Inc. Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel

  • 48 minutes 44 seconds
    Teamshares CEO Michael Brown on Why Going Public Is Just the First Inning

    Teamshares CEO Michael Brown is on a mission to address one of the biggest problems in the American economy. Millions of small businesses are owned by Boomers and Gen X approaching retirement, and most will never find a buyer. Teamshares buys these businesses from retiring owners. With more than 90 companies acquired across 30 states, over 500 million in revenue, and a Nasdaq listing on the horizon, Michael is proving that the small business economy deserves a better solution.


    What You'll Learn:

    • How Teamshares actually works and why the model gets stronger as it scales
    • What nearly 100 acquisitions have taught Michael about small businesses that most people don't see
    • Why going public changes everything for Teamshares and why Michael says it's still the first inning
    • How he built through COVID and the 2022-2023 rate shock without losing conviction
    • The long-term mindset behind building a company with a 200-year plan

    Chapters:

    01:30 Michael's Childhood

    04:04 What Is Teamshares

    07:44 Why Going Public Is Just the Beginning

    15:30 Lessons from 90 Acquisitions

    18:50 The Future of Teamshares

    28:19 The 200-Year Mindset

    32:25 Building Culture at Scale

    36:00 Leading Through Market Shocks

    37:55 Quickfire 


    Follow Teamshares:

    Follow Inspired:

    • Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/
    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners
    • X: https://x.com/InspiredCap
    • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital/
    • Substack: https://alexavontobel.substack.com/


    Important Disclosures and Disclaimers

    This podcast episode features a discussion with Michael Brown, Co-Founder and CEO of Teamshares, Inc. (“Teamshares”), and Alexa von Tobel, Founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital. Ms. von Tobel and Inspired Capital are existing investors in Teamshares and may have a direct financial interest in the outcome of the proposed business combination described below.

    Proposed Business Combination. Teamshares has entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination with Live Oak Crest Acquisition Corp. (“Live Oak”), a special purpose acquisition company. In connection with the proposed transaction, a registration statement on Form S-4 (the “Registration Statement”) has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). This podcast does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. For important information about the proposed transaction, including where to find the Registration Statement and other legal disclaimers, please refer to the press release available at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260403515446/en/Teamshares-and-Live-Oak-V-File-S-4.

    Clarifications. References to Operating EBITDA throughout refer to Pro Forma Operating EBITDA, which includes pre-acquisition results of acquired businesses as if they had been owned for the full year. References to “Corporate EBITDA” throughout the episode refers to 2025 Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA. Investors should review the full set of assumptions and risk factors accompanying these metrics in the Registration Statement, including a full reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures.

    10 April 2026, 11:00 am
  • 58 minutes 17 seconds
    Replay: How Ben Lamm (Colossal Biosciences) is Bringing Back Extinct Species

    What happens when humanity faces the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history? Serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm believes we need a backup plan. With a track record of building and exiting companies across AI, gaming, and conversational intelligence, Ben took on his most audacious venture in 2021: co-founding Colossal Biosciences with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church to bring extinct species back to life. The company has already successfully de-extincted the dire wolf and aims to return woolly mammoths to the Arctic by 2028. In this episode, Ben shares how his self-described "unemployable" streak became his entrepreneurial superpower, why asking naive questions helps him tackle impossible challenges across industries, and how Colossal's breakthrough technologies represent humanity's essential insurance policy for planetary survival.


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    25 March 2026, 11:00 am
  • 47 minutes 9 seconds
    Taylor Francis on How Watershed Is Solving the Climate Crisis

    Watershed CEO Taylor Francis is building the infrastructure for companies to decarbonize at scale. After building Stripe's climate program, he saw how technology could move the needle faster than policy alone and set out on his journey as a founder. With a 500 million ton CO2 reduction goal by 2030 and customers like FedEx, Walmart, Airbnb, and Spotify, Taylor is proving that climate action can be both urgent and profitable.


    What You'll Learn:

    • Taylor's journey from An Inconvenient Truth to founding Watershed
    • What he learned at Stripe about scaling impact and building mission-driven companies
    • How supply chain collaboration is the real lever for decarbonization (and why it matters more than you think)
    • What the next decade of climate actually looks like and why the world is winning faster than predicted
    • The frameworks and principles that attract the best people to solve the hardest problems

    Chapters:

    1:57 Growing Up and An Inconvenient Truth

    5:35 From Princeton to Policy

    7:40 What Stripe Taught Him About Scale

    9:54 The Origin of Watershed's 500 Megaton Mission

    13:09 Breaking Down Scope One, Two, and Three Emissions

    16:00 How Watershed Works With Fortune 500 Companies

    18:50 The Story Behind the Name Watershed

    21:00 Why Network Effects Matter in Decarbonization

    23:15 What the Best Investors Taught Him

    28:15 The Truth About Climate Today

    33:10 Where the World Is Actually Headed

    36:20 Product Footprints and AI Done Right

    39:42 Why Domain-Specific AI Beats Generic Models

    41:00 Quick Fire


    Follow Watershed and Taylor:

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    11 March 2026, 11:00 am
  • 42 minutes 41 seconds
    Julia and Thomas Berolzheimer on Why the Future of Shopping Will Run Through Creators

    Julia Berolzheimer and Thomas Berolzheimer have spent 15 years turning a fashion blog into one of the most powerful e-commerce brands in the creator economy. What started with a camera and an idea in 2011 has grown into a multi-platform empire spanning a blog, Instagram, Substack, ShopMy, Amazon, and their newest venture, Coreli.


    What You'll Learn:

    • How Julia and Thomas built one of the most trusted brands in the creator economy
    • Why curation beats creation when it comes to driving real commerce
    • How they think about managing content, platforms, and technology as a team
    • Where AI fits in and where it doesn't for creators who've built on authenticity
    • What the next decade of the creator economy actually looks like

    Chapters:

    • 01:52 Intro
    • 02:35 The Beginning of Julia and Thomas's Journey
    • 04:45 Milestones and Evolution of Gal Meets Glam
    • 06:41 Curation and How Julia Starts Every Morning
    • 11:30 Managing Content Across Different Platforms
    • 15:34 ShopMy
    • 20:25 Tools and Technology
    • 25:20 How Julia and Thomas Work Together
    • 29:00 The Future of the Creator Economy
    • 31:05 Using AI for Influencer Content
    • 35:45 Quickfire Round

    Follow Julia and Thomas Berolzheimer:

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    25 February 2026, 5:00 am
  • 51 minutes 52 seconds
    Solace Founder Jeremy Gurewitz Raises $130M to Transform Healthcare Advocacy

    Solace founder and CEO Jeremy Gurewitz is building a marketplace that connects patients with healthcare advocates—covered by insurance. After losing his mother to pancreatic cancer and witnessing firsthand how difficult it was to navigate the US healthcare system, Jeremy founded Solace to help every American manage the overwhelming complexity of healthcare, from finding the right doctors to dealing with insurance. Now, after raising $130 million in a Series C led by IVP, Solace is expanding into commercial insurance and scaling nationally. With a patient NPS of 90 and data showing improved outcomes and lower costs, Jeremy shares how he is building for a future where healthcare advocacy becomes as standard as having a primary care physician.


    What You'll Learn:

    • Jeremy's personal journey from losing his mother to building Solace
    • How healthcare advocacy works and why patients achieve a 90+ NPS
    • Why the US healthcare system is so broken and how advocates fix it
    • Where Jeremy sees healthcare heading in the next decade


    Chapters:
    02:00 Growing Up with a Doctor Mother
    06:45 From Quantitative Finance to Healthcare
    09:00 What Solace Does for Patients
    11:38 Why Inspired Invested in Solace
    12:45 Real Stories of Solace Saving Lives
    17:35 Why the US Healthcare System Is So Broken
    20:35 Building a Marketplace of Healthcare Advocates
    22:45 Measuring What Matters: Outcomes and Costs
    28:50 Announcing Solace's $130M Series C
    30:31 Building Culture at Scale
    33:00 Where Solace Is Headed
    36:30 When AI Helps and When Humans Are Essential
    40:20 Jeremy's Predictions for Healthcare in 2035


    Follow Solace and Jeremy:‍ • Solace Website • Solace LinkedIn • Jeremy Gurewitz LinkedIn Follow Inspired:‍ • Website • LinkedIn • X • Instagram • Substack

    11 February 2026, 12:00 pm
  • 48 minutes 56 seconds
    Kevin Ryan, the Godfather of NYC Tech, on AI in the Decade Ahead

    Kevin Ryan is known as the godfather of New York City tech. Over three decades, he's founded or backed companies worth more than $40 billion combined, including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), MongoDB (now valued at $30 billion), Business Insider (sold for $450 million), and Gilt Group. As founder of AlleyCorp, Kevin has spent his career building category-defining companies and correctly predicting major technology shifts before they happened. From betting on the internet in 1996 to understanding AI's trajectory today, Kevin shares his framework for seeing what's next and why speed executed properly changes everything.


    What You'll Learn:

    • How Kevin spotted the internet would change everything in 1996 and the patterns he uses to see what's next
    • The two categories Kevin is betting on: vertical AI applications and deep science breakthroughs
    • Why winning the first four years matters more than anything else
    • How to compete for top 0.1% talent in today's market
    • Kevin's 2036 predictions for work, NYC vs SF, and where technology is headed

    Chapters:

    00:00 Introduction
    02:10 Kevin's Childhood 
    05:00 Reflecting on His Entrepreneurship Journey
    08:30 Speed Matters
    11:15 The Feeling When You Know a Company Is the One
    14:58 Why You Need Top 0.1% Talent
    17:00 Two Categories Kevin Is Betting On
    20:00 Drawing the Defensibility Line in Vertical AI
    22:22 Thinking About the Product
    23:10 Acceleration of Science and When Kevin's Antenna Goes Up
    25:08 What the World Looks Like in 2036
    27:00 Job Loss and AI Displacement
    32:00 San Francisco vs New York City
    38:18 What Kevin Hopes for NYC Tech
    40:50 Interesting Topics Kevin Is Exploring
    42:36 Quickfire Round

    Follow AlleyCorp and Kevin:

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    28 January 2026, 12:00 pm
  • 38 minutes 7 seconds
    How Flock Safety Became a $7.5B Crime-Fighting Company with Founder Garrett Langley

    Flock Safety founder and CEO Garrett Langley is building the technology infrastructure to eliminate crime in America. A repeat entrepreneur who previously built and sold two companies for over $200 million each, Garrett now leads a $7.5 billion company serving more than 6,000 communities, 5,000 law enforcement agencies, and 1,000 businesses while helping achieve nearly a million arrests annually. He shares his conviction that safety drives economic prosperity, the surprising fact that drones arrive on scene 94% of the time before officers, and how AI will free police officers from paperwork to focus on community relationships.

    What You'll Learn:

    • Why it's getting easier to commit serious crimes in America and what's driving that trend
    • How technology creates precision in law enforcement that's never existed before
    • Why drones are transforming emergency response and saving cities money
    • How AI will reshape policing by eliminating paperwork and doubling community presence
    • Why safety is the foundation for economic prosperity and job growth


    Chapters:

    00:00 Introduction

    02:08 Why Team Is the Only Thing That Matters

    04:40 Growing Up in Atlanta: Learning Sales from His Father

    06:45 What Is Flock Safety and How Does It Work?

    11:20 The Crime Crisis No One Talks About

    14:33 Serving Neighborhoods, Businesses, and Law Enforcement

    17:00 Real Cases: From U-Hauls to Black SUVs

    19:55 The Future of Policing in 10 Years

    23:30 Building Technology While People's Lives Are at Stake

    25:38 How Drones Are Changing Emergency Response

    28:09 Scaling to $300M ARR at 70% Growth

    29:38 Why Safety Drives Economic Prosperity

    32:30 The "Do the Work" Culture at Flock

    33:48 Quickfire Round


    Follow Flock Safety and Garrett:

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    14 January 2026, 12:00 pm
  • 6 minutes 58 seconds
    2026 Predictions: Physical AI, Quantum Computing & the Future of Work

    Alexa is sharing her bold predictions for 2026, from physical AI transforming our crumbling infrastructure to quantum computing breakthroughs that will reshape innovation. With her signature focus on walking into the office "in 2035," she explain why AI won't destroy jobs but will instead free us from mundane work, how autonomous vehicles will give suburban parents their time back, and why smart machines are finally taking us out of the Roman times.


    Chapters:

    00:09 Prediction #1- Physical AI

    02:06 Prediction #2- Quantum

    03:00 Prediction #3 - Jobs

    05:04 Prediction #4 - Autonomous cars


    Follow Inspired:

    7 January 2026, 3:08 pm
  • 56 minutes 49 seconds
    Mikey Shulman on Building Suno into a $2.5B AI Music Platform

    Suno founder and CEO Mikey Shulman is building the future of music creation. A Harvard PhD physicist who led machine learning at Kensho before it was acquired by S&P Global, Mikey had a realization in 2022 that audio was a backwater in machine learning—despite being everywhere in human life. He turned that realization into $2.5B company Suno, which grew from zero to over 100 million users. Mikey shares how Suno scales to users generating seven million tracks a day, why music's format will change as dramatically in this era as it did in the shift from vinyl to streaming, and how AI is democratizing creativity for billions of people who never thought they could make music.


    What You'll Learn:

    • How growing up in a loving, stable environment with parents who encouraged following your passions shaped Mikey's leadership style
    • Why audio was overlooked in machine learning and how Suno made it a first-class citizen
    • How Suno went from zero users to 100 million and zero revenue to $200 million in under three years
    • Why a quarter of songs on Suno are remixes of other songs on the platform
    • The difference between creation and consumption in music and why that boundary is disappearing
    • How Suno is growing the entire pie of music rather than just splitting existing revenue
    • Why the business model for music will change when the format becomes interactive
    • What Mikey learned about speed versus craft when building for billions of users


    Chapters:
    01:52 Growing Up: Following What You Love
    03:45 From Physics to a PhD at Harvard
    05:30 Kensho and the Path to Machine Learning
    09:30 Teaching Machine Learning at MIT Sloan
    12:10 The Birth of Suno
    15:30 Why Audio When Everyone Chose Text
    16:25 Zero to 100 Million Users in Three Years
    18:55 Xania Monet: The First AI Billboard Artist
    21:55 Stories That Keep the Team Going
    24:15 Music Was Invented to Be Social
    27:27 The Business Model for Interactive Music
    29:44 Reshaping the Music Industry
    32:45 New Boundaries of Music Creation
    35:00 The Future: Interactive Albums and Fan Fiction
    37:35 Growing the Pie for All Creators
    40:00 Will There Be Agentic AI Stars?
    41:15 Building Teams That Move Fast
    43:30 Speed and Craft: The Cultural Balance
    45:30 What's Coming Next at Suno
    46:30 Guardrails in a Lower Stakes Domain
    47:47 Managing Chaos as a First-Time CEO at Scale
    49:55 Quickfire Round


    Follow Suno and Mikey:

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    17 December 2025, 12:00 pm
  • 49 minutes 49 seconds
    Dylan Taylor on Building Voyager Technologies and the Future of Space Innovation

    Dylan Taylor, founder and CEO of Voyager Technologies, is building the infrastructure that will define humanity's future in space. Through defense, space solutions, and Starlab, Voyager is working on some of the most ambitious aerospace projects of our generation. In this conversation, Dylan takes us from watching Star Trek as a kid in Idaho to becoming a publicly traded space company CEO. He shares what it's actually like to reach space aboard Blue Origin, why we're living through the biggest space boom in human history, and how space will transform our global economy.


    What You'll Learn:

    • Why space isn't an industry but humanity's eighth continent
    • His experience going to outer space
    • How perfect real-time information about Earth will create trillions in economic value
    • Projects that Voyager is working on
    • How ambition shifted from personal glory to reflected glory through leadership
    • Predictions for the space industry
    • The frontier innovations that will enable humans to live and work in space


    Chapters:
    01:52 From Star Trek Dreams to Space Reality
    04:37 What is Voyager Technologies?
    07:02 Winning the Contract to Build Starlab
    09:40 Going to Space on Blue Origin
    16:36 The Overview Effect and What Astronauts Feel
    20:10 How Space Shifted Dylan's Perspective on Risk and Ambition
    22:40 The Henry Crown Fellowship and Leadership Transformation
    23:40 Inside Voyager Technologies' Projects
    26:50 The Purpose of Starlab as a Microgravity Laboratory
    31:00 Space Predictions
    35:23 Space as the Eighth Continent
    36:55 Perfect Real-Time Information About Earth
    38:50 What Keeps Dylan Up at Night About Space's Future
    41:07 Frontier Innovations in Quantum Computing and Beyond
    45:15 Quick Fire Round
    47:52 Outro


    Follow Voyager Technologies and Dylan:


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    3 December 2025, 12:00 pm
  • 46 minutes 5 seconds
    Axion Founder Daniel First on Solving the $4 Trillion Manufacturing Problem with AI

    Axion founder Daniel First is building the command center for American manufacturing that detects product failures before they reach customers. His AI-powered observability platform links IoT data, technician reports, and customer feedback across aerospace, medical devices, and consumer products to identify emerging issues manufacturers don't even know exist. Born from watching enterprise AI pilots fail at McKinsey, Axion is architecting customer-centric manufacturing where products iterate in real time based on what's breaking in the field.


    What You'll Learn:

    • The trillion-dollar quality crisis plaguing American manufacturing and how AI is solving it
    • Why most enterprise AI fails and what makes the rare successes different
    • The future of American manufacturing competing on speed of customer learning
    • How real-time field data is transforming product development cycles
    • Unconventional founder habits that enable exceptional speed and deep thinking 

    Chapters:

    2:00 From Orthodox Debates to Independent Thinking
    3:00 Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Human Flourishing
    6:00 The Pivot from Academia to Industry
    7:20 Predicting AI as the Next Cultural Mania
    8:10 What Axion Actually Does for Manufacturers
    10:35 The Invisible Quality Crisis Costing Trillions
    13:30 Surprising Multi-Department Platform Adoption
    16:02 Surgery Equipment Failure With Two Root Causes
    16:47 Why Axion's Organization Looks Different
    18:00 Building an Ecosystem Across Product Lifecycle
    20:28 How Quality Data Drives Product Innovation
    21:58 American Manufacturing Winning on Empathy
    26:00 How Axion Succeeded Where 95% Fail
    28:50 Why Robotics Will Create More Quality Issues
    31:10 What Enterprise Leaders Think About AI
    32:50 Data Centers and Manufacturing Tailwind
    34:09 The Experimental Mindset Driving Speed
    36:30 Why 2010s Advice No Longer Applies
    38:40 The Vertical AI Revolution
    39:55 Quick-fire Questions

    Follow Axion and Daniel:

    • ⁠Axion Website⁠
    ⁠• ⁠Axion LI ⁠
    ⁠• ⁠Daniel LI


    Follow Inspired:
    • ⁠Website⁠
    • ⁠Instagram⁠
    • ⁠LinkedIn⁠
    • ⁠X⁠
    • ⁠Substack

    24 November 2025, 1:52 pm
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