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Founders Uncensored \\ Unfiltered startup founder stories: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Peter Day -- General Partner @ super{set}
Every founder circles the same three questions. Is this idea a real business? Who do I hire next? How do I sell something that still breaks? Guess wrong, and you spend wasted time trying to find out. Most of the advice available is either a funding narrative or a highlight reel, and neither one helps at 11 pm on a Tuesday when the design partner goes quiet. Founders Uncensored brings the chaos of building a startup into the light. We sit down with the people building AI-first companies and get the version they would only tell a peer: the pivot, the failed hire, the stretch where nothing worked, and the call that finally paid off. No pedestals. No thesis decks. If you’re a founder, a founding-team engineer, or someone seriously weighing the leap, this is the conversation you have been waiting to hear.
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- 1 weeks ago44 min
The Hard Decisions Nobody Prepares Founders to Make
Sooner or later a founder has to make a call nobody warned them about, like splitting from a co-founder or pivoting. David Metz is founder and CEO of Prizeout, which puts merchant-funded cash back rewards inside credit union banking apps and now counts more than 30 credit unions as partners. He has lived the founder bingo card himself: parting ways with co-founders, handing out titles he regretted, and rebuilding the business after a pivot. He explains why he refuses to split equity 50/50 and insists on vesting from day one, why you should keep selling yourself as long as you can before a first sales hire (and expect a drop-off when you do), and how he decides whether to pivot by weighing the data against what customers actually tell him.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- 3 weeks ago46 min
What Founders Learn When Their Startup Gets Real
Starting a company means finding out your bad hires and bad customers are the same problem. Kian Alavi is Co-Founder and CEO of Mazlo, the financial platform for nonprofits and fiscal sponsors, and he spent eight years running operations, finance, and development at a nonprofit before building it. He walks through going through two co-founders before finding the right fit, firing customers who would have turned Mazlo into a company with one client, and why he shows his team the runway. He also covers how to tell when "we need more people" is true, why gross margin was the thing he didn't know he'd have to learn, and why customer conversations are the one job you never delegate.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- Oct 5, 202637 min
Why This Founder Keeps Going Back Into the Fire
Kris Beevers sold one company and immediately started another. Kris Beevers is the co-founder and CEO of NetBox Labs, previously co-founder of NS1 (acquired by IBM in 2023), and he's started four companies total, including a failed wood products business. He explains why he'd rather kill a company than lose a friendship, why he built in New York instead of San Francisco, and why he never moved past "I don't know what I'm doing" even after multiple exits.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- Sep 21, 202640 min
The Problem Meta Couldn't Solve Became His Startup
Meta's Integrity team had 1,000 people and still couldn't keep up with bad actors. Brett Levenson, CEO and co-founder of Moonbounce, led that team before realizing human review can't scale against non-deterministic AI, so he built the control layer instead. He walks through the moment he understood AI had made application security non-deterministic overnight, why 75% of his engineering resources went into one problem: turning vague policy into decisions enforceable in real time, and the case for chatbots that redirect a self-harming teen to a parent instead of just answering the prompt. He also gets into recruiting his Apple co-founder over lunch, and the early mistake of treating enterprise sales like a technical problem instead of a relationship one.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- Sep 7, 202626 min
How Knowing When to Pivot Built a Better Company
A pivot most founders never admit to considering out loud. Caitlin Leksana is CEO and Co-Founder of Fazeshift, an AI platform for accounts receivable backed by Gradient and Y Combinator, and she's lived the failed startup that made this one work. She and her co-founder killed their crypto marketing startup after a false-positive revenue signal, fired a Japanese conglomerate client mid-shutdown, and found the real idea from a color-coded spreadsheet she'd built just to track invoices. The company has since raised $27 million and grown to 35 people by doing the thing she almost skipped the first time: calling customers before building anything.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- Aug 24, 202633 min
Why Founder Conviction Beats Funding
A competitor raised 25 times more capital and still isn't winning. Steve Ancheta, Founder and CEO of Zig.ai, spent 16 years carrying quota before betting on a sales execution platform built to close the gaps that burn reps out. He explains why he benchmarks his messaging against AI labs instead of competitors, why the first customer signed on a working but ugly prototype over a polished one, and the five-minute whiteboard reset an early investor forced on him after funding closed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
- Aug 12, 202636 min
The Founder Lessons Tom Chavez Learned Building Four Companies
What separates founders who scale from founders who burn out? For the launch of Founders Uncensored, host Peter Day sits down with four-time founder and super{set} General Partner Tom Chavez to unpack the hard lessons of building companies and evolving from founder to CEO. Tom shares why founders need to move faster when a business model isn’t working, delegate real authority, master the less glamorous parts of leadership, and prioritize their health along the way. They also explore how AI is accelerating business velocity, why founders should focus on making new mistakes instead of repeating old ones, and how maintaining a strong sense of agency can help leaders navigate the toughest moments of entrepreneurship.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
About Founders Uncensored \\ Unfiltered startup founder stories
Every founder circles the same three questions. Is this idea a real business? Who do I hire next? How do I sell something that still breaks? Guess wrong, and you spend wasted time trying to find out. Most of the advice available is either a funding narrative or a highlight reel, and neither one helps at 11 pm on a Tuesday when the design partner goes quiet. Founders Uncensored brings the chaos of building a startup into the light. We sit down with the people building AI-first companies and get the version they would only tell a peer: the pivot, the failed hire, the stretch where nothing worked, and the call that finally paid off. No pedestals. No thesis decks. If you’re a founder, a founding-team engineer, or someone seriously weighing the leap, this is the conversation you have been waiting to hear.
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