Tonya J. Long is the managing partner of Daymaker Ventures, which works alongside early-stage founders to raise their first million through deal-by-deal SPVs (special purpose vehicles) and builds a community of investors who want a say in each deal. She wrote a best-selling book on AI when generative AI first reached consumers, has advised boards and startups on AI strategy since, and has led technical teams of several hundred people. Through her project Beyond Work, she writes about what work and identity look like as AI takes over the tasks careers were built on.

In this episode, Tonya joins Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft to ask what happens to who we are when the job title stops doing the work of an introduction. They cover why we learned to measure people like factory equipment, the C.A.R.E. traits Tonya looks for in founders, the accountability gap in distributed teams, the HAY Index (Human Agency Yield) she is developing to measure judgment and cross-functional work, and why venture capital may need to rethink what counts as a serious business.

Guest: Tonya J. Long, Managing Partner of Daymaker Ventures

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyajlong/

Daymaker Ventures: https://daymaker.vc/

Beyond Work (website and Substack): https://beyondwork.world/

Ops or Die is the ScaleSpark podcast, hosted by Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft. When your team runs across partners, contractors, and AI agents and the handoffs keep slipping, we build the operating systems that hold it together. Come talk to us at https://scalespark.ai.

Most founders treat legal as the paperwork you handle once a deal is on the table. Business and technology attorney Morvareed Salehpour makes the opposite case: legal architecture is part of building the product, and the founders who bring it in early are the ones who raise more and get acquired for more. She joins Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft to unpack a copy-left near-miss that almost open-sourced a client's proprietary code, why online templates leave AI and SaaS (software as a service) founders exposed, and how to prioritize legal spend when the budget is tight.

In this episode:

The copy-left trap that can unintentionally open-source your proprietary code

Why templates and online legal tools fall short for AI and SaaS founders

Triaging legal risk on a limited budget, starting with your biggest exposure

Data privacy and compliance across US states, consumer health laws, and global markets

How the smartest founders use legal as a growth engine

0:00 Introduction

2:11 Open Source and the Copy-Left Trap

6:33 Legal From Day One: Templates, Triage, and Timing

20:30 Negotiation Strategy and the IP Sections That Sink Deals

33:57 AI, Vibe Coding, and Data Privacy Time Bombs

46:46 Insurance, Liability Chains, and Legal as a Growth Engine

Morvareed Salehpour is the managing attorney of Salehpour Legal, a business and technology law practice serving software, SaaS, AI, digital health, biotech, and media-tech companies, along with the designers, developers, and IT providers who support them. She advises founders on contract negotiation and drafting, data privacy, intellectual property licensing, and mergers and acquisitions. Her focus is bringing legal strategy into product development early, before a gap becomes a liability.

Website: https://www.salehpourlaw.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morvareedsalehpour/

Ops or Die is the ScaleSpark podcast for people who know operations isn't sexy until it saves your business, hosted by Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft. If your operations feel messy but not broken enough yet, the ScaleSpark team is at scalespark.ai.