Prevetted Podcast

About Prevetted Podcast

Federico Ramallo spotlights extraordinary people, their great stories and remarkable talent that's reshaping our world! Powered by Density Labs - https://densitylabs.io

Publisher

Federico Ramallo

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Aug 2023

Latest episode

12 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

173 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Aug 2026

   #170 Ricky Sun: The Real-Time Graph Database Ending AI Hallucination in Production

   Ricky Sun is Founder and CEO of Ultipa, the real-time graph database he calls the world's fastest, and CTO of Aichax. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Ricky Sun explains how a real-time graph database and explainable, white-box AI keep connected data queryable in real time and stop hallucination before enterprise AI ever reaches production.Ricky's career runs through Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC before he set out to build companies of his own. At Ultipa he built a real-time graph database designed to traverse deeply connected data in microseconds, now used across finance, fraud detection, risk, and compliance. In this conversation he breaks down what a graph database is, why it answers questions a relational database cannot, and what it actually takes to make deep graph traversal fast at scale.We dig into where a real-time graph database sits alongside the vector databases and embeddings most teams reach for first, and why Ricky prefers the phrase graph augmented intelligence to plain artificial intelligence. He makes the case for explainability and white-box AI: why today's models are so hard to reason about, and how a graph turns a black box into something you can inspect, audit, and trust.From there we get into Aichax and its blunt promise that hallucination ends here, the season-long question of why roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots never reach production, and how graph and explainability change that math. Ricky also talks standards, from the Linked Data Benchmark Council to the ISO GQL graph query language, and shares what he has learned building deep-tech engineering teams across the US and China over two decades.About Ricky Sun:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickysun/- https://www.ultipa.com- https://aichax.aiAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction2:30 From Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC to founding Ultipa7:00 What a real-time graph database actually does13:00 Real-time graph database vs vector databases for AI19:00 Explainable white-box AI and graph augmented intelligence26:00 Ending hallucination: inside Aichax33:00 Why enterprise AI pilots die before production40:00 Graph analytics for fraud, risk, and compliance in finance46:00 Standards, ISO GQL, and the Linked Data Benchmark Council52:00 Advice for CTOs adopting graph and explainable AI#GraphDatabase #ExplainableAI #AIinProduction

2. 

   12 Aug 2026

   #171 Tom Trill: Digital RF and Building a Culture People Choose at Qualinx

   Tom Trill is the CEO of Qualinx, a Dutch deep-tech semiconductor company bringing radio frequency into the digital domain. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Tom and Federico Ramallo get into what it takes to build a venture-stage hard-tech company: the culture that makes people relocate across the world to join a startup in Delft, how AI is changing engineering craft and human judgment, and the deceptively hard question of what "good enough" really means. Tom brings more than 25 years of semiconductor experience, with senior roles across Samsung, Cypress, and Freescale, a stint as co-founder of an AI vision startup, and now the CEO seat at Qualinx. He explains the company's core invention, digital RF, which brings RF back in line with Moore's Law: a reconfigurable receiver chip covering roughly 20 MHz to 8 GHz at an order-of-magnitude lower power, aimed at GNSS, positioning, and the connected edge. The mission is ubiquitous connectivity, so small and cheap it fades into the background like running water. They also dig into the human side of deep tech: building a company of 70+ people across two dozen nationalities, why values need constant reinforcement through rapid growth, why long-tenured subject-matter experts still beat AI on the hardest problems, and how AI agents can reduce the noise for engineers without removing human accountability. About Tom Trill - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomtrill/ - 🌐 https://www.qualinx.io About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - 🌐 https://densitylabs.io - ✅ https://prevetted.ai 🎙 PreVetted Podcast - 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast - 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod - 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction to Tom Trill and Qualinx 1:38 Building a culture people choose to join 10:04 AI, engineering craft, and human judgment 19:22 Defining what is good enough 27:02 Digital RF and ubiquitous connectivity 34:10 Closing reflections on culture and craft #DeepTech #Semiconductors #DigitalRF

3. 

   10 Aug 2026

   #169 Justin Marcucci: Scaling Digital Engineering from Founder to President of Apexon

   Justin Marcucci is President of Apexon, a digital engineering services firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, where he leads the global commercial organization. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Justin Marcucci traces a rare path through digital engineering, founder, design-led operator, and executive at scale, and what it actually takes to build and lead teams that own outcomes. Justin started and ran Nickelfish, an interactive design agency, for thirteen years before Endava acquired it and he stayed on as Chief Digital Officer for nearly a decade, running North American and global industry P&Ls through Endava's global expansion and its 2018 NYSE IPO. He unpacks the inflection points that reshaped Nickelfish, what selling the company taught him about his own business, and what made a long post-acquisition integration actually work. Now at Apexon, an AI-first technology services firm, with over 5,000 employees across the USA, UK, India and Mexico, Justin talks through his first ninety days in the President seat, and how a company built out of four merged startups keeps design and user thinking at the center of an industry that has become AI- and engineering-led. He details Apexon's new AI Center of Excellence, its focus on enterprise and agentic AI architectures, and how AI is changing both client delivery and how he runs the commercial org. The conversation gets specific on the operator's craft: scaling teams in a consulting-led services business, hiring senior leaders who own outcomes instead of just executing, and how PE-backed growth differs from running a digital business inside a public company. Justin closes with what he'd tell someone earlier in their career trying to build something durable in digital. About Justin Marcucci: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-marcucci-1a6ab533/ - https://www.apexon.com About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - 🌐 https://densitylabs.io - ✅ https://prevetted.ai 🎙 PreVetted Podcast - 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast - 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod - 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 2:30 What the President of Apexon actually does 6:15 Starting Nickelfish and thirteen years running it 12:40 Selling Nickelfish to Endava: the lessons 18:05 Chief Digital Officer through Endava's IPO 24:30 Moving to the Apexon President seat 29:50 First ninety days and what surprised him 34:20 Keeping design and UX central in an AI-led industry 39:10 Scaling teams in a consulting-led services business 43:35 Hiring senior leaders who own outcomes 47:50 Using AI across delivery and the commercial org 52:15 PE-backed growth vs running inside a public company 55:40 Building a durable career in digital #DigitalEngineering #TechLeadership #ScalingTeams

Who has been a guest on Prevetted Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Beth Flory
• John Hooker
• Bill Canady
• Ryan Eisenberg
• Joseph Argiro

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

5,997

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 37 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

48

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

0

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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