Pilot Wave

Mark Spindel ran a AAA balance sheet at the World Bank, built and wound down a billion-dollar macro fund, and co-wrote the political history of the Federal Reserve. He joins Afsheen Afshar to trace a line from Salomon Brothers in the 1980s to the Fed's position today, and to what both mean for allocators trying to price AI.
The through line is empirics and its limits. Salomon had more PhDs than any firm on the Street and still committed too much capital. Spindel's read is that the models held and the behavior did not. He applies the same test to this cycle. Hyperscaler and AI-related borrowing is approaching the scale of bank debt. Capex is enormous. Productivity has not yet arrived in the official statistics, and his explanation is the one Pilot Wave underwrites: technology does not deploy itself. Workflows get redesigned and workforces get retrained, or the gain stays theoretical.
In this episode:
Salomon Brothers, and what its rise and collapse show about hubris, empirical overconfidence, and the limits of knowing the price of everything
Writing The Myth of Independence, and watching the thesis play out as political pressure on the Fed intensified
Why situational awareness, not data alone, separates firms that survive from firms that don't
How the Fed is modeling AI's effect on growth, productivity, and the labor force in real time
Given the chair, Spindel raises rates sooner, and reads the hesitancy at the Fed as more political than economic
The hyperscaler debt boom, and what it means that AI-related borrowing is approaching the scale of bank debt
Barton Biggs on no asset class surviving too much money, and where that applies now
Why radiology is the counterexample worth sitting with: disrupted by better models, and more radiologists practicing than ever
How allocators separate real GPs from AI opportunists: track record, incentive structure, proximity to decision-makers
 
Connect with Pilot Wave:Website: https://www.pilotwaveholdings.com 
X: https://x.com/pilotwaveai 
Guest/s:
Michael Spindel
https://x.com/PotomacRC 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-spindel-4aa69a135 
Host/s:
Afsheen Afshar
https://x.com/snaff 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsheen-afshar-9a924b

Most AI investing stories are theoretical. This one has receipts. In this episode, Afsheen Afshar sits down with John MacKinnon, President of Connect Atlantic Utility Services (CAUS), a Nova Scotia-based high voltage transmission and distribution contractor that grew into one of Atlantic Canada's most sought-after infrastructure businesses under Pilot Wave ownership. Together they walk through the entire arc of a majority buyout that produced a cash-flowing infrastructure business, an AI spinout built for less than one percent of revenue, and ultimately a realized return.
John doesn't sugarcoat it. He was skeptical at the start, the ERP rollout nearly confirmed every doubt, and the decision to build Detect from scratch after every platform on the market came up short felt like a serious gamble. What changed his mind wasn't the pitch. It was watching the flywheel actually spin: Connect's cash flow funding the technology, the technology compounding the value of the business, and the data eventually making the exit decision obvious.
If you're an investor trying to understand what the AI rollup model looks like when it actually works, or an operator wondering whether any of this translates to the real world, this is the episode to hear.
What We Got Into:
Closing a majority buyout during COVID with a seller Afsheen had never met in person
Why a battle-scarred operator with plenty of scar tissue was skeptical from day one
The ERP rollout that went sideways and nearly proved every doubt right
Running dozens of ideas through the "9 out of 10 are dumb" filter before zeroing in on asset inspection
Why every drone and inspection platform on the market failed and the decision to build from scratch
How Detect evolved from a drone company into a data and algorithms platform with a dataset that didn't exist anywhere in the world
The flywheel: how Connect's cash flow funded Detect's development for less than 1% of annual revenue
The live demo that changed everything: flying over a customer's own assets in real time from a boardroom 500 miles away
A buy-and-hold-forever firm that sold when the data said to and why that was the right call
 
Resources Mentioned:
Detect: https://detectinspections.com/ 
Connect with Connect Atlantic Utility Services:Website: https://centuri.com/connect-utility-services/  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mackinnon-a3267b13 
Connect with Pilot Wave:Website: https://www.pilotwaveholdings.com 
X: https://x.com/pilotwaveai 
Host/s:
Afsheen Afshar
https://x.com/snaff 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsheen-afshar-9a924b 

Welcome to PilotWave -- the podcast at the intersection of AI and the real economy. We talk to the researchers, builders, acquirers, and investors pushing this industry forward. In this pilot episode, we turn the mic inward. Founder and Managing Partner Afsheen Afshar, Senior Partner Arik Oganesian, and Director Calvin Cooper introduce the firm and the thesis behind it.
Seven years in, PilotWave has learned that buying industrial businesses and transforming them with AI demands something most firms can't fake -- a rare hybrid of private equity discipline, venture-style risk tolerance, deep technical expertise, and enough EQ to work with sellers who've never thought about an AI strategy. The three dig into the origin story, the hard lessons, and what the OpenClaw moment reveals about where autonomous AI is actually headed.
What We Got Into:
The origin of the firm and why the AI rollup model was considered a dumb idea until it wasn't
Why "AI rollup" is a misnomer -- and what PilotWave actually does
The hybrid capability stack that makes or breaks this model
EQ as an operational edge when working with traditional business owners
OpenClaw and what fully autonomous AI exposes about risk, liability, and human intuition
Why human instinct degrades when AI does everything -- and why that matters for portcos
The ownership model as the only structure that gives you real leverage
The North Star principle and how it clarifies every tough decision
 
Connect with PilotWave:Website: https://www.pilotwaveholdings.com 
X: https://x.com/pilotwaveai 
Hosts:
Afsheen Afshar
https://x.com/snaff 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsheen-afshar-9a924b 
 
Arik Oganesian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arik-oganesian 
 
Calvin Cooper
https://x.com/cooper_nyc_ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coopernyc