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Bryant Chou (brryant) co-founded Webflow, which today powers around 1% of all websites on the internet. Now he's back in the current YC batch with Ploy, an AI-powered website and marketing platform that doesn't just build your site — it connects to your analytics, CRM, and search console to...

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Y Combinator

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Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field (Dylan Field) on how AI will transform design and why craft and attention to detail will be the ultimate differentiators. At AI Startup School in San Francisco. 01:38 – How Dylan and Evan Started Figma 02:58 – WebGL: From Games to Tools 04:10 – Buying Time to Build 05:48 – Staying Motivated Through Early Exploration 06:10 – Cold Emails, Early Feedback & First Users 08:24 – Launch Timing and Lessons on Shipping Early 10:08 – Culture of Constraints & Creative Problem-Solving 10:50 – Recognizing Product-Market Pull 13:32 – Why Design is the Differentiator in the AI Era 16:34 – Figma’s AI Product Launches & Expanding Beyond Design 18:56 – The Blurring of Design, Development, and Product 21:00 – The “MS-DOS Era” of AI Interfaces & Future Surfaces 23:26 – The Role of Design in AI Research & the Future of Designers 27:36 – Audience Q&A: AI Tools, Open Source, Principles, and Advice
40:36

Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field (Dylan Field) on how AI will transform design and why craft and attention to detail will be the ultimate differentiators. At AI Startup School in San Francisco. 01:38 – How Dylan and Evan Started Figma 02:58 – WebGL: From Games to Tools 04:10 – Buying Time to Build 05:48 – Staying Motivated Through Early Exploration 06:10 – Cold Emails, Early Feedback & First Users 08:24 – Launch Timing and Lessons on Shipping Early 10:08 – Culture of Constraints & Creative Problem-Solving 10:50 – Recognizing Product-Market Pull 13:32 – Why Design is the Differentiator in the AI Era 16:34 – Figma’s AI Product Launches & Expanding Beyond Design 18:56 – The Blurring of Design, Development, and Product 21:00 – The “MS-DOS Era” of AI Interfaces & Future Surfaces 23:26 – The Role of Design in AI Research & the Future of Designers 27:36 – Audience Q&A: AI Tools, Open Source, Principles, and Advice

Y Combinator

178,646 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Philip Johnston (Philip Johnston) is the co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, the company building data centers in space. In November 2025, Starcloud launched an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit and trained the first large language model in space. They've since raised $200 million, hit a billion-dollar valuation just 17 months after YC demo day and filed with the FCC to deploy 88,000 more satellites. In this episode of Lightcone Podcast, Philip walks us through their wild origin story, the engineering challenges behind the Starcloud-1, why they booked a SpaceX launch before they even knew what they were building and how data centers in space make sense both economically and politically. 00:39 — Why Build Data Centers in Space? 01:40 — The Insight That Started Starcloud 04:43 — Launching Starcloud-1 09:45 — The Engineering Behind Data Centers in Orbit 13:49 — Why 100 VCs Said No 16:12 — Book the Launch Before You Build the Product 18:32 — The Roadmap to Commercial Space Compute 21:10 — Building NVIDIA GPUs for Space 23:41 — Raising $170M for a Hard Tech Startup 26:37 — Hiring the World's Best Space Engineers 31:25 — Why AI Compute Is Moving to Space 34:49 — Advice for Hard Tech Founders
36:13

Philip Johnston (Philip Johnston) is the co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, the company building data centers in space. In November 2025, Starcloud launched an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit and trained the first large language model in space. They've since raised $200 million, hit a billion-dollar valuation just 17 months after YC demo day and filed with the FCC to deploy 88,000 more satellites. In this episode of Lightcone Podcast, Philip walks us through their wild origin story, the engineering challenges behind the Starcloud-1, why they booked a SpaceX launch before they even knew what they were building and how data centers in space make sense both economically and politically. 00:39 — Why Build Data Centers in Space? 01:40 — The Insight That Started Starcloud 04:43 — Launching Starcloud-1 09:45 — The Engineering Behind Data Centers in Orbit 13:49 — Why 100 VCs Said No 16:12 — Book the Launch Before You Build the Product 18:32 — The Roadmap to Commercial Space Compute 21:10 — Building NVIDIA GPUs for Space 23:41 — Raising $170M for a Hard Tech Startup 26:37 — Hiring the World's Best Space Engineers 31:25 — Why AI Compute Is Moving to Space 34:49 — Advice for Hard Tech Founders

Y Combinator

160,939 Aufrufe • vor 4 Tagen

Theo breaks down the state of tech, founders, and being a creator all in one sitting "I'm gunna say things I'm gunna get in trouble for" We go over: - His journey to where he is today - The current state of tech - How to become an exceptional engineer - The downsides that come h being a creator - How he handles criticism Highlights: 05:03 - Dev job market & who's struggling 07:12 - How to become an exceptional engineer 20:38 - Get a job first, then startup 27:08 - YC vs other accelerators 39:07 - Creator-founders and why they're bad 56:18 - How Theo handles criticism 01:14:53 - Passion, depth, and "10x agency" 01:28:27 - "Make what you wish existed" 01:30:16 - How to get good at public speaking Definitely one of the most interesting discussions i've had in a while his authenticity & passion for what he does is contagious and honestly such a breath of fresh air in tech
1:36:09

Theo breaks down the state of tech, founders, and being a creator all in one sitting "I'm gunna say things I'm gunna get in trouble for" We go over: - His journey to where he is today - The current state of tech - How to become an exceptional engineer - The downsides that come h being a creator - How he handles criticism Highlights: 05:03 - Dev job market & who's struggling 07:12 - How to become an exceptional engineer 20:38 - Get a job first, then startup 27:08 - YC vs other accelerators 39:07 - Creator-founders and why they're bad 56:18 - How Theo handles criticism 01:14:53 - Passion, depth, and "10x agency" 01:28:27 - "Make what you wish existed" 01:30:16 - How to get good at public speaking Definitely one of the most interesting discussions i've had in a while his authenticity & passion for what he does is contagious and honestly such a breath of fresh air in tech

Anthony Sistilli

133,736 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal explains how AI is going to eat traditional software/SAAS. If your product is just software, agentic AI can reproduce it on demand, optimize it, and redeploy it to a better market. "Agentic AI means it’s like having Fiverr, a website of experts you can ask any question. It’ll go away and do the task.... Agentic AI will build, design the website, code it, register the domain name, figure out the branding, figure out the marketing, figure out the email list, figure out the whole thing. So then you and I are in competition. You’ve built this incredible new website. I just go to my AI and say, “Love Steven’s website. Can you just build it better. Boom. 3 minutes. How can we be entrepreneurs in software? Now there’s this theory going around that AI is going to eat software, and I kind of get it." ---- From 'The Diary Of A CEO and Raoul Pal The Journey Man' YT channel. (link in comment)
1:11

Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal explains how AI is going to eat traditional software/SAAS. If your product is just software, agentic AI can reproduce it on demand, optimize it, and redeploy it to a better market. "Agentic AI means it’s like having Fiverr, a website of experts you can ask any question. It’ll go away and do the task.... Agentic AI will build, design the website, code it, register the domain name, figure out the branding, figure out the marketing, figure out the email list, figure out the whole thing. So then you and I are in competition. You’ve built this incredible new website. I just go to my AI and say, “Love Steven’s website. Can you just build it better. Boom. 3 minutes. How can we be entrepreneurs in software? Now there’s this theory going around that AI is going to eat software, and I kind of get it." ---- From 'The Diary Of A CEO and Raoul Pal The Journey Man' YT channel. (link in comment)

Rohan Paul

48,418 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal explains how AI is going to eat traditional software/SAAS. If your product is just software, agentic AI can reproduce it on demand, optimize it, and redeploy it to a better market. "Agentic AI means it’s like having Fiverr, a website of experts you can ask any question. It’ll go away and do the task.... Agentic AI will build, design the website, code it, register the domain name, figure out the branding, figure out the marketing, figure out the email list, figure out the whole thing. So then you and I are in competition. You’ve built this incredible new website. I just go to my AI and say, “Love Steven’s website. Can you just build it better. Boom. 3 minutes. How can we be entrepreneurs in software? Now there’s this theory going around that AI is going to eat software, and I kind of get it." ---- From 'The Diary Of A CEO and Raoul Pal The Journey Man' YT channel. (link in comment)
1:11

Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal explains how AI is going to eat traditional software/SAAS. If your product is just software, agentic AI can reproduce it on demand, optimize it, and redeploy it to a better market. "Agentic AI means it’s like having Fiverr, a website of experts you can ask any question. It’ll go away and do the task.... Agentic AI will build, design the website, code it, register the domain name, figure out the branding, figure out the marketing, figure out the email list, figure out the whole thing. So then you and I are in competition. You’ve built this incredible new website. I just go to my AI and say, “Love Steven’s website. Can you just build it better. Boom. 3 minutes. How can we be entrepreneurs in software? Now there’s this theory going around that AI is going to eat software, and I kind of get it." ---- From 'The Diary Of A CEO and Raoul Pal The Journey Man' YT channel. (link in comment)

Rohan Paul

17,215 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat