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Startup Hustle

Startup Hustle

Startup Hustle 1373 Episodes Jun 25, 2026

Startup Hustle is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. It aims to tell the real story of startups and entrepreneurs, covering topics from funding to failure and beyond. The show is designed for anyone who wants to start, own, or build a business.

Episodes

The Speed of Context: Why AI Changed What Engineers Actually Do Jun 25, 2026 25:18 Most engineering teams are still optimizing for the wrong thing. They chase the speed of code when the real bottleneck is the speed of context. Matt Watson and Eban Bisong, founder and CEO of Senvi, get into what actually changes when AI moves from a coding tool to a teammate.Eban has spent his career as a founding engineer, and his approach is hands-on: don't tell skeptical engineers AI works, sh
AI, Protein, and GLP-1s: What's Actually Working in Health Tech Jun 18, 2026 29:12 Most people are already asking AI about their health. Almost none of them believe the answers. Around 40% use it to make wellness choices, but fewer than 5% trust what it says. Matt Watson and Josh Anthony, CEO of Nlumn, dig into why.Josh has spent 25 years in food and nutrition, and his take is blunt: trust drops fast as the question gets serious, from a recipe to a diagnosis, and the fix isn't a
Building Software Solo with Beth Epperson of Legacy Purposed Jun 11, 2026 31:47 Matt Watson sits down with Beth Epperson, founder and CEO of Legacy Purposed, here in the Kansas City area. Beth came up through marketing and branding, including the brand launch for Hyvee Arena, before deciding to build something of her own.Her company is built around two products. Aligned Legacy measures how people think in real time and helps teams see how aware, connected, and aligned they ac
Geothermal Energy and the Future of Data Center Power Jun 4, 2026 24:35 Data centers are multiplying fast, and the energy demands are staggering. Matt Watson sits down with Tim Tarver, founder and CEO of Exceed Geo Energy, to talk about one of the most underrated power sources in the conversation: geothermal. Tim breaks down how his company is adapting drilling technology from the oil and gas industry to generate clean, baseload energy almost anywhere in the country,
From Excel Sheet to 13,000 Customers: How Sean Tepper Built Tykr May 28, 2026 28:14 Most retail investors don't know what to do after they open a brokerage account. Sean Tepper was one of them until he built a traffic light rating system for stocks and turned it into a SaaS platform used by 13,000 customers across 50 countries.In this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt Watson sits down with Sean Tepper, founder and CEO of Tykr, to break down the real story behind building a B2C SaaS
Eric Ries: Why Good Companies Go Bad May 21, 2026 36:06 Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup. Sold 2 million copies. Helped hundreds of people build companies from nothing. Now he's back with a harder question: why do so many of those companies eventually go bad?In this episode, Matt Watson sits down with Eric to talk about his new book Incorruptible—a deep dive into the invisible forces that corrupt organizations, why profit-maximization becomes pathologi
The Non-Technical Founder Who Beat the Developers May 7, 2026 35:39 Most founders get the order wrong. They build for two years, then ask a marketer how to sell it. Connie Lund flipped the script. She started Zaboom with no dev team, no code background, and no VC funding. What she had was 50+ years of combined marketing and product experience, a GoHighLevel account, and a willingness to break things at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. In this episode, Connie walks Matt through
Stop Hiding Behind Process (You Should Own the Product Instead) Apr 23, 2026 29:56 Most product managers are just project managers with a fancier title. They make zero real decisions, answer to everyone, and wonder why nothing ships on time. Willis Jackson has been building product teams for over a decade. He's blacklisted entire companies from his hiring pool. And he moved to the Bay Area to measure himself against the best—only to find out nobody there really knows how to do p
The Secret to Winning Venture Capital: What 2,000 Startup Investments Taught Dave Lambert Apr 16, 2026 34:11 Most founders think investors bet on ideas. They don't.Dave Lambert has funded over 2,000 companies through RightSide Capital, and he's seen this pattern play out thousands of times. Great product. No revenue traction. Wrong ask, wrong timing. Automatic no.In this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt sits down with Dave to break down how RightSide Capital evaluates startups differently than traditional
Are Software Engineers Really at Risk? Mohan Reddy Weighs In Apr 9, 2026 25:46 Matt Watson sits down with Mohan Reddy, serial entrepreneur and Chief Scientist at Cornerstone AI Labs, to explore how AI is fundamentally reshaping the way we think about work, skills, and human potential. Mohan shares the origin story of Skyhive—a workforce intelligence platform built to reskill and upskill people at a global scale—and how its acquisition by Cornerstone brought that mission to a
How AI Is Disrupting Education with Katie Boody Adorno of LeanLab Education Apr 2, 2026 28:55 AI is changing how kids learn. But are schools ready?Katie Boody Adorno is the founder and CEO of LeanLab Education. She's spent 13 years trying to close the opportunity gap in public education. In this episode, she and Matt break down how COVID widened learning disparities, why high-dosage tutoring works but doesn't scale, and how AI is now lowering that cost. They also get into what it takes to
AI Isn't Killing Software Jobs: It's Changing Who Builds What Mar 26, 2026 35:33 Zach Klempf is back! He joined Matt Watson on one of the early episodes of the show. Now, Zach is president of AutoManager, a private equity group with five automotive software companies under its umbrella.In this episode, Zach and Matt get into how AI is making senior engineers more productive. They talk about why offshore teams tend to adopt it more slowly, and where vibe coding breaks down when

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