Tank Talks

🎙 Weekly podcast series with leaders in the startup ecosystem hosted by @mattybcohen & @ripple_ventures 🎙

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Every operator should watch this.

Mike Mahannah turned a $1M sheet metal shop into @amazon's top data center supplier and sold it to Modine for ~$260M.

Today, he coaches CEOs at Resonance Consulting, helping them spot the blind spots he once had.

On this episode of Tank Talks he shares all the lessons from 40 years of operating, in under an hour:

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAibwTp

[Matt Cohen @mattybcohen]

🗓️ On May 18, 2020, the first @TankTalkPodcast episode went live.

Six and a half years and 350 episodes later, over a million listeners have tuned in.

What's even crazier is that none of this was built to be a podcast.

It started with @ripple_ventures mission: support our founders and build community. The Tank, our first office, was where that mission became something you could walk into and see with your own eyes.

Every few weeks, we'd make The Tank better by inviting someone worth learning from to share what they knew.

When COVID hit, I assumed it was all over. Everyone had to leave The Tank, but it turned out no one wanted to leave the talks behind.

So we took the interviews online and broadcast them to our founders so they could keep learning while stuck indoors.

Fast forward to today, a few milestones:
• Our new website is live at https://t.co/N5527AXfwN
• We just published our 350th episode
• We've passed 1M social media impressions

Most importantly, we've heard and shared the stories of first-time founders, founders with billion-dollar exits, world-class investors, and even a few celebrity athletes jumping into the startup arena.

We started Tank Talks to support founders and build community. 350 episodes later, we're just getting started.

There are a lot more founders to meet and a lot more rooms to fill.

Pull up a chair at https://t.co/N5527AXfwN. Whether you're a founder, investor, operator, student, or just curious, The Tank is always open.

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Your best hire might be your biggest problem.

Mike Mahannah fired his top two sales hires because they weren’t a culture fit. And funnily enough, sales went up, and everyone was happier.

"When you're clearly not a fit for the culture, clearly not a fit for the business, end it."

That lesson cost Mike years to learn, today it’s all free on Tank Talks.

Mike is a 2x exited operator. He's sold a heating and cooling firm to his own employees and a then, a ~$260M manufacturer to Modine. Today he's a partner at Resonance Consulting, coaching CEOs through the same blind spots he once had.

If you're building or working at a startup, this episode is 40 years of operating lessons in under an hour.

Full episode on

[Matt Cohen @mattybcohen]

Budget 2026 gave Canadian tech exactly what it asked for.

✅ Up to $15M CAD in capital gains exemptions per person, per business. Canada’s answer to U.S. QSBS.
✅ A rollover so exit proceeds can go into the next Canadian startup instead of heading south.
✅ Aimed squarely at IP-based companies built here.

A few caveats: it’s not law yet, it’s not retroactive, and unexercised options don’t count.

@ruffoloj and I break it all down on @TankTalkPodcast.

Take the win. Now it’s time to build 🤝

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Everyone always wants to throw AI at everything and burn as many tokens as you can.

But costs are catching up...

@Uber burned its 2026 AI budget in 4 months.

@Microsoft is capping token spend.

The token maxing era seems to be coming to a close, and Shomik Ghosh of @Sierra_Ventures thinks that's great news.

If everyone kept token maxing, AI demand would look far bigger than it really is. Companies would build for demand that isn't there.

This shift is finally getting us closer to the real number.

Shomik started his career on a fixed income trading desk. Now, he is a partner at Sierra Ventures, where he still reads public markets to spot where real demand is showing up in AI.

This episode is a must listen if you invest in, build on, or bet on AI. See full episode on https://t.co/q9iENP5RQH

[Matt Cohen @mattybcohen]

Your AI spend isn’t too high because AI is expensive.

It’s too high because every task goes to the same model.

@PeterJ_Walker (Head of insights at @OpenRouter) watches 180 trillion tokens move every week across 500+ models. He knows where the money goes.

New @TankTalkPodcast below

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

@midjourney started as an AI image generator.

Now it's building full-body medical scans to deploy across the US.

Shomik Ghosh, Partner at @Sierra_Ventures says this is his favorite trend right now: Founders whose ambition refuses to stay in its lane.

From creators and images to the medical world.

"We need more of that."

Shomik has sat on almost every side of the table: starting off as a fixed income trader, then a first employee at a startup, then an early backer of Snyk at @Boldstartvc . Today, he's a partner at Sierra Ventures, investing in frontier and applied AI.

Full conversation with Shomik on https://t.co/PhshAibwTp

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Andrej Karpathy (@AnthropicAI ), Noam Shazeer (@OpenAI ), John Jumper (@AnthropicAI ) can work at any company they want

So why did they all choose to go back to the frontier labs?

Shomik Ghosh @shomikghosh21 at @Sierra_Ventures says their moves back to labs are the clearest sign that we're very close to recursively self-improving models.

Shomik spent six years backing companies at the earliest stage at @Boldstartvc. Now, he's a partner at Sierra Ventures, he invests across frontier AI, including @ReflectionAI_ .

On this episode of Tank Talks, we sat down with him to talk about where AI is headed, and the signals that he looks for and trusts more than any other market benchmarks.

This episode is a must listen if you invest in, build on, or bet on AI. See full episode on https://t.co/PhshAibwTp

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Everyone says you have to be in San Francisco to build a great startup.

But, one of the most active pre-seed investors in the world says that Toronto is actually her favourite place to scout founders.

On this episode of Tank Talks, we are joined by Elizabeth Yin:
→ General Partner at @HustleFundVC , which she co-founded 9 years ago → backer of ~700 pre-seed companies around the world → whose firm sees over 1,000 pitches a month

We caught her live at @nrthtechCA in Toronto, where 10,000+ founders, investors and operators spent three days figuring out what’s next for Canadian tech.

So many Canadians think they have to move to SF to make it. But our conversation on Tank Talks proves to you why that might not be true.

Full episode on https://t.co/q9iENP5RQH

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

You don’t need to be technical to start a company anymore.

On this episode of Tank Talks, the founder behind a $350M+ fintech exit explains why there’s never been a better time to build or join a startup.

Michael Garrity has been building long before the AI wave, where he:
→ Built @financeit from scratch in 2011 and saw it acquired for $350M+
→ Co-chairs the @theC100 , the network of Canadian tech leaders working to get 100 startups to $100M in revenue by 2030
→ Was one of the first founders through C100’s 48 Hours in the Valley, the program behind Sonder, Koho and Mejuri

We caught him live at @nrthtechCA in Toronto, where 10,000+ founders, investors and operators spent three days figuring out what’s next for Canadian tech.

We’re at the very beginning of the AI era. Bookmark this episode if you want to know how the people at the frontier are thinking about new opportunities.

Full episode on https://t.co/q9iENP5RQH

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

For decades, law firms have run on the billable hour. So the slower a lawyer works, the more they make.

At most firms today, associates’ bonuses are still tied to the hours they bill. So when legal tech builds copilots to make lawyers faster, it’s working against the very system lawyers are paid by.

@jrbluth , a @Harvard_Law grad, saw this problem firsthand. Instead of building another legal tech tool like most players in the industry, he’s rebuilding the firm itself.

At Blackletter, Canada’s first AI-native law firm, Jonathan and his team are redesigning entire legal workflows end to end, pairing technology and people to deliver better outcomes for clients, not more hours.

“It’s no longer about providing tooling to people doing the work, but saying end-to-end, how do we do this better?”

On Tank Talks, Jonathan breaks down the perverse incentives holding legal back, and why the only way to make top-tier legal services more abundant is to become the firm.

The legal industry is on the edge of a major shift. Bookmark this episode to see what's coming.

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAic4IX

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Fusion can only move as fast as it can measure.

Every fusion company needs plasma diagnostics to prove its reactor works, and almost every one builds them in-house.

Last month, we had the chance to sit down with the founder in Canada who is changing that.

Henry Gould, founder and CEO of Daedal, is building a standardized platform that plugs into any approach, from tokamaks to stellarators to hybrids. As he puts it:

"This company does not stop at the R&D phase of the fusion industry."

Daedal is starting where the need is most urgent today, then expanding into adjacent industries like SMRs and semiconductor plasma processes. In the long term, they plan to become the operating infrastructure for the fusion power industry.

The fusion race is accelerating fast. This episode is the fastest way to catch up.

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAic4IX.

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Fusion's billion-dollar bottleneck might be sitting in Ontario.

In the fusion industry, a single reactor could need around 55 kg of Tritium to get started, requiring $1.5–2B in fuel just for one reaction.

What people are starting to realise is that Canada holds most of the world's civilian supply.

With fusion attracting a record $4.48B in funding over the past 12 months, that makes Ontario one of the most strategic places in the industry.

Henry Gould, founder of Daedal Systems, joined us in the Tank to break down Canada's tritium advantage, why the province and federal government are finally waking up to it, and why, after years at @GeneralFusion, he chose to build Daedal right here in Toronto.

If you are interested in the current state of nuclear energy, as well as where the industry is headed, this episode is a must-watch.

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAic4IX

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

He first went to @McKinsey, and then to @Cohere as their first non-technical hire.

During his time at Cohere, he saw what scaling alongside a generational company looks like. Now, he has moved on to build his own company, Blackletter. Canada’s first AI-native law firm.

This week, Jonathan Rosenbluth joined us on Tank Talks to discuss Blackletter, his career progression, as well as his advice for people to make the jump to startups early.

“I think it is far riskier just to stay on the traditional path where you're growing incrementally year over year. Whereas if you go into a hypergrowth environment…You're so much more capable”

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAibwTp or in bio.

[Matt Cohen @mattybcohen]

He went from @Harvard_Law to employee #20 at @cohere . Now he's building Canada’s first AI-Native law firm, Blackletter (https://t.co/Plo2MLetOT) .

Jon Rosenbluth was one of the few in his Harvard Law class who didn't go into law. But after seeing countless founders lose time and money to billable hours, he wanted to build a firm that would change that.

So, he left Cohere to fix a system that hasn't changed in 70 years.

Now, his team at Blackletter consists of elite lawyers AND machines working together. The system checks for errors and stays online 24/7. But most importantly, the lawyers remain the key judgment layer, and clients are charged a flat fee.

This week on @TankTalkPodcast with Jon Rosebluth, we cover:

02:14 - His career journey from Harvard to McKinsey to Cohere
07:48 - The real case for joining an early-stage startup
15:47 - Why build an entire law firm instead of just another legal tech tool?
19:39 - Problems that most founders face with the current legal system
24:51 - Where software hands off to human lawyers
32:15 - What the law firm of the future actually looks like

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Anthony Mouchantaf is the founder of Biossil, and as a Founder himself, his advice is to really think about motivation.

Ask whether you have something distinct to contribute, and If you're genuinely obsessed with a problem, the process of chasing it would fulfill you on its own.

Being the founder will be the byproduct of your passion.

However, If you're only chasing the identity of being a founder, don't be one.

Boomark this episode for more insights from a founder & CEO behind a billion $ company.

Episode available on https://t.co/JDUl47zq2F

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

The founder of Canada's newest unicorn (backed by @OpenAI) thinks we need to stop glorifying being a "founder."

"I don't think it's healthy to wanna do entrepreneurship for the sake of entrepreneurship." "It's probably not the shortest path to happiness."

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

@TonyMouch is a founder who's been an operator, a VC, and an LP.

Last week, he joined us on the Tank to talk about Biossil (now at a $1B valuation), his career, and key life lessons he has learned along the way.

A huge congrats to Biossil for the raise! Bookmark this episode on Tank Talks to hear how Anthony built it.

Full episode on https://t.co/PhshAibwTp

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

CEO and Co-founder of Canada’s newest unicorn, backed by @OpenAI, shares his biggest learning as a first time founder:

[Tank Talks @TankTalkPodcast]

Rahul Parmar was one of @googlecloud's first sales hires in their London office.

On Tank Talks, he shares his biggest lessons and takeaways from his career at Google to @DrataHQ , and now, GTM at @Railway.

Bookmark this episode if you want everything Rahul learned from 6 years selling at Google and scaling Drata from under $5M to $50M+, in under an hour.