Have you thought about what your founder futures look like if you're suddenly not here—and whether your business worth is actually protected?

You spend your time thinking about growth, valuation, exits, and risk—but many founders avoid the uncomfortable questions about legacy, control, and continuity. This episode connects estate planning to founder futures, showing how personal preparedness, governance decisions, and AI disruption all shape what really happens to the value you've built when circumstances change.

By listening, you'll gain:

• A practical framework for protecting your founder futures by understanding how estate plans, healthcare directives, and digital assets prevent chaos for your family and your company.

• Clear insight into scaling a venture-backed platform the right way, including term sheets, preference stacks, board control, and why "IPO-ready" thinking matters more than chasing an IPO.

• A CEO's perspective on AI disruption and defensibility, including how category leaders must rebuild for an AI-native future before competitors force the change.

Press play and learn how to safeguard your founder futures while building a company—and a legacy—that holds up under real-world pressure.

Check out:

• ~06:30–09:30
  Why estate planning matters even if you "don't have much"
  Cody explains why wills, healthcare directives, and digital assets matter regardless of net worth—and why certainty beats assumptions for families and founders.

• ~32:00–38:00
  Venture capital reality: term sheets, preferences, and board control
  A candid CEO-to-CEO discussion on VC tradeoffs, preference stacks, governance, and why founders must be willing to walk away from bad terms.

• ~1:07:00–1:14:00
  AI disruption and rebuilding to protect the business
  Cody outlines why AI is both the biggest threat and opportunity, and how Trust & Will is thinking about becoming AI-native before a challenger forces the change.

About Code Barbo

Cody Barbo is the Co-Founder & CEO of Trust & Will, the leading digital estate planning platform in the U.S., trusted by over one million families. Since launching in 2017, Trust & Will has modernized legacy planning with simple, secure, and attorney-approved online solutions tailored to state-specific laws. Under Cody's leadership, the company has raised over $75 million in funding, and its customers report more than $100 billion in estate assets on the platform. Trust & Will supports 20,000+ financial advisors and 200+ banks and enterprise partners, including AARP, Fifth Third Bank, UBS, and USAA. Recently, the company introduced EstateOS, the first intelligent estate planning platform designed to revolutionize legacy planning through embedded AI guidance, streamlined workflows, and enhanced collaboration between families and financial professionals.

Trust & Will was recognized on the Inc. 5000 list for the second consecutive year in 2024. Cody was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2023 Pacific Southwest Award Winner and regularly contributes to Forbes, Fast Company, and Inc. He is passionate about leveraging technology to transform estate planning from a transactional task into a deeply meaningful and personal experience.

Is your company's "AI disruption" happening with you—or quietly without you… and putting your business worth at risk?

If you're leading a mid-to-large company right now, you're probably feeling two pressures at the same time: move faster with AI and don't blow up the business while you do it. Because AI isn't a future trend anymore—it's already being built, tested, and used across departments, geographies, and teams (often without a single unified view). And that creates a real leadership headache: how do you scale AI for competitive advantage while still keeping guardrails in place?

In this episode, Jim Schleckser talks with Pete Foley (CEO of ModelOp) about what happens when AI spreads "like wildfire" inside an organization—and how to regain control without killing momentum.

You'll walk away with:

• A practical way to get visibility into AI across your organization so you know what models exist, what they're doing, and where the biggest risks are hiding.

• A framework for putting governance and guardrails in place without slowing innovation—so you can move faster than competitors and sleep at night.

• A clearer path to scaling AI investments into real business outcomes (revenue, cost reduction, risk control) instead of letting models sit stuck in limbo for 9–12 months.

Hit play now to learn how to build AI guardrails that protect your brand and accelerate results—so you can boost business worth before the market decides who survives the disruption.

Check out:

• [02:10] "In five years, there'll be two kinds of companies…" — Jim frames the stakes of AI disruption and why ignoring it threatens long-term survival and business worth.

• [10:45] The real AI bottleneck: why models take 9–12 months to reach production — Pete explains what's slowing companies down and why that pace won't survive the next wave.

• [23:30] The "air traffic controller" approach to AI governance — visibility, risk assignment, guardrails, and real-time monitoring so AI can scale without chaos.

About Pete Foley

With more than 25 years of executive and entrepreneurial experience in enterprise software and a track record of successful business exits, Pete Foley's leadership gives ModelOp customers, partners and employees a high level of trust and confidence in the company and its future.

Prior to co-founding ModelOp, Pete held several chief executive roles, including CEO of RingCube Technologies, a desktop virtualization software solution provider acquired by Citrix in 2011; CEO of PortAuthority Technologies, a provider of data leak protection systems, from 2005 through its acquisition by Websense in 2007; and CEO of Infoblox (BLOX) from 2002 through 2005. In addition, Pete was the Executive Chairman of Graphite Systems, a low latency, flash-based big data appliance that was acquired by EMC, from 2012 to 2015.

Ever catch yourself wondering, "What is my business worth—like, the real number, not the cocktail-party guess?"

If your business represents the majority of your net worth (and for most CEOs, it does), not knowing your true valuation is risky. You could be planning an exit, thinking about succession, considering a partnership change, or even just trying to make smarter growth decisions—but without a real valuation framework, you're basically relying on back-of-the-napkin math. In this episode, you'll get a clear, CEO-friendly breakdown of how valuations actually work and what drives value up (or quietly drags it down).

You'll walk away with:

• A practical understanding of the real valuation methods (market comps, public peer multiples, discounted cash flow, and when asset-based valuation applies) so you can stop guessing and start thinking like an investor.

• A sharper perspective on what increases or decreases your company's value—especially risk factors like customer concentration, shaky financials, key-person dependency, and unreliable forecasts.

• A clearer playbook for "valuation readiness" so you can improve value before a buyer, a partner, or the IRS forces the question.

Press play now and steal the same valuation lens buyers use—so you can protect your wealth, reduce risk, and increase what your business is worth before the next big decision hits.

Check out:

• 0:03:10 — The 3 main ways your business is valued (market comps, public peer multiples, and discounted cash flow—plus why valuation is forward-looking).

• 00:10:55 — How to value intangible assets like patents and trademarks (including the "relief from royalty" method that's surprisingly practical).

• 00:22:40 — The biggest value drivers you can actually control (clean financials, forecasting confidence, reducing key-person risk, and de-risking the business for buyers).

About Dave Bookbinder

Dave Bookbinder is a corporate finance executive with a focus on business and intangible asset valuation. Known as a collaborative consultant, Dave has served thousands of client companies of all sizes and industries.

Dave has conducted valuations of the securities and intangible assets of public and private companies for various purposes including acquisition, divestiture, financial reporting, stock-based compensation, fairness and solvency opinions, reorganizations, recapitalizations, estate planning, S-Corp. conversion, exit strategy, and succession planning.