Startups Decoded

Andy Walsh sits down with Ella Molony Cook, exited founder turned investor and Founder of Time Rich, a community of ambitious women thriving in the new world of AI.
One exit. Seven figures raised. Three companies she still holds equity in. Multiple failures, which she talks about more freely than the wins. She dropped out of high school, built a retreat business in Australia before she knew the word startup, and sold to the buyer who could grow it rather than the one with the highest number.
Then came the raise she calls the most punishing experience of her life, and the realization that the company she was grinding toward was her business partner's dream. We cover capital, secondaries, the liquidity nobody plans for, and the thesis behind Time Rich Club: women should hold 20% of the capital table, not 2%.
Episode outline
Bali to an exit at 23 — a passion project turns into a business, then an acquisition on her terms.
The validation trap — accelerators, VC approval, and why permission drains founder energy.
What the raise cost — the punishing version of fundraising, and the case for family offices.
Liquidity nobody explains — secondaries, fake buyers, equity employees cannot move.
The mask — identity collapse after an exit, and building someone else's ambition.
Time Rich — health, community, AI, and the 20% thesis.
Presented by Deel If you're making your first or fiftieth hire — and doing it across borders — Deel is worth knowing. They're supporting Startups Decoded for good reason. LEARN MORE.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Andy Walsh 2x exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally). Andy helps founders sharpen judgment and integrate brand, product, and growth into a clear path to scale.
Ella Cook 4x companies founded, one bootstrapped exit, seven figures raised, and four years building across the US market. She founded Time Rich Club, a community for women. Her work sits at the systems layer: helping founders, family offices, and GPs run better pipelines, source smarter deal flow, and keep the human layer that makes private capital actually work.
Access All Areas.
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit "Neptuno" – Phondupe (Album: Onykia) https://phondupe.bandcamp.com/album/air-conditioning-vol-2
Disclaimer. The views and opinions shared on Startups Decoded are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment or legal advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making any financial or legal decisions.

Most founders obsess over the first million. The real fight starts after it.
Jordan DiPietro has scaled from every seat. Growth at The Motley Fool through several hundred million in revenue, The Hustle through its HubSpot acquisition, and Hampton from zero to $10M as CEO. Now he coaches founders and CEOs building from $5M to $50M.
Through his career he observed a genuine disconnect in how Founders hired good people. He just launched Hiring OS — the opinionated hiring system for growth-stage founders. The goal is to help founders go from open role to signed A-player in 6–8 weeks.
This conversation covers why companies stall in the messy middle, the hedging that ruins ICPs and job descriptions, and the two bottlenecks Jordan sees in every stuck company: the founder and the team. He shares his role design process, the 30-minute stack rank exercise that keeps A players loyal, and how to tie AI to real business outcomes instead of anxiety.
If you're past $1M and growth feels harder than it should, this one's your map.
Presented by Deel
If you're making your first or fiftieth hire — and doing it across borders — Deel is worth knowing. They're supporting Startups Decoded for good reason. LEARN MORE.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube

Andy Walsh
2x exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally). Andy helps founders sharpen judgment and integrate brand, product, and growth into a clear path to scale.
Jordan DiPietro
Former CEO of Hampton and former VP of HubSpot Media. Jordan has spent more than two decades building media, subscription, and community businesses, including leadership roles at The Motley Fool and The Hustle. Today he works with founders and CEOs scaling companies from $2M to $50M while sharing insights through his writing and coaching.
Access All Areas.
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)
https://phondupe.bandcamp.com/album/air-conditioning-vol-2

Disclaimer
The views and opinions shared on Startups Decoded are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment or legal advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making any financial or legal decisions.

Chris Lee joined Deel when it was doing $1M ARR. Today it's past $1B+.
He didn't just watch that happen, he made hiring, firing, and org design decisions that either cleared the path or slowed everything down. That's what this conversation is really about.
Most founders build their sales team reactively. They wait until it hurts, then hire fast and hope for the best. Chris runs a 600-person sales org with 65+ managers and 14 direct reports — and in 5.5 years, he hasn't had a single director leave regrettably. That number tells you everything about how he thinks about people.
Episode outline
The $1M ARR starting point: What the early Deel sales motion looked like.
Hiring philosophy at scale: Why great people hire great people.
Fire fast: The real cost of keeping the wrong person in place too long.
Scaling through thresholds: What breaks at $10M, $500M, and $1B ARR.
AI and the future sales org: How systems thinking is becoming the defining skill for sales leaders.
The Pitch: How 10 global startups won $1M in investment from Deel
The Ghostbuster role: The emerging function nobody has a title for yet, finding broken things and fixing them.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Presented by Deel: If you're at the stage of making your first or fiftieth hire — and doing it across borders — Deel is worth knowing about. They're supporting Startups Decoded for good reason. LEARN MORE.
Chris Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/techcontrarian/
Chris was one of Deel’s earliest sales hires. He helped build the revenue engine that took Deel to $1B+ ARR in under three years. Today he runs Sales for the Americas. He's seen every stage of that growth from the inside into the machine it became.
Andy Walsh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anwalsh/
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (750,000 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)
Disclaimer
The views and opinions shared on Startups Decoded are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment or legal advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making any financial or legal decisions.

Founders do not know how to convert their network.
Andy Walsh sits down with Kyle Kane, co-founder of onSpark AI, the world's first AI-powered partnership engine. Kyle Kane built $2B in partnership revenue for some of the biggest names in music and brands before realizing the same broken pattern kept killing deals: founders had the right relationships and no system to turn them into money.
Kyle breaks down what a partnership engine actually looks like, why most founders confuse networking with revenue strategy, and how OnSpark is using AI to fix the part of the funnel nobody wants to talk about. The conversation covers borrowed gravity, partnership autopsies, and the one mindset shift that separates founders who close from founders who collect contacts.
EPISODE OUTLINE
From Shakira tours to Samsung deals — Kyle's path from signed songwriter at seventeen to driving $2B in brand partnership revenue
Networking is not a growth strategy — why collecting handshakes produces nothing measurable
The two wounds that kill deals — lack of self-worth and lack of trust
Borrowed gravity — how founders without celebrity access can use the same logic
The Drake tour that almost ended him — eight million dollars, 26,000 pre-sold tickets, and a promoter who disappeared with the refund
Presented by Deel If you're making your first or fiftieth hire — and doing it across borders — Deel is worth knowing. They're supporting Startups Decoded this season for good reason. LEARN MORE.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Andy Walsh
2x exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (Top 2% globally). Andy helps founders sharpen judgment and integrate brand, product, and growth into a clear path to scale.
Kyle Kane
Co-founder of onSpark AI — the world's first AI-powered partnership engine, backed by Martell Ventures. Kyle has driven over $2B in partnership revenue for clients and brands, and now builds the tools that make that possible at scale. He works with founders, creators, agencies, and operators who want to stop chasing cold leads and start building partnerships that actually convert.
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.

Brad Bowery sat down with Andy Walsh to unpack what founders should be thinking about as they begin hiring, and why the global talent pool is more accessible than most realize.
Brad has built local teams as a founder and global teams as an operator at Zendesk and now Deel, where he leads Global VC and PE Partnerships.
In this episode we explore;
The real friction of global hiring: compliance, classification, and when contractor status blows up
PEO versus EOR, explained plainly
What a 10-person startup can learn from how the fastest-growing companies think about talent infrastructure
If your next hire could define the next 18 months, this one is worth your time.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Presented by Deel: If you’re making your first or fiftieth hire, and doing it across borders — Deel is worth knowing. They’re supporting Startups Decoded for good reason. LEARN MORE.
Subscribe now
Brad Bowery
Brad Bowery has spent his career at the intersection of startups and scale — founder, operator, and now head of Global VC and PE Partnerships at Deel. Before Deel, he scaled Zendesk’s startup program. Prior to that, he co-founded two renewable energy startups, SRECTrade (acquired by Xpansiv) and Pace Avenue, and later took on roles leading people operations at the drone startups Lily Robotics. Stanford MBA. Brown grad. Still holds the school pole vault record.
Andy Walsh
2× exited founder and host of Startups Decoded (500,000 downloads + Top 2% globally).
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. Find out more!

Access All Areas.
Listen: Apple || Spotify || YouTube
Subscribe: Substack
Connect: LinkedIn
Web: startupsdecoded.com
Socials: TikTok || Instagram || X
Music Credit
“Neptuno” – Phondupe (Album: Onykia)