What if intelligence tools once reserved for governments could help businesses, families, and everyday people make better decisions?

In this episode of 50 Chairs, Gary Hensley talks with Anthony Vinci, CEO of Vico.io, former intelligence officer, and author of The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America.

Anthony shares how his experience in intelligence, including serving as CTO of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, led him to build Vico, a platform designed to help people forecast future events and make more informed decisions.

They discuss:

• What intelligence officers see that most people miss
• How misinformation and deception affect businesses, families, and voters
• Why AI-generated content creates a new challenge for finding truth
• How forecasting can improve decision-making
• Why intelligence is not just about gathering information, but helping people make better choices
• The courage it takes to leave a successful career and build something new
• Advice for young people navigating AI and an uncertain future

Anthony also explains why he believes the future belongs to people who can think critically, test information, and take action before certainty arrives.

Learn more about Anthony and Vico at https://vico.io  
Follow Anthony at https://anthonyvinci.com

Subscribe to 50 Chairs for conversations with founders, leaders, and builders navigating the moments that require conviction, courage, and a willingness to start before the path is clear.

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Erica Donalds is an entrepreneur, education advocate, charter school founder, and former managing partner at a multi-billion-dollar fund. In this conversation, she shares the moment she walked away from a successful finance career to pursue education reform, why she believes parents should have more agency in their children’s schooling, and how charter schools, school choice, AI, and virtual reality are shaping the future of education.

In this episode:

• Leaving finance to pursue education reform
• Why school board service showed her the limits of the system
• What she learned from launching charter schools
• How parents can have more choice and ownership
• Why AI and virtual reality may change learning
• Why entrepreneurship is essential to freedom and innovation

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

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Johnny Crowder built Cope Notes, an SMS-based mental health platform reaching people in 110 countries, without a paycheck for four and a half years. He did it coming off a career touring in a death metal band, without knowing venture capital was even an option, and without ever automating the human part of his product.

This is a conversation about what it actually takes to stay. Not the highlight reel. The moment the bank calls because your account hit zero. The monthly urge every founder gets to walk away. The weight of knowing that when you are out, your employee is out too.

Johnny is one of the most honest founders I have sat across from. He talks about bootstrapping as a blind spot, not a badge of honor. About redefining success so many times that the definition that finally stuck would drive an investor up a wall. And about a simple life mission that has never needed to change: make stuff that helps people feel better.

If you are in the middle of a hard season and wondering whether the difficulty means you are doing it wrong, this one is for you.

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Kevin Damoa started as a backup dancer in Los Angeles. Then he went to war.

After serving in both the Army and Air National Guard, Kevin spent years at SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Harley-Davidson's Serial 1 Cycle Company. At every stop, he kept finding the same broken system hiding in the same place: the seam where road and rail are supposed to hand off to each other. Nobody had fixed it. Not the military. Not the biggest aerospace companies in the world. Not anyone.

So Kevin built the fix himself.

He's the Founder and CEO of Glīd Technologies, a dual-use logistics infrastructure company building road/rail autonomous vehicles and an AI coordination layer that works across commercial freight and contested defense environments. One system. Two very different threat environments. No new infrastructure required.

In this episode, we go deep on the logistics gap that's been hiding in plain sight for decades, why the problem persisted, the grind of building hardware from scratch after leaving some of the most prestigious companies in America, and the moment Taylor Transport's president said he never conceived this technology would exist in his lifetime.

Kevin's unfair advantage isn't the technology. It's the biography. Nobody else has the full map.

Topics covered:

• Railhead operations in Iraq and the logistics flaw that wouldn't let him go
• Building dual-mode vehicles that operate on both road and standard-gauge rail
• The Glīd product suite: GlīderM, Rāden, and EZRA-1SIX
• Defense logistics, GPS-denied environments, and the dual-use vision
• What it takes to get your first customer when you're selling the future

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He sold his company, sat in a rocking chair on his farm porch, and lasted about a week before asking himself: what now?

Dr. Andy Hafer built Dynamic Communities over 15 years and sold it to private equity. In this episode, he tells Gary the unfiltered version of life at the "mountaintop," and why it's really a mountain range. He talks gratitude, the hand-written thank-you checks he sent his team, and how a kid who set out to be valedictorian became an accidental entrepreneur after hating his first engineering job.

Andy ran his first company from behind the wheel of a 36-foot RV, wearing helicopter pilot headphones, while his family traveled the country. From there he co-founded Synapse and helped turn Tampa Bay into a place known for building companies, and now he's aiming the same playbook at the region's toughest societal challenges.

What you'll hear:

• What surprised him most the day the deal closed
• Why work ethic, not the grade itself, is the real through line
• How a software user group became a community of thousands
• "The most powerful force in the universe is people coming together to solve problems"
• His one-line advice for anyone sitting on an idea: just do it
• The mentors who shaped him, from his parents to a civil rights march
• What's next: Park Junction, an AI startup, and moving Tampa Bay's rankings

Find Dr. Andy Hafer on LinkedIn (search "Dr. Andy Hafer").

50 Chairs is hosted by Gary Hensley. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. More at 50chairs.com.

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For the 50chairs Playbook from every episode go to www.50chairs.com

In this episode of 50 Chairs, Gary sits down with Blake Hall, founder and CEO of ID.me, for a conversation about service, identity, leadership, and what happens when a startup grows into national infrastructure.

Blake shares the origin story behind ID.me, from seeing veterans forced to expose personal information just to access simple benefits, to building a digital identity platform now trusted across major parts of government, healthcare, and commerce. He reflects on his time as an Army Ranger, the lessons of service, the loneliness of leadership, and the operational discipline required to scale through chaos.

Gary and Blake also explore the future of AI, fraud, trust, and what it means to prove who you are in a world where technology is making everything easier to fake.

For anyone building in the ugly middle, Blake’s advice is direct: develop a skill that matters, tie it to your superpower, build habits of excellence, and stop waiting.

The future belongs to builders.

www.50chairs.com

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For the 50chairs Playbook from every episode go to www.50chairs.com

Donna Harris joins 50 Chairs to talk about the “middle” of entrepreneurship, the moment when the vision is clear but the chairs are still empty.

From leaving corporate life at Oracle, to building her first company, co-founding 1776, and now leading Builders and Backers, Donna shares what it really takes to turn ideas into action. This episode explores agency, startup ecosystems, pitch competitions, family sacrifice, and why America needs more everyday builders.

For anyone sitting on an idea and wondering where to start, Donna’s advice is simple: momentum beats perfection.

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What happens when a West Point graduate, Army intelligence officer, startup founder, and venture capitalist realizes that success was never about the destination?

In this episode of 50 Chairs, I sit down with my longtime friend and mentor, Craig Cummings, Co-Founder and General Partner at Moonshots Capital.

Craig’s journey spans U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the National Security Agency, building and selling RideScout to Daimler Mercedes-Benz, and now investing in some of the country’s most ambitious founders across defense tech, AI, biotech, and national security.

But this conversation goes deeper than resumes and exits.

We talk about:

• Why “the climb is the joy”
• The loneliness of entrepreneurship
• Leaving the military three years before retirement
• Building startups while facing personal adversity
• How Moonshots evaluates founders and leadership
• What authenticity actually means in leadership
• The emotional reality of acquisitions
• Why founders must know when to keep going and when to stop
• The secret to “having it all”

This is a conversation about ambition, identity, leadership, friendship, and learning to appreciate the journey before the summit.

If you’re building something, questioning your next move, or chasing a version of success that still feels out of reach, this episode is for you.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
 🌐 More episodes and founder playbooks at www.50chairs.com

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For the 50chairs Playbook from every episode go to www.50chairs.com

He was cut 13 times, and still made the NFL. Most people quit long before that.

In this episode of 50 Chairs, I sit down with former NFL fullback Jed Collins, whose journey is built on resilience, rejection, and relentless belief.

This isn’t a highlight reel story. It’s about what happens before the success. When the chairs are still empty.

We talk about:

• Building conviction when no one else sees it
• Why greatness is lonely
• The mindset required to keep going through rejection
• What the NFL teaches about pressure, identity, and discipline
• How Jed turned his journey into a mission around financial literacy

Jed also shares his framework for “being a pro”: confidence, trust, and adding value. Lessons that apply far beyond football.

If you’re in the middle of building something and it’s not working yet… this one will hit.

Because success isn’t instant.
 It’s built one chair at a time.

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What does it actually take to stay in the game long enough to win?

In this episode of 50 Chairs, Gary Hensley sits down with Alex Denning to explore the phase of building that most people never make it through. The part where nothing is working, no one is watching, and the outcome is still uncertain.

From the discipline of Formula racing to competing at the highest levels with Lamborghini, Alex shares what it means to operate with conviction when there is no immediate signal.

This conversation is about more than racing. It is about patience, belief, and the reality that success is often decided long before it is visible.

If you are building something, this one is for you.

https://50chairs.com/blog/8d40595f-9b46-4444-9bbf-c19908f915ef

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For the 50chairs Playbook from every episode go to www.50chairs.com