Couverture de Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast

Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast

Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast

De : Venture Guides
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Welcome to Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast—the podcast for early-stage founders and startup leaders who know that great companies aren’t lucky… they’re built through smart execution and a bulletproof go-to-market strategy. Hosted by Sage Nye, Managing Partner at Venture Guides, each episode dives into candid conversations with technical founders, investors, and GTM experts. You’ll get real talk, proven playbooks, and no-fluff advice on how to land your first customers, build a repeatable sales motion, and scale your startup the right way. Forget the hype. This is the go-to resource for founders serious about getting to market, growing revenue, and building companies that last. Ready to scale? Let’s get to work.Venture Guides Economie Finances privées
Épisodes
  • How to Build a Leadership Culture: Lessons from Bob Brennan, a Four-Time CEO

    How to Build a Leadership Culture: Lessons from Bob Brennan, a Four-Time CEO
    Oct 20 2026

    What if the most powerful tool a leader has isn’t a strategy, but a single question?


    In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Bob Brennan, four-time CEO, executive coach, and board director, to unpack how great leaders use inquiry instead of instruction. Bob scaled Iron Mountain from $1.8 billion to $3.2 billion in revenue and led Veracode through its $614 million acquisition by CA Technologies. He explains why his psychology background shaped every company he ran, and why “What can I do to be more effective?” is the one question he insists every leader ask.


    Bob breaks down how to step into a company as CEO and cut through competing agendas, why withholding feedback is unkind rather than benevolent, and how getting defensiveness out of an organization changes everything. He shares the two red flags he never ignores in a hire, why most CEOs don’t give themselves time to think, and how to empower a team without micromanaging it.


    The conversation also covers managing investors as owners, why a high headline valuation can be a trap, and why the best founders make everyone else the hero. This episode is a practical playbook for founders and executives who want to lead through questions, build future leaders, and scale without losing the people who make it work.


    Chapters:

    00:00 Intro

    01:30 From Psychology Student to Four-Time CEO

    03:50 Selling Through Inquiry: People Don’t Argue With Their Own Conclusions

    05:05 Stepping In as CEO: Opening the Aperture, Closing the Priorities

    08:45 How to Develop Future CEOs

    11:00 The One Question Every Leader Should Ask

    12:15 Why Withholding Feedback Is Unkind

    14:20 Build Your Own Personal Board

    15:40 What CEOs Don’t See: The Time to Think

    18:05 Hiring for Seed vs. Scale and the Two Red Flags to Watch

    22:55 The Psychology of Leadership: Removing Defensiveness

    24:30 Managing Investors, Boards, and Term Sheets

    27:55 Empowering Teams Without Micromanaging

    29:10 Key Takeaways: Make Them the Hero


    Connect with the team:

    👉 Sage Nye on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sage-nye/

    👉 Venture Guides Website: https://www.ventureguides.com/

    👉 Bob Brennan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbrennan236/


    You can also listen to our podcast here:

    👉 Apple - https://go.fame.so/built-not-born-podcast-apple

    👉 Spotify - https://go.fame.so/built-not-born-podcast-spotify

    👉 YouTube - https://go.fame.so/built-not-born-youtube
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    32 min
  • How AI Agents Are Breaking SaaS Economics with Ki-youn Jung & Abhishek Singh

    How AI Agents Are Breaking SaaS Economics with Ki-youn Jung & Abhishek Singh
    Sep 10 2026
    What happens when AI agents scale faster than their economics can support? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with EON co-founders Ki-youn Jung, Co-founder and CEO, and Abhishek Singh, Co-founder and CTO, to explore the infrastructure challenges emerging as enterprises adopt AI agents at scale. They discuss how EON’s experience with escalating compute costs led them from a health-tech application toward building an inference layer designed to anticipate agent behavior, reduce redundant token usage, and lower latency. The conversation examines why token economics could undermine traditional SaaS models, how reusable and deterministic AI outputs can preserve trust through statistical verification, and why infrastructure may represent the bigger opportunity in AI. They also explore the challenges of running agents for weeks or months, including drift, oversight, and maintaining alignment. The episode offers a practical look at building infrastructure for the next era of computing.
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    30 min
  • How Founders Mistake Traction for Product-Market Fit and Scale Too Soon

    How Founders Mistake Traction for Product-Market Fit and Scale Too Soon
    Aug 6 2026
    What if the biggest bottleneck to scaling your startup isn't market demand; it's internal alignment? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Carter Cast, former CEO of Walmart.com and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University, to unpack a hard truth: most startups don’t fail from lack of demand, they fail from lack of alignment. Carter explains why mission clarity must precede growth and how misalignment at the top quietly fractures teams as companies scale. He breaks down what real product-market fit looks like (hint: it’s not fueled by discounts), and why sustainable unit economics are the only green light to accelerate. The conversation also dives into leadership, what separates high-performing teams from dysfunctional ones, how to navigate the shift from generalists to specialists, and why motivation mismatch often masquerades as underperformance. Above all, Carter makes a compelling case that self-awareness isn’t a soft skill; it’s the ultimate competitive advantage that defines how far a founder can go.
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    32 min
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