In episode 44 of Built by Margin, Laurie Chen sits down with Jaramogi Adams, founder of Jarkara Strategies, to discuss his journey from dot-com consulting to an 18-year career at American Express, global finance leadership, to fractional COO and strategic advisory work. With an educational background from Duke University and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Jaramogi shares how his name — meaning “one who travels often” — became a through line in his life and career, shaping his desire to learn across countries, companies, and industries.

The conversation explores how growing companies can move from intuition to execution by building stronger operating rhythms, clearer KPIs, and better communication systems. Jaramogi explains why his core superpower is listening, how he helps leaders translate qualitative challenges into quantitative decisions, and why scaling requires more than ambition — it requires people, tools, processes, and disciplined change management. He also shares how he uses AI as a thought partner, why nonprofits still need financial stewardship, and how one early career decision at American Express became far more valuable over time than he could have measured in the moment.

QUOTES

• "Good work begets more work. My brand is the work that I deliver — and when that work becomes memorable, people either refer me or bring me back in." – Jaramogi Adams
• "YI don’t use AI to do the thinking for me. I use it as a thought partner — to give me alternate perspectives so I can make a better decision." – Jaramogi Adams
• "Ultimately, it’s my human brain and your human brain that are the most valuable. AI is here to make things faster and give us a different perspective." – Laurie Chen

Laurie Chen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauriechencpamba/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriechen/

Risk Worthy: https://www.riskworthy.co/

Jaramogi Adams

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaramogikadams/

Jarkara Startegies: https://jaramogikadams.com/

In episode 43 of Built by Margin, Laurie Chen sits down with Alisha Esmail, founder and CEO of Latch, an AI-native customer retention platform helping founders detect churn before it happens. Alisha shares her unexpected journey from international development and building a coffee company with fully female supply chains and microloans, to launching a tech company focused on customer success and retention. After losing her largest client in her first business, Alisha became obsessed with understanding why customers stay, why they leave, and how founders can build systems that protect recurring revenue.⁠
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Laurie and Alisha also explore what it means to build an AI company as a non-technical founder, how AI is changing financial modeling and startup operations, and why early-stage founders need to know their cash runway, burn rate, and customer acquisition metrics. Alisha opens up about leaving a comfortable company to start over, the fear of visibility and rejection, and the importance of founder resilience. Their conversation blends risk, numbers, decision-making, and the mindset required to keep building when the startup journey gets hard.⁠

QUOTES

• "The most successful founder is the one that doesn’t quit." – Alisha Esmail
• "The numbers tell a story… finance is just a tool, like everything else." – Alisha Esmail
• "Risk worthy does not equal reckless. You have to know your numbers in order not to be reckless." – Laurie Chen

Laurie Chen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauriechencpamba/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriechen/

Risk Worthy: https://www.riskworthy.co/

Alisha Esmail

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alishaesmail/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisha-esmail/

Latch.ai: https://yourlatch.com

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In episode 42 of Built by Margin, Laurie Chen sits down with Javier Casado-Cocero, Duke MBA graduate and founder working on Valyd, an identity infrastructure company using decentralized identity technology to fight fraud in healthcare and secure the next era of AI agents. Javier shares how his work evolved from blockchain and decentralized technologies into a broader mission: proving who is behind each digital action while preserving privacy, protecting credentials, and enabling doctors and organizations to safely delegate work to AI agents.

Laurie and Javier also dive into the business side of building a frontier technology startup, including pricing models, enterprise sales, customer validation, financial forecasting, and how Valyd uses AI tools like Claude and Gemini to strengthen market research and pro forma models. Javier discusses how the Duke Fuqua entrepreneurship ecosystem helped shape the company, why Valyd converted from an LLC to a Delaware C-Corp, and the leadership lessons he has learned while scaling a remote team in cybersecurity and healthcare infrastructure.

QUOTES

• "We realized that the technology is also very secure and is able to preserve privacy as well as prove data about individuals. And it was this that made us realize that we can use this technology to solve the identity problem." – Javier Casado-Cocero
• "Sometimes it's important to remember to just double check and dot your I's and cross your t's, but it's always a push and pull because one of your advantages is how fast you're able to move too." – Javier Casado-Cocero
• "As a fractional CFO myself, I’m very interested in how startups in the rise of AI era are utilizing AI to drive their financial models." – Laurie Chen

Laurie Chen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauriechencpamba/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriechen/

Risk Worthy: https://www.riskworthy.co/

Javier Casado-Cocero

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-c-c/

Valyd: https://valyd.id/