How does your organization make decisions based on your product data?... and what makes you trust it?
Do you trust it enough to run automation loops?
Those are the questions we're seeking answers to, and we'd love to discuss it with you. Through a short series of structured interviews with business and tech leaders, we're exploring how organisations decide what to trust in their product data, and what happens when that trust breaks. Run by A Founder's Friend, sponsored by Skene.ai; editorial independence is preserved and the sponsor is named on the page.
The ask
One 30-minute recorded interview with Nicolas, then a quick look at the draft before it goes live.
Named or anonymous — your choice, confirmed before the interview and again on the draft. No sales calls, no demos, and no follow-up from Skene.ai unless you ask for one.
Time line from participants perspective
- 01
One 30-minute recorded interview
The published piece and the benchmark report are built from this conversation.
- 02
A quick look at the draft before it goes live
You confirm the final version, choose named or anonymous, and request any edits.
- 03
Publishing piece where you're featured
A long-form interview in the AFF Products series on Substack — named or anonymous, your choice.
- 04
Publishing report and analysis
A benchmark report across the full series, published jointly with Skene.ai, on how peers think about product data and decision-making — plus your own version that places your thinking against the wider findings.
What you get
- ✦A published long-form piece in the AFF Products series on Substack — named or anonymous, your call, confirmed before anything goes live.
- ✦Inclusion in the benchmark report on how your peers think about product data, decision-making, and the cost of bad numbers — published jointly with Skene.ai, plus a personalized cut that highlights how your thinking compares.
- ✦Three short video clips cut for LinkedIn, Instagram, and X — opt-in per participant.
- ✦A free A Founder's Friend subscription — full archive, frameworks, and future content.
- ✦Editorial review of your contribution in the publication — nothing ships without your sign-off.
Editorial & interviews
Two decades in startups, go-to-market, and leadership. Publishes the AFF Products series on Substack. Runs the interviews, owns the editorial, protects your attribution.
What this actually is
Not an SDR sequence. Not a demo request. Ten structured interviews with business leaders and technical decision-makers on exactly that question.
No sales calls. No product demos. No follow-up from Skene.ai unless you explicitly ask for one. That's a written commitment, not a soft promise.
Why we're doing it this way
AI-powered outreach has made inboxes worse, not better — messages that feel personalised but clearly aren't, offering the recipient nothing in return. This is the opposite deal. You get a published piece, a benchmark, and a subscription for your time. We get a genuine conversation. Skene.ai gets to hear how the market actually thinks about product data before anyone pitches anyone. Everyone leaves the exchange with something they didn't have before.
What A Founder's Friend is
A Founder's Friend (AFF) is a content and advisory practice built on two decades in startups, go-to-market, and leadership. It publishes long-form essays, interviews, and frameworks — most visibly through the AFF Substack — and works with a small number of companies on collaborative business development, content, and coaching.
The practice is built on one belief: editorial credibility and genuine curiosity open doors that sales decks don't. Every interview in this series is run under that standard.
Who you'll actually talk to
Nicolas Dolenc · founder, A Founder's Friend
Nicolas was the Executive Producer and first President of Slush — the founder-focused conference in Helsinki. If Slush was the product, he was head of the product: he helped shape how tens of thousands of founders experienced the event, and built the content, speaker, and founder programmes from the ground up.
After Slush: producing events for VCs and agencies, coaching founders on narrative and go-to-market, helping shape people & leadership practices and company culture in some of the most renowned startups in the local Helsinki startup scene, writing the AFF Substack, while founding StoryRoots.
He's an entrepreneur, business coach, author, and former basketball player — but underneath all of that, a storycrafter. Which is exactly the lens these interviews are run through: not "what does your stack look like", but "how do you actually decide, and what does it cost you when you get it wrong".
Read what AFF publishes
The editorial home for the series and everything else AFF writes.
Or open it directly: afoundersfriend.substack.com
Questions people ask before saying yes
Interested?
Just reply and we'll answer any questions and find a time for the interview.