PreVetted Podcast

Ricky Sun is Founder and CEO of Ultipa, the real-time graph database he calls the world's fastest, and CTO of Aichax. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Ricky Sun explains how a real-time graph database and explainable, white-box AI keep connected data queryable in real time and stop hallucination before enterprise AI ever reaches production.Ricky's career runs through Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC before he set out to build companies of his own. At Ultipa he built a real-time graph database designed to traverse deeply connected data in microseconds, now used across finance, fraud detection, risk, and compliance. In this conversation he breaks down what a graph database is, why it answers questions a relational database cannot, and what it actually takes to make deep graph traversal fast at scale.We dig into where a real-time graph database sits alongside the vector databases and embeddings most teams reach for first, and why Ricky prefers the phrase graph augmented intelligence to plain artificial intelligence. He makes the case for explainability and white-box AI: why today's models are so hard to reason about, and how a graph turns a black box into something you can inspect, audit, and trust.From there we get into Aichax and its blunt promise that hallucination ends here, the season-long question of why roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots never reach production, and how graph and explainability change that math. Ricky also talks standards, from the Linked Data Benchmark Council to the ISO GQL graph query language, and shares what he has learned building deep-tech engineering teams across the US and China over two decades.About Ricky Sun:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickysun/- https://www.ultipa.com- https://aichax.aiAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction2:30 From Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC to founding Ultipa7:00 What a real-time graph database actually does13:00 Real-time graph database vs vector databases for AI19:00 Explainable white-box AI and graph augmented intelligence26:00 Ending hallucination: inside Aichax33:00 Why enterprise AI pilots die before production40:00 Graph analytics for fraud, risk, and compliance in finance46:00 Standards, ISO GQL, and the Linked Data Benchmark Council52:00 Advice for CTOs adopting graph and explainable AI#GraphDatabase #ExplainableAI #AIinProduction

Justin Marcucci is President of Apexon, a digital engineering services firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, where he leads the global commercial organization. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Justin Marcucci traces a rare path through digital engineering, founder, design-led operator, and executive at scale, and what it actually takes to build and lead teams that own outcomes.

Justin started and ran Nickelfish, an interactive design agency, for thirteen years before Endava acquired it and he stayed on as Chief Digital Officer for nearly a decade, running North American and global industry P&Ls through Endava's global expansion and its 2018 NYSE IPO. He unpacks the inflection points that reshaped Nickelfish, what selling the company taught him about his own business, and what made a long post-acquisition integration actually work.

Now at Apexon, an AI-first technology services firm, with over 5,000 employees across the USA, UK, India and Mexico, Justin talks through his first ninety days in the President seat, and how a company built out of four merged startups keeps design and user thinking at the center of an industry that has become AI- and engineering-led. He details Apexon's new AI Center of Excellence, its focus on enterprise and agentic AI architectures, and how AI is changing both client delivery and how he runs the commercial org.

The conversation gets specific on the operator's craft: scaling teams in a consulting-led services business, hiring senior leaders who own outcomes instead of just executing, and how PE-backed growth differs from running a digital business inside a public company. Justin closes with what he'd tell someone earlier in their career trying to build something durable in digital.

About Justin Marcucci:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-marcucci-1a6ab533/

- https://www.apexon.com

About Federico Ramallo

Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Introduction

2:30 What the President of Apexon actually does

6:15 Starting Nickelfish and thirteen years running it

12:40 Selling Nickelfish to Endava: the lessons

18:05 Chief Digital Officer through Endava's IPO

24:30 Moving to the Apexon President seat

29:50 First ninety days and what surprised him

34:20 Keeping design and UX central in an AI-led industry

39:10 Scaling teams in a consulting-led services business

43:35 Hiring senior leaders who own outcomes

47:50 Using AI across delivery and the commercial org

52:15 PE-backed growth vs running inside a public company

55:40 Building a durable career in digital

#DigitalEngineering #TechLeadership #ScalingTeams

Aligning your home with your life is the difference between a house that quietly drags you down and one that supports who you're becoming. Kim Costa breaks down her eight-dimension Wheel House Method.

In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Kim Costa — Top 5% realtor, author of Live in Your Wheel House, and podcast host — shares how she went from two decades as a CFO and controller to building a movement around home-and-life alignment. We get specific on the eight dimensions of life, decluttering with purpose, multi-generational living, and designing a space that reflects your next chapter instead of your past.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction to Kim Costa and her journey
2:38 The Wheel House Method: aligning life and home
5:32 The eight dimensions of life
8:16 Multi-generational living: solutions and challenges
10:57 Navigating family dynamics in shared spaces
13:48 Personal transformation and life changes
16:28 The importance of romance and connection
19:13 Creating a supportive home environment
24:08 Gender roles and household dynamics
27:32 Understanding personal strengths and weaknesses
30:10 Navigating dietary differences in relationships
33:59 The importance of environment in relationships
35:20 A holistic approach to life and relationships
42:15 Finding purpose and alignment in life

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Kim Costa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimecosta
- Density Labs: https://densitylabs.io

CONNECT:
- Website: https://prevetted.fm
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

ABOUT THIS CHANNEL:
PreVetted Podcast spotlights founders and operators sharing the specific, in-the-trenches lessons behind building companies and lives that fit them. New interviews every week. Powered by Density Labs.

#LifeAlignment #IntentionalLiving #NextChapter

JJ Friedman is the Director of Product Engineering at PLACE (formerly Remine), and this conversation is a clinic on engineering leadership in the AI era. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, JJ and Federico Ramallo dig into what actually moves a team forward: judgment over syntax, trust over control, and treating embedded engineers as long-tenure teammates rather than disposable project labor.

JJ took an unusual route into engineering leadership. He studied philosophy and economics at Occidental College, played college basketball, then sold luxury real estate in Beverly Hills before open-source work pulled him into software. After a bootcamp he joined Remine, climbing from senior engineer to tech lead to director over nearly five years, through the company's acquisition by PLACE. Along the way he co-built Shipm8, a Kubernetes health-monitoring developer tool.

He gets specific about what each transition required. As tech lead he took over a struggling two-year single sign-on and MLS dashboard project and shipped it live in four months by keeping the IDP foundation and restarting the product layer. He frames the real job of an engineering manager as translating between business and technical stakeholders, humbling your own ideas, and removing friction so the team can deliver.

On AI, JJ and Federico land in the same place: craftsmanship is never replaced, and AI augments a strong team rather than replacing one. They talk through why the best engineers think through problems before writing code, why you should hand AI the tests, docs, and merge requests instead of the core build, and Federico's "AI arbitrage vs labor arbitrage" thesis, where a long-tenure team that holds business context is what makes agents productive.

The back half is about people. JJ shares his third philosophy of contracting, hiring embedded talent you treat as full-time, which is how Density Labs engineers became tech leads and go-to front-end and mobile developers on his team. They cover mentoring junior engineers, building trust ("trust but verify," and a "do not assume" agent prompt), and what more leaders should understand about running cross-border engineering teams.

About JJ Friedman:

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jj-friedman/

- https://remine.com

About Federico Ramallo

Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- Website: https://densitylabs.io

- PreVetted: https://prevetted.ai

PreVetted Podcast

- Podcast: https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- X: https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction to JJ Friedman and Remine

02:35 Journey from Sports to Engineering

05:11 The Open Source Experience

07:46 Understanding the Engineering Mindset

10:27 Craftsmanship vs. AI in Engineering

12:59 Career Progression at Remine

14:04 The Role of Management in Engineering

16:01 Building Trust and Communication

18:51 Navigating Business and Technical Needs

21:34 The Importance of Asking Questions

27:36 The Evolution of Collaboration with Density Labs

28:21 Philosophies Behind Contracting and Talent Acquisition

33:24 Building a Symbiotic Relationship with Contractors

34:24 Contributions of Density Labs Engineers

39:09 The Importance of Mentorship and Growth in Engineering

43:25 Understanding Cross-Border Engineering Teams

47:18 AI and Labor: A New Paradigm

54:03 Final Thoughts and Advice for Engineering Leaders

#EngineeringLeadership #AIAugmentation #EmbeddedTeams #TechLeadership #CrossBorderTeams

Engineering leadership quietly breaks the day you stop touching the code. Vasu Raj Jain leads at Amazon Ads without ever leaving the codebase, and in this PreVetted Podcast episode he and Federico Ramallo turn that habit into a full playbook for staying technical, building trust, and putting AI agents in their place.Vasu is a Senior Software Engineer and Engineering Lead at Amazon Ads, where he owns the architecture for ad-serving infrastructure that handles 50M+ requests per second across Prime Video, live sports, shopping, and audio. He directly leads 30 engineers and influences 150+ across the org. He walks through the balancing act at the core of ad tech: advertiser reach, publisher trust, and customer privacy all have to stay in harmony, or the deal falls apart.His path into engineering was almost accidental. A childhood dream of becoming a pilot ended when he failed the National Defense Academy physical over his eyesight; a month of chemical engineering followed before he switched to computer science, co-founded a hyper-local street-food app, and moved from India to the University of Florida on a student exchange, where a theoretical mindset gave way to a builder's one.The heart of the conversation is how he leads without losing the code. Vasu splits a two-week sprint roughly into writing code himself, designing systems, and mentoring, and he deliberately asks his own team to assign him sprint tasks so he understands their execution layer and earns their trust by leading from example.On AI, Vasu and Federico agree hard: agentic AI is a tool, not a replacement for junior engineers. Agents run on your identity and your credentials, so when something breaks the accountability lands on the human who spun them up, never on the agent. Junior engineers bring context, judgment, and a human touch that a tool cannot. They also dig into Federico's thesis that long-tenure teams who hold the business context are what steer agents well, plus his own rule of never letting an agent commit its own code.About Vasu Raj Jain:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasujain00/About Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Serving ads across Amazon at scale3:40 Relevant ads vs customer privacy5:18 Balancing advertisers, publishers, and customers7:37 The pilot dream and the exam that changed everything8:57 Resilience and adaptability12:35 Switching from chemical engineering to CS16:35 From India to the US on a student exchange19:20 Theoretical vs practical: the mindset shift26:51 From individual contributor to engineering lead27:11 Splitting the sprint: code, design, mentor36:22 Handling interruptions with agentic AI40:39 Why agents help humans instead of replacing them41:42 Managing agents vs mentoring junior engineers46:29 Agents are tools; accountability stays human50:16 Advice: never lose touch with the code53:58 Advice for moving from India to the US#EngineeringLeadership #AIAgents #StayingTechnical #TechLeadership #AdTech

Mike Hess is the Founder and Executive Director of the Blind Institute of Technology (BIT), and his core message is simple: technology is the greatest equalizer for people with disabilities. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Mike and Federico Ramallo dig into digital accessibility, WCAG, and workforce development, and why accessibility is also a real business advantage.

BIT is a pan-disability workforce development organization. Its fully virtual, instructor-led Academy levels people up in digital accessibility and Salesforce certifications toward gainful employment, and 100% of BIT's instructors identify with a disability.

Mike came up through a deep telecom and engineering career (Qwest, Level 3 Communications, switch engineering, COBOL) after entering tech through an IBM-funded program at the Community College of Denver as the Y2K boom took off. He was appointed by the Governor of Colorado to the Workforce Development Council and recognized with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Business Award.

Mike explains why he calls technology an equalizer: Apple and Steve Jobs building screen-reader access into the first iPhone, Uber making independent ride-hailing possible for a blind traveler, and the RSA security tokens he could hear instead of see. He breaks down WCAG as a shared translation layer between assistive-technology users and developers, how modern JavaScript frameworks discard native HTML accessibility, and why Salesforce stands alone as the most accessible business enterprise application for B2B workforce development.

They also get into the harder problem of perception. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman's concept of loss aversion, Mike describes the "squishy feeling" that keeps well-meaning people from hiring people with disabilities, and the five words that dissolve it: "How can I help you?" They cover the curb-cut effect, how closed captions and text-to-voice built for the disability community now serve everyone, and the roughly 1.3 billion people worldwide (north of $10 trillion in disposable income) that businesses overlook. Mike's closing advice to hiring managers: accessibility is not difficult, it is intentional.

About Mike Hess:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hess-9a4a826/

https://blindit.org

About Federico Ramallo

Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

https://densitylabs.io

https://prevetted.ai

PreVetted Podcast

https://prevetted.ai/podcast

https://x.com/PrevettedPod

https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Introduction to the Blind Institute of Technology

1:13 Expanding Workforce Development for All Disabilities

3:27 The Impact of the ADA and Early Career Experiences

7:47 Resilience Through Economic Challenges

11:19 Building Resilience in the Disability Community

15:55 Creating Allies in the Disability Community

19:23 The Role of Technology as an Equalizer

22:39 Empowering Independence Through Accessible Technology

24:45 Understanding WCAG and Its Importance

26:43 Breaking Down Perceptions Around Disabilities

30:59 The Value of Accommodations for All

33:32 BIT's Dual Role in Workforce Development

36:22 Advice for Hiring Managers on Accessibility