Knuckle Up with Nakul

The HOW of building iconic companies.

Founders who’ve done it at the highest level on recruiting, culture, intensity, and the inner game of the job. With Nakul Mandan.

latest · ep 11
Will Bryk. Exa.

Will Bryk, co-founder and CEO of Exa, is building web search for AI agents - and betting a first-time founder can take on Google. Five years in, Exa powers search for Cursor, Cognition, and 5,000+ companies, and has raised $250M at a $2.2B valuation led by a16z. Will explains why he kills process before it lays eggs, screens out NPC hires, and why nothing at Exa should ever take a month to ship.

Garrett Lord. Handshake.
Handshake's remarkable refounding: a lesson in how the next AI fortunes get made
Jul 21
James Cadwallader. Profound.
How everyone will do marketing by 2027: ”Marketing engineers” and agents as the audience
Jul 7
Immad Akhund. Mercury.
Building a $5b company without 996
Jun 23
Cameron McCord. Nominal.
Startup lessons Silicon Valley won’t teach you
Jun 9
Akshay Kothari. Notion.
Business used to be go karting. Now it's Formula 1.
May 27
Ashwin Sreenivas. Decagon.
Behind the curtain of a $4.5b AI-native powerhouse
May 19
Michael Grinich. WorkOS.
$50M ARR With 3 sales reps, no CRO, and one PM
May 7
Bipul Sinha. Rubrik.
Nobody knows anything, product market fit is dead, and there's only one moat
Apr 30
Qasar Younis. Applied Intuition.
Battle-tested playbooks for recuriting, reading the market, and adapting to AI
Apr 21
Frank Slootman. Snowflake.
Frank Slootman on what most CEOs get wrong
Apr 14