Real Founders Build for Ownership, Not Optics, with Francis Pedraza

Most founders build for optics: flashy raises, big valuations, and investor approval.

But what happens when you build for ownership instead?

In the first episode of Not Another Podcast*, **Brennan Pothetes* sits down with **Francis Pedraza**, founder of **Invisible Technologies**, to explore what it really means to control your company’s destiny.

Francis built one of the world’s leading AI operations companies, training 80% of the world’s large language models with only *$6M raised* and over *$130M in annual revenue**. Then, in one of the boldest moves in startup history, he *bought back his investors to regain full control of the business.

They unpack:

Why founder control matters more than valuation
How Francis scaled profitably without chasing VC approval
What it takes to align teams through radical equity distribution (50% to employees!)
Why governance, incentives, and ownership design are the ultimate founder superpowers

This episode is for founders who are done chasing optics and ready to build something that lasts.

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Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Brennan & Francis kick off with startup therapy

02:30 – From Legos to company building: the childlike mind of a founder

06:00 – Why founders must “chew glass” in the early years

07:30 – Getting rejected by Google and Peter Thiel — and what came next

08:30 – Building Invisible: the “Ops-as-a-Service” model

09:50 – How Invisible helped train 80% of the world’s LLMs

12:00 – Surviving the early years of hell and hard choices

15:00 – Designing governance for founder control

18:00 – Why capital efficiency beats fundraising hype

20:00 – The origin of Invisible’s contrarian model

22:30 – How to find investors who actually align with your mission

25:00 – Breaking even, tripling revenue, and turning down a Series A

29:00 – Giving 50% of the company to employees

32:00 – Why ownership alignment creates unbeatable culture

36:00 – How Francis raised debt to buy out early investors

38:00 – The art of building trust with your shareholders

42:00 – Sales, hiring, and fundraising as the same motion

44:00 – Why transparency builds real investor relationships

46:00 – Rethinking equity: buybacks, secondaries, and true liquidity

50:00 – How to build a board that works for founders, not against them

54:00 – What “long-term compounding” really looks like

57:00 – The new founder mindset: discipline over hype

1:03:00 – Learning from failure, burnout, and difficult beginnings

1:09:00 – Francis on legacy, learning, and the next metamorphosis

1:12:00 – Brennan’s reflections: the new playbook for founder ownership