Twenty years ago, Raj was in a room with Steve Jobs and a group of nervous AT&T executives. Jobs ended the tension by offering to hand them a billion dollars in cash on the spot. Raj watched that and spent the next two decades building companies of his own.

He co-founded Localytics in 2008, two weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed, bootstrapped it through the financial crisis, scaled it past $25 million in revenue, raised $60 million, and eventually sold it. Then built a second company acquired by Snapchat. Then spent a year at AWS as GM of Generative AI watching Fortune 500 companies build AI demos that never shipped.

Now he's building again.

In this episode, Raj traces the full arc. What it was like to work directly with Jobs multiple times a week before the iPhone launched. What that experience modeled about founder conviction. And how he carried it through every wave of tech that followed, mobile, analytics, cloud, and now AI.

The new company is coming. This is the story of everything that led here.

Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building at the edge.

Your current insurance policy has a gap in it. Your AI system is probably sitting right in it.

Karthik Ramakrishnan, CEO of Armilla AI, has spent 15 years at the frontier of machine learning. From building prediction platforms for the New York Times and Kobo, to working alongside AI godfather Yoshua Bengio at Element AI, he's seen the full arc. Now he's solving the problem enterprises won't say out loud: they're terrified of deploying AI because nobody can tell them what happens when it goes wrong.

In this episode, Karthik breaks down exactly where the coverage gaps live. Why 50+ US insurers have quietly added AI exclusions to general liability policies. Why your cyber insurance won't trigger when your own AI causes a privacy breach. And what the Air Canada chatbot lawsuit means for every company deploying AI today.

He also gets into the practical side. How one fintech startup used a warranty on their AI model to win banks that competitors couldn't. Why a perfect demo is no longer enough to close enterprise deals. And what Y Combinator pushed him to do that changed everything for Armilla.

Most founders obsess over growth. But Rebecca Skvorc, CFO at ODAIA, says the real question is whether your company has the foundation to survive it.

In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Rebecca joins Amar Varma to unpack what founders need to understand before the curve starts pointing up: ARR vs. CARR, net and gross revenue retention, cap table complexity, smart resource allocation, remote culture, and why finance should be treated as a strategic partner from day one.

Colin Hennigar of SickKids Foundation and the Upside Foundation joins Mantle Mondays to explain how founders can turn startup equity into lasting impact and why legacy should start long before the exit.

Donate to SickKids Foundation: www.sickkidsfoundation.com

Learn about the Upside Foundation: www.upsidefoundation.ca

Manage your cap table on Mantle: www.withmantle.com

Raising venture capital in 2026 looks nothing like it did three years ago. Seed-strapped companies are hitting $6M ARR in six months. Pre-ChatGPT portfolios are re-platforming from scratch.

Matt Cohen, Founder and Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures, has backed 55+ companies through 13 exits since launching the firm. He joins Amar Varma on Mantle Mondays to break down what's actually getting funded right now — and what isn't.

00:00 Introduction to Venture Capital and Founder's Journey

05:54 The Evolution of Ripple Ventures and Investment Philosophy

12:09 The Importance of Long-Term Commitment in Venture Capital

17:37 The Role of Founders in Shaping the Future of Technology

23:41 Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Portfolio Companies

31:12 Navigating AI and Infrastructure in Tech

39:32 The Role of Relationships in Venture Capital

44:2 Personal Insights and Community Engagement

What does it actually take to manage wealth well after an exit?In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Chris Canavan, the General Manager for post-exit founders, breaks down how founders should think about managing post-exit wealth — from preparing your personal finances before liquidity to handling the operational, emotional, and strategic complexity that shows up after the deal closes.

AI makes it easier to ship. Ashok Sivanand, founder and former CEO of Integral, explains why that can be dangerous if founders confuse output with progress.In this Mantle Mondays conversation, Ashok breaks down how lean product teams actually win: identify the constraint, sequence the bottlenecks, and tie every prototype to a real business outcome. 00:00 Intro01:17 Ashok’s origin story05:18 Efficiency vs. effectiveness07:56 Silent killers before Series A17:18 AI experimentation and false progress21:56 Build vs. buy in the AI era27:43 The hidden cost of building in-house32:38 What Ashok is optimistic about34:23 Rapid fire

Phil Jacobson, former Head of Operations at Tensor Labs, breaks down what startup ops actually looks like when the stakes are high: legal, finance, hiring, cap table cleanup, and acquisition readiness. The biggest takeaway: the systems founders delay early are often the same systems that matter most when it’s time to raise, scale, or sell.

In this Mantle Mondays episode, Phil shares how he went from founder to operator, why he joined Tensor Labs, what he learned running ops in crypto, and why getting the cap table out of a spreadsheet was one of the first things he tackled before Tensor’s acquisition by Coinbase.