Sessions · Speaker session
Building Your Exec Team: The Decisions That Determine Your Company's Ceiling
Thursday, February 5, 2026 · 4–7 PM PST
This session has ended.
About this session
Building Your Exec Team: The Decisions That Determine Your Company's Ceiling
You're drowning in growth. Every decision lands on your desk. You know you need help, but the thought of handing off terrifies you.
Some founders hire and scale beautifully. Others hire and stall. The difference isn't luck—it's who you bring in first and how you set them up.
What You'll Learn
- What actually breaks at your stage—and who solves for it--Most founders misdiagnose the problem. We'll walk through the pattern: what slows you down first, why experience ≠ fit, and the questions that separate real bottlenecks from false ones.
- How to spot adaptability over credentials--The person who crushed it at a $500M company might be lost at $5M. You'll learn what actually predicts success in chaos—and how to evaluate judgment, not just résumé.
- Why hiring your clone fails--Your instinct is to find someone just like you. That's usually where founders go wrong. We'll discuss how to hire your complement.
- Real war stories: what happened when it worked (and when it didn't)
The decisions you make before day one determine whether they accelerate or stall. We'll cover compensation, decision rights, and what you hand off completely.
Hosting this session
Kabir Shahani
Advisor, Investor, Entrepreneur, avante
Kabir Shahani is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and investor with a track record of building transformative software companies. He founded and served as CEO of Amperity, a leading enterprise customer data platform that helps brands unify and activate their customer data. Under his leadership, Amperity grew to serve more than 400 major brands and is valued at more than $1B. Prior to Amperity, Kabir founded Appature, a marketing automation company that sold to a publicly held holding company, where he went on to lead their $300M+ revenue software business. He's raised more than $250M+ in capital and served on several company boards.
Today, Kabir dedicates his time to supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs through Amp It Up Ventures, which incubates new companies and supports high-growth software businesses. Through Amp It Up Ventures, Kabir serves as Co-Founder and active participant in innovative AI-driven companies. He currently serves as Executive Chair at Avante, a Generative AI software platform that helps organizations better understand and optimize employee benefits, and at Adora, a Generative AI software platform that creates advertisements for companies within seconds, significantly reducing the time and cost typically associated with ad creation and placement.
Next step
Have a question behind the session?
Share what you’re working through. If your company qualifies, we’ll reply personally within 24 hours.
For companies that have raised at least $1M from venture firms.