In startups, choosing a co-founder is often compared to choosing a spouse. But what happens when your co-founder actually is family?

In this episode of Build Mode, host Isabelle Johannessen explores how founders navigate co-founder relationships that come with built-in trust and unique challenges. First up is Hala Jalwan and Alessio Tresanti, the married co-founders of AI agent for procurement focusing on autonomous sourcing, Rivio. They discuss building a company from the same household and why clear roles and communication matter when both your personal and professional lives are on the line.

Then Isabelle talks with Anna Sun, co-founder of Nowadays, an AI co-pilot for corporate event planning that she launched with her sister Amy shortly after graduating from MIT. Sun explains how their sibling dynamic shapes decision-making, team culture, and the way they move quickly as founders.

They discuss:

• How trust shapes strong co-founder partnerships

• The benefits and challenges of building a startup with family

• Dividing roles and decision-making between co-founders

• Hiring and culture in early-stage startups

• Why some founders turn to co-founder coaching to navigate conflict

This episode looks at how unconventional co-founder relationships can become a startup’s biggest advantage and why trust may be the most powerful tool a founding team has.

Apply to Startup Battlefield: We are looking for early-stage companies that have an MVP. So nominate a founder (or yourself): techcrunch.com/apply. Be sure to say you heard about Startup Battlefield from the Build Mode podcast.  

TechCrunch Disrupt: If you're thinking about applying to Startup Battlefield, then October 13 to 15 in San Francisco, we're back for TechCrunch Disrupt, where the Startup Battlefield 200 takes the stage. So if you want to cheer them on, or just network with 1000s of founders, VCs, and tech enthusiasts, then grab your tickets.  

Use code buildmode15 for 15% off any ticket type. 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.

This week on Build Mode, we’re joined by David Park, co-founder and CEO of Narada, an enterprise AI agent platform spun out of UC Berkeley AI Lab research. Narada uses large action models to automate complex, multi-step workflows across enterprise systems. After previously co-founding and exiting Coverity, Park is now building his second company with a different playbook: Stay lean, talk to customers, and don’t raise before you’re ready. 

In this episode, he shares why Narada spent a year making nearly 1,000 customer calls before raising institutional capital, how the company reached 99.99% reliability in production environments, and why he believes too much funding too early can derail even the strongest teams. Park also reflects on his experience as a Startup Battlefield Top 20 company and the lessons he’s carried from his first exit into building Narada. 

He breaks down: 

• Why customers won’t tell you your “baby is ugly” — but their wallets will 

• How Narada achieves enterprise-grade AI reliability 

• Why raising money before product-market fit can be dangerous 

•  The discipline of building a lean, “mean building machine” 

• When to scale your go-to-market team (and when not to) 

• Why founders must stick to their values, even under pressure 

• Lessons from Startup Battlefield and building in public 

Apply to Startup Battlefield: We are looking for early-stage companies that have an MVP. So nominate a founder (or yourself): techcrunch.com/apply. Be sure to say you heard about Startup Battlefield from the Build Mode podcast.  

Founders Summit: If you want to take these conversations beyond the podcast, then come join us in person at a TechCrunch event on June 9 in Boston, we're hosting our founders Summit, which is essentially build mode in real life. It's a full day focused entirely on founders, builders and the conversations that actually move startups forward. It's also a great way to sharpen your story. Get your tickets. 

TechCrunch Disrupt: If you're thinking about applying to Startup Battlefield, then October 13 to 15 in San Francisco, we're back for TechCrunch Disrupt, where the Startup Battlefield 200 takes the stage. So if you want to cheer them on, or just network with 1000s of founders, VCs, and tech enthusiasts, then grab your tickets. 
 

Use code buildmode15 for 15% off any ticket type

00:00 – Why customers won’t tell you the truth (but their wallets will) 
02:43 – What Narada does: enterprise AI agents powered by large action models 
04:28 – Enterprise reliability: reaching 99.99% accuracy 
07:32 – Trust, security, and on-prem deployment 
12:26 – Bootstrapping, 1,000 customer calls & finding real pain 
15:05 – Raising after traction & meeting their lead VC at Disrupt 
18:47 – Scaling responsibly after product-market fit 
22:46 – Go-to-market strategy & leveraging channels 
23:48 – From Coverity exit to Narada: a founder’s second act 
27:05 – Founder advice: passion, grit & integrity 
30:20 – Fake it till you make it? Not quite. 
30:44 – Startup Battlefield experience 
36:05 – Final reflections on disruption & building for impact 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

This season on Build Mode, we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class team and that starts with hiring the right people the first time. 

This week, we’re joined by Sarah Lucena, founder and CEO of Mappa, a behavioral intelligence platform that uses voice AI to decode human behavior in under 60 seconds. After rebuilding teams over and over again early in her career, Sarah set out to answer the question: why do “great on paper” candidates fail to flourish after their hired? 

In this episode, she explains how Mapa analyzes thousands of voice biomarkers, from speech patterns to linguistic signals, to build behavioral profiles and match candidates based on compatibility, not just the on-paper credentials. They help their clients make the right hired the first time, saving crucial time and money. 

She breaks down: 

• Why most hiring decisions are still a gamble 
• Compatibility vs. similarity (and why it matters) 
• How voice biomarkers reveal behavioral traits 
• How to reduce bias without lowering the bar 
• How founders should think about building aligned teams 

Whether you’re hiring your first employee or scaling a fast-growing startup, this episode will change the way you think about talent, team dynamics, and what it really means to be a “fit.”  

Chapters: 

00:00 – Why great hires still fail 
00:47 – Meet Sarah Lucena (Founder & CEO, Mappa) 
01:39 – What Mappa does: voice → behavioral intelligence 
04:22 – Why voice (not video) is the best signal 
06:03 – The proprietary dataset & real-life outcomes 
12:30 – Mapping companies, not just candidates 
14:27 – Compatibility vs. similarity 
16:10 – Bias, diversity & better hiring signals 
23:53 – Expanding beyond hiring (VCs, finance, insurance) 
30:16 – Using Mappa to evaluate investors 
33:02 – Building Mappa’s own team 
35:49 – Founder advice: patience, compatibility & lawyers 
39:16 – Startup Battlefield experience 
41:29 – Outro 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

Build Mode is back. This season we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class founding team starting with your cap table, equity structures, and startup compensation strategy. 

We kick off with Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Yuri has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage startups, and he shares practical advice on how early-stage founders should think about startup equity, cap table design, investor selection, and compensation structures from day one. 

He breaks down: 

• The 3 types of investors (and which one to avoid) 

• Why your cap table is part of your team 

• The 20–25% seed dilution rule 

• How to split equity with a co-founder 

• How to talk to early employees about risk and compensation 

No matter where you are in your startup journey, this episode will help you get the incentive structure right from the beginning.  

Chapters: 

00:00 - Why your first hires deserve more equity 
00:31 - Meet Yuri Sagalov (YC → General Catalyst) 
02:12 - Your cap table is part of your team 
02:50 - The 3 types of investors (avoid this one) 
05:02 - How to split equity with a co-founder 
07:55 - How much equity to give early employees 
09:37 - How to talk compensation and risk 
12:31 - Red flags in formation docs and vesting 
18:27 - Advisors for equity? Usually a mistake 
20:05 - The 20–25% seed dilution rule 
26:03 - The shift to 10-year stock options 
34:11 - Don’t scale before product-market fit 
39:23 - Final advice: Just start and choose your co-founder carefully 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

It takes a village to build something great. In Season 2 of Build Mode, we go deep on how to assemble a founding team that signals ambition, execution, and long-term success. Founders and investors share candid lessons on hiring, structuring, and scaling teams that actually win. New episodes coming February 19.

n the season finale of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Paul Irving, Partner and COO of GTMfund, to discuss go-to-market strategies for the AI era. Paul shares specific, actionable advice on how early-stage startups can win even when facing well-funded competitors who iterate at lightning speed. He also explains why distribution has become the final remaining moat when technical advantages disappear in months instead of years, and why every company needs a unique go-to-market motion tailored to their specific ICP. 

If you just can’t get enough AI-native GTM strategies, check out this episode of the GTMnow podcast: Build your AI Outbound Machine with ChatGPT 

Chapters:  

00:00 Intro 

00:44 Meet Paul Irving - GTM Fund 

04:02 Finding Competitive Edge in Specific Channels 

07:34 Matching Operators to Startups with AI 

12:08 The End of the B2B SaaS Playbook Era 

14:09 Creative GTM Strategies 

16:18 The Power of Warm Introduction Mapping 

23:04 Success Stories: Ryder and Vanta 

25:25 Red Flags in Go-to-Market Strategy 

27:29 Advice for Resource-Constrained Founders 

31:22 When to Start Hiring a GTM Team 

34:57 Outro 

Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

We're bringing you a special TechCrunch podcast crossover episode. Isabelle joins Equity Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan to dissect the year's biggest tech developments, from mega AI funding rounds that defied expectations to the rise of "physical AI," and make their calls for 2026. 

The group tackled everything from why AI agents didn't live up to the hype in 2025 (but probably will in 2026), to how Hollywood will push back against AI-generated content, to why VCs are facing a serious liquidity crisis.  

Listen to the full episode to hear: 

• Why world models are the next big thing in AI and how they're different from large language models 
• The death of "stealth mode" for AI startups and the rise of alternative funding sources 
• Predictions on regulatory chaos around AI policy and what Trump's recent executive order means for startups 
• Hot takes on IPOs: Will OpenAI and Anthropic actually go public in 2026? 
• Rapid-fire predictions including Johnny Ive and Sam Altman's inevitable public breakup, the return of dumb phones, and why everyone will be calling themselves "AI native" 
• What's coming in Build Mode season 2: A deep dive into team building, hiring, and finding co-founders 

Chapters:

00:00 Intro - TechCrunch Build Mode & Equity Crossover Episode

00:27 Meet the Hosts - Predictions Episode Introduction

02:49 Reviewing 2024 Predictions - The Mega Funding Rounds

05:40 AI Startup Funding Challenges and Alternative Capital Sources

08:05 2026 AI Predictions - World Models and the Next Evolution

12:41 Physical AI - The Intersection of Robotics and Intelligence

14:07 AI in Media and Content Creation

18:48 Netflix-Warner Brothers Deal and FTC Predictions

21:09 The LP Direct Investment Trend

23:26 IPOs and Deep Tech Capital Challenges

25:49 Startup Battlefield Trends - Verticalized AI Across Industries

28:08 Rapid Fire Predictions - Fashion, Self-Driving Cars, and More

30:25 The Dumb Phone Comeback and Foldable iPhones

32:51 Build Mode Season 2 Preview - People and Team Building

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

Founders Gabriel Sanchez (Enspectra Health) and Tom Harries (Earth Funeral) share what it takes to build in heavily regulated industries where "move fast and break things" simply won't work. In this episode of Build Mode, they reveal the realities of navigating FDA approval processes, state-by-state regulations, and cultural taboos while building products that are literally matters of life and death. Gabriel walks through Enspectra's nearly decade-long journey to FDA clearance for their skin imaging device, while Tom discusses building a human composting service as an alternative to cremation and burial. They offer tactical advice on iterating while waiting for regulatory approval, planning your runway when success is largely out of your hands, and raising venture capital in spaces that many investors consider too taboo to touch. 

Chapters:  

00:00 Intro 

00:30 Meet Gabriel Sanchez - Enspectra Health 

02:34 The First FDA-Approved Skin Imaging Physics in 28 Years 

04:24 From Stanford Lab to Clinical Device 

06:43 Navigating FDA Clearance and Reimbursement Strategy 

43:33 Scaling While Managing Regulatory Barriers 

46:55 Where Earth is Today and Future Growth 

48:00 Outro 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

Venture capitalists Ross Fubini (XYZ Ventures) and Leslie Feinzaig (Graham & Walker Ventures) pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies — not just how they evaluate startups, but also how they win over LPs and founders alike. In this episode of Build Mode, they share hard-won lessons from raising their first funds and how that experience allows them to empathize with founders. They discuss why "founder-market fit" applies to VCs too, how authentic thought leadership beats manufactured content, and why the best investor relationships start years before you need the money. Plus, the importance of building trust over transactions and why your network truly is your competitive advantage in venture.

Chapters:  

00:00 Intro 

01:01 Meet the VCs: From Netscape to Costa Rica 

03:06 The Horror Show of Raising a First Fund 

05:29 Building a Fund as Proof of Concept 

08:52 The Schtick: Why VCs Need a Unique Thesis 

11:44 Thought Leadership That Actually Works 

15:34 The Qualification Process: Knowing in Two Minutes 

19:06 Authentic vs. Manufactured Content 

27:59 Building Relationships Before You Need Money 

30:00 Founder-Market Fit for VCs 

32:52 Key Takeaways: Person, Firm, Terms—In That Order 

36:45 Field Notes: Creative Ways VCs Court Founders 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

Alltroo co-founders Kyle Rudolph and Jon Walburg share how they transformed their pro-athlete star power into a fundraising platform that allows their community the ability to donate to a variety of organization and win high-value prizes. In this episode of Build Mode, they reveal how they leveraged their networks to disrupt the charitable giving industry, from raising half a million dollars for the NFL in their first year to learning hard lessons about scaling too fast. They discuss the pivot from $10,000 golf tournaments to $10 sweepstakes entries, building trust with both celebrities and fans, and why your network is your greatest competitive advantage.

Chapters: 
00:00 Intro 
00:58 Meet the Founders: From NFL to Tech Startup 
03:53 The $10,000 Golf Tournament That Sparked Everything 
06:14 Navigating the Nonprofit-Tech Startup Hybrid Model 
11:44 Leveraging Star Power: The NFL Partnership Win 
15:34 Getting Athletes to Say Yes: The Trust Factor 
19:06 When Identity Crisis Hits: Scaling Too Fast 
27:59 The Mistake of Outsourcing Your Vision 
30:00 Founder Market Fit: Your Network Is Your Net Worth 
32:52 Key Takeaways: Building Thought Leadership Without Celebrity Status 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 

Glīd CEO and founder Kevin Damoa shares what it takes to win Startup Battlefield 2025 and build a company solving real infrastructure problems. Fresh off his victory, De reveals how a veteran's perspective on logistics led to an autonomous solution bridging congested roads and underutilized rail. Plus, he shares how mindfulness, mission-driven culture, and $70M in early customer commitments positioned Glīd for success. 

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro 

01:13 What Glīd does: Autonomous transloading explained 

02:40 From military logistics to founding Glīd 

04:05 Moving containers: The versatility of TEUs 

04:47 $70M in commitments and five railroad partnerships 

05:01 Why Glīd launched three products at once 

08:47 The Startup Battlefield experience and preparation 

12:15 Pitching on stage: Nerves, preparation, and execution 

15:32 The camaraderie among Startup Battlefield competitors 

19:47 Veteran founders and mission-driven companies 

25:01 Post-win momentum: Customers, investors, and talent 

27:15 Hiring on vibes: Glīd's culture of God, family, self, and commitment 

28:25 Kevin's advice: Meditate, don't freak out 

29:00 Tips for aspiring Startup Battlefield applicants 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.