Real founders.Real numbers.From zero to one.
Top startup founders break down — episode by episode — how they actually found product-market fit. By
Mistral Ventures.
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He spent $0 on marketing for 2 years—then raised $400M at a $3.25B valuation. | AJ Loiacono, Co-Founder & CEO of Judi Health
- 02
He spent $150K on brand before he had a product—then closed $1.5M ARR in 1 month. | Niklas Lindgren, Co-Founder & CEO of Endra
Ep 49 · Aug 17, 2026
- 03
He lost all 5 of his first deals—then built the next Looker and raised $250M. | Colin Zima, Co-Founder of Omni
Aug 10, 2026
- 04
He fired almost everyone, kept 2 engineers—then grew 12x and raised a $30M Series A. | Rafael Broshi, Co-Founder of Notch
Ep 47 · Aug 3, 2026
- 05
He worked out of a police department for free for a year—then built a $6.8B company. | Ben Rudolph, Co-Founder of Peregrine
Ep 46 · Jul 27, 2026
- 06
1st-time solo founder does 90 interviews in 90 days—closes a $25M Series A 2 years in. | Damien Lewke, Founder of Nebulock
Ep 45 · Jul 20, 2026
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Deep-dives
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Every episode also lives as a written breakdown — the frameworks, quotes, and lessons in long form.
Post 01·Aug 24, 2026Augment Raised $110M in Its First Year: How Harish Abbott Built Augie, the AI Teammate for Logistics
Augment is an AI teammate for freight, built by Deliverr founder Harish Abbott. It raised $110M in a year and supports $35B+ in freight under management.
Post 02·Aug 24, 2026Chainguard Raised $50M from Sequoia With No Revenue — Then Killed Its First Product: Dan Lorenc's Story
Chainguard raised $50M from Sequoia pre-revenue on a handshake, killed its first product at $1M ARR, and reached a $3.5B valuation. Dan Lorenc's full story.
Post 03·Aug 24, 2026Larridin Raised $17M from a16z: How Russ Fradin Is Building the Measurement Layer for Enterprise AI
Larridin is Russ Fradin's AI measurement startup, which raised $17M from a16z, Bloomberg Beta and GV to tell enterprises which AI tools actually work.
Fig. 01The host
Pablo asks the questions you’d actually want to ask.
Pablo Srugo is a partner at Mistral, a seed-stage venture firm. Before VC, he co-founded Gymtrack (venture-backed FitTech) and an online tutoring platform that was acquired in 2014.
He’s interviewed 250+ founders — from the team behind Reddit to first-time builders shipping their first $100 in revenue. The result is a feed of conversations that skip the inspiration porn and dig into the spreadsheets, the dead ends, and the exact moments PMF clicked.
- 250+
- Founders interviewed
- $2B+
- Raised by guests
- 14yr
- Operator + investor