The New Build

For our Season 1 finale, we did something different: three founders, three industries, and one bet they all made independently—that mobile had to be the anchor for their business.
In this episode, host Abhinav Narain sits down for three shorter conversations with the teams behind Clover Dogs, Land, and MMARA. Julian of Clover Dogs explains why a dating-app swipe—not another shelter directory—is what finally makes rescue adoption feel joyful, and how AI now onboards a shelter's entire roster of dogs in minutes. Andrew of Land makes the case that his climate-resilience app is deliberately not a weather app, and why he traded fitness-tracker-style risk scores for a plain-language model borrowed from horoscope apps. And Obi and Onyi of MMARA share how a beauty company selling hair products became a women's health platform using hair loss as an early signal for conditions like lupus, PCOS, and thyroid dysfunction—and why they refuse to build on agentic AI that's wrong about women's health roughly 60% of the time. Across all three, the same lesson keeps surfacing: get obsessed with the problem, not your solution.
Find this episode’s full show notes here:
* https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-12-clover-dogs-land-mmara
Topics covered:
Why mobile is the right anchor for some businesses—and genuinely wrong for others
When the interaction model (a swipe, a daily read, a daily log) is the product
Designing for behaviors people already do, instead of asking them to learn new ones
Using AI on the back end to remove operational friction for non-technical partners
Why a "pivot" is really just iteration you should be doing every day
Links:
Clover Dogs: https://bubble.io/clover-dogs 
Clover Dogs (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clover-dogs/id6753950948
Julian Reeves (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-reeves-a19157112/
Land: https://land.supply
Land (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/land-climate-tracking/id6755068546
Andrew Haarsager (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/haarsager/
MMARA: https://www.themmara.com
MMARA (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mmara-my-hair-coach/id6745461031
Obi Chukwuma (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/obianozo-chukwuma/
Onyi Chukwuma (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyi-chukwuma-7baa4220/
Start building: bubble.io

Scott Belsky has spent two decades at the center of how creative and technical work gets built, shipped, and scaled — and almost none of it followed a conventional path.
In this episode, Emmanuel Straschnov sits down with Scott Belsky — founder of Behance, longtime Chief Product Officer at Adobe, prolific angel investor in 100+ companies, and now partner at film studio A24 — to explore the frameworks he's developed across a career that spans product, entrepreneurship, and storytelling. They dig into why empathy consistently outperforms passion in building products, what the "messy middle" actually demands of founders and teams, and how Scott thinks about the AI moment from the rare vantage point of someone who has been launching AI-driven features in creative tools for over a decade.
Find this episode’s full show notes here:
https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-11-scott-belsky
Topics covered:
Why the focus group that almost killed Behance actually validated the entire vision
"Empathy outperforms passion": what this means in practice for early product decisions
The most common mistake early-stage founders make — and why Instagram's login data explains it
The "windows blacked out" analogy for leading teams through the messy middle
Scott's experience co-leading Adobe's product reinvention after the Behance acquisition
Two types of creators: content creators vs. artists, and why they want completely different things from AI tools
Why builders should design model-agnostic products in the current AI landscape
The Ramp investment story: how "spend less" as a core principle made everything different
What Scott actually looks for in founders — including a litmus test he uses in every pitch meeting
Why optimism is both a founder's greatest asset and their biggest liability
Scott's one piece of advice he wishes he'd had when starting Behance
Links:
Scott Belsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbelsky
Behance: https://www.behance.net
The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky: https://www.themessymiddle.com/
A24: https://a24films.com
Start building: bubble.io
✦  ✦  ✦  ✦  ✦
Chapters
[00:00:33] Introduction
[00:02:13] Scott's unlikely path from Goldman Sachs to entrepreneurship, and what drew him to design along the way
[00:05:45] What Behance's first (and only) focus group revealed: creatives didn't think they needed another network — and why they were wrong
[00:09:43] Common founder mistakes
[00:12:44] Defining the messy middle
[00:18:11] What it felt like to lead product inside Adobe after the Behance acquisition
[00:21:06] How builders should think about AI models
[00:24:28] Why Scott joined A24 and what excites him about new IP and risk-taking storytelling in an era of sequels
[00:31:45] What Scott looks for when investing in founders
[00:37:30] The one lesson Scott wishes he'd had at Behance: knowing when not to be a contrarian

Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup, the book that gave a generation of founders the MVP, the pivot, and the build-measure-learn cycle. He's also an early Bubble investor who believed in the democratization of building before most of Silicon Valley took it seriously.
In this episode, Emmanuel sits down with Eric to talk about his new book, Incorruptible, and the forces that quietly corrupt even the best companies. Eric introduces the concept of "financial gravity" — the structural pressure that bends successful companies away from their founding purpose — and explains why it starts pulling the moment you succeed, not after. He also makes a sharp case against vibe coding and AI-assisted building without understanding.
Topics covered:
Why AI tools can make founders less capable, not more
"Financial gravity": the invisible force that corrupts good companies from within
The difference between "mission-driven" and "mission-controlled"
Why governance is a creative design decision, not a legal formality
How Incorruptible builds on The Lean Startup
Find this episode’s full show notes here:
https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-10-eric-ries
Links:
Incorruptible by Eric Ries: incorruptible.co
Eric's podcast: ericriesshow.com
Eric's newsletter: news.theleanstartup.com
Eric on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/eries
Eric on X: x.com/ericries
AnswerAI: answer.ai
Start building: ⁠bubble.io⁠
* * * * *
Chapters
[00:00:47] Introduction
[00:02:20] How AI and no-code changed the game Eric predicted 
[00:05:20] Why most people use AI wrong
[00:06:00] Dark flow: vibe coding is a slot machine 
[00:08:15] The artifact is not the progress
[00:09:30] What Incorruptible is about
[00:11:02] Financial gravity: the invisible force that corrupts good companies 
[00:13:35] The Bill Gates intern story
[00:16:23] The FedMart and Costco story: 200 years of companies losing their soul 
[00:22:45] When should founders think about governance? 
[00:24:58] The "most evil company" exercise: what your charter actually commits you to 
[00:27:01] The PBC filing: a two-page fix most founders don't know about 
[00:29:15] Mission-driven vs. mission-controlled: the Google "don't be evil" test 
[00:33:00] Does Incorruptible conflict with The Lean Startup? 
[00:35:48] Eric's blueprint: the path of ethos and the path of integrity 
[00:40:10] Is Eric optimistic?

Most founders build software first and a business second. Clément Llehi did it the other way around — and that sequence might be exactly why Makko works.
In this episode, Abhinav sits down with Clément, the bootstrapped solo founder of Makko, a facility management company based in France. Starting with no co-founder, no outside funding, and no coding background, Clément spent his early mornings cleaning offices at 5 AM while consulting at Capgemini by day and designing what would eventually become a platform running operations for 300 employees and over 600 enterprise clients by night. He shares the moment he knew it was time to go all in, what it actually takes to earn the trust of major companies when you're a small, self-funded team, and why he restructures his company every six months on purpose.
Topics covered:
Leaving a consulting career at Capgemini to start a cleaning company — and why people thought he was making a big mistake
Doing the cleaning himself first, and why that changed every product decision he made
How the pandemic forced him to pause and build the platform that now runs the whole operation
The moment winning his first big enterprise contract made everything feel real
What consulting taught him about user experience — and why the FM industry still hasn't caught up
Building enterprise trust as a small, bootstrapped, founder-led team
Why he deliberately restructures Makko every six to eight months
How AI is changing Makko's internal operations, and what he's thinking about for clients next
The competitor's comment that meant more to him than any client win
Find this episode’s full show notes here:
https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-09-makko
Links:
Makko: makko.fr
Clément on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clementllehi/
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Chapters
[00:00:00] Why the early days of building Makko felt like the best and worst time of Clément's life
[00:00:22] Introducing Clément, founder and CEO of Makko
[00:02:23] Why Clément left a consulting career at Capgemini to start a cleaning company
[00:03:38] The brutal early grind: cleaning at 5 AM, working 9-5, building the platform at night
[00:05:26] Why Clément entered the industry as an operator first rather than building a platform from the outside
[00:13:36] Discovering Bubble: How Clément found no-code and built an MVP in a month during COVID
[00:15:51] From first clients to 600+ B2B accounts: What earning enterprise trust actually looked like
[00:19:06] How a consulting background gave Makko a customer experience edge in a notoriously old-school industry
[00:21:43] Overcoming skepticism: Why some people couldn't believe a tech-forward company could also be the best at cleaning
[00:24:57] Why Makko deliberately restructures every six to eight months — and what that looks like in practice
[00:31:03] Clément's playbook for building a bootstrapped business that enterprise clients can trust
[00:33:13] Knowing when to leave your day job: Why you need both traction data and gut instinct
[00:36:13] The micro signals most entrepreneurs ignore — and how one small complaint can signal a bigger cultural problem
[00:40:16] The competitor compliment that told Clément he was building something truly different

We recorded this just after Allbirds made headlines this month for selling its footwear assets, but before they announced their pivot to AI infrastructure under a new name — all roughly two years after Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO. He founded the company in 2015, took it public at a $4 billion valuation in 2021, then watched the stock collapse more than 96% before stepping down in March 2024. Rather than retreat, he's back—building Biologica, a women's hormonal health company, with lessons that only come from living through the full lifecycle of building, losing, and starting over.
In this episode, Emmanuel talks with Joey about what actually broke at Allbirds, why being a public company made the turnaround harder, and the specific frameworks he's applying differently the second time around. You'll hear his "slope of ignorance" hiring philosophy, why he believes "take the money and spend like you don't have it," and what advice he's giving early-stage founders today that's genuinely different from five years ago.
Topics covered:
From biotech to footwear: Why Allbirds was always a material innovation company
The "slope of ignorance": Hiring for competitive moats, not urgency
Selling $1M in shoes in 30 days with zero advertising
What broke after the $4B IPO: False signals from COVID's volatile consumer behavior
Why the $160 Tree Flyer running shoe was a strategic mistake
The public company trap: Quarterly reporting creating negative externalities
Why being too small as a public company ($300M revenue) made turnarounds brutal
Stepping down as CEO: The transition process with Joe Vernachio
Starting Biologica with his wife Liz: Hormonal age, not chronological age
What he's doing differently: Subscription model, lean team (6 people), research-first
The second-time founder paradox: People assume you'll succeed (and stop giving honest feedback)
"Spend like you don't have it": The investor advice he didn't internalize until too late
Why the music will stop: Capital allocation in an optimistic market
Building vs. buying technology: Why consumer companies shouldn't build their own tech
Find this episode’s full show notes here:
* ⁠https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-08-joey-zwillinger
Links:
* Biologica:
https://biologica.com
* Joey on LinkedIn: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzwillinger