⏱️ Issue #134: How Startup CEOs Can Maximize Their Time As They Scale
Claremont founder & entrepreneur Sam Corcos shares a detailed look into how he spent 5 years building his company, with reflections on what changed in the transition from very early-stage to scale up.
Good morning & happy Thursday. How do startup CEOs spend their time and structure their day when everything feels urgent in a growing company? What happens when a startup levels up from survival mode to scale-up, and how should a founder’s calendar change as a result?
This week, serial Claremont entrepreneur Sam Corcos shares a detailed breakdown of how he spent the last 5 years building his health tech company, Levels, and the small, strategic tweaks that compounded into major gains in focus, delegation, and founder efficiency. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Matthew, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Sam Corcos & Levels
Claremont grad and serial entrepreneurSam Corcos (CMC ‘11) is the CEO and co-founder of Levels, an a16z and StoryHouse-backed startup that shows you how food affects your health, using continuous glucose monitors and other biosensors.
Sam recently shared a detailed look with First Round Review into exactly how he spent 5 years building the company, reflecting on what changed in the transition from very early-stage to scale-up.
How I Spent 17,784 Hours in 5 Years as a Startup Founder
It’s a bit weird to see five years of your life plotted on a chart. But many years into relentlessly tracking my time, I’ve gotten used to it. When every minute is accounted for, there's no room for self-deception about where your time actually goes, or whether you're truly focused on what moves the needle.
With that, here’s the chart for exactly how I spent my time working on Levels for the last five years:
Hitting the five-year milestone, I was certain the data would show dramatic shifts from our two-year check-in. After all, the leap from pre-seed to Series A changes just about everything. You have more folks on the team, more customers, more complexity. It certainly feels like I spend my time differently than those early chaotic days.
But the numbers tell a different story. Take team management, for instance: Even with triple the number of direct reports, the time allocation in this bucket barely budged year over year.
As the product matures, the customer base expands and the team grows, it seems inevitable that the founder spends their time further from the nucleus. Less coding, more strategy discussions and 1:1 meetings. And yet, that’s not been my experience.
Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of times when I’ve felt the pain of a larger, more unwieldy org compared to when it was just a group of folks who could all fit around the table together. But I’ve found there are a lot of things that founders assume have to change about how they spend their time as a startup grows up, but these patterns can be corrected.
When Levels has begun to slip into these predestined paths, we’ve taken drastic measures to right the ship — in the most extreme case, completely overhauling our approach to software engineering (more on that later).
A few years ago with our first installment, I set out to share an unvarnished, unsanitized view into how a founder actually spends their time. Not to be prescriptive to other founders or to preach the “right” way for how you should allocate your time when building a business. But my hope is that this project gives other builders a chance to press pause and reconsider where their calendar isn’t serving them, or their startup…
Read the full article for Sam’s masterclass and thoughts on burnout fallacy, the importance of staying close to your codebase, navigating starting a family as a CEO, and what actually moves the needle as a startup founder.👇
Roya Amini Naieni (HMC) is the co-founder and CEO of Trilobio – a robotics and synthetic biology company. Trilobio was created to improve synthetic biology and life science research processes by building robotic lab automation modules coupled with an "app store" to package and distribute lab protocols as code. Last year, Roya and her co-founder Maximillian Schommer were awarded a spot on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Just recently, Roya was also included in the Future Minds Network 25 Under 25 list.
News Medical also interviewed Roya to discuss Trilobio’s mission to make fully automated laboratories accessible to every biologist. She talks about how her background as a biologist shaped the development of Trilobio’s technology, specific areas of research where their platform has the most significant immediate impact, and the next steps for her company. Currently, Trilobio’s systems are being used across the U.S. in areas such as biotherapeutics development, rare cancer treatment research, and bio-prospecting.
Product expert and friend of Claremont Brett Goldstein is the founder and CEO of Micro, an all-in-one tool for email, CRM, and project management that automatically organizes itself. It extracts and organizes information in your inbox so you can create "micro apps" for any workflow from fundraising to sales to travel planning. They just launched out of stealth. Check out Brett’s announcement and join the waitlist. Mention StoryHouse and you’ll get bumped up the list. 👇
📣 Claremont Announcements: Mar Hershenson & Pear VC
Harvey Mudd board member and Claremont parent Mar Hershenson is the founder of Pear VC. They recently announced that the applications for PearX S25 are now open. PearX is Pear VC’s 12-week accelerator program for pre-seed companies. If you’re looking to turbocharge your company from pre-seed to seed, join PearX this summer. 👇
Serial founders and Claremont alumniJon Miller Schwartz (HMC ‘13),Oliver Ortlieb (HMC ‘12),Max Friefeld (HMC ‘13) are the co-founders ofUltra, a robotics startup that is building intelligent industrial robots for American warehouses and factories. Designed for rapid integration, Ultra's robots leverage teleoperation and autonomy to learn new tasks quickly. Jon, Oliver, and Max are also the previous co-founders of the robotic 3D printing factoryVoodoo Manufacturing (acq. by 3D Tech) and online 3D product marketplaceLayer By Layer (acq. by MakerBot). Ultra is backed by StoryHouse, Y Combinator, and Pioneer Fund, and they are hiring for several open roles for their founding team:
Claremont alum Sammy Greenwall (PO) and Adam Pratt are the co-founders of Henry AI, a first-of-its-kind AI analyst for the commercial real estate (CRE) sector. Henry’s AI copilot integrates internal and external data to generate deal decks for CRE brokers quickly. Several national brokerages, including five of the top ten in the country, are already leveraging Henry AI. The company also recently secured a $4.3M seed round led by Susa Ventures, 1Sharpe Ventures, and StoryHouse Ventures. They are looking for talented candidates to join their founding team. For more information, message Adam directly.
Backend Engineer - can iterate on systems architecture independently, identifying bottlenecks and knowing the right level of complexity vs. scalability to apply to a problem
Claremont alum Lewis Johnson (PO ‘07) and Brad Booth are the leaders of NLM Photonics, which is developing cutting-edge photonics solutions to support the growing demands of AI, cloud computing, and data centers. NLM’s semiconductor technology can reduce data center power use by up to 30%, enabling high-bandwidth, low-power data transfer. StoryHouse is proud to have invested in NLM together with other top institutions, including Emerald VC, Hamamatsu Photonics, and Ideaship. Check out their open positions below:
Julia Peng, Melissa Moore, Amit Deshwar, and Claremont alum Michael Swift (CMC ‘16) are the co-founders of Kerna Labs, which is building foundation models of RNA biology to discover and develop the next generation of genetic medicines. Their AI-powered platform solves critical bottlenecks in mRNA payload design and delivery, including potency and protein output, tissue specificity, half-life, and manufacturability. Kerna Labs recently emerged from stealth backed by Susa Ventures, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused fund), and StoryHouse. They are seeking exceptional summer interns for a unique research project with outsized strategic impact.
Check out the other ~2,000 open jobs at 280+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 300+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 500+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention StoryHouse Review. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s must-watch 📺
Claremont grad and StoryHouse portfolio founder Ina Herlihy (SC) joined the Horizons podcast to discuss her journey from obtaining press credentials as a teenager to her experiences in marketing and product management at companies like Zumper and Walmart. She shares insights on email marketing, leadership development, and the significance of understanding customer needs in product design. Ina is the founder and CEO of AddGlow, a SaaS software that helps brands build community on their website to increase revenue.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Incentify recently closed a $9.5M Series A round led by Innovent Capital Group, with participation from Ryan LLC, Gary Gilbert (co-founder of Rocket Mortgage and co-owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers), and others. Incentify, founded by Claremont grad and serial founder Laurence Sotsky (CMC), is the leading tax credit and incentive platform that optimizes C&I discovery and management with centralized reporting and customizable workflows.
This week’s top listen 🎧
Claremont grad and StoryHouse portfolio founder Sagar Batchu (HMC ‘15) was on The Way of Product podcast to talk about the future of API development and the rapidly evolving landscape we are in. Sagar shares his journey from being a physics graduate to finding his calling in tech and building a game-changing API toolchain. Sagar is the co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy, a developer-first API DevEx platform that enables developers to offer best-in-class self-service experiences for API consumers.
Everything else you need to know💡
Congratulations to Claremont grad and StoryHouse portfolio founder Marco Lobba (PO ‘13) for being named to the San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 for innovative contributions to biotech and precision medicine. Marco is the CEO and co-founder of CatenaBio, which is built on technology developed in the labs of Berkeley’s Matthew Francis and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna (PO’85). The company’s platform allows for the rapid coupling of proteins to create novel therapeutics in oncology, autoimmune disorders, and vaccine development.
Serial Claremont entrepreneur Xiaoyin Qu (PO) recently announced stepping down as the CEO of her company heyBoss AI, and being replaced by Astra, an AI leader her company has built, and the world’s first AI CEO. Xiaoyin is the founder of heyBoss AI, the world’s first AI-run dev agency for non-coders. HeyBoss allows users to submit a one-line product idea, whether a website, app, or game, and receive a live product in under nine minutes, complete with design, code, backend, optimized copy, SEO, and hosting.
Can’t get enough of StoryHouse Review? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🧑⚕️ Living to 120 With Personal Virtual Nutritionists….. Serial Claremont entrepreneur Victor Penev (PO ‘96) talks about the future of personalized nutrition with the help of Agentic AI. Victor is the founder and CEO of Edamam, a food database and nutrition data provider. In this interview, Victor shares how Edamam is building a personal virtual nutritionist using their unique data and aiming to help everyone live up to 120 years without chronic conditions and mental illness.
