E16| He Raised $65M Early-Stage. Here's the Playbook. | Dennis Gavrilin, Co-Founder & CFO, Comfi

E16| He Raised $65M Early-Stage. Here's the Playbook. | Dennis Gavrilin, Co-Founder & CFO, Comfi

Dennis Gavrilin didn't just build a company, he helped raise $65M at the early stage while architecting the financial and AI systems behind it. In this episode, the Co-Founder & CFO of Comfi breaks down exactly how he did it. We get into the fundraising playbook founders rarely talk about: why misreading your numbers kills deals before they start, why starting your raise 6 months early isn't optional, and what investors are actually looking for when they sit across from you. If you're a founder trying to raise, scale, or just survive, this one's for you.

E15: Merging Product & Engineering in the Age of AI | Fernando Fanton | CPTO, Property Finder

Most companies treat product and engineering as two separate worlds. What if that’s exactly the problem? Fernando Fanton, CPTO at Property Finder, has spent his career sitting at the intersection of both. In this episode, he gets into why the judgment layer is becoming the real bottleneck as AI agents multiply, how customer support in banking is about to get dramatically better, and what it actually means to build A+ individuals inside a team. A sharp, no-fluff conversation for anyone building at the intersection of product, engineering, and AI.

E14: Will Humans Live for Centuries Because of AI? | Akshay Chopra | FinTech Leader, Inventor & Author

What happens when AI gets smarter than all of us combined? And what happens after that? Akshay Chopra, FinTech Leader, Inventor, Investor, and Author of After Us, has thought about this more seriously than most. In this episode, he gets into why the AI arms race isn't just a tech story and where it leads isn't pretty. He talks about superintelligence, the very real possibility of conflict and human compromise, and why the transparency and accountability gap inside AI models should worry everyone. He breaks down what the antisenescence research wave could mean for human longevity and how this generation growing up with AI might actually be a welcome shift. One of the most wide-ranging, high-stakes conversations we have had on The Human Orbit.

E13: The $150 Trillion Problem He's Fixing | Abdul Naushad | Founder & CEO (Buckzy)

Cross-border payments move trillions of dollars. Most of it still runs on infrastructure built in the 1970s. Why? Abdul Naushad, Founder & CEO of Buckzy, has spent his career taking that question seriously. In this episode, he gets into why blockchain won't replace SWIFT entirely, how banks with 100,000+ employees are being forced to change from the inside, and why time-to-market is the variable most founders underestimate until it's too late. One of the more grounded fintech conversations we've had on The Human Orbit.

E12: Enterprise AI Is Broken - Here's How to Fix It | Ian Wilson, Chief Innovation Officer, N2 Group

Most companies are running AI pilots. Almost none are seeing real ROI. Why? Ian Wilson, Chief Innovation Officer at N2 Group, has spent years watching enterprises adopt AI the wrong way. He uses JP Morgan as a benchmark: build dedicated AI teams, play the long game, and the returns follow. Most others chased short-term wins by cutting staff and called it transformation. In this episode, he gets into the open vs closed LLM debate, vertical vs horizontal AI strategy for founders, the quiet collapse of SaaS valuations nobody is talking about, and why AI data centres, energy, and geopolitics are shaping the next wave of enterprise decisions. Ian also raises something that should keep every AI startup founder up at night: the Law of Obsolescence. One of our most grounded, no-fluff conversations yet.