Best Matt Slavin Podcasts (2025)

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Dr Matt Slavin | Reconnect: Why Nature Will Revive Your Mind 1:07:47

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14h ago1:07:47

1:07:47

Clinical psychologist Dr. Matt Slavin explores how evolutionary psychology shapes our modern minds. From fear and anxiety to collaboration, competition, and connection, he reveals how embracing change—and reconnecting with nature—can transform mental health. Packed with insights on compassion, curiosity, and play, this episode shows how stepping in…

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He left a $2B ARR company to build AI agents—then hit $1M ARR in < 6 months | Amit Shah, Founder of Instalily 40:37

3h ago40:37

40:37

Amit walked away from being President of 1-800-Flowers after scaling it from $500M to $2B because he saw smart people trapped in dumb systems. His insight: half of global GDP is 90% manual work—salespeople entering data instead of selling, technicians reading manuals instead of fixing. He started Instalily in Spring 2023 when everyone said AI agent…

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8-13: Bring on the Buckeyes (Oregon State recap, hoops in full swing, conference tournament szn) 1:39:02

2h ago1:39:02

1:39:02

Tulsa football has swept the OSUs thus far. Only one remains in D1 football: Ohio State. Bring on the Buckeyes. Ryan is back from pheasant hunting + a week long trip to Berlin, and we catch up on what was a big week in Tulsa sports. Football dominated Oregon State, men's hoops is 3-1 and just lost a road nail-biter to Kansas State, and women's hoop…

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He tested his idea in one weekend—then raised $120M. | Wayne Slavin, Founder of Sure 50:02

1h ago50:02

50:02

Wayne tested flight insurance over a single weekend with a WordPress site and Google ads. When people tried to pay, he showed a fake error message. The result: 15.9% conversion. That validation led to Sure, now powering insurance for Tesla, Toyota, and MasterCard. But the journey was brutal. Wayne worked solo for a year, burning through savings in …

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At 21 he made his 1st million. At 23, he grew his startup to $8M ARR in 6 months. | Matt Espinoza, Founder of Clover 51:57

1d ago51:57

51:57

Matt sold his first company at 19 and made $100K. He sold his second at 21 and made $800K. A couple years later, he launched Clover and grew it to $8M ARR in 6 months. His secret? Insane distribution. His formula is to ignore quality—and engineer quantity instead. While everyone obsesses over viral content, Matt posts 1,000 videos across 333 accoun…

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It’s OK to Wobble: The Moment I Finally Asked for Help | Jack Murphy 1:05:51

8d ago1:05:51

1:05:51

Mental health advocate Jack Murphy shares his journey from the automotive world to mental health, confronting addiction, stigma, and the myths around therapy. He introduces Wobble, a platform making mental health support more accessible, and urges men to prioritise emotional fitness before crisis strikes. A raw, powerful conversation about breaking…

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He walked away from $5M ARR—then built a $50M company. | Russ Fradin, Founder of Larridin 46:44

7h ago46:44

46:44

Russ has started and sold multiple companies over 30 years, but his Dynamic Signal journey will change how you think about product-market fit. They had $5M ARR selling influencer marketing software. Then Russ told investors to pretend the $5M didn't exist and bet on a $200K pipeline instead. That pivot led to 600 Fortune 2000 customers and an exit …

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8-12: The Final Stretch 39:49

15d ago39:49

39:49

There are only four games left in the football season and every game is a must win. Hosting solo this week Matt breaks down some of the stats behind the FAU matchup and why he thinks Tulsa can come out of the bye with a win. Additionally he looks at the basketball season opener and the other sports on campus.…

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He made 2 key changes —then grew to $100M ARR in 2 years & exited for $2B. | Harish Abbott, Founder of Deliverr & Augment 52:12

9h ago52:12

52:12

Harish spent 9 months building Deliver and could barely get 10 customers. The product worked. Merchants liked the fast delivery promise. But nobody was signing up. Then he made two changes—and scaled to $100M in revenue in 2 years. Shopify acquired them for over $2B. Harish says it wasn't about finding product-market fit. It was about finding produ…

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He built a $20B public company, left—then raised a $100M Series A. | Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix & DevRev 49:07

16d ago49:07

49:07

Dheeraj built Nutanix into a $20B public company—then walked away to start DevRev. He just raised a $100M Series A. This episode breaks down why most founders "sell and run" (chase new logos instead of delivering value), why that strategy fails, and how Dheeraj thinks about building platforms with use cases instead of just features. He explains why…

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He built a new database in his bedroom—now he powers Cursor, Notion and Anthropic. | Simon Eskildsen, Founder of turbopuffer 53:27

23d ago53:27

53:27

Simon spent 10 years at Shopify scaling databases to millions of requests per second. Then he discovered vector databases were so expensive that companies couldn't launch AI features. So he solved it. When Cursor emailed about their crushing costs, Simon flew to San Francisco unannounced. They migrated their entire workload within a week, cutting t…

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8-11: Baylor Manziel + J.J.'s No Sports Zone (ft. J.J. Cody-Fox) 2:30:30

8d ago2:30:30

2:30:30

Tulsa Football played its best game of the year on Homecoming, but came up just short against a very solid Temple team in dramatic overtime fashion. We talk about the choice to go for two, the play call, the Baylor Brody connection, the growth of the team, and plenty more. After that, since we've got another bye week coming up, friend of the sh…

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He burned $4M to hit $100K ARR—but with 1 big change, he grew to $4.5M ARR in just 12 months. | Guy Podjarny, Founder of Snyk & Tessl 50:43

26d ago50:43

50:43

Guy spent 2 years and $4M building Snyk to $100K ARR. Thousands of developers loved the product. They just wouldn't pay. Then he figured out the problem: he had product-user fit, but not product-buyer fit. Developers loved Snyk. Security teams (the actual buyers) didn't care about it. The distance between user and buyer was killing him. So Guy spen…

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5x founder asked Ford for a contract so large—they acquired his company instead. | Amar Varma, Founder of Mantle 42:18

14d ago42:18

42:18

Amar is a 5x founder who helped birth Tinder (it was the 10th project—after the first 9 failed), then sold his next company to Ford for putting a platform in every single vehicle they make. But the wildest part? He got Ford to commit in under a year by doing something most founders would never do: he asked for SO MUCH money that only the CEO could …

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8-10: The Five H's (Basketball Preview ft. Head Coach Eric Konkol) 2:15:28

16d ago2:15:28

2:15:28

Tulsa Head Men's Basketball Coach Eric Konkol joins the podcast to preview the 2025-26 basketball season! We break down the roster including all 12 new players, talk the schedule and why it is the way it is, ask what success means for this team, and get into some fun listener questions. Plus a lightning round! Always love having coach on the show a…

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He "kind of" had PMF for 8 years—until, after a rebuild, he raised $100M | Ben Alarie, Founder of Blue J 40:43

1M ago40:43

40:43

Ben Alarie spent 8 years building Blue J with "partial product market fit"—real customers, real revenue, but no real market pull. Then he made a bet that would either kill the company or 10x it: he put the existing product in maintenance mode and gave his team 6 months to rebuild everything from scratch using a technology that barely worked. Two ye…

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They failed every POC—then grew their cybersecurity platform to $100M ARR in 5 years. | Dean Sysman, co-founder of Axonius 48:37

1M ago48:37

48:37

Dean thought he'd have to bootstrap Axonius because no investor would fund a solution to a problem that had existed for 20 years. He was wrong—they've raised $500M. The breakthrough came when a Fortune 500 company was actively being hacked by Chinese state actors. Their first customer almost said no—they had 20 bugs during the POC. But Dean's team …

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8-9: Second Season (ECU Preview ft. The Boneyard Podcast) 1:25:13

1M ago1:25:13

1:25:13

Second verse, hopefully much better than the first. Tulsa just wrapped bye #1 on the year and, with that, is past all of the hardest teams on their schedule. ECU is no joke though, checking in at #68 in ESPN's SP+ rankings this week. To help us preview Thursday night's road game against the Pirates, we welcome in Jared Shafit from The Boneyard Podc…

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He tested his pitch on Uber drivers—then built a cybersecurity platform to $180M raised. | Casey Ellis, Founder of Bugcrowd 49:19

24d ago49:19

49:19

Casey turned hackers into a marketplace and built Bugcrowd to $180M+ raised. But the real story isn't about cybersecurity—it's about how he validated a two-sided marketplace with almost no product, refined his pitch by literally testing it on Uber drivers until it clicked, and cracked the code on category creation when everyone thought hackers were…

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He quit Google & his 1st startup failed—but his 2nd grows at $1M ARR every 10 days. | Zach Llyod, Founder of Warp.dev 49:14

1M ago49:14

49:14

Zach spent 8 years at Google leading engineering for Google Docs, then left to build a photo sharing app with zero go-to-market plan. Reality hit hard: "At Google, anything you launch gets millions of users. At a startup, the challenge isn't building—it's getting anyone to care." After writing a brutal postmortem documenting everything that went wr…

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8-8: Out of the Gauntlet (Memphis Recap) 1:06:43

1M ago1:06:43

1:06:43

First things first: We have a Patreon! It's by far the best way to support this podcast. Ryan just published a new post breaking down how things are going across all 7 active TU fall sports now that we're at the midpoint of the season for most of them. Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fall-sports-2025-140596354 On to football. Tulsa…

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Do You Get Air Hunger? What Anxiety Is Really Telling You | Howard Cooper 1:30:07

2M ago1:30:07

1:30:07

Consultant and Anxiety Specialist Howard Cooper went from severe anxiety sufferer to ex-anxiety expert. He challenges traditional therapy, explores how memory and storytelling shape our fears, and introduces ‘air hunger’ as a key factor in anxiety. Howard shows how breaking the illusion of anxiety, teaching resilience, and modelling healthy respons…

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He tried to return $200K to investors 30 days in—then exited to Microsoft 5 years later. | Alex Sherman, Founder of Bluefish AI 44:39

2M ago44:39

44:39

Alex had $2,000 in his checking account when Microsoft acquired his last company. For years, he paid himself $30K while his friends made six figures at corporate jobs. He had only 2 months of runway for 18 straight months. Then retail media exploded and everything changed—he went from grinding against the current to riding a wave. After selling to …

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A drug dealer threatened to kill him—then he grew 50x in 3 Years to $50M ARR. | Brett Carlson, Found of ServiceUp 33:28

2M ago33:28

33:28

Brett had a drug dealer's car for 13 days. By day 11, the death threats started coming. This is the reality of building ServiceUp, the "DoorDash for auto repair." Brett literally stole DoorDash's entire playbook—city launches, three-sided marketplace, everything—but discovered even if he got 90% right, 10% of B2C customers can end you. He raised fr…

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8-7: Back to Reality (Tulane Recap & Memphis Preview) 1:21:45

1M ago1:21:45

1:21:45

After the historic win over Oklahoma State, Tulsa came back down to earth with Saturday’s loss to Tulane in the Battle of the Color-Based Water Phenomena. We do our best to break down the game (having not been able to watch it in its entirety) and talk what’s next for the football team this season. After that, we talk about some breaking news in th…

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He pitched 100 VC and spent 3 years building— then grew to $7B AUM. | Doug Scott, Founder of Ethic 45:14

2M ago45:14

45:14

By Mistral.vc

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PMF Observations: Speed is the only startup moat—& why most founders lose it. 11:01

1M ago11:01

11:01

Arnold Schwarzenegger mastered three completely different fields—bodybuilding, acting, and politics—with one simple philosophy: reps, reps, reps. This solo episode reveals why speed of execution is the only real moat for early-stage founders. One founder takes an idea from conception to signed customers in three weeks. Another takes six months. The…

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8-6: Party Like It's ‘51 (OSU Recap ft. Phillip Slavin & Tulane Preview ft. Jack Chasanoff) 2:22:36

2M ago2:22:36

2:22:36

For the first time since November 3, 1951, Tulsa went into Stillwater and came away with a road win against Oklahoma State. That's the kind of program-changing, culture-building win head coach Tre Lamb has been looking for in his first season. "New Tulsa" might be just be here after all. For the first time ever on the show, we bring in a guest to h…

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He spent 5 months working with customers before building—then grew to $10s of millions ARR. | Aviv Leibovici, co-founder of Buildots 48:10

2M ago48:10

48:10

Aviv spent months walking construction sites carrying tools for managers just to understand their problems—speaking to customers is "bullsh*t"—you need to work beside them to see reality. His company Buildots had a working AI product that tracked construction progress perfectly, but 90% of users got zero value from it. Until he made one key change …

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She cold messaged 50,000 engineers—then grew to $10M+ ARR. | Shensi Ding, Founder of Merge 40:16

2M ago40:16

40:16

Shensi cold messaged 50,000 engineers to build Merge. She worked 9am-9pm every day, gave her first customers two months free to prove herself, and refused to hire anyone remote—even during peak COVID. She purposefully didn't collect a single dollar of revenue until she knew she could hit $1M in a months. "Startups are all about momentum." She lost …

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8-5: Deep Shot Syndrome (Navy Recap & OSU Preview ft. Calvin Alexander) 2:00:34

2M ago2:00:34

2:00:34

Tulsa forced 3 turnovers in Navy's first 3 possessions to go up 14-0, but TU couldn't keep up the momentum and the Navy train rolled right over us for the rest of the game. We discuss the awesome start from the defense, Baylor Hayes, the lack of a deep ball so far, and more before awarding our players of the game and taking a look around what conti…

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He bet his house on a startup—took 7 years to $1M, then hockey stick to $100M+ ARR. | Eldon Sprickerhoff, Co-Founder of eSentire 40:58

2M ago40:58

40:58

Eldon put a $150K line of credit on his house to start eSentire in 2001. No VCs would touch him—they didn't understand services businesses. He worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week for 7 years to hit $1M in revenue. His co-founder coded while he flew to New York on $99 JetBlue flights from Buffalo to save money. Then something clicked: they brought in…

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8-4: The First Loss (NMSU Recap & Navy Preview ft. Mike James) 2:06:09

2M ago2:06:09

2:06:09

Tulsa Football followed a hot game 1 against Abilene Christian with a disappointing road performance at New Mexico State. However, as we discuss, you can definitely still find plenty of reasons for optimism going forward. Can the team get their swagger back in their American Conference opener at home vs Navy this Saturday? We will see. To learn mor…

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He quit his job, went all-in on AI agents—then grew to 100K users & a $30M Series A in a year. | Soham Ganatra, Founder of Composio 58:20

2M ago58:20

58:20

Soham spent 6 months building AI that would auto-generate integrations between any software. He locked down Glean as an early customer because he had friends there. And it failed completely. So he pivoted. This time, he refused to work with friendly customers who knew him. Instead, he did 10-20 calls per day with strangers who would tell him his pr…

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TechCrunch called this YC founder a fraud at 18—then he built a $10M ARR fintech. | Sahil Phadnis, Founder of Affiniti 59:59

2M ago59:59

59:59

Sahil was 18 when TechCrunch published a hit piece calling him a copycat. His co-founder Aaron was 16. They'd just raised $6 million from YC and top VCs for their crypto startup, then got subpoenaed by a state government and watched their business implode. So they fired everyone, moved back to their parents' homes, and spent months cold-calling den…

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Paul Graham Said His Startup Was Worthless—2 Months Later He Hit $1M ARR. | Jon Noronha, Co-Founder of Gamma 1:00:08

3M ago1:00:08

1:00:08

Jon spent 3 years building Gamma with barely any traction—just a few hundred users after burning millions. Then ChatGPT dropped. In desperation, he pivoted to AI-powered presentations in March 2023 with one year of runway left. What happened next was insane: Paul Graham publicly mocked their launch tweet calling it worthless—then it went viral. The…

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8-3: A5 Wagyu (ACU Recap & New Mexico State Preview ft. Nick Coppola) 1:52:19

3M ago1:52:19

1:52:19

The Tre Lamb era kicked off at home with a resounding 35-7 victory over the #16 FCS team in the country in Abilene Christian. Can TU keep the momentum going and go get a road win at New Mexico State? To help us preview the Aggies, we welcome in Nick Coppola from the Las Cruces Sun-News. In this one, we: * Recap the Abilene Christian win, especially…

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He quit Google, launched Rubrik—then grew to $1B ARR & a $16B market cap. | Soham Mazumdar, Co-Founder Rubrik & Wisdom AI 53:55

3M ago53:55

53:55

Soham co-founded Rubrik by taking what he learned from building Google's data center tech to enterprises desperate for cloud migration. Two quarters later, he hit $1M ARR. And a few years later, a $16B IPO. Soham breaks down why paid pilots beat free trials, how to sell enterprise hardware before it works, and why early customers become your bigges…

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Your Lovely Questions, Our Unfiltered Answers: Part Two 57:48

3M ago57:48

57:48

We tackle your questions and dive into fascinating tangents, exploring emotional resilience, personal growth, and modern masculinity. From insecurities and humour to friendship, gratitude, survival skills, and the realities of monogamy today, this episode is a candid, wide-ranging conversation on self-discovery, connection, and life’s unexpected le…

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He Bootstrapped to $55M in Revenue—without ever having to hit 100% YoY growth. | Stéphan Donzé, Founder of AODocs 43:23

3M ago43:23

43:23

Stéphan bootstrapped AODocs to $55M in revenue and 250 employees without taking a dime of VC money—while competing directly with venture-backed competitors. Starting as a services company in 2012, he spotted the cloud migration wave early and built document management for enterprises moving to Google Workspace. In this episode, Stéphan breaks down …

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8-2: Tre Lamb Era Begins! Abilene Christian Preview (ft. Zach McKinnell) 1:31:53

3M ago1:31:53

1:31:53

Football is so close to being back, just days away at this point! And we are so pumped to see the first game with Tre Lamb at the helm. To help us break down FCS #16 Abilene Christian we are joined by Zach McKinnell from FCS Football Central on Sports Illustrated, Hero Sports FCS and Opta Analyst FCS (and plenty more). While we did talk about the m…

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He Bootstrapped Wrike to $10M ARR—then exited for $2.2B. | Andrew Filev, Founder of Wrike & Zencoder 1:08:13

3M ago1:08:13

1:08:13

Andrew bootstrapped Wrike and grew it from 0 to a $2.2B exit by doing the exact opposite of what every startup book tells you. No pivots. No talking to customers before launch. No narrow niche. Just 17 years of relentless focus on one problem while everyone else was pivoting every 18 months. In this episode, he breaks down exactly why bootstrapping…

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Q2 2025: The new Series A Bar is $3M ARR—& only 20% of seed startups make it. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta 57:09

3M ago57:09

57:09

Peter Walker from Carta drops the hard data every founder needs. Based on actual cap table data from 1000s of startups, this Q2 update reveals the brutal new reality. It takes 2+ years to go from seed to A (up from 1.6), you need 3X the revenue you used to, and if you're not AI, you're getting half the attention. But there's good news too—teams are…

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8-1: Tulsa Football Mega Preview 2025 (ft. Jeremie Poplin) 2:40:17

3M ago2:40:17

2:40:17

The Hurricast returns! To kick off our 8th season and to preview the 2025 Tulsa Football team, we welcome Jeremie Poplin back to the show! Jeremie is the new Statewide Sports Director for News on 6 in Tulsa/News 9 in OKC in addition to being a sideline reporter for TU football, frequently appearing on the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast, and more. Wit…

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His Video AI app hit $10M+ ARR in Months—with 0 outbound sales. | Michael Lingelbach, Founder of Hedra 1:05:53

3M ago1:05:53

1:05:53

Hedra CEO Michael Lingelbach breaks down how his generative video app went from zero to millions of users and an eight-figure run rate in months — then deliberately slowed down to rebuild a V2 that enterprises would pay for. We dig into the prosumer-to-pro upsell, why free users are a false signal, and how a creator-seeded launch can outpull ad spe…

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He grew to millions in ARR in 18 months—by fighting with his co-founders on purpose. | Ross McNairn, Co-Founder of Wordsmith AI. 49:57

3M ago49:57

49:57

Ross went from lawyer to self-taught engineer to CTO at a 1,600-person unicorn—then quit to build Wordsmith AI. In 18 months, he's raised $30M and grown to mid-single-digit millions in ARR by doing everything differently. He tested co-founders by starting fights. Built in Slack for 10 months before adding a web interface. Kept his team at 8 people …

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Why Anxiety Isn't The Enemy | Tim Box 1:28:50

3M ago1:28:50

1:28:50

TEDx speaker Tim Box, whose talk has 3.4M views, flips the script on anxiety, revealing it as a natural human emotion, not a disorder. He breaks down the misconceptions, explains the physical sensations we all feel, and shares powerful strategies to manage panic attacks. With personal stories and expert insights, Tim shows how acceptance, self-awar…

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He thought his startup would fail—then grew to $100M ARR. | Rick Song, Co-founder of Persona 59:57

3M ago59:57

59:57

Rick built Persona into a $100M+ ARR unicorn, but he never thought it would work. In fact, Rick started Persona believing it would probably fail, and that mindset might be exactly why it succeeded. In this episode, Rick reveals how a casual project with zero expectations turned into a billion-dollar business, why early-stage startups should avoid h…

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FAN TAKEOVER: Chris Rathbone (@ReignCaneTulsa) Talks TU Fandom, Why Tulsa Belongs at the Top, Tre Lamb, the 2025 Football Season, and More 37:53

4M ago37:53

37:53

The Hurricast is back! Kind of! We're getting back into the swing of things by letting fans host an episode or two of the show before Matt and I get back to our regular weekly cadence here in a couple of weeks. We begin with Chris Rathbone (a.k.a @ReignCaneTulsa), who starts off with his TU fandom origin story before getting into why Tulsa belongs …

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Forget PMF—Neil Patel says to give your product away for free instead. | Neil Patel, Co-Founder of Neil Patel Digital 31:01

4M ago31:01

31:01

Neil Patel just flipped everything you know about startups upside down. He says product-market fit is overrated, giving away your software for free can make you rich, and the real secret to scaling isn’t charging customers—it’s monetizing the leads your free product generates. Neil breaks down his playbook on how startups can leverage free products…