🎙 Weekly podcast series with leaders in the startup ecosystem hosted by @mattybcohen & @ripple_ventures 🎙
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He was one of @googlecloud's first Sales hires. He then scaled @DrataHQ from under $5M to $50M+ in about 20 months. Now, he runs GTM at @Railway without a sales team:
This week on Tank Talks, we welcomed Rahul Parmar (@parmstar) to cover:
06:30 – The 3-step sales rule he learned selling Google Cloud to Fortune 500 Companies
13:37 – Why Toronto reps become killers once they sell to the US
18:56 – Why he decided not to hire a sales team at Railway
41:36 – The sales job that's already gone
42:47 – The AI cost everyone is overpaying for
Bookmark this episode to understand what GTM looks like when the team is tiny, and how to develop founder-led instincts that never switch off.
"Canadian buyers are the hardest to sell. Reps trained on them crush it in the US."
Rahul Parmar (@parmstar) co-founded Lighthouse Labs, was an early @googlecloud sales lead in London, scaled @DrataHQ from $5M to $50M+, and now runs GTM at @Railway solo.
New @TankTalkPodcast 👇
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Links to Episode:
Youtube: piped.video/tQC1AJcWe6k
Substack: tanktalks.substack.com/p/sel…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3NY…
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A founder who's been an operator, a VC, and an LP, is now backed by @foundersfund and @OpenAI to resurrect drugs that big pharma companies have left behind.
This week on Tank Talks, we welcomed @TonyMouch to the Tank where we covered:
02:24 – the Alexander Hamilton obsession behind a biotech CEO
11:22 – why most VCs cluster around mediocrity
20:10 – the marathon metaphor for how billion-dollar drugs die
30:50 – running a biotech like an operating hedge fund
48:47 – the regulatory reform AI-era medicine actually needs.
Full episode on Tank Talks. Bookmark & watch.
Most people only know @foundersfund for @PalantirTech and @anduriltech
Few know that @peterthiel was also early in Canadian bio.
Now his fund has led the A and co-led the B in a Toronto company called Biossil (biossil.co) alongside @OpenAI to rescue abandoned drugs from pharma’s graveyard.
This week, I welcome my good friend and @ripple_ventures former anchor LP, Anthony Mouchantaf (@TonyMouch), to sit down with us on @TankTalkPodcast to share his read on why the AI labs are leaning into biology.
With so many people fearing AI everywhere, there's one place it's not feared, and that's healthcare, biotech and life sciences.
On this episode, we cover:
- Why promising drugs die three-quarters of the way to approval
- How an 8-person team runs biotech like an operating hedge fund
- The CSI-style hunt to track down a drug’s original owner
- Why most VCs, in his words, “cluster around mediocrity”
Full episode links below.
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Youtube: piped.video/Go5aQJGfW0g
Substack: tanktalks.substack.com/p/how…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7HL…
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Tank Talks retweeted
$120 trillion in investor capital just landed in Toronto, and Canada still can't explain what it wanted out of the US trade talks.
New @TankTalkPodcast with @ruffoloj:
Why the trade deal collapsed
@MarkJCarney's $1T pitch to global capital
@AnthropicAI's IPO goes political
Miro's fall from $17.5B to @bendingsppon
Watch 👇
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A 40 min masterclass on grit, ownership, and reinventing yourself after the peak given by @NHL MVP and @HockeyHallFame of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger .
His heart stopped on ice, he got booed in his own building and even failed for two years straight.
But these hardships were what allowed him to come up on top, becoming one of the most feared players of his era.
His whole philosophy in one line:
"Once you decide I want to be the best player in the world or try to be the best player in the world, reverse engineer that and put the time and effort in and the work in to become that player."
Full link to the episode in comments below:
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Substack: tanktalks.substack.com/p/how…
YouTube: piped.video/-acFI4hhnlU
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0p3…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
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Featured on @HockeyHallFame , @NHL Norris and Hart Trophy winner, @StanleyCup champion, two-time @Olympics gold medalist, and one of the fiercest competitors the game has ever seen.
This week, we had the honour of welcoming @chrispronger into the tank.
Bookmark this interview for a true masterclass on grit, ownership, and reinventing yourself after the peak.
Timestamps and links below:
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Timestamps:
00:52 – the one bet that started everything
21:51 – why he wanted every opponent to hate him
32:06 – the 30 seconds his heart stopped on the ice
51:05 – the investing rule that overrides every deal
57:21 – the one game his family is banned from playing
Substack: substack.com/@tanktalks/note…
Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0p3…
Youtube: piped.video/watch?v=-acFI4hh…
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The US @DeptofWar is his customer. The White House cyber office has brought him in as an expert. This week, he sat down with us to share what he knows about cyber security.
In this week’s episode with CEO of Lastwall, Karl Holmqvist, we cover:
Every few weeks, another headline lands about an AI agent doing something nobody authorized.
Karl has spent thirty years watching people connect things to the internet without knowing who else could reach them.
In most cases, nobody was being careless. The risks were just invisible.
So now that every company is handing agents access to their systems, the headlines are already arriving.
His view is that we’re making the same mistakes as we have been for 30 years, just faster and at scale with agents.
@Lastwall_Karl founder and CEO of @Lastwall joined us on @TankTalksPodcast this week to talk about cybersecurity in the age of AI.
In this episode, we cover:
đź“· The one entry point behind roughly 85% of all attacks
đź“· What it took to sell to the hardest customer on earth
📷 Why he tests AI agents but won’t put them near live systems
đź“· The encryption behind every bank login, and why it has an expiry date
Links in comments below!
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15:53 – the moment that made him start a security company
18:10 – the root cause analysis behind every breach you've read about
25:14 – landing the hardest customer on earth, and why he built for them first
28:11 – the years when "our customers are defense" closed VC doors
32:28 – why Canadian procurement makes founders do the same work 400 times
42:18 – what $16M from BDC's StrongNorth Fund actually buys
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Today @mattybcohen and @_dominiclau just announced their Fund IV at @ripple_ventures.
Watch and read about the full announcement here:
cc: @katiekola_smile @okayjay70
Eight years ago I started @ripple_ventures with a simple thesis: back the most ambitious founders we could find, in the markets that move GDP.
Today @_dominiclau and I are announcing that Fund IV is live, anchored by Northleaf Capital Partners, @RBC / @rbcx , and one of Canada's largest private conglomerates. We have completed our first close and already have ten companies in the portfolio.
Our world has changed a lot since 2018, but our role as a VC has not. What has changed is where that ambition is showing up. It is no longer in IT budgets, but in rocket launch, air defence systems, critical minerals exploration, biology labs, and the manual back-office workflows nobody wants to do by hand. These are the markets that decide what a country owns next.
Three things are guiding this fund:
- Following the brightest founders into the most ambitious things being built.
- Investing with conviction in the earliest stages (pre-product and pre-traction).
- Supporting sovereign capabilities with frontier technologies.
Welcoming the newest portfolio companies out of this fund:
@CanadaRocket Company (sovereign launch capability)
@NV_Dynamics (full-stack air defence systems)
Terranox AI (AI uranium exploration)
Daedal Systems (diagnostics for fusion reactors)
Valen (AI to improve drugs)
Green Abundance (plant engineering)
@urunml (infrastructure for the interactive era)
Silmo (AI for the back office)
Blackletter (building a new type of law firm)
Asset (embedded AI accounting)
To the founders we have not met yet: if you are building with this level of ambition, we'd love to partner with you. Come find us early, that is when we are most useful.
Watch the launch video and read our full article below.
cc: @katiekola_smile @okayjay70
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Tank Talks retweeted
Our CEO and Co-Founder, @ziade_paul, joined @TankTalkPodcast with Matt Cohen last week to discuss what it will take to build Canada's sovereign defence capabilities.
From accelerating innovation to rethinking procurement and investment, Paul discussed why Canada has the talent and expertise to lead, but needs the conviction to build.
Check out the full episode here: piped.video/watch?v=xIax55lZ…
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Tank Talks retweeted
Years ago I asked @pmarca for advice on successful M&A (having screwed up my unfair share of those). His advice was “make their chiefs your chiefs!” We are lucky to have Wayne at the top here - Affirm CAN and our Revenue org’s many victories have a lot to do with his excellence!
Rower at @Harvard . A PhD at @Cambridge. Six years in private equity. He then took a 5-person division to a $340M exit, and now runs revenue at @Affirm:
13:09 — how he sold Canada's first BNPL product before writing a line of code
21:24 — the inbound that told him it was time to sell, not build
29:12 — the @mlevchin habit that turns "maxed out" projects into 10x
36:05 — the lending practice he calls borderline abusive, and wants banned
50:29 — the model change in the last 18 months that reset underwriting Full episode with
This week's episode with @WaynePommen on Tank Talks out now!
Links in the comments below.
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You cannot learn a customer's answer by preparing better
You learn it by asking sooner.
In Christmas 2016,Wayne sketched a checkout flow on paper.
In January he asked two companies to commit to a payment product that did not exist.
They said yes, so his team built it that spring.
Four years later, paid $340M for the company.
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Always take that leap, you never know if you don't try:
"Don’t give up. Stay in the game. Things compound."
@WaynePommen, CRO of Affirm on Tank Talks this week
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Youtube: piped.video/scgkqzjYiuo
Substack: tanktalks.substack.com/p/how…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5fZ…
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Rower at @Harvard . A PhD at @Cambridge. Six years in private equity. He then took a 5-person division to a $340M exit, and now runs revenue at @Affirm:
13:09 — how he sold Canada's first BNPL product before writing a line of code
21:24 — the inbound that told him it was time to sell, not build
29:12 — the @mlevchin habit that turns "maxed out" projects into 10x
36:05 — the lending practice he calls borderline abusive, and wants banned
50:29 — the model change in the last 18 months that reset underwriting Full episode with
This week's episode with @WaynePommen on Tank Talks out now!
Links in the comments below.
@Affirm paid $340M for his company. Five years later, he's still there.
That almost never happens. Founders clear the earnout and leave.
@WaynePommen took a 5-person division in 2015, built it into PayBright, sold it to Affirm, and stayed to become CRO.
New Tank Talks is live 👇
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Youtube: piped.video/scgkqzjYiuo
Substack: tanktalks.substack.com/p/how…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5fZ…
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Before she was an investor at a $24B firm, she was selling desks at WeWork's peak.
Her team was responsible for building a glass box on a truck, assembling a fake WeWork inside it, and parking it outside their competitor's front door to poach customers.
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They got chased off by the police, driven by one motto: "sell desks at all costs."
WeWork would peak at a $47 billion valuation in 2019; the same year she moved to venture.
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Julia Maltby spent a decade as an operator and GP, rode WeWork through its hypergrowth, became principal at Flybridge, and founded her own seed fund. Today, she builds the venture program at Fengate, a Toronto firm with $24B in committed capital, and allocates funds for a living.
Listen to the full conversation on Tank Talks with Matt Cohen, this week featuring Julia Maltby from Fengate
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