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.
Frank Slootman on what most CEOs get wrong
Frank Slootman · Former Chairman & CEO, Snowflake
Battle-tested playbooks for recuriting, reading the market, and adapting to AI
Qasar Younis · Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition
Business used to be go karting. Now it's Formula 1.
Akshay Kothari · Co-founder & COO, Notion
$50M ARR With 3 sales reps, no CRO, and one PM
Michael Grinich · Founder & CEO, WorkOS
Behind the curtain of a $4.5b AI-native powerhouse
Ashwin Sreenivas · Co-founder, Decagon
How a first-time CEO is taking on Google: No process, no NPC hires, and extreme shipping velocity
Will Bryk · Co-founder & CEO, Exa
0 → $1b in a year: The remarkable story of Handshake's refounding
Garrett Lord · Co-founder & CEO, Handshake
The new marketing playbook: “Marketing Engineers” and agents as the audience
James Cadwallader · Co-founder & CEO, Profound
Building a $5b company without 996
Immad Akhund · Co-founder & CEO, Mercury
Startup lessons Silicon Valley won’t teach you
Cameron McCord · Co-founder & CEO, Nominal
Nobody knows anything, product market fit is dead, and there's only one moat
Bipul Sinha · Co-founder & CEO, Rubrik