F0under

01 · Interviews

Founder interviews

One founder, one long conversation, published in full under both our names. What they sell, what it costs to sell it, what broke, and what they would do differently from zero.

The first interviews are being recorded.

Join the list and they land in your inbox the day they’re published.

One list, no sequences. Your email goes to our CRM and nowhere else — see privacy.

The format

Long, specific, and published whole.

Most founder interviews are press. Someone arrives with three talking points, repeats the origin story they have told forty times, and leaves before anything is at stake. That is not a bad interview — it is a different product, and there is plenty of it already.

These run long, usually an hour or more, and go out close to unedited. Cuts are for repetition and for anything the guest asks to pull after the fact — they get that right without argument, because the alternative is a guest who stays vague from the first minute. Nothing is anonymised. Real name, real company, real numbers, or the number is left out entirely and said to be left out. No “a seven-figure business” standing in for a figure nobody will confirm.

What every guest gets asked

Seven questions, published in advance.

There is no gotcha. Guests see these before we start, because the good answers take a minute of thinking, not surprise.

  1. 01

    What do you actually sell, and to whom?

    Not the mission statement. The thing money changes hands for.

  2. 02

    What does it cost you to sell one?

    Ad spend, commission, returns, support, the lot. Most founders have never said this number out loud.

  3. 03

    What was the last month that scared you?

    Cash, churn, a supplier, a platform ban. Everyone has one, and nobody puts it on LinkedIn.

  4. 04

    What did you believe two years ago that you now think was wrong?

    This is the question that separates operators from people performing being one.

  5. 05

    What broke when you grew?

    The thing that worked at ten customers and fell over at a thousand.

  6. 06

    What would you do differently from zero?

    With what you know, not with hindsight’s luck.

  7. 07

    What are you not willing to do for growth?

    The line. Everyone has one, and it says more than the wins do.

Who makes a good one

Someone who runs a business today. Not someone who ran one once and now sells the course about it, and not someone six weeks into an idea. The interesting guests are the ones deep enough in to have specifics and far enough along to be honest about what they got wrong — any size, any industry, anywhere.

The people in these conversations are also the first guest list for the rooms in Dubai and the first members considered when the community opens.

Someone come to mind — including you? Join the list and reply to the first email that arrives. That reaches me directly.