In this holiday special episode of First Builders, hosts Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui sit down to reflect on 2025, what it was like to build The Council in this tumultuous year, the launch of First Builders, and some predictions for 2026. In this conversation, Amber and Rachel discuss: Firm highlights like Rachel joining full time, starting to deploy Fund II, and launching the podcast Viral moments from 2025 like Soham Parekh going viral, PR being handled well and not well (i....

AI is moving faster than ever—but reliability remains the missing layer. In this episode of First Builders, hosts Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui sit down with Haroon Choudery, founder and CEO of Autoblocks AI, to unpack what it takes to build trustworthy AI systems in high-stakes, regulated environments. Haroon has spent over a decade building at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and infrastructure, with a career that spans early work with Mark Cuban on computer vision projects, foundational r...

Regulation and policy is often seen as a barrier to innovation, but it doesn’t have to be. In this episode of First Builders, hosts Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui sit down with Prashanthi Raman, former head of government affairs at both Cruise and Lyft, after starting her career as an attorney in healthcare policy. Prashanthi has worked at the intersection of policy and tech for over a decade, and started her career as an attorney focused in healthcare policy. She spent time working ...

A real-time debrief on a breakout moment. GC AI just announced its Series B led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone after crossing $10M ARR and serving legal teams at more than 1,000 companies in under two years. Founder and CEO Cecilia Ziniti returns to First Builders to talk about going from day one to “kindergarten,” keeping the quality bar high while hiring fast, and why customer milestones matter more than funding. In this conversation, Cecilia shares: – How GC AI kept customer love ...

What if the same wealth tools billionaires use were accessible to everyone? In this episode of First Builders, hosts Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui sit down with Alessandro Chesser, Co-Founder & CEO of Dynasty, a licensed Nevada trust company helping founders and investors maximize equity value through smart ownership structures like QSBS stacking. Before founding Dynasty, Alessandro spent eight years at Carta, joining as the company’s first sales hire and helping scale revenue from zero to ...

How do you build a billion-dollar company when you’re not in Silicon Valley? On this episode of First Builders, hosts Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui sit down with Jack Greco co-founder, COO & CFO of ACV Auctions, which went public at a $3.85 billion valuation, to explore what it means to build and scale from the ground up in Buffalo, New York. Jack shares what it took to transform a scrappy regional idea into a national marketplace for auto dealers—and the lessons learned from leading teams ...