The Breakouts - 20 Minute Startup Stories: Recent Episodes
The Breakouts Podcast
Learn the playbooks of extraordinary founders building category-defining startups.
Season 1 is focused on emerging verticals (ex: Web3, HealthTech, FinTech, AI/ML, etc). It features 10 founders that collectively raised $100M+ in seed funding this year.
Michael Gifford recently raised $11.7M in Series A funding for his new startup, Splitero.
Splitero enables homeowners to quickly access the equity of their home without having to take on additional debt or make monthly payments.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Grey Nguyen recently raised a $5M seed round to build Starlight — an app that lets businesses set up their company wallet, onboard their team and track their spending with one secure tool.
Starlight is an all-in-one solution for companies to manage their crypto assets. They offer everything a company needs to operate in the crypto economy from setting up wallets, to buying crypto, to tracking expenses. Starlight helps you manage the details - so you can focus on running your business.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Brian Retford recently raised a $14M seed round to build Risc Zero - a startup creating scaling solutions using Zero Knowledge Proofs which will make blockchains faster, cheaper and more accessible.
Risc Zero provides a platform enabling users to trust programs run anywhere while allowing developers to use the tools they already know. The company was founded by a team of Seattle-based hackers committed to enabling users to control their experience on the internet through the creation of privacy-enhancing decentralization technology.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jeff Wilson recently raised a $9.5M seed round to build a universal autonomous housing platform for 1.5 billion humans. with his startup, Jupe.
Wilson is also known as ‘Professor Dumpster’ for the year he lived in a 33 sq. ft. modified trash dumpster as part of an environmental education and minimalist housing experiment. Wilson’s work on startups, minimalism, and social experimentation has been featured in Forbes, The Atlantic, NY Times, and The Washington Post.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Nick Desai recently raised an $8.2M seed round to build a patient-centric personal health concierge app, Renee.
Nick started this company with his wife, Renee. In the past, the 2 of them founded Heal — a HealthTech company that pioneered home-centric patient care and raised over $200M.
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Michael Gifford recently raised $5.8M in seed funding & $1B in debt financing for his new startup, Splitero.
Splitero enables homeowners to quickly access the equity of their home without having to take on additional debt or make monthly payments.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Nick Aubin recently raised an $11M seed round to build Commons Clinic - a startup providing seamless specialty care programs for pain & orthopedics.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Nick about strategies, tactics, & hacks that Nick is using to build his business.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Sisun Lee recently raised an $3M PreSeed round to build a developer-first on-ramp to Web3 with his new startup, Ramper.
Ramper is building an SDK that empowers developers to easily integrate web3 authentication and NFT checkout into their mobile applications.
Sisun is a 2nd-time founder — before Ramper, he had founded a nootropics beverage company called More Labs and raised over $20M for it.
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jeff Sherman and David Morgan recently raised a $18.5M seed round for Zephyr AI - a startup advancing precision medicine using ML-powered predictive analytics.
Imagine a world in which you could enter data about a type of cancer you want to cure, and an AI could tell you how to make the most effective medicine possible — a world in which drug discovery happens in days, not decades. That’s the world Zephyr AI is trying to build
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Derek Flanzraich recently raised a $15.5M seed round to build a health & wellness first credit card through his startup, Ness.
Ness is Derek’s second company. His first company, Greatist, got acquired by Healthline — one of the largest health information sites on the internet.
With Ness, Derek is hoping to drive consumers to take more and better healthy actions by rewarding them for health & wellness purchases with points and exclusive perks.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with them about strategies, tactics, and hacks that they’ve used to build their startup. They discuss product, distribution, fundraising, tokenomics, and much more. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- Product: What was your process for building conviction in this problem before pursuing it?
- Distribution: What’s your current acquisition strategy?
- Fundraising: What is 1 unconventional fundraising tip that you have for founders? Something unique that you think other founders on the pod may not have already said.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jarrad Aguirre recently raised a $12M seed round to modernize heart health and prevent the next million heart attacks & strokes with his startup, Miga Health.
Some stats: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. 80% of heart attacks and strokes are preventable. A heart attack or stroke happens every 20 seconds. Over $500B is spent on cardiovascular care in the US alone.
Miga Health is focused on improving care delivery and driving better patient outcomes through their mobile app and telehealth clinic.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Jarrad about strategies, tactics, and hacks that he's used to build his startup. They discuss product, distribution, fundraising, and much more. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- Product: What was your process for building conviction in this problem before pursuing it?
- Distribution: What’s your current acquisition strategy?
- Fundraising: What is 1 unconventional fundraising tip that you have for founders? Something unique that you think other founders on the pod may not have already said.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Andy Schoonover is the CEO & Co-Founder of CrowdHealth — a $12.1M funded health-tech startup that’s building a community-driven alternative to traditional health insurance.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with them about strategies, tactics, and hacks that they’ve used to build their startup. They discuss product, distribution, fundraising, tokenomics, and much more. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- Product:What was your process for building conviction in this problem before pursuing it?
- Distribution:What’s your current acquisition strategy?
- Fundraising:What is 1 unconventional fundraising tip that you have for founders? Something unique that you think other founders on the pod may not have already said.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Aaron Bai & Sahil Phadnis are two ambitious young college dropouts who recently raised a $6.2M seed round to build Pebble — a next-generation neobank, powered by blockchain technology.
They are by far the youngest founders we’ve had on the show - they dropped out from UC Berkeley in their freshman year (at ages 17 & 19 respectively).
Whereas incumbents like Bank of America & Chase offer around 0.04% APY, Pebble is able to offer 5% weekly APY rewards (100X difference) by leveraging blockchain technology in the backend. How? Listen to the episode to learn more.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with them about strategies, tactics, and hacks that they’ve used to build their startup. They discuss product, distribution, fundraising, tokenomics, and much more. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- Product: What was your process for building conviction in this problem before pursuing it?
- Distribution: What’s your current acquisition strategy?
- Fundraising: What is 1 unconventional fundraising tip that you have for founders? Something unique that you think other founders on the pod may not have already said.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Brian Retford recently raised a $14M seed round to build Risc Zero - a startup creating scaling solutions using Zero Knowledge Proofs which will make blockchains faster, cheaper and more accessible.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Brian about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? - The Business: What’s your business model?
Value Utilization - Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Grey Nguyen recently raised a $5M seed round to build Starlight — an app that lets businesses set up their company wallet, onboard their team and track their spending with one secure tool.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Grey about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup:What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? - The Business:What’s your business model?
Value Utilization - Competitive Advantage:How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Nick Aubin recently raised an $11M seed round to build Commons Clinic - a startup providing seamless specialty care programs for pain & orthopedics.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Nick about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? - The Business: What’s your business model?
Value Utilization - Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jeff Wilson recently raised a $9.5M seed round to build a universal autonomous housing platform for 1.5 billion humans. with his startup, Jupe.
Wilson is also known as ‘Professor Dumpster’ for the year he lived in a 33 sq. ft. modified trash dumpster as part of an environmental education and minimalist housing experiment. Wilson’s work on startups, minimalism, and social experimentation has been featured in Forbes, The Atlantic, NY Times, and The Washington Post.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Jeff about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? * The Business: What’s your business model? * Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
Competitive Landscape?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jeff Sherman and David Morgan recently raised a $18.5M seed round for Zephyr AI - a startup advancing precision medicine using ML-powered predictive analytics.
Imagine a world in which you could enter data about a type of cancer you want to cure, and an AI could tell you how to make the most effective medicine possible — a world in which drug discovery happens in days, not decades. That’s the world Zephyr AI is trying to build
In this episode, Akkshay chats with David and Jeff about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? * The Business: What’s your business model?
Value Utilization * Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Michael Gifford recently raised $5.8M in seed funding & $1B in debt financing for his new startup, Splitero.
Splitero enables homeowners to quickly access the equity of their home without having to take on additional debt or make monthly payments.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Michael about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? * The Business: What’s your business model? * Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Sisun Lee recently raised an $3M PreSeed round to build a developer-first on-ramp to Web3 with his new startup, Ramper.
Ramper is building an SDK that empowers developers to easily integrate web3 authentication and NFT checkout into their mobile applications.
Sisun is a 2nd-time founder — before Ramper, he had founded a nootropics beverage company called More Labs and raised over $20M for it.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Sisun about the story behind his new startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
About the Startup:
- What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
- What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
- How does it work?
The Business:
- What’s your business model?
- Building Conviction
Competitive Advantage:
- How do you plan to win the industry?
- What’s your competitive advantage?
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Nick Desai recently raised an $8.2M seed round to build a patient-centric personal health concierge app, Renee.
Nick started this company with his wife, Renee. In the past, the 2 of them founded Heal — a HealthTech company that pioneered home-centric patient care and raised over $200M.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Nick about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup:What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? * The Business:What’s your business model? * Competitive Advantage:How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Andy Schoonover is the CEO & Co-Founder of CrowdHealth — a $12.1M funded health-tech startup that’s building a community-driven alternative to traditional health insurance.
In this episode, Akkshay chats Andy about the story behind his startup, how it works, and how he thinks about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work? * The Business: What’s your business model?
Building Conviction * Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Aaron Bai & Sahil Phadnis are two ambitious young college dropouts who recently raised a $6.2M seed round to build Pebble — a next generation neobank, powered by blockchain technology.
They are by far the youngest founders we’ve had on the show - they dropped out from UC Berkeley in their freshman year (at ages 17 & 19 respectively).
Whereas incumbents like Bank of America & Chase offer around 0.04% APY, Pebble is able to offer 5% weekly APY rewards (100X difference) by leveraging blockchain technology in the backend. How? Listen to the episode to learn more.In this episode, Akkshay chats with Aaron & Sahil about the story behind his startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
About the Startup:
What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does it work?
The Business:
What’s your business model?
Competitive Advantage:
How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Unique value proposition?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Derek Flanzraich recently raised a $15.5M seed round to build a health & wellness first credit card through his startup, Ness.
Ness is Derek’s second company. His first company, Greatist, got acquired by Healthline — one of the largest health information sites on the internet.
With Ness, Derek is hoping to drive consumers to take more and better healthy actions by rewarding them for health & wellness purchases with points and exclusive perks.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Derek about the story behind his startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
About the Startup:
- What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
- What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
- Future vision?
The Business:
- What’s your business model?
Competitive Advantage:
- How do you plan to win the industry?
- What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Jarrad Aguirre recently raised a $12M seed round to modernize heart health and prevent the next million heart attacks & strokes with his startup, Miga Health.
Some stats: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. 80% of heart attacks and strokes are preventable. A heart attack or stroke happens every 20 seconds. Over $500B is spent on cardiovascular care in the US alone.
Miga Health is focused on improving care delivery and driving better patient outcomes through their mobile app and telehealth clinic.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with Jarrad about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
- About the Startup: What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
How does your product work? * The Business: What’s your business model? * Competitive Advantage: How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Eric & Ethan Parker are two brothers who recently raised a $8M seed round to bring DeFi to the masses through Giddy. They realized that although DeFi can unlock a lot of value for consumers (ex: higher yield), it’s very hard to access unless you’re a very sophisticated investor.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with them about strategies, tactics, and hacks that they’ve used to build their startup. They discuss product, distribution, fundraising, tokenomics, and much more. Here are a few of the questions we cover:
- Product: What was your process for building conviction in this problem before pursuing it?
- Distribution: What’s your current acquisition strategy?
- Fundraising: What is 1 unconventional fundraising tip that you have for founders? Something unique that you think other founders on the pod may not have already said.
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen
Eric & Ethan Parker are two brothers who recently raised a $8M seed round to bring DeFi to the masses through Giddy. They realized that although DeFi can unlock a lot of value for consumers (ex: higher yield), it’s very hard to access unless you’re a very sophisticated investor.
In this episode, Akkshay chats with them about the story behind their startup, how it works, and how they think about winning the industry. Here are some of the questions we cover:
About the Startup:
- What does your startup do and what problem does it solve?
- What’s your background? What were you doing before your startup?
- How does your product work?
The Business:
- What’s your business model?
Competitive Advantage:
- How do you plan to win the industry?
What’s your competitive advantage?
Podcast Twitter
Discord Community
YouTube Channel
Newsletter (The Ultimate Founder's Playbook)
TikTok
Host: Akkshay Khoslaa
Writing & Production: Akkshay Khoslaa & Gokul Kumarresen