business
Hosted by Mash (Michael) Ashley · business · EN-US
Most startups don’t fail because the idea is bad.They fail because the journey is harder than expected.Inspiring Founders explores what it really takes to survive and succeed in entrepreneurship. Each episode features honest conversations with founders and startup leaders about customer discovery, risk, resilience, and building companies that don’t just launch — but last.No shortcuts. No startup theater. Just the real work behind innovation.
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Contact path
Public web form
Booking probability
28%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchMost startups don’t fail because the idea is bad. They fail because the journey is harder than expected. Inspiring Founders explores what it really takes to survive and succeed in entrepreneurship. Each episode features honest conversations with founders and startup leaders about customer discovery, risk, resilience, and building companies that don’t just launch, but last. No shortcuts. No startup theater.
Inspiring Founders Podcast is hosted by Mash (Michael) Ashley. The show has published 13 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "Hrishi Amravatkar" (22 October 2026, 42 minutes), "Alexander Piskunov" (8 October 2026, 47 minutes), and "Everything is giving us feedback!! Elizabeth Greenfield Inspiring Founders Interview" (24 September 2026, 44 minutes).
Inspiring Founders Podcast publishes roughly every two weeks, with episodes averaging 43 minutes across 13 episodes.
Booking probability for Inspiring Founders Podcast is 28%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Inspiring Founders Podcast requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Inspiring Founders Podcast's contact route on record: public web form.
The strongest fits for Inspiring Founders Podcast are Business & Management Consulting. Inspiring Founders Podcast has a business audience.
Mash (Michael) Ashley hosts Inspiring Founders Podcast, a business podcast with 13 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Episode #5
Hrishi Amravatkar spent twenty years in the Bay Area at eBay, Cisco, Nokia and Amazon, where he headed the conversational AI team on Alexa. Along the way he kept building on the side: a used-book marketplace at USC, one...
Episode #4
Alexander Piskunov went from investment banking to private equity, then took what he calls a leap of faith and built his own business: importing wine into the UK from Georgia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil and Peru. He...
Elizabeth Greenfield spent 25 years as a nurse — 15 of them as a nurse anesthetist — before walking away from a job she loved to build her own functional medicine practice.She was running marathons and triathlons...
In mid-2024, Shiven Dave was an aerospace engineering student drowning in wind tunnel test data. So he built a pipeline that let an AI watch his screen and answer his questions. He called it Jarvis — he's a lifelong...
Episode #10
This interview with Mykyta Tretynko, the founder of Billioncore joins us over Zoom to talk about his founder journey, what it's like being a startup in Ukraine, and why he is on a mission to stop fraudsters and...
Handoyo is the founder and CEO of Lyrid, a cloud infrastructure platform he describes as "Airbnb for data centers" — aggregating compute, storage, and networking from local data centers and hyperscalers into one...
<p>What does it take to bridge the gap for entrepreneurs in overlooked geographies? In this episode of Inspiring Founders, Mash sits down with Natalia Bishop—a serial tech founder and the visionary behind Story and...
<p>The One Trait Every Successful Founder Needs (It’s Not What You Think)What does it take to build, grow, and exit multiple companies? For serial entrepreneur Tom Shen, the secret isn't a high IQ or a perfect business...
<p>AI can generate an answer instantly — but that doesn’t mean it’s answering the right question.</p><p>In this episode of Inspiring Founders, I sit down with Benjamin Baer of DecideWise in downtown San Jose to talk...
<p>In this episode of Inspiring Founders, Wayne Fenton shares lessons from decades in big tech, multiple startups, and now founding a deep tech company in Santa Cruz.</p><p>We explore what it really means to become...
<p>Meet Raymond Cheng, Founder and CEO at Decrypt Compliance, a Silicon Valley Startup providing compliance audits and certifications for small and medium sized businesses. If your startup wants to do business with the...
<p>Meet Sameer Saran, the CEO and Founder of ParkStash a Parking Management Software for Real Estate used by Apartments, Student Housing, Mixed-use Retail Sites, and even Truck Parking. Sameer has been bootstrapping...
<p>Welcome to another episode of the Inspiring Founders Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Ashley and today we are heading over to San Jose to learn how SJSU supports Startups and Small Businesses at the south end of...
<p>Join Michael Ashley, AKA MASH, for an interview with PieFi founder Sol Lipman and learn what Pizza has to do with Startups coming out of Santa Cruz, California.</p>
Recent guests on Inspiring Founders Podcast. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
Chief Investment Officer, North Asia, Standard Chartered Bank
Billioncore
DecideWise
ParkStash
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