2025 Summary:
2025 was our 6th year doing Founder's Voyage. It included a number of changes to Founder's Voyage, both continuing the pre-existing path of the Saturday interviews and podcast to starting new things. The conversations we had have grown and progressed as well, feeling more like a space for honest reflection than an interview.
In 2025, we:
- Interviewed 38 Guests;
- Experimented with 15 Episodes without Guests;
- Released 97 episodes;
- Organised 3 In-Person Events, and;
- Had a ton of fun doing it all.
We had guests from:
- South Africa;
- India;
- United States;
- United Kingdom;
- Italy;
- Brazil;
- Japan;
- Australia, and;
- Many more.
Those guests worked in:
- Biotechnology and Gene Editing;
- AI Ethics;
- AI Development;
- Construction;
- Education;
- Finance;
- Space Industry;
- Mental Health, and;
- Many other sectors.
It is a rare priviledge to be able to speak with and learn from such a broad and incredible group, and on behalf of the Founder's Voyage team we are deeply honoured by this experience. So many of our guests talked about the changes in their journies, however, at Founder's Voyage, we changed as well. Improving as hosts, starting to host live in-person events in London, and releasing almost 4 times more episodes than we had across the entire 3 years we were releasing episodes.
Lessons from 38 Founders:
Every episode we ask guests many questions, but always end on 'What words of wisdom, or piece of advice do you want to leave us with today'. This is very deliberately worded, we want our guest to feel able to share what has been the deepest essence of their success (which is defined very differently for different people). This year in particular we have gotten many words of wisdom revolving around these ideas.
1. Grit:
Persistance, endurance, stubbornness, all different terms around the same theme, the ability to take the negative, and push forward anyway. From Winston Churchill's claim:
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
to Reid Hoffman:
"Hard work isn't enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It's actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness." - Reid Hoffman
many have pointed out that grit is a key for success due to the incredibly high likelyhood of some failure being not just inevitable on the path to success, but maybe required to achieve success. Many of our guests have expressed the same reality, they put forward that their grit is a key ingredient in the success they have managed to achieve.
2. Education:
How many times are children told they must do well in their studies, it might be a universally accepted truth. Yet it is rarely applied to adults, even entrepreneurs, a number of guests we have had on have expressed how important it is for an entrepreneur to continue their personal education. When a founder has a clear goal and solution in front of them it is vital to know as much as possible about that particular topic and surrounding topics. When in-between key projects it is vital to continue educating yourself on new technologies, old wisdoms and alternative points of view. A stagnant knowledge base is the first step to being obsolete. The guests we have interviewed have regularly raised this in their 'Words of Wisdom'.
3. Balance and Imbalance:
We have had a strange split from guests around balance, both speakers who have claimed keeping balance allows them to achieve their success and speakers who have made the claim that success as a founder is almost unachievable without balance destroying focus. It's hard to align these two diametrically opposed views, however the suspicion I have is that it resonates with the period in their entrepreneurial journey that a founder finds themselves. During the earliest, most desperate, and focused, period of entrepreneurship imbalance is the only possible way to pull a successful business out of the ether of non-existance. However, as a team grows, and a founder's responability goes from executor of ideas to decision-maker, the need for that manic fixated energy reduces and it becomes more and more important to come to the table with a clear mind. It may very well be that a business operates in seasons and the founding team must be willing to both sacrifice comfort when needed, and pull back to recoup and self-educate in varying amounts.
Moments that Stuck with Us:
1. Erica Olsen - Alcohol and Being at Your Best:
Erica talked to us about stress drinking, and how it affected her. It's been 4-5 years since this was a problem in her life, but for Erica, the act of conciously stopping her stress drinking resulted in a huge benefit to both her personal standard of living, and the reality of those working below her. Many people struggle with the same demon's that Erica discussed, and the courage she showed in being willing to discuss it in a public situation like this shows her strength of character, and inspires other to follow her path of overcoming these difficulties. Thank you Erica for your trust and bravery.
2. Arul and Shirali Nigam (to be released on the 8th of Jan) - AI Ethics:
Many people this year have talked about the impact and risks of AI. Ethics around AI, and how 'others' should deal with or prepare for it has been a recurring topics, many of the guests we have had one talked about where the responsability should lie, or what people can do to protect themselves. The key difference from our sibling founder guests, Shirali and Arul Nigam, is that they started Circuit Breaker Labs purely to head on tackle the problem of AI's informing or encouraging users about suicidal or dangerous behaviours. They saw this was a major issue that few others were looking into and solely targetted around making this new revolutionary technology safer for all of us.
3. Elizabeth Fuller MacKellar - Permanence and Impermanence:
Elizabeth Fuller MacKellar passed away on the 27th of October 2025. Her episode on Founder's Voyage was finally released on the 23rd of November 2025, a month later. She was an incredible person, entrepreneur and someone who deserved to be celebrated, both whilst alive, and now that she has passed. I recall the shock on Nancy's face when we found out, mid-interview of another guest, that Elizabeth was no longer with us. She was a mentor of the MIT Bootcamps and disicplined entrerpeneurship framework, a champion of eco-friendly practises and she had an amazing journey. It is a priviledge to be able to share her journey with the world.
2025 has been an incredible year, filled with highs and lows. We will be back in 2026, talking to many incredible people. I hope you will continue to join us on this journey.
- Spencer Walker-Fooks