Beyond the Case
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.
Episodes
52 episodes
The Power of Psychological Safety Among Peers - with Felix Kues
Felix Kues is a serial entrepreneur, deep-tech investor, and Harvard Business School OPM participant. Felix shares his journey from building AI software companies across multiple continents to founding a highly automated venture fund and later ...
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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27:54
The Inner Operating System of an Entrepreneur: Advisors, Yoga, and Time - Sudhakar Kadavasal
Sudhakar Kadavasal, a second-generation entrepreneur from Chennai has built and led businesses across IT services, logistics, chemicals, construction, and energy, with operations in India and Dubai. Sudhakar shares how his father’s early entrep...
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Season 1
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Episode 51
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17:41
From $2,000 to 800,000 Subscribers: Building a Values-Driven Media Giant - Lucas Ferrugem
What began as a $2,000 experiment at age 13 has grown into one of Brazil’s most influential independent platforms, bootstrapped to over $40M in cumulative revenue, 800,000+ paying subscribers, and 30M annual viewers. This conversation goes beyo...
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Season 1
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Episode 50
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24:03
From Control to Trust: The Real Shift Every Entrepreneur Must Make - Ankita Gupta
This conversation is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurs must consciously evolve from being hands-on operators to becoming true leaders. In the early stages, control feels necessary. Every decision, review, and execution flows through the fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 49
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19:02
Thinking in Decades, Not Quarters: Lessons from a Multi-Generational Owner - Antonio Liberal
Third-generation entrepreneurship isn’t about inheriting a business. It’s about inheriting a promise and upgrading it for the next era. In this episode, Portuguese pharmacist and
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Season 1
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Episode 48
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29:19
Scaling Through Adjacencies, Not Distractions - Abhijit Vaish
Build adjacencies before you chase scale.Enduring companies don’t grow by random diversification. They expand by moving one thoughtful step outward from their core DNA, solving the next customer pain that naturally sits beside wha...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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18:49
Sold to OpenAI: The Patience, People, and Principles Behind the Exit - Tomasz Kulakowski
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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26:29
The Emperor Has No Clothes: Harvard OPM and Indian VCs with Vinay Pasricha
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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35:01
Nothing Is Impossible When Discipline Is a Lifestyle: Ironman Lessons - Mohamed Mahlab
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 c...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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39:07
The Cost of Ambition No One Measures - Somdutta Singh
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, re...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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39:53
Scaling Trust in a Volatile, Unorganized Market - Akshay Verma
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 th...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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31:18
How My Principles Replaced My Instincts - with Radu Dumitrescu
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, principl...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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26:44
From a Billion-Dollar Market Cap to Insolvency: Decisions, Reflection, and a Robust Second Innings - Pujit Aggarwal
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 abo...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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28:15
The Quiet Math of a Meaningful Life and Its North Star - Rajan Shah
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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25:36
Lessons You Only Learn When Things Fall Apart - Geetanjali AlamShah
47 litigations. That’s how deep the hole got after Geetanjali “Gee” AlamShah’s airline bet went sideways and it’s also the most hopeful part of this conversation: she climbed out. Not by pretending it didn’t hurt, but by getting discipli...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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29:34
Lessons from 12 Startups and a Lifetime in Tech - Brad Cowdrey
Imagine waking up every day knowing your job is to suffer on purpose because that’s the price of building something that can dominate a category. Brad Cowdrey (OPM 49) explains why startups aren’t glamorous, why Ge...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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39:37
The Quiet Vulnerability of Power and the Art of Executive Search - K. Sudarshan
K. Sudarshan is a veteran executive search leader and Managing Partner at EMA Partners across India, Singapore, and the UAE. Sudarshan shares his journey from an accidental recruiter to building and l...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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33:20
Exits, Term Sheets, and the Real Cost of Raising Capital - Alejandro Diez Barroso
Alejandro Diez Barroso explains how bootstrapping two early e-commerce businesses in Mexico taught him the real constraint in many markets: access to growth capital. He sold not because he wanted to, but because scaling required fundin...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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41:48
Trusts, Taxes, and the Questions Founders Avoid - Juan Carlos Almanza
If your business outlives you, have you clearly written what you want it to mean and how decisions should be made when you’re no longer there to make them?For business owners, Trusts are powerful ...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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36:19
Loyalty, Sacrifice and the Real Cost of Being a Lawyer - Felipe Barreto Veiga
This conversation is less about legal theory and more about the emotional weight of being a lawyer. Through Felipe Barreto Veiga’s story, we see a profession defined by responsibility, sacrifice, and quiet loyalty. Being a lawyer, in his tellin...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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35:26
The IIT Graduate Who Chose His Mother Over America and Built an Education Empire - Pramod Maheshwari
A single sentence from his mother "If you go to the US, you may never come back… and it may be too late” rerouted Pramod Maheshwari’s life. In that moment, ambition met responsibility. He stayed back in Kota, not with a grand plan, but...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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36:28
Mental Models That Let Winning Emerge After Losing - Hari Kiran Chereddi
What if you could hear, firsthand, from an international sportsperson about the emotional journey that follows a loss?Not loss as failure, but loss as a teacher: the kind that strips away ego, demands honesty, and forces you to co...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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25:45
Scuba Diving and Leading When Panic Isn’t an Option - Jeff Cronkshaw
Jeff Cronkshaw doesn’t talk about leadership in theory — he talks about it 40 meters underwater, in zero visibility, when failure isn’t abstract and panic kills.Across this conversation, Jeff draws a powerful parallel between s...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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34:39
Optimism, Reinvention, and Thinking in 20-Year Chapters - Gustavo Reichmann
Optimism isn’t just a personality trait in this episode - it’s a discipline. Gustavo Reichmann frames life as forward motion: the future should feel bigger than the past, even as you age. He credits that mindset to watching his 95-year-old gran...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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29:03
The Owner Who Bought Back His Company from Private Equity - Eric Hoffman
Hoffman Media, a founder-led niche media company, raised private equity capital in the mid-2000s to fund acquisitions and organic growth. The firm entered the 2008 financial crisis with a PE partner h...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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26:46
