A power-packed Unpak3d Podcast featuring Mike Conover, CEO of Brightwave, sharing battle-tested strategies for enterprise AI success. Mike breaks down exactly how to build, scale, and dominate in the AI-first era.

Since recording this episode, Brightwave has launched Report Builder and Blueprints, two powerful new features that mark the debut of the first deep research platform purpose-built for private market investors. These tools help investment teams go from a 1,000-page data room to a fully sourced, sharable report in minutes—automating workflows like investment memos, expert call summaries, and comp analyses.

Key insights you'll discover:

🚀 1:31 - From Zero to AI Hero: Mike's journey and critical success factors

🤝 6:20 - Building Your AI Dream Team: Culture secrets that attract and retain top talent

🔓 14:13 - The Open Source Advantage: Why it matters for enterprise adoption

🛠️ 21:35 - Production-Ready AI: Skip the common pitfalls, nail the execution

🏄‍♂️ 27:48 - Surfing the AI Wave: Strategic moves that put you ahead of competition

🛡️ 38:30 - Data Moat Strategy: Transform data into unbeatable market advantage

✨ 42:19 - The Brightwave Edge: Inside look at next-gen AI implementation

🤝 50:57 - Strategic Partnerships: Accelerate growth through smart collaborations

🧘 59:42 - Leadership Sustainability: Balance innovation with personal well-being

We had a fantastic conversation with Jake Heller who founded Casetext and sold the company to Thomson Reuters for $650M. We cover the Casetext journey to AI, how he positioned himself to take advantage of the AI wave and his lessons on creating a buzz for M&A. Listen, like and subscribe!

1:00 - The Casetext journey

5:00 - Learning to leverage AI

21:00 - Moats in Vertical AI

29:00 - Thoughts on Building an AI-native startup

32:57 - Defining Customer Obsession and finding PMF

55:23 - Lessons on hiring and the importance of culture

1:04:31 - Decompressing

We had a great conversation with George on his career lessons, coaching his founders to be great, how AI is shifting business models and where he sees the opportunity emerging

Please listen, like and subscribe!

1:42 - George's Journey
10:36 - Lessons and Resilience born from Failure
26:59 - Coaching Well-Rounded Founders
33:56 - Remember the Fundamentals when Building AI
40:22 - Changing business models to fit AI
52:43 - Where do startups win in a noisy world?
1:03:36 - Decompress

In this episode, we have a fantastic conversation with Ankit Jain, CEO of Infinitus. We cover a broad range of topics around selling, delivering value and building with a focus on how Infinitus has been successful in healthcare. We then talk about how AI going to be impact healthcare and how it will get adopted. Please listen and subscribe!

1:27 - Ankit's Journey to Infinitus

14:01 - Taking the entrepreneurial plunge

19:50 - Choosing and building the Services as a Software approach

30:58 - Spotlight on Infinitus

35:11- Pricing Service as a Software

44:35 - Developing the GTM for Healthcare

53:31 - Opportunities for AI in Healthcare

58:15 - Decompress

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Shyam Rao, the founder and CEO of Punchh, for a deep dive into the world of startups and entrepreneurship. Shyam shares his wealth of experience, from bootstrapping Punchh in its early days to scaling it into a successful venture.

We talk to Sumit Agarwal the founder of Ario and Shape Security (acq by F5 for $1B). We decrypt the the journey from the military to building a deep cybersecurity product and now a personal AI assistant. Listen in to uncover his 3D framework that guided the journey of Shape and now Ario. We wrap with how to navigate M&A, a theme which we believe is going to be a key topic in several board meetings this and next year.

3:13 - Sumit's Journey from Air Force to Security to AI

10:07 - Identifying Hard, Valuable, Fun Opportunities

19:24 - Building 3D defensible, differentiated, delightful tech in tough markets

28:33 - Identifying the right talent

37:38 - How to be Customer Focused NOT Revenue Focused

46:02 - Unlocking Value to Drive Price

55:07 - Solving the demand bottleneck in M&A

58:26 - Decompressing with family

In this episode, we talk to Cedric Bru, the CEO of Taulia. Cedric joined the company after spending 7 years as an exec at Visa. In this episode, we dive deeply into how Cedric put his imprint on the business and navigated a crisis with one of their partners going bankrupt.

1:29 - Cedric’s journey into entrepreneurship and going from big company to startup
18:39 - Embracing the possibility of failure when running a startup
23:40 - Developing a high performance culture
35:28 - Putting your imprint on the business as a new leader

46:15 - Navigating the Greensill Crisis

53:10 - Work life balance
1:03:34 - Advice to start companies in a challenging macro

In this episode we have a great conversation with Varun Badhwar. Varun sold his first company, Redlock, to Palo Alto for over $200M. He recently embarked on his 2nd journey to build Endor Labs, where he raised a $70M Series A to secure the software supply chain.

In this episode we cover:

1:04 - Varun’s foray into startups
8:57 - Hiring and building the best when $s are constrained
17:33 - Positioning for success in a noisy market
32:02 - Early GTM Success in an expensive environment
41:08 - Navigating the Palo Alto Acquisition
50:06 - Spotlight on Endor Labs
58:50 - Decompress

1:12 - Story at Microsoft
9:54 - Dealing with ups and downs
14:30 - Bob’s new book “The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future”
17:55 - Culture through scaling
24:26 - What do you look for when hiring
35:20 - Strategies to compete in the modern landscape
50:42 - Threading the needle

In this episode we cover Mahe's journey to being a founder, how Phenom found it's niche and what makes them successful as a business

1:12 - Mahe’s journey
8:01 - AI’s role in business
20:09 - How do you find a wedge in today’s software saturated world?
29:38 - Building/hiring for a sustainable organization
45:32 - Scaling a business