Every major AI training operation is quietly running into the same wall: the speed at which silicon can move data between chips. Every new GPU cluster a hyperscaler adds makes the problem more expensive.

In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, host Jonathan W. Buckley is joined by Vivek Raghunathan of Xscape Photonics — the deep-tech company spun out of Columbia University research to attack the bandwidth bottleneck at GPU-to-GPU and GPU-to-memory interfaces inside AI data centers. Xscape's core platform is a scalable multi-color laser system: custom silicon photonics built for hyperscale data centers and AI infrastructure operators.

This is not a software company with a slick demo. It's a materials and systems company making a long, capital-heavy bet — and the conversation digs into what that takes: the moment Columbia research stopped being research and started feeling like a company that had to exist, what the skeptics got wrong about the market, what broke first in the university spin-out chaos and how it got fixed, and how a hardware team holds together when timelines slip. Vivek is candid about the growth challenge in front of him now: finding product-market fit and expanding into new segments.

Every episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon and more: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

Xscape Photonics: https://www.xscapephotonics.com

Enjoying the show? Follow We Built It Because We Had To wherever you listen and leave a rating. It helps other founders find these stories. For more on how The Artesian Network helps early-stage tech companies get to market and scale, visit https://www.artesiannetwork.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ep38&utm_content=shownotes

In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, host Jonathan W. Buckley is joined by Daniel Rosenrauch of Viirtue, a white-label VoIP and unified communications platform built for MSPs, ISPs, and resellers who want to sell voice services under their own brand without running the infrastructure themselves.

Viirtue was founded by people who had been resellers themselves, and it positions itself as partner-first: fully managed cloud infrastructure, with billing, tax compliance, and usage rating handled for partners, plus AI call intelligence such as call transcription and sentiment analysis.

Jonathan and Daniel talk about building a channel-dependent business through several market shifts — the move from on-premise to cloud, COVID, and now AI — and what it takes to keep a partner-first model together as the ground moves.

Every episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon and more: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

Connect with Daniel Rosenrauch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/viirtue-dan-rosenrauch
Viirtue: https://www.viirtue.com

Enjoying the show? Follow We Built It Because We Had To wherever you listen and leave a rating. It helps other founders find these stories. For more on how The Artesian Network helps early-stage tech companies get to market and scale, visit https://www.artesiannetwork.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ep37&utm_content=shownotes

Enterprise legal teams are overwhelmed by inbound work they can't see or control — and it slows down the whole business. Most AI companies chase sales and customer support. Evan Wong went after the function they all ignore.

In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, host Jonathan W. Buckley is joined by Evan Wong, founder of Checkbox — the AI Legal Front Door and Operating System built for enterprise in-house legal teams. Checkbox intakes requests from every channel, automates routine work with AI, and assigns matters automatically based on type and expertise, while giving legal leaders the visibility and metrics to track workload, cycle times, and resources. For the business, that means instant answers, faster turnaround times, and full transparency into where requests stand.

The wedge is the story. Legal ops is one of the least glamorous corners of enterprise software, and enterprise legal teams have historically been invisible inside their own companies — no real operating system to manage the flood of inbound work. Checkbox picked that beachhead deliberately, positioned itself as the front door to the legal function, and earned its way into serious procurement environments: named customers include Analog Devices, SAP, Coca-Cola, and Woolworths — with no IT required to deploy and minimal change management.

Jonathan and Evan get into the origin of that bet — who first convinced Evan that in-house legal was the right beachhead — what early selling looks like when the buyers are lawyers rather than revenue leaders, how Checkbox thinks about applying generative AI to a function most AI companies have ignored, and the growth challenge Evan names candidly: adding revenue at a rapidly increasing rate quarter over quarter to hit growth goals.

Every episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon and more: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

Connect with Evan Wong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theevanwong
Checkbox: https://www.checkbox.ai

Enjoying the show? Follow We Built It Because We Had To wherever you listen and leave a rating. It helps other founders find these stories. For more on how The Artesian Network helps early-stage tech companies get to market and scale, visit https://www.artesiannetwork.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ep36&utm_content=shownotes