The Scaling CEO

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Stacy, CEO of ID90 Travel, to talk about scaling through survival, hypergrowth, and long-term profitability. We discuss raising $13M and learning capital discipline the hard way, why team quality determines whether growth breaks you, and how leadership style must evolve at every stage. Mike also shares how he’s using AI to accelerate development while protecting the human touch that drives a 95 NPS score.

In this episode, I sit down with Sameer Ahuja to unpack the personal evolution required to scale as a founder and CEO. We talk about why early success becomes a liability, how ego quietly limits growth, and what it really means to commit to a new version of yourself. Sameer also shares insights on distribution strategy, identifying true product-market fit, scaling platforms with multiple stakeholders, and deciding when leaders must change—or step aside—for the company to grow.

In this episode, I speak with Dana McCauley about why innovation investments fail to deliver results in growing companies. We explore the tension between efficiency and modernization, how innovation debt quietly accumulates, and why many organizations buy powerful systems without the depth to use them properly. Dana also shares practical insights on industrial AI, automation in manufacturing, building the right leadership mix, and how CEOs can modernize operations without losing momentum.

In this episode, I talk with Sankalp Arora about the leadership shift technical founders must make as their organizations grow. We discuss why communication replaces product as the CEO’s core job, how repetition creates alignment in complex organizations, and why ignoring human irrationality breaks scaling efforts. Sankalp also shares lessons on managing context switching, protecting mental health, building learning cultures, and operationalizing AI across engineering, finance, and leadership workflows.

In this episode, I sit down with Bryan Murphy to explore why AI is a structural shift, not a feature you simply add to an existing business. We talk about moving from services-heavy models to AI-first platforms, the discipline required to stay focused as a CEO, and the personal blind spots that emerge at scale. Bryan shares lessons from scaling multiple companies, making painful contrarian bets, operationalizing AI across the organization, and building management systems that prevent leaders from becoming the bottleneck.

In this episode, I talk with Pano Anthos of XRC Ventures about why educating the market is one of the most expensive and underestimated barriers to scale. We explore bootstrapping discipline, founder CEO transitions, AI application layers, and why distribution—not capital—is becoming the ultimate competitive advantage for startups and venture-backed companies.

In this episode, I speak with Ted Krantz, CEO of interos.ai, about why product usage is the clearest signal of real product-market fit. We break down daily versus monthly usage, why partial PMF is dangerous, how AI is reshaping SaaS strategy, and what CEOs must prioritize when scaling beyond revenue metrics to build truly sticky, defensible companies.

Brandon Colby, a medical geneticist and founder of Sequencing.com who builds consumer genomics products. He explains why CEOs of deep tech companies need real technical fluency. He talks about moving research into clinics, how clinical training shapes product choices, hiring smarter teams, and where AI actually helps versus where it is just hype.

In this episode, I sit with Eric Martell to break down decision discipline at scale. We talk about why saying yes too often leads to burnout, why defaulting to no kills growth, and how experienced CEOs build clear decision frameworks. We also cover pivots, capital discipline, the shift from builder to leader, and how AI is changing how modern companies operate.

In this episode, I talk with Asad Zaman about why hiring today is harder—and riskier—than ever. We unpack the talent crunch, how AI is shrinking teams while raising the talent bar, and why CEOs must stay involved in hiring longer. We also discuss leadership decay, stage-appropriate hires, CEO energy, and how leaders scale themselves in a high-pressure environment.