The {Closed} Session cover art

The {Closed} Session

The {Closed} Session

By: Tom Chavez Vivek Vaidya super{set}
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 Building a company from scratch is soul-sucking and mind-numbingly hard - but it’s the best thing ever. We know this because we’ve built a couple ourselves - and we’re building a lot more right now. We’ve made a lot of money for our employees, our shareholders, ourselves - we’re proud of that - and that’s why we want to talk about how it’s done. Join us - Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya - in The Closed Session, where we reveal all the joys and sorrows of company building. From the guttermost to the uttermost, we’re not going to hold back.© 2019-2022 Economics
Episodes
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    Building startups and wealth with purpose
    Jan 5 2026

    Most VCs chase momentum while missing systematic market dislocations worth billions. Sean Mendy, co-founding partner at Westbound Equity Partners, built a $125M fund targeting the 97% funding gap for underrepresented founders. He didn't do this out of charity, but as alpha generation through expanded deal flow and objective evaluation frameworks. The conversation reveals how network-driven sourcing creates self-reinforcing homogeneity, why impact metrics must align with venture-scale business outcomes, and Westbound's 50% profit-sharing model that attracts values-aligned founders in competitive rounds.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    35 mins
  • Building a Billion-Dollar AI Startup

    Building a Billion-Dollar AI Startup
    Dec 15 2025

    Most AI 'innovation' is just workflow automation disguised as intelligence. Benjamin Shapiro, founder of I Hear Everything and creator of AI-powered podcast production systems, talks with Tom Chavez about the brutal realities of building defensible AI companies versus riding the hype cycle.

    Tom and Ben dissect why proprietary data virtuosity trumps LLM wrappers, how outcome-oriented AI solutions kill traditional left-to-right workflows, and why founders must quintuple their execution speed or face extinction in the compressed imagination-to-execution timeline.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    22 mins
  • How to build a global AI infrastructure company

    How to build a global AI infrastructure company
    Dec 1 2025

    Most enterprises burn millions on idle GPUs while developers wait weeks for access. Haseeb Budhani, CEO of Rafay Systems, built a global GPU orchestration platform after exits at Soha Systems (acquired by Akamai) and brings deep infrastructure expertise to solving the $100B GPU waste crisis. He reveals why 93% of Fortune 500 companies achieve sub-85% GPU utilization, how sovereign AI requirements are driving hundreds of "Neo clouds" globally, and the specific multi-tenancy frameworks that transform expensive compute from sunk cost into competitive advantage.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    34 mins
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