Founders · new episode 27 Aug 2026
In Depth
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First Round's practical conversations with founders and operators on building early.
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- 185The fastest way to learn is to run two competing bets | Jay Parikh (EVP CoreAI, Microsoft)27 Aug 2026 · 1h 2mJay ParikhGeorge Conrades▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of CoreAI at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Jay spent over a decade as Facebook's global head of engineering, scaling the company from a few hundred engineers to billions of users, then ran the cybersecurity…
- 184What startups get wrong about enterprise | Lindsey Scrase (COO, Checkr)30 Jul 2026 · 1h 8mDaniel Yanisse▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Lindsey Scrase, COO of Checkr. Before joining Checkr as CRO and later stepping into the COO seat, Lindsey spent nearly a decade at Google Cloud as global managing director for SMB, mid-market, and startups. In this conversation, she breaks down why…
- 183How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma)24 Jul 2026 · 1h 3m▶
About this episode
In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Jon Noronha, co-founder and CPO of Gamma, the AI-native presentation platform used by more than 100 million people. In this conversation, he walks through Gamma’s distinct eras of product-market fit: from a pre-AI struggle with a year of runway left, to an overnight…
- 182Why Plaid’s COO cold-calls new hires | Eric Sager (COO of Plaid)16 Jul 2026 · 1h 9mEric SagerBain & CompanyCitibankVisa▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Eric Sager, COO of Plaid, following stints as CRO of Bluevine and Head of Sales at Square. During his seven-year tenure at Plaid, Eric has helped lead the business through a pandemic, Visa's collapsed acquisition, a fintech downturn, and the AI boom. In…
- 181How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)25 Jun 2026 · 60 minPaul Copplestone▶
About this episode
In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase, the open-source Postgres platform now serving more than seven million developers. Before Supabase, Paul launched a Thumbtack-style marketplace in Southeast Asia and co-founded an office-management startup called Nimbus,…
- 180How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)4 Jun 2026 · 1h 1mDylan FieldDennis WoodsideFrancoise Brougher▶
About this episode
In today's conversation, Brett sits down with CMO of Figma, Sheila Joglekar Vashee. Previously the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company past $1 billion in revenue, she now leads marketing at Figma fresh off its IPO. In an industry that has spent a decade trying to turn marketing into…
- 179Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel)21 May 2026 · 1h 2m▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Graham Moreno, Head of GTM at Parallel Web Systems. Before Parallel, Graham scaled Windsurf's GTM organization from three sellers to seventy-five in under a year, served as President through the Cognition acquisition, and earlier built and led…
- 178Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma)14 May 2026 · 44 minDylan Field▶
About this episode
In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Praveer Melwani, CFO at Figma. Praveer joined Figma in 2017 as the company's first business operations and finance hire, when the team was around 30 people and not yet charging for the product, and stepped into the CFO seat in 2022, helping to lead the…
- 177Why great product leaders should stop obsessing over the roadmap | Diya Jolly (CPO & CTO of Xero)30 Apr 2026 · 50 minSukhinder Singh Cassidy▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett is joined by Diya Jolly, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Xero. Before Xero, Diya was CPT at Okta and led YouTube's advertising monetization products at Google. In this conversation, she unpacks her three-bucket framework for delegating decisions, why the most…
- 176Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis)21 Apr 2026 · 57 minAmazon Web Services▶
About this episode
In this episode of In Depth, First Round Partner Josh Kopelman sits down with Shachar Hirshberg and Dan Shiebler, co-founders of Artemis, the AI-native security platform that just emerged from stealth with $70M in combined seed and Series A funding. Shachar and Dan unpack how they built a 30-person team in seven…
- 175Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash)17 Apr 2026 · 1h 2mChristopher Payne▶
About this episode
In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Christopher Payne, who spent a decade as President and COO at DoorDash, helping scale the company from roughly 70 employees to the dominant food delivery platform in the US. Before DoorDash, Christopher held senior operating roles at Amazon and eBay,…
- 174The most politically dangerous role in the C-suite | Katie Burke (COO, Harvey)10 Apr 2026 · 1h 11mKatie BurkeBrian Halligan▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Katie Burke, who recently became COO of Harvey after joining as Chief People Officer. Before Harvey, Katie spent 11 years in HR leadership at HubSpot, where she built one of tech's most distinctive cultures. In this conversation, she unpacks her…
- 173What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)26 Mar 2026 · 1h 7mJay KrepsAmazon Web Services▶
About this episode
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the company built around Apache Kafka, the open-source data streaming platform he originally built while at LinkedIn. In this conversation, Jay shares his full journey: how Confluent grew from a scrappy group of engineers with no go-to-market experience into a…
- 172The product wisdom every CPO should ignore | Jeremy Epling (CPO, Vanta)19 Mar 2026 · 1h 10mChristina CacioppoNat Friedman▶
About this episode
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett is joined by Jeremy Epling, CPO of security and compliance platform Vanta. Jeremy details his career journey, unpacking what it took to make the jump from tenured Microsoft executive to startup CPO. He also shares hard-won insights: how to maintain shipping velocity…
- 171Building Zipline: From launch disaster to drone-delivery giant | Keller Cliffton (Co-founder, CEO)12 Mar 2026 · 1h 11mBrian CheskyCleveland ClinicAlfred Lin▶
About this episode
Keller Cliffton is the co-founder and CEO of Zipline, the world's largest commercial autonomous delivery system, which today serves 5,000 hospitals across multiple countries and saves an estimated 17,000 lives per year. In this episode, Keller breaks down his extreme hiring philosophy that has powered Zipline for over…
- 170Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake)26 Feb 2026 · 60 minFrank SlootmanBob MugliaCarl Eschenbach▶
About this episode
Chris Degnan was the first sales hire at Snowflake and spent 11 years scaling the company from zero to $3.5 billion in revenue as its CRO, working alongside four different CEOs and learning from each one. In this episode, Chris breaks down what it actually takes to scale an enterprise sales organization, why MEDDIC is…
- 169Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta)19 Feb 2026 · 1h 11mStevie CaseFirst Round Capital▶
About this episode
Stevie Case is the CRO of Vanta, the trust management platform serving everyone from founders to Fortune 100 CISOs. A former pro-video gamer who stumbled into sales through a mentor's bet, Stevie has built one of the most unconventional paths to the C-suite in tech. In this episode, she unpacks why early revenue hires…
- 168Figma is not the source of truth | Ryan Lucas (VP of Design, Rippling)12 Feb 2026 · 1h 6mBrian CheskyParker Conrad▶
About this episode
In the second Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Ryan Lucas, VP of Design at Rippling. Before Rippling, Ryan led design at Retool and co-founded multiple startups, bringing a rare founder's perspective to design leadership. A trained industrial designer, Ryan traces the roots of modern software design…
- 167Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel)5 Feb 2026 · 1h 16mGuillermo RauchJohn CollisonPatrick Collison▶
About this episode
In the first Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Jeanne De Witt Grosser, Chief Operating Officer at Vercel. Before Vercel, Jeanne spent nearly a decade at Stripe, where she built and scaled global revenue teams and led product partnerships. In this conversation, she unpacks what separates good executives…
- 166Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)10 Dec 2025 · 1h 15m▶
About this episode
Anil Varanasi is the co-founder and CEO of Meter, which provides full-stack networking infrastructure as a service for businesses. Since founding Meter with his brother Sunil in 2015, Anil has been playing a distinctly long game in one of the most entrenched markets in technology, betting on vertical integration,…
- 165How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)19 Nov 2025 · 1h 5mJyoti Bansal▶
About this episode
Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to…
- 164How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi)6 Nov 2025 · 1h 24mZack KanterAddition▶
About this episode
Zack Kanter is the founder and CEO of Stedi, an API-first healthcare clearinghouse. After bootstrapping a wildly profitable auto-parts business, he sold it to tackle "the most complicated problem" he'd ever encountered: business-to-business transaction exchange. He spent years building EDI infrastructure, threw away…
- 163Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped Serval's AI agents for IT teams | Jake Stauch (Founder and CEO)23 Oct 2025 · 1h 23m▶
About this episode
Jake is the founder and CEO of Serval, an AI-driven IT automation and service management platform that just raised $47M in Series A funding this week. Before founding Serval, Jake spent over five years at Verkada, where he led multiple products from 0-1 and helped scale the company across hardware and software. His…
- 162The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth in generative media | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)22 Oct 2025 · 59 minFirst Round Capital▶
About this episode
Gorkem Yurtseven is the co-founder and CTO of fal, the generative media platform powering the next wave of image, video, and audio applications. In less than two years, fal has scaled from $2M to over $100M in ARR, serving over 2 million developers and more than 300 enterprises, including Adobe, Canva, and Shopify. In…
- 161From dorm room to life-saving AI | Prepared’s story | Michael Chime (Co-founder & CEO of Prepared)1 Oct 2025 · 1h 9m▶
About this episode
Michael is the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, the AI assistant for 911 calls that helps dispatchers capture information faster, translate emergency calls in real time, and deliver lifesaving context to first responders. Founded out of Yale in 2019, Prepared grew from a school safety app into a critical platform for…
- 160Saying yes to everything: How customer obsession built Samsara | Kiren Sekar (CPO)11 Sept 2025 · 1h 9mSanjit Biswas▶
About this episode
Kiren Sekar is the CPO of Samsara, a company that brings real-time visibility, analytics, and AI to physical operations. Before Samsara, Kiren was an early leader at Meraki, which was acquired by Cisco for $1.2B. In this episode, he walks us through Samsara’s origin story: from hardware hacking in a basement to…
- 159Starting an education giant in a “bad market” | ClassDojo’s story | Sam Chaudhary (Co-founder and CEO)3 Sept 2025 · 1h 12mAccelBill GatesGeoff Ralston▶
About this episode
Sam Chaudhary is the co-founder and CEO of ClassDojo, a multi-product education platform used in 95% of U.S. schools and over 180 countries globally to connect teachers, students, and families. In this episode, Sam shares the full arc of building ClassDojo, from early skepticism about education and a failed…
- 158From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman’s journey | Abhinav Asthana (Co-founder & CEO)28 Aug 2025 · 1h 6mAbhinav AsthanaStewart ButterfieldAnkit SobtiRam Gupta▶
About this episode
Abhinav Asthana is the co-founder and CEO of Postman, the world's leading API collaboration platform used by millions of developers and thousands of companies. What began as a personal itch, a simple Chrome extension Abhinav built to make his own API work easier, became a global phenomenon within weeks. In this…
- 157How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO)20 Aug 2025 · 1h 4mCameron AdamsLars RasmussenCliff ObrechtDave Greiner▶
About this episode
Cameron Adams is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the design platform valued at $42B as of July 2025, used by over 230 million people every month. Before starting Canva, Cameron was a designer and engineer at Google and co-founded Fluent, an email startup. In this episode, Cameron walks through…
- 156Twitter's former CEO on rebuilding the web for AI | Parag Agrawal (Co-founder and CEO of Parallel)14 Aug 2025 · 1h 6m▶
About this episode
Parag Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Parallel, a startup building search infrastructure for the web’s second user: AIs. Before launching Parallel, Parag spent over a decade at Twitter, where he served as CTO and later CEO during a period of intense transformation, as well as public scrutiny. In this episode,…
Who the show talks about
Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.
