What does a career built across early internet startups, agency exits, consulting, product leadership, and scaling companies like Acquia, NGINX, Cockroach Labs, SingleStore, Mesosphere, and Tabnine actually look like?

Peter Guagenti — entrepreneur, executive, advisor joins Yannick Kpodar for a conversation on how he’s repeatedly found product-market opportunities, built customer love, and helped companies grow from early revenue to scale.

Peter recently joined Full Stack CEO™ and brings deep experience across strategy, product, marketing, sales, and ops, with five successful exits and early conviction in AI dating back to 2017.

Main Topics:

• Why Peter says his career was never a straight line, and why the journey mattered as much as the outcomes
• The five-exit perspective: what he looks for in companies
• Spotting trends early, from the rise of the internet to open source, cloud, and AI
• Why the first real job of a business is creating and keeping customer relationships
• How two acquisitions came from customer traction and word of mouth, not a classic M&A process
• Why product-market fit is the real unlock, and why revenue is still a struggle until you find it
• How Acquia scaled from about $3M to over $100M, and why product + sales alignment made the difference
• What founders at the seed to Series A stage get wrong when they hire sales leaders too early
• Why Peter joined Full Stack CEO™

Timestamps:

• 00:00 — Introduction: Peter’s background and why his LinkedIn looks like a straight line
• 03:03 — Five exits, many lessons: how he thinks about selecting opportunities
• 04:28 — Early conviction in open source, cloud, and AI
• 06:51 — The first startups and acquisitions: what actually drove those outcomes
• 08:53 — The purpose of a business: create and keep customer relationships
• 09:53 — How customer traction led to acquisition conversations
• 11:23 — How he got to $6M in year one in an earlier startup
• 13:02 — The importance of using your network to drive early deals
• 15:17 — Why product-market fit is the real revenue unlock
• 16:29 — Joining Accenture and building new muscles
• 19:06 — Scaling Acquia from ~$3M to $100M in four years
• 20:20 — What changes when a company moves from founder-led sales to real scale
• 22:03 — The mistake of hiring closers who can’t build a machine
• 25:21 — Why Peter joined Full Stack CEO™

Resources & Links:

• Peter Guagenti on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterguagenti

  Full Stack CEO™:

• Membership: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/ceo-operating-room
• Pre-Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/pre-seed-track
• Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/seed-track
• Series A: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/series-a-track
• Free Live Training Sessions: https://luma.com/fullstackceo

What does it actually look like to build a company from zero to 300 employees, get acquired, start over, hit $1M ARR in under a year, and then spend the next decade helping other founders avoid the mistakes you made?

Bill Kahlert — 3x founder, 3x exited, advisor to 24+ B2B SaaS and AI companies through Techstars and Alchemist — joins Yannick Kpodar to share the reality behind the scenes.

Bill recently joined Full Stack CEO™ as an Operator Partner to support B2B SaaS & AI CEOs as they scale from pre-seed to Series B. Learn more at www.full-stack-ceo.com.

Main Topics:

• The real story of the Aalayance acquisition: failed first attempt, stock options wiped out by the dot-com crash, and the lockup nobody told him about
• Why acquisition term sheets always look better on paper, and the earnout trap that leaves founders getting paid nothing
• How Bill went from zero to $1M ARR in under a year at Leadfwd.ai
• The GTM playbook that drove a 70%+ close rate
• The #1 mistake Bill sees across every founder he advises
• What makes Full Stack CEO™ different from the accelerators

Timestamps:

• 00:00 — Introduction of Bill´s career
• 03:02 — From Xerox to Claude Code: watching the internet rise and AI arrive in real time
• 04:04 — The Aalayance acquisition: zero to 300 employees, acquired by HCL
• 05:51 — The dark side of earnouts: how acquirers set KPIs they know you can't hit
• 07:47 — What Bill would tell every founder before signing an acquisition term sheet
• 08:27 — Leadfwd.ai: from zero to $1M ARR in under a year
• 11:36 — The pivot: from inbound to outbound
• 13:23 — The upsell that became the primary sale and how to recognize when to flip your GTM story
• 16:20 — How they hit a 70%+ close rate
• 17:22 — What Bill sees advising across Techstars, Alchemist, and his portfolio
• 18:09 — The Claude Code illusion: why "just go vibe code it" is disingenuous advice
• 21:41 — Why even founders with $500K in pre-seed still can't define their ICP
• 23:40 — Why Bill joined Full Stack CEO™

Resources & Links:

• Bill Kahlert on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/billkahlert

Full Stack CEO™:

• Membership: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/ceo-operating-room
• Pre-Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/pre-seed-track
• Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/seed-track
• Series A: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/series-a-track
• 12-Week Labs: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/labs
• Free Live Training Sessions: https://luma.com/fullstackceo

What does a career built on multiple exits, a 12-year CEO run scaling Aktana to 400+ employees across 50 countries, and the technology that became the foundation of AWS Redshift actually look like from the inside?

David Ehrlich — serial CEO, board member, Stanford & HBS alum — joins Yannick Kpodar for a raw, unfiltered conversation on what it truly takes to build and lead a company from zero to scale in the age of AI.

David recently joined Full Stack CEO™ as an Operator Partner to support B2B SaaS & AI CEOs as they scale from pre-seed to Series B. Learn more at www.full-stack-ceo.com.

Main Topics:

• Why building a company is one of the hardest things a human being can do
• The single most important demarcation line every CEO must understand: pre vs. post PMF
• The Aktana near-death story: no money, no customers, no product — and the pivot that changed everything
• Burn rate discipline: why David coaches founders to resist raising capital for as long as possible
• Key metrics by stage — what to watch pre-PMF vs. post-PMF, and why LTV matters more than CAC early on
• Building in the age of AI: the massive opportunity and the moat problem every AI founder must solve

Timestamps:

• 00:00 — Introduction: does David's career look as good on the inside as it does on paper?
• 02:43 — The brutal reality of starting from nothing
• 04:50 — Advice for CEOs at every stage: pre-seed, seed, and Series A
• 06:23 — The one demarcation line that matters: pre vs. post PMF
• 07:06 — How David knew Aktana hit PMF in early 2015
• 09:32 — Burn rate deep dive: runway, capital discipline, and the trap of raising too early
• 11:19 — What every Series A investor is actually looking for when they review your cap table
• 12:28 — Metrics by stage: what to look at pre vs. post-PMF
• 16:07 — The pivot that saved Aktana
• 16:33 — Building in the age of AI: what's different in 2026
• 19:11 — Why David joined Full Stack CEO™
• 19:44 — CEO longevity: the non-negotiables for staying in the game

Resources & Links:

• David Ehrlich on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjehrlich

Full Stack CEO™:

• Membership: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/ceo-operating-room
• Pre-Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/pre-seed-track
• Seed: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/seed-track
• Series A: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/series-a-track
• Series B: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/series-b-track
• 12-Week Labs: https://www.full-stack-ceo.com/labs
• Free Live Training Sessions: https://luma.com/fullstackceo