Ignite: Conversations on Startups, Venture Capital, Tech, Future, and Society

Max Sinclair is the founder and CEO of Azoma, an AI SaaS company helping global brands win in AI-powered search. A former Amazon product lead, he helped launch Amazon Business in the UK, led search and browse for Amazon Singapore, and headed EU Grocery before jumping into founder life. With deep experience across e-commerce search, item data quality, and now answer engine optimization (AEO), he offers sharp, battle-tested insights ...

Leyla Kunimoto is the co-founder of Accredited Investor Insights, a platform demystifying private placements, venture funds, and commercial real estate for LPs and high-net-worth investors. She writes for a cross-section of the ecosystem—limited partners, fund managers, RIAs, and wealth advisors—focused on cutting through jargon to what actually drives outcomes.

With thousands of conversations across LPs and GPs and a personal i...

Jason Syversen is the founder & CEO of SportsVisio and a former DARPA program manager turned repeat entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He went from hacking Wi-Fi cameras for Special Forces demos to running nine-figure government R&D portfolios—then into startups and sports, with a mission to democratize analytics for everyday athletes.

With deep roots in cyber/defense and a chip-on-the-shoulder upbringing, Jason...

What if the tools reshaping our cities still think it’s 1998? Amar Hanspal thinks that’s a bug, not a feature—and he’s building the patch.

Amar Hanspal is a veteran product leader and entrepreneur who helped steer Autodesk’s product org through a massive cloud shift before co-founding Bright Machines. Today he’s the co-founder of Motif, reimagining how architects and engineers design—collaborative, AI-native, and web-first. With...

Jeffrey Fidelman is the Founder & CEO of Fidelman & Company, an investment bank purpose-built for early-stage companies and emerging managers. A Harvard graduate who spent a decade at Morgan Stanley and HSBC before helping run a $120–125M venture fund, he’s since scaled a 40-person team that blends institutional process with hands-on fundraising execution. With a productized “fundraising as a service” model and the launch o...

Max Greenwald is the co-founder and CEO of Warmly.ai, a platform building AI agents that warm your TAM and route hot leads to sales. A former Google PM who helped ship Google’s viral “Where’s Waldo” Maps April Fools (played by ~100M people), he’s navigated six pivots and the gauntlet from idea to real GTM repeatability. With on-the-ground experience from Techstars Boulder to scaling revenue and team, he offers hard-won insights int...

Gabriel Jarrosson is a seven-time founder with three exits and the General Partner of Lobster Capital, a fund specializing in top-performing YC startups. With over $25 million invested in early-stage companies, Gabriel brings a rare blend of founder grit and investor insight—shaped by years of building, failing, and ultimately scaling ventures from scratch.

With his experience as both an entrepreneur and an investor, Gabriel offers ...

Jim Ferry is a Partner at Volition Capital, a Boston-based growth equity firm backing founder-owned, capital-efficient companies across software, internet, and consumer. With over a decade at Volition and lead roles in investments like Attitude, Doing Things, Kinetics, and ButterflyMX, he’s helped scale businesses from product–market fit through exit. With hard-won lessons from wins and misses, he offers clear-eyed insights into gr...

Marc Seitz is the founder of Papermark, an open-source alternative to DocSend that helps startups share documents more securely and affordably. With a background spanning physics, hackathons, and startup building—from co-founding HackerBay to launching Intel Ignite Europe—Marc brings deep insights into open source innovation, founder culture, and the evolving intersection of AI and software development.

In this episode, he discu...

Justinas Milašauskas is an Investment Manager at Willgrow, a Lithuania-based family office and diversified investment platform. With over 15 years of experience across trading, institutional sales, and portfolio management, Justinas brings deep insight into public and private markets — from credit and derivatives to venture and private equity. He’s also an active angel investor and a member of the Lithuanian Business Angel Network ...

Jack Stockert, MD is the Managing Director at Health2047, the venture studio founded by the American Medical Association (AMA) to build, fund, and scale startups transforming healthcare from within. With a background that bridges medicine, consulting at McKinsey, and entrepreneurship, Jack brings a rare perspective on how to align medical insight with innovation and investment.

With years of experience helping founders tackle fo...

Joe Zanca is the Managing Partner of Deal Gen Partners, where he helps private equity funds, independent sponsors, and PE-backed operators source proprietary deals.

Previously, he built and exited On Demand Storage, launched a top-rated business podcast, and most recently joined Bullpen Technology Partners. With founder-operator chops, a banker’s Rolodex, and a nose for off-market opportunities, he offers insights into buy-side sou...

Anthony Jules is the co-founder and CEO of Robust AI, a robotics company pioneering collaborative systems that blend human and machine intelligence. A 30-year tech veteran and MIT alum, Anthony previously co-founded Sapient Corporation, helped scale it from three to 4,000 employees, and later worked at Google advancing robotics and AI research. With deep expertise spanning software, AI, and organizational design, he offers rare ins...

Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), and host of The Eric Ries Show. With decades of experience shaping how founders build, scale, and sustain companies, Eric has influenced a generation of entrepreneurs to move faster, reduce waste, and think long-term. In this episode, he shares his journey from early startup failures to pioneering the Lean Startup movement, and how he’s now...

Elizabeth Yin is the Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed venture capital firm that writes “hilariously early” checks and equips founders with tactical, no-BS startup advice. A former founder who built and sold LaunchBit, and the former accelerator manager at 500 Global where she wrote 200+ investment checks, Elizabeth brings hard-won lessons from both sides of the table.

With her deep experience as a founde...

Collin Groves is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at BDev Ventures, a fund backed by software powerhouse BairesDev. With experience launching five corporate venture capital arms during his time at Ernst & Young Parthenon and leading 50+ B2B SaaS investments across the Americas, he blends data-driven rigor with hands-on customer acquisition strategies. In this episode, Collin shares how BDev Ventures de-risks startups b...

Hugh Massie is the Executive Chairman and Founder of DNA Behavior, a pioneer in behavioral AI that blends finance, identity, and decision-making. As a Titan 100 CEO, published author, and global advisor, he brings decades of expertise in behavioral science, wealth management, and technology. With his mission to impact over a billion people annually by 2030, Hugh offers groundbreaking insights into how behavior shapes money, leaders...

Ari Newman is the co-founder and managing director of Massive VC, an inflection point venture capital platform backing high-growth technology companies across AI, data, energy, cybersecurity, energy transformation, and the new space economy. A repeat founder who built and sold FilterBox and Juston, Ari also helped scale Techstars and now advises multiple growth-stage boards.With decades of experience on both sides of the table—rais...

Anthony Rose is a serial entrepreneur best known for taking BBC iPlayer from skunkworks to a national success and now transforming startup fundraising as co-founder and CEO of SeedLegals. With decades of experience building and selling companies, as well as pioneering digital products used by millions, he brings a unique outsider’s perspective to legal tech and venture funding.

In this episode, Anthony shares how he turned frust...