Episodes

  • Why Most Startups Fail: Founders Don’t Know What They Don’t Know Yet

    Why Most Startups Fail: Founders Don’t Know What They Don’t Know Yet
    May 7 2026
    What if the real edge in building and investing in companies is knowing exactly where your knowledge stops? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Dave Fachetti, Partner at Venture Guides, to unpack the operator–investor mindset that drives durable outcomes. Drawing on decades of experience, Dave explains why great founders prioritize solving painful, urgent problems before optimizing execution, and how this “efficacy before efficiency” mindset underpins true product-market fit. He introduces his “know what you don’t know” test as a lens for evaluating founders, emphasizing self-awareness, curiosity, and coachability as critical traits. The conversation also explores cap table strategy as a long-term system, the importance of aligning all stakeholders, and why board dysfunction guarantees failure. Dave shares practical frameworks for hiring, leadership, and navigating AI opportunities, while highlighting the balance between conviction and listening. It’s a grounded playbook for founders and investors aiming to build resilient, high-performing companies.
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    35 mins
  • The AI Hacker Era Is Here: Alissa Knight on Rewriting Cybersecurity

    The AI Hacker Era Is Here: Alissa Knight on Rewriting Cybersecurity
    Apr 2 2026
    What happens when a former teenage hacker builds AI that can find security vulnerabilities before attackers do? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye speaks with cybersecurity expert, CAIO, Founder, and CEO of Assail, Alissa Knight, about the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and offensive security. Once arrested for hacking as a teenager, Alissa went on to build Ares, a powerful AI model that autonomously discovers vulnerabilities in APIs, mobile apps, and web applications. She explains why the age of adversarial AI means companies must shift from preventing attacks to continuously identifying weaknesses faster than attackers can exploit them. The conversation explores the rise of AI-driven security testing, the emerging “one-person unicorn” founder model, and how startups should think about hiring, fundraising, and defensibility in an AI-first world where directing intelligent systems may matter more than traditional expertise.
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    35 mins
  • Why Your GPU Investments Are Running at 40% Efficiency, and How Zymtrace Fixes It

    Why Your GPU Investments Are Running at 40% Efficiency, and How Zymtrace Fixes It
    Mar 18 2026
    What if your multi-million-dollar GPU investment was quietly delivering less than half its potential? In this episode of Built Not Born, the conversation focuses on why AI infrastructure performance often lags far behind spend, and how continuous profiling is emerging as a real competitive edge. Join host Sage Nye as she sits down with Israel Ogbole, CEO and cofounder of zymtrace, to explore why most GPU clusters run at just 20–40% utilisation, how traditional observability tools miss the real bottlenecks, and why profile-guided optimisation can unlock massive efficiency gains without demanding deep CUDA expertise. Israel shares hard-won lessons from building a must-have infrastructure product: validating real willingness to pay, avoiding “nice-to-have” traps, and navigating early founder dynamics. The discussion also dives into the growing talent gap in low-level systems engineering, and how rich profiling data can become context for LLM-driven optimisation workflows. It’s a practical, insight-dense conversation for founders, operators, and AI leaders focused on extracting real returns from AI infrastructure, not just scaling hardware.
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    35 mins
  • 172 Rejections Later: How Stuart Lombard Built ecobee Into a Smart Home Leader

    172 Rejections Later: How Stuart Lombard Built ecobee Into a Smart Home Leader
    Mar 12 2026
    What if getting rejected 172 times was the best thing that could happen to your startup? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Stuart Lombard, co-founder and former CEO of ecobee, to unpack the grit and strategic clarity required to build a lasting company. After 172 investor rejections, Stuart transformed ecobee into a trusted smart home brand competing against giants like Google and Nest. He shares how founders must develop the judgment to filter advice, balance hardware’s operational rigidity with software’s agility, and recognise true product-market fit before scaling. Stuart also explains why culture, transparency, and mission-driven leadership aren’t soft ideals but competitive advantages. From navigating hardware complexity to building a 600-person organisation, this conversation reveals how resilience, focus, and long-term thinking turn scrappy startups into market leaders.
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    28 mins
  • Transforming physical product development with Brian Lindauer and VibeIQ

    Transforming physical product development with Brian Lindauer and VibeIQ
    Feb 17 2026
    What if your product development cycle could be compressed from 12 months to weeks? In this episode of Built Not Born, the conversation focuses on unpacking why physical product companies struggle to move fast and how they can build agility into their DNA. Host Sage Nye sits down with Brian Lindauer, Founder and CEO of VibeIQ, as Brian shares lessons from two decades across retail and product development, explaining how fragmented systems, unstructured data, and siloed teams quietly slow decision-making and inflate inventory risk. The conversation explores how true product-line understanding can compress development cycles from months to weeks, and why AI’s real power isn’t just automation, but prediction to help teams assess feasibility, margins, and manufacturability earlier in the process. Brian also dives into building enterprise tools people actually want to use, scaling go-to-market strategies for physical goods, and hiring A-players who thrive in ambiguity. It’s a practical, grounded discussion for founders and operators looking to turn product development from a bottleneck into a strategic advantage.
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    29 mins
  • When the Internet Breaks: Building Infrastructure Resilience with Edward Tsinovoi

    When the Internet Breaks: Building Infrastructure Resilience with Edward Tsinovoi
    Jan 15 2026
    What if a single internet outage could take down your entire business? In this episode of Built Not Born, the conversation unpacks a growing but under-discussed risk in modern infrastructure: edge fragility. Host Sage Nye sits down with Edward Tsinovoi, Co-founder and CEO at IO River, to discuss that as digital businesses scale, the risk of a single CDN outage can cascade into massive financial and operational damage. Edward draws on decades of experience in deep-tech infrastructure to explain why edge resilience has become mission-critical in 2026, and how multi-CDN strategies can be implemented without months of custom engineering. The conversation spans both technology and leadership, covering vendor lock-in, fault-tolerant system design, and the importance of decoupling edge infrastructure from application services. Edward also shares hard-earned lessons from building and scaling a deep-tech company, from assembling world-class teams to creating products that move from “nice-to-have” to truly indispensable.
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    26 mins
  • UK CIO of the Year, Ian Penny: Why Great Tech Strategies Start with Customer Problems

    UK CIO of the Year, Ian Penny: Why Great Tech Strategies Start with Customer Problems
    Jan 8 2026
    Infrastructure decisions rarely feel glamorous, but they often determine whether a company scales or stalls. In this episode of Built Not Born, the conversation centres on how technology choices, leadership, and customer focus intersect under real-world pressure. Host Sage Nye sits down with Ian Penny, a global technology leader with over two decades of experience stabilising and scaling complex systems across organisations like JPMorgan, Barclays, and Hiscox. Ian shares why the most effective technology strategies start with customer problems, not platforms, and how reframing infrastructure as a business enabler changes executive buy-in. Together, they unpack the trade-offs between startup and enterprise software, the long-term cost of unchecked technical debt, and the leadership habits that help teams consistently deliver. From communicating infrastructure value in human terms to building teams that prioritise impact over novelty, this episode offers practical insight for leaders making high-stakes technology decisions while building organisations designed to last.
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    24 mins
  • 90% of Startups Fail: What $100m Sales Teams Do Differently with Ethan Schechter

    90% of Startups Fail: What $100m Sales Teams Do Differently with Ethan Schechter
    Dec 11 2025
    Leadership in high-growth environments comes with moments of pressure, complexity, and rapid change. For go-to-market executives, your approach in those moments sets the tone for the entire team. In this episode of Built Not Born, Ethan Schechter shares how he keeps teams laughing through the lows, turns competition and collaboration into motivation, and helps build startups that endure when many don’t. Sage Nye sits down with Ethan Schechter, a go-to-market leader and SVP of Global Sales & Customer Success at Qodo, to discuss what it really takes to build high-performing sales teams from the ground up. Ethan shares how to balance structure with creativity, foster accountability, and turn failure into growth. From his “Passion, Mastery, Accountability” hiring framework to practical insights on cross-functional selling and customer success alignment, this conversation offers a blueprint for scaling revenue engines that endure the chaos of startup growth.
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    27 mins