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This episode, we welcome Michael Broughton! Michael is a USC student on a leave of absence and cofounder of Perch, a free app that allows users to build their credit through recurring expenses such as rent, Netflix and Hulu. Coming from a military family of nine, Michael started the company out of some personal experience and in the early days of t…

Today, we have Shreyas Parab! Shreyas is a junior at Stanford and co-founder of Angle Global, an online education platform with the goal of teaching the world English. So far, Angle Global has struck a partnership with one of China’s largest spelling bees to provide technology to their 5 million students and have been working in collaboration with …

Welcome to Season 4 of the Founders Couch! This episode, I'm joined by the wonderful Frederick Daso, senior Forbes contributor who writes on college entrepreneurship. We interview the stellar John Peurifoy. John is currently the co-founder of Floating Point Group (FPG), a 14 person cryptocurrency trading infrastructure venture-backed startup. He gr…

Look out for Season 4 in the new year :)--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/founderscouch/support

Why are user interviews so important when building a product that's not for yourself? What are some clever tactics? And how do you balance staying true to your vision vs. taking feedback? Ayushi Sinha joins us on the couch today! Ayushi is a recent Princeton grad who studied Computer Science and received a certificate in Cognitive Science. Hailing …

We welcome Tejasvi Desai! Tejasvi is a Johns Hopkins senior who studies Biomedical Engineering. Hailing from Pleasanton, California, Tejasvi is the cofounder of Relavo (https://relavomedical.com/), a medical device venture preventing infections in home dialysis. So far, they’ve developed a working prototype, verified the efficacy of their disinfect…

How did Protect3d come to be? And how does Tim approach selling to customers that might be less likely to adopt new tech? Tim is a recent Duke grad who studied Mechanical Engineering. Hailing from Dallas, TX, he is the cofounder and CTO of Protect3d (https://www.protect3dpads.com/), a startup that leverages 3D technology to create anatomical precis…

How did a high school football star turn into a startup entrepreneur? And how did he go about raising funding with respect to his product timeline? Today, we welcome Robbie Felton on the couch! Robbie is a recent Brown student, on a leave of absence, who studied Public Health. Hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Robbie was a high school football star…

We welcome Faisal Younus to the couch! Faisal is a recent Harvard dropout who studied Applied Math and Computer Science. Hailing from Long Island, New York, he is the cofounder of Athlane (https://www.athlane.com/), a YC-backed company from the Summer ’19 cohort that is looking to be the connective fiber between streamers and brands, facilitating s…

We welcome Jenny Xu! Jenny is a recent MIT graduate who studied computer science. She hails from the Bay Area. Once a self-described “shy kid,” she is now the cofounder and CEO of Talofa Games, which is building a social running mobile game. So far, they’ve built a playable prototype and are building out their team. They recently won $300K at Niant…

Today, we welcome Chukwunonso Arinze! Chukwunonso (aka Chooki) is a current PhD student at UChicago studying Physics. Hailing from Nigeria, he is the cofounder of Kaoshi (https://kaoshi.network/), a fintech company creating technologies that enable banks to provide financial services to their citizens living in the diaspora. So far, they’ve built a…

As COVID-19 continues to rampage the world, what my guests today are building could not be more relevant, timely, and pressing. We welcome Ibraheem Alinur and Irewole Akande to the couch! Ibraheem is a recent 2020 grad from Northwestern and hails from Florida. Irewole is an incoming MBA student at SMU Cox Business School and hails from Nigeria. The…

Before an introduction on my guest today, I want to give a quick shout-out to a really cool Black-hosted podcast called Side Hustle Pro. Hosted by Nicaila Matthews Okome, Side Hustle Pro spotlights bold Black women entrepreneurs. Some other great Black-hosted podcasts about business are Championing Women’s Voices and Behind the Brilliance. Go check…

Today on the couch, we chat with Shuyao Kong, a student at Harvard Business School who grew up in Beijing, China. She’s the cofounder and Chief Motivator of the nonprofit humanID, a one-click anonymous login replacing login with Facebook. So far, the company has released one test app and integrated with another client, a COVID-tracking app in India…

This episode, we've got Stanford CS & Physics junior Amber Yang on the couch! Hailing from Orlando, FL, she is the founder and CEO of SeerTracking. SeerTracking originated as Amber's high school research project for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. She ended up winning the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award and later on tha…

For this episode, we have Katherine Huang, a freshman at MIT who hails from Lowell, MA and is currently planning on majoring in Urban Planning and Computer Science. During her junior year of high school, she founded “Science and Us," a non-profit organization that runs events and creates online educational resources to help high schoolers learn abo…

Today on the couch, we have Ruthie Lewis, a Stanford senior studying Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Product Realization, who hails from Columbus, Ohio. Last year, she co-founded Stanford Undergraduates in Mechanical Engineering (SUIME) with fellow Stanford student Chloe Evans, who was unavailable for this interview as she is currently inter…

Join us on the couch today as we talk to Kliment Serafimov, a senior at MIT who founded a preparatory school called "The School of the Future" for high schoolers in his homeland, North Macedonia. The idea originated from his own personal experiences with the education system and desire to bring more STEM engagement to motivated, advanced students i…

We've got Stanford junior Phoebe Yao on the couch! Phoebe is studying her own Individualized Major in Human Centered Design Engineering, and she hails from St. Louis, Missouri. Last year, she took a gap year, traveling to Oxford, China, and India, where she came up with the idea for Pareto, a service that helps hustlers free up time by delegating h…

For this episode on the couch, we've got Federico Bescotti, a senior at MIT working on DigitalDUCT, a machine readable duct tape that can store information via a cloud-based software solution. The product's versatility and ease-of-use lends itself to applications in rugged environments like in the military field or on construction sites. In additio…

A friend of mine and fellow Stanford senior King Alandy Dy joins me on the third episode of Season 2 today! King is a serial entrepreneur, having previously founded a consumer company when he was 18 years old that was essentially the Common App of the Philippines. Today, we talk about his current enterprise company tul. ai that is doing robotic pro…

Join us on the couch today as we talk to Myles Stapelberg, a junior at MIT working on NanoCAP, a metallurgical company that is seeking to bring a novel, composite metal with enhanced properties to the nuclear, aerospace, and jewelry industries. The company originated as an undergraduate research opportunity in The Short Lab at MIT, a lab in the Mes…

Stanford senior Demetri Maxim joins us on the couch today as our first guest of Season 2! He's the founder and CEO of Nephrogen, a biotech company that focuses on at-home entirely non invasive kidney monitoring. The company originated as a science fair research project in high school and became an official corporation Demetri's freshman year. He's …

We’ve got Stanford senior Kaitlyn Albertoli on the couch today! Not only is she my CEE246 Venture Creation TA, but she is also cofounder and CEO of Buzz Solutions, a software analytics company which analyzes data collected by drones in order to provide predictive analytics to utilities. She started the company out of CEE246 her sophomore year. Hear…

We’ve got YouTube star Rachel Fong on the couch! She’s a Stanford sophomore studying product design who has a YouTube channel called KawaiiSweetWorld that has over 1.2 million subscribers and has garnered over 142 million views. Tune in to hear her story! ... What drew her to kawaii? How did she grow the channel? How does she make money? What goes …

We’ve got a very special episode ahead of us! We’ll be talking to one of my close friends, Maddie McConkey - Stanford Public Policy junior and founder of LMM Political, a political campaign consulting company based in Minnesota. We cover everything from what’s involved in a political campaign to how she hires interns to some of the biggest challeng…

Joining us on the couch today are Stanford juniors Christopher Lu and Jack Gartland! They are the founders of FriendChip, a social app that makes it easy for you to meet up with your friends. We talk about everything from what makes their team work and the challenges and benefits that come with creating an app that is based on social networks...---…

We’ve got Stanford seniors Amanda Calabrese, Elijah Zenger, and Greta Meyer on the couch! Tune in to hear all about their journey of starting Tampro, a startup focused on improving the tampon: the challenges they’ve faced, what they’ve learned, and where they’re headed..--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/founderscouch…

We’ve got Stanford senior Michelle Lu and masters student in computer science Apoorva Dornadula on the couch! They are 2/4 of the team that founded tech startup Viralspace, a marketplace that helps brands crowdsource user-generated content from their fans and helps creators monetize their content. The two share what’s prepared them the most for the…

This week, we’ve got Stanford senior Stephanie Niu on the couch! Tune in to hear all about how she created her food-based handmade soap business Skindulgences. How did she get on Etsy, and how does she promote her soap on Instagram? Plus, Stephanie shares why she values building a network of female entrepreneurs and forming partnerships with other …

We’ve got Stanford junior Evan-Michelle Miller on the couch today! Tune in to hear all about how Evan noticed a big problem in the music industry and decided to start her own publishing company Nave Entertainment to not fall prey and retain control and ownership of her own music. Evan gives us a rundown of the ins and outs of the music industry and…

Nathan Kong joins us on the couch today! Tune in if you’d like to hear about how he founded his VC-backed AR startup Beyond One (parent company of DIVR Edu and CurioPets), why he decided to drop out of Stanford for a full year, and the biggest lessons he took away from those days: grit, user research and iterative testing, marketing timing, work-li…

We've got Stanford senior Arjun Tambe on the couch today! Tune in if you'd like to hear about how he started small and snowballed big and ultimately scaled his debate school The Debate Intensive to two different states. We explore the fascinating world of debate together. And, we touch on all the coordination that goes into managing a summer debate…

In this first episode, we welcome Albert Chon to the couch! Tune in to to hear all about how he assembled the right team for his bitcoin startup Injective Labs and how he tapped into one Stanford professor as a main mentor and resource. Plus, we touch on how he approaches funding and finds the right balance between schoolwork and startup life. And,…