Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

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Aug 2026

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Formerly Six Figure Secrets of Fractional Experts, Founder Unfiltered is the show about the stuff founders don't talk about: the identity crisis when you go from operator to leader, the weird shame of self-promotion, the gap between who you are and who your business needs you to be. Hosted by Bradley Jacobs, founder of Mylance — a LinkedIn thought leadership platform for B2B founders — this show gets into the psychology, the patterns, and the honest conversations that actually move the needle. No hacks. No hype. Just the raw truth about what's really holding you back.

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August 20, 2026Episode 12937 min

13 Years to $180M: What Bootstrapping Really Looks Like with Gregory Galant

I sat down with Gregory Galant, co-founder and CEO of Muckrack, the leading PR software platform, and co-founder of the Shorty Awards. Greg bootstrapped his company for 13 years on roughly $200K in angel funding before raising $180 million. That's not a typo, and getting there was not a straight line. We talk about persistence, and how to actually tell the difference between an idea worth sticking with and one you need to walk away from. Greg shares the story of spending two years building a podcast ad network that never found its market, even while competitors were getting funded by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, and how that experience shaped the way he evaluates decisions today. He also gets into one of his most useful habits: writing a private memo before every major call so he can go back later and separate a good decision from a lucky or unlucky outcome. We get into mindset too. Greg is honest about how hard it is not to take a failing business personally when your identity is wrapped up in it, and the mental model he uses to treat entrepreneurship more like running experiments than staking his self-worth on every outcome. We also cover why he thinks courage and judgment matter more than ever now that AI has made tactical knowledge nearly free, why Muckrack went all-in on remote work over a decade before it was normal, and how he actually measures performance on a distributed team. If you're building something and wondering whether you're pushing a boulder uphill or riding a market that's actually pulling you forward, this conversation will give you a real framework for figuring that out. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro to Gregory Galant 00:47 The single biggest factor in success 01:50 Knowing when to persist vs. pivot 02:31 Two years on a podcast ad network 03:45 Competing against Sequoia-backed rivals 04:28 Pushing a boulder vs. market pull 05:19 A mediocre team in a great market 06:07 Learning it wasn't him, it was the market 07:25 The Edison filament analogy 08:41 Giving yourself entrepreneurial longevity 08:57 How the Shorty Awards went viral in 24 hours 10:14 Talking mindset and imposter feelings 11:09 Separating identity from outcome 12:18 Treating decisions like experiments 13:07 Writing private memos before big calls 14:35 It's not about you, it's the market 15:26 Why this never gets easier 15:59 AI and the death of tactical advantage 17:41 Why Silicon Valley insiders had the edge 18:00 Courage and judgment as the new differentiators 19:21 Why AI won't give you conviction 20:06 The Felix Dennis paycheck-addiction line 21:09 Founder mistakes that actually cost him 22:00 Building tech before proving the business 23:32 Launching a dozen side projects 24:29 The angel investors who called him unfocused 25:05 Discovering Muckrack's real audience 26:19 What changed to make him double down 27:02 Muckrack's first $8,000 in MRR 28:15 The market kept pulling harder 28:51 Going remote before it was normal 30:08 Why they never made anyone commute 31:38 Giving up the New York office for good 32:26 What remote work exposes about culture 33:31 How he measures performance remotely 34:04 The Andy Grove input/output framework 36:09 Advice to his younger self 37:13 Where to find Gregory Galant

August 13, 2026Episode 12836 min

The Hard Lessons Nobody Tells You When You Leave Corporate

Leaving Uber was one of the strangest experiences of my life. One day I'm running a business line worth billions of dollars, the next I have no manager, no structure, no salary, and no idea whether I'm doing a good job. In this episode, part three of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, I get into everything that happened after I left: pitching my first consulting client on a $25k proposal I basically made up on the spot, learning to ask for what I actually want (something corporate culture trains out of you), and the existential wobble of defining success for myself for the first time. We talk about why so many founders confuse their identity with their business, and why separating "I am Bradley" from "I am the business" was the single biggest unlock in my entrepreneurial journey. I share how a mastermind group, a few minutes of intentionally feeling hard emotions, and a shift from chasing metrics to falling in love with process changed how I run Mylance day to day. We also get into how Mylance came to be, why posting daily on LinkedIn became my entire marketing engine, and why keeping your hard-won expertise to yourself is, in my view, the most selfish thing you can do. If you're building something on your own and wondering whether the chaos is normal, this one's for you. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro to part three 00:16 Everything after Uber 01:18 Making up a $25K proposal 02:08 First entrepreneurial leap 02:52 Learning to ask for what you want 03:29 Why corporate discourages asking 04:14 Knowing your market value 04:42 Never Split the Difference tactic 05:24 Falling into consulting 06:06 Existential first months solo 07:18 Building an informal advisor board 08:06 Corporate structure vs going solo 09:10 Starting a mastermind for support 09:51 Facing the fear of shutting down 10:13 Separating self from the business 11:29 Letting yourself feel emotions 12:26 Trauma responses and burnout 13:21 Ditching fancy business models 14:19 Falling in love with process 15:07 Systems as 98% of the game 15:30 Planning nights for needle movers 17:14 Purpose over hitting numbers 18:09 Why Mylance was founded 19:06 The first client conversation 20:12 Researching the market 21:32 Sales and marketing struggles 21:49 Building trust through daily posts 22:52 Coaching program pivot 23:19 The $12,000 sale story 24:07 The power of compounding trust 25:04 Posting consistently, small audience 26:00 What a thousand followers is worth 26:42 Speak from the "I," not the "you" 27:43 Fear of being seen 29:19 Entrepreneurship as self-improvement 30:05 Keeping expertise to yourself is selfish 32:04 Content as a mirror for others 34:00 Where to find Bradley and Mylance

August 6, 2026Episode 12736 min

AI Can Steal Your Skills. It Can't Steal This with Abhijit Bhaduri

I've talked to a lot of guests on this show, but this conversation with Abhijit Bhaduri gave me a word I haven't stopped thinking about since we recorded it: hunar . Abhijit has led learning and leadership development at Colgate, Wipro, Microsoft, and Pepsi. He was Wipro's first Chief Learning Officer, has written six books, and has built an audience of nearly a million followers on LinkedIn. But none of that is really what we talk about. We talk about the thing underneath all of it. Hunar is a Persian-origin word used in Hindi and Urdu, and it sits somewhere between mastery and artistry. Abhijit breaks down the difference between talent (what you're born with), skill (what can be taught and benchmarked), and hunar (the unrepeatable stuff you bring from your own life, your disappointments, your obsessions, your weird taste in music) that shows up in your work whether you mean it to or not. He tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock's childhood and how a single terrifying afternoon became the signature of "the master of suspense." We talk about Roger Federer, why his rivals cried when he retired, and why AI can replicate a skill but never a signature. If AI can build the CRM, write the copy, and do the accounting, the thing that makes your product yours isn't the execution. It's you, integrated into the work. We talk about what that means for building in public, for LinkedIn content, and for founders trying to differentiate in a market where everyone has access to the same tools. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Introducing Abhijit Bhaduri 01:14 The through line across his career 02:29 Going out on his own after big brands 04:42 Building identity without a big name 05:15 Where the idea of hunar began 06:13 Talent versus skill versus hunar 07:41 The Alfred Hitchcock origin story 09:23 How fear became his signature 10:47 The unsigned painting analogy 12:17 Why AI can steal skill, not hunar 13:30 Why we still need teachers 14:12 The human side AI can't replicate 15:28 What makes a CRM actually different 16:08 The industrial era of interchangeability 17:45 Why benchmarks hurt mental health 18:24 His next book, AI Identity 19:17 The vulnerability of being unique 20:01 Bringing storytelling into corporate work 22:40 Illustrating his own LinkedIn content 23:15 Roger Federer as a hunar example 24:34 Why his rivals cried at his retirement 26:20 Learning from others without copying them 27:00 How founders can go find their hunar 28:42 Coaching founders on money and identity 30:15 What works for him on LinkedIn 32:07 Posting consistently over years 33:33 Writing for yourself and the reader 34:07 His closing message to founders 35:11 Where to find Abhijit Bhaduri

July 30, 2026Episode 12629 min

The Billion-Dollar Uber Business Nobody Talks About

This is part two of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, and if you haven't listened to part one about launching Raleigh, the Lyft wars, and Uber Eats in Miami, go back and start there first. This episode picks up right where things got hard. I talk about getting rejected for a role I was asked to interview for, and the lesson that rejection taught me about making career moves about what a company actually needs instead of what I want. From there I take you through moving to Europe to launch Uber Eats in Milan, managing a team of over 25 Italians without speaking the language, and learning the difference between managing and leading the hard way. Then I get into the part of my Uber story almost nobody knows: Uber Freight. I walked into a warehouse in San Francisco with a handful of people from the freight world and helped build a digital freight brokerage from scratch, inside a hundred billion dollar industry that was still running on phone calls and fax machines. Two years later, that business crossed a billion dollar valuation. I talk through the two-sided marketplace problem we got completely backwards at first, why enterprise sales in freight is a game of pure reliability, and how Uber's willingness to make big, bold, expensive bets is what actually built the business. If you're building something new inside an old industry, or you're trying to figure out how much risk you're actually willing to take on to grow, this one's for you. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro and part two setup 00:40 The rejection that taught a lesson 01:10 Launching Uber in Italy overview 01:23 Getting rejected for the Madrid GM role 01:50 Applying anyway without fluent Spanish 02:07 The call that changed everything 02:49 Putting ego aside to add value 03:11 Asked to launch two cities at once 04:01 Choosing Milan over Madrid 04:47 Launching Uber Eats in Milan 05:16 Grassroots marketing with no brand 05:45 The lunch culture clash 06:38 Managing the pressure from corporate 07:39 First launch day: 50 orders vs 1,003 08:16 Becoming a pure manager for the first time 08:52 What he'd do differently in Italy 09:44 Deciding to come home after seven months 10:04 Hearing about the Uber Freight acquisition 10:52 Getting the call to join Freight 11:16 Why chaos and building excite him 12:02 Sponsor: Lodify 13:05 Walking into the Freight warehouse 14:03 The disconnect between plan and reality 14:44 Breaking the news to leadership 15:08 Grassroots interviews with truck drivers 16:15 Crossing a billion dollars in two years 16:39 The hundred billion dollar fragmented market 17:00 The chicken-and-egg marketplace problem 18:07 Why loads mattered more than sign-ups 19:35 First time doing enterprise sales 20:01 What shippers actually care about 20:39 Proving reliability with the worst loads 21:16 How they hit a billion dollar valuation 21:38 Growth versus profitability tension 22:32 Spot market versus contract market 23:16 Beating the market with technology 24:23 Using the Uber name as leverage 25:22 Would Freight work without Uber's name 25:54 What made Uber succeed overall 26:24 Travis and the big bold bets philosophy 27:41 Bradley's own lessons from getting slapped down 28:38 Setting up part three

July 23, 2026Episode 12549 min

Stop Selling Your Product. Start Selling How You Think with Simon Bowen

This episode changed how I see my own business. Most founders think their product is the thing they sell. It isn't. Your thinking is the real product. I sat down with Simon Bowen, founder of the Models Method and creator of the Genius Model, a system he's used for nearly 30 years to help founders and consultants turn complex expertise into visual frameworks that actually close deals. Simon's work spans 30 countries and industries from defense to one-on-one coaching, and he's spent his career helping people get out of their own heads long enough to see what they actually know. We get into why "uniqueness" is a trap in a world flooded with AI-generated marketing copy. Simon breaks down his framework for company genius: the 20% that's truly yours (your original perspective, shaped by your story) integrated with the 80% you've curated from everything else in your industry. We talk about why purpose doesn't make the sale, why the sale is made in the how, and Simon walks through a real example of finding "the ache," the deep, often unnamed problem underneath the problem a customer says they have. If you've ever struggled to explain what makes you different, or felt like imposter syndrome was creeping in because so much of what you do isn't "original," this conversation will change how you think about your own value. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro to Simon Bowen 00:56 Simon's origin story 02:35 Ideas start as a drawing 04:10 Facilitating rooms that disagree 05:24 The real Pareto principle 06:44 Getting rooms to the breakthrough 09:24 What is company genius 10:09 Make me safe, help me win 11:04 Why AI breeds sameness 12:00 Thinking is the real product 13:15 The founder's story as a lens 15:13 The laundromat example begins 18:03 Curate, create, integrate 19:02 Imposter syndrome reframed 20:28 Purpose, mechanics, and magic 21:29 Consistency builds reliability 22:15 Culture creates character 23:13 The believability crisis 25:12 Purpose doesn't make the sale 26:55 The sale is made in the how 28:44 What AI can't replace 32:02 What the market really wants 34:19 Introducing "the ache" 36:02 The acne treatment example 39:05 Three levels of problem 40:59 Naming the ache 42:00 Why founders forget their own ache 44:34 Closing thoughts on business 46:01 Business as the cornerstone of community 48:37 Where to find Simon Bowen

July 16, 2026Episode 12440 min

90% Market Share in 6 Months: The Wild Ride of Running Uber at 24

I was recently a guest on Cassidy Warren's podcast, For Your Own Good, and the conversation went so long and covered so much that I wanted to bring it here too. This is part one of a three-part series pulled from that interview, and it goes all the way back to when I was 24 years old, joining Uber and getting handed the Raleigh, North Carolina market. My job was simple to say and brutal to execute: beat Lyft. We launched on the exact same day, with basically the same product, and six months later we had 90% market share. I walk through exactly how that happened, the five-mile launch radius, the obsession with five-minute ETAs, the live recruiting with a backpack full of iPhones and cash incentives, and the sheer amount of experimentation inside a very tight discipline. I also get into launching Uber Eats in Miami from scratch in six weeks, saying no to an entire city team who wanted a flashy launch party, and instead building the actual marketplace first. Restaurants, eaters, couriers, in that order. This is what it looks like to own a market as if it's your own company before you actually know what you're doing, and to do it anyway. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro and episode setup 00:46 Uber at 24, goal to beat Lyft 01:27 Uber Eats Miami preview 02:01 90% market share explained 02:41 Early Uber culture, Wild West 03:36 Launch day vs Lyft in Raleigh 04:19 Five mile radius strategy 04:58 Six months later, 90% share 05:43 Focusing on one KPI 06:33 Experimentation within discipline 06:58 Incentive experiments explained 07:29 Managing events and driver supply 08:12 Pitching drivers on gig economy 09:07 Background checks and security 09:52 Signing up riders at UNC 10:54 Organic growth over paid ads 11:41 Who do you trust, then and now 12:41 Comparing to AI hype today 13:52 Communicating with skeptical users 14:30 Answering 500 driver emails weekly 15:52 Building a text expander system 16:28 Transition to launching Uber Eats 17:14 Getting picked for Uber Eats launch 18:09 Six week launch challenge in Miami 19:06 Three sided marketplace explained 19:36 Metrics needed to launch 20:07 Killing the launch party idea 21:05 Biggest Uber Eats launch to date 22:10 Becoming a leader under pressure 23:07 Jumping in wherever needed 24:03 Conflict on a commission team 25:04 Offered the Miami GM role 26:08 Reflecting on ownership mindset 27:23 Talking to restaurant partners 28:37 Explaining the restaurant pitch 29:10 Ghost kitchens and on demand lunch 31:02 Why the restaurant model failed 32:20 DoorDash winning on volume 33:12 Backpack full of iPhones story 34:49 Copying competitor features 35:23 Why Uber tracked Lyft so closely 36:26 Live dashboards and supply scores 37:39 Why lost riders rarely return 38:18 Lesson on owner over optimization 39:32 Door to door restaurant signups 40:04 Closing and part two preview

July 9, 2026Episode 12350 min

I Watched $47 Billion Disappear at WeWork. Here's the Leadership Lesson That Actually Changed Me with Robin Daniels

My guest this week, Robin Daniels has held executive roles at Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box, Matterport, and WeWork, and he's now Chief Business Officer at Zensai. He watched WeWork's valuation swing from $20 billion to $47 billion to nothing in the span of a single year, and what he took from that isn't a war story, it's a way of leading. We get into the delusion that fuels great founders, the fine line between visionary and reckless, and why people always buy with emotion and support with logic, no matter how "B2B" the sale looks. Robin shares the courage it took to buy a one-way ticket from Copenhagen to California at 21, why high performers fear not trying more than failing, and how he made the brutal transition from doer to leader by learning to trust his team and optimize for speed. We also talk honestly about imposter syndrome, self-promotion, and the question he asks people frozen by the fear of posting: can your ego handle a few people thinking you're wrong? His core argument is one I keep coming back to: you can't control outcomes, you can only control your inputs and your outputs, so reward how people show up, not just what they hit. Robin's book, The Human Success Playbook , is out now. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Meet Robin Daniels 01:18 The Uber and WeWork parallels 03:00 The founder's useful delusion 06:00 Buy with emotion, support with logic 08:30 Market B2B like B2C 10:50 A one-way ticket to California at 21 14:30 Fear of not trying vs fear of failing 17:40 From doer to leader 20:00 Why micromanagement kills teams 23:00 Optimize for speed and trust 25:30 The mistake that shaped his leadership 28:00 Imposter syndrome at every level 30:30 The voice that says you're a fraud 32:00 Getting started on LinkedIn 35:00 The 90-9-1 content model 38:00 Can your ego handle the judgment 39:30 Why worshipping outcomes backfires 43:00 Reward how people show up 47:40 The Human Success Playbook 49:50 Where to find Robin

July 2, 2026Episode 12216 min

AI and the Founder Opportunity (Pt 4 of 4): What AI Can't Copy

This is part four of my four-part series on AI and the founder opportunity, and it's the one that answers the question I get asked the most: once AI makes it easy for anyone to build a product or service, what's actually left to protect? I walk through why AI is a multiplier, not a moat. The technology gets you to market fast, but so does everyone else's. What separates one founder from the next isn't the product, it's trust, credibility, and the story only you can tell. I share the honest version of my own journey building Mylance since 2020, including the products I sold and the ones I shut down, and why I don't count any of it as failure. I also get into the real reason most people never do this: not laziness, but fear of judgment. And I close with the four things I'd focus on if I were starting over: know what you're passionate about, validate there's a business in it, get honest about what's holding you back, and pick a strategy and stick with it for years, not weeks. No books or resources referenced in this one, just the lessons from building and rebuilding Mylance since 2020. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.coConnect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/Timestamps 00:00 Welcome & what we're building 00:39 Recap: the AI series so far 02:20 AI is a multiplier, not a moat 03:15 Why customers choose you 03:46 Products I built and killed 06:41 Your story is the differentiator 08:28 Why founders hide instead of market 09:37 The real reason: fear, not laziness 10:58 Consistency over years, not weeks 13:01 Recap: short game vs long game 14:08 4 keys to set yourself up right 15:52 Wrap up

June 25, 2026Episode 12143 min

Dr. Ruth Gotian Studied Nobel Winners, Astronauts & Olympians — Here’s What She Found

I sat down with Dr. Ruth Gotian, a success researcher and executive coach who has spent her career studying the world's highest performers, Nobel laureates, NASA astronauts, and Olympic champions, to figure out what they actually do differently when the pressure is real. What surprised me most is how often these elite performers say "I don't know." They're not protecting their egos, they're staying curious and pulling knowledge from outside their lane. We dug into why imposter syndrome is actually a sign of your success, why high achievers fear not trying more than they fear failing, and why focusing on your next goal beats obsessing over the ultimate one. We also got into self-promotion, the thing so many founders avoid. Ruth's take reframed it for me: it's not about you, it's about the value and the people you put the spotlight on. And she shared a networking system, the 24/7/30 rule, that any founder can use right now. Resources mentioned: Ruth's book The Success Factor, her LinkedIn Learning courses, and the free Passion Audit at RuthGotian.com. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 What elite performers do differently 01:15 The subway that sparked the research 03:30 No one teaches you how to succeed 05:00 The surprising power of "I don't know" 07:00 Reading isn't it, open your mind 09:30 Get out of your lane to learn 11:30 Ego and saying "I don't know" 14:00 Your five people set your baseline 16:30 Think next goal, not ultimate goal 19:00 They're terrified too 20:30 Imposter syndrome is a strength 22:30 Failure is just data 25:00 Saying yes only to aligned goals 28:00 Giving value across seasons 30:30 Self-promotion is really value-giving 33:30 Becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice 36:00 Don't fear giving away your secrets 39:00 Breaking through the praise plateau 42:00 What got you here won't get you there 44:30 Using AI for real human connection 47:30 The 24/7/30 networking rule 50:00 Remember your why

June 18, 2026Episode 12013 min

AI and the Founder Opportunity (Pt 3 of 4): Finding Your Product-Market Fit

This is part three of my four-part series on how AI is reshaping the workforce, and it's the one I promised would be tactical. If you've listened to parts one and two, you know about the macro shift and the inner-game work, this episode is the playbook. I walk through the exact mistake most founders make: they get excited about an idea, build it, then go looking for customers, only to discover they built the wrong thing. I share the step-by-step process I used about a year ago to launch a brand-new product at Mylance, one that had paying customers before we'd even built it. You'll hear how I wrote out my hypotheses, ran real customer conversations instead of asking leading questions, built a no-code MVP I could ship in a day, and used the Sean Ellis score to know when I'd actually found product-market fit. I also talk about how tools like Claude Code, Lovable, and Base44 have made building fast, but figuring out what to build is still the hard part. Part four, on building trust and a sustainable customer experience, drops in two weeks. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro and what Mylance does 00:50 Recap of parts one and two 01:30 What this episode delivers 02:15 The mistake most founders make 03:00 Step 1: write your hypotheses 04:15 Bradley's own hypothesis example 05:30 Step 2: real customer conversations 07:00 Talk to real ideal customers 08:00 Step 3: brainstorm the MVP 08:45 Build fast with AI/no-code tools 10:00 Get customers onto the MVP 11:15 The Sean Ellis score and PMF 12:30 Why founders skip this step 13:15 Recap, Part 4 coming in 2 weeks