Builder's Growth Lab
The podcast where builders, founders, and investors talk AI marketing and customer acquisition for AI builders.
Join us (Conor Douglas, Mallory Loar, Charlie Hernandez) as we talk about the latest AI coding tools, interview the creators building them, and share real builder stories with AI founders. From Claude Code to cutting-edge startups, how to acquire customers for your AI app, we talk about AI code and keep you informed and entertained.
Perfect for builders who want to stay ahead of the AI curve without the hype.
New episodes weekly.
Episodes
45 episodes
From 0 to 150K, Building Communities That Actually Stick With Grace Ling | Episode #44
Grace Ling built Design Buddies into a community of 150,000+ designers, cold-emailed 400 hiring managers to land her job at EA, got cancelled by people she trusted, was rejected from YC multiple times, quit her UX career to travel 21 countries,...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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1:53:03
Copy Our AI Marketing Stacks | Episode #43
No guest this week -- just Charlie, Connor, and Mallory getting into the weeds on the exact tools and workflows powering their agencies, their products, and this podcast.If you're an AI founder or indie hacker trying to figure out how to...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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1:38:30
SEO and Content Marketing in the AI Era with Brendan Hufford | Episode #42
What does it actually take to grow a SaaS company through content marketing when AI is reshaping search as we know it? In this episode, Charlie sits down with Brendan Hufford, head of marketing at Grow Sprints, to dig into the strategies that a...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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41:46
Government Money Is Sitting There - Here's Why Most Founders Ignore It | Episode #41
Most founders building AI products are ignoring a $700B+ market sitting right in front of them: government contracts.In this episode, Charlie, Conor, and Mallory sit down with Maurice Harari, co-founder and CEO of BidLab, to break down h...
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1:33:44
The GTM Strategy Most Founders Skip - Interview With Josh Lowman | Episode #40
Most AI companies are not losing on product. They are losing on positioning. And Josh Lowman says they are solving the wrong problem entirely.Josh runs Goldfront, a category design studio in San Francisco, and has worked with over 150 co...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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1:52:27
Andy Crestodina's Organic Growth Playbook for the AI Era | Episode # 39
Andy Crestodina has spent 25 years building Orbit Media into one of the most respected content marketing agencies in the game. No paid ads. No outbound sales team. Just organic content that generates 900+ leads a year.In this episode, An...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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1:43:22
ChatGPT Ads Are Here, Should AI Founders Care? | Episode #38
OpenAI just opened up advertising inside ChatGPT, and the BGL crew breaks down what it actually means for builders, marketers, and AI companies. Conor shares his take from the paid media side, covering CPMs, attribution challenges, and what he'...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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1:35:03
What VCs Actually Look For When Investing | Episode #37
Inside VC with Robert Harari 🎙️We just dropped Episode 37 with Robert Harari, a VC since age 17 and co-founder of Raisy, an AI platform that connects founders with investors using behavioral...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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1:44:22
Building Out Loud & More | Episode #36
We hit record and talked about what's actually on our minds this week: our canceled Breckenridge trip that makes our heart hurt, building CampaignPilots in public and what we're learning from sharing the journey, NFL bets we missed (and why we'...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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1:51:32
Jon Cheney on What Founders Get Wrong About Implementation | Episode #35
Jon Cheney, Chief AI Officer and CEO of GenAIPI, joins the show to break down how he scaled from solo consultant to an 8-person AI services firm and what AI founders can steal from his playbook. We dig into his framework for customer acquisitio...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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2:07:03
Why the Big AI Breakthrough Still Hasn't Happened (And Where the Real Opportunity Is) - Interview with Silvia Oviedo Lopez | Episode #34
Guest: Silvia Oviedo Lopez, Former Pinterest & Canva Leader, Now Building Stealth AI StartupSilvia spent two decades scaling Pinterest to 450 million users and leading AI-powered content discovery at Canva. Now she's building ...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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1:48:37
What It's Actually Like to Raise Capital For Your Startup | Episode #33
In this episode, Mallory Loar pulls back the curtain on her fundraising journey: raising nearly $800K for her app.She breaks down how she leveraged her network to get in front of angel investors, why early-stage investors bet on founders...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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2:10:27
2025 Podcast Recap & What's Next | Episode #32
We chat where we started and where we're going/what's next for 2026.
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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33:48
Why Some AI Founders Never Get Funded (Katie Dunn, Angel Investor Explains) | Episode #31
Katie Dunn closed $10B in real estate deals before becoming a full-time angel investor. She's invested in 30 companies, helped founders raise $27M+, and focuses on underrepresented founders in CPG and tech. In this episode, she breaks down what...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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56:56
The Hidden Cost of Bad Onboarding & How to Fix It | Featuring Teemu Kinos | Episode #30
Customer success is becoming the next major frontier for AI agents. In this episode, we sit down with Teemu Kinos, co-founder of Skene.ai, to unpack how AI agents are reshaping onboarding, retention, and expansion for modern SaaS companies....
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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1:39:48
The Distribution Pivot That Led to an 18-Month Exit (And How You Can Do It Too) | Episode #29
Andre Albuquerque, who took Kitch from founding to Glovo acquisition in 18 months and now runs Builders Camp where he has trained over 4,000 product managers, joins the show to break down what AI founders get wrong about distribution. He shares...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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1:45:00
Stop Relying on Luck - Build an SEO Engine That Delivers | Episode #28
The moment yall have been waiting for. The SEO 101 episode. We start by talking turkey day, then get right into the SEO discussions. Charlie talks SEO fundamentals (content/technical/backlinks) like parent/child pages, title t...
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1:42:17
More Customers To Your App with Christian Peverelli | Episode #27
If your dashboards are loud but your next steps are fuzzy, this one’s for you. We open with a clear look at how Campaign Pilots turns GA4, Search Console, and Google Ads into plain-English insights you can act on today—no more stitching togethe...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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1:47:35
Interview with Stephen Stearman | Episode #26
What does it take to build an AI product that clinicians actually trust? We invite Synth.ai CEO Steven Steerman to break down how his team turns hours of psychological report writing into minutes, while navigating the hard realities of HIPAA, S...
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1:36:09
Interview with Ryan Carson | Episode #25
Names matter because they set expectations, and expectations drive momentum. We open with a playful roast of our working title and turn it into a real exercise in clarity. Why a simple, memorable name can act like a launch ramp instead of...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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1:17:26
How to Properly Rebrand Your AI Company | Episode #24
We run a live branding workshop to evolve our show from a technical niche to a hub for builders who want customers. We align on audience, mission, naming strategy, and a visual system that supports clarity, distribution, and growth.• sh...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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1:47:15
Sukhpal Saini (Winner of Lovable Hackathon) | Episode #23
A new chapter begins as Mallory joins the crew as a co host and sharpens our focus on the brand, community, and content moves that actually compound for AI startups. We swap stories about stamina and setbacks, from API approval limbo to error l...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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1:09:28
AI Branding & Community Building Expert, Mallory Loar | Episode #22
Tired of AI products that all sound the same? We sat down with brand and community powerhouse Mallory Lore (formerly Bolt.new and Discord) to unpack how real brands are built in a crowded market & why the “vibe” only works when it’s backed ...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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1:05:40
Conor & Charlie's Stories - How They Met | Episode #21
In this episode, Conor and Charlie talk about their careers before getting into AI, their backgrounds in digital marketing agencies (and before that!) and how they met.
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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1:18:54
Joseph Perla, CEO Hangout.FM - How To Set up Facebook Ads For AI Apps | Episode #20
In Episode 20 of AI Code Central, Charlie and Conor sit down with Joseph Perla, CEO of Hangout.FM, to explore the tension between human connection and artificial intelligence in product design. Joseph, a Princeton ML researcher who helped build...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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1:12:54