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The Founders Sandbox

The Founders Sandbox

By: Brenda McCabe
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The Founder's Sandbox is going to be an exciting new podcast produced and sponsored by Next Act Advisors. Our host and founder of NAA, Brenda McCabe, will be interviewing players in the ecosystem of startups. Discussion centers on the nuts and bolts of resilient companies, shared experiences creating (and keeping) revenue, while making companies playful AND well governed! We will tackle common issues faced by the founders of startups, and talk about how to create a fun environment where, under great corporate governance, founders can sit back and watch their employees build and play.2025 Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Season 4, #7 - Abundance in the Startup Ecosystem

    Season 4, #7 - Abundance in the Startup Ecosystem
    Jun 30 2026
    Episode Summary: Abundance in the Startup Ecosystem with Naseem Sayani In this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe sits down with investor, ecosystem builder, and female founder advocate Naseem Sayani to explore how capital, community, and visibility can create a more abundant and equitable startup ecosystem. Naseem shares her journey from management consulting and digital innovation to venture investing, where she became increasingly aware of the disparities women founders face when raising capital. After leaving a successful consulting partnership, she dedicated her career to supporting female entrepreneurs, investing in overlooked founders, and helping reshape how venture capital recognizes opportunity. The conversation dives into practical fundraising advice for women founders, including why founders should "lead with the money, not the empathy," how gender bias shows up in investor questioning, and how pitch decks can be strategically designed to guide investor conversations. Naseem also discusses the research-backed differences between the questions male and female founders receive during fundraising and offers actionable strategies for reframing those interactions. Brenda and Naseem explore several of Naseem's current initiatives, including her podcast The Capital Flex, which amplifies real fundraising stories from women founders, and the newly launched SoCal Women's Health Collective, a community focused on advancing innovation and collaboration in women's health. The discussion also examines the future of healthcare investing, where Naseem advocates for shifting the conversation from "women's health" to precision health—a broader framework that highlights the enormous market opportunities in personalized care, diagnostics, and health solutions that have historically been overlooked. Naseem emphasizes the power of abundance over scarcity, encouraging women to share networks, knowledge, and opportunities rather than competing for limited seats at the table. She argues that true progress will come when more capital flows from traditional funding sources into diverse founder communities, creating better outcomes for investors, founders, and society alike. Captions: 00:09 All right, welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host, now in this fourth season of the Founder's Sandbox. And my mission is quite simple. With the Founder's Sandbox, I have guests that are business owners, service providers, VCs, and corporate directors. 00:36 who like me want to use the power of the enterprise to make change for a better world. And with stories in the sandbox on resilience, scalability, and purpose-driven experiences of my guest, um we have an origin story and we get to really understand what's under the hood of the businesses that my guest, um our owners have. So I'm absolutely delighted to have Naseem Sayani as my guest this month. Welcome, Naseem. 01:06 Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. So Naseem and I go back um many, many years. She touches, um checks many, many boxes. Our first encounter was while I was m leading a women's corporate, a women's investment fund. So we invested in women owned companies with a minimum 33 % equity holding of uh the woman uh founder or m C-suite. 01:34 member and Nassim at that time was within Emily Ventures. She's since moved on to other firms and we've we're she's my first port of call when there is a very talented woman founder, particularly in the life science or digital health area. So I was absolutely delighted when the same also launched her own podcast podcast. So we'll get into that in a minute. So let me just make a uh bit more proper. uh 02:04 Introduction to you, Naseem. You're an investor, ecosystem builder, and speaker, as you guys are going to see here. Currently, the operating umbrella for all of the different ventures um that Naseem is orchestrating is Game Changers, World Changers. I love the title of your umbrella. You lead, and I've seen it in real life, commitment to empowering female founders. um 02:34 Her network across the United States and elsewhere is uh has no paragon. She is amazing. She's largely focused in health tech and fintech. And there's something that you've been doing recently, which is really giving a voice to women founders and what's it like raising capital. So with that, we're going to jump into uh our podcast today, abundance in the startup ecosystem. how, why are you doing what you do today? 03:04 Tell us about your origin story. Oh goodness. Yeah. No, back in time, back in time. Back in time. You were a consultant. all. I was. Yeah, we all grew up somewhere. So I like, I like to say I'm a recovering consultant. So I spent many, many, many years in core management consulting. So really problem solving. 03:27 at various strategic levels with Fortune 100s. I was working across healthcare, financial services, consumer, little bits of energy and ...
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    44 mins
  • Season 4, #6- Resilience & Purpose: A Little more Social

    Season 4, #6- Resilience & Purpose: A Little more Social
    May 26 2026
    In this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, host Brenda McCabe sits down with behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to explore the surprising power of human connection. Drawing on decades of research and his new book A Little More Social, Epley reveals why we consistently underestimate how positive social interactions can be—and how small choices, like expressing gratitude or starting a conversation, can significantly improve our well-being, relationships, and workplace culture. Together, they discuss the science behind social connection, the hidden barriers that hold us back, and practical ways leaders and professionals can build more resilient, purpose-driven organizations through simple, intentional human interactions. You can find out more about Nicholas and his book at: about Nicholas Epley Accolades Nicholas Epley Book him for for speaking events at: https://www.wsb.com/speakers/nicholas-epley/ or pre order his new Book out May 19, 2026: A Little More Social Here: Amazon, Bookshop) You can also find his book Mindwise here: Amazon, Bookshop transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. Now in the fourth season, my mission with this podcast is really to bring in company owners, founders, 00:31 professionals, board directors that like me share a common mission, which is making change in the world through enterprises, small, medium or large. em And each of my guests um have em in their own ways built resilient, scalable, well-governed businesses um to really make that change. And I'm absolutely delighted to have Professor Epley, Nicholas Epley, 01:01 from the University of Chicago as my guest for this month. um Welcome to the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you, Brenda. This is a delight for me to have a former student back with me in conversation. I love it. It's amazing. I've been pursuing you for at least two years, and I kept getting delayed because of his writing a book. And today we're going to talk about um his new book that will be launching on May 19th, A Little More Social. 01:31 So before we get into the material, I need to make a proper introduction as I do to all my guests, all right? So um Nicholas Eppoli, he is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Faculty Director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is an author. We'll get into some of his work today. And he has many other accolades. 01:59 that are just too many to go through here because we'll eat into valuable time. And he has back to back podcast to announce his new book. I do want to call out one accolade. You were named by Ethicast, I guess, a business leader in ethics back in 2018. And business ethics, as we all know, corporate governance is very near and dear to my heart. So those accolades will be in the show notes. 02:29 em Dr. Epley, or Professor Epley as I'll call you, right? You study social cognition, how thinking people think about other thinking people to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. He teaches an ethics and happiness course to MBA students called Designing a Good Life. I was a... 02:56 an alumnus. I took your course back, think in 2017, 2018. So you're going to be forever a professor to me. All right. So I often speak of your class designing a good life and the pro-social exercises and other stats and experiments that now that you have this book out, I realized you were using the classrooms. Yes, I was. Yeah, I was doing a lot of the experiments in the class. I mean, the best way to teach 03:25 people something is not to tell them the thing, but to show them the thing. And so I could tell you that reaching out and expressing gratitude makes you feel better, makes other people feel better than you think, but more powerful is actually have you do it. Right. So we're going to talk about the book. And I think it's in chapter seven that you talk specifically about how gratitude is such a powerful mechanism. um Again, my guest here, I like to uh 03:56 kind of identify resiliency, purpose driven or scalable. m I think that what you teach and what we're gonna hear about here for my listeners is an example of resiliency practices. And I believe it's very much key in bringing it back to my listeners, Professor Upley is I work with a lot of company owners, business leaders who I think would benefit from learning some of these practices outside of the classroom today. anyway. 04:23 I took your class back in, I think, in 2017, pre-pandemic and in person. And my life has uh really been impacted in an incredibly positive way. I bring it into my personal life, some of these experiments that you're going to share with my listeners, as well as the classroom, where I do teach business ethics. And I have them um do a personal ...
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    50 mins
  • Season 4, #6- Building Reputation with Purpose

    Season 4, #6- Building Reputation with Purpose
    May 14 2026
    In this episode of the Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe sits down with growth advisor and author Vanessa Golsby to explore what it really takes to scale private equity-backed SaaS companies. Vanessa shares the story behind her new book, The $100M Push: The Four Decisions PE-Backed SaaS CEOs Make to Deliver Growth in 100 Days, and reveals the four critical decisions CEOs must lead to build scalable, resilient growth: defining the ideal customer profile, aligning go-to-market execution, making strategic investment decisions, and creating long-term operational accountability. Drawing from her experience advising more than 100 middle-market software companies and serving as an operating partner in private equity, Vanessa offers an inside look at how investors think, why commercial alignment matters, and how CEOs can create predictable growth through disciplined execution. The conversation also explores the role of generative AI in modern go-to-market strategy, the importance of reputation and purpose-driven leadership, and the entrepreneurial leap Vanessa took to launch her own advisory firm. This episode is packed with practical insights for founders, SaaS executives, and growth leaders looking to scale with clarity, confidence, and purpose. You can find out more about Vanessa at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-goolsby https://vanessagoolsby.com/ Or order her book at: https://www.amazon.com/100M-Push-Decisions-PE-Backed-Deliver/dp/1963549309 Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. Now in the fourth season, the Founder's Sandbox is a podcast that gathers business owners, founders, professional service providers. 00:31 and corporate directors. And we all are working towards the same mission, which is building scalable, resilient, purpose-driven companies to build a better world. We do this with underpinning, with great corporate governance, and really working with the founders to build that resilience and scalability. My guest, um join me here in what I like to consider a fun sandbox. 00:55 And this month, my guest, I'm actually delighted to invite Vanessa Golsby. Vanessa's joining me from, is it Dallas? Dallas, that's right. Dallas, Texas. So um more here, but thank you Vanessa for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox. And I wanna give a brief introduction to why Vanessa's here today. There's multiple um boxes that she checks, largely Vanessa. 01:22 has her own firm. She is a growth advisor who specializes in scaling private equity back middle market software companies. And it's an interesting time and that space that I'm certain we're going to get to a question here in a minute about the impact of generative AI and all those models out there and the effect on software businesses. You're a seven-year veteran as an operating partner. 01:48 in two private equity firms and portfolio SaaS CEOs. She has helped more than 100 middle market software companies drive growth, execute go-to-market companies, go-to-market, pardon me, turnarounds, and deliver investor returns through sharper commercial execution. That's all in the commercial execution, isn't it, Vanessa? That's right. Yeah. And prior to advising, she was a former operator leading product and commercial. 02:16 teams for 18 years at brands like Travelocity and Financial Times, which I didn't know that when we first were talking. I hadn't realized when we had our first conversations of your corporate experience with Travelocity and Financial Times. So you brought a lot of that corporate kind of know-how into the private equity world and you actually started your own firm. it four months back? 02:44 October, October of 2025. My goodness. So you're not even into your first year. I know. So, and, and, uh, you are an author. So your book, um, so I don't know when you found the time, Vanessa, but your book, the 100 million push the four decisions PE backed as SAS CEOs make to deliver growth. And a hundred days is out. 03:13 Matter of fact, this last week and we're in the third week of April, it uh hit bestseller, right? That's right. Amazon. Yeah. And in that book, we'll get into it. You distill the framework that you've developed. I don't know when, while setting up your own firm, but you developed over decades in the trenches, codifying the sequence behind the big four decisions. 03:40 that enable CEOs to scale with speed, clarity, and confidence. So welcome to the Founder Sandbox. Great. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Well, I always like to start with uh my guests to really talk about your origin story. And I think what's very appropriate for today's uh episode is what drove you to actually write a book, right? 04:09 because it distills both your professional as well as um this new tool that you got out there in the market. Yeah, you know, I never thought I would set out to write a book, if ...
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    47 mins
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