In our first episode of 2026 Scotty Allen speaks with Yaniv Bernstein, ex-Google, Chief Product Officer of Vera, and host of The Startup Podcast, about how AI is changing what it takes to build a startup in 2026, what “technical” and “non-technical” founders mean (if anything) in this new age, and what the minimum a founder of any description needs to be able to know about and do with AI to get into the game in this new world.

They discuss why speed is now table stakes, how small teams can go further than ever, what founders should worry about early on, and how product thinking and real customer contact matter more than ever.

About Yaniv Bernstein:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein

The Startup Podcast: https://www.tsp.show/

Vera: https://www.vera.guide/

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic. This week Scotty is joined by Gavin Tye – founder of DealBuddi and SixSides – and B2B or SaaS business consultant through Sales Market Fit.

About Gavin Tye:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/gavintye

Website: https://salesmarketfit.co/about/

This is our last episode for 2025 that will come up in your feeds. We’ll be back. mid-January. If you cannot get enough of the bootstrap content and can’t live without it for a month, please check out our YouTube channel or other socials. But thank you so much for your support throughout 2025.

In this episode Scotty is joined by Summer Howarth – director of Eventful Learnings Co – to discuss what is involved in maintaining a founder led business and how Summer’s experience, interest and expertise in learning design and education strategies have made Eventful Learnings a perfect match to lead.

About Summer Howarth:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/summerhowarth

Website: https://eventfullearning.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eventful_learning_co/

This week on Founder Friday Scotty is joined by founder of Filament Analytics Tom Maitland. Filament is an automated data warehouse that unifies business data, making it easy to analyse with natural language.

Tom speaks on the value of being a second time founder in knowing what to prioritise in the early stages of building. As well as talking about the new learnings arising from publicly building Filament by sharing progress on social platforms such as Linkedin to gain direct feedback from piers.

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

About Tom Maitland:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/tommaitland

Filament: https://filamentanalytics.com

In this Industry Episode Scotty talks to Scott Glew – co-founder of Fastvue and also the network Morning Startup – based in Western Australia. Exploring Scott’s journey in bootstrapping Fastvue to great success, in what continues to be a lean and effective operation, and how Scott has used the lessons of this success to guide other local founders in the space through Morning Startup.

Speaking on the value of being involved in such startup networks, being open to the feedback they can provide, and diving into some of the common takeaways any listener at the start of their founder journey should keep in mind.

About Scott Glew:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/scottglew

Morning Startup: https://www.morningstartup.com

Fastvue: https://www.fastvue.co

This Founder Friday Scotty is joined by Jesse Gordon, founder of Study Pulse, to talk about the early journey bootstrapping journey in ed tech; including all the learnings and reflections involved in the process.

Jesse is a software engineer and entrepreneur who specialises in bridging the gap between technical architecture and profitable product design. He is the founder of StudyPulse, a bootstrapped AI education platform that he scaled to serve students at over 400 schools, fixing the broken feedback loop for exam prep.

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

About Jesse Gordon:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-gordon-ib/

Website: https://studypulse.au

Community means a lot of things to a lot of different people in the startup ecosystem. But someone who has been doing something or several really interesting things in that space is our guest today, Amber Main.

She is an ecosystem builder. She’s the founder and CEO of Sparks. And in this episode talks all things ecosystem, collaboration, and how we actually turn community into something meaningful for startups.

About Amber Main: https://au.linkedin.com/in/amber-main-💎💎-a99a3ab0

In this Founder Friday Scotty is joined by Nathan MacPhee, founder of Invest Inya Farmer (IIF) to discuss how bootstrapping proved effective for IIF in the early idea validation stage.

Find out more at: iif.today

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

If you’ve been around the startup space for more than a hot second, you certainly have heard the terms low code and no code. Today we have someone that is going to help us understand what they mean, how they might be best used in the startup space, and where maybe they’re best left untouched.

Dave McManus is the founder and director of Lightning Ventures. He is a well-known Bubble enthusiast and works with a number of programs, as well as his own work, in helping people in the low and no-code space.

About Dave McManus:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/davemcmanus-lightning-products

Website: https://www.lightningventures.com.au/

If you are building a digital product and you want other people to use it, then there is probably a cybersecurity element that has to be considered at some point. When is too soon to be focusing on that? When is it too late? And how is AI impacting that? To help attempt to answer these questions Scotty is joined by Billy Hosking, founder of Kavira IT.

About Billy Hosking:

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/billy-hosking

Website: https://kavira.com.au