Startups Decoded

Most founders think branding is about what they look like. Jill Smith says it’s about how you behave, and most brands have no idea who they actually are.
Fix that first. Everything else follows!
Andy Walsh sat down with Jill Smith, CEO of Iris, one of the US’s most respected integrated brand and demand agencies, to unpack what actually makes a brand stick.
This isn’t a conversation about logos or color palettes. It’s about identity, community, and why the brands that win long-term are the ones that behave like people, including owning their mistakes.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe now
Jill Smith
Jill’s spent her career in two worlds that most people keep separate: the art world and advertising. That unusual path gave her something most agency CEOs don’t have, a real eye for what’s culturally real versus what’s just noise.
Her take: the brands that last are the ones that know exactly who they are, and behave accordingly, consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Insight
This episode sits at the intersection of brand clarity and founder identity, which is exactly where most early-stage founders get stuck. Jill’s framework isn’t theoretical. It’s operational. Know who you are. Know your community. Behave like a person. Own your mistakes before the internet does it for you.
What We Cover:
Why “being different” is a dead end — and what being unique actually means
How to find your high-value audience using data, AI, and synthetic personas
The power of micro-communities over mass marketing
What Liquid Death, Elf Beauty, and California Pizza Kitchen get right about brand behavior
How to turn a brand mistake into a 25% sales increase (the mac and cheese story)
The case for long-form content and experience spend in a world drowning in noise
Who Should Listen:
First-time founders trying to find their brand footing
Operators building community around an early product
Founders who’ve been told to “build a brand” but have no idea where to start
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (500,000 downloads + Top 2% globally).
Access All Areas.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
The Studio
​Filmed on location at 28th&Park. A content & production studio for New York’s visionary Builders, Investors, Artists, Musicians, & Creators to amplify their voice & share bold stories. Use the code “Decoded” for 25% off your first booking.

Most founders try to build a company.
Sophie de Haën built one by accident.
And she did it while she was still in college.
Andy Walsh sat down with Sophie de Haën, founder of SDH Paints, to unpack one of the most unconventional founder journeys we’ve seen on Startups Decoded.
Sophie didn’t start with a startup idea, a pitch deck, or a plan to raise money. She started painting during COVID and sharing her work online. What began as a creative outlet quickly attracted attention. As her audience grew, people started asking to buy the art.
That simple feedback loop turned into SDH Paints — a fast-growing art-led brand with nearly 300,000 followers and six-figure annual revenue, all built while Sophie was still a college student.
But the real story isn’t just how the company started.
It’s how she chose to grow it.
Instead of chasing scale and momentum, Sophie made the unusual decision to slow the business down during her final year of college. After years of constant output, she stepped back to reconnect with her creativity and figure out what she actually wanted the next chapter to look like.
In this conversation, Andy and Sophie explore a different path into entrepreneurship, one where audience comes before product, community becomes the feedback loop, and the founder is evolving just as fast as the business.
This episode offers a glimpse into how the next generation of founders are emerging, often without meaning to.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe now
What We Cover
Building an audience before building a product
Turning creativity into a business organically
The creator-to-founder pathway
Social media as a real-time product feedback loop
The tension between art, commerce, and identity
Why Sophie paused growth while the brand was working
How authenticity builds stronger communities than strategy
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anwalsh/
Access All Areas.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe: Substack
Community & Events: Founders Circle
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
The Studio https://28thandpark.podyx.com/
​Filmed on location at 28th&Park. A content & production studio for New York’s visionary Builders, Investors, Artists, Musicians, & Creators to amplify their voice & share bold stories. Use the code “Decoded” for 25% off your first booking.

Alicia Teltz didn’t reinvent her life overnight. She made one decision.
That step led to losing 84 pounds, leaving a 10-year relationship, walking away from a high-paying corporate career, and starting over. In this episode we unpack what really blocks people from change. Confidence rarely shows up first. Momentum follows action.
Alicia shares the reality behind rebuilding your life, the mindset shift that comes with taking control, and why visibility on LinkedIn is less about tactics and more about showing up before you feel ready.
This conversation isn’t about reinvention as a buzzword. It’s about the moment you stop waiting.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Chapters
00:00 The decision that changed Alicia’s life
02:30 Leaving a “perfect” life behind
06:15 Losing 84 pounds and rebuilding confidence
10:00 Why bold decisions rarely start with confidence
15:30 Walking away from corporate security
19:45 Finding your voice online
24:30 What people misunderstand about LinkedIn
30:10 Authentic storytelling vs performative posting
36:45 Showing up before you feel ready
41:20 Helping founders build visibility online
Who Should Listen
Founders at a crossroads
Operators questioning their path
Leaders navigating identity and visibility
Anyone who knows something needs to change
Alicia Teltz
A LinkedIn personal branding and social selling expert and Chairwoman of The Hype Department. After 15 years in B2B tech sales at companies including SAP, Mastercard, Gartner, and LinkedIn, she left corporate to build her own business helping founders and executives grow influence through authentic online storytelling.
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally).
Access All Areas.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
The Studio
​Filmed on location at 28th&Park. A content & production studio for New York’s visionary Builders, Investors, Artists, Musicians, & Creators to amplify their voice & share bold stories. Use the code “Decoded” for 25% off your first booking.

AI has already changed how we create, search, and automate. The next step is prediction.
In this episode, Vanja Josifovski joins Andy Walsh to explore how enterprises can use their own private data to forecast future outcomes, automate decisions, and move from analysis to action. As CEO and Co-Founder of Kumo, Vanja is building predictive intelligence systems that sit on top of enterprise data and help companies improve revenue, reduce fraud, and make faster, better decisions.
This conversation explores how predictive AI is evolving, why trust remains the biggest barrier to adoption, and what happens when machines become better than humans at making mid-level operational decisions. We also get into the role of explainability, the future of work, and how AI will increasingly become natural language, instantaneous, and predictive.
Listen:
Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe now
In This Episode
• Why predictive intelligence is the next phase of AI
• How Kumo uses enterprise data to forecast future outcomes
• Where trust breaks down in AI adoption
• Why most business decisions will eventually be automated
• How explainability and human oversight shape adoption
Chapters
00:00 The Future of AI and Predictive Intelligence
04:12 Vanja’s Journey in Tech and AI Evolution
09:06 Trust and Acceptance in AI Technology
12:41 The Role of Predictive Intelligence in Business
18:10 Kumo’s Predictive Intelligence Model
24:37 Feedback Loops and Continuous Improvement
30:37 The Future of Decision-Making with AI
35:10 The Impact of AI on Human Behavior and Society
Vanja Josifovski
CEO and Co-Founder of Kumo, a predictive AI platform that brings transformer and foundation model technology to enterprise tabular and relational data. Before Kumo, Vanja held senior leadership roles across major technology companies including Google, Yahoo, Airbnb, and Pinterest, with a long career focused on helping organizations use data to better serve customers, improve decisions, and scale intelligently.
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally).
Access All Areas.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
The Studio
​Filmed on location at 28th&Park. A content & production studio for New York’s visionary Builders, Investors, Artists, Musicians, & Creators to amplify their voice & share bold stories. Use the code “Decoded” for 25% off your first booking.

Power in startups is rarely where founders think it is.
Itamar Novick, Founder and GP at Recursive Ventures, has worked both sides of the table as a founder, operator, angel, and VC. He’s backed 150+ early-stage companies and helped founders raise over $500M, while also building companies like Life360 and Gigya from the inside.
In this conversation, we unpack the real power dynamics between founders and investors. We get into when founders should start thinking about leverage, how power gets handed over long before a board seat shows up, and why fundraising should be run like a focused sales process, not a random hunt for capital.
Itamar also breaks down where founders get contracts and cap tables wrong, why some businesses should never raise venture, and how seed-strapping is changing the path for early-stage companies.
This episode is for founders who want to raise smart, keep control, and understand the rules before they get expensive.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Chapters
00:00 Navigating the VC-founder power dynamic
05:12 Lessons from early fundraising
09:45 Iteration and learning
15:04 Advisors and decision-making
20:14 Understanding power before fundraising
25:13 Setting the right foundations
28:31 Taking control of fundraising
35:30 Contracts, cap tables, and control
41:40 Venture fit and seed-strapping
47:44 What makes founders stand out
Itamar Novick
Itamar Novick is the Founder and General Partner at Recursive Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC fund investing in US pre-seed and seed startups. Since 2010, he has invested in more than 150 early-stage companies and was named a Business Insider Top 100 Global Seed Investor from 2021 to 2025.
Before VC, Itamar was a repeat entrepreneur and startup executive, including roles at Life360 and Gigya. His investment approach is shaped by operator experience and a clear belief that founders should be empowered to build and lead for the long term.
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally)
Access All Areas.
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
The Studio
​Filmed on location at 28th&Park. A content & production studio for New York’s visionary Builders, Investors, Artists, Musicians, & Creators to amplify their voice & share bold stories. Use the code “Decoded” for 25% off your first booking.