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 14
David Paffenholz. Juicebox.

David Paffenholz, co-founder and CEO of Juicebox, grew the AI-native recruiting platform from $1.5M ARR to an $850M valuation without losing a single employee in two years. He breaks down why search — not workflows — was recruiting's real problem, how Juicebox is building the agent-native alternative to LinkedIn, and the culture formula of independence, visible impact, and real equity behind a 90-person, five-days-in-office team.

Arvind Jain. Glean.
$7B AI founder: "AI is not capable of replacing you right now"
Sep 9→
Guillermo Rauch. Vercel.
Inside Vercel's AI-era playbook: "Recursive Founder Mode"
Aug 25→
Will Bryk. Exa.
How a first-time CEO is taking on Google: No process, no NPC hires, and extreme shipping velocity
Aug 4→
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→