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[Music] founder of >> You're watching TVN.
5:00
Today is Tuesday, September 9th, 2025.
5:03
We are live from the Palace of Party Rounds. We are at YC Demo Day.
5:05
Uh the batch is fall 2025, right?
5:09
F 2025 because it used to just be winter and summer but now they've added it's a quarterly batch and so I believe we're in fall. Is that right? Yeah. >> Yeah.
5:20
And so we are here with Nate.
5:20
Uh introduce yourself, tell the stream who you are, why you're here.
5:25
>> Nate Valsard, friend of the pod.
5:28
>> You the first time you came on was at the first time we did YC Demay two quarters ago.
5:32
>> Been in the Bay Area for uh longer than I care to admit. 2008.
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bounced around a few technology companies, spent some time at some institutional VC firms, have dabbled as an entrepreneur, and now have a seed fund. >> Take it back further.
5:43
How did you make your first dollar on the internet?
5:46
>> Uh, I sold used records on eBay. >> Used records 2001. >> 2001. >> Vinyl guy. >> Yes.
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>> This is crazy because I sold record players on eBay. >> I sold DJ equipment.
5:59
>> As we know, as everything becomes more digital, tactile, physical things become more important.
6:03
So, I was early adopter there. Is there uh was the ARB?
6:04
So my ARB was international shipping.
6:09
Basically people wanted top tier DJ gear in Australia and they couldn't get it because the companies wouldn't export or was it more about like going in uh what do they call it? Crate digging. Crate digging.
6:21
Finding stuff that wasn't available in, you know, in Ohio and then you ship it there or Wisconsin.
6:25
You would travel up and down the Mississippi River corridor hitting up antique shops getting rare soul funk jazz and psychedelic rock records.
6:33
And then you would sell them at a 10x markup to our friends in Japan. >> That's cool. That's cool.
6:37
Uh we have one more lightning round question.
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>> Japan was your exit liquidity.
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>> We're starting with the lightning round.
6:45
Uh a most underrated or greatest entrepreneur of all time. Who you got? >> Oh god.
6:49
Um >> underrated or greatest is actually kind of hard to throw. >> Wait, wait.
6:53
What's the actual So, we're going to ask we're going to try and ask every single uh person who comes on the stream how they made the first dollar on the internet and what their favorite entrepreneur is.
7:05
Favorite it could be anyone.
7:07
>> I'm going to go the last decade, last 5 years.
7:09
I think Andrew Duden from Hims and Hers is incredibly >> fastest consumer company to go public. >> Oh yeah, that's true.
7:17
>> The only successful consumer spack trading at 11 billion.
7:21
>> They went Yeah, they went out as a spack, but then they actually held the price. an absolute killer.
7:25
>> He's got a retail army. >> Exactly. >> Which is weird. Yeah.
7:27
>> Not Not every boardroom general can lead a retail army. >> Fantastic.
7:32
>> And I I would just I think Andrew is incredibly underrated.
7:34
I'm not going to say all time, but in a last call cycle, >> but we're we're going favor.
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>> There was some recent news that that they didn't didn't uh compounding like generally get like a a green light, which is very good for him.
7:48
Yeah, they've had a great uh kind of uh new wave with the >> Yeah, like a regulatory royal flash has been kind of drawn and there's been a lot of uh uncertainty about which way the the chips would fall and they got lucky.
8:02
>> And I want to give one other founder Hillary Kohl's who also doesn't get a lot of publicity, but she is also, you know, an incredible founder and, you know, important to the to the success. >> Fantastic.
8:12
>> Um well, I have to put you in the truth zone.
8:14
This is Y Cominator demo day summer 2025. This is summer. End of summer. Demo end of summer. We're starting fallatch.
8:21
>> So, we met some founders who had F who were I think going into the fall batch, but they they've been accepted.
8:25
They'll be joining the next batch. Summer. Yes. >> Oh, great.
8:29
My first my first YC was >> five. >> Wow. I was summer 12 as 12.
8:32
So, just a mere 13 years. Yeah. Still kicking.
8:36
Uh, but I mean I was what, 21 at the time or something like that. >> Just a lad. >> Just a lad. Just a lad. Just a boy.
8:42
What else is the top of your timeline today?
8:46
Have did you watch the Apple event? Were you shaking? Were you crying?
8:48
Were you Were you gasping? Were you clapping?
8:54
>> Standing ovation from you for the iPhone. The iPhone 4000.
8:58
>> I was looking for more innovation on the wired headphones.
9:03
>> Speaking his language, my boy.
12:35
It just like pushes live. >> Yeah.
12:37
I feel like the uh of the app store like uh kids being able to build like Flatty Bird and then just go viral and you're going to see like most of the stuff is just it's just going to be so much slop and so much so many zeros but you're going to get these crazy crazy breakout stories of like some kid just vibe coded something had a really unique idea and was able to execute on it so much faster already.
13:03
the barrier to getting an app in the app store is like way lower than boxed software like where you had to literally call Masayoshi son and get like physical distribution.
13:13
>> Well, I think by the way guys stream was down the last 5 minutes.
13:15
That was a fantastic conversation but we're back up. >> We're back up.
13:19
>> But I think what you said while we were out was uh apps as memes.
13:21
I think the concept of like kind of transient ephemeral software software as gifts.
13:25
I mean, the original like think about like 10 15 years ago, everyone had an app idea and and like >> I don't know like 10,000 people in the world were actually like qualified to like ship something pretty decent, right?
13:41
May maybe more than that obviously, but but it was like the amount of demand like the reason that companies like lovable have blown up is like the demand for apps is like so much higher than uh the supply of developers that can actually like build these things.
13:55
And then especially too, like most app ideas are not worth investing $100,000 into or $50,000 or even$10,000, right?
14:03
It's just like something that should just be created for fun.
14:04
Maybe it turns into a company.
14:07
Maybe it's just a little piece of software that >> it is sort of a gauntlet being thrown down for the ideas guys because it's like >> John Fio, >> but like seriously, it's like it's like now you're in you're you're going to be in a paradigm where like oh you have an idea. Okay.
14:22
like uh you now can just put your idea into a text box and get it in front of millions of people.
14:28
Uh let's see how good your idea really is.
14:31
>> I think let's figure it out.
14:32
>> I think the concept of social >> app >> marketplace all at on Etsy where now you have this more artisal software experience.
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People with ideas can iterate and build and ship things.
14:43
I think that there's going to be some sort of new thing.
14:46
Is the app store the next app store? I don't know.
14:49
But I think when you lower the bar >> Yep. super low.
14:52
There's a lot of interesting ramifications of that.
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>> Yeah, I was I was I was thinking about that in the context of like OpenAI.
14:56
that in the context of like OpenAI. Like we've we've been in this era where, you know, it's like, okay, you have this $200 a month plan, you get like the super frontier model in a fantastic iOS app and if they go towards agentic
15:11
commerce and ads and eventually they want to monetize fully, like do the paid plans go away and does the product become more one-sizefits-all or do we continue to live in this world where if you have the budget, you can get like a really, really, really special app experience. And the flip side of that is like is
15:28
And the flip side of that is like is like there are a bunch of pieces of software that I could imagine building that don't work as businesses but would work essentially like uh as as like a one-of-one piece of software.
15:40
The example that I always give is like if I if I hire an assistant I can pay that person to buy a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and print out the articles physically remove all the ads and give me just a book of exactly what I want. very expensive to do.
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It was probably, you know, like lots of lots of money.
16:00
But like I could have a piece of software that does that.
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Now, I couldn't go and sell that software because I'm reselling subscriptions and I'm de taking ads out of the product.
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But in terms of like a a vibecoded one of one, there's only one person that's using it.
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Like it seems like potentially you could see more more stuff that feels like the domain of only like you needed a person to do this.
16:21
To take it even a step further, I just want >> instead of you being on my contacts, I want the John app.
16:27
>> Yeah, that's interesting.
16:27
And so, >> what would the John app have?
16:30
>> Well, it would just be everything you're into. Okay. >> Right.
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And I don't need to ask you any questions.
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I know what you're reading.
16:33
I know what you're buying.
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I know where you're going.
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I know what you're shopping.
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And when you think about like contacts as this new dynamic piece of software, there's like a portal through you. >> Yeah. Yeah.
16:42
>> That's something that's super interesting.
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And I I'm just riffing here, but like I think that >> where you think where this goes >> Yeah. Yeah.
16:48
becomes really trippy and you know the the language >> like Uber for John basically >> it's Uber for John. It's Door Dash for John.
16:56
It's Trip Adviser for John.
16:56
It's whatever workout app for John >> or or is it more like John like or is it more like a return to like the old like uh 2000s web? Yeah, exactly.
17:07
like like we we we have we have all been forced into expressing expressing ourselves through these like narrow boxes and like yeah you can put like any MP4 in there or any any MP3 or any image in there but but you can't actually make any social app like your profile like fully your own and customize everything.
17:25
But you could do that on just a normal website.
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Maybe that's coming back.
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>> Think think about every time someone asks you for advice. >> Sure.
17:32
Oh yeah, that >> or pings you and it's just like you just it's just like here's my app.
17:35
like it's like you're just a proxy to your and you can John and I are John and I are investors in Deli which kind of similar thesis of you know making yourself available 24/7.
17:50
>> Um let's uh switch gears a little bit.
17:52
Are you going to be buying the uh Elon are you going to be signing up for Elon's uh SpaceX telecom Starlink >> direct phone? Excited about this?
17:58
Yeah, I'm a I'm a fan of rural environments >> and Oh, you are you are and you need connectivity. >> Yeah.
18:07
>> And so I absolutely will be >> What's your do you do you travel with a Starlink setup much when you're going on escapades?
18:14
>> No, but I would say like when I'm situated in place for sure.
18:19
>> Um my my partner Dave who uh is a sprinter van guy >> is fully mobile mobile Starlink on his van. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
18:25
Uh, so what are your thoughts on 996?
18:27
Uh, deep fates on X says, "Yeah, I work 996.
18:31
9 minutes coding, 9 hours tweeting, six energy drinks."
18:35
>> It's just it's just an extension of the performative mail meme. Let's just be honest.
18:39
>> So, so I would totally agree with you, but we had R.
18:42
Carazian from Ramp, the economist over there, uh, on the show yesterday.
18:46
He looked at the credit card data and there's actually a meaningful uptick in in business activity in San Francisco.
18:54
just San Francisco on Saturday just as of 6 months ago and it's like a meaningful uptick >> and so he says it's real. >> Sure.
19:03
There's always people that are living the realness. >> Sure.
19:06
>> And then there's the performative social media cloud chasing and so yeah, of course there's always there's truth in every meme. >> Yeah.
19:11
It's like it's like maybe there's a 20% uptick in 996ing and then that's been like 5xed by the the volume of like post.
19:18
>> Atlas Atlas was joking.
19:18
It was like the great lock in and it's just like working Chinese hours for 4 months.
19:25
>> I mean, I think >> Nal Nal had uh some new some new press today.
19:30
He said, "Nal Ravocan expects employees to work 24/7 at his new startup."
19:34
>> That's the next level after 996 is just don't sleep. Just stay at your desk.
19:40
Just 12 127 >> 12 12 12 >> 12 a. m.
19:44
>> I'm bullish on him and hers then for the kind of performance-enhancing aspects required. >> Okay. Okay.
19:49
You think they might get into some some sleep deprivation?
19:53
>> Back in the day people used to take pro vigil. >> Yeah.
19:55
Uh there was always that lore about like the air force >> pilots combat.
20:01
>> I've never done that but you know that was always Obama's hack as he would you know >> you came on like we're not going to talk about politics and here you are.
20:07
Nothing that's about Yeah, that's performance performance and I'm you know I'm sure that you know providial is not like a partisan issue. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. >> It's bipartisan.
20:18
>> That's as far as we'll go on that.
20:21
>> Anyway, um do you want to run through the the the first Elon Treasury company? Did you see this?
20:25
Have you been following the the the treasury stock memes?
20:28
I mean strategy micro strategy, but then there are a few that do ETH and Salana.
20:33
>> There's five Salana treasuries that all launched within the same like 3we period. So like essenti Yeah.
20:37
If you if you track it, there's uh there's one that uh Panta launched.
20:42
>> Uh there's one that I think >> uh yeah, Joe Mccan I think was working on one.
20:46
Um there's a few coming through the >> don't understand it, but maybe it's just because I'm aware of like you can buy crypto directly, but maybe it's like a tax thing.
20:55
>> No, it's an on-ramp for uh Tradfi to play in crypto as a as a more safer play because it's highly regulated and so they I think instead of them just buying Salana, they can buy into this thing and >> Okay.
21:08
a regulatory thing more than a more than a tax thing >> for traditional finance and I'm just being super reductive on that but I think that's that's the appeal and then you know assume that there's if they're hoovering up as much
21:16
>> and then you give retail an opportunity for new forms of basically betting >> it all comes back to that but so we were talking about Echoar so so SpaceX uh acquired a spectrum that's going to enable them to get into direct to sell >> 17 billion >> um yeah it was 8.5 billion of cash 8 and
21:34
5 billion of cash 8 and a half billion of stock.
21:37
Uh Echoar is not is up 24% in the last 5 days but is pretty much flat today.
21:44
And um people people were starting people yesterday realized they were like wait >> a $20 billion public company holds 8.
21:50
5 billion of SpaceX stock.
21:52
Like this is an Elon treasury company >> but small issue.
21:56
They have $30 billion of debt.
21:58
And so we were kind of like doing some rough math yesterday and realizing like SpaceX needs to be like uh closer to a $2 trillion company for them to just pay off the and this is a company that's losing a lot of money in in in their core um core business.
22:14
>> Spectrum purchase is is highly strategic and makes me very very bullish.
22:19
>> I think people also should be looking at if they're if they want a public market comp uh you know more global play like look at Rocket Lab.
22:26
They're almost like a correlary to every time Elon kind of does something publicly that's embarrassing or that is against you know the political is like I guess that that stock like >> which one? >> Rocket Lab. >> Rocket Lab. Okay. >> Yeah.
22:36
It's also a publicly traded another successful deep tech spack of the era.
22:40
Yeah, they started off like >> and they're actually launching rockets now, but there are a couple of those like the anti- Elon trade.
22:45
Like there's this satellite company that's as they've been like mooning in the in the public markets, but I don't think that they've actually like shipped any satellites.
22:56
It's all like deals at this point.
22:58
>> Rocket Lab should Rocket Labs for sure.
23:00
>> 15 billion market cap spa. >> Yeah.
23:02
>> Uh road kind of like a rough period and now has been ripping. >> Yeah.
23:05
Firefly also got out and did quite well I believe in the IPO.
23:07
So the spack the spack universe like there's some winners. Yep. Let's be honest. >> Yeah. Yeah.
23:12
None of them that was part of >> same thing. No, no, no. That's wrong. So he did So and so up. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So truth zone. >> One out of >> Yeah.
23:21
It's like one out of eight.
23:21
Uh >> so that's like you know that's likely spread across them.
23:26
It it was not a good time but it was a rough time for a lot of people in a lot of markets. >> Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Sorry.
23:30
Did you guys see this company yesterday, Alter Ego, >> that uh that's doing the uh it's like a telepathic like headset device that you can like think messages in.
23:39
Thought it was pretty interesting.
23:43
>> That'll be big in the astrology community. >> Yeah. Yeah, I can see that.
23:45
Um went pretty got almost two million views since yesterday.
23:50
Some people were pushing back and saying like you actually have to like mouth the words, but I think it's fine. like a like a fish.
24:02
>> Is this actual shipable or pre-order?
24:04
Somebody I don't know I don't know pre-ord live, but >> I don't know how true this is.
24:08
Somebody quoted it and said this is the same type of thing Alman and and Ivory launching by the way future is here.
24:15
>> I think I think that would totally make sense and I think that's a good good call.
24:18
Um the question is just like yeah can how quickly can like AirPods 4 fast follow that technology?
24:24
But um if it's doing something else with like the electrical signals or like the mandable >> this is a good so we have to talk about this.
24:32
Uh Hunter SPX Thompson says Nvidia sells chips to Nebus to sell to Microsoft to sell to OpenAI all for OpenAI to burn 100 billion between now and 2029 so I can ask digital god for company primers and get answers in paragraph format pulled from seeking alpha dog >> Wow. Absolutely brutal.
24:50
uh the Nebas deal that got announced uh yesterday.
24:56
Total uh total retail >> yesterday was an insane day in the market, right?
25:00
>> Yeah, Nebas is up another 40 it's 42% in the last 5 days.
25:03
$22 billion company right now.
25:06
Retail uh they had a retail army behind them >> treasury company. Did you see that?
25:13
>> Oh, is there a treasury for that? No.
25:15
>> So, there's a there's a company >> there's going to be a treasury for everything.
25:17
Uh so I wasn't familiar with these these folks but Dan Ies is uh Wedbush Securities.
25:23
So he is now leading a crypto treasury strategy focused on Worldcoin, the native token of the blockchain used in OpenAI's creator Sam Alman's identity startup World.
25:34
And they bought so they bought uh $250 million um they had a $250 million pipe into the com into the public company OTO and the company I believe went up 2,500%. Which is a lot.
25:52
So, Fartcoin Treasury win.
25:57
>> Seriously, >> I'm actually not kidding. >> Yeah.
25:59
Well, we we were pitching this idea of instead of focusing on these like crypto assets, you could create a company that has a treasury that's just pure scratchoff lottery tickets.
26:11
So, you have like $10 million of lottery tickets in there.
26:13
And it's like, who knows what it could be worth.
26:15
It's hard to get to a book value on that.
26:16
You could do the expected value, but who knows?
26:20
Maybe maybe the investors will just will just not do the book value. Securitize it. >> Exactly.
26:24
Get get derivatives against the the the right to scratch off.
26:29
>> This is something there.
26:29
I do want to cover a bit more Nebius.
26:30
Uh there's there's some coverage here from Techrunch that's pretty solid because we covered this company earlier this year in a different context.
26:37
So, um >> Nebius is a real company.
26:39
It's a it's hypers scale, right? Or Neocloud. >> No. So, I'll get into it.
26:43
So, Nebius has actually been public for 13 years.
26:46
floating in May 2011 as Yandex Envy, the Dutch holding company of Russian internet giant Yandex, which is the Google of Russia.
26:54
>> Out of Yandex, >> remember that's crazy.
26:56
>> So, at the tail end of 2021, Yandex hit a peak valuation of 31 billion.
26:58
But in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, everything changed.
27:05
NASDAQ halted trading on Yandex shares in February due to sanctions imposed on Russian affiliated companies.
27:10
And a year later, NASDAQ said it would delist Yandex altogether.
27:14
But Yandex successfully appealed on the basis that it was restructuring a process that would take an additional 16 months to fully complete.
27:21
Part of this included offloading all of its Russian assets, which was where most of the real business value lay.
27:27
But what remained under Yandex's ownership was a random assortment of infrastructure and business units that just so happened to be located outside of Russia. That's crazy.
27:36
So they had set up data centers outside of Russia and everything effectively in Russia was was seized and sort of like pulled back uh into the country. >> What a wild story.
27:48
>> This divestment concluded in July with Yandex changing its name to Neas AI, a cloud compute uh platform with its own Finnish data center. >> Finish.
27:58
>> Um so uh >> we saw a billboard for Nebas on the drive-in today. >> Yeah.
28:02
So, the new business uh was to be spear spearheaded by Arcadi, the Russian Yandex co-founder and former CEO who was removed from a European sanctions list in March after he publicly condemned Russia's assault on Ukraine.
28:14
The core Nebus business sells GPUs as a service to companies needing compute.
28:20
>> Uh and that is pro I don't need to continue that.
28:24
>> Um so anyways, uh crazy crazy story >> here.
28:28
>> Uh uh >> Highway 101 billboard. Yeah. Yeah.
28:30
Maybe saw it when we saw it.
28:34
>> Not not 101, but we we saw it rolling in today. >> Yeah.
28:37
>> Where did I took a picture of it because I love advertising.
28:40
>> Um anyway, >> for the East Bay the Eastbay people coming in. >> Yeah, exactly.
28:43
That's us came from Oakland.
28:46
>> Uh it said AI runs better on us.
28:49
>> Echoar has a wild story too.
28:49
Uh Brandon GR dug into it on the Substack. Go to Substack. What is it? TVPN. stack. com. >> Yeah. >> Uh subscribe.
28:56
Uh we I believe we have our first guest.
28:59
So, thank you so much for coming on.
29:01
>> Great to see you, Titans.
29:02
>> Enjoy the rest of your demo day. Get out there.
29:05
>> Your founder on the show.
29:07
>> I will find that team. Bring them over.
29:08
>> Did you bring enough checks? Is your checkbook full?
29:09
I hope you're not running out of check. >> It's all Apple Pay. All Apple Pay now.
29:14
>> We need a ping sound effect. Ching.
29:16
>> Uh, anyway, if you're just tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day summer 2025.
29:21
And we will bring in our first team. Look at this. How you doing? Welcome to the stream. Um, >> what's going on? >> How you doing?
29:27
Do you want to bring over another chair for them here? You can grab this chair.
29:31
>> We'll bring in one for you. We'll put this here. >> Lads, lads.
29:34
Lads, are we going to outfits?
29:39
Because um our logo is a rocket. >> Okay.
29:42
>> And we help I need to talk to Mike. >> Yeah. As much as you can. >> Yeah. So, I'm Bora. This is Jerry.
29:45
We're co-founders of Reacher.
29:47
And the outfits are because we help brands reach more creators. Okay.
29:52
>> And make viral content to help them reach more people. >> How do you do that?
29:54
Like what is the actual product? Yeah.
29:58
So, we build AI agents to help brands find the right creators, personalize the outreach. Okay.
30:01
Get them to respond, pay them, and then also generate scripts and hooks so that they can make viral content. >> Got it.
30:07
Is the is the long-term uh a marketplace for brands to connect to creators?
30:11
Do you want to create like liquidity two-sided marketplace? >> Definitely.
30:14
Right now, like let's build as much tools for brands as possible.
30:17
There's so much work there and then once we have a critical mass of let's say 50,000 brands, we open up the deal marketplace to creators and that's when they can make money. >> Okay, first question.
30:24
I'm going to hit you with a hard question.
30:26
I'm I'm bullish on the tool in its current state.
30:30
Uh there's been so many attempts to build creator marketing tools over the last decade.
30:35
None that I'm aware of have become, you know, truly uh truly massive companies, right?
30:44
How what what what do you think has changed now that can enable this to be sort of a billion dollar company?
30:51
So I would say one thing is the fact that Tik Tok shop exists and social commerce is like the first real social commerce platform.
30:56
Everything is native native checkout.
30:57
Um the attribution is really dialed in in terms of everything happens on the platform and it's the first real attempt at getting anybody like you, me, regular creators that don't have millions of followers to make content and with the algorithm the way it works is you can go viral, right?
31:11
So I think that's one big aspect of it and the other part is AI and I'll let you speak to that.
31:17
>> So you guys just just one second.
31:17
You guys are focused on Tik Tok, Tik Tok shop initially as a category >> currently. Currently, yes. Cool. >> Yeah. >> Uh yeah.
31:24
You said AI agents going around finding creators.
31:27
Uh is there push back from scraping Tik Tok?
31:29
Like what what's the actual interaction like there?
31:34
>> No push back because we're number one on the Tik Tok shop app store. Okay.
31:35
So we're we're in the back end. We're number one. >> Fantastic.
31:40
>> We help Tik Tok make money so they don't want to push back. >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
31:43
Uh we we have some lightning round questions.
31:44
Uh favorite entrepreneur. What you got? >> Oh, you go. >> You can say anybody. >> Yeah, I know.
31:50
Could be just about I was gonna say Elon, but I think it's Jensen. Here we go.
31:55
>> Yeah, the first Jensen.
31:55
Let's start counting him up.
31:56
Uh, also, uh, we've been asking everyone, how did you make your first dollar on the internet?
32:02
>> Oh, first dollar on the internet.
32:04
>> Just dollar in business. >> Dollar in business.
32:06
I was fixing people's iPhone crack screens. >> No way. >> That's a great story. >> Fantastic. >> Awesome, guys. >> Traction. Traction. What?
32:15
What kind of numbers demo day going for demo day? >> Demo day was great.
32:19
Alumni demo day was great.
32:20
Our traction is $137,000 in monthly recurring revenue. >> Wa. Thank you. >> Series B territory. >> Get my 100 million.
32:31
Oh, we heard series A and B investors don't like outfits, so we're going to see about that.
32:37
>> Well, you love the aesthetics. Thank you so much. >> Cheers. >> See you.
32:42
>> Hey, we have a surprise guest.
32:42
We have the CEO of Gusto. I believe Josh is here.
32:48
Uh we're going to bring in Josh. >> There we go. >> How you doing? >> It's been too long. Good to see you. Oh, it's been so long. I'm so glad to see you. C Good to catch up.
32:58
Um >> it's good to be here.
33:00
>> Uh introduce yourself for the stream really quickly. >> Hello, I'm Josh.
33:02
I'm the CEO co-founder of Gusto and we are right across the street. >> No way.
33:08
>> Literally my team walked up and was like, "They're across the street.
33:09
Do you want to go say hi?" I'm like, "Sure. Let's go. Let's go." Incredible. >> I have zero prep. It's >> good. Uh good placement, too.
33:15
Did you guys do that on purpose?
33:18
>> Well, we were an early adopter of Dog Patch. We came here 2017. >> Okay.
33:21
>> And uh we were surrounded by Jewel. >> Oh, yeah.
33:24
>> Used to be this building. >> Crazy. That's crazy lore. >> Uber Autonomous Cars. That's the other tenant. Now it's Astronis NYC. >> Okay. Awesome.
33:33
>> Um uh what batch were you in? It was 2020. >> Winter 2012. >> 2012. Winter 2012.
33:37
That must have been just after summer 2012 when I went through cuz I remember we used Gusto.
33:44
>> What how did how did demo day go for you? >> Yeah.
33:46
>> So, first off, it was smaller.
33:46
It was down in Mountain View, >> but it was still like it was still like 70 teams.
33:51
>> There was about 50 60 in the batch and it was twice a year.
33:54
Now it's four times a year.
33:57
>> Um, and yeah, uh, I mean the shift was just starting to San Francisco.
34:00
So, we were actually still based in Po Alto up until four employees. Yep.
34:05
>> And then we moved up to the city and then a lot of companies are now here.
34:07
Were you did you guys start with the payroll?
34:10
Was that the thing you were planning to build or did you kind of pivot into it?
34:15
>> We were before YC definitely iterating and experimenting.
34:18
Once YC officially started, we were like heads down. >> Okay.
34:22
So, were you running payroll prior to demo day or did you need more time?
34:27
>> Cuz did you ever not dog food the product?
34:29
>> So, we we decided we weren't going to pay ourselves until you could do it. There we go. That's great.
34:34
And then we hit two milestones. >> I like it.
34:40
>> This board's going hard. >> Yeah.
34:41
No, we didn't pay ourselves till we could use our own product.
34:42
And then we onboarded like 10 other companies. >> Okay.
34:46
But that was during Y that was during YC for demo day.
34:47
We had to be able to say to everyone, >> yeah, we're using our own can process payroll.
34:53
>> Otherwise, you have to be put a clown mat, you know, outfit on.
34:56
>> We were we were three electrical engineering PhD dropouts.
34:57
What what credibility do we have building payroll software?
35:01
What's the What's the the the craziest MVP version of running payroll?
35:06
Like legally, can you just hand someone cash and fill out a form?
35:08
Aren't there aren't there stores?
35:11
>> How do you how do you ramp up?
35:11
You can do it on a spreadsheet, right?
35:14
Obviously, you should use gusto, but like legally, can you just do it on paper?
35:20
>> When we started the company, 40% of businesses in the US were doing it by hand. >> Wow. >> Right.
35:24
And you can there's like physical businesses out there in the world that still like run they do payroll service bureaus and you can like go into them tech business. >> Yeah. Exactly.
35:34
>> And >> it looks more like retail. >> Yeah.
35:36
About a third of companies are still using that type of system. It's errorprone. Mistakes get made. You get penalized. yada yada. >> That's wild. >> Insane. >> That's crazy.
35:46
Uh >> how was how was how was RA?
35:47
Did you guys have any trouble raising or or people by that point were were pretty bullish?
35:52
I'm guessing >> I think we stood out. There was luck. There was hard work.
35:56
A lot of stuff has to line up cuz you're raising at the same time with a bunch of other founders.
36:02
>> Um Instagram had just gotten bought in the last year or two, I think, before that.
36:06
And so a lot of the companies in the batch were in the social mobile local.
36:10
I remember this >> kind of craze. >> So low.
36:12
>> The best time to build SAS is when everyone >> we stuck out as like we're building a business that has like very concrete need, very very established market.
36:18
Y >> so we ended up doing really well in the batch in terms of the fundraising process.
36:24
We raised a $6 million seed round which back then was a large amount.
36:28
Um and then it wasn't about spending it.
36:32
Like when we did our series A, we still had two of that in the bank.
36:35
But yeah, we had some great investors get involved and we're really grateful. Yeah.
36:38
>> Uh we have a lightning round.
36:38
We have two questions we've been asking everyone.
36:41
Uh favorite entrepreneur doesn't have to be greatest.
36:43
It can just be anyone, but who's your favorite entrepreneur?
36:48
>> Can I be snarky in my answer?
36:48
Tor and Eddie are my co-founders. They're amazing.
36:52
I think really highly of them.
36:55
>> That's a fair that's a fair answer.
36:56
>> I mean, I can go with a classic.
36:57
>> Any biographies that you are on your nightstand?
37:00
>> Here's a personal story.
37:00
U graduated 2005 Stanford and the commencement speaker that year was Steve Jobs. >> Wow.
37:07
That speech was was >> it's like a viral video >> and um that was a formative moment and I I really admire like that customer centricity that like imagine the future aspect of of Steve Jobs. >> Wow. Yeah, that's great.
37:22
>> And then what's the first dollar that you made online?
37:24
Was it gusto or were you doing anything before?
37:27
>> I mean back in the 90s I was building websites.
37:28
I built a website for a coffee shop. >> For a coffee shop.
37:31
So I mean that was I got paid for that.
37:34
>> Do you remember how much you got paid?
37:35
Uh, I think I did it for like 500 bucks. >> 500 bucks. That's pretty good.
37:37
In the '9s with inflation, that's like $25,000 today.
37:43
>> It was I mean, >> yeah, if you just waited some time, bought Bitcoin crypto, good to go.
37:49
>> Well, you put it all in payroll and I think it worked out.
37:51
>> Maybe I'm Satoshi, you know. >> Fantastic.
37:52
Um, more guests just ready to go. Okay, >> perfect.
37:56
I just want >> I got a lot more questions, but great good to see you. >> Yeah.
37:59
Yeah, you congrats on all the progress with what you guys are doing. >> Yeah.
38:02
Uh, and uh, yeah, good luck out there if you're uh, >> what percent what what percentage of the batch is already using gusto, do you think?
38:10
>> Uh, we tend to do pretty well with YC batches. Fantastic.
38:13
And we also do a Boba get together. >> There you go.
38:17
>> Boba, Boba, Gusto, make payroll easy, set up healthare really easy. >> We're here to serve.
38:22
>> Well, thank you so much for helping us. We'll see you soon. >> Good to see you.
38:25
>> And we will bring in our next guest >> who will also tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both. Go to ramp. com. What's happening? Welcome to the show. >> Hello. >> Hey. Welcome to the show. I'll give you a salute. There you go.
38:37
>> I'm a big fan of the show. >> Thanks.
38:40
>> Introduce yourself for the stream. What are you building?
38:42
What are you pitching here today? >> So, I'm Bruno.
38:44
Uh, we're building Gaus, a personal AI investment analyst for retail investors. >> Interesting. You know, B toC.
38:49
If you invest in stocks, you're welcome to join our platform. >> Okay. >> Uh, yeah.
38:54
I mean, there's been a ton of moves in the in the retail world.
38:55
Tons of meme stocks going on.
39:00
meme stock for the retail investor who doesn't want to get burned or the retail investor >> to not make mistakes when I'm asking >> Exactly.
39:10
That's actually our number one use case.
39:12
We want retail investors to make less emotional mistakes. Emotional mistakes.
39:15
So, right now we're focusing on thesis driven investors.
39:16
So, not the the meme stock buyers.
39:19
Uh so, you have a clear thesis, you want to monitor the market, but you're a busy professional.
39:24
You don't have time to know keep track of everything that's happening.
39:26
we can find opportunities.
39:28
You know, you connect your portfolio to us and we can start giving tailored advice that fits your >> talk to me about the puzzle pieces that you're putting together.
39:37
I imagine plaid's important.
39:39
There's probably some broker dealer at some point.
39:41
There's probably a Frontier model that you're partnering with.
39:45
You're not training your own models, but >> what what are the puzzle pieces that you're putting together to build the platform? >> Yeah, exactly.
39:50
So, Plaid uh is part of our platform.
39:52
We have read only access to your accounts. We don't do trades. >> Okay.
39:56
You just recommend right now >> we recommend so we're an adviser basically we want to tackle the advisory market and replace with agents.
40:03
>> So so what kind of uh what's the compliance framework if you're giving people investment advice as an app?
40:10
>> Everyone always says so you just say not investment advice and then you're fine. Right.
40:12
And then you can give as much investment advice. >> Yeah. Yeah.
40:15
Right now that's what we do but we're in the process of getting the RAIA registration.
40:18
Hopefully by the end of the month we will be on our way and we can >> you come into did you did you come into YC with this idea or did you pivot into it? >> We did.
40:26
Yeah actually we've been Michael Far and I have been working on this for the past like 3 4 months. We apply with this idea.
40:31
Uh we're one of the few B2C companies in this batch cuz most companies have been B2B but it's been exciting. We got like 1.
40:38
7,000 users using our platform generating revenue. >> Yeah.
40:42
And uh is your KPI like assets uh that are linked on plaid?
40:45
Is that what you share today?
40:46
Yeah, that's one of the the KPIs.
40:48
But right now, we're focusing on signups and retention.
40:49
Yeah, we want to get, you know, users coming to our platform and staying with us, and we want to eventually be the best in giving like tailored investment advice for people. >> That's great. Uh, lightning round. >> Yeah.
41:01
Well, yeah, I was going to say, uh, how are you monetizing today?
41:05
>> It's a subscription model, so we're charging $19 a month for customers.
41:07
And you know, we we'll plan to continue with this for a while and then eventually we're going to switch to the more RAI like model.
41:16
>> Free plan or everyone paid? >> Free plan. You it's a premium.
41:18
You can just like sign up the platform, use the free features and then you can pay an X.
41:23
>> I like businesses like this because people run the calculus of like if I >> pay $19 a month, but I can make a slightly better investment.
41:30
Also, I mean, you can definitely I don't want to, you know, degrade the business in any way, but uh you can also underwrite this as uh almost like an edutainment product like like even if I'm not always making the trade that it recommends, if I'm just saying, "Okay, here's my thesis.
41:46
Walk me through the stocks."
41:48
That's almost like a deep research type product.
41:49
That's something that somebody can read like an investment newsletter. >> Exactly.
41:54
What were you doing before this?
41:56
>> I was so I started my career at New Bank, big Brazilian fintech.
41:57
I was doing data science there. Then I moved to VC.
42:02
I did three years of fintech investing in Latin America. >> Thank you. >> VC I I like VCs. I was in the industry.
42:08
Um you know I and then I switched to the other side of the table now.
42:11
Wanted to start something on my own.
42:12
Did two years of business school at Stanford.
42:14
Just graduated two months ago.
42:16
Did YC and now we're here.
42:19
>> Non-traditional background.
42:22
>> Uh so uh how how's how's the fundra going?
42:26
>> Uh we close around already. >> Let's go. Okay.
42:31
>> Uh, still undisclosed, but we we have a small location for smaller angel checks, but you know, hopefully that's good good runway for us.
42:40
>> He's like, call me, but not financial advice, but also it's going it's going to be a thousand bagger, but also not financial advice. >> Uh, dude, congrats.
42:46
couple couple round question.
42:49
Uh, favorite entrepreneur.
42:51
We've been asking everyone who comes to mind uh throughout history.
42:55
>> Um, I have to say David from New Bank.
42:57
He's an inspiration for me.
42:57
He challenged, you know, the most traditional industry in Brazil, big banks, and he managed to create a a generational company. Fantastic. I really like him.
43:06
>> Uh, how did you make your first dollar on the internet?
43:10
>> Um, so when when I was a kid, um, you know, I started kind of like the small e-commerce shop to sell, um, materials for, you know, school school materials.
43:23
Um, it was just like a school website in Brazil. I was in S.
43:25
Brazil. I was in S. follow and you know kids were always like they asked their moms to buy school materials and I was like I think there's a way to just like sell directly to kids and they were like starting to go to these websites and I was just like and it was like there was no payment system or anything it was
43:40
just like a storefront and you know they could select the material and they paid me cash at school so >> but but you use the internet as kind of order management management system management system >> that's amazing that's a great story thank you so much for hopping on >> so much great so much >> congratulations on the That was uh not general solicitation by the way. He was not saying to reach out
44:00
He was not saying to reach out to him if you want to invest in the company.
44:04
Uh but uh love to see it.
44:04
Uh I'd love to see a non-traditional background into uh >> Stanford representation >> Stanford MBA worked as a venture capitalist worked at a at a at a hyperscaler.
44:16
>> Uh we we love to not hyperscaler gigaser.
44:21
>> Welcome to stream Perseus defense.
44:21
I saw your stuff on on X.
44:24
I saw the image of this massive like weapons. >> Oh yeah. Wow. Got to update the show.
44:32
>> Welcome to the show, guys.
44:32
Welcome to the show on or off. >> No, you're good. You >> good. Cool.
44:36
>> Welcome for hopping on.
44:36
Uh we're going to kind of have you pass back the mic and uh back and forth.
44:39
Uh just get it as close as you can.
44:41
But uh introduce yourselves. Who are you? What are you building? >> Cool.
44:45
So my name is Jason Cornelius. Uh this is Steve. >> Hey, what's up guys?
44:48
Steve with Perseus Defense. >> What's up?
44:50
>> And we're building 16inch missiles to shoot down drones.
44:52
16inch missiles to shoot down drones. Okay. >> Okay.
44:56
>> Uh what what yeah like do we not have 16 do we not have 16inch missiles in the arsenal currently?
45:02
Is this something that's like like we're familiar with like the Patriot and then the bullet.
45:07
>> How much do they cost and how do you fire them?
45:10
>> Yeah, it's a good question.
45:10
So there are some existing solutions for like the counter UAS problem, right?
45:12
We see >> walk through the Yeah, walk through the solutions >> for sure.
45:16
So there's, you know, electronic warfare, so GPS jamming unreliable, right?
45:20
There's the there's easy ways to defeat them.
45:22
You know, you can make a more advanced drone and this is what we >> have the fiber optic cables. >> Fiber optics.
45:27
This is like already defeating some of those solutions that we have.
45:30
And then there's like the Death Star laser beam which is very expensive, immobile, very heavy, requires a lot of power. There's AI machine guns.
45:36
And so like there's a million solutions.
45:38
And we were >> your buddy that does that uh >> uh ACS control gone on in the truck. Yeah.
45:44
And so there's some really good solutions out there for different use cases and they need more.
45:47
We we need more and they all have pros and cons and they have like a layered.
45:51
So some of them like ACS is very short range.
45:52
Some of them like a Patriot is very long range.
45:56
And so we looked at it who's going to fill this gap that's in between when we don't want to spend a $10 million missile to shoot it at 10 miles away, but we also don't want it to get so close to us that it's, you know, right on top of.
46:06
>> So what's the what's the range? It's a 16inch missile. Half mile. >> Half mile. >> Half mile.
46:10
And and is the benefit of that the payload?
46:12
like you can blow up a bigger drone or you can just fly farther.
46:15
Like what are the trade-offs that go or what are the benefits that go into having >> really the cost? >> The cost. >> Yeah.
46:20
So if you look at like the best solutions today, you know, Rathon has something called Coyote.
46:23
That's still $250,000 per drone that we take out.
46:27
The drone that we take out cost $1,000.
46:28
So like not a great scale, right?
46:31
So we're building these things for sub $10,000 a shot.
46:35
Trying to drive that cost down.
46:37
And then you have a >> How how is how does it do targeting and like actual tell you about it? >> Yeah.
46:42
So there's a thermal seeker on board the missile.
46:43
All the computes on board the missile. It's fire and forget.
46:46
So it just seeks out the drones.
46:46
Uh >> so you can just shoot these out into the >> and um so we have the display out back with like the missile pod mounted on some unmanned vehicles that we got some Navy Seals to send us.
46:55
But you can see like these things could they're cheap. They can pop off.
46:59
You can have like they're only a pound each.
47:00
So you can have like 25 missiles in one pod that's only like 30 lb or so.
47:04
So a guy can carry around like a mini surfaceto air missile site basically. >> That's crazy. >> Crazy.
47:09
uh what's the progress of the business?
47:11
Are you going straight to program of record?
47:13
Are you doing some uh some different grants?
47:16
What what's the business model? >> Sure. It's a good question.
47:18
So, you know, typical way to do this is you apply for a cber, small business innovation project.
47:22
And we've so we've done some of those applications, but we're kind of trying to attack it from all different possible angles.
47:27
So, I was in the Pentagon 3 weeks ago.
47:29
I carried missiles inside the Pentagon to show two offices there.
47:32
We're working with Fort Hood, so first calvary division down there.
47:36
They've been super helpful giving us feedback on our solution trying to help us accelerate it into the DoD.
47:39
So, we're talking to the soldiers at the ground level.
47:42
We're talking to the Pentagon.
47:43
We're talking to the science and technology communities inside the DoD and really have a list of supporters.
47:48
They're just waiting for us to get the technology ready so that they can bring us out.
47:52
We can demo it and get it ready to rock.
47:55
>> What's it like uh testing a product like this? It's >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
48:01
But uh but but you know a lot of your batch mates here can go and just ship a product >> you know to make make an edit ship it to prod and then uh the stakes are a little bit lower.
48:11
So like where are you guys even testing and and all that stuff?
48:14
>> Can't say on here where we test at but every two weeks we do we do a long drive very far outside of San Francisco and we load the truck up.
48:20
We take a bunch of missiles out into a very far away land uh and we test.
48:24
So that's been the entire YC batch.
48:26
Every two weeks we've done it.
48:28
So four or five cycles and then in between those two weeks we have the entire team doing major iterations to the design improving it.
48:33
So in the 10 weeks of YC we've done five major missile iterations launched over 30 missiles and it's it's progressing quite fast.
48:42
>> I will say the the first thing that we bought with the YC company or with the YC money was a Ford Expedition and so we just packed that thing full of all the >> and then we blew it up. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Lightning round.
48:54
Uh favorite entrepreneur?
48:56
Who do you look to for advice or uh or as a role model?
49:01
>> We're looking at Dino at Seronic right now and trying to match that trae growth trajectory that they're having a lot.
49:06
And I'll say Steve Blank, we're kind of friends with him down at the Stanford class. He's awesome. >> I love him.
49:11
Yeah, I interviewed him a while back. He's great.
49:13
Uh second lightning round question.
49:15
How do you make your first dollar on the internet or in business?
49:20
>> First, >> I used to wash horse trailers. >> Wash horse trailers. >> Equestrian. There you go.
49:24
Let's give it up for people who gather their money question industry.
49:29
Thank you so much for coming on.
49:31
Good luck with the rest of demo day. >> Cheers.
49:35
>> We will talk to you soon.
49:35
Uh we, if you're tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day 2025.
49:38
We uh are going to have some special guests hop on the stream.
49:43
We might have Gary Tan stop by.
49:43
Uh the team's going to bring in Gary Tan as soon as he's available.
49:47
Uh but up next, we have Meteor. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? Nice to meet you.
49:53
>> Uh introduce yourself for the stream. Who are you? What are you building? >> Yeah. Uh, I'm Prenav.
49:56
Um, we're building Meteor. And this is for Han.
49:58
Uh, the AI native browser that's going to kill Google Chrome. >> Oh, okay.
50:02
We got the browser wars going. Let's go. >> Yes. Meteor.
50:09
>> You guys going after Comet, too. >> Yeah, absolutely. Everyone. Yeah. >> Okay. Well, what's the plan?
50:13
I mean, everyone has installed Chrome at this point. Everyone runs it.
50:17
It's so hard to rip it out.
50:19
How do you How do you create a solution that's 10x better? >> Yeah.
50:22
Well, I mean, we all spend seven or eight hours every day on our browser, right?
50:26
We spend we do most of our work on the browser, >> right?
50:29
Most of it is redundant work.
50:29
Y >> we're saying we can automate all of that away, >> right?
50:33
We're saying we want AI we want to spawn AI agents that work with you as your co-pilot to the web that can do your work for you so you don't have to waste your 7 8 hours. >> Okay.
50:42
But but but like what does that look like as I use the product?
50:43
How do you pitch to somebody who says Chrome works well enough for me? >> Right.
50:48
Chrome does work well enough for you if you're okay wasting many hours a day.
50:51
What we're saying is we're giving you time savings.
50:52
It's sort of like people pay thousands of dollars for personal assistants, right?
50:55
People pay thousands of dollars for employees to hire like to create automations.
51:01
>> We're saying we want to create virtual employees >> that run on your browser, >> right? And that's Meteor.
51:05
So like >> let's say you want to handle your calendar, right?
51:08
Just automate all like meeting creation, you know, based on your your emails.
51:12
Like if you want um if you want, you know, some kind of like data entry, just hand like tell me Meteor and we'll handle it for you, right?
51:19
How is the AI agent interfacing with the actual data?
51:20
Are you screen scraping, taking screenshots, trying to interpret it that way?
51:23
Are you you doing computer use or, you know, interacting with the HTML API underneath? >> Yeah.
51:30
So, we're in alpha right now.
51:30
So, we're trying out a bunch of things.
51:31
Um, right now we're primarily using vision. So, we use screenshots.
51:35
Um, also helps a little bit with like some of the the the prompt injection stuff.
51:39
So, definitely uh we're primarily using vision, but you know, we've been playing around with a bunch of things.
51:44
And >> yeah, I think uh >> what's the best frontier model right now for what you do?
51:47
for what you do? Uh right now it's it's probably cloud set but you know we use a mixture of models right um we use GPT we use cloud we use all of them and we are state-ofthe-art yeah so >> what were you guys doing before YC >> we were at the UDub we were both doing computer science to build
52:04
>> Meteor there you going >> we have a lightning round uh who's your favorite entrepreneur >> it's got to be Steve Jobs >> Steve Jobs okay and how did you make your first money online your first dollar in business or online >> selling Pokemon cards >> selling Pokemon cards There we go. There There we go.
52:20
>> Well, congratulations on demo day. Thank you so much. >> How's the race going?
52:22
First year college dropouts. You're here. You're going through YC.
52:27
>> Oh, it's been it's been going great. Yeah.
52:28
Uh we're you know, we're both second time entrepreneurs and a bunch of cool in the past.
52:32
That's >> first time dropout. Second time. >> First time dropouts. Yeah.
52:35
Unfortunately, you can only do that once. Yeah.
52:36
This is all >> No, you could go back and get you could get an MBA immediately like you go to med school at 35. Drop.
52:44
What was your What was your last company?
52:46
Um, so he built Maxima, which is an FPJ ID that was 10 times faster than the industry standard. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah.
52:53
A lot of lot of code code optimization.
52:54
I built a bunch of projects at UDub that went viral.
52:57
>> He almost got kicked out twice. >> I did all the story.
52:59
When what was the worst the worst thing you did to get? >> Okay.
53:03
So, what the thing that went most viral was u I figured out there was a data leak that allowed students to get access to their professors before Udub published it.
53:09
And I published it within eight down within eight days. It got taken down. I got called in.
53:13
Uh, but you know, everything's okay now.
53:16
We're We're >> Everything's okay now. >> Congrats, guys. Appreciate it. >> Good luck out there. Good luck. Thank you so much.
53:23
>> If you see Sarpai, just run the other direction.
53:27
>> Just run the other direction.
53:29
>> Thank you so much, guys. Thanks for coming on.
53:30
We have our next >> We've been trying not to do handshakes.
53:33
People are insist on the handshake.
53:35
We're going to do handshakes.
53:36
>> We're going to do handshakes. Okay. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? >> Welcome. How's it going? >> Cheers.
53:42
>> Congratulations on fantastic demo day.
53:44
Why don't you introduce yourself and >> Yes.
53:46
You just literally came directly from the stage. >> Fantastic.
53:48
We love I think it was really good.
53:50
>> You look calm and collected. >> Okay, that's good.
53:52
>> Introduce yourself in the company. >> Um, cool. I'm Haz Hubble.
53:53
I'm the founder of Pali where we're bringing every contact and every conversation from every platform into one place.
54:00
>> And using AI to help you keep track modern work.
54:04
I got iMessage, there's Signal, there's a chat, there's LinkedIn, there's email, there's personal email. >> Tell me about it.
54:09
Um and uh there's been a few people that that have like tried to crack this. I think like text.
54:13
com highest maybe highest profile solution.
54:19
>> There was a YC the YC founder working on something like what's the what's the unique insight and and um what kind of value do I get from connecting all these services and giving you all my data?
54:31
>> Well, one you don't give us all your data.
54:33
We do it fully locally on your device with on device LLM one device backed databases.
54:39
local either so I have to run it on a computer that's always on basically >> no it's on your iPhone as well >> okay but if my MacBook's closed right now it's not going to sync to my phone >> if it's switched off fully it won't sync but if it's if it's chilling like that it's okay >> never turn off but but realistically if I really cared about this I could get a Mac Mini and throw it that's just running okay got it How are you actually scraping?
55:07
Can you share how you're scraping out of iOS? >> It's very clever. >> Okay.
55:13
Everyone always says one stupid trick that Tim Cook hates >> and uh and good luck to you holding on to that.
55:20
What's attraction been like?
55:22
What kind of metrics were you? >> Yeah.
55:23
I mean, so we launched two months ago, reached product of the week on Product Hunt, and it's since growing to over Thank you. Fantastic.
55:31
>> Uh we since grown to over three and a half thousand users, 125k of ARR people are really a lot. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
55:38
Growing at 22% week over week. >> That's fantastic.
55:41
>> Uh we have some lightning round questions for you.
55:42
Uh who's your favorite entrepreneur who you learning a lot from?
55:47
>> Uh my favorite entrepreneur of all time actually would be like Richard Branson. And here's a fun story.
55:51
So when I was I dropped out of high school and I remember when I was like 14 15 speaking to my mom mom about this I pointed to him as someone who was successful who dropped out.
56:01
>> Did he drop out of high school though? >> Oh wow.
56:02
And then 10 years later I was invited to spend a week on his island with him. No way.
56:06
And I spent actually time with him on Neker Island and so it was like a very cool full circle moment. Totally.
56:11
Um he's been a great great like mentor over the years. >> That's amazing. That's amazing.
56:14
Second lightning round question.
56:15
How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business?
56:18
Um, I was 12 years old and I sold FIFA Ultimate Team coins. >> FIFA?
56:22
What do what do what do coins mean?
56:26
>> Basically, it's like you can buy and sell players and create a team and I would um, >> it's like virtual currency inside the game.
56:31
>> Uh, but how I would do it is I'd find a player and buy up every single version of that player and then price fix three times higher than the like classic price.
56:40
And so um, it made so much money.
56:43
Definitely illegal in the real world, but on this game it was fair game. >> Fair game legends.
56:46
Uh well uh how's the raise going?
56:50
How's the how's >> I mean we're over subscribed.
56:52
We're still deciding on who to partner with.
56:55
So reach out if you want to chat.
56:58
>> Not financial advice, but >> thank you so much. Thanks so much. Great to meet you.
57:03
>> Can't wait to test the product out.
57:03
We will bring in our next guest and we are live here from YC Demo Day. Welcome to the stream. Nice to meet you, man. >> Nice to meet you. What a direct name. Let me guess.
57:15
model, context, protocol, AI, something like that. What's going on? Introduce yourself. What do you do?
57:20
>> Yeah, my name is Peter. I'm the CEO of MCPUs. We help people use MCP.
57:21
Of course, we build open source dev tools and infrastructure.
57:26
>> I was going to say, what's the open source strategy? >> Yeah, open source. I mean, is a no-brainer.
57:30
>> Strategy is to open source.
57:33
>> Every license, everything is free. >> Okay. Everything's free.
57:34
And then there's probably a GitHub repo that's growing and some measured by stars or something like that. >> 7K stars. >> I know.
57:40
Let's hear it for 7K stars. Congrats.
57:42
Uh and then uh at some point do you want to be more like Red Hat Linux like who are you looking to in terms of well-run is it GitLab like >> superbase >> superbase okay breakdown uh how will their business model look like yours?
57:55
>> Yeah because they they have a bottomup approach they get developers and then those developers introduce inside the company the tool >> uh and I love it >> and and is the goal there to sell a a non-self-hosted version long term?
58:07
>> Yes like cloud you know. >> Great. Yeah.
58:09
>> Um what else is driving adoption right now?
58:12
now? like who are the key uh businesses or customers that are really going all in on MCP >> enterprise enterprise 20% of 100 users >> is there any uh is there is there any like uh specific subset of enterprise that's particularly all in on AI or MCB like we saw this data point yesterday that uh when the census polls people
58:33
maybe enterprises are less likely to adopt AI maybe they got over their skis but you can imagine that it's different if you're a farmer adopting AI or a large you agricultural conglomerate, a chemical plant or a widgets business versus like your Visa or you're a fintech company and like AI is it's already already a digital business. So
58:49
So is there are have you noticed any trends in who your customers are?
58:54
>> Yeah, I think what you said makes a lot of sense like tech forward enterprise are are doubling down like PayPal these kind of companies because they have like a very software like they have a very valuable software MCP allows to expose this software to agents so they're the ones you know doubling down.
59:10
>> Uh how's the raise going? Very good. Very good. You raised six already. >> $6,000. >> $6,000. >> $6,000.
59:20
>> Uh, how many times did you have to apply to YC to get in? >> Oh, three. Three of them. >> Three. Never give up. >> Never give up. I never give up. >> What were you doing? What were you doing?
59:28
>> I was I was in Zurich, you know, so far far there.
59:32
And virtual tryon for e-commerce. Okay. >> Miserable. >> Oh, virtual triumph.
59:36
>> Did you just say miserable? >> Yeah.
59:37
Like it's very hard to sell to fashion. Don't do it founders. Totally hard.
59:43
>> It's crazy how many companies have taken that crack yet.
59:45
It's just >> But no, it's getting better.
59:47
You know, I think you're doing well.
59:53
But yeah, I mean, you you always wonder if it's going to is that functionality going to live like at Shopify or at at an indep at an independent enterprise.
1:00:00
>> What's the uh what's the AI scene like in Zurich?
1:00:02
I there's that poaching team. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is great.
1:00:06
Zurich is a great place for talent like deep research and uh yeah I think last year you had another Zurich guy in there.
1:00:14
>> So we're also getting it.
1:00:16
>> But you're staying in the bay. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:00:17
We're staying in the bay. >> Okay.
1:00:18
America play the America Eagle. Thank you.
1:00:22
Uh uh we we we have a lightning round.
1:00:26
We like to ask two questions.
1:00:27
First uh who uh what who is your favorite entrepreneur or someone in business that you look up to? >> Yeah. Brian Chesy, I think. >> Brian Chesy. Oh, no less.
1:00:33
And then our second question, how did you make your first dollar online or in business >> converting an open source uh user? >> Really? >> Yeah.
1:00:46
>> That was when >> MCPUs. >> No.
1:00:47
So, I thought it was like an hypothetical question. >> No, no, no.
1:00:50
Literally like a lot of people they uh they sold records on eBay or they you know set up a website for a friend.
1:00:56
Everyone has an interesting story of like their first taste of entrepreneurship.
1:00:59
Could have just been a job. I don't know.
1:01:01
I think it was an app where people could create picture of their kids.
1:01:05
I made it with a girlfriend at the time. No way. Okay, >> cool. Programming. Yeah.
1:01:09
And you got your first dollar. Well, congratulations.
1:01:12
Have a great rest of your demo day. Nice to meet you.
1:01:15
>> We will talk to you soon and we will bring in our next guest at YC Demo Day 2025.
1:01:21
>> Welcome to the stream. How you doing?
1:01:24
>> Thank you for hopping on the stream. I'm John. Nice to meet you.
1:01:25
Uh, please introduce yourself. What do you do? What are you building? >> Yeah. Um, I'm Prali. I'm building Slashy. >> What is Slashy?
1:01:33
>> Slashy is a general agent that connects to your apps. Okay.
1:01:35
Like your calendar, Gmail, Notion, Slack, stuff for you. >> Android, iOS, both. >> It's on the browser. >> It's on the browser. Okay.
1:01:42
Uh, so is this a Chrome plugin or is or are you engaged in the browser wars?
1:01:46
Are you going up against Chrome directly?
1:01:49
>> We're not in the browser wars.
1:01:49
We're actually built on a APIs. >> APIs. >> Yeah. No MCP, no browser. >> No MC, no browser. Right.
1:01:56
So, does that mean I have to go through like 25 different oaths to actually log into every single app with you once and then you have the freedom to move around with your agents and stuff?
1:02:07
>> There's ways to get around it.
1:02:07
There's ways to get around.
1:02:08
Um, you know, Google Sith Lord magic. >> Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
1:02:12
Right now, it's very basic.
1:02:14
We just don't want to, you know, unleash our power to the world. >> Of course. Of course.
1:02:17
Well, uh, speaking of power, how powerful is the best? >> What is the value?
1:02:21
Like, what is the value that you're that you're uh telling users they'll get out of the product?
1:02:25
Is it more B2B focused, more consumer? Where where's the focus?
1:02:30
>> The the focus just you know your 9 to5 the that you don't like doing >> and you just like have slashy do the automating of the repetitive tasks.
1:02:38
>> So so specifically I I have a workflow that I'm doing where I'm going from this document to this app to this calendar to this email and I do that every single day and so I'm going to use Slashy to automate that. >> Well, yeah.
1:02:49
I mean that's that's a great workflow.
1:02:51
>> Yeah, except Slashy writes the prompt for you and thinks of the edge cases for you as well.
1:02:55
And well, one thing you should try on it is people search.
1:02:57
I know you're meeting lots of founders today.
1:03:00
Um, but yeah, we made we made a specific template for you for we >> alike >> to be like find everything about Xfounder. >> Okay. Okay.
1:03:09
>> Uh, Atlassian just bought the browser company.
1:03:12
Do you think they're kind of going after a similar opportunity to what you guys are going after?
1:03:16
>> I think I think the issue is just it's really hard to build habits around browsers.
1:03:19
It's really hard to get people to use browsers and switch from like what they've already been using. >> Yep.
1:03:24
So better to integrate at a deeper level. >> That's exactly it.
1:03:26
You need to you really need to just, you know, be like useful and be something that people want to use.
1:03:32
>> So once I once I authenticate and you're you're hooked into my digital life, are you going to just automatically detect >> things that could be workflows?
1:03:39
You said you're going to write the prompt to yourself.
1:03:41
So you're going to notice that every time I get an email from someone saying, "Hey, I'd like to meet, I open up LinkedIn and I search them and I go over here and I look at their website."
1:03:50
And then you might do that automatically for me in the future. >> Yeah.
1:03:52
I asked you to do one thing and then it'll be like do you want me to set this up for you every single day? >> Fantastic. That's nice.
1:03:58
>> How uh how did you meet your co-founders and what were you guys doing before this? >> We met at college.
1:04:01
Uh all three of us I'm 18 freshman.
1:04:03
Uh my co-founder is sophomore and then the other one is junior. >> Wow. >> Um >> what school? >> Georgia Tech. Nice. >> Yeah.
1:04:10
Before that I had dropped out. >> Sorry. >> Dropped out. >> Dropped out. >> There we go. Freshman drop out.
1:04:16
>> For that freshman dropout very far. >> Fantastic.
1:04:20
How do how do your parents feel about the the dropout? >> They're both PhDs.
1:04:24
It's uh you know, it's a little bit of an uphill battle, but you know, they're supportive.
1:04:27
So, what what metrics did you share uh during your pitch? >> What metrics I share?
1:04:33
Well, uh 40% of the batch uses us. >> That's great.
1:04:42
>> Growing 30% week over week.
1:04:42
30% of the VCs in demo day are using us for meeting prep. >> No way. Okay. Really good. Okay. Very cool. Yeah.
1:04:49
You you came in with a pretty broad pitch, but you narrowed down really well. I like this. >> Amazing.
1:04:53
Uh, how's the fund raise going? >> Fundrais going well.
1:04:56
We're almost almost done with closing. Um, yeah. Yeah. >> Fantastic.
1:05:02
>> That should make your parents feel a little bit better.
1:05:03
It's like, okay, like she dropped out, but she raised, you know, >> the bags in the river.
1:05:07
Um, uh, we have a lightning round. We asked two questions.
1:05:10
Uh, who's your favorite entrepreneur?
1:05:12
>> Who's my favorite entrepreneur?
1:05:14
>> Someone you look up to? >> Elon Musk. Lucy Guo. Whoa. >> Whoa.
1:05:19
Wait, somebody somebody's asking a question.
1:05:22
Freshman dropout on September 9th is wild.
1:05:25
Did you go did you go for a week or were you a freshman tech or not? >> I did a year. >> Oh, you did one year. Okay. Okay. Okay. It would be funny.
1:05:33
And then the last question we ask is uh how did you make your first money online?
1:05:36
Although normally that's like people much younger a decade ago.
1:05:41
But uh yeah, what was your first introduction to entrepreneurship?
1:05:44
Was it this company or did you make money in some other way?
1:05:45
Some people, you know, did some stuff on eBay or built an app or built a built a website or something. >> I know.
1:05:51
I started a company when I was 14 that Lucy Grow funded actually. >> No way.
1:05:56
>> We went to Age of Zero. >> Very cool. Okay.
1:05:57
What did you actually do? How'd you make money?
1:05:59
Like what what did someone pay you for?
1:06:02
>> Uh summarizing research papers. >> No way. There we go. Well, >> crazy. All right.
1:06:06
Well, one shot by Deep Research eventually. >> Legend in the making.
1:06:11
>> Well, congratulations.
1:06:11
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:06:12
Uh we will talk to you soon.
1:06:14
Have a good rest of your demo days.
1:06:16
>> If you are just tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day 2025 and we are bringing in our next guest. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? I'm John. Please sit down. Good to meet you.
1:06:25
>> Talk into that microphone and introduce yourself for the stream. Who are you? What do you do?
1:06:28
What do you >> Everyone, I'm the CEO of Closera and we build AI agents for commercial real estate. >> Oo, okay.
1:06:35
>> Um, what what part of the commercial real estate stack?
1:06:38
The actual transaction do you sit on the buyer side, the seller side?
1:06:41
Like that's a great question. administration.
1:06:43
There's so much that in commercial real estate. >> Exactly. It's a huge industry.
1:06:46
So, uh yeah, my co-founder and I our families actually grew up uh in the commercial real estate space.
1:06:51
Our both our families are developers.
1:06:54
>> Um let's hear it for the developer building. We like >> developers.
1:06:57
Developers say that in a different context. Exactly. Yeah.
1:07:01
Um but yeah, we we kind of did a survey of the whole market and we realized actually the most insane amount of manual tedious boring work that of course can be automated with AI agents um is actually done by brokerages and so that's where we decided to focus. >> Mhm.
1:07:14
Um >> uh and and so where in the brokerage stack do you say is this somebody who's who's they never actually take possession.
1:07:21
They're just facilitating the buy and sell. >> Yeah, exactly.
1:07:23
So our our customers are commercial real estate brokers.
1:07:25
So both on the buy side and sell side.
1:07:27
Um and that's yeah that's what where we focus.
1:07:30
And then in terms of we're we're talking AI agents, are you trying to build an RL environment for some of the other platforms and and kind of you know throw your own agent on top or are you just building like SAS that pulls the different AI tools off the shelf as needed for use?
1:07:46
Like how should I think about the business? >> Yeah.
1:07:50
So you should think of us as kind of like AI employees.
1:07:51
We automate entire endto-end workflows.
1:07:53
And so for commercial real estate brokers, um there's two workflows in particular that take up the most amount of time and money.
1:08:00
Um and so for example, one of them is creating uh sales materials for buying and selling buildings.
1:08:03
So today on average, uh teams spend about 4 weeks making these materials and spend about 5K in design fees.
1:08:10
Uh and with us, they can do that entire process in about 5 minutes. >> Very cool. >> There we go.
1:08:16
>> Uh progress on the traction. How's the raise going? How's >> de?
1:08:19
Um yeah, the raise has been great.
1:08:21
We were we were done in 48 hours. always Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:08:27
I think with raising it kind of either goes one of one of two ways.
1:08:29
It's either like know you're hot or plateau of productivity. >> Exactly. Yeah.
1:08:34
>> What were you doing right before this?
1:08:36
>> Um so I was at Google.
1:08:36
So I was a PM working on monetizing Gemini Notebook LM that helps with amazing. Yeah.
1:08:46
So that launch was was super fun.
1:08:48
It was like we were in chats with like Sergey. It was it was crazy.
1:08:52
you rate limiting us so hard.
1:08:52
John was paying 500 and he couldn't >> I wanted to pay you more.
1:08:56
I feel like you weren't monetizing hard enough. Come on, man.
1:09:00
>> You know, I don't work there anymore, but I can I can hold you accountable.
1:09:01
We have two lightning round questions we like to ask.
1:09:06
One, uh, favorite entrepreneur, someone you look up to. >> Yeah.
1:09:09
I think, you know, classic answer definitely Steve Jobs.
1:09:10
Like reading that biography in middle school is like what got me to want to move to the valley, go to Stanford, DYC.
1:09:15
So, >> the Walter Isacson book, fantastic book.
1:09:18
Uh second question, how did you make your first dollar on the internet?
1:09:21
>> Yeah, how we made our first dollar on the internet was actually we uh cold called.
1:09:25
So brokers are you know they always pick up the phone and so um anything as a kid.
1:09:30
So people like sold eBay or like you know did like websites as a kid any any childhood.
1:09:34
In high school, I made an app.
1:09:37
Um, it was a free app, but it I used AI to help the visually impaired.
1:09:40
And so, basically, this is like premultimotal models and stuff, and you could take a photo.
1:09:44
Uh, and if you were blind, like it would tell you, you know, what you're looking at, like say like a can of Coke or a can of Pepsi. >> Uh, yeah.
1:09:50
That had users in about 120 countries.
1:09:52
Um, it was named one of Tech Crunch's top AI stories of the year and was also uh in a Google commercial with Jeffrey Hinton and Justin Trudeau. No way. No way. >> That's amazing. >> Legend. That's fantastic.
1:10:02
Well, congratulations on the day and uh yeah, good luck out there. >> Awesome. Thank you for having me. >> Yeah, good luck.
1:10:08
Say hello to all the VCs that couldn't fit in already cuz you're done. >> RIP.
1:10:12
>> Anyway, >> we are live from Demo Day YC 2025.
1:10:17
>> We will bring in our next guest uh whenever they are ready.
1:10:19
Uh in the meantime, any breaking news, Jordy?
1:10:23
Anything we should run through before we're uh bringing the next guest?
1:10:27
>> Um I think we have our next guest right here. Hey, Josh Browner. How you doing, man? >> There we go. Good to see you. >> How you doing? >> I'm okay.
1:10:35
>> I wasn't expecting you.
1:10:36
>> How many did you Did you back all the winners already? >> Um, no.
1:10:38
I'm here mainly for social. >> Okay. >> Okay. Just hanging out. >> Just hanging out.
1:10:43
>> There are some amazing companies here. >> There are. There are.
1:10:44
Uh, what what trends do you like?
1:10:47
We heard that last batch was cursor for everything.
1:10:48
This batch is lovable for everything.
1:10:51
Have you noticed any trends?
1:10:54
>> I'm seeing a lot of uh boring software AI.
1:10:56
I was just speaking with a amazing founder working on waste collection AI software.
1:11:01
So, >> and and and you and you're using boring and you're using boring as a pjorative or not as a pjorative.
1:11:07
>> No, I think more of these businesses need to be built.
1:11:09
Less jargon and more boring stuff. >> More boring stuff.
1:11:12
Just find a specific >> Yeah, I've been I've been impressed with the traction so far.
1:11:16
There's been a couple founders that have come on that uh cool ideas expected to to to to not necessarily have like a a bunch of like real totally traction with with businesses and >> yeah I mean you've obviously been working in like the application layer of AI for what a decade or something like that now. >> I'm getting old.
1:11:39
>> You're still teal fellow right? >> Yes. >> Uh young at heart.
1:11:41
Uh but but but does the uh does this idea of like going after bore boring kind of vertical SAS vertical AI uh does that fit with a a worldview that uh maybe like we're not just going to get the the the foundation model labs to oneshot every single business opportunity and in fact it is a great time to build a a niche business.
1:12:04
>> I think that there's opportunities that are beneath the foundation models.
1:12:07
You're seeing them now like coding and things like that, but those are huge opportunities.
1:12:11
They're not going to go into waste management.
1:12:12
And so you can build 100 million, 200 million business. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:12:18
We I I looked at Fiji Simo at when she became the CEO of applications at OpenAI.
1:12:21
She had five things that she was going to knock down and it was like, you know, knowledge retrieval, health, uh, you know, coaching, shopping, talent, coding, but then waste management's not on that list and so I think you're safe for a little bit.
1:12:36
Um, >> anyway, uh, >> what what's happening in uh, in your business that's that's exciting?
1:12:41
Uh, I imagine there's every time the models get better, your product gets better. >> Yeah.
1:12:49
Um, I I think you constantly have to be innovating.
1:12:52
We're like always worried about what the big companies are doing to detect our AI robots.
1:12:56
There are now SAS startups that detect our robots.
1:13:01
So, we're trying to Yeah, exactly.
1:13:01
Um, anti-root as a service.
1:13:04
Fortunately, we're more motivated than the average like Comcast SAS vendor. So, we we stay ahead.
1:13:12
And then on the product side, um, when do not pay started, it was just like templates.
1:13:16
Now, you could just ask chat GPT to generate a template.
1:13:17
So, we're trying to go deeper, try and go more in the background >> um and >> build really exciting things. >> Yeah.
1:13:26
Have you been talking to founders about where prices are sitting?
1:13:28
Do you have any sense of of what what what a you know median valuation is for this round or or you know high end of the batch pricing.
1:13:39
I remember when I went through uh you know raising at like 12 was great.
1:13:44
I I think any company raising below 20 there's like a problem with it.
1:13:49
So I think 20 is now the baseline.
1:13:51
>> 20 is the base and then at high end what what are you saying 40 60 >> I mean some even 100. Yeah.
1:13:55
Um >> I'm trying I'm I'm here to meet um 100 people at once and then I can relax. I'm very introverted.
1:14:04
So this is my one social event of the year.
1:14:05
So >> one of the year four badges.
1:14:10
You got to keep >> this is my first YC demo day. It's amazing.
1:14:12
You can just meet everyone. That's great. Yeah.
1:14:14
Uh, we've been doing a lightning round with everyone that comes on the stream today.
1:14:17
Uh, favorite entrepreneur, someone you look up to.
1:14:21
>> Um, >> who comes to mind?
1:14:22
>> I guess in this batch there's an amazing founder from Kazakhstan, Nomio.
1:14:24
I think that's the name of his company. His name is Allan.
1:14:28
He's just such a hustler.
1:14:28
I'm not an investor in his company, but I wish I was.
1:14:33
>> What about throughout history?
1:14:33
History's greatest entrepreneurs. Who sticks out to you? >> Larry Ellison.
1:14:38
Larry Ellison is an inspiration.
1:14:41
He he's very um kind of pricing focused.
1:14:44
Did your other guest say that?
1:14:46
>> No one said Larry Larry, but we've been talking about Larry for a long time.
1:14:50
>> As a deeply underrated founder, just a fantastic >> animal.
1:14:54
Oracle will sue its customers.
1:14:56
Uh they're so focused on money.
1:15:00
>> Also, I mean, the fact that he's just like never really sold it and like really just the position that he has in that company is just remarkable.
1:15:05
There's just a bunch of things.
1:15:07
Also, he just looks great at his age.
1:15:08
You can just tell that like a lot of things are going on.
1:15:12
>> There's a headline from the LA Times in the year in June 29th, 2000 called Oracle defends its spying on Microsoft as public service. >> I love it. I love it.
1:15:23
>> They also called it their civic duty. >> That's great. That's great.
1:15:25
The other the other lightning round question, this one would be fascinating for you, uh, is how did you make your first dollar ever on the internet?
1:15:34
So, I was jailbreaking phones and um selling themes on Cydia.
1:15:40
So, this was before the days when the Apple operating system allowed you to change Apple icons.
1:15:43
And so, I would sell a Disney theme.
1:15:46
And this was like a complete copyright violation because I'd take all of Disney's IP and make it, but I guess they weren't detecting it.
1:15:52
And it was very lucrative.
1:15:55
>> How old were you at the time? >> Maybe like 13.
1:15:56
And there's different waves.
1:15:58
So, >> Disney's worst nightmare.
1:16:00
>> So, I was in the jailbreaking wave and then there was the Minecraft wave.
1:16:02
Then there was the >> how were people making money on Minecraft?
1:16:07
>> Uh Minecraft server businesses. >> Okay. So you set up a server.
1:16:11
>> So that was Adam Gild's generation with owner.
1:16:12
That's the Wonder Founder, the amazing TBPN sponsor.
1:16:18
>> Um >> they were making money with servers.
1:16:20
Then there was Sneaker Bots and that's the W founders.
1:16:23
>> And now >> what's next? >> H >> Fortnite. Anything in Fortnite? >> I think it's right. Roblox. >> Roblox.
1:16:28
You see a lot of kids doing well on Roblox. >> Roblox. Yeah. >> Fascinating.
1:16:32
people that are printing on Roblox today will be here in five years.
1:16:36
>> Or maybe just SAS startups.
1:16:36
I mean, there's like a 12-year-old who's viral on X with this >> in a few years.
1:16:43
I don't even mess around with the video games.
1:16:44
I just went straight to enterprise, age 12, >> my first dollar uh a business deal between me and Oracle >> and Larry to build out a new data center.
1:16:55
>> Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. Have a great day. Enjoy demo day.
1:16:57
Uh, if you're just tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day 2025. Nice to meet you. I'm John. Pleasure. Welcome to the stream. >> Great to meet you.
1:17:07
>> Uh, please introduce yourself for the stream. Who are you? What are you building? How's demo day going? >> Yeah. Hi.
1:17:11
Do I look at you or look at whatever you want.
1:17:14
>> Okay, I'm going to look at you. >> Fantastic. >> I'm Anson.
1:17:15
Um, we're building normal and we're automating hardware testing and compliance.
1:17:19
>> Hardware testing and compliance. Any specific verticals?
1:17:21
Are we talking like semiconductors, rockets, spaceships, cars? >> Yeah.
1:17:25
Yeah, we're starting with like robotics and drones and other any electrical components that have like a radio >> Yeah. Yeah. >> part to it. So, that's mostly it.
1:17:32
>> So, there's like a test stand where you need to actually see does the motor work and pick up the the robotic arm and it needs to be uh and there's someone there testing that robotic motor like every day.
1:17:43
They get a new robotic arm, they test it, and then they need to put that into some sort of database to manage and and and you kind of provide the software suite that they interact with on the day-to-day basis. >> That's awesome.
1:17:51
When you pitch it back to me, >> that is what you're doing. Okay. Fantastic.
1:17:54
It's uh very similar to that.
1:17:56
So basically as people are trying to build more hardware um and try to build more hardware here, a lot of the testing infrastructure is either overseas or it's um >> not like very nice to deal with.
1:18:05
It's kind of like working with the IRS a little bit.
1:18:09
So just kind of streamlining the process so that as teams go through and like they they build this like wonderful robot or a wonderful like drone like subasssembly, they're able to actually get that tested in in like a facility and through a process that is like deserving of the thing that they've made. Yep. >> Yeah.
1:18:23
>> Uh, who are you selling to right now?
1:18:23
Do do you want to start with like go figure out how to work with big manufacturing, the the the the big automaker OEMs and primes or startups?
1:18:32
Like who who who's the ideal customer to work with at this stage? >> Yeah.
1:18:36
So, the people that we're working with now are mostly like early stage startup companies.
1:18:39
So, if anybody's watching, like we'd love to work with you.
1:18:42
Um, so yeah, mostly drone, robotics, toys, um, uh, cameras. >> Yeah.
1:18:48
Anything with like a RF component. >> Okay, great.
1:18:50
>> Uh, how's demo day going?
1:18:50
Did you share uh any sort of headline KPI or uh news on the raise? >> Yeah. Uh we're wrapped up.
1:18:57
So this is kind of >> Let's go.
1:19:00
It's a celebratory stream.
1:19:00
We don't know how you can be talking.
1:19:02
We can get back to building. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:19:05
So this is my co-founder.
1:19:05
He couldn't be He's outside.
1:19:07
So we're just going to we're going to put him on the street. His name is Hudza. Yeah.
1:19:12
>> Wait, I've seen him on X.
1:19:12
He had some wild post just yesterday I was watching and he was wrong about something.
1:19:16
I need to put him in the truth zone. I got to debate him. Bring him in.
1:19:21
I don't I don't remember anything other than that he was wrong.
1:19:23
I I just remember seeing his post and being like about his post traction though.
1:19:26
What were you guys able to do? >> Yeah. What did you share? >> Yeah.
1:19:30
So, we launched 3 weeks ago and we have 35k in revenue. So, so fast weeks. Congratulations. It's fantastic. Thanks.
1:19:38
>> Um and then uh the race wrapped up.
1:19:38
We do have a lightning round.
1:19:41
We've been asking everyone two questions.
1:19:43
First is who is your favorite entrepreneur? Someone you look up to? >> Can be anyone. Favorite founder. >> Favorite founder.
1:19:50
Can I say throughout history?
1:19:52
Anyway, >> sir sir John A. McDonald. >> Who's that?
1:19:55
>> Uh first prime minister of Canada. >> Okay.
1:19:57
Company started a >> started Canada.
1:20:03
We don't have any buttons for >> Canada. Yeah.
1:20:04
I this is somewhat American.
1:20:06
I don't know if I could fully endorse it, but it's out it's outside the box and I appreciate it for that reason.
1:20:10
Uh the second question is how did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business as a kid?
1:20:15
Did you Did you do anything interesting?
1:20:19
Some people set up websites.
1:20:19
Some people >> I taught kids how to argue. >> Okay. Wait, what? Argue less. Arguing lessons. >> Argue. Debate. >> Okay. Debate. Debate. Okay.
1:20:27
Uh and and and so they they pay you like on an hourly basis. That's fantastic. There you go. >> That's great. Well, watch out.
1:20:33
Don't get an argument with her.
1:20:36
>> Congrats on professional argument.
1:20:38
>> Congrats on getting the round done.
1:20:38
And uh thanks for coming on.
1:20:41
>> Yeah, thanks for coming on.
1:20:42
>> If your course >> Yeah.
1:20:43
If your co-founder wants to debate John too, send I'll bring him right off.
1:20:48
>> I don't remember what he said, but I know I'm angry about it.
1:20:50
I'm I'm ready to >> He said something wild. Uh what was Sorry. What was that? Of all time.
1:20:57
>> Oh, favorite favorite entrepreneur of all time is what we're going to do. Okay. Thank you.
1:21:00
We are clarifying our questions.
1:21:02
We will talk to you soon.
1:21:03
Have the great rest of your day. We are live.
1:21:06
>> Breaking news from the timeline.
1:21:06
There is now a $2,000 iPhone.
1:21:07
It's the iPhone 17 Pro with two terabytes. $2,000 iPhone dropped. Welcome to the stream. Nice to meet you. I'm Johny. Nice to meet you. >> Pleasure.
1:21:19
>> Uh, will you be picking up the $2,000 iPhone?
1:21:21
It just dropped minutes ago. This is breaking news.
1:21:24
>> I'm I'm probably sticking with my >> You're good. >> Short the stock. Short.
1:21:28
You're >> like the incremental disaster. Small. >> Yeah.
1:21:34
We look to YC Founders as the future, the taste makers.
1:21:36
If they're not adopting the latest and greatest, what's going to happen?
1:21:40
>> Uh, introduce yourself.
1:21:40
What do you What are you building?
1:21:42
>> So, I'm Aiden, the CTO of Figgov.
1:21:42
We're doing the AI operating system for local governments.
1:21:47
Starting with the 311 in a box. >> 311.
1:21:49
What do you is that information hotline?
1:21:53
>> The theformational u counterpart to 911. Okay.
1:21:57
>> So, interestingly, only around 2% of cities have a 311 line even though every city has 911.
1:22:04
>> And what we're doing with our first product is uh creating a 24/7 call center that's available to >> anyone from if you're in San Francisco >> Yeah.
1:22:13
or if you're in like a city of 10,000 in the middle of Iowa, like you should have the same level of service.
1:22:18
>> You call 311, it automatically routes you to your service and then uh if I'm in my city, it'll give me information.
1:22:25
What What are the What's the obviously everyone knows textbook 911 call?
1:22:29
Someone's breaking into my house.
1:22:29
What's the textbook 311 call?
1:22:32
>> Yeah, I think >> like is this road open or when does a trash pickup come? Stuff like that. >> Stuff like that.
1:22:37
It definitely varies a lot more city to city.
1:22:39
So, we're live in Florida and we're taking calls about alligators roaming around the city.
1:22:42
And so, >> and it can kind of route and and I'm sure you've set the system up so that you can route to 911 if you need to or write to animal control.
1:22:51
Kind of sit above the rest of the stack of all the different city services. >> Yeah.
1:22:56
And that's kind of why we started with this is because it gives us a really great insight into what are the calls and services that the city's providing.
1:23:03
So, now we can go down and actually handle these workflows end to end with our agents.
1:23:06
What's the secret to actually having like high NPS?
1:23:08
I imagine that like people are not very happy with robot phone trees.
1:23:13
You're literally in the clanker business.
1:23:17
You're like the you're the meme of like when >> phone trees are phone trees are terrible for decades. >> This is conversation.
1:23:24
>> This is potentially better. So what's the secret?
1:23:26
>> Most people don't realize they're talking to an AI. >> They don't. >> No. >> Okay. Why is that?
1:23:30
>> Cure for male loneliness.
1:23:31
Are are are you building on top of a particular foundation model orific specific APIs that just sound so good? Yeah.
1:23:39
Who who who are you using?
1:23:39
How do you piece things together to make it great?
1:23:42
>> Yeah, we're using a voice um from Vappy that's just we've trialled out a bunch of different >> Vappy.
1:23:49
Yeah, another YC company. >> Oh, cool. Okay.
1:23:51
>> Is that in this batch?
1:23:53
>> No, they're I think Winner 24. >> Okay. Okay.
1:23:55
We'll have to check them out.
1:23:56
But yeah, there you just try all these different voices and this one has a bunch of stutters and makes it sound super natural. >> Okay.
1:24:03
So it just feels completely natural. Got it. Very cool. >> Traction. Yeah.
1:24:08
>> You're you've been lining up cities driving around. >> Yeah. Yeah. What did you share?
1:24:10
Do you share like an like an ARR or just like number of cities?
1:24:14
Like what what's the headline number that you shared today?
1:24:17
>> We shared um live in one city and 80K ARR. So 80K.
1:24:20
New contracts that have yet to go live, but we signed them.
1:24:25
>> But in the pipeline, so you're charging is this 40k per city effectively? >> Uh 60k and then 20k. Yeah. >> No way. Yeah. Yeah.
1:24:34
I mean, I can imagine this replaces, you know, potentially replaces a job or makes somebody a lot more high leverage.
1:24:42
And if you want like roundthe-clock coverage on a helpline, which I'm sure these cities don't offer, but even if you're offering like a workday, that's just somebody who has to sit there.
1:24:49
I would flip it around and just be like, if I'm the mayor and I'm charging every single person in my city some sort of property tax and I'm taking in millions and millions of dollars and my citizens can't get information, but for whatever price he's charging, I can offer this this service to my population, they're going to be like, "Wow, the city feels so much more responsive.
1:25:10
Like when that tree fell down on my street, I was able to just dial 311 and send it to the right thing instead of going website."
1:25:18
It's an interesting execution challenge where you can literally create a database of like every potential buyer for your product and then just hound them on day one and then hound them.
1:25:30
Like it's not like a mystery of like who are we going to sell to?
1:25:32
>> Oh, there's Yeah, the perfect client doesn't know.
1:25:33
I don't even know that they're in the market.
1:25:34
No, it's like you know who's in the market.
1:25:36
That's >> we're doing have a state-by-state go to market motion because a lot of the first question they'll ask us is okay, what other cities in Florida are are using you?
1:25:45
They can also do this um thing called piggybacking where they literally just copy and paste the contract from a city.
1:25:52
So that's kind of you know little hacks like this I think will help us conquer the gov tech market where historically it's been hard to break in but now you have this AI obviously >> land and expand. >> Yeah.
1:26:04
>> Uh how how did the how how's the fundra going? >> It's good.
1:26:06
We're around threequarters done. Uh >> there you go.
1:26:09
Uh we have a lightning round that we've been doing.
1:26:11
Uh who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
1:26:15
someone you look to for advice. >> Um, Peter Teal.
1:26:21
>> First person to say PT. Second question.
1:26:24
Um, >> how did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business?
1:26:30
>> Uh, flipping Supreme T-shirts. >> There we go. There we go.
1:26:34
>> How did you How did you acquire Wait, were did you have bots that would buy them? >> Yep. >> Yeah. Okay.
1:26:40
>> Into the into the bot game. Um, >> okay.
1:26:41
When it was like during my lunch in high school, so I would just like monitor the site and >> the situation monitoring the situation. I love it. Thank you. >> Amazing.
1:26:52
Congrats on all the progress. Super super.
1:26:56
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:26:56
Uh, if you are just tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day 2025.
1:27:00
Uh, we will bring in our next guest when we're ready.
1:27:03
Um, just Oh, we got uh ah here we go.
1:27:06
the demo you've been waiting for. You all been waiting.
1:27:12
Will they bring a massive block of metal onto the stream? The answer is yes. Great to see you.
1:27:18
>> The answer to dude, you uh got a little workout on the way in. Look at this. How many pounds is that? >> No clue. No clue. A lot.
1:27:26
>> I borrowed it from Astronis. >> Okay.
1:27:28
>> Wait, did you sell it to them and then you brought borrowed it back or is this just theirs? >> This is theirs.
1:27:31
They wanted to help the cause.
1:27:33
Yeah, >> it's illustrated. So, yeah.
1:27:33
Why Why is this sitting here? What do you do? Introduce yourself. Who are you? >> Yes. My name is Zane.
1:27:38
I'm the founder of Knox Metals and we cut metal.
1:27:39
So, we're trying to build the most efficient metal service centers in America to empower every factory in America to work with better margins to move faster. >> Okay. There's a lot of ways. >> He's doing the meme. He's doing the meme. He's doing the meme.
1:27:50
The reason he's re-industrializing also also to be clear, this is Zayn uh from X.
1:27:54
You probably if you're if you're on the Everything app, you've seen him before.
1:28:01
>> Uh he's been on the show via his post many times before.
1:28:03
So, it's great to finally >> I've been printed a few times. Yeah, you're a printer.
1:28:07
Yeah, that was that was fun.
1:28:09
I remember one time I was watching TVN and I was like for some reason it was like I had to go somewhere and I was like I just skipped to the print section.
1:28:16
You guys would print the best tweets and I was like who they got today? >> Who is you? >> That's fantastic.
1:28:21
Okay, so there's a lot of ways to cut metal.
1:28:22
Adrian's doing a bunch of CNC machines.
1:28:24
Uh there there's other people that are doing additive stuff.
1:28:28
We've talked to 3D printing guys who build the metal structures up.
1:28:30
Uh what is your specific like like put it in like Lego terms for me?
1:28:34
like a how are we actually cutting this metal?
1:28:38
>> Okay, so to be clear, we would sell this to Hadri. >> Yeah.
1:28:41
>> To someone like a Hadrien. >> Okay.
1:28:42
>> Um what we do is we buy big billets, usually the size of an F-150. >> Okay.
1:28:46
>> Put it on our saw, which is about the size of four F-150s. Wow.
1:28:49
>> And then we band saw cut it and then we sell like >> and then it can go into a CNC machine, fits into a CNC.
1:28:55
>> If you want to make an F-18 part, a component for your washing machine, >> you name it.
1:28:59
>> This is incredibly deep in the stack. I love it. >> Yeah.
1:29:01
So like the operation is really simple.
1:29:04
complex operations of the factory.
1:29:04
Like I'm sure you guys want to hear why just >> pure metal. >> This is insane. So so many challenge. So it's not local.
1:29:18
It seems like obviously like it's not easy to just cut through metal, but it seems like that's relatively solved. >> Yeah.
1:29:25
What you're trying to solve is like the efficiency in the factory because even if you you make this block then how do you get it? How do you store it? How do you trans?
1:29:34
You know >> you nailed it.
1:29:36
So like the metal service industries is like $300 billion these guys do a year.
1:29:40
Like if you're a metal service center that's the total of the market. >> Yeah.
1:29:45
>> We we strongly believe that they are >> Yeah. John lift the lift.
1:29:49
Actually it's going to destroy No, it's going to destroy his suit. We need it for tomorrow. Interesting.
1:29:53
I can I can figure it out.
1:29:55
>> We basically strongly believe that they have a ton of overhead and lack all the technology in the world that puts a tax on every metal sold in America.
1:30:00
That's why you're seeing more metal bought from the USA or bought from China.
1:30:06
>> Like I worked in like like a small PE shop.
1:30:08
Like everyone I talked to they're like, "Hey, how do we get stuff in from China?"
1:30:11
So like we want to re >> PE shop like private equity. >> Yeah. Okay.
1:30:15
>> We want to like re-industrialize the metal service later. >> Okay. Yeah.
1:30:17
So, so how much of the value is just there's going to be a bigger by by American wave.
1:30:22
There might be more regulations, more tariffs, and so it makes more sense now to do this work in America versus you think that you could long-term go toe-to-toe against a Chinese metal shop and just with better better workers, better automation, better technology, you will just have a better product even in a completely level economic playing field. >> Exactly.
1:30:44
And like the key thing you said there is product and what is product? The factory, right?
1:30:48
So everything that goes into it, procurement, inventory management, like you said, estimating. So how do we get blocks?
1:30:53
Uh the cheapest block to any factory in America next day. Yep. >> That's the goal. >> Got it.
1:30:57
Uh we have a lightning round that we've been doing.
1:30:59
Uh first question, uh who's your favorite entrepreneur? >> Alex Karp.
1:31:03
>> Of all time, Alex Karp.
1:31:03
We've had him on the show last week.
1:31:06
>> I think that's a great pick.
1:31:06
Second, uh how did you make your first dollar online or in business?
1:31:11
Uh, my dad had a machine shop and he made me scrub the floor. I was 14 years old. >> No way.
1:31:17
>> Family business,000 foot facility. One man success. >> Sounds incredible.
1:31:24
Wait, how how's how's the fund raise gone?
1:31:26
>> Oh, I'm going to try and lift this. >> It's good.
1:31:28
Uh, we closed like >> Yeah, we had like an initial goal and we closed that, but >> Oh, it's so heavy. >> There we go. >> Let's go. Come on. Yeah. >> Just break this. >> It's liftable. It's liftable.
1:31:44
I I would put that at over 100 pounds. >> Yeah.
1:31:48
And it's such an awkward >> My guess was My guess was 97. >> 97. Okay.
1:31:53
>> No, fun is going well.
1:31:53
We like had an initial goal.
1:31:55
We We got there and now seeing some more interest.
1:31:57
So, thinking about raising some more just to have a bit more runway and move faster. >> Count me in, Chad. Count me in. I'm riding with you.
1:32:07
>> Thanks so much for coming. >> I know.
1:32:08
I should have brought my physical checkbook.
1:32:11
Such a missed opportunity. Great to see you, dude. You're a legend. >> Good luck with that. What a terrible prop.
1:32:19
Anyway, okay, that was fun. I think I broke a sweat.
1:32:23
This was not the right move. Let's see.
1:32:24
Yeah, I was trying to warn you.
1:32:26
>> Thank you so much for coming on the stream.
1:32:27
How you got you brought your own metal? I lifted one. How are you doing?
1:32:32
Okay, so we both lifted the metal cubes. >> We did. We did. Are you Are you in Knox? You did Knox, right? >> Yes. We invest in Yes.
1:32:39
Introduce yourself for the stream. >> Hello everyone.
1:32:41
My name is Paige Fendori.
1:32:43
I'm the founding partner behind Genius Ventures.
1:32:45
We invest in technical storytellers at their earliest chapters. >> Very cool.
1:32:49
>> And you wrote a children's book on venture capital.
1:32:51
You're introducing introducing venture capital to the children.
1:32:54
Are you getting paid out by anthropic in the lawsuit? Did you see this? >> Oh no. I haven't got check.
1:32:59
You got to go check my mail.
1:33:02
>> You might have a few thousand bucks waiting for you.
1:33:04
You can you can roll that into the fund.
1:33:06
>> Wait, that would be >> I got to check my email.
1:33:07
Maybe >> uh what uh yeah, what's your reaction to to demo day?
1:33:14
>> Oh my gosh, it's >> too low, right?
1:33:16
>> The most >> Yeah, most people have been saying, "I don't feel comfortable investing.
1:33:19
The prices are just too low." Suspiciously low. Suspiciously low.
1:33:22
When you go on when you go on T-Mo when you go on Teemo and there's like $12 couch and you're like, how can a couch be $12?
1:33:27
You're like, how can this how can this clearly billion dollar company be worth $60 million?
1:33:33
>> Let me tell you, the energy is electric today.
1:33:36
Um, it's been so fun bumping into friends.
1:33:40
Uh, my friend, shout out Casey Caruso, she brought me bone broth to pregame the day. >> No way.
1:33:46
>> I drove over in the Whimo.
1:33:48
>> This is the SF locket right here.
1:33:49
>> Do you remember when I explained uh uh uh bone broth to you for the first time? >> Uh, no.
1:33:56
>> I think I said something like protein tea or something like that. >> It really is. >> Yeah. It's like bone broth.
1:34:01
You mean like protein shake? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's like protein. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you warm it up.
1:34:05
We we warmed it up and we drank half a gallon on the stream one day.
1:34:11
>> You guys are going to do a a mukbang of all the bone the bone broths.
1:34:14
>> Well, we are we are completely aligned with Kettle Fire.
1:34:19
>> We're aligned with Kettle and Fire cuz we're buddies with Justin Mayer.
1:34:20
So we So we cannot be we we cannot be impartial when it comes to >> So what what's the strategy going into demo day for you?
1:34:27
You had already invested deployment. >> Yeah.
1:34:32
We looked at a a bunch of companies, but actually the story on Knox was pretty unique.
1:34:35
Zayn and I met um probably four years ago >> uh when I was fundraising for my first fund.
1:34:42
And at the time he was working at a firm and they were like buying and selling machine shops.
1:34:46
Uh and then we just stayed in touch over that time.
1:34:49
Um and I would send him like some of our manufacturing investments.
1:34:54
Like we have a company in Man.
1:34:56
And I would send that to him for his thoughts on manufacturing.
1:34:58
And then I saw on LinkedIn he was posting he got into YC and I was like dude like this is amazing.
1:35:04
Uh and then we hopped on a call.
1:35:07
I was really excited by what they're building.
1:35:08
Uh really fits into the reindustrialization of America, the whole American dynamism. >> Yeah.
1:35:14
>> Um and I actually was on my friend's roof last night.
1:35:19
We were talking and she was just like, you know, if you just like love company, you just like got to go in.
1:35:24
And I remember being like, "Okay, I got to call Zayn and be like, yo, like like please, like I really want to be a part uh of this journey."
1:35:30
And he was like, "Yeah, we would love to have you be a part of it."
1:35:33
So I um sent the wire this morning. >> Fantastic. >> There you go. There you go.
1:35:36
You did not don't want to wait until the end of the day.
1:35:39
You know, >> we've been doing a lightning round with everyone.
1:35:41
Um who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
1:35:43
Who is the genius behind Genius Ventures? >> But that's so hard.
1:35:48
Um, the first name that popped into my head was uh Jerry Lopez, who's a surfer, Zen master, philosopher.
1:35:55
I feel like very much not in like the tech world of his movement. >> Yeah.
1:36:01
And what I love about him is he uh he's just has this incredible sense of grace riding super aggressive waves and then took that same jury's language. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:36:14
Took that same sense of grace into building companies.
1:36:17
>> He gets barreled a lot more. Oh, he gets barreled. >> Oh, yeah.
1:36:19
I know all about getting barreled.
1:36:20
I've learned in this shore break. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:36:25
John, I I teach John about surf.
1:36:27
Every time we see the ocean, I explain >> this is a beach break.
1:36:30
That would be a point break. >> That's great.
1:36:32
Second question of our lightning round.
1:36:34
How did you make your first dollar online or in business?
1:36:36
Did you do anything crazy as a kid or early on? >> Um, yeah. I tutored. >> Okay. >> Well, okay.
1:36:44
I'm trying to I'm trying to think of like the the first dollar. Oh, you know what it is? Okay.
1:36:49
So, my mom is an impressionist artist, Kim Dy Art.
1:36:50
Uh my brothers and I when we were camping, we would go and sell her art cards in the campground when we were like five. >> Captive audience.
1:37:01
>> We were It was like seven, five, and a three-year-old going around being like, "Can you buy our art cards?"
1:37:04
And like I've became an amazing salesperson through that experience. >> Yeah.
1:37:10
Now you're selling money. >> Yeah.
1:37:12
>> Uh where are you on fund two now?
1:37:12
What what's uh what's the update on the fund? >> Yep.
1:37:18
We're uh wrapping up our last couple investments in fund two.
1:37:20
So, we have two more to go. >> Very exciting. >> More to come soon. >> Big announcements. Big announcements soon. Yeah. >> Show. We'll ring the gong. >> We'll ring the gong.
1:37:30
We don't have our gong with us, but uh >> do we have sound effects today or no? >> Uh barely. No, we don't. We don't. Fortunately, no. Ben is >> the claps. Okay.
1:37:39
The the the gong we will save for a proper announcement. Okay. I like that.
1:37:47
>> Uh, make sure to send us any founders you like and have fun.
1:37:51
>> Let them know for business. Thank you.
1:37:52
>> It was a pleasure seeing both of you. >> It was a pleasure. We will see you soon.
1:37:57
>> If you're watching live, we are at YC Demo Day and we have our next guest on the stream. Welcome to the stream.
1:38:04
That's a fantastic jacket. >> Oh, thank you. Thank you.
1:38:07
>> Uh, introduce yourself. Who are you? What are you building?
1:38:09
>> Yeah, so hi, my name is Vhor.
1:38:09
Um, and we're building orange slice.
1:38:11
We're basically AI search infra to help you find customers that already want your product. >> Okay.
1:38:17
I'm so distracted by the or it's orer than the YC orange. >> I know.
1:38:22
You went orange for orange and you won for orange. >> It's actually crazy. Okay.
1:38:26
So, uh, give me give me the give me the pitch for the company at the customer level. Yeah. Who's buying and why? >> Yeah.
1:38:34
>> Yeah. So we take all the data in the internet and we figure out okay out of your customers who actually needs your product today and we just tell you hey these are the people that need it today >> and that's the people you reach out to for uh uh other >> B2B sales teams sales teams okay
1:38:51
>> so we can track your total addressable market whatever is in your CRM whoever you're talking to we figure out okay who needs your product today what have they been posting what have they been filing what maybe a new blog is out that indicates they need something from you guys >> smart it's always on. >> It's always on. Let's like see who >> It's always on.
1:39:04
Let's like see who actually wants you instead of >> when when how old were you when you realized you wanted to build agents for the enterprise?
1:39:12
>> That's a great question.
1:39:12
You know, I think that that's a fantastic question.
1:39:16
Really started really really young, but >> yeah. Yeah. 5 years old, I woke up.
1:39:18
I spawned into the world and I said, I must help.
1:39:25
>> What were you doing before this?
1:39:27
>> Uh I was uh basically hacking in college, but I was an investment banker at JP Morgan. >> Oh, let's go. Let's go.
1:39:31
Complete >> complete 180. This is just fantastic.
1:39:38
>> Um and then and then did you did you were was that like summer internship? >> Summer internship.
1:39:42
>> Did you are you did you drop out?
1:39:44
>> And then I I I no graduated thankfully. >> Contrarian. Contrarian. I'm super. Here we go. >> I like college. It was fun. Right. >> No, I know.
1:39:52
It's It's a good It's a good time. >> That's great.
1:39:54
We've been doing a lightning round asking two questions. >> Wait, no, no, no.
1:39:57
Before the lightning round, >> how much money are you making right now? Oh, that's true.
1:40:01
Oh, so we're at like 53K MR.
1:40:03
So, we make a bit more than what is that 600,000 a year. That's great. Ramen profitable. >> Yeah, of course. Fantastic. Like 90% margins. We're printing cash. >> That's great. >> Printing. Let's go. >> Let's go.
1:40:17
>> This is just the start though.
1:40:18
>> Uh uh you're the round's closed.
1:40:21
>> Yeah, the round is closed unfortunately.
1:40:24
>> But if if you always >> let us in. Let us in.
1:40:30
I think for you guys we can make room.
1:40:31
For you guys, we can make room.
1:40:31
They're going to keep booing unless you let the sharks.
1:40:36
>> When you say us, you mean we can do it.
1:40:37
>> If it's super strategic, you know, 25 mil from QIA. >> Yeah. >> Uh that's awesome. That's awesome.
1:40:44
This makes this makes a ton of sense and um I can see why I can see why it's ripping. Uh lightning round. >> Yeah.
1:40:52
Well, I have one more question.
1:40:52
So uh so I'm uh I I'm I'm selling a businessto business product >> and I get some sort of alert from you saying hey there's a new customer and are you focused on a person or a company?
1:41:05
>> We're focused on the company. We do both.
1:41:07
So we'll track all the executives at the company that could be the one this is the company and then >> and then this is also the person.
1:41:12
This is the person that owns >> who might be the internal channel. Exactly. Got it. Okay. All that stuff. >> A crazy idea for you.
1:41:17
So you guys sell to a company.
1:41:20
You detect a customer for that company.
1:41:22
You partner with Tesla Optimus to actually deploy a robot to go have a stake dinner with the end customer and close the loop and then pick up the commission on that deal.
1:41:32
I think you got to go full stack. >> Full stack. >> No, totally.
1:41:37
And that's one of the biggest reasons we haven't done the end of the stack yet.
1:41:41
Like people sell in so many different ways.
1:41:43
>> Well, and and a lot of people are just like fighting and competing over the end of the stack with a bunch of slop.
1:41:49
>> I don't want any more emails in my inbox. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
1:41:52
>> And so all you need to do is serve the person, you know, serve the leadup at the right time and then let a uh >> uh a stake expert take it all. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:59
I mean it's it's beautifully anti-slaugh because um the like the the human's just in the loop at the right point.
1:42:06
I don't really care if you if you misidentify someone and I click on a website.
1:42:10
I'm like actually they're out of like the core value prop right now or maybe I'll deal with that one later. Like that's fine. Um fantastic. So lightning round. >> Uh two questions.
1:42:18
Who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
1:42:23
>> Oh, that's a good one.
1:42:23
I'm not I don't actually know that many entrepreneurs in general.
1:42:27
>> Someone that you read a biography of or look up to or maybe just saw a recent interview with and thought was I could learn something from them.
1:42:34
>> He's Lisan Algib of Enterprise SAS.
1:42:34
He doesn't need his blank slate.
1:42:36
He doesn't need any influence.
1:42:38
Well, honestly, I I don't think um I I don't draw that much inspiration just because I think the biggest motivating factor, and this might be contrarian, it's not actually inspiration, but like the fear of mediocrity of it not working out has been way bigger for us.
1:42:51
That's biggest reason I don't have that much inspiration.
1:42:55
But Eric from the RAM from RAM, my co-founder, used to work at RAMP, >> so I mean they are absolutely killing it.
1:43:03
>> Royal Flush, you know.
1:43:05
>> Uh you picked a legend from the modern era. Yes. >> Yeah.
1:43:08
I mean, you can't not like what he's doing. >> Future Hall of Famer. >> Yeah. 100%.
1:43:13
>> Uh, how did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business? >> Oh, man.
1:43:19
First dollar would have to be in like elementary school.
1:43:23
>> I used to like do origami of like folding up like ninja stars for like other people.
1:43:27
Um, and then I used to sell it on like the school bus of like I had half an hour in the morning and then half an hour at the end to do all my sales and then you go home and you just keep folding the rest of the day.
1:43:35
I remember having so many paper cuts when I started.
1:43:40
>> Just fingers bleeding like just one more prospecting.
1:43:43
I see the kid in the second row.
1:43:48
They're ready for >> I had to go to a dark place for this ninja star. >> Exactly.
1:43:52
>> They're ready for a ninja star.
1:43:52
Anyway, thank you so much for coming on.
1:43:55
>> Congrats on all the traction.
1:43:55
Are you going to go Are you going to hang out for the rest of the day? Are you going to go? >> Yeah.
1:44:00
Always like to chat with sort of cool founders.
1:44:01
Thanks for doing this, guys. This is so cool. >> Awesome.
1:44:04
Yeah, we'll find you after. Cheers.
1:44:06
Good to meet talking to you guys.
1:44:08
>> Uh let's bring in our next guest.
1:44:08
We have the co-founder of Fall. >> Do we have to stream? How you doing? >> What's up?
1:44:16
>> Good to see you in person. >> Welcome to the show.
1:44:18
>> Welcome to the stream. >> What's up, Jody? >> What's happening?
1:44:20
>> Introduce yourself for the stream really quickly. >> Um, welcome to YCWA.
1:44:27
>> Great shirt, by the way. >> Look at this. All right.
1:44:30
>> We just talked to We just talked to a founder that that made their first uh money flipping flipping Supreme Box logo t-shirt. >> There you go. There you go. >> Yeah.
1:44:38
I'm decked out in false fall swag. >> Yeah. But the GPU poor.
1:44:40
Are you guys GPU poor anymore?
1:44:44
>> Well, I have a GPU rich hats, too. >> Okay.
1:44:46
>> I got to give you guys some.
1:44:49
>> Um, so I'm I'm one of the co-founders of F. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Fantastic.
1:44:52
Also, one of our latest sponsors makes this possible. >> Uh, so thank you. corporate media.
1:44:57
Uh give us your reaction to YC demo day. How what's the mood?
1:45:03
>> I think you just rolled in here from uh but give us the vibe from >> literally like I just rolled in from our office.
1:45:08
We're like 5 minute drive away.
1:45:10
Um I mean it's amazing energy. I love it. >> Yeah.
1:45:13
>> Uh I mean being in the Silicon Valley for I don't know 15 years, close to 15, >> I actually never been to a demo day. >> There you go. Brought you.
1:45:22
>> So this is my first time.
1:45:22
Um and yeah, love the energy. That's great. So >> give us um Yeah.
1:45:26
So, so I guess what's been h how much how much have you guys from a from a customer acquisition standpoint?
1:45:34
It feels like there's like incredible pull from the market.
1:45:36
You guys have >> crazy logos from you know uh decacorns, public companies all the way down.
1:45:42
I imagine a bunch of bunch of just companies are getting off the ground and signing up for you guys.
1:45:47
But like what is that customer acquisition kind of motion look like?
1:45:51
Are you guys do you pay much attention to kind of the super early stage or do you just like let people find you?
1:45:57
>> Yeah, we pay a lot of attention to early stage.
1:45:59
Uh a lot of our customers are early stage.
1:46:02
Um and it is I think it's one of the best times to build like on top of fall and you know other other LLMs as well.
1:46:11
But like if you want to build anything in consumer AI specifically, I think fall is probably like the best way to accelerate you know building something out there.
1:46:20
There's incredible demand.
1:46:22
I think I was doing some math on the way here like um I think in our startup segment I think the revenue of like all of our startups com combined and what what I define startups is let's let's call it like 200 people or less. >> Yeah.
1:46:37
Raised less than a billion dollars. >> Yeah. Sure.
1:46:39
I think the total combined revenue of our customers is in the billions. >> Wow. No way.
1:46:44
So, so it's kind of it's kind of ridiculous like how much demand there is in the in the consumer AI market or or even like proumer, but you can build amazing applications that that you know that leverage the gen media technology.
1:46:58
>> Yeah, that proumer thing is is fascinating.
1:46:59
fascinating. I mean we saw this with uh the the images in chat GPT the dolly moment where you know it's not like like it's not an enterprise tool but it's something that went so viral that everyone has to wake up even if you're just a marketing manager in a Fortune
1:47:15
500 company like you're going to see it you're going to think about it and be like okay I actually need a strategy here we recently saw this with Nano Banana again we saw a little spike in the Google trends chart uh what is >> yeah what have you guys seen on the nano banana era, how are things changing? Just kind of give me your
1:47:30
Just kind of give me your read. >> It's incredible.
1:47:32
I mean, the demand the the way the way I look at it is like every time we have new capabilities, >> there is a jump in demand. >> Yeah.
1:47:41
>> And it it doesn't seem like these things are eating into each other.
1:47:43
It seems like we're really seeing like the the building blocks coming coming together. Yep.
1:47:50
>> So, for example, with Nano Banana and like all the editing models in general, they actually are a key ingredient to really good video models.
1:47:57
Meaning when you want to stretch like stick together a few clips >> start with a few of those. >> Yeah.
1:48:03
You you you actually want to you can keep like the consistency between using these edit models, right?
1:48:08
So like it actually solves the consistency problem in video. >> Yeah.
1:48:12
>> So that enabled video to go even further >> because now you can just generate like you know 10 different starting frames and ending frames and then combine them together.
1:48:21
So so these things are really like building blocks and they're kind of compounding on top of each other.
1:48:24
So the way we see it in traffic and revenue is that anytime there's like a new model, new capabilities specifically, >> we we see a huge jump. >> It was pretty wild.
1:48:34
There was a site that spun up.
1:48:36
I don't know if you saw this the day of Nanoban's launch.
1:48:37
It was just called nanobanana. ai.
1:48:41
It had full like it was a full looked like a Google product and it was just someone else just vending in Nanobanana under the hood, but I'm sure they got their API access.
1:48:51
>> This happens all the time.
1:48:51
Like if you actually search nanobanana on app store like just go to app store there will be literally 20 results.
1:48:58
>> Yeah this is so crazy still nanobanana.
1:48:59
aii is the number one result for nano banana people have nailed it down >> AI image editor edit photos >> I mean the app store was like that for so long where you search chat GPT and it would be like chat with GPT and it has like 5,000 fivestar reviews and you're like I know that's not from OpenAI because I can clock it as like clearly this is not an OpenAI branding.
1:49:19
It's slightly off >> and and all of these things are, believe it or not, they're getting traction. >> Yeah. So, it's insane. >> Yeah.
1:49:28
Like, and like like Apple, I don't know, like they're not really doing much to stop this.
1:49:31
Maybe they're trying, but like not really.
1:49:34
>> It's a game of whack-a-ole. >> Yeah.
1:49:35
It's a game of whack-a-ole.
1:49:35
And and I think they're benefiting from this.
1:49:38
And and I think, you know, obviously like long term, what matters is like how these products differentiate, but I think it just shows you like how insane the demand is. >> Yeah.
1:49:48
What keeps you up at night between the uh inference cost kind of stack?
1:49:50
So uh are you are you worried about GPU poor like are we going to run out of line time at TSMC?
1:49:59
Are we going to see a chip shortage versus just large scale data center capacity versus energy?
1:50:05
Like if we play this out a few years like what what what do you want to get right that might be out of your control even but like you'd like to make it make sure that it goes right. >> Yes.
1:50:16
I think we're very capacity constrainted and >> but at what level that's what I'm interested in.
1:50:22
So, so yeah, it's it's so it >> even this even this this Nebia steel yesterday, right?
1:50:27
Like like shocked everyone, right?
1:50:30
Especially we we were hanging with a a friend who's a multi-stage, you know, has multi runs, you know, help helps run a multi-billion dollar fund and he was just like like a year ago this company like couldn't, you know, this company was not taken super seriously as a player and all of a sudden they have a$20 billion deal with >> with Microsoft. Uh yeah, Microsoft.
1:50:49
Um so anyways, like that that just shows like the the fact that the fact that you know Microsoft is going I I I >> you know if you if you kind of like stack rank where Nebia sits in in the Neocloud space, it certainly wouldn't have been somebody's top choice, but I think that just shows like how capacity constrained >> um everyone is. >> It's incredible.
1:51:13
Yeah, I think I mean currently we're going through another crunch right now.
1:51:19
>> Uh specifically for H100s.
1:51:21
>> Uh so like we experienced this >> interesting >> and and you can you can kind of feel it coming and and you know like >> does it feel like that?
1:51:29
>> It it it it feels pretty bad, right?
1:51:31
Like you're trying to you're trying to scale.
1:51:32
So like most of our workloads are inference workloads, right?
1:51:34
We don't do any training.
1:51:36
any training. So our needs are like we don't just like buy you know 10,000 GPUs and just sit there for another for a whole year right that's not how we operate we're more dynamic we go and like expand our our fleet over time so we and we're multicloud so we talk to
1:51:53
like all the you know new clouds and we have really great relationships with all of them we test them we benchmark them if if they work for us you know if they're reliable support is good we use them so and you know when you need when you need new capacity. You literally
1:52:06
You literally like hit them up.
1:52:07
You call all of them up >> in order >> old fashioned way >> and and literally I'm not even kidding like you just you just call them up and you know sometimes it's like you start hearing more nos, right?
1:52:20
Like do you have do you have 512 GPUs?
1:52:21
Do you have thousand GPUs?
1:52:23
And it's just like no no you're like oh crap.
1:52:25
So so you you kind of want to like stock up a little bit. That's how we operate.
1:52:29
We we like we like buy buy a little bit in bulk, you know, but but really prices hit hit a little bit of a bottom, which like hasn't happened with A100s.
1:52:37
I mean, if you look at it, like they just kept going down with H100s.
1:52:40
They kept going down and they kind of hit the bottom.
1:52:44
They're like now now kind of kind of picking back up again.
1:52:48
>> How uh what can you tell me about how inference moves around the globe as a function of time?
1:52:54
function of time? I heard this story about midjourney potentially doing inference in Asia right >> where they're sleeping they're not using they're not running Netflix in Malaysia or Singapore and so when I generate an image or something you know it go it's
1:53:10
inferenced over there is that something you're doing is that something that you're planning to do is that common is that happen naturally >> so so our traffic patterns are basically maxed out when US and Europe is up simultaneously so that's that's kind of like like the peak peak time, right? And
1:53:24
And then we don't have like as much >> users like we still have customers in in Asia, but like it's it's much less.
1:53:34
>> So, you know, we we do see a deep dip, >> okay, >> across, you know, when when US and EU is asleep, there's a slight dip. >> Sure.
1:53:41
>> Um, we do we do a few things. Yeah.
1:53:43
>> Uh, we use like >> we basically like uh have a pool of GPUs that we like, you know, return and and and and bring back simultaneously.
1:53:50
But what's really important for us is uptime. >> Yep.
1:53:54
So even if it means like we're going to have some idle GPUs, we we'd like to take that cost because if you can't take those GPUs back, like if you let them go, you can't take them back, you know, then then you you have a very bad time with your customers.
1:54:06
So for us, like reliability is more important. Got it.
1:54:10
At >> at this time, you know, and over long term, I think if >> you might be able to move move the liquidity across the globe over time.
1:54:18
>> Uh what any any key lessons?
1:54:18
You were at Oracle for four years back in the day.
1:54:23
any key lessons from that era that you've kind of brought in?
1:54:25
Obviously, Oracle's been on its tear um and really leaning in.
1:54:30
>> So, Oracle was my first job out of college.
1:54:32
So, you know, that's 2012, 2016.
1:54:34
Um back then, they did not believe in cloud.
1:54:38
They were like the anti- cloud company. Yeah. You remember that? Yeah.
1:54:42
So, so like Larry Ellison would go on stage literally be like, "Guys, like we don't believe, you know, he has like a famous quote, you know, it's someone's computer or something, you know, the cloud doesn't exist."
1:54:52
um >> they've come a really long time long way since then and obviously like they're on a rip right now I think with with AI >> what we hear from the field is like um there's really good you know Nebus including Nebus is a very good like data center operator
1:55:08
>> and Oracle is a very >> they had to do that because of running Yandex right >> yes >> yeah they actually had to I I get more worried about >> Neocloud products that are were doing you know like there there's one I think it's like Irene or something like that
1:55:24
that's coming online that that you know just last year I think was doing like Bitcoin mining right so like fast pivot maybe a later pivot >> some of those guys are also good but so after Oracle I was at Coinbase so uh the crypto like some of the companies I including
1:55:42
like they they had a lot of experience but like what's what's special about Oracle is that they they've got a lot of experience they know how to operate these machines at at you know really good cost so and and uptime is very important. So, you know, all of these
1:55:52
So, you know, all of these things, you know, the economics and and like operating the the data center play a huge role into this.
1:55:58
I think they, you know, I'm I'm glad they chose going in this direction.
1:56:03
You know, I I think there's only a few opportunities, right?
1:56:07
And this is this is one of them and they like they just went ahead and like capitalize on it, which is really great. >> Lightning round. >> Yeah, let's do it.
1:56:13
>> We've been asking everyone, who is your favorite entrepreneur, someone you look up to throughout history? O. Um, >> could be anyone. >> Could be Larry.
1:56:23
>> Um, >> I really like Okay. Uh, >> could be anyone. >> Let's see. I like Brian. Brian Armstrong. >> There we go.
1:56:31
>> It's a pretty good pick. >> That's a great pick. I love it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Legend. >> Uh, second question.
1:56:34
How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business? >> O. Okay.
1:56:39
I had um Do you know these toys? Karetta Fighter. >> No. >> No. Okay.
1:56:44
It's like, is that too old? >> How big is the toy?
1:56:47
This it's like it's like two fighters.
1:56:48
You just like make them fight with each other.
1:56:51
So when I was like six or seven, this is not on the internet. >> Yeah.
1:56:55
Like almost rock and robot. Same thing. Same thing. I I rented those out.
1:57:00
>> You rented those rent.
1:57:03
>> Flip the capex to opex.
1:57:03
You don't need to you don't need to buy these things.
1:57:08
You go to him, you rent them. Today he's renting.
1:57:11
>> That's actually kids don't do renting enough.
1:57:13
They're always transacting. Am I stretching?
1:57:15
Let me draw a full circle analogy here.
1:57:17
You rent you buy the servers. You rent out the tokens.
1:57:20
You rent out the >> He's going to the What's your allowance? >> Okay. 20 bucks a week.
1:57:24
That's what That's the price. 20 bucks a week. >> There you go. Value based prices. >> Yeah, exactly. That's fantastic. >> Amazing. All right.
1:57:32
Well, come back on the show, guys. Good to see you.
1:57:33
I got to I got to give you some hats. Please.
1:57:38
>> Give them give them out to your favorites. >> Fantastic. Okay, we will. Perfect. >> Some rich hats. GPU. Oh, these are good hats. These are really Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is great.
1:57:47
We got We got We got four. Great.
1:57:49
Don't Don't give this away.
1:57:51
We'll quiz We'll quiz folks on whether they're on GPUs or they merely sit on top of hyperscalers. We got Jack from Slow. How you doing, Jack? >> What's up? >> Good to see you. Oh, the suit.
1:58:03
Did you have to Good to see you. >> I can't believe it. You look fantastic.
1:58:09
Well, >> you look fantastic. >> Thank you. Thank you. How we doing? How is how is demo day? >> It's been fantastic. It's been great.
1:58:13
Uh tons of cool companies, a really wide >> Everybody's kind of kind of ripping.
1:58:19
>> We kind of came in thinking like let's try and find the theme cuz like uh >> other than AI >> cursor for Yeah, there there's like a little bit of an AI theme, but >> we had metal we had uh Zane. We had metal cutting.
1:58:30
We had a missile company already.
1:58:32
Uh there's been a few different companies and I I feel like the narrative is shifting now to just like AI is just a tool like cloud computing.
1:58:41
It's just like are you using like a pi like a python or you know it's like or are do you have a mobile strategy or are you pulling mobile off the shelf?
1:58:48
>> No, it's like like it's like at this point you're not going to use like oh yeah I know we're building in the cloud everybody.
1:58:52
It's like what are you actually doing?
1:58:53
>> It's like okay yeah you're a software company but like what are you actually doing?
1:58:56
So it very much feels like we're in this >> era of like vertical software for AI.
1:58:58
So it's like vertical AI this is vertical SAS all over again.
1:59:02
Um but the traction is really good.
1:59:05
The businesses are super niche and super interesting.
1:59:07
So, you're learning a lot about like a guy who set up a 311 line in Florida and he's getting a lot of calls about alligators and like that's interesting to me. Yeah.
1:59:14
Uh, anyway, what's new with you?
1:59:16
>> Well, so it's funny like everybody most of the investors are here to like invest capital and >> quickly introduce yourself for the story for those who don't know. >> Um, I'm Jack Reigns.
1:59:22
I'm on the investment team over at Slow Ventures early stage venture fund.
1:59:26
We um run about a billion dollars now.
1:59:29
Invest generalist little bit of everything$ 1 to3 million checks.
1:59:33
But unlike every other venture fund here, we actually are launching the uh the slow ventures etiquette finishing school.
1:59:40
So I don't know if you can see this.
1:59:44
>> You guys are dressed sharp.
1:59:44
Obviously our >> I remember this photo.
1:59:46
This is a fantastic photo. >> We had this.
1:59:50
>> We got to Photoshop you on there.
1:59:51
>> I know once I make once I make GP, maybe I can be on there.
1:59:53
Um but you know there's there's a lot of capital floating around now.
1:59:57
That's like like financial capital to invest in founders.
2:00:00
But the real problem in San Francisco is you don't know how to dress.
2:00:03
Like >> wait, but if people don't know how to dress, why is you're just expecting them to go to a black tie event?
2:00:10
>> Well, you know, they can we we say that it's self select.
2:00:12
You show up in a sloppy top.
2:00:15
>> You want a high bar and then you want to take you want to constructive feedback, >> right?
2:00:19
I don't know if you guys were in like fraternities in college, but there's this whole like you kind of get hazed if you're like, this is just like pitching a startup.
2:00:25
come to you, the the the pitch is a little sloppy.
2:00:27
You go around, by the time you come back and pitch the second, third time, the business is polished. >> Yeah. Literally.
2:00:32
And it's like there's, you know, there's there's business upside of this.
2:00:34
Like fixing your etiquette makes you like you can command a boardroom better, but also >> boardroom generals. We love boardroom.
2:00:41
>> And like we also want to help founders like get girlfriends or boyfriends like there's especially in SF like everybody's complaining.
2:00:45
You know, the 996 is great except you know.
2:00:46
has uh has slow flipped bullish on a uh question.
2:00:55
Are you guys still bearish?
2:00:56
>> Speak for the entire firm right now.
2:00:58
>> For the entire firm and especially friend of the program, Sam, my boss who owns my paychecks ideally watching this right now.
2:01:05
Um we're bullish on AI when it's a good company that uses AI.
2:01:07
It's like the whole like our our take the whole time has been that like the models are going to eat pretty much everything.
2:01:15
Microsoft's going to eat everything.
2:01:17
>> I mean, that's what we're seeing today.
2:01:19
Micros Microsoft is going to eat Nebius.
2:01:21
>> A lot of the companies I feel like are in that Sam Leon idea of like AI cherry on top I think is his phrase.
2:01:25
on top I think is his phrase. I I like that framing and I thought he >> it's the more the more vertically integrated and the thing is like if the founders actually have like real domain expertise in the thing versus like somebody who knew AI well and then they're trying to like oh this is an obvious problem
2:01:38
>> maybe but you're seeing some interesting like one co-founder is incredibly sharp in AI been doing machine learning forever and then the other co-founder actually is that dude in their space for 20 years that's when it gets interesting >> is he him >> so he's when when you have AI wizard plus co-founder who is him or her >> or her. >> Yeah, that's that's the magic. So, I
2:01:57
>> Yeah, that's that's the magic.
2:01:57
So, I would not say that we're bullish on AI anymore than we have been, but like, you know, we respect AI used well.
2:02:02
It's like AI is table stakes.
2:02:04
If your only thing is AI, >> get a get a post out there. >> Slow respects AI. >> Slow respects AI. >> Yep. You heard it here first. >> Breaking news. Uh, okay.
2:02:13
We've been asking everyone lightning round.
2:02:15
Uh, who is your favorite entrepreneur in history of all time? >> In history.
2:02:20
Um, >> probably outside of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. This is like ESPN.
2:02:26
Are you supposed to say that? >> Um, no. John D. Rockefeller. >> Rockefeller. >> Rockefeller. What about you guys?
2:02:35
>> Uh, I don't think we've uh I don't think we've answered the question ourselves. >> Mine is always Steve.
2:02:38
It's just the obvious answer, but growing up >> Yeah.
2:02:44
>> use just it's it's uh my favorite products ever have consistently been Apple products. Yeah.
2:02:50
And I I just would listen to so much founders podcast.
2:02:52
I say Jay Gould, of course.
2:02:53
But >> can we can we flip around?
2:02:55
Who's your least favorite least favorite entrepreneurs ever?
2:02:59
>> Uh least favorite entrepreneurs.
2:03:02
>> They had to be good enough to be famous, but you just don't like >> probably SPF or something.
2:03:05
One of those like that's a good pick.
2:03:08
>> Although although maybe he's underrated cuz he got that anthropic bags and he's ripping now. >> Okay. SPF.
2:03:12
Underrated venture investor.
2:03:15
Underrated entrepreneur >> perhaps.
2:03:16
Perhaps not the sharpest operator.
2:03:18
Do you think overrated gamer do you think the Elizabeth Holmes Twitter account is real?
2:03:23
>> Uh it I I believe it is run by her husband. >> Okay.
2:03:26
>> Uh and I do not believe >> I I actually disagree.
2:03:27
I I don't I don't think uh >> I it screams like ghostriter coded >> because for it to be run by her husband, her husband would have had to be like hyper online on X and like it just feels like very go like you can tell when an account is ghost sure >> and it's ghostritten.
2:03:45
I believe that he probably has the keys hired a ghost rider at >> Ghost.
2:03:50
But we agree that she does not have a prison phone the the everything app installed on a phone that is connected to some sort of 5G network within the prison. We agree on that. >> Okay, great.
2:04:01
>> Could she because SPF is tweeting from prison right now?
2:04:03
>> It is possible, but it's very much looked down upon.
2:04:04
And of course, like as soon as it as soon as the tweet goes out, like the warden should be able to get the news and like someone calls the warden because like someone sees the post, calls the the governor, and then the governor calls the warden and says like one of your prisoners is breaking the rules, like can you do something about this?
2:04:20
Like it should flow through. I don't know.
2:04:22
Maybe >> if she I don't know what her prison terms are, but like if and when she gets out, like how quickly do you think she could raise like 50 million$100 million?
2:04:30
Do you think it do you think it's like >> I mean John John's take is John's take is the pitch >> if you really want to she she can rebuild her her personal brand but that's and and people people are already like people are just it just marketing works right so she's just like marketing
2:04:47
to the timeline right now people are deciding like oh maybe I like her like oh she's making me laugh so people naturally start to like her I don't think it's going to repair her brand in the in the capital markets I think if she wanted to truly repair the brand, it would be like deep threads and long posts on biotech. >> That was my take was Martin Skrey. Uh he
2:05:06
>> That was my take was Martin Skrey.
2:05:06
Uh he has posted about biotech, about trading.
2:05:14
He's gotten a lot of picks, right?
2:05:14
He talks about capital markets.
2:05:16
He talks about yes, he he did get in legal trouble, right?
2:05:20
Uh but he has but he has said the thing that I was doing before I went to prison.
2:05:25
I I'm still doing it and I'm an expert and you can kind of judge me by my opinions and my takes and I'll go on live streams and you can judge me by my words and I haven't seen enough posts from her on the state of mRNA or the state of of GLP1s or the state of of gene editing technology.
2:05:41
Like if she really is an incredible biologist who's been like wrongly convicted, like show me some incredible biology takes, right? Don't just be okay.
2:05:51
Yeah, you're just a mean.
2:05:53
the the Martin Skrey like shortselling reports where like it's like Friday at lunchtime and he just tweets this company's a fraud like their tests are going to fail.
2:06:00
Stock drops 70% on Monday. Incredible performance. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:06:03
And it shows that he's like he's like at least a student of the game in in in the world in the financial world.
2:06:09
>> Now he has a kid, you know, dropped his kid on the internet.
2:06:12
>> Anyway, uh we have a lightning round.
2:06:12
Uh we did the we did the favorite entrepreneur.
2:06:15
The second one is how did you make your first dollar online or in business?
2:06:20
>> Oh, that's uh first dollar online or in business.
2:06:22
Um I was trading spaxs in my Roth IRA which is Yeah.
2:06:25
So like most people lost money on these.
2:06:28
I one of my buddies I made the I swear to God this is why Sam this is why Sam hired me cuz he really appreciated my spack story.
2:06:37
But basically like I graduated December 2019 was bored co hits like the first week I start my job corporate finance very boring.
2:06:46
And one of my buddies texts me he's liked DraftKings is going public through a spa.
2:06:50
if you buy this thing, you'll own DraftKings stock. I was I didn't get it.
2:06:54
I was like, why don't they just IPO?
2:06:55
I read through the structure and it's like, oh, if you buy these warrants, it's like a call option that doesn't expire for five years.
2:06:59
And then Spaxs turned into a bubble.
2:07:03
>> I built some web scrapers that would like ping me whenever um whenever like a new spack got listed or like a merger was announced.
2:07:10
So, this was like fairly autistic, but I saw that Apollo had a spack, and I noticed that they had changed their website header from oil rigs to windmills in like June 2020.
2:07:19
And my hypothesis was everybody's chasing the next Tesla.
2:07:24
They're going to announce like an EV deal and the warrants are going to go from 50 cents to like whatever.
2:07:28
And I just put all my money in Apollo warrants.
2:07:30
And then they announced a deal with Fisker Automotive like a month later. Made a lot of money.
2:07:35
And I just basically got out.
2:07:35
I just parlayed that like 20 times.
2:07:38
My first online money was trading spaxs in my retirement.
2:07:42
>> That's a fantastic story.
2:07:43
>> So, shout out Chimath.
2:07:43
A lot of people lost money on his spaxs.
2:07:45
I would like to thank him for uh bank rolling a trip to Argentina. >> Oh, let's go.
2:07:50
Hopefully, you have steak, his bottle of wine, maybe some tequila.
2:07:54
>> And spaxs are back, so maybe it's time to do it again. >> Maybe. Maybe.
2:07:56
Maybe this time is different.
2:07:59
>> Couple IPOs coming for good. >> Fantastic. We'll see you. >> Great to see you. Bye, guys. >> See you.
2:08:04
And we will bring in our next guest to our YC Demo Day stream. We are live. How you doing? >> Of course. How you doing? >> Great. Great. Yeah. >> Very coded. I love it. >> I love it. Introduce yourself. What who are you? What do you do? >> Uh my name is Arlon.
2:08:20
I am building Nomio which is an API uh that gives more context to agents. Okay.
2:08:25
>> So if you're a cursor user, you can pretty much just go to cursor index any documentation or codebase and give it as a context to an agent.
2:08:32
>> We uh what exactly is happening?
2:08:32
I I I know cursor does kind of rollups of what's happening.
2:08:37
There's there's some rag infrastructure that's popular.
2:08:39
What else is going on in in the actual product to unlock value? >> Yeah.
2:08:45
So, the two reasons I built this is because like I was so pissed where I would like go to Google, copy paste all the docs and paste them right in the cursor. We've all been there. Yeah.
2:08:53
The memory is not persistent.
2:08:53
So, they will forget that in like 2 seconds.
2:08:56
And second one is that you also pollute context window which like causes context rot.
2:09:00
It's actually a study done by Chroma which is like a company. Oh, yeah. We know. Yeah.
2:09:04
saying like post 4,000 tokens.
2:09:05
I think like the performance of any goes like this. Yep.
2:09:09
>> So that's like the reason I build this. >> That makes sense.
2:09:10
Wait, do do you have a take on uh Jeff Jeff's take on like context windows and and and the need for rag?
2:09:16
Like h how do you think about the the tradeoffs in where the frontier models are scaling like there's one world where you just throw bigger and bigger context windows endlessly. Maybe that doesn't work. >> Yeah. You know what?
2:09:27
There are two different architectures right now.
2:09:28
So if you look at cursor and cloud code, cloud code doesn't index your codebase.
2:09:31
So they only do agency crack which like only uses terminal tools like grab grab and cursor they use both they use local index and also vector store.
2:09:39
So like rack uh it's really hard to say right now a lot of people started hating on rack but I think it's still effective if you're like combining it with like graph rack which is also a very good approach. >> Okay.
2:09:51
>> Uh what's the traction of the business been like? >> Yeah.
2:09:53
So in the past 3 weeks I send up 25% of the current batch paying and >> let's go. Congratulations. >> Yeah. Thank you.
2:10:01
and 5% of the spring badge. >> Amazing.
2:10:05
>> So yeah, total like more than 90 companies.
2:10:07
Uh and yeah, about like 11. 5k MR. >> There we go. Congratulations. >> Are you profitable? Yes, sir. Let's go. Let's go.
2:10:20
>> Yeah, cuz like deals cover everything like all the infrastructure cost and Yeah.
2:10:24
So yeah, I guess Oh, yeah.
2:10:24
Yeah, it covers the infrastructure cost. Okay. >> Incredible. What were you doing?
2:10:28
You you have a crazy story, right?
2:10:29
What were you doing before this?
2:10:30
So I was bored of high school when I was 17 and I wanted to build.
2:10:33
So I dropped out, raised a million in couple days in London. >> Couple days. How did that go? >> Yeah.
2:10:39
So usually like people race like it takes weeks to race in London.
2:10:43
Especially in Europe because they're so slow, but like if you find the right approach and like good people.
2:10:46
So in my case it was Local Globe.
2:10:48
They're really really good and they're really fast.
2:10:50
So I guess I just got lucky.
2:10:50
Uh I built from London for a couple couple months and then applied for OC. >> Okay. So same company. >> Same company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:10:58
Applied for YC for my third time.
2:10:59
Uh yeah, >> third time rejected the first.
2:11:03
>> My dad applied 3 years ago. He got rejected.
2:11:04
So I sort of like put a goal for myself to like apply again and again and Yeah. Yeah.
2:11:07
That's that's incredible. >> It's amazing.
2:11:11
>> How did how did you make your first dollar on the internet? >> Yeah. >> On the internet. Yeah.
2:11:14
So when I was 15, I was a student and I wanted to build something and I needed some domain expertise and since I was a student, atteol database for high school students uh from like underrepresented backgrounds to go and apply to summer programs in US. Mhm.
2:11:30
>> Uh, so I did a couple of those myself, like at Berkeley and then at UPUPAN, came back, scaled it to 20,000 active users and made like $2,000 or something. That's amazing. >> Take it to the bank. >> Last question.
2:11:42
>> Uh, who's your favorite entrepreneur of all time? >> Yeah.
2:11:45
Who the the most money, bro? Like Elon Musk. Yeah. Yeah.
2:11:46
He was the richest man, bro. Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:11:49
>> But otherwise, yeah, Brian Chesky is my goat. I love Brian Chesky. >> Brian Chesky. Founder mode. >> There you go. >> Fantastic. >> BoG.
2:11:54
How's the fundraiser gone?
2:11:56
>> Uh, I closed it a couple weeks ago. Yeah. couple weeks ago. Okay. Incredible. >> That's great.
2:12:02
>> Um, crushing it, dude. >> Fantastic.
2:12:03
Well, thanks so much for coming. >> Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. >> Great to meet you. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. >> Have a good one.
2:12:10
>> Up next, >> who we got next?
2:12:12
>> We are continuing our coverage live from YC Demo Day 2025. Welcome to the stream.
2:12:16
>> Well, what's happening? >> I'm John. >> Allesia. >> Allesia. A pleasure. >> Great to meet you.
2:12:20
>> Allesia, >> how you doing?
2:12:21
Uh, would you mind introducing yourself and your company? >> Sure. So, uh, hi everyone. I'm Allesia.
2:12:26
Um, VFlow is the all-in-one solution to build production ready apps in no code. >> Okay.
2:12:31
Uh, we've seen a lot of news recently that uh there's now a whole industry of Vibe Code cleanup specialists. What's your reaction?
2:12:37
Can Vibe coding ever make it to production? >> Uh, no. >> No.
2:12:43
>> Not now at least like all the solutions out there are really broken and they can they give you this wow effect in the front end but on the back end side there is so much uh to do and there is a huge need.
2:12:53
people are like they have hair and fire problems and they need to solve these problems. So the market is huge.
2:12:58
>> So how are you plugging in how do you deliver value to your customers >> so we uh have a solution which is a hybrid approach between lovable and any database plugged in.
2:13:06
So we have this no code interface that is AI like the AI generate this flow and then maps deterministically to code.
2:13:12
So the code is never going to be hallucinating >> and uh yeah that's a robust solution.
2:13:17
>> How's traction been so far? >> Traction is amazing.
2:13:18
As soon as we launched uh as I said like people have this hair and fire problem so they just they want to throw money at you.
2:13:25
>> Oh >> for you to on board them on platforms that they can actually continue developing the application on.
2:13:30
>> Did you share any metrics today at demo day? >> I will share it. I haven't presented yet. >> Okay. Okay.
2:13:34
You will >> front run it. Front run it.
2:13:35
Front run it for the for the audience.
2:13:38
>> 8,000 8,000 applications in three weeks. >> Congratulations. Congratulations.
2:13:43
>> Uh what were you doing before this?
2:13:43
I worked as a software engineer for four years for a company and I actually built a no code tool which is very similar to what for animation and 3D modeling.
2:13:52
>> Oh, that's for Disney. >> Interesting. Disney crazy. >> That's amazing.
2:13:56
>> Uh how do you how how have you reacted to like the way that Disney's approached AI?
2:14:02
I know they kind of seemingly it's like um they're very careful not to get into hot water around like using like too much AI but clearly want to stay on.
2:14:15
>> I think they use AI everywhere like literally everywhere in rendering 3D modeling everywhere and it's cool like you can just make everything faster and the super high resolution renderings. >> Makes sense.
2:14:24
Um let's move into our lightning round.
2:14:26
We've been asking two questions.
2:14:28
First uh who's your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
2:14:30
My favorite entrepreneur is Taylor Swift. >> Taylor Swift. That's a good one.
2:14:35
>> Big fan and she is amazing. Um, >> that's great. >> Definitely.
2:14:38
Resilience and persistence.
2:14:41
>> Second, uh, how did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business >> by selling um stuff that my brothers didn't use at home? >> Really? >> Yes. >> No way. It's amazing. >> Nice.
2:14:52
>> Anyway, uh, >> uh, incredible.
2:14:55
>> Thank you so much for coming on the show.
2:14:56
We will talk to you soon. Have a good one. What are we bringing on?
2:14:57
Oh, I forgot to ask about the GPU.
2:15:00
We got to ask if they uh if their GPU will open. Hey, >> how you doing? >> Good. >> Nice to meet you. >> Welcome to the show. >> I'm John. Welcome to the show. >> Josh. >> Josh. Pleasure. >> Jordy. Good to meet you.
2:15:10
>> Uh, introduce yourself for the stream.
2:15:12
Who are what are you building?
2:15:13
>> Well, I'm Joshua March.
2:15:13
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Veritus Agent.
2:15:15
We build AI agents for the consumer lending industry. >> Okay.
2:15:20
So interfacing with borrowers to help help doing sales, servicing, collections for like fintex, banks, credit unions, services, that kind of thing.
2:15:28
>> Do you see your company as GPU poor or GPU rich?
2:15:32
>> Uh I we're rich everything. You can have this.
2:15:35
Uh >> uh what uh how how have you like how have you what's go to market look like?
2:15:42
Are you are you focusing are you trying >> banks involved?
2:15:45
>> Yeah, I imagine there's like a couple BNPL players that would you know be >> be ideal. Yeah.
2:15:49
No, we're we're we're currently our first design partner was in the collection space collecting on medical payments.
2:15:55
That's been super successful.
2:15:56
We've done thousands of outbound calls, >> but but but sort of like a not a name that you necessarily recognize.
2:16:02
>> And we're now launching business are big. >> Yeah. Exactly.
2:16:04
We're now getting live with a fintech who's launching us into their conversion funnel for like for sales.
2:16:09
There's a big serer that's in the solar space.
2:16:11
There's collections agencies. So, a big a handful. >> Makes sense.
2:16:15
>> Did you have experience in the in the space prior to this? >> Yeah.
2:16:18
So I actually I previously built a contact center software company to like 15 million AR before I got acquired. Wow.
2:16:24
>> Um and then uh immediately prior to launching this company I was essentially working in like a web 3 credit fund >> and had invested into some emerging market debt buyers who are doing collections and servicing which kind of exposed me to the whole world. >> Oh that makes sense.
2:16:37
>> And I was like we should just do this with AI basically.
2:16:39
>> Did you share any metrics today at demo day?
2:16:41
Um yeah, the only we haven't uh converted any of we got our first design customer live like six weeks ago.
2:16:47
We're now launching with like five more.
2:16:51
>> And the first customer uh the first design partner we did like 4,000 outbound calls and collected like 50k in the first month, which is like a big success, but like yeah, we're still getting going.
2:17:00
>> Uh are you how are you thinking about the are you thinking of selling like the result in some way like over time would you just charge a percentage?
2:17:08
>> Yeah, it depends who we're selling to.
2:17:10
So when we're selling to like a serer or collections agency, we'll probably just sell on usage based kind of pricing.
2:17:13
But when we're selling to fintexs and banks, then we'd love to do as much outcome based pricing as possible.
2:17:20
And that's on the sales side, the collection side, everything.
2:17:23
>> Uh we have been asking everyone two questions.
2:17:26
First, who's your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
2:17:30
So, um, there's this guy, Felix Dennis, who was a who was a British entrepreneur, and he wrote this book called How to Get Rich. Yeah.
2:17:37
>> Which I think is the best book on entrepreneurship. Okay.
2:17:40
>> Um, and he's like a crazy guy.
2:17:40
He's dead now, but he was like a crazy crazy guy.
2:17:44
>> Big big into magazines.
2:17:45
>> Big you would love this guy.
2:17:47
>> He owned like he was like PC Magazine, Maxim, The Week.
2:17:49
He was like a big publisher.
2:17:51
Did a load of different stuff. >> Felix Dennis. >> Felix Dennis. >> Great.
2:17:54
I'll have to look him up. Uh, second question.
2:17:56
How did you make your first dollar online on the internet or in business?
2:18:00
>> Yeah, so um I launched an e-commerce website when I was like 19, still at college and was selling uh selling like a load of home wares online. >> Home. Nice. Nice.
2:18:11
>> John was selling uh were you selling DJ equipment international?
2:18:13
He's an international businessman from a young age.
2:18:16
>> International businessman at age 13. It was great. >> 13. Nice. Awesome.
2:18:20
>> Uh anyway, thank you so much for stopping by.
2:18:22
Have a great congrats on the on the progress.
2:18:24
Congrats on the progress.
2:18:26
Let's move on to our next guest.
2:18:28
We are live from YC Demo Day 2025. How you doing?
2:18:32
>> We're getting some photos taken by Bryce Johnson. Welcome to the stream.
2:18:34
We're going to bring in Wait, >> the prompting company. Come on. >> The prompting. >> The prompting.
2:18:41
>> The prompting company. The prompt maxing. Yes, sir. >> But of where?
2:18:44
Where could you possibly be based? >> Of San Francisco.
2:18:48
>> The prompting company of San Francisco.
2:18:50
>> You don't capitalize the of though.
2:18:50
The of >> I'm just looking at this. >> Oh, cool. funny.
2:18:55
>> Uh yeah, bull market and companies named uh that start with the exactly the issue tracking of company of Australia, right? >> Yeah, exactly.
2:19:04
>> When did you pick that name and logo and design?
2:19:06
>> Um we picked it two months ago. >> Two months ago. Okay. >> Okay. Okay.
2:19:08
You should be the last one to do it though. I hope so.
2:19:11
I think I think u trade is over.
2:19:14
>> Yeah, the trade is over.
2:19:15
>> So So you're prompting.
2:19:15
It's pretty self-evident, but tell the stream who you are, what you actually do. >> Yeah. My name is Kevin.
2:19:21
and I'm the CEO and co-founder of the prompting company and we help product get mentioned in chat GPT. >> Okay. >> Okay. Okay. Okay.
2:19:28
>> Not just another generative engine optimization tool but yeah. Yeah.
2:19:30
How do you how do you uh differentiate? >> Yeah, for sure.
2:19:34
So, we play in the infrastructure layer.
2:19:35
We're not just creating articles for you.
2:19:36
Um we create shadow sites for our companies to you know influence all >> I is there is there any special design in in in the type of shadow site that you're building?
2:19:47
Like what what exactly does that look like?
2:19:48
HTTP servers, there's APIs, there's documentation, there's a lot of different.
2:19:51
So these shadow sites are basically like markdown versions of your site. Okay. Mark. Yeah.
2:19:56
We basically iterate on more of those.
2:19:58
>> Why do the foundation models like markdown so much?
2:20:00
>> Cuz it takes like >> there.
2:20:02
No, it's it's just 90% less tokens, man. >> Oh, okay.
2:20:04
It's just more compressed. Super fast. Got it. Then HTML. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
2:20:07
Cuz if they scrape the HTML, they're bringing in all the CSS and Okay.
2:20:10
Uh, did you come into the batch with this idea or >> Yes, we did. We did not pivot. We came in pure play. It's a pure play. Pure play.
2:20:19
What were you doing before this? >> Um, I was at Beehive. I was working there. >> Oh, no way. Cool. >> Yeah.
2:20:25
>> Made your money in uh newsletters. >> Newsmaxing.
2:20:28
>> Um, what's uh what's traction been like?
2:20:30
>> Um, it's been pretty good, dude. Uh, we are at 300k now.
2:20:32
Um, Nvidia paying customers. >> No way. >> Interesting.
2:20:37
>> How did you how did you land Nvidia?
2:20:39
>> Oh, dude, it's um it's it was a crazy bake off, but ultimately the better product one and a bake off.
2:20:45
>> I love I love bake offs. That's great. Um, very cool.
2:20:48
>> Um, what, uh, speaking of Jensen, who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time in history?
2:20:53
>> In history, I mean, >> anyone live, alive or dead, >> dude. Uh, Steve Jobs. >> Steve Jobs. Now, that's a great one. >> Good answer. Good answer.
2:21:00
>> What about how you made your first dollar on the internet or in business? >> O, on the internet.
2:21:04
I actually ran a service back then to jailbreak iPhones. >> No way. You heard that before? >> Josh Browder. Josh.
2:21:11
Yeah, he was jailbreaking iPhones.
2:21:13
And there was someone else who was fixing broken iPhone screens.
2:21:16
So the yeah the the little lowhanging fruit in the digital economy. Very very popular.
2:21:20
Uh would you consider yourself GPU poor or GPU rich?
2:21:26
>> GPU poor at the moment.
2:21:28
>> GPU poor at the moment.
2:21:29
>> How's the how's the fundra going?
2:21:31
>> It's going pretty great, man.
2:21:31
We're way over subscribed. >> Fantastic.
2:21:34
>> Picking our lead right now. >> Amazing. Well, congratulations.
2:21:35
Thank you so much for coming on. >> Great to meet you.
2:21:38
Good to meet you for coming on. >> Have a good one.
2:21:40
Let's bring in our next guest from YC Demo Day.
2:21:43
How are we doing on time, guys?
2:21:46
We have to get out of here to get catch a flight, correct? >> Okay, let Nick know. How you doing? >> What's happening?
2:21:53
>> Nice to meet you, Theo.
2:21:54
>> Good to meet you, guys. >> What's happening?
2:21:56
>> How you doing, fellow?
2:21:57
>> Yeah, fellow content creator, streamer, accidental business guy turned into an influencer somehow.
2:22:01
>> Introduce yourself to the stream.
2:22:02
>> Yeah, for those who don't know me, I'm Theo.
2:22:03
I started I was actually doing a YC company for making stuff like this easier because I worked at Twitch for 5 years.
2:22:09
I wanted to be easier to do live content collaborations.
2:22:11
So, I built Zoom for streamers.
2:22:12
Make it easier to bring a guest like you like mine in HD.
2:22:14
I'm assuming you guys are actually not using OBS. That's cool.
2:22:17
But we built everything around OBS so that you can use your professional existing solutions.
2:22:21
Copy paste somebody straight from your browser into our into OBS at 1080p.
2:22:27
>> What you're using if you're using Hangouts or Zoom in the >> We're an alternative to Hangouts and Zoom. We're like better.
2:22:31
But to be clear, we don't really focus on this product anymore.
2:22:34
We built it because it was so needed and nothing else like this existed before.
2:22:37
And I saw the need when I was at Twitch.
2:22:39
We won half the top streamers.
2:22:40
Our reward was 8K a month.
2:22:40
So we started exploring more.
2:22:42
It was like one of those things where you can get all the most important customers and have a tiny business. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:22:49
I had a buddy who built uh this amazing tool for helping make documentaries and I was just like this is a very small market man. >> Oh yeah.
2:22:58
>> And I was like this is the best.
2:22:58
I was making YouTube videos like video.
2:23:01
>> What did you So did you guys tag them all?
2:23:04
>> Kept the product running.
2:23:05
>> It's still running to this day.
2:23:05
It's relatively easy to maintain.
2:23:06
Thankfully, we uh I'm proud of what we built there.
2:23:10
But at the same time, I wanted to better understand creators.
2:23:11
And I just missed going deep on tech cuz when I was at Twitch, my favorite time of day was lunch and dinner where I could just nerd out with these super experienced engineers.
2:23:20
>> Co took that away from me.
2:23:20
So, I built my YouTube channel to better understand what creators needed and to just get all this weird tech stuff off my chest and it blew up almost immediately.
2:23:27
I'm still I the last >> Do you do you have a head of membership?
2:23:33
>> So, you've seen the browser company video. I love that.
2:23:35
So, uh, it was a fantastic reaction.
2:23:39
>> Jordy was saying the same thing in the morning.
2:23:41
>> Yeah, I I mean I I think it's a fantastic outcome.
2:23:43
I'm super happy for everyone involved.
2:23:45
I think I think I can see Atlassian like >> wanting to take the browser very seriously.
2:23:50
And so there's a way that in the fullness of time that it will look like, you know, incredible deal for both sides.
2:23:56
Uh, but I did see the video.
2:23:56
I was like, wait, >> had a membership?
2:24:01
>> What's going on there?
2:24:01
>> There's just certain things in that scenario that are like hard to not have your eyes catch.
2:24:04
So, the chaos I've engaged with since my YouTube channel blew up accidentally, just got more into DevTools stuff, built some DevTools as well for the business, got so annoyed with the state of all the AI chat apps.
2:24:15
Deep Seek V3 drops, like, "Oh my god, this model's incredible."
2:24:16
But the website was somehow even worse.
2:24:19
>> So, I said, "Time to make a better one cuz I'm a nerd about like full stack web and application performance and just quality of experience.
2:24:24
I helped build a lot of Twitch chat when I was over there, the world's as far as I know, fastest updating text interface on the web." >> Oh, yeah. People love Twitch chat. >> Yeah, Twitch.
2:24:31
It's so much better than YouTube.
2:24:32
It's unbelievable to this day.
2:24:34
So I wanted to make this unpack that because I believe that Twitch chat is specifically like doesn't just endlessly load.
2:24:40
It loads blocks at a time.
2:24:42
>> It's blocks but they come in really fast. >> Is that a mistake? >> No, that's by design.
2:24:44
That's absolutely by design.
2:24:46
Like chat readability is like comprehensive like your ability to comprehend what's happening in chat is like Lewig and he was saying like could I start over if I didn't have any Twitch followers and he did this experiment and he was like I think I have an edge just because I'm good at reading chat.
2:24:58
And I was like I never would have clocked that as like an as like a thing but it is.
2:25:03
Actually, one of the things I do differently is I film all my YouTube videos live on Twitch.
2:25:06
So, I'll be like and I have chat open next to my like return feed. >> Yes.
2:25:11
I have a team that like helps me that we built some custom software to auto chop the individual topics so we can get a video out within an hour of it being recorded, which I'm really proud of.
2:25:18
But the goal is really to do it live so any like mistakes I make, any sources I need help finding, any weird comments or questions I would get about the thing can happen while I'm filming. >> Yeah.
2:25:27
So then the final thing is much better. >> Yeah.
2:25:29
It just cuts like it takes us an hour and a half to film an hour long video and then like 30 minutes to edit it. That's great.
2:25:33
I'm really proud of our workflow there. >> That's cool. >> Super fun.
2:25:36
>> Uh, was that a content creation injury?
2:25:38
>> Uh, got in a fight with a Firefox user. >> Joking.
2:25:42
It was a skateboard injury from a long time ago. >> Oh, wow. Slowly built up.
2:25:45
Yeah, I was a sponsor skater for a little bit.
2:25:47
I really into that to this day.
2:25:49
But, uh, >> yeah, 10 years ago had a really bad 15 years ago had a really bad wrist break.
2:25:54
Also tore the entire ligament for my thumb and it's just slowly been like falling off of my hand.
2:25:58
So, finally got that reconstructed.
2:25:59
Will you you should build an app that uses uh computer vision to teach people how to kick flip.
2:26:06
>> I think there's a there could be a bull market in that in that space. >> Yeah.
2:26:09
It'll be slightly bigger than the one for content creator tools.
2:26:12
>> No, but it's a it's it's a public service, right?
2:26:13
Teaching the world to kick flip. You just come out.
2:26:15
Our mission is to kick flip.
2:26:18
>> Something that's been fun for me recently that I actually really appreciate you guys for, too, is it seems like the hunger for people to understand how the startup stuff actually works has been growing a lot recently.
2:26:26
I've always been a nerd about it.
2:26:28
Really, I've been investing in a lot more.
2:26:29
I think I've been over a 100 YC startups at this point.
2:26:31
It's been really fun for me and >> love it.
2:26:35
The and recently it feels like I can actually talk about that stuff more where previously people's eyes would just glaze over. They wouldn't care.
2:26:42
But I'm doing like one startup e video a week at least right now and they're performing incredibly well.
2:26:46
The response has been awesome.
2:26:47
It feels like people are ready to talk about this now. It's a really good time. >> Finally big enough.
2:26:51
I mean you look at the the the traction on like the actual Y cominator account and like on YouTube and this has like over a million followers.
2:26:58
Still one of the most underrated YouTube channels, too.
2:26:59
Like the old Michael Cyel Dalton podcast like I reference it all of the time. >> So good. Yep. Yeah.
2:27:04
And I mean that they've but all the stuff that Gary's done, they've done really >> absolutely love all of them.
2:27:09
It's like like the Y Combinator like program, Y Combinator content, the Y Combinator partners, everything I went through there is a huge part of why my YouTube is successful and now why T3 chat's successful too.
2:27:17
I wouldn't trade it for anything. >> Makes sense.
2:27:20
>> What uh what's a what's your goal over the next 5 10 years?
2:27:24
>> If I had a 5 to 10 year goal, I would be probably not here. I'd be working on it. I have no idea.
2:27:27
I've always kind of just went with the flow and that works really well.
2:27:30
My thing's always been it's better to be late than early.
2:27:32
I find that people try way too hard to be early to a thing and it ends up kind of rotting their brain a little bit.
2:27:37
Like imagine you saw how big powerful smartphones were getting back in the day.
2:27:41
You're like, "Oh my god, this is obviously the future.
2:27:43
Everything's going to be on phones.
2:27:44
So I'm going to go all in making Java applets for the Kaioera Echo and Blackberry.
2:27:49
Are you better or worse off than somebody who got into app development 2 years after the App Store came out?" >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:27:54
Sometimes it's better to be late.
2:27:55
Everybody told me I was too late when I we made our chat app and we're as far as I know the fastest growing third party chat app. >> Wow. >> Crazy. >> Fantastic.
2:28:00
Uh we've been asking everyone two questions.
2:28:03
Uh who's your favorite entrepreneur in history?
2:28:09
>> History makes it tough.
2:28:09
I would say like >> alive or modern history like alive makes a lot easier. Modern history.
2:28:13
I think Tim Sweeney is my personal favorite.
2:28:14
The way he's aligned his business is incredible.
2:28:17
Like to this day he still owns exactly 51% so nobody can outvote him.
2:28:21
his focus on making everything better for developers, knowing the flywheel will eventually like fund him back.
2:28:26
It's kind of like Apple strategy, but way more focused on developers, which I care a lot about.
2:28:29
Even things that have been a flop like Epic Games Store were with the goal of getting developers more money because he was tired of Apple getting subsidized with 30% revenue from an indie game dev.
2:28:39
>> Yep, that makes a ton of sense.
2:28:41
>> Uh, what did you what did you think of the the um Apple launches today?
2:28:45
>> Apple launch today was, as a nerdy tech and video guy, I love it.
2:28:49
The iPhone 17 Pro is a actual like monumental leap in what you can do for video production.
2:28:56
Have you guys paid attention to any of that stuff?
2:28:57
I'm sure these guys are going to love it.
2:28:59
>> I just know 14 48 megapixel like better camera. >> That's cool.
2:29:01
But the No, I mean that they added Genlock support. >> Okay.
2:29:04
>> So like full Blackmagic S like integrations.
2:29:06
You can do time code with a new USB like device they partnered with Blackmagic to make.
2:29:10
You can do crazy synchronization shots where you get like 20 iPhones at different angles and do like frame by frame like like freeze frame 3D shots and stuff with it.
2:29:20
That was normally you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars before.
2:29:23
Now you just get like 20 iPhones and a couple USB adapters. It's insane. >> Yeah.
2:29:26
And that's going to be even cheaper in like 2 years when these things >> and ProRes RAW which is really cool too because I know way too much about cameras.
2:29:32
I'm really nerdy about this but uh the Red camera company had an exclusive patent on compressed raw video encoding where on on camera specifically.
2:29:40
So the reason that all those like USB or not USB like external HDMI recorders got popular Atmos is a business because of Red's patent.
2:29:48
>> That patent allowed them to just get away with things they absolutely shouldn't have and shut down every other camera company trying.
2:29:52
The patent was they had succeeded in suing Apple.
2:29:54
They succeeded in suing DJI.
2:29:56
They almost got the barred from the US.
2:29:57
They succeeded in suing Sony, Canon, a bunch of other companies. They were suing Nikon.
2:30:01
Nikon said, "How expensive are you guys?"
2:30:02
And bought them for like $30 million.
2:30:03
So now the patent's not being enforced.
2:30:06
So Apple got to put ProRes Raw in the new iPhone, which is unbelievable. That's wild.
2:30:10
>> Actual raw video encoding on a phone is just I could not have imagined that even 2 years ago. >> That's crazy.
2:30:14
Uh, other question we've been asking, how do you make your first dollar on the internet or in business? >> Minecraft. >> Minecraft.
2:30:20
>> I was Minecraft servers.
2:30:22
>> Yeah, somebody else said this.
2:30:23
>> I if I hear from a founder that they started Minecraft servers, I don't even think twice. I just write the check.
2:30:27
>> Yeah, >> that's crazy. It's so crazy. It's sneaker botting.
2:30:32
>> Sneaker bottle way back like buying and selling stuff on eBay.
2:30:36
It was popular in like the '9s, 2000s.
2:30:38
Yeah, there's always one of those every generation.
2:30:40
It's been really fun to see.
2:30:41
And now I feel like people skip the step and just go straight to the business, which is interesting.
2:30:44
Just start an enterprise fast. Crazy. >> Yeah.
2:30:48
Just going to like the founders Inc.
2:30:50
events and seeing how many like excited young founders there are now is just something I never would have imagined before.
2:30:54
Like when I was a kid, it was the promise like the exciting thing is you'll get to work at the Google campus one day.
2:30:58
Like that's what you were aspiring for.
2:30:59
Now you're aspiring to be here and that's a really interesting shift. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's great.
2:31:04
Are you GPU poor, GPU rich? I'm GPU middle class. >> GPU middle class.
2:31:11
>> Well, you could pick a hat if you want one.
2:31:12
>> Oh, I want the GPU poor hat for sure. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Middle class. >> You got to go.
2:31:18
You got to go up or you got to go up or down.
2:31:21
>> Well, thank you for joining.
2:31:22
>> It's not properly fitted, but you will fix that for sure. Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
2:31:25
Thank you so much for meeting you guys. Let me know.
2:31:26
You want me to comment on any weird stuff in like the AI chat space or UI or whatever? No worries at all.
2:31:31
I miss even more of them than you guys do.
2:31:33
Let me know if you ever need help with anything. I'll be around. Have fun, man. Cheers.
2:31:35
Have a good rest of your day. >> Lightning round.
2:31:38
Let's Let's Oh, there's people out there. Okay. Okay. Let's run it. Let's run it. Let's run it. Come in quickly. Who are you? What do you do? Welcome to the stream. Just my hand. Introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? >> I'm Bob. >> Hi, I'm Bob.
2:31:49
Welcome to the show, CTO of Embed.
2:31:51
We build coding agents for firmware. >> Okay.
2:31:53
Coding agents for firmware. >> Firmware. Yeah.
2:31:56
>> What What device are you embedded in?
2:31:58
>> So, we do microcontrollers, Linux computers.
2:32:00
So, think about any microcontroller you can think of.
2:32:01
SDM32, ESP, uh, TI, NXV, any any manufacturer.
2:32:06
>> When did you when did you learn you wanted to do agents for coding agents for firmware?
2:32:10
>> That's a good good question.
2:32:10
So, I did hardware all my life.
2:32:12
Started like, you know, >> started when I was small doing robots, moving to more professional stuff in high school.
2:32:17
In college, I >> school, let's go. >> In college, I Yeah. Yeah.
2:32:22
>> In college, I built uh humanoids and then um uh went to a startup, did MedTech stuff, and then went to Tesla, worked on robo taxi.
2:32:28
worked on robo taxi. So we kind of saw I saw this problem from like you know a re like a 10% research lab to a trillion dollar company that firmware they run was so inefficient compared to webdev >> and traditional coding agents just couldn't do it like uh cloud code or cursor they lack context what we say about context is two different problems right one problem is that it has no
2:32:46
understanding of uh the chips like it needs to read the documentation for the chips to understand how to actually write the code and once it has written the code it has no way to test the code on the device right so we built this information and this hardware interaction layer where you can actually, you know, read read out outputs from the uh from from your board and run like a GV debugger to like debug. Yeah. Yeah. >> How's traction? How's demo day going?
2:33:09
>> Traction has been great.
2:33:09
We launched uh 3 weeks ago now.
2:33:10
We have over 100 paying users, 500 line. >> Fantastic.
2:33:16
>> 500,000 lines of code change.
2:33:16
Uh working on the first uh enterprise, you know.
2:33:21
>> Uh who's your favorite entrepreneur of all time?
2:33:23
Oh, >> Elon has uh are you uh bullish bearish humanoids in the next uh five years? >> I'm very bullish.
2:33:33
>> In the next 5 years, you think they'll be walking around.
2:33:36
>> Do you think I will have one in my home? >> Maybe not your home. Factories. >> Factories. >> Factories. Why factories?
2:33:43
>> Factories because like it's a straightup replacement for your human workers.
2:33:45
You just so much lower cost and you don't have to modify anything in your factory.
2:33:51
drop in replacement and free work for us. >> Okay, we will see. Well, thank you so much.
2:33:56
We'll hold you to it in five years.
2:33:58
Expect to hear from us with uh with a fact check on that.
2:34:00
Thank you so much for coming by. We'll see you later. Have a good one.
2:34:05
>> Uh we will bring in our next guest.
2:34:06
We're doing lightning round.
2:34:06
We got a lot of folks out there.
2:34:08
Let's bring in the next founder from YC Demo Day 2025. Welcome to the stream. Hi, I'm John Elena. Pleasure to meet you. >> Nice to meet you. >> Introduce yourself. Who are you? Elena Seash.
2:34:20
I'm a partner at Google Ventures. >> Oh, fantastic. Amazing. Okay.
2:34:22
What's >> I was going to hit I was going to hit this button, but uh not not >> partner mode. Partner mode.
2:34:30
>> Uh how uh what's your reaction to demo day been?
2:34:34
What are the common trends that you're seeing?
2:34:35
How has this one different from other ones?
2:34:37
Are valuations the highest they've ever been? What are you seeing?
2:34:40
>> I feel like valuations are always higher.
2:34:41
I think the fact that the public markets have come back has just reintored a lot of faith.
2:34:46
>> IPO windows open people IPO windows open.
2:34:47
I'm excited to see a lot of that.
2:34:49
Um, I run fintech at Google Ventures, so there's a lot of fun fintech and crypto companies in the pipeline.
2:34:53
Um, and yeah, it's been a really fun demo day.
2:34:56
The energy is always >> Did you do any of the companies in this batch yet? Are you still looking?
2:35:03
>> Not in this batch yet, but I think again, >> but you guys are you guys can are so multi-stage that you kind of come in for. It's more about Yeah.
2:35:08
building building relationship.
2:35:11
>> Right now, we're investing out of a $2.
2:35:11
8 billion fund every two years. Yeah.
2:35:13
Um, and our sole LP is Google. >> That's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. >> Why we like work?
2:35:19
>> You introduced it as Google Ventures, but isn't it rebranded fully to GV or have we gone back?
2:35:23
>> It's uh you know it depends on what flavor people are looking for.
2:35:25
But it's both GV and Google. >> Got it.
2:35:29
What uh give us give us the state of early stage fintech today because if this was four years ago, I think we would have seen like half the batch some something like that fintech related and >> very little of that today from from what we've seen.
2:35:44
It probably creates probably means like now is the right time to to be starting >> company. But what are you seeing?
2:35:51
>> Yeah, I feel like fintech has always ebed and flowed.
2:35:53
Um and at GV, we've been investing in fintech since the start.
2:35:57
Uh we were seed investors in Robin Hood, seed investors in Plaid, seed investors in Gusto.
2:36:00
We recently invested in RAMP.
2:36:03
Um and so what you can kind of see in fintech right now. Yeah, let's go. Big day. Big day today.
2:36:07
Um what you can see in fintech is a barbell.
2:36:12
There are people who are solving things at the earliest stages.
2:36:16
Uh parts of the world where fintech still hasn't touched.
2:36:18
I'll still say >> fintech's total market cap is 4% of all of financial services.
2:36:24
>> Financial services is 20% of the S&P 500. Yeah.
2:36:28
>> So there's a lot of ways to go.
2:36:28
Do you think the fact that there are so many uh scaled growth stage deckorn plus fintech companies with founders still at the helm changes the strategy at the early stage?
2:36:42
Like do you need to be more focused or niche because you have Zach at Plaid, you have Eric at Ramp, uh Brian at Coinbase, Rad at Robin Hood.
2:36:51
Like >> it's not the same era where it's like the founders died 50 years ago.
2:36:54
And so yeah, it's probably open season on that category.
2:36:59
It's like no, if you if you start that company in that space, like that person, that founder that we all know who's already on the podcast circuit is going to be coming for you and they go multi-product, right?
2:37:08
They earn the trust of a of a consumer and then they get >> advantages and they also are not in manager mode.
2:37:14
So yeah, >> I mean I think that's a lot of why we invested a ramp even at this last round's price, right?
2:37:19
Like I've spent a decade looking at office of the CFO software and I think that they'll end up winning.
2:37:24
Hey, let's give it up for the office of the >> CF. Let's do it.
2:37:28
>> Um, and I think the best founders think they're never done. >> Yeah.
2:37:32
>> And so with fintech, what I love about it is I look at AMX.
2:37:35
It's a $230 billion company. >> Yeah.
2:37:39
>> There is a lot of room to run if you're a fintech founder.
2:37:41
>> Are you pitching Ruth Parat on ramp? >> Always. >> Okay. Let's make it happen. >> Yeah.
2:37:46
>> Uh, we got to do that.
2:37:47
>> Were you at the last demo day? >> Yes. >> Uh, why did Yeah. Yeah.
2:37:50
the one that's that's more important, but I was going to say like vibes based analysis.
2:37:55
To me, the uh I've been more a lot more excited about this batch than last time.
2:38:00
Last time it felt like super derivative, everything >> uh it was a lot of like agents for agents and infrastructure for agents.
2:38:09
This is a lot more of like agent less infrastructure, more like here is a product with like a clear value prop and we have 100 people using we're using AI like we're using cloud or mobile or anything else. >> Yeah.
2:38:20
And I I think I think I always think of things as variables, right?
2:38:22
And when people are building for things that don't yet exist, it becomes stacking a bunch of variables on top of each other.
2:38:28
And I think what I love about this badge is it seems pretty grounded and rooted in things that people need today.
2:38:34
>> Like the market is there.
2:38:34
I'm not taking a risk on whether or not the market's going to come into fruition. >> Yeah.
2:38:39
And a year ago, if you were doing agentic infrastructure, there was a lot of people that I was seeing like not even just in YC that were like building infrastructure for agents and yet and they would sign up a lot of customers, but none of the customers were creating any value.
2:38:53
So it was like it was like infrastructure for companies that weren't really >> working and and I think that's and I think that the catalyst now is like now you have a bunch of companies building Agentic software that are delivering value for customers and so a lot of the infrastructure companies can probably work now. >> Yeah.
2:39:12
>> Uh we're doing a lightning round outside of Larry and Sergey obviously who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time in history alive or dead?
2:39:17
Anyone that you think is inspiring maybe read a biography or something. >> Oh wow.
2:39:22
Uh there are there's so many this is really difficult.
2:39:25
Um >> anyone >> you know what I I think I would say um Brian Armstrong Coinbase created a market that didn't exist before.
2:39:35
The largest businesses are always market creators in spite of what I said earlier about a market.
2:39:41
>> Yeah, that's a great one. We love Brian. Uh second question.
2:39:44
>> So if you're the next Brian Armstrong, if you're creating a market right now, please please get in touch. Yeah. Um second question.
2:39:50
How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business? >> Oh wow. Um, trading crypto. >> Trading crypto.
2:39:58
>> I'm surprised we haven't heard that more. >> I know. >> Yes. Let's hear.
2:40:02
>> Thank you for laughing.
2:40:03
>> She was born in the trenches. >> Born in the trenches. Still in the trenches.
2:40:07
>> Still in the trenches. Still in the trenches. >> Last question.
2:40:10
>> Uh, do you consider yourself GPU poor, GPU rich?
2:40:12
You're you're bolted onto a hyperscaler.
2:40:16
>> I think I know the answer, but I'll hear it from you.
2:40:18
Uh, define GPU poor, GPU rich.
2:40:21
>> GPU poor means that you're struggling to scrap together every H100 you can.
2:40:24
GPU rich is you press the button on the mass run if you want.
2:40:30
You know, it's it's a vibe, but it's also a very real thing for foundation model companies.
2:40:33
Now, it's just a general vibe.
2:40:36
Do you feel constrained by technology or liberated by it?
2:40:41
>> I feel like liberated by We got to lean in. We got to lean in.
2:40:45
>> We'll give you the sn It it hasn't been properly said. Oh, maybe it fits.
2:40:52
>> Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. Fantastic.
2:40:53
Great to meet you back sometime. >> See you next batch.
2:40:57
>> Have a great rest of your demo day. >> Two phones.
2:41:00
You know she means business. >> There you go. >> That's a corporate. That's a corporate.
2:41:04
>> That's a corporate athlete.
2:41:05
>> Corporate athlete right there. Jenn, >> how you doing? Welcome to the stream.
2:41:10
>> Welcome to the stream. Good to meet you. >> Yeah. >> Introduce yourself. What do you do?
2:41:14
>> Hey, uh my name is Scion. Uh we're Kinda. That's a great name. >> Yeah.
2:41:19
>> Um, we're basically a deep research for class action law firms. >> Okay. Interesting. >> Yeah.
2:41:23
>> Let's give it up for litigation. >> Litigation.
2:41:26
>> Uh, what's the secret sauce?
2:41:26
Is it is it just the the bad data in, bad data out?
2:41:31
You got to get private data that's maybe behind some sort of wall.
2:41:33
It's not scraped into the the pre-training weights of GPT5.
2:41:36
And so you have some cornered resource in the data or is it something in the architecture or something at the UI level?
2:41:42
like where where's the interesting >> kind of like most startups at YC like a lot of it sits on the application layer. >> Sure.
2:41:49
>> Um most of it for for class action law firms is the scale at which they do things.
2:41:54
You know they can have maybe 10 million pages for litigation. >> Oh wow.
2:41:57
>> So with that kind of scale you can't obviously just toss them to check. >> Yeah.
2:42:01
Be a hassle to just click upload another PDF upload another PDF. Upload another PDF.
2:42:04
And then the kind of second thing is like most of the data sort of sits sits in silos and kind of aggregating it all and making it sort of you know comprehensive like human would is is >> Would you ever would you ever go full stack?
2:42:16
Would you ever start suing suing people yourself? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:42:19
We uh >> we just America that's the American way. Let's go. >> Yeah. >> Watch out. >> Um Yeah.
2:42:27
We we actually just said this in our in our pitch.
2:42:28
We want to become the world's first class action law firm. Okay. Full stack.
2:42:32
So full stack >> AI law firm. >> Yeah. AI law firm. Yeah. >> Nice. >> Fantastic. Uh how's traction?
2:42:37
What do you share at demo day? How's it going? How's the race going? >> Yeah.
2:42:41
So we have about 60,000 in revenue in just the last four months since basically launching. >> Congrats.
2:42:46
>> Uh we have three of the largest plaintiff law firms in the in the USing as customers. >> That's great.
2:42:53
>> But yeah, it's going really well.
2:42:53
Pitch is uh was a little nerve-wracking at first, but got over it.
2:42:58
>> Uh what what's it like selling into these firms so far?
2:43:00
They seem to be responding well. >> Yeah.
2:43:04
Mo much better than uh most would expect, I guess.
2:43:06
Like they uh they probably don't know a lot about AI at all.
2:43:09
So you just kind of say it's magic and then >> has this been an overlooked category broadly just building software for this type of firm?
2:43:17
It feels like they just print cash and they're willing to spend um some of the numbers I've heard on like some of these even firms that like have a website, they look like a tiny business and they're just printing like $50 million a year. It's crazy. >> Yeah.
2:43:33
Mo most settlements are a billion plus, but uh yeah, absolutely.
2:43:35
Like you know, because of natural language being so a lot easier with art gener gener AI, um they it makes it a lot easier.
2:43:44
So, the kind of work they do is has basically been overlooked for practically ever.
2:43:49
In fact, most of them are >> You can never throw software at it. >> Yeah.
2:43:52
And most of them aren't even still paperless.
2:43:54
They still have lots of paperwork.
2:43:55
They've just gotten over the the cloud, if you want to call it that. So, um Yeah. >> Cool. Uh lightning round.
2:44:00
Who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time? >> Sam Alman. >> Sam.
2:44:05
>> Just just because I've met him twice, but he's >> he's a goat. Uh second question.
2:44:07
How'd you make your first dollar online in business or on the internet? >> Uh cold call. >> Cold call. That's good.
2:44:15
>> Uh it was actually so we the previous space that we were in was personal injury still law firms.
2:44:20
>> Uh my brother he's an expert cold cold caller. >> Yeah.
2:44:22
Uh >> are you How did when did you realize you wanted to get into class actions and personal injury law?
2:44:29
>> Uh well basically we literally about last summer we started walking into businesses cold just like saying hey we do AI we're both previously AI researchers like we we can probably solve your business problems.
2:44:41
>> Law firms were a huge part of it. So nice. Yeah.
2:44:43
>> Based on where you sit in the stack, do you do you feel like you're GPU poor or GPU rich?
2:44:48
>> Uh GPU rich, but GPU poor soon.
2:44:52
>> Okay, good luck to you. Scaling up.
2:44:54
Hopefully you can scale up.
2:44:54
Thanks so much for meeting.
2:44:58
We will talk to you soon.
2:44:58
Have a good rest of your day. >> Thank you.
2:45:01
If you're just tuning in, we are live from YC Demo Day 2025 and we have our next guest coming into the studio. Welcome. >> It's Colonel time. >> Welcome to the show. You seem fired up.
2:45:10
Did you just pitch yourself?
2:45:10
Uh we haven't pitched yet. >> Who are you? What do you do?
2:45:13
>> Um Raph Garcia, uh founder of Kernel.
2:45:16
We're crazy fast browsers in the cloud for your AI agent. >> The browser wars.
2:45:21
>> The browser wars are on these basically computer use.
2:45:24
So it's API to go and interact with the website. >> Yeah.
2:45:27
So nowadays a lot of AI agents, you want to hook them up to the exact same tools that humans use. Yep.
2:45:33
>> And >> the browser is one of the main tools that we use on a day-to-day basis.
2:45:35
And so >> we're powering automations in healthcare, fintech, QA, >> lots of different use cases that >> uh AI is really good at.
2:45:44
Um >> walk us through kind of the history of the market because I know there was there used to be this company I'm blanking on the name, but they were doing like browser they had a browser use product and they were venturebacked, but they never really like broke out.
2:45:57
It feels like this market has just like exploded in size or less.
2:46:00
Prior to LLM's, the main use case was you run your tests uh or your QA >> on on a on a browser, a headless browser in the cloud.
2:46:10
Um but as soon as AI came on the scene, uh tools got supercharged by this intelligence.
2:46:17
You could connect to them. >> Yep.
2:46:19
>> So, uh you know, I I experienced this firsthand.
2:46:22
I I founded a company called Clever back in 2012. That was uh >> No way.
2:46:26
>> Uh we were I think we might technically in the same batch.
2:46:29
in the same batch. Um and we our first piece of code we wrote was a browser automation to pull uh data out of uh student information system a killer company by the way you should look it up massive acquisition massive deal size gone size gone >> what was the number 500 million there so
2:46:47
yeah both both me and my co-founder are previous YC founders so we are uh experienced at the game uh and yeah I was previously a a quant at a high frequency trading firm so like speed is the name of the Will you be our >> if you want to make your browser infrastructure super fast I will help you. >> I will be most subscribed as the round.
2:47:04
>> I will be most subscribed as the round.
2:47:06
>> Uh it's extremely and it's over. Yeah.
2:47:10
>> Overally over uh I mean it is a hyper competitive space.
2:47:16
I I saw even AWS launch something.
2:47:18
It seems like something obviously AWS would have a product.
2:47:19
Uh how how are you thinking about competition in the long-term market structure?
2:47:24
Are you thinking it's even a winner or take all market or is this igopoly like what we saw with cloud where AWS, GCP, Azure, these are all great businesses?
2:47:33
>> Yeah, I think you know with dev tools I think there's an opportunity for companies to come into the space and just be laser focused on the technical quality of the product.
2:47:41
You see this with like Planet Scale and RDS.
2:47:43
You know, Amazon has a competitor that like, you know, has a huge market share, but Planet Scale is like eating their lunch when it comes to mind share and and uh some bigger customers >> like there's a lot of examples of like >> so we're we are like infra nerds like trying to make browsers super fast in the cloud and I don't think there the lengths we are going to do that like AWS is going to be years behind uh whatever we're we're working on.
2:48:06
So >> how are the bakeoffs going?
2:48:08
the bake offs are going well.
2:48:09
So we, you know, we we did YC and, you know, YC is now like five or six thousand companies.
2:48:15
So it's a huge uh early adopter market to kind of launch and sell into.
2:48:19
Uh but now we're starting to see uh deals come on that are, you know, >> Fortune 500 uh more enterprise deals.
2:48:25
Um so yeah, size gong is is going off in the office.
2:48:31
Uh and yeah, we're we're seeing really good revenue growth over I guess a thousand% you could call it month over month.
2:48:38
uh 400% uh usage month over month.
2:48:42
We've spun up like 200,000 browsers uh in the last 3 months.
2:48:44
So um yeah, things are things are going well. >> Fantastic.
2:48:49
Uh we >> How big is the team today?
2:48:52
>> Uh we're six full-time.
2:48:54
>> So hiring a lot of people I worked with at Clevver and uh and yeah.
2:48:56
No, I love I I love when a founder >> comes in, put runs it back, does it like they did it the first time, like goes back through YC, and then just puts on a master class. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:49:08
The the the mistake, and I don't know if you'll agree, the mistake is like, okay, I could have done the next I'm going to I'm going to incubate 25 different things.
2:49:14
I'll be at the beach for the next, but I'd like you to build things as hard.
2:49:20
And they completely forget how hard it is at the early stage.
2:49:23
That's the value of going through YC again is like the partners put you in that mindset like okay you actually have to do things that don't scale.
2:49:28
You have to build a product something wants. Right. >> Yep. >> Yeah.
2:49:31
Just you you could have done the whole like raise 50 million, get the really crazy office out the gates and then and then you wouldn't you you got to earn it every time.
2:49:40
>> You got to earn it every time for sure.
2:49:41
Uh well speaking of people who earned it, who is your favorite entrepreneur in history?
2:49:45
>> Um >> who do you look to >> favorite entrepreneur?
2:49:47
How far back are we going?
2:49:49
>> We can go live or dead.
2:49:49
Literally thousands of years if you want. You can go.
2:49:52
Somebody has somebody has mentioned Jesus Christ.
2:49:54
Somebody has mentioned Eric Lyman at RAM.
2:49:56
So I mean I didn't make the comparison but it was made today.
2:50:01
>> I mean cliche I'll have to go Steve Jobs.
2:50:02
I mean I I grew up reading >> that was Jordy's answer too >> and studying Apple.
2:50:05
Like that was my first computer as a kid.
2:50:07
So I I got to shout out to Steve.
2:50:10
>> I said Edwin Land Steve Jobs mentor. But it's not anyway. Uh second question.
2:50:12
How did you make your first dollar online or in business?
2:50:18
Um, I mean, do you count uh trading futures as a quan?
2:50:25
>> Wait, is there a more noble way to make your first dollar?
2:50:27
Like, what are we talking about?
2:50:29
>> I mean, that was my first job out of college. >> Fantastic. That's my quant.
2:50:34
>> Anyway, congratulations.
2:50:34
Congratulations on the progress.
2:50:35
Come back on the show as you have more news.
2:50:37
When you're ready to announce the round, jump on. >> We're very excited.
2:50:40
Uh, anyway, we will bring in our We have what? >> 10 minute countdown. 10 minutes. Come in.
2:50:45
We're in the lightning round. Who are you? What do you do? Explain yourself. >> My name's Audi.
2:50:50
I'm a co-founder of Agent Mill.
2:50:51
It's the first email provider built for AI agents.
2:50:52
The key distinction There we go.
2:50:55
The key distinction is we're not AI for your email. We're email for your AI. >> Okay. >> Wow. >> Oh, interesting.
2:51:01
Like browser use for agents. Okay.
2:51:03
I was wondering about this because I go to agent mode and often times it hits a wall where it's like, okay, it should just now it should just email the person to actually kick off that process and it can't do it. >> Yeah.
2:51:14
How much money are you making?
2:51:16
>> How much money are we making? >> Yeah.
2:51:18
Did you share a KPI at demo day? Did you share progress?
2:51:21
>> What KPI should >> We did not, but we love our customers. >> Okay. Okay. There.
2:51:23
But you customers plural.
2:51:25
So, I know that there's more than one. >> Yes. >> Okay. I'm learning. I'm learning. >> Keep us going.
2:51:29
Did you come in with this idea or did you pivot to it?
2:51:33
>> So, we were trying to get rich quick.
2:51:36
>> Is that why you're Is is somebody vlogging out there or is that someone else? >> Exactly. We're like hustlers.
2:51:39
You're getting that YouTube.
2:51:41
You're getting that YouTube.
2:51:43
>> I know what question I'm asking. >> Let's go.
2:51:45
>> So, we wanted agents to go on the internet, make us money, farm free trials.
2:51:49
>> Um, and then interesting. >> Exactly.
2:51:51
And we realized, okay, it's kind of hard to give agents their own inboxes, but they should have them.
2:51:55
Sequoa's talking about them.
2:51:55
Lang Chain's talking about them.
2:51:56
Agents need their own email inboxes. >> Okay. So, you did it.
2:51:59
Uh, this brings me to the lightning round question.
2:52:01
How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business like as a kid or maybe took you a while?
2:52:06
Uh, so I got cut from the basketball team >> and I was like, damn, I want to be a part of >> basketball [Music] hedge funds and trading. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:52:22
Um, so I was like, "Hey, I want to be involved, man.
2:52:23
I want to feel like I'm a part of something."
2:52:24
So I just said, "Hey, coach, what can I do?"
2:52:26
He's like, "Okay, be the scorekeeper."
2:52:28
That's how I made like my first 300 bucks. Fantastic. And there we go.
2:52:32
>> That's an honest That's an honest living. Uh, second question.
2:52:34
Who's your favorite entrepreneur in history, alive or dead?
2:52:38
>> I like Warren Buffett. >> Warren Buffett. >> Yeah. >> Interesting.
2:52:41
>> I think he's one of those guys who's like actually humble. >> Yeah. >> Right.
2:52:44
Like it's not like, okay, hey, I'm worth 100 million. I'm driving.
2:52:46
I think he just genuinely is in it for the love of the game. >> He does. He's the game.
2:52:52
>> Hopefully one day, you know, I could be like that. >> Fantastic.
2:52:54
Well, thank you so much for the game. Great to meet you. Cheers. >> Have a good one.
2:52:59
>> Let's bring on our next guest at YC Day 2025. We got eight minutes. Let's bring him in. Introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? >> What do you do? >> Here, sit down here. Shake my hand. It's time to meet you. Who are you? What do you do? >> Hey, uh I'm Audit.
2:53:12
I'm building Riff, which is cursor for music production. >> Oo, that's fun.
2:53:16
Uh are you sitting So, Cursor sits on top of an open- source IDE.
2:53:21
Are you sitting on top of Ableton or something?
2:53:24
>> That doesn't exist for music.
2:53:24
So, we actually built everything from scratch.
2:53:26
Uh trained our own models.
2:53:26
We have our own like editor.
2:53:29
It kind of looks like GarageBand, but you can use AI tools to generate sounds and mess around. Interesting.
2:53:33
Uh, do you bring your own like samples or do do you plug into a sample library like where or is all the are all the samples AI generated?
2:53:41
>> Yeah, we have like a user community of samples but we also like let you generate your own. >> Cool.
2:53:46
>> And also like lots of bells and whistles to make it easier.
2:53:48
Like for example, um, you can hum out a melody and we'll play it on an instrument for you. >> That's very cool.
2:53:52
Um, uh, >> what's your most popular song? You make music, right? >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I, uh, let me see.
2:53:59
Uh, I produced a song for this artist named Rio Craig. Um he's he's pretty big.
2:54:04
He works with like a lot of EDM artists.
2:54:06
>> Yeah, >> that's awesome.
2:54:06
We'll have to play it uh off the >> So, so uh what what's like how do you see the market here?
2:54:13
Is there a million people that you think will pay for a product like this or do you want to get go more enterprise work with labels? Like what's the play?
2:54:22
>> Yeah, I mean so like you know we're definitely targeting pros. It's a pro tool. Yeah.
2:54:25
But pros for us means >> pro tools. >> Oh yeah, a good one.
2:54:28
Um, like it doesn't just mean music producers.
2:54:32
It's really anyone who releases music on the internet.
2:54:35
Like imagine you're just a singer.
2:54:36
Instead of paying thousands of dollars for your producer, you can produce your own music. >> Yeah, that's great.
2:54:40
>> Um, and that's like a, you know, 80 million people release music on the internet. Yeah. >> Uh, how's traction? How's demay going? >> Great.
2:54:46
I mean, yeah, we grew grew to 400 DAUs.
2:54:48
People are already dropping songs on Spotify that were made on riff and uh getting some getting some listens already. >> Fantastic.
2:54:53
>> Um, yeah, the raise is fantastic.
2:54:53
I honestly like have to like really pick the investors now.
2:54:57
Like the round is completely filling up. So, great spot. Great. Last last question. Wrist check. >> Oh yeah. >> What is this?
2:55:05
>> Yeah, it's it's a red light. Looks wonderful.
2:55:07
>> Not enough watches on the wrist here at YC.
2:55:09
>> Lightning round questions.
2:55:09
Favorite entrepreneur in history, live or dead. >> Dr. Dre. >> Dr. Good. I knew I had to ask you.
2:55:17
Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. Great to meet you.
2:55:20
Let's bring in the next one. >> How are you doing?
2:55:25
>> 5 minutes left at the YC day live stream. Welcome to the stream. Introduce yourself. Who are you? >> Freya time.
2:55:31
>> Yeah, I'm Tunga the and I'm the CEO of Freya. >> What do you do?
2:55:35
>> We build voice AI for European enterprises. >> Okay.
2:55:38
>> Especially regulated ones like finance. >> Okay.
2:55:40
>> And we pretty much voice AI for Europe. >> How's traction?
2:55:43
>> Traction uh eight paid pilots converting to 24K MR. >> That's great.
2:55:48
>> Within the past four weeks >> and the rest of the demo day.
2:55:51
>> Getting ASML in the round.
2:55:51
Are you >> Yeah, they're the hot inion.
2:55:55
>> Say goodbye to the tier ones. ASML's in the business. You didn't get ASMR? >> Not yet. Next round. Next round. We're rooting for you.
2:56:01
Are you GPU poor by any chance?
2:56:04
>> Do you want a GPU poor hat? >> I might as well be.
2:56:07
>> Uh, are you So, so what's the strategy?
2:56:09
Are you going to build a company here?
2:56:10
Are you moving back to to to Europe? >> Back and forth.
2:56:13
So, u we have office in San Francisco and >> as well as Prague.
2:56:17
Yeah, we're based in three uh places.
2:56:19
So, our go to market is Europe especially finance industry.
2:56:22
But since we started working with banks and insurance companies there, especially we're working with some of the biggest banks there. Yeah.
2:56:30
>> Um in US, we got some interest with some of these neo banks and credit unions.
2:56:32
So >> who's your favorite entrepreneur in history and I would love a European example if you have one >> European example >> but but you can say anyone.
2:56:43
>> If there were if there were good European entrepreneurs, they would come to SF. They would come to SF. mog. >> Okay.
2:56:51
>> Well, yeah, just zooming out, who's your favorite entrepreneur in history?
2:56:54
>> Entrepreneur, >> I would say >> alive or dead.
2:56:56
>> I'm I'm impressed by what Elon Musk has done. >> There we go. That's a great one.
2:56:59
>> So, yeah, track record is very >> How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business?
2:57:03
>> In my own business or >> Yeah, just no in in you know, like as a kid, did you make any money on the internet?
2:57:08
>> Yeah, I mean on internet uh pretty much I didn't make my first money on internet. I was doing sales. >> Sales. >> Yeah.
2:57:14
For I was trying to get uh some people to a real estate shop. >> Okay. pretty much what I did. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah.
2:57:21
>> Well, congrats on the progress.
2:57:21
Thanks for talk to you soon. Have a good one.
2:57:25
Let's bring in our next guest.
2:57:25
How much more time do we have? 4 minutes. Let's keep going. We're going. We're going. We're going. >> Bring them in. Bring them in. How you doing? Welcome to the stream.
2:57:36
>> Long time listener, first time caller.
2:57:37
>> Thank you for coming on stream. Introduce yourself. Great to have you. Who are you? What are you building? >> I'm John Ferrara.
2:57:41
I'm building JXA, which is a GPS alternative that can track anywhere on Earth with no hardware.
2:57:48
>> I feel like I've seen this on X.
2:57:49
>> You might have seen our we had a pretty cool launch video. >> Very cool. Yeah. Okay. So, uh how does it work?
2:57:53
I we that there there's some company that spun out of Google that just sold that does something similar. It's like magnetics.
2:57:57
But what how do you how are you doing it? >> Yeah.
2:58:00
So, we basically use simulated technology to basically render any environment using satellite imagery or indoor floor plans into 3D.
2:58:06
>> So, you're doing geoger.
2:58:08
>> You could you could put it that way. Yeah.
2:58:09
We should the company that way. Yeah.
2:58:10
And then we simulate millions of people or objects moving throughout space, simulate their sensor measurements like accelerometers, gyroscopes, and then train models on that and then basically deploy a software and we can leverage the IMUs which are like sensors that are already into every phone and most other devices today to track you >> adjacent to that like like I can see you through your Wi-Fi.
2:58:29
Lots of people love this.
2:58:30
If you've seen that film in like the Dark Knight, there's like a scene where Batman kind of >> disappears.
2:58:34
I know the one you're talking about, you know, that's how you can envision it. >> Yep.
2:58:37
Uh that's going to be entertaining on the internet.
2:58:40
>> What uh who who's the who's the buyer here?
2:58:43
>> Yeah, we sell a lot to like actually at this point uh like warehousing, manufacturing, logistics because 90% of all movement happens in GPS denied areas, indoors, underground, defense is a big one.
2:58:54
I grew up in a military family, so we sell a lot to like try to sell a lot to like DoD, stuff like that.
2:58:59
But we right now we've made a lot of progress like selling to companies who want to like ship thousands of pallets or containers or move around a warehouse stuff like that.
2:59:06
>> Do you require any custom hardware or could this be distilled at some point into just an iPhone app?
2:59:11
>> No, it's just software. That's just software.
2:59:13
>> So like actually it was almost we were this close if you come next demo day we're actually going to be in the demo day app.
2:59:16
We were YC want Gary and Jared wanted to track all the investors and founders to see where they were going but we weren't able to work with their app team quite in time.
2:59:24
So next demo day it'll be there but that's already existing.
2:59:27
We're building actually small asset tags that are like 2 inch by 2 in that allow us to basically stack them stuff is important but doesn't have software and so that's where like we'll get to the point where we can do that sort of thing.
2:59:38
>> That's super super cool.
2:59:38
Uh lightning round questions.
2:59:40
How do you make your first dollar like fun? Sure.
2:59:44
Yeah, we've we've uh done about $150,000 in revenue in the last like six weeks. Um >> good. Congratulations. >> Thanks.
2:59:51
And then uh we're actually on pace to be at like 500K in the next two months.
2:59:54
Um there's a lot of demand.
2:59:54
We have like hundreds of thousands of of these tags pre-ordered. >> Wow. >> Um fantastic.
3:00:00
>> And uh yeah, we raised our round.
3:00:00
Um >> 5 million at 40 was what our go giving it away.
3:00:08
>> Sorry, I didn't mean to. Maybe that was too much. No, no, no.
3:00:12
We try not to drag it out of people. >> Oh, my bad. >> No, no, no, no. But it's helpful. It's very interesting.
3:00:15
Um so, >> come back on the show when you want to announce the actual round.
3:00:19
I guess you kind of pre-announce. >> Can I get a gong?
3:00:22
>> Yeah, you can get a gong.
3:00:22
We'll get the gong for the gong for you.
3:00:24
Uh, how'd you make your first dollar on in life or in life or as a kid?
3:00:30
>> Um, as a kid I would Well, I worked a lot of really weird jobs.
3:00:32
I got my first one when I was 13 working at a uh working 13 at a hot dog stand in a shack in Phoenix, Arizona.
3:00:38
Um, so was shoveling hot dogs and it was gourmet hot dogs.
3:00:43
So, like basically pay $9 for a hot dog that got wrapped in naan bread instead of a normal bun.
3:00:46
We charge you nine bucks.
3:00:49
>> Uh, who's your favorite entrepreneur in history, live or dead? >> Oh my god.
3:00:52
Um, I would say I would say I know the riff guys just said Dr.
3:00:57
Dre, but I'll say Drake because he just came out with that Amazon store and Drake's my favorite artist. So, what Amazon store? You haven't seen this?
3:01:03
He's >> This is his actual plot to take over Amazon Music as a distribution platform, but he's working with Amazon to sell all of his merch and all of his goods through their storefront and basically facilitate all their distri distribution through there.
3:01:14
So, that's my copout answer, but I just love Drake.
3:01:17
>> Thank you so much for coming on. Great to meet you. >> Thanks for coming on.
3:01:19
We have our next guest, uh, Casey. Let's bring her in. >> Welcome. >> Welcome. >> Final guest. Closing it out. >> Closing it out. >> Saving bats for last. >> Great to meet you. >> Welcome.
3:01:32
Uh, introduce yourself for the stream. Tell us who you are.
3:01:35
>> My name is Casey Caruso.
3:01:35
I'm the managing partner of a fund called Topology. >> Fantastic. >> Psyched to be here.
3:01:40
>> Uh, what >> reaction to demo day? >> Electric. >> Electric. >> Electric.
3:01:46
>> Uh, more electric than last Demo Day. Particularly electric.
3:01:48
What is what about it is electric?
3:01:51
>> I just think the founder quality is so high and I think it's just an incredible thing that YC does for the valley >> and it's very unique.
3:01:56
I mean there's a lot of things that are like this and still the essence of YC has been I think retained. >> Yeah. >> Totally. Totally.
3:02:03
Uh were you at the last demo of day? >> I was.
3:02:08
>> To me like the it seems like the bar is like consistently higher across this batch.
3:02:12
I I don't know if you feel the same.
3:02:14
same. I feel like the the founder >> maybe it's the founder the same but the the quality of the company and the traction >> the industry has kind of figured out like how to tell the story that's not just like AI only and it's actually like putting going back to the basics of like what's the problem we're solving and so when I talk to a lot of the founders
3:02:29
they come in and they lead yeah there's AI being said but it's almost in the background and they're more focused on the market or the problem or the product so I've been I feel like all the stories have been a lot more tractable than just like AI infrastructure stuff >> agree I also think the founders are getting younger younger I honestly feel high school dropouts. >> Yeah, there's like 14y olds out there
3:02:46
>> Yeah, there's like 14y olds out there and they're like, "We just launched 30 seconds ago and we have 10K in MR."
3:02:49
And I'm like, "Oh my god."
3:02:51
Like, >> yeah, they're skipping the Minecraft and the like sneaker flipping.
3:02:55
They're just going straight into enterprise SAS.
3:02:57
It's absolutely beautiful.
3:02:59
Uh, where where have you been most uh excited to invest broadly just out outside of YC over the past uh year?
3:03:06
Yeah, I mean so the fund is a 75 million fund one >> and we're backed by people like Mark Andre, founder of OpenAI and we really focus on technical founders that are commercially minded building cool and that's really important.
3:03:20
We only back cool >> and so we will look everywhere but that's like the motto or that's the oneliner.
3:03:27
We spend a lot of time in neuroch.
3:03:29
We spend a lot of time in maybe less popular AI categories. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh any reaction?
3:03:35
Uh since you said Neuroch, there was a company that had went pretty viral yesterday with doing like te telepathy.
3:03:41
What what what's going on there?
3:03:44
How proprietary do you think that is?
3:03:46
Is that is that something that we're going to see more of as like a form factor? >> Yeah, absolutely.
3:03:51
So, actually, if you go to topology.
3:03:52
vc/neruro-map, you can see a really sick visualization market of all this. >> I love it.
3:04:00
>> It's but it's more than a market map. Okay.
3:04:02
>> Um but >> I love market maps.
3:04:02
We're we're pro market map here, by the way.
3:04:05
>> And if they're crowdsourced, even better, right? >> Yeah, of course.
3:04:07
>> Um, but that specific technology is called silent speech. Okay.
3:04:09
And it's becoming more popular. >> Very cool.
3:04:12
>> Uh, it's actually >> Do you have to actually move your mouth in order for >> That's right.
3:04:16
So, it's using muscle movement instead of brain signals.
3:04:18
And there's some that are trying to do silent speech with brain.
3:04:21
Um, but like Ultra Ego is going with the muscle approach.
3:04:25
Uh, >> and to actually get it with like the EKG, you don't or is is it EK, not EKG, what whatever >> EMG maybe. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
3:04:33
So, you need you need like 60 sensors or something like that.
3:04:37
So, it's not necessarily >> Yeah.
3:04:38
Right now, the biggest thing in neuro is to become what's called multimodal, kind of like what happened with AI.
3:04:43
So, people are using things like ultrasound with EEG, which is one of the most popular non-invasive technologies with, you know, MAC or um with muscle movement and combining them all together.
3:04:53
The other cool neuroch company though that we're investing in is Sam Olman's new company called Merge.
3:04:58
And that one's going to become really popular, too.
3:04:59
But I thought they killed that demo on Twitter. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Great demo. It was a great demo. >> Yeah.
3:05:05
>> Um, >> lightning round. >> Lightning round.
3:05:07
>> We got to get out of here.
3:05:07
So, um, we do need to get out of here.
3:05:09
>> Favorite entrepreneur alive or dead. >> Oh, I can't do that.
3:05:10
All my children I love equally.
3:05:14
>> All my portfolio you read a biography of who's like, you know, from a hundred years ago.
3:05:19
You don't have anyone that you >> You're like, "No, my favorite my favorite entrepreneurs are only the only the the companies I invest in." >> Yeah.
3:05:25
No, not not favorite entrepreneur that you've necessarily.
3:05:28
>> No, you then you go Einstein. >> Einstein. That's good.
3:05:32
No one said Einstein yet.
3:05:34
Uh, and how did you make your first money, first dollar either on the internet or in business? >> Yeah.
3:05:39
I I started coding when I was really young as an anon cuz my mom wanted to keep my uh >> like gender kind of under wraps.
3:05:44
So I, you know, didn't get any like creepy messages and I used to, yeah, do website development as a >> great one. I love that. Great stuff. >> Fantastic. >> Awesome.
3:05:53
Great having you on >> so much for coming on the stream. >> Nice to meet you.
3:05:56
>> Have a great rest of your day. >> Good to meet you. Cheers.
3:05:57
>> We'll talk to you soon.
3:05:58
>> Anyway, thank you for watching our show. >> Show.
3:06:02
>> Thank you tomorrow live from New York City.
3:06:05
>> Live from New York City.
3:06:07
>> Maybe live from New York Stock Exchange. You never know.
3:06:09
It might very well happen.
3:06:12
>> We could very well be there.
3:06:12
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