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The Founders Sandbox

The Founders Sandbox

By: Brenda McCabe
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Summary

 The Founder's Sandbox is going to be an exciting new podcast produced and sponsored by Next Act Advisors. Our host and founder of NAA, Brenda McCabe, will be interviewing players in the ecosystem of startups. Discussion centers on the nuts and bolts of resilient companies, shared experiences creating (and keeping) revenue, while making companies playful AND well governed! We will tackle common issues faced by the founders of startups, and talk about how to create a fun environment where, under great corporate governance, founders can sit back and watch their employees build and play.2025 Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Season 4, #6- Building Reputation with Purpose

    Season 4, #6- Building Reputation with Purpose
    May 14 2026
    In this episode of the Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe sits down with growth advisor and author Vanessa Golsby to explore what it really takes to scale private equity-backed SaaS companies. Vanessa shares the story behind her new book, The $100M Push: The Four Decisions PE-Backed SaaS CEOs Make to Deliver Growth in 100 Days, and reveals the four critical decisions CEOs must lead to build scalable, resilient growth: defining the ideal customer profile, aligning go-to-market execution, making strategic investment decisions, and creating long-term operational accountability. Drawing from her experience advising more than 100 middle-market software companies and serving as an operating partner in private equity, Vanessa offers an inside look at how investors think, why commercial alignment matters, and how CEOs can create predictable growth through disciplined execution. The conversation also explores the role of generative AI in modern go-to-market strategy, the importance of reputation and purpose-driven leadership, and the entrepreneurial leap Vanessa took to launch her own advisory firm. This episode is packed with practical insights for founders, SaaS executives, and growth leaders looking to scale with clarity, confidence, and purpose. You can find out more about Vanessa at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby https://vanessagoolsby.com/ Or order her book at: https://www.amazon.com/100M-Push-Decisions-PE-Backed-Deliver/dp/1963549309 Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. Now in the fourth season, the Founder's Sandbox is a podcast that gathers business owners, founders, professional service providers. 00:31 and corporate directors. And we all are working towards the same mission, which is building scalable, resilient, purpose-driven companies to build a better world. We do this with underpinning, with great corporate governance, and really working with the founders to build that resilience and scalability. My guest, um join me here in what I like to consider a fun sandbox. 00:55 And this month, my guest, I'm actually delighted to invite Vanessa Golsby. Vanessa's joining me from, is it Dallas? Dallas, that's right. Dallas, Texas. So um more here, but thank you Vanessa for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox. And I wanna give a brief introduction to why Vanessa's here today. There's multiple um boxes that she checks, largely Vanessa. 01:22 has her own firm. She is a growth advisor who specializes in scaling private equity back middle market software companies. And it's an interesting time and that space that I'm certain we're going to get to a question here in a minute about the impact of generative AI and all those models out there and the effect on software businesses. You're a seven-year veteran as an operating partner. 01:48 in two private equity firms and portfolio SaaS CEOs. She has helped more than 100 middle market software companies drive growth, execute go-to-market companies, go-to-market, pardon me, turnarounds, and deliver investor returns through sharper commercial execution. That's all in the commercial execution, isn't it, Vanessa? That's right. Yeah. And prior to advising, she was a former operator leading product and commercial. 02:16 teams for 18 years at brands like Travelocity and Financial Times, which I didn't know that when we first were talking. I hadn't realized when we had our first conversations of your corporate experience with Travelocity and Financial Times. So you brought a lot of that corporate kind of know-how into the private equity world and you actually started your own firm. it four months back? 02:44 October, October of 2025. My goodness. So you're not even into your first year. I know. So, and, and, uh, you are an author. So your book, um, so I don't know when you found the time, Vanessa, but your book, the 100 million push the four decisions PE backed as SAS CEOs make to deliver growth. And a hundred days is out. 03:13 Matter of fact, this last week and we're in the third week of April, it uh hit bestseller, right? That's right. Amazon. Yeah. And in that book, we'll get into it. You distill the framework that you've developed. I don't know when, while setting up your own firm, but you developed over decades in the trenches, codifying the sequence behind the big four decisions. 03:40 that enable CEOs to scale with speed, clarity, and confidence. So welcome to the Founder Sandbox. Great. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Well, I always like to start with uh my guests to really talk about your origin story. And I think what's very appropriate for today's uh episode is what drove you to actually write a book, right? 04:09 because it distills both your professional as well as um this new tool that you got out there in the market. Yeah, you know, I never thought I would set out to write a book, if ...
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    47 mins
  • Season 4, #5- Be Curiously Different

    Season 4, #5- Be Curiously Different
    Feb 10 2026
    What happens when you're tasked with reinventing an economy—and later find yourself building investment systems in countries where the rulebook doesn't exist? That's the story of Thomas Nastas, this month's guest on the Founder's Sandbox. His journey from Michigan's automotive belt to the front lines of the former USSR is a masterclass in resilience, creativity, and leadership under pressure. In this episode, host Brenda McCabe interviews Thomas Nastas, a seasoned board director with over 30 years of experience in international markets. They discuss Thomas's journey from Michigan to various emerging markets, his innovative approaches, and the differences in governance roles between the U.S. and international markets. They also touch on the importance of scaling businesses through customer revenue, the concept of resilience in entrepreneurship, and the significance of purpose-driven enterprises. Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, the host of this monthly podcast where we are now in our fourth season. And the podcast is really oriented towards 00:33 growth scale companies, board directors, and VCs that work in the typically the scaling um of companies and the ecosystem. And I am absolutely delighted to bring a guest in this to this month, these podcasts, Thomas Nastas, who has been serving in international boards of directors and US boards of directors. 01:02 for over 30 years. um His international background is quite um pioneering. And we're going to get into the material here, but we're going to learn about his experience out in Russia and Katastrofgan, um Africa. And Thomas and I met through um board prospects. We are both um 01:30 quite unusual candidates for boards of directors in the uh common way of recruiting board directors in the United States, prior CEOs. We do have an extensive background in international governance. And when I got to speak with Thomas um over the last couple of months and learning how he brought the board governance oh practices 01:59 from the United States to Emerging Marcus just fascinated me and I ask him to be a guest here. So Thomas, I want to thank you for joining me today in the Founder's Sandbox. Well, thank you. Appreciate the invitation. So um I briefly touched on you are uh a board director with uh lots of international experience. um 02:29 You also have a lot of em experience at emerging markets. um So Russia, Kazakhstan, Africa, and think it's East Africa, and some South American markets. um You've served on over, I want to say, is it 50? As companies, right? And em for my listeners, independent board directors is a term that we use here in the United States. 02:56 whereas in other markets, they're called non-executive directors. So, NED. So, Thomas has been in an NED role in over 50 companies. And we're gonna get into how that's kind of different em to what you have traditionally here in the United States. You are a midwesterner, just like me. My family. You're from Michigan, um big automobile industry. em 03:25 beachhead here in the United States. I'm from Ohio, so we've heard a lot of us, I think some of the experiences of being uh born and raised and educated in the Midwest, uh bringing in uh that Midwestern spirit, as I say, kindred spirits from the Midwest. And finally, um the em other area that Thomas is particularly experienced in, um and we share this 03:55 as well as you work in SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises, but in the international markets, which is, again, it's fascinating. So we have a lot to unpack and unpeel today in today's podcast. So Thomas, could you just talk about your origin story? mean, what, you were really young, you were in Michigan. What made you pack up and actually go off to Russia? 04:24 Give us a little bit of your origin story. Well, I didn't go directly from Michigan to Russia. uh From Michigan to Canada, to Europe, to Africa, and then to Russia, and then to Kazakhstan. oh So it little bit, it was kind of like baby steps. A little bit of background on how I ever got involved in this is I'm a mechanical engineer. oh 04:52 by training, you know, I got an MBA and worked in, you know, Ford Motor Company and automotive suppliers. And, um, and then many decades ago, um, we had a new governor in Michigan and, um, he, like all other governors, even, even still now today said that, you know, the Michigan economy is dominated by the auto industry, you know, and 05:21 And it goes up and down and up and down and up and down. And we need to diversify the economy. Right? Right. So this governor, name was Bob Blanchard. He put together a program uh in the sort of the mid eighties on how to go about diversifying the Michigan economy. And he put together a bunch of blue ribbon boards of CEOs of, you know, Ford and GM and 05:51 Chrysler and you know, the major ...
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    56 mins
  • Season 4, #4 - Chris Daden Scaling for work 4.0

    Season 4, #4 - Chris Daden Scaling for work 4.0
    Nov 13 2025
    In this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, host Brenda McCabe sits down with Chris Daden, CTO of Criteria Corp, to explore what it takes to scale purpose-driven businesses in the era of Work 4.0. Chris shares his fascinating origin story—starting with a childhood shaped by tech-savvy parents and leading to multiple exits, international teams, and leadership at a global talent success platform. He breaks down how Criteria uses science and AI to remove bias from hiring, why soft skills matter more than ever, and how to future-proof your workforce in an AI-augmented world. Learn about his nonprofit, SoCal Tech Forum, and why building trust is essential for AI adoption at scale. transcript: 00:18 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is in its fourth season. I'm here, your host, Brenda McCabe, and I'm live this month's podcast is 00:31 from the Founders Space in Pasadena. And I'm joined with my guest, Chris Daden of Criteria Corp. um And a colleague of mine in the startup ecosystem. Welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So am I. So um I want to briefly give some background on the Founder Sandbox for those that are listening in today. um 00:56 Each episode features in-depth conversations with founders of small and mid-sized owner-operated companies and operators that support the ecosystem. And together, through storytelling, we explore how to build scalable, resilient, purpose-driven businesses with great corporate governance. And you're going to discover today with Chris, his origin story. I always like to start with how the person 01:24 that's a guest to my podcast, really started getting involved with the ecosystem of startups. And your story is quite fascinating. I'm gonna give a spoiler alert here. You and I met, I guess two years ago, at a Thai con event where you were on a panel. I was the MC em and we got to talking over dinner and just your origin story and the multiple exits you've had. 01:53 really um lit up a bulb in my mind. said, Chris, you have to be in my podcast. So it's two years later, and I'm so glad that we're making this happen. Lucky to be here. Thank you. forward to it. So this podcast, again, we're going to talk about a lot of things because Chris, not only are the CTO of Criteria Corp, a talent success company, where you help organizations meet objective evidence-based 02:23 talent decisions that both reduce the bias and drive better outcomes. But also, you're a two times 40 under 40. You've had multiple exits of prior companies. You're a speaker, a founder, a board member, and recently you started your own nonprofit in SoCal called the SoCal Tech Forum. 02:51 Oh, and I forgot you're a member of the Forbes Technology Council. we're going to have... Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Brenda. So with that, again, my episodes on particularly Spotify, we have a title that's on each episode and we've chosen Scaling Work 4.0 for this month's podcast. Again, it's Chris Daden, CTO of Criteria. So let's start. What would you... 03:21 Call your tagline. Tell us about your origin here in Southern California. Sounds great. Well, just a little bit about myself personally. I've been in tech for ah quite a while now. It's really the only career I've ever had working in tech. So I started in my youth, frankly. My father was a member of the British Merchant Navy. you can imagine with that career involved, he traveled all around the world. uh 03:50 Also, of course, gave me lot of inspiration for the global companies that I run today and the teams that I've started around the world. So although my father wasn't directly in computer science, you know, that career of being in the merchant Navy definitely shaped my global perspective. when he stopped working in the merchant ship Navy as an officer, he started developing his own software for weather routing for large 04:21 merchant ships and container ships. So what was amazing about that was it was ran out of a spare bedroom in my parents' house just upstairs while I was growing up there. And uh we used to even have a rack of kind of four by four Dell just desktop computers that were stacked on top of each other with a switch to switch between them. And we're running the workload that my dad made with the software there on those computers. 04:51 It was very visible and evident in my childhood. My first kind of internship was maybe when I was 13 or so ah in the closet of that office. We pulled the doors off and put a desk in it and that was like my internship desk for the summer. started with programming in the dotnet ecosystem. So what year is that more or less? Yeah, it's probably like 2005, 2006. uh 05:21 So it uh was a great introductory language. Fun fact, there's a YouTube video online of me when I'm about that age doing a tutorial of how to make a calculator. So very few people have found that. I'll leave it to the public to ...
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    37 mins
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