May 27, 2025
May 27, 2025
Why Most Startups Don't Focus on Growth Early Enough (+ New Podcast Launch)
Lessons from the growth lead who helped scale Ramp and Unify + meet our newly launched focal podcast where we go deep with founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from the early days each week.
pascal's notes
"Finally a startup podcast where you actually learn something that matters!"
That's what I set out to do when I started having discussions with founders and operators around potentially doing a podcast.
Why?
Because most startup podcasts are basically a highlight reel that barely scratch the surface across the 20+ topics they cover. They're entertaining - but you don't actually learn anything useful.
Thus, meet the focal podcast where I go deep with some of today's best founders / operators on ONE crucial lesson they learned the hard way early on.
No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you'd get if these founders were mentoring you 1-on-1.
Today we launched the first episode, and starting tomorrow, I'll share insights from these conversations in writing on here.
Stay tuned!
🙏 Can I ask for a big favor: Engage with my launch post LinkedIn & X so more founders see it. A like and / or comment go a long way - would really appreciate it, thank you!
Our debut episode tackles a critical mistake most founders make:
“Most startups don’t focus on growth nearly early enough.”
This comes Austin Hughes who knows startup growth better than almost anyone else.
As a former early growth lead at Ramp and now the co-founder and CEO of Unify (>$30M raised from Thrive, Emergence, OpenAI, and more), Austin has both built a growth organization from scratch as well as helped scale one faster than almost anyone else.
Our conversation changed how I think about growth at startups. We cover:
Experimentation speed is everything
Why you have to start with outbound from day 1
To win, move from cold to warm outbound
Why to build your growth team as early as possible
The ultimate startup moat: Building in public
For more, check out my conversation with Austin on the newly launched focal podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Youtube.
Additional guests over the next few weeks include:
Han Wang, Co-Founder & CEO of Mintlify ($22M raised from a16z, Bain, & YC)
Alexa Grabell, Co-Founder & CEO of Pocus ($23M raised form Coatue, First Round, Pear, and Box Group)
Don Muir, Co-Founder & CEO of Arc (>$180M in debt + equity raised from Left Lane, Bain Capital, YC, & Torch Capital)
Santiago Suarez Ordoñez, Co-Founder & CEO of Momentum ($18M raised from First Mark, Basis Set, & South Park Commons)
Simon Rohrbach, Co-Founder & CEO of Plain ($21M raised from Battery & Index)
And many more.
