Cat Agostinho built Imagen Insights on a bet that most brands get wrong: real, unedited feedback from real people beats any dashboard, survey, or assumption a company makes about its own audience. Tomorrow Group agreed enough to acquire it in March 2026, at six times EBITDA.

Cat explains why the feedback most founders trust often tells them nothing, why the loudest agreement in the room can be the least useful signal, and why the businesses getting this right are asking a very different question before they build anything at all. Stop guessing what your customers want, and start finding out what they're actually hiding from you.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com

Every founder hits this point eventually, and almost nobody says it out loud. A listener wrote in with a question a lot of Series A founders are quietly asking themselves: what do you do when you've built something that works and you just stop caring.

James Johnson and Freddie Birley get into recommitting versus changing, why the servant-leadership instinct quietly burns founders out, and why the business you're in right now might not be where your success actually lives. This isn't about motivation. It's about figuring out which problem you're actually solving.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com

Jeevs Mahil decides which coaches get put in front of Octopus Ventures' portfolio founders, and after years of those introductions she has a clear, slightly uncomfortable view on why so many founders pick the wrong one.

James and Jeevs get into why "ex-founder" tells you almost nothing useful about whether someone can actually coach you, the one question to ask before your first session that most founders skip entirely, and the real ROI behind getting this call right versus wrong. Get this one wrong and it costs a lot more than the coaching fee.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com