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Founder Real Talk

Latest episodes

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Apr 21, 2022 • 43min

Guillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO of Vercel, on Using Open-Source to Make The Web Faster

Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO of Vercel, a cloud platform provider used to develop, preview, and ship frontend websites and applications using their Next.js open-source framework. Originally from Argentina, Guillermo taught himself JavaScript at just eleven years old and has developed multiple open-source libraries since then. He would go on to co-found LearnBoost and Cloudup, both of which were acquired by Automattic in 2013. Since the founding of Vercel in 2015, the company has already achieved Unicorn status, with GGV being a proud investor and having led a very successful $150M Series D round. Vercel now services more than 25,000 customers worldwide, including major companies like Uber and Facebook. In this episode, Guillermo talks about using open-source software to build communities and the importance of maintaining a developer-oriented approach. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Investor, Oren Yunger.
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Apr 7, 2022 • 39min

Matan Bar, Co-Founder & CEO of Melio, on Bridging the Gap Between B2B and AP Automation

Matan Bar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Melio, the B2B online payment service that allows small businesses to manage payments and receivables digitally. While consumers have been using peer-to-peer payment services for years, many small businesses were still sending checks in the mail, waiting days or even weeks for payments to go through. Now, Melio helps save precious time while increasing cash flow. The need for Melio exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company raised $144M in just one year. Before founding Melio, Matan worked with PayPal and co-founded The Gifts Project, which was quickly acquired by eBay in 2011. Melio may be Matan’s first venture as a CEO, but the company was already given a $4B valuation after just three years and now has offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Denver. With an incredibly promising future ahead of him, Matan continues to build both a winning service and a winning team.
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Jan 20, 2022 • 35min

Tomer Weingarten, Co-Founder & CEO of SentinelOne, on Facilitating the Next Generation of Endpoint Security

Tomer Weingarten is the Co-Founder and CEO of SentinelOne, an autonomous endpoint security platform with over 6,000 customers worldwide. SentinelOne prevents cyberattacks in real-time using AI and machine automation and helps companies adopt new technologies while staying protected. Before founding SentinelOne, Tomer worked as a software developer and founded multiple companies. SentinelOne now has over 1000 employees with offices in the U.S., Tel Aviv, and Tokyo and is recognized as one of the best and most diverse places to work. In June 2021 SentinelOne executed the biggest cybersecurity IPO to date, raising over $1B in a market cap of over $11B. In this episode, Tomer shares how he and his team plan to reshape the cybersecurity industry. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Investor, Oren Yunger.
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Nov 19, 2021 • 16min

Sarika Garg, Co-founder & CEO of Cacheflow, on Rethinking SaaS Buying and Following Your Curiosity

In this 15 minute salon episode, Sarika Garg, Co-founder & CEO of Cacheflow, shares why she and her Co-founder, Brian Zotter, decided to tackle the traditional SaaS buying experience with buy-now-pay-later. Cacheflow’s innovative approach has the potential to impact the way software is bought and sold across the global enterprise SaaS market, which is set to reach $400 billion in annual sales worldwide by 2025. Sarika was previously Chief Strategy Officer at procurement financing unicorn Tradeshift, where she helped build an invoice factoring business for suppliers and an AP automation platform for buyers. She spent the previous 13 years working at SAP, most recently running SAP Ariba, where she drove over $200M in sell-side revenue for Ariba cloud.
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Nov 11, 2021 • 30min

Adam Markowitz, CEO & Co-Founder of Drata, on Maintaining SOC 2 Compliance and Healthy Competition

Adam Markowitz is the Co-founder and CEO of Drata, the San Diego-based startup that provides companies with fast and efficient automated security compliance, a once painstakingly long and arduous process. A former rocket scientist, Adam founded his first startup, Portfolium, in 2013 and created a network of over 5M students, connecting them to mentors and future employers. Six years later he sold the company for $43M when he was just 32 years old. The first line of Drata’s code was written in July 2020 and the company has skyrocketed. GGV led Drata’s $25M Series A round earlier this year. Drata just announced a $100M Series B financing making the company a “unicorn” in an incredibly fast period. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Investor, Oren Yunger.
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Nov 4, 2021 • 39min

Dan Adika, CEO & Co-founder of WalkMe, on Taking Small Steps to Achieve Real Targets

Dan Adika is the CEO and Co-founder of WalkMe, a cloud-based platform that simplifies the digital adoption process for employees and customers while increasing company productivity. Before co-founding WalkMe in 2011, Dan was a software engineer at HP and served in the Israeli Defense Force for over five years as a programmer and team lead. WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform is used in over 43 countries across all industries and platforms for onboarding and training. WalkMe was listed in the Top 100 Customer Success Strategies in Tech and has been on the Forbes Cloud 100 list for five years running. WalkMe has over 2,000 customers from over 42 countries, including 31% of Fortune 500 companies, and recently saw a very successful IPO with a greater than $2B valuation. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Capital Investor, Oren Younger.
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Oct 14, 2021 • 37min

Ariel Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO of TripActions, on Building Tools For a Better Corporate Citizen

Ariel Cohen is the Co-founder and CEO of TripActions, the cloud-based platform that uses real-time data to make corporate travel and spending easier for everyone while cutting down on company costs. Founded in 2015, TripActions saw exponential growth and a $4 billion valuation before the travel industry came to a grinding halt during the onset of COVID-19. After making key pivots, TripActions quickly recovered with the release of TripActions Liquid, their spending management solution, and recently had a successful Series E upround, raising $155 million at a $5B valuation. In this episode, Ariel talks about creating win-win situations and bringing his company back from the unthinkable. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Capital Investor, Oren Yunger.
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Sep 23, 2021 • 36min

Tomer Bar-Zeev, Co-Founder & CEO of ironSource, on Having Meaningful Fun at Work

Tomer Bar-Zeev is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tel Aviv-based ironSource, a software company that helps content creators turn their app into a successful and scalable business through distribution and monetization. Originally from Israel, Tomer studied computer science before becoming VP of Business Development at AtlasCT and Payoneer. He co-founded Foxtab before co-founding ironSource in 2010 with seven co-founders. IronSource launched a successful IPO in 2021 after a successful SPAC merger with a valuation of over $11 billion. In this episode, Tomer talks about building ironSource out of necessity, rejecting a $18 million offer to sell the company in the first few months of its existence, acting as chief enabler in his position as CEO and more. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Capital Investor, Oren Yunger.
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Aug 26, 2021 • 42min

Eynat Guez, Co-founder & CEO of Papaya Global, on Balancing Company Growth, Culture, and Family

Eynat Guez is the Co-founder and CEO of Papaya Global, a cloud-based solution modernizing the way companies approach payroll, payments, and workforce management. Before Papaya Global, Eynat was the CEO of two different relocation service companies based out of Israel and China. Since its inception in 2016, Papaya Global has raised $190M in funding and is used in over 140 countries. When she’s not running her $1.2B company, Eynat is also a volunteer Mentor at Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Promoting Young Women to Science Education, which gives young women the tools they need to secure a bright and ambitious future. In this episode, Eynat talks about the importance of a revenue-driven approach and meeting the needs of your target market before scaling. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Capital Investor, Dan Cahana.
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Aug 4, 2021 • 49min

Shay Banon, Co-founder & CEO of Elastic, on Galvanizing a Community Around Search

Shay Banon is the Co-founder and CEO of Elastic, a search company that makes data usable in real time and at scale for enterprise search, observability, and security. The foundation for what became Elastic was laid in 2004 while Shay was building a recipe app for his wife. Shay built Elastic Search the product in 2009 and open sourced it in 2010. He co-founded the company Elastic Search with Steven Schuurman, Uri Boness, and Simon Willnauer in 2012 and the company quickly rose through the ranks, raising over $160M in funding before its successful IPO in 2018. In this episode, Shay dives into the 17 year evolution of the company and how the open source community and model has helped shape Elastic into what it is today.

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