Knuckle Up with Nakul
Conversations with elite operators about the HOW of building iconic companies.
Recruiting, culture, intensity, and the inner game of being a founder/CEO. Actual operating playbooks, not highlight reels. With players at the top of their game.
Hosted by Nakul Mandan, founder of Audacious Ventures.
Building a $5b company without 996
Immad Akhund · Co-founder & CEO, Mercury
Immad Akhund engineered the opposite of most founders: pressure goes down as success goes up. The operating philosophy behind Mercury — anti-996, remote-first, profitable for four years, and now valued at $5.2 billion.
Listen to EpisodeAll Episodes
Startup lessons Silicon Valley won’t teach you
Cameron McCord · Co-founder & CEO, Nominal
Business used to be go karting. Now it's Formula 1.
Akshay Kothari · Co-founder & COO, Notion
Behind the curtain of a $4.5b AI-native powerhouse
Ashwin Sreenivas · Co-founder, Decagon
$50M ARR With 3 sales reps, no CRO, and one PM
Michael Grinich · Founder & CEO, WorkOS
Nobody knows anything, product market fit is dead, and there's only one moat
Bipul Sinha · Co-founder & CEO, Rubrik
Battle-tested playbooks for recuriting, reading the market, and adapting to AI
Qasar Younis · Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition
Frank Slootman on what most CEOs get wrong
Frank Slootman · Former Chairman & CEO, Snowflake