Beyond the Case

Sohin Shah

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A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies. This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.

HACE 17 H

Sold to OpenAI: The Patience, People, and Principles Behind the Exit - Tomasz Kulakowski

Send a text He sold his company to OpenAI last month and the story behind it is a masterclass in patient entrepreneurship, long-term bets, and knowing when to start. Tomasz Kulakowski didn’t start his entrepreneurial journey fresh out of college. He started after losing a job, being told he was “overqualified,” and asking himself a simple but dangerous question: If I’m overqualified to join, maybe I’m qualified to build. That decision, made in his early 30s, led to multiple companies, several exits, and most recently, the sale of his AI infrastructure company to OpenAI. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: 1) The hardest part of entrepreneurship is deciding to begin. Once you decide, most obstacles become solvable problems instead of excuses. 2) Job loss can be a gift. Being forced out of comfort creates the space to build something truly yours. 3) Start where you have unfair understanding. Tomasz anchored his ventures in advanced software, algorithms, and AI - domains he deeply understood. 4) Co-founders matter more than ideas. He credits early momentum to finding the right partners quickly and building with people smarter than himself. 5) Bet early on the future, not when it’s obvious. In 2014, long before AI was mainstream, his team began investing in machine learning talent and infrastructure. 6) Winning reveals opportunity. After winning a global Kaggle/NOAA competition, they realized something critical was missing: proper tooling for data scientists to collaborate, version models, and scale work. 7) Infrastructure beats hype. They built what became a “GitHub for data scientists” quietly powerful, deeply technical, and strategically valuable. OpenAI agreed. 8) Exits are fragile until the money hits the bank. Until closing, everything is risk. Due diligence is long, sensitive, and often reveals things founders themselves overlook. 9) For your first exit, optimize for closing, not ego. A slightly lower valuation is better than no deal. Your first exit buys freedom, credibility, and future leverage. 10) Wisdom = listening + sharing success. A wise leader listens more than talks, surrounds themselves with smarter people, and shares credit with the team. His advice to younger founders? Start earlier. Be brave. If you’re unsure—start anyway. Entrepreneurship, as Tomasz shows, isn’t about perfect timing. It’s about committing early, compounding skill, and building with humility until opportunity finds you. Books: Leaders Eat Last

26 min
HACE 1 DÍA

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Harvard OPM and Indian VCs with Vinay Pasricha

Send a text Vinay Pasricha shares his unfiltered and potentially controversial observations from 25 years as a serial entrepreneur in India. He ran an education training company that scaled to 200,000 students across 40 cities before winding it down. Five years ago, he pivoted to AI, building talent acquisition automation that reduced recruitment time from 6 weeks to 24 hours and costs from ₹2 lakhs to ₹3,000, a 100x improvement. His platform now has 1.5 million candidates and can find any profile in India within 24 hours. Vinay candidly discusses what he's witnessed in the Indian startup ecosystem, his Harvard OPM experience, and the realities of building technology businesses in India. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:AI's Transformative Scale: Unlike traditional software offering 10-20% productivity gains, AI delivers 100x improvements, fundamentally changing competitive dynamics rather than incremental optimization.Trust Frontline Judgment: The person on the ground knows their local situation better than headquarters. Empowering local leaders and resisting the urge to override decisions is critical for multi-geography operations.Absolute Honesty Pays: Every instance of bending the truth comes back to bite you, often years later. Being completely straight and upfront saves tremendous time and trouble in the long run.Self-Funding Reality in India: Real technology businesses struggle to get funded in India. VCs fund proven models (food delivery, e-commerce) but not genuine innovation. Plan to self-fund for 3 years minimum.Drop the Hero Complex: Stop proving you're the smartest person in the room. Success isn't about your ego or intelligence. It's about empowering others to execute better and letting them own the credit.Geographic Nuance Matters: India operates like different countries. What works in Delhi differs from Mumbai, Chennai, or Kolkata. Emphasizing with local contexts is essential.Question Prestigious Education: Vinay candidly shared that his Harvard OPM experience added minimal value. Many participants were "buying stamps" rather than seeking genuine learning. Don't assume brand names equal substance.Indian VC Backs "Samosa Shops": Funding flows to scaling proven consumer businesses (chai stalls, delivery services), not authentic technology innovation. India produces traders masquerading as tech companies, not breakthrough technology.Three-Year Runway Requirement: Only start a real technology business if you have family money to sustain three years independently. Otherwise, high-paying jobs offer better economics without blood, sweat, and tears.Early Adoption Advantage: Vinay partnered with OpenAI and Microsoft years before ChatGPT went public, giving him a massive head start. Being an early adopter of transformative technology creates insurmountable competitive advantages.Books: The FountainheadThinking, Fast and Slow

35 min
HACE 4 DÍAS

Nothing Is Impossible When Discipline Is a Lifestyle: Ironman Lessons - Mohamed Mahlab

Send us a text Elite endurance fitness demands structure, early mornings, repetition, and the ability to keep going when your brain wants to stop. Mohamed Mahlab uses that same “choose the hard thing” mindset to challenge himself as a leader: he sets public commitments, builds disciplined routines, and carries responsibility for thousands of livelihoods. Starting sport at 38 - overweight, out of breath, finishing last, he rebuilt confidence through daily training, then progressed step-by-step from short triathlons to 24 Ironman finishes. The deeper lesson wasn’t the medal; it was proof that “impossible” can be trained into “done,” and that solo preparation creates self-belief you can’t outsource. In business, he grew Rowad Modern Engineering from a tiny, borrowed-furniture setup into a top construction player in Egypt operating across ~10 countries. He credits relentless work, differentiation and ethics as the compounding edge. He’s cautious about scaling too fast because culture, capability, and reputation take time. Crisis periods (2011 revolution, COVID) became accelerators: he expanded cross-border, kept sites running to protect labor incomes, and used the disruption to improve systems and digitalization. His leadership philosophy: be a finisher, enable others to succeed, and treat success as a responsibility, not a trophy. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: 1. Raise the bar gradually: sprint → Olympic → half → full; progress beats bravado. 2. Public commitment fuels grit: accountability to family/team can outlast motivation. 3. Be a finisher: train “2 hours and 1 minute,” not “2 hours minus 1.” 4. Discipline is trained early—and refined forever: identify weaknesses and work them. 5. Responsibility creates stamina: thousands of employees’ families change the meaning of “tired.” 6. Differentiate through basics: safety gear, schedules, professionalism—especially when the market doesn’t. 7. Ethics as strategy: the “right way” may be slower, but it protects longevity. 8. Don’t scale faster than capability: culture, know-how, and ecosystem trust take time. 9. Hard times can be opportunities: revolution and COVID pushed expansion and operational upgrades. 10. Learn continuously, apply immediately: cases (Toyota, Friendly Fire, execution boot camps) became real operating changes. Books: From Good to GreatCharles de Gaulle

39 min
5 FEB

The Cost of Ambition No One Measures - Somdutta Singh

Send us a text This talk is really about rewiring what “success” means. From chasing validation, money, and outcomes to building with reflection, detachment, discipline, and community, while protecting your inner life (mental health, spirituality, relationships, and creative practice). Somdutta Singh shares how she broke away from a “doctors and scholars” family expectation to pursue entrepreneurship, driven early by the idea of high risk, high reward but later grounding that drive in reflection, discipline, and self-awareness (influenced by Dr. Amar Bose). She describes building and exiting companies, then scaling her third venture, Assiduus, and why reflection matters: entrepreneurs often get overly attached to outcomes, opinions, and rejection, which can derail decision-making and mental health. She speaks candidly about depression during a high-growth phase, despite strong financial performance, triggered by culture not scaling, relationship strain, and the illusion of “work-life balance.” Therapy helped her reconnect with self-worth, stop chasing validation, and return to what made her whole: spirituality and music. That inner rebuild reshaped her ambition: success became less about personal wins and more about creating leaders, enabling wealth for the team, and impact. On leadership, she names non-negotiables: clarity, passion + prudence, and kindness. She discusses the hardest CEO decisions of letting people go when they don’t scale with the company, while keeping relationships intact through an alumni network. On women in leadership, she highlights an uncomfortable truth: women often don’t support women enough, shaped by years of insecurity and trauma, but change is possible through intentional investing and community-building. She closes with OPM learnings (listening, unlearning, community) and advice to her younger self: stop chasing, love yourself more. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: Reflection is a competitive advantage: it reduces over-attachment to ego, outcomes, and rejection—and keeps you focused on “why.”Execution needs humility: hire people better than you; vision isn’t enough.Detachment isn’t apathy: care deeply, but don’t let setbacks define you.Mental health is real and common: treat depression like any other health issue—get unbiased help early.Numbers aren’t the full scorecard: revenue/profit can rise while culture and inner life collapse.“Balance” can be a trap: entrepreneurs may need integration, boundaries, and support systems more than perfection.Return to non-transactional anchors: music, spirituality, sport, art—these stabilize the builder.Leadership non-negotiables: clarity, passion + prudence, and kindness (skills can be taught; character is harder).Hardest CEO move: letting loyal early teammates go when the company outgrows the fit—do it with dignity and continuity (alumni mindset).Stop chasing validation: your definition of success must come from within; self-love fuels sustainable ambition.Books: Many Lives, Many Masters Atomic HabitsThe Hard Thing About Hard ThingsZero to OneBhagavad GitaWorks of Swami Vivekananda

40 min
4 FEB

Scaling Trust in a Volatile, Unorganized Market - Akshay Verma

Send us a text How do you go about scaling in an unorganized industry that’s mid-disruption—while commodity prices swing wildly and brand “differences” can feel paper-thin? You stop trying to sell a product and start engineering trust, systems, and culture that compound over decades. Akshay Verma is a third-generation leader of Verma Jewelers in Himachal Pradesh, India, about modernizing a legacy business in a traditionally unorganized jewelry market. As competition intensifies with corporate chain entrants, he shares the core challenge for family jewelers: shifting mindset from owner-operator to organized enterprise by building processes, teams, and a replicable customer experience. He also addresses gold-price volatility as both threat and opportunity for driving innovation in product mix and a push toward tech-enabled retail. On e-commerce, he argues it can’t be half-hearted: it must start with clear customer understanding and likely works best as digital + physical, especially for everyday wear versus wedding buying. On disruptions like lab-grown diamonds, Akshay takes a segmented view: separate audiences, separate positioning - natural diamonds retain their “original” status, while lab-grown serves affordability-driven demand. Finally, he credits personal transformation and executive education especially Harvard Business School’s OPM and mentorship from Rahul Jain for expanding his ambition, delegation capacity, and long-term vision. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: In commodities, trust is the real product. The differentiation comes from reputation, honesty on purity/quality, and being part of life’s milestone moments - not just selling metal.The hard part of scaling a family business is mindset, not money. Moving from “I handle everything” to “systems + people + delegation” is the real transformation.Culture must be operationalized, not framed. Core values (ownership, accountability, discipline, punctuality, customer-first) become scalable only when trained, measured, and enforced.Go to the customer before you build everywhere. The mobile exhibition model is a clever way to expand reach across small towns without committing massive capital to permanent storefronts.Volatility forces innovation, if you let it. Gold-price swings push experimentation in product mix (e.g., lower-carat daily wear) and better tech/processes.E-commerce isn’t optional, but “half-in” fails. Digital works when you deeply understand customer behavior and start with the right categories, while keeping physical for high-touch occasions.Hybrid retail is the likely end-state. Jewelry buying often needs feel/fit/experience so digital should amplify discovery and convenience, not replace the showroom entirely.Disruptions like lab-grown need segmentation, not denial. Treat it as a different customer and value proposition don’t confuse “premium legacy” positioning with “accessible alternative.”Brand storytelling can be localized and still premium. Campaigns that turn real customers into the face of the brand and celebrate local culture create identity, pride, and viral familiarity.Personal discipline becomes leadership leverage. Early mornings, health routines, and protected family time aren’t just lifestyle changes. They enable clearer thinking, better delegation, and sustained expansion energy. Books: The 12 Week YearTraction

31 min
1 FEB

How My Principles Replaced My Instincts - with Radu Dumitrescu

Send us a text Restaurants don’t win on food alone, they win on feel. Radu Dumitrescu, founder & CEO of Stadio Hospitality Concepts, lays out a leadership philosophy built on culture, principles, and a relentless focus on the guest experience. A lifelong entrepreneur who started his first business at 18 and later sold a major printing operation, he entered hospitality almost accidentally. Then scaled to ~10 a la carte restaurants and 440 employees. His core idea: people don’t go out to “eat,” they go out to experience, and that experience is an equal balance of design, product, price, and service. Internally, he runs the company like a long game: promote from within, prioritize behavioral standards over pure technical skill, and build culture through consistent everyday actions, especially when nobody is watching. He also challenges the myth of “work-life balance” as a neat formula, arguing it’s all just life and the balance shifts with seasons. Inspired by Harvard Business School’s OPM cases and books like Principles, he’s codifying what made the company work via “Project Clarity” - documenting culture, roles, processes, and teams to scale to the next stage and improve guest experience. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: Experience beats cuisine. Food matters, but the “why” of dining out is the full emotional package.The 4-part experience model: design + product + price + service. Each must pull its weight.Culture is behavior, repeated. It’s built daily, including when no one is watching.Authenticity is operational. “Do what you say” isn’t branding. It’s leadership hygiene.Hire and promote for attitude first. His “51–49” lens favors emotional/behavioral fit over pure technical skill.Retention is a strategy. Low turnover comes from care, stability, and real support beyond payroll.Structure reduces chaos. A big team isn’t inherently chaotic if roles and growth paths are clear.Over-planning can kill momentum. Early “guts” matter; details come after movement starts.Work-life balance isn’t a spreadsheet. Entrepreneurship runs in waves. Learn to self-regulate, not time-box.Codify to scale. “Project Clarity” (culture, roles, processes, teams) turns tribal knowledge into repeatable execution. Books: PrinciplesGood to GreatBeyond Entrepreneurship 2.0Zero to One

27 min
30 ENE

From a Billion-Dollar Market Cap to Insolvency: Decisions, Reflection, and a Robust Second Innings - Pujit Aggarwal

Send us a text From a $1B market-cap market darling to a wipeout, this conversation traces how Pujit Aggarwal - former MD & CEO of Orbit Corporation, a Mumbai-based luxury real estate developer that went public via an IPO - thinks about ambition, decision-making, and rebuilding after a steep reversal. Orbit, once a listed company, was ordered to be wound up by the Bombay High Court in April 2018 after it failed to repay debts; reporting around the same period cites liabilities exceeding ₹1,380 crore, which is roughly $150 million at current exchange rates. Across the interview, he explains Orbit’s original thesis - premium South/Central Mumbai redevelopment with unusually high quality standards - alongside what he describes as the drivers of distress: regulatory delays, high-cost debt, and expanding into larger, more capital-intensive land acquisitions. He frames the difficult period as something to “own,” likening it to a pilgrimage that required endurance, acceptance, and persistence, and says his “second innings” in real estate is now underway. He also reflects on how success has shifted for him over time - from wealth-first to prioritizing relationships, health/spirituality, and then business—and emphasizes OPM as a major inflection point in his learning and worldview. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: Chaptered career view: He frames his life in “10-year blocks,” each with distinct lessons - early work, OPM learning, peak public-market years, loss/rebuild, and a new phase ahead.What he credits for early momentum: A mix of market understanding (South/Central Mumbai), redevelopment opportunity, and a deliberate bet on premium product positioning.Quality as a strategy choice: He repeatedly prioritizes durability/materials and long-term build quality, arguing the “bottom line will follow quality.”Where he locates the inflection: He attributes the downturn to a combination of policy/regulatory friction, high-cost debt, and shifting from smaller redevelopment plots to larger acquisitions once financing access improved.Cash-flow timing matters as much as demand: Even in a market where “anything sells,” he points to stalled construction and delayed revenues creating a severe cash-flow mismatch.Mindset under pressure: His coping frame is not denial or bargaining; it’s acceptance (“own the issue”) and endurance, described through the “pilgrimage” metaphor.Regulation: clearer, not simpler: He argues the regime has improved with greater disclosure and structure (he compares approvals to IPO-level disclosure), while still warning that gray areas and surprises remain.Title diligence as a core operator skill: He treats clean title as non-negotiable and suggests digitization has improved speed and access to information, but places responsibility on the developer to get to “100%.”Litigation preference: He advocates for commercial settlement, sitting across the table, rather than spending years in court, presenting negotiation as the practical path.Founder advice: protect baseline cash flows + preserve the core idea: His guidance is to secure steady cash flows for essentials (salaries, basic needs) while resisting over-dilution of the original entrepreneurial vision from too many external opinions.

28 min
26 ENE

The Quiet Math of a Meaningful Life and Its North Star - Rajan Shah

Send us a text If you had to write your obituary today, what would you want it to say - how many lives you lifted, or how perfectly you avoided failure? Rajan Shah’s story argues that the legacy worth leaving demands risk, learning, and the courage to fail early because resilience, impact, and integrity are built in the messy middle, not in a spotless record. Rajan Shah, founder and CEO of Capwell Industries in Kenya, shares a three-decade journey building a food manufacturing business rooted in staples (maize, wheat, rice, pulses) and evolving into higher-value foods (baked goods, beverages, ready-to-eat meals) while expanding across East Africa. He challenges the dominant “Africa is too hard” narrative: yes, there are real friction points like cost and corruption, but the opportunity is massive, driven by a young, growing population and a regional hub effect. Inside Capwell, innovation is treated as a core value and is paired with global benchmarking for quality rather than local comparisons. Rajan’s leadership compass centers on integrity (win-win relationships) and agility (fast, non-bureaucratic decisions). He frames resilience through lessons from COVID-era supply shocks, drought cycles, and climate change pushing the need to onshore supply and work more deeply with farmers. His “North Star” is purpose with lasting human impact: the real measure isn’t wealth, but lives touched. For young entrepreneurs, his advice is direct: take your shot, don’t fear failure, fail early to become stronger, and find mentors to keep you learning without quitting. Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation: Lead with obituary-thinking: measure success by human impact that outlasts you, not by money or titles.Embrace failure as training: failing early builds resilience and increases odds of long-term success.Africa isn’t just risk, it’s scale: East Africa’s youth bulge and growth make it deeply investable, despite challenges.Innovation can be a discipline: embed it as organizational DNA (process, product, packaging), not as occasional bursts.Quality improves when you benchmark globally: don’t compare to local competitors. Aim for world standards.Integrity is a business strategy: win-win relationships across suppliers, customers, and government create sustainability.Agility beats bureaucracy: founders win by deciding fast and keeping teams lean and empowered.Resilience is local supply: COVID and shipping shocks highlight the need to reduce import dependence and strengthen local farming.Climate cycles are predictable—plan for them: drought and climate pressure aren’t surprises; build systems assuming disruption.Purpose makes hard decisions easier: a clear “why” (nutrition, farmers’ livelihoods, convenience) becomes the filter for strategy, partnerships, and growth.Books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

26 min

A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies. This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.

Creador

Sohin Shah
Años de actividad

2025 - 2026
Episodios

46
Clasificación

Explícito
Copyright

© 2026 Beyond the Case
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