All Episodes

July 8, 2025 47 mins

Malcolm De Leo is the Co-founder and Chief Business Officer at GraphIQ, an innovation-first platform redefining how enterprises discover and connect with business intelligence. With a PhD in chemistry and a 20+ year career spanning Clorox, Orbital Insight, and Quantified, Malcolm has built a reputation for evangelizing innovation, data-driven transformation, and cultural change inside legacy organizations. In this episode, he shares how GraphIQ was born from repeated market frustration, and why the real unlock in AI isn’t the models—it’s the data.


In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

00:01 – Welcome & Guest Introduction

01:30 – Shifting from Science to Startups

03:00 – Lessons in Culture and Change from Big Companies

03:50 – The Origin Story of GraphIQ

05:00 – The “Aha Moment” Behind GraphIQ

06:50 – What Makes GraphIQ Different

09:45 – Go-To-Market Strategy and Ideal Customers

12:15 – The Forgotten Power of Data in the AI Boom

14:00 – Trust, Transparency & Attribution in AI Tools

15:00 – Happy Accidents & the Realities of Fundraising

18:00 – Balancing Revenue vs. Vision

20:20 – Product-Market Fit Frameworks

22:00 – Designing Culture on Purpose

25:00 – Remote Teams and Scaling Collaboration

26:00 – What VCs and Founders Get Wrong About Enterprise Sales

29:30 – Facing the Founder Mindset Shift

36:30 – The Next Chapter for GraphIQ

37:40 – The Future of Enterprise Intelligence

38:30 – Rapid Fire Round

44:50 – Lessons from Orbital Insight & Building Smarter

47:00 – Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Malcolm


Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/ignite-podcast


Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ignite-conversations-on-startups-venture-capital-tech/id1709248824


Follow Malcolm de Leo on X: https://x.com/InnovationMuse


Follow Malcolm de Leo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdeleo/


Follow Team Ignite on X: https://twitter.com/ignitevc


Follow Brian on X: https://x.com/brianrbell


Follow Brian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bblinkedin/


Visit Our Website: https://www.teamignite.ventures


Subscribe to Our Newsletter: https://insights.teamignite.ventures/


👂🎧 Watch, listen, and follow on your favorite platform: https://tr.ee/S2ayrbx_fL


🙏 Join the conversation on your favorite social network: https://linktr.ee/theignitepodcast

//


Our sponsor Byldd⁠ helps non-technical domain-expert founders build and launch tech businesses by providing a complete product team - that's everyone you need from designers to engineers to testers, all the way up to a CTO.


We'll ship products while you focus on the other essentials: validation, sales, and distribution. Our portfolio companies have been backed by YC, Google, ERA, and other top-tier investors.


Get Started Here: https://tr.ee/bylld

Mark as Played

Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience

The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.