Alex Kruszewski, Founder and CEO of Abacus, joins Paul Anthony for a homecoming conversation that traces an unlikely path from investment banking to building what he calls a brand-new category in wealth technology. A Notre Dame finance graduate, Alex began his career in investment banking and private equity at firms including Evercore, Madison Dearborn Partners, and BDT, before a step into pharmaceutical operations turned into a sale process that ended with Eli Lilly buying the business. That outcome led the founding family to ask him to stand up Goldfinch Capital Partners, a Chicago-based family office where, at 27, he served as CIO running the investments.

It was there that Alex hit the problem that would become Abacus. Everyone talks about allocating capital, he explains, but almost no one talks about the unglamorous work of tracking it. At Goldfinch, answering the deceptively simple question of "what are we worth right now?" required six-figure legacy software plus two full-time accountants, and it was only ever as accurate as the last person to key in the numbers. Abacus fuses software and service to solve that garbage-in, garbage-out problem, building each client a "financial digital key" that ports in public equities, private equity, venture, real estate, debt, and documents, then keeps it continuously correct through a White Glove services team of ex-bankers and private equity professionals working alongside agentic AI.

Paul and Alex dig into the model Abacus calls SPaaS, service presented as a software: clients get the interface without ever having to fill it in. From there the conversation opens up into pricing philosophy in an AUM-obsessed industry, why Abacus deliberately stayed in stealth, and a genuinely useful stretch on team building, incentives, and founder life with young kids. Alex closes with contrarian advice that cuts against startup culture: don't do it for the money or the title, and don't do it at all unless the vision is so big it's the only thing you can work on.

Key Takeaways

● Allocating capital gets all the attention, but tracking it is the real unsolved problem, and it only stays accurate if the underlying labor is flawless

● Abacus builds each client a "financial digital key" that consolidates every asset class and document, then permissions it out to advisors, CPAs, or AI tools on demand

● The SPaaS model (service presented as a software) delivers the interface without making clients do the data entry, pairing agentic AI with human domain experts

● Alternatives resist standardization, so human relationships and domain expertise, not just API pipes, are what actually keep the data current

● The best AI use case is not replacing people but freeing them from the annoying parts of their jobs so they get back to the work they were hired to do

● Great teams come from defining a narrow scope, identifying what makes each person tick, and incentivizing them accordingly, not from hiring generalists

Connect:

● OpStart: https://www.opstart.co

● Paul Anthony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-anthony-8a256087/

● Alex Kruszewski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-kru/

● Abacus: https://www.abacuswt.com

Hashtags:

#OpStart #Abacus #WealthTech #FamilyOffice #StartupPodcast #FounderStory #FinTech #ServiceAsSoftware #SPaaS #SmallBusiness #StartupLife #Entrepreneurship #AI #FoundersJourney #PrivateEquity

In this episode, we sit down with Tyler Bliha, founder of Abode Money, to unpack how he’s building an AI-powered financial manager for homeowners.

Tyler shares his journey from investment banking and private equity to early-stage fintech, and how his experience at UpEquity helped shape the vision behind Abode Money. We also dive into why homeowners are often overspending on property taxes, insurance, and other recurring housing costs — and how Abode is using AI to simplify and automate savings.

We discuss:

• Why property taxes are the perfect wedge into the homeowner financial relationship

• How Abode expanded from Texas to all 50 states

• The role of AI in automating complex, localized financial workflows

• Why founder-led fundraising requires urgency, process, and signal

• What makes homeownership one of the biggest untapped opportunities in consumer fintech

Guest: Tyler Bliha, Founder, Abode Money

🌐 Abode Money: abodemoney.com

Dr. Avi Jayaraman, physician, two-time founder, and CEO of Blue Light Health, joins Paul Anthony in the studio to talk about building healthcare businesses that actually get paid for. Avi went from earning his MD in Dallas to accidentally falling into startups with Sonara, a platform that let opioid-recovery patients take methadone at home instead of traveling to a clinic every single day.

After Wharton and a stint on the VC side, the founder seat pulled him back in. Blue Light Health is his virtual clinic taking on something close to home for a lot of parents: technology and social media addiction in kids. Avi breaks down the staggering numbers behind the problem and why a clinical approach beats a tech-only blocking app.

He and Paul close on the lessons every founder needs: when to go straight to enterprise decision-makers, why the right angel investors change everything, and practical advice for keeping your own kids out of a clinic down the road.

In this episode, you'll learn:

● Why the biggest opportunities come from picking a huge problem and catching a lucky confluence of timing factors

● How a few well-connected angel investors unlocked enterprise sales conversations Avi never could have reached on his own

● The case for going straight to the board, CEO, and CFO instead of testing your product in a small, controlled setting first

● Why technology and social media addiction in kids is a clinical problem, not a "use a blocking app" problem

● How existing psychiatric medications and therapy can address both the addiction and the underlying mental health disorder

● Why building the clinical science first is the real moat, and how that data unlocks value-based-care contracts with payers

● How AI is collapsing the old choice between building tech or providing a service into a single venture-scale model

● Avi's advice for parents on delaying screens and protecting kids' emotional regulation early

Timestamps

00:00 - Welcome and meeting Dr. Avi Jayaraman

01:12 - Avi's background: from med school to founder

02:00 - Sonara: at-home methadone and access to care

12:00 - Picking big problems and catching the right timing

12:39 - Finding room for the right angel investors

13:48 - Going straight to enterprise decision-makers

17:41 - Private equity in healthcare: the other side

20:46 - Blue Light Health and the gap on the clinical side

22:33 - Why screen addiction in kids is a clinical problem

24:16 - Therapy and medication for digital addiction

28:00 - Building a venture-scale business that's profitable early

34:08 - The team and tech behind Blue Light Health

36:51 - Proving ROI to insurance payers

40:20 - Where tech fits and the real moat

45:55 - Advice for parents on kids and screens

49:30 - How to support Blue Light Health

50:42 - Closing: the role OpStart plays behind the scenes

Connect:

● OpStart: https://www.opstart.co

● Paul Anthony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-anthony-8a256087/

● Dr. Avi Jayaraman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinash-jayaraman/

● Blue Light Health: https://bluelighthealth.com

Hashtags: #OpStart #BlueLightHealth #HealthcareStartups #StartupPodcast #FounderStory #DigitalHealth #MentalHealth #ScreenTimeAddiction #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #HealthTech #Wharton #FoundersJourney #Entrepreneurship #StartupLife