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A Day One® show · 20 Episodes

Founders in Motion

with Thea Ngo

Honest, tactical conversations with early-stage founders — the real decisions, trade-offs and mechanics behind building a company.

APAC-leaning founder stories, hosted by Thea Ngo. A new episode ships every Thursday — on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.

What you'll hear

the real work of building — in motion.

Honest, tactical conversations with early-stage founders. Every episode goes after three things.

The real decisions

The calls founders actually agonise over — not the tidy after-the-fact version.

Honest trade-offs

What it cost, what got dropped, and why. The parts most shows skip.

The mechanics

How it was really built — the moving parts under the story.

First up Ep 20

AI Insurance Brokerage: 80 Marathons, Uninsured, Nearly Killed Him | Sean Stuart, Rosella

Every policy he read had the same clause: more than two marathons back-to-back counts as an "extreme event." He and three friends were about to run 80 in 80 days, and none of them had run one. They went anyway, with nothing covering them.

Episode details → 27 August 2026
AI Insurance Brokerage: 80 Marathons, Uninsured, Nearly Killed Him | Sean Stuart, Rosella Coming soon

every episode

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Ep 19
20 August 2026
Basketball Stats From One Phone Video: Their $3.5M AI Pivot | Cordelia King, Superstat
Cordelia King co-founded Superstat after her first company kept attracting players who lied about how good they were. One phone video now gives every basketballer full box scores — and the team is leaving Melbourne for Austin.
Soon
Ep 18
13 August 2026
Quibi: How a $1.75B Startup Died in 6 Months
Quibi raised US$1.75 billion before it had a single show and shut down six months after launch. Thea takes apart what actually killed it — the tech that forced every show to be shot twice, and why almost no one converted from free trial.
Soon
Ep 17
31 July 2026
Why AI Can't Fix Your Business and the $10M Raise He Regrets | Lee Lagdameo, Shikii Labs
Lee Lagdameo crossed from VC to founder to build Shikii Labs — and says most companies aren't AI-ready: their data is a mess, and raising less beats raising more.
Soon
Ep 16
23 July 2026
Impact Investing at $10: The Fortune He Lost, The Fund He Built | Arjun Agarwal, inaam
inaam founder Arjun Agarwal joins Thea Ngo on losing the family fortune to a business betrayal in South Africa — Patek Philippes sold to survive — and building the ASIC-regulated impact-investing app nearly every Australian VC passed on.
Soon
Ep 15
16 July 2026
AI for Lawyers: 300 Features, They Used One | Rowan McNamee, Mary Technology
Mary Technology co-founder Rowan McNamee joins Thea Ngo on why his legal AI reads thousands of case documents but never makes the final call — and the failed first prototype that offered lawyers 300 options when they only wanted one.
Soon
Ep 14
9 July 2026
Passive Investing Australia: Get Rich Slow, The Fintech That Tells You to Trade Less | Hayden Smith, Pearler
Hayden Smith started Pearler, a wealth management platform for everyday Australians, with negative money in the bank, medical bills unpaid, and surgery he couldn't afford.
Soon
Ep 13
2 July 2026
$350M Fintech Founder Steps Down as CEO to Rebuild With AI | Josh Foreman, InDebted
Josh Foreman built InDebted from $12 in first revenue to over $1M a week profitable, 200 people, $350M valuation then voluntarily stepped down as CEO to rebuild the company from scratch.
Soon
Ep 12
25 June 2026
Battery Storage Founder: 8 Months of Rejection, One Term Sheet He Refused | Rakhesh Martyn, Hachiko Energy
Eight months of pitching, nothing to show for it, then the first term sheet finally arrives, and his own lawyer tells him not to sign. So he walks away from the only offer he has.
Soon
Ep 11
18 June 2026
Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression: The Doctor Who Left Medicine to Build a Clinic Network | Lauren Barker, Good Mind Therapeutics
Lauren spent nearly a decade as a doctor before she joined a chaotic mental-health startup. Then the model broke, her co-founder walked, and she rebuilt the company alone, teaching herself Google Ads off YouTube. That became Good Mind Therapeutics: five ketamine clinics across Australia, break-even, heading for fifty.
Soon
Ep 10
4 June 2026
$15M ARR Fintech Founder: I Found My First Customer on Facebook | Caroline Tran, Hello Clever
Caroline Tran cold-DMed the CEO of Tasmania's largest telco through a Facebook group, no product, no brand, no payments background. He said yes. That became Hello Clever: $15M ARR, 20 countries, 60 banking relationships.
Soon
Ep 09
21 May 2026
The D1 Athlete Who Built a $100M Voice AI Company | Will Bodewes, Phonely (YC S24)
Will Bodewes wrote a sticky note to himself on day one of building Phonely: "there are no shortcuts for you, Bodewes." That note sat on his desk every day for 2 years.
Soon
Ep 08
8 May 2026
$40M FinTech Founder on Raising Millions Before He Had a Business Idea | Shakeel Lala, Marloo
What happens when a VC backs you before you have an idea and then you have to find one?
Soon
Ep 07
23 April 2026
He Turned Falling Socks into an Eight Figure Global Brand | Nathan Yun, Paire
Nathan Yun built Paire into an eight-figure brand by doing almost everything the DTC playbook said not to: engineering fabric from scratch, opening a physical store, and turning Shark Tank into a sales channel rather than a funding pitch. This is the story of building an iconic brand from the least sexy product in fashion.
Soon
Ep 06
9 April 2026
This Stanford Dropout Wants to Help You Fall in Love | Celeste Amadon, Known
Celeste Amadon left Stanford, cancelled her job offers, and raised her seed round in four days before Known had a single paying user. Her thesis: dating apps aren't broken by accident. They're engineered to keep you swiping, paying, and single.
Soon
Ep 05
27 March 2026
How He Turned 3 YC Rejections into a $25M AI Governance Company | Nam Nguyen, TruthSystems (YC S25)
Nam got told to come back in 5 years by major law firms. A year later he was YC-backed, had raised $4M in 48 hours, and was serving some of the biggest law firms in the world. But the harder story is what it took to get there, January in Poland, rejections piling up, a parental deadline looming, and 20 something selling AI governance to people with decades of experience.
Soon
Ep 04
26 February 2026
Why Early Facebook Investors Backed a Self-Taught Aussie Dev | Finnlay Morcombe, Fluency
Finnlay raised $6M from Accel VC weeks after landing in the US, no deck, no data room, just two pages. But the bigger story is what Fluency is actually building: a platform that maps how work gets done inside enterprises, heading toward AI models that can predict your business before it happens.
Soon
Ep 03
12 February 2026
What Harvard Didn't Know: I Was Already Building an 8-Figure Startup | Stephen Turban, Lumiere Education
Stephen Turban was two semesters into his Harvard PhD when he got called into a Zoom room and confronted with his own face on the Lumiere website. The ultimatum was simple: PhD or startup. He chose the company. Four years later, Lumiere is 100 people strong and doing eight figures.
Soon
Ep 02
29 January 2026
He Ran One of Australia's Biggest Athleisure Brands - Then Built Software to Fix Its Biggest Flaw | Jevon Le Roux, Keeyu
Jevon dropped out of high school to become a pro surfer, then built Nike's Hurley brand in South Africa, ran PE Nation and Surf Stitch, and now he's building Keeyu, an AI platform that stops ecom complaints before customers even notice problems.
Soon
Ep 01
8 January 2026
He Quit a Six-Figure Consulting Job to Sell Chilli Oil | Ethan Yong, Umami Papi
How do you turn a lockdown side project into a cult food brand?
Soon
Your host

meet your host

Thea Ngo

Thea Ngo

Senior Investment Associate, Archangel Ventures

Thea Ngo is a senior investment associate at Archangel Ventures, a Sydney early-stage venture fund, where she sources and evaluates investments across the APAC startup ecosystem. She previously worked as a strategy consultant with PwC's Strategy& in New York and Southeast Asia, and has additional experience in venture building and operating roles at Do Ventures, Kidas and Phynergetix. She holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Ngo also created and hosts Founders in Motion, a Day One podcast that sits down with early-stage APAC founders for the honest, tactical version of the story: the real decisions, trade-offs and mechanics of building a company.

Every Thursday

a new founder story, every week.

One episode ships every Thursday. Join the Day One community and never miss one.

A Day One® show

Founders in Motion is produced with Day One — the podcast network for founders, investors and operators, and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Want a show like this for your fund or company?

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