Top Founders

Marc Seitz, physicist turned self-taught software engineer and Papermark co-founder, shares how a weekend-built DocSend alternative became a $3M ARR bootstrapped SaaS. He explores open source growth, turning GitHub stars into paying customers, freemium and viral distribution, feature parity, AI’s impact on contributions, and building a company 50/50 with his wife.

Siva Surendra, technology entrepreneur and CEO of enterprise AI platform Lyzr, shares the company’s meteoric rise from $0 to $12M ARR. He discusses shutting down a $4M AI SDR experiment, winning a $2M federal contract over Palantir with a 10-day prototype, and building sovereign AI infrastructure. Also covered: 95% margins, an on-premise appliance, enterprise pricing, explosive valuation growth, and a planned $100M Series B.

Atticus LeBlanc, entrepreneur and founder of PadSplit, is transforming affordable housing through furnished room rentals. He reveals how a no-property marketplace scaled to 34,000 units, generates over $250 million in annual rent, and refills rooms in just eight days. He also discusses investor yields, fundraising battles, debt financing, AI, and why he rejected a $150 million offer.

Jonathan Adly, a pharmacist turned entrepreneur and AI software engineer, built TJM Labs into a pharmacy automation powerhouse. He discusses moving from clinical work to coding, why labor-replacing AI beats another system of record, and how pharmacy relationships fueled rapid adoption. The conversation covers technician-replacing agents, acquisitions, raising $75 million while profitable, valuation strategy, and scaling to 450 pharmacies and 500,000 prescriptions daily.

Vadim Yasinovsky, co-founder of pdfFiller and CEO of airSlate, reveals how an unglamorous PDF tool became a $106M-a-year powerhouse. He discusses siloed product teams, a massive programmatic SEO engine, and why AI search may upend it all. He also shares plans for vertical AI, acquisition criteria, capital efficiency, and a quietly built AI product.

Jeff Lu, founder and CEO of Akool, previously worked on Face ID at Apple and AI at Microsoft and Google Cloud. He shares why he left Google to build specialized video models, how Akool reached more than $3 million in monthly revenue, and why Coca-Cola chose its technology. He also discusses organic growth, enterprise sales, a lean team, half a million daily creations, and the future of realistic long-form video.

Antoine Fort launched Qobra in 2020 with a $100K pre-seed from 7 angels, and his first investor was also his first customer. He started by cold calling with a phone list from a provider later shut down over European privacy law (GDPR), charging $10K/year. Today Qobra is at about $30K/year per customer, 250+ customers, and roughly $7–8M ARR. Along the way, one meme ad closed an $80K/year deal, and a single sales rep on the platform earned $1.5M in commissions (75x the average). So when Nathan asks if he'd sell for $100M cash today, his answer is surprisingly honest. Qobra is an AI-first sales compensation and commission software platform. Antoine covers his $5M seed and $10M Series A, the $2M in debt he raised to limit dilution, the $200K–300K/year he spends on LinkedIn, YouTube and Google ads, his G2 and SEO glossary playbook, and the three AI agents Qobra is building to replace commission consultants.

Sevan Marian, co-founder and CEO of Paris-based IT company Fleet, bootstrapped it to nearly $40M in annualized revenue across 20 countries. He discusses renting laptops for about $50 a month, selling customer contracts to banks for upfront cash, managing devices globally, expanding internationally, rebuilding leadership, and giving employees a chance to cash out their equity.

Alex Jekowsky, co-founder and CEO of Cents, builds technology for laundromats, dry cleaners, and shared laundry rooms. He discusses scaling from $700,000 to $60 million, combining software, payments, and custom hardware, and winning a 73-location customer. He also explores exceptional efficiency, 99% retention, hardware acquisitions, employee liquidity, and raising capital without sacrificing future options.

Oliver Mohseni, co-founder of Froda and former molecular biology researcher, reveals how the startup bank serves small businesses traditional lenders overlook. He discusses embedded lending partnerships, retail deposits, machine-learning credit decisions, and the economics of $23,000 loans. Plus, Froda’s path to 150,000 businesses, a $500 million loan book, and expansion across seven European markets.