From ML Engineer to CEO: Brightwave's Mike Conover on Turning Technical Vision into Company Strategy

Mike Conover started his career as a machine learning engineer. Today, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Brightwave, an AI startup helping financial professionals make faster decisions with massive, unstructured data.

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Mike shares how he made the leap from technical contributor to strategic leader—and the hard lessons he learned along the way.

From translating technical vision into a focused go-to-market strategy, to learning how to coach, hire, and scale intentionally, Mike unpacks the mindset shift required to move from building code to building a company.

We also get into:

• How Brightwave validates new product bets in a high-stakes industry
• Why founder-market fit is emotional, not just strategic
• Mistakes to avoid when hiring your early team
• How to create focus loops and feedback channels before feature creep sets in
• Why emotional intelligence and execution velocity matter just as much as AI architecture

If you're a technical founder — or thinking about becoming one — this conversation offers an unvarnished look at what it actually takes to scale yourself while scaling your startup.

RUNTIME 55:09

EPISODE BREAKDOWN

(1:12) Mike explains how Brightwave works.

(3:49) Where the idea came from.

(7:47) How he connected with co-founder Brandon Kotara.

(10:58) The biggest challenges he faced shifting from an engineering role to founder/CEO.

(14:22) “As a CEO, you have to do a lot of jobs that you have no preparation for.”

(15:07) Working with a coach has been “such a sustaining source of inspiration, but also continuity.”

(18:45) “There's a rap lyric I really like, which is, ‘you can't crush me, I'm dirt.’”

(20:29) Turning “reasonable” feature requests into new products helped Brightwave build customer trust.

(25:30) “ It's unusual,” but co-pilots and POC programs were not part of their early success.

(30:12) Tips for building feedback loops between customers and the product team.

(36:04) Seed to Series A “ was about four months.”

(40:02) “ Most startups are not that defensible.”

(45:54) “A lot of the product-led growth techniques that you might use don't always fit the market especially well.”

(47:45) How to create a self-assessment framework for founder-market fit.

(50:43) “ Brightwave — in its full totality — has material substance in my mind already.”

(53:05) The one question he'd have to ask the CEO before taking a startup job.

LINKS

Mike Conover

Brandon Kotara

Brightwave

Fred Kofman, Conscious Business

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Thanks for listening!

– Walter.