From garage to a $250 million global aerospace supplier—and then do it again and again as an investor and mentor.

In this episode, Jerry Jendusa, founder of EMTEQ and now head of Breakthru, shares how a mix of listening to customers, discipline, and people-first leadership drove his growth journey. From bootstrapping to $100 million in sales and $250 million exit, Jerry reflects on lessons learned:

• people trump process
• process trumps product
• customers trump capital
• debt trumps equity.

A proud Wisconsin native, Jerry also discusses building bridges in polarized times through shared purpose and growth.

Favorite Quotes

“We learned, sometimes the hard way, to prioritize people and process—but learned fast. At the end of the day, people create the process, so people always trump process.”

“We set out to raise customers, not capital. We wanted to live inside customers’ value stream: their minds, habits, and pain points.”

“Equity is far more expensive than debt. The smarter you are about leveraging debt, the faster your equity can grow.”

“I still meet $5-million companies who brag, ‘I pay cash for everything.’ My reaction? ‘Are you serious?!?’ That’s not strength—it’s stagnation.”

“To my younger self: don’t start a business—buy one.”

Key Themes

People over process: Sustainable scaling begins with the right team, not the right manual.

Customer intimacy: The best capital is customer trust, not investor cash.

Smart leverage: Knowing when (and how) to use debt accelerates equity growth.

Scaling culture: Values, discipline, and a bias for listening build companies that last.

Key Takeaways

Growth follows focus—on people, customers, and disciplined risk.

Process matters, but only when people buy in.

Debt, used wisely, can be a growth engine.

Entrepreneurs don’t need to invent something new—they can scale what already works better.

From Ghana to Czech Republic to Harvard Business School to the frontlines of Africa’s digital economy, Raphael (“Rafi”) Afaedor's career is a masterclass in vision, immersion, and execution. Having co-founded Jumia—the first African e-commerce giant to list on the NYSE—and later Kyosk, a B2B platform connecting fast-moving consumer goods producers to informal retail shops and end customers, Rafi has learned firsthand how to scale in large, complex markets.

As Rafi explains, Africa’s so-called ‘difficult markets’ are actually vast opportunities for those who learn to adapt to local realities rather than impose foreign business models. From repackaging fertilizer in much smaller, 1kg bags to rethinking online payments, his story is about listening, learning, and building systems that work for real people—not just spreadsheets or foreign VCs.

Favorite Quotes

· “Capital reaches Africa last—and dries up first. Choose investors who have patience and understand the terrain.”

· “You can’t change customer behavior. It’s much easier to work with what already exists than to try to replace it.”

· “Africa’s customer service works—it just works the African way.”

· “Think in decades, not exits. The continent will reward those who stay the course.”

· “Leadership isn’t formal authority. It’s when people still call you ‘boss’ even after you’ve left.”

Key Themes

· Adapting Global Models to Local Realities: Western e-commerce assumptions often fail in Africa; success means redesigning for local buying patterns and logistics.

· Leadership through Respect: Rafi’s philosophy—‘you can’t be a leader if you don’t have followers’—underscores the power of informal authority and dignity.

· Venture Capital Fit: Choosing investors who understand Africa’s pace and volatility can make or break a scaling journey.

· The Long Game: True scale takes patience, persistence, and alignment among partners for the long haul.

· Repackaging for Affordability: A consistent lesson—from fertilizer to consumer goods—is that smaller, accessible SKUs unlock massive new markets.

I believe that one of the biggest challenges in going from a few millions to a few tens of millions is building systems and processes that enable scaling. We have seen this challenge in the majority of the ScaleApp Podcast discussions, Giscad is just the most recent example. As Julie Brandle explains, one aspect of their scaling challenge was to bring on more specialized professional services - legal, accounting, HR etc.

Metis is also a great story of resilience - recession, Pandemic, and now, October 2025, significant market uncertainty.

Maybe we need to re-define “Resilience” = “Metis Construction?”

Julie Brandle, founder and president of Metis Construction in Ohio, has built a significant construction services company based in Ohio. Launching in 2009, in the depths of the recession, Brandle turned uncertainty into opportunity. Today, Metis employs about 50 people, generates $30–50 million in revenue, and works across Ohio and beyond with clients such as Firestone Auto Care, Dollar General, McAlister’s Deli, and Bank of America.

Brandle’s formula is simple but powerful: build trust, deliver on time and on budget, and treat every project—large or small—with equal seriousness. Along the way, she has overcome some skepticism of entering a “man’s business,” "over-scaled" too rapidly during COVID to $50 million, and learned that growth must be strategic, not just fast. Metis is also a proud alum of ScaleratorNEO, where Julie and her team sharpened their growth mindset around the three C’s: cash, customers, and capacity.

Favorite Quotes

· “We hit our goal of around the $50 million mark during COVID. And it’s a stressful mark… don’t grow for the sake of growth.”

· “Sometimes clients would ask who I, a woman at a construction site, brought with me. And I’d say, it’s just me. I’m the owner and president.”

· “Our whole team was on board at ScaleratorNEO - I didn’t have to sell decisions later - yhey were already there, part of it from scratch."

· “If it’s important to you and you need it, we’re here to help you. No project is too small."

Key Themes

· Strategic Growth vs. Fast Growth: Rapid expansion can overwhelm systems, people, and processes; scaling requires infrastructure upgrades at every stage.

· Resilience in Uncertainty: Starting in a recession, weathering COVID, and navigating inflationary shocks, Metis has adapted while maintaining service.

· Culture & Teamwork: Remote work strained culture, but flexibility and intentional rebuilding are helping restore cohesion.

· Women in Construction: Julie has confronted skepticism head-on, proving that credibility comes from competence and delivery.

· Scalerator Impact: Involving the whole team in structured growth planning made scaling practices stick.

Background

In this episode, I welcome our first Trinidad & Tobago venture to ScaleApp Podcasts: Giscad, co-founded by Desmond Dougall and Sudesh Botha. What began 22 years ago as two engineers suddenly out of work has grown into a 50-person regional powerhouse operating across nearly numerous Caribbean markets. Giscad is a ScaleratorT&T alumnus.

Academics in the entrepreneurship space often make a stark dichotomy between so-called “opportunity entrepreneurship” and so-called “necessity entrepreneurship”, but the dichotomy is often a false one. I have never bought it, and now we have seen now three significant ventures in which needing to make an income lead to a regional or even global leader. The idea they are separate is, frankly, kind of bullshit.

Favorite Quotes

· “You get customers’ trust when you say, ‘no, we don’t do that, and it won’t be good for you.’”

· "You don’t have all the answers. Take risks. Be open to advice.”

· "We almost crashed and burned because we were growing 20% every year for eight years but had no cash to fund the growth.”

· “We have more external thank internal directors. It keeps you from doing nonsense.”

· “Be prepared for setbacks. Don’t take them personally. Keep moving forward.”

· “ScaleratorT&T totally changed our focus on how we would approach customers: building that customer persona, modeling the customer, and then also modeling the customer journey.”

Key Themes

Origin Story – Born from necessity after a downsizing, Desmond and Sudesh used their expertise in GIS and CAD to launch Giscad. Early success came as the local Autodesk rep, winning against global giants by offering nimble, relationship-driven service.

Scaling Beyond Software – Giscad pioneered GPS tracking in the Caribbean, evolving into the region’s largest fleet management provider. Today, fleet solutions, Autodesk distribution, consulting, and GIS services make up the business, with offerings layered together to create strong customer stickiness.

Challenges & Turning Points – Eight years in, rapid growth nearly bankrupted them. They turned to governance, external directors, and financial discipline to survive and grow.

Culture & Trust – Built on telling customers 'no' when needed, focusing on solving problems rather than selling solutions, and expanding with local presence across multiple Caribbean nations.

Takeaways

· Necessity can lead directly to opportunity and growth.

· Trust and honesty are differentiators in markets dominated by relationships.

· Professional governance and financial discipline are essential when scaling.

· Layering services across business lines strengthens customer loyalty and market share.

· Programs like ScaleratorT&T can sharpen strategy and unify teams.

Do we need to re-define "Chutzpah" = "Positron?" Mitesh Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Positron AI, is leading one of the most audacious ventures in the tech world today: building silicon to compete directly with NVIDIA. Backed by over $70 million in funding from DFJ, Valor, Atreides, Oakseed (disclosure: I am an LP) and others, and already shipping product within 18 months of founding, Positron’s bet is that the market for inference—the part of AI that actually generates text, images, code, and video—will soon dwarf training of LLM models, which is NVIDIA's bread and butter. By focusing on efficiency (performance per watt, per dollar) rather than general-purpose GPUs, Positron aims to make AI more scalable, more affordable, and far less power-hungry BY A LARGE MARGIN. With early customers such as Cloudflare and ParaSail (and others), Positron has $10's of millions in bookings and is ramping up to reach $100s millions by 2026. Agrawal’s co-founders bring unusual strengths: Thomas Sohmers, a Thiel Fellow who taped out a silicon chip at age 19, and Edward Kmett, one of the world’s leading Haskell contributors. Together, they are challenging the world’s most valuable company. (BTW this may change my aversion to the whole idea of "Thiel Fellow" which I used to call "Thief Fellows.")

Favorite Quotes

“We are living in an exponential growth of usage.”

“For inference, companies really care about efficiency—performance per watt and per dollar.”

“It took us just 18 months to go from founding to first product and first revenue.”

“The biggest challenge and the biggest fun is convincing customers you’ll be around in 3, 5, 10 years.” (We will be - with a raise of over $70 mio!)

“Ultimately, it comes down to a very unhinged belief that we will deliver faster.”

Key Themes

• Inference is the growth engine of AI: already $100 billion in compute spend this year and growing 5x year over year.
• NVIDIA’s GPUs dominate both training and inference, but they are general-purpose, power-hungry, and expensive—opening room for specialized chips.
• Positron’s edge is focus: custom silicon for inference, shipping fast, and driving down costs to unlock massive adoption.
• Scaling a silicon startup requires not only cutting-edge design but also building credibility with customers and managing capital-intensive production.
• Investors and early customers are betting that Positron can move faster than the giant, even if the ultimate outcome is acquisition.

Key Takeaways

• Inference is where the revenue is: companies pay per query or per generated output, and every cent saved per transaction scales massively.
• Speed to market matters: Positron went from founding to revenue in 18 months, compared to 4–5 years for most chip startups.
• Customer trust hinges on two things—performance today and confidence that Positron will still be shipping chips five years from now.
• Capital allocation is overwhelmingly R&D-driven (70%+), but profitability on sales helps fund growth.
• The organizational challenge ahead is maturing management and operations while retaining the boldness to outpace NVIDIA.

Background / Introduction

What is the biggest bottleneck keeping the stream of drugs and devices from getting to market? R&D? Capital? Maybe, but managing regulatory compliance is right up there. Safely speeding time to market for pharmaceutical and medical device makers is huge.... IF you can pull it off. 50% of time to market is in regulatory compliance.

Enter Erez Kaminski and Ketryx. Managing AI for Amgen, Erez saw first‑hand how slow, costly, and error‑prone compliance work is for safety‑critical products. He and Jan Poschko founded Ketryx in 2021 to help regulated teams design, develop, test, and deploy by automating and validating documentation and evidence generation. With active support and financing from E14, the MIT Media Lab affiliate fund, Erez got Ketryx into the market and into customers’ workflows significantly decreasing time to market and resource inefficiency. 25 million patients covered, 2% of all FDA clearances. Backed by E14, Ubiquity Ventures, 53 Stations, Lightspeed, and Transformation Capital.

Favorite Quotes

“Move fast and break nothing.”

“Patients are dying and we’re sitting here working on paperwork.”

“First we focused on safe. Then we focused on speed. Then we focused on innovation.”

“Great people produce great things.”

“Staff for slope, not just intercept—recruit teachable high‑performers and invest in mentorship so the organization can scale.”

Key Themes

• Regulatory drag is massive: evidence packages can run to thousands of pages per version; compliance can consume ~50% of time‑to‑market.
• AI can safely generate, trace, and review compliance evidence when embedded deeply in product workflows.
• Trust is earned through delivery and measurable ROI.
• Safety first, then speed, then broader innovation.
• Talent and culture: hire exceptional, high‑IQ/EQ contributors and develop them rapidly;

Key Takeaways

• Adoption hinges on risk‑sensitive buyers; early wins with innovative leaders create momentum in conservative industries.
• Clear economic case: shorter time‑to‑market, less burnout, and higher product safety build a durable enterprise ROI story.
• Leadership, leadership, leadership.

Background / Intro

FactoredAI was incubated in 2019 by Israel Niezen out of Andrew Ng’s AI Fund with $2.5 mio “we didn’t really need,” and today has over 300 of the top 1% of talent in LATAM solving complex data problems by building world-class AI and ML/LLM solutions. Factored went from $.7mio in 2020 to $3mio to $8mio to $13mo to $18 mio in 2024, and will break $30mio in 2025. Their plan is to break $100mio in 2028. Clients include global leaders in retail, car rental, dating apps, and healthcare.

Key Themes

• Talent Arbitrage with Quality Focus – FactoredAI taps into the top 1% of LATAM data scientists, mathematicians and engineers, offering US clients best talent-lower cost tech development.
• Still, FactorAI competes on quality, not price. Cost savings is a "bonus."
• Services Model, Not a Marketplace – FactoredAI embeds engineers long-term or delivering fully managed solutions.
• Word-of-Mouth Driven Growth – The company grew to $18 mio ARR before hiring sales and marketing, relying on Israel’s personal network and repeat business from client executives who moved companies.
• Remote-First but Culture-Strong – With 300+ employees in 21 countries (14 in Latin America), FactoredAI fosters community through in-person gatherings, festivals, and weekly virtual rituals.

My Favorite Quotes

“Making this top talent feel excited and part of a team is the biggest challenge and the one thing we have gotten right.“

“We have a high density of top talent people, people who really care, and they are the best quality filters for new talent.”

“The other thing we got right is being authentic about our mission: We are allowing US companies to grow by giving them the best of the best.”

"Fall in love with a problem that you really, really authentically want to solve."

"Execution informs strategy. You learn by doing first, and strategy follows."

"We are not creating a body shop. We’re building one of the world’s highest caliber AI services firms."

Introduction

Rosalyn and Blair Hyslop met as teenagers Atlantic Canada in Junior Achievement and from the start dreamed of running a business together. That dream became reality when they acquired Mrs. Dunster’s, a beloved regional bakery known for its authentic donuts, garlic cheese buns, and grew it to offer hundreds of other homestyle baked goods. At the time, the business had about $7M in revenues and 50 employees; today it is 6–7x larger, with over 250 employees, multiple bakeries, and retail stores of its own. They expect to double again within 3–5 years.

Key Themes

• Maintain emotional connection: Customers don’t just buy Mrs. Dunster’s products; they buy into stories, memories, and tradition—grandmothers’ recipes, family road trips, and comfort food.

• Prioritize quality while you scale: Even as they’ve grown, Blair and Rosalyn have insisted that they must replicate the texture and taste of homemade food. If new machines don’t match their quality standards, they are rejected—even if that slows productivity. And overhaul systems even if it is painful and takes time and money.

• Be a platform to scale acquisitions: Growth has come not just from buying revenue but from acquiring family bakeries that add new capabilities (bread, rolls, retail).

• Hire ahead of need. Sometimes you must stretch for top talent before you can “afford” it—because the right person pays for themselves many times over.

• Celebrating wins: A key cultural shift inspired by their Scalerator experience was starting every meeting with “wins”—big or small—to balance the daily grind of problem-solving.

Key Takeaways

• Protect authenticity as you scale – Don’t sacrifice taste and emotional connection for efficiency.

• Use acquisitions for capability, not just revenue – Strategic buys can open entire new categories to build revenues on your existing platform.

• Invest in people ahead of growth – The right hires unlock capacity.

• Scaling requires systems – Growth without process maturity chokes the business.

• Celebrate wins internally – It builds pride and balances the stress of scaling.

• Follow your customers – Many of their biggest growth moves came directly from customer demand.

Favorite Quotes

• “We don’t want to be like everybody else—we’re not going to out-white bread the white bread guys.”
• "Scalerator taught us to celebrate wins, large and small, ALL the time. It was a massive culture shift for us and has paid off."
• “We’re not sending out units. We’re sending out food that people are going to eat, their kids are going to eat.”
• “Sometimes you need to make the leap and hire the higher-level person you don’t think you can afford—they end up paying for themselves.”
• “We grew 30% a year for five years and ran out of money four times. Growth eats cash.”