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Zipline has always done things the “wrong” way. They launched a drone company when drones were essentially illegal in the US. They moved the whole team to trailers on a farm in Half Moon Bay to figure out how to fly. Their launcher was deep sea fishing poles from... Walmart. Their landing pads were made by a bouncy castle company. They went to Rwanda with no aviation experience, no logistics experience, no healthcare experience. Co-founder and CEO Keller Cliffton wore tennis shoes and a hoodie to meet the president of the country. The night before the launch, he was on his back in the dirt with a screwdriver in his mouth, trying to rebuild a launcher that kept destroying itself, while the president's special forces watched. The aircraft flew. Keller was just as surprised as everyone else. Nine months of all-nighters after that Rwanda launch, they got one hospital working reliably. Then 20 more in three months. Then 50. Then 400. Today Zipline serves 5,000 hospitals globally and has flown 135 million autonomous miles. To find the best hardware builders in the world, Zipline often hires teenagers. Not as interns fetching coffee — as engineers who own real work. One kid joined at 15 and got offered $180K to lead a team of mechanical engineers instead of going to Stanford. He took it. Another applicant had built a full GPS system for a 3D-printed quadcopter using onboard Nvidia GPUs. While at boarding school. Keller's question for candidates: what have you built? Keller summarized everything in one line: "We specialize in turning the impossible into the merely late." He shares Zipline’s wild origin story in full in our conversation on In Depth. Timestamps: 02:11 Why Zipline doesn't hire for experience 06:04 Are founders born or made? 07:37 Why Zipline hires 17-year-olds over PhDs 17:03 The employees Zipline doesn't want 18:53 The ultimate startup hire is a "heat-seeking missile" 20:36 Why blind references are a non-negotiable 23:07 Can candidates admit when they screwed up? 30:10 Zipline's secret leadership playbook 35:16 Why you should always fire quickly 36:26 The early vision for Zipline 39:48 How Zipline almost died - twice 44:55 From toy robots to drone delivery: Zipline's pivot 51:35 How Rwanda's health minister changed everything 57:10 Why Zipline's launch was a "complete disaster" 1:04:05 Scaling from 1 hospital to 5000 1:05:17 The 10x hardware cost rule every founder should knowshow more

Brett Berson

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42,859 次观看 • 5 个月前 •via X (Twitter)

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BREAKING: Zipline Raises $600M+ at $7.6 Billion Valuation, Surpassing 2,000,000+ Commercial Deliveries Becoming the world’s largest commercial autonomous delivery system. Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton (Keller Cliffton) joins Sourcery to break it all down Backed by Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Valor, & Tiger Global, Zipline is entering a major U.S. & global scaling phase. The company was most recently valued at ~$5B in 2024, making this a meaningful step up. Highlights (00:00) Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Co-Founder & CEO, Zipline (01:11) The Cow Ranch origin story and Zipline’s latest fundraise (06:42) Zipline, the world’s largest commercial autonomous system (08:32) Alfred Lin (Alfred Lin) & Sequoia Capital's early bet (10:59) Building healthcare logistics that actually work (16:02) Why Zipline doesn’t need marketing? (20:23) Legos, rotisserie chickens, and delivering almost everything (22:51) When off-the-shelf hardware isn’t good enough (26:55) Defense interest & why Zipline stays commercially focused (29:47) What is Zipline’s “magical portal” model? (32:17) A simple decision that saved Zipline (37:17) Hiring mission-driven builders from Tesla & SpaceX (39:20) Learning how to scale from Tesla’s former CFO (41:28) The trillion-dollar path: 50B deliveries at 10x frequency (44:59) Expanding Africa operations with strong US government backing (47:33) Why this is the best time to be alive

BREAKING: Zipline Raises $600M+ at $7.6 Billion Valuation, Surpassing 2,000,000+ Commercial Deliveries Becoming the world’s largest commercial autonomous delivery system. Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton (Keller Cliffton) joins Sourcery to break it all down Backed by Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Valor, & Tiger Global, Zipline is entering a major U.S. & global scaling phase. The company was most recently valued at ~$5B in 2024, making this a meaningful step up. Highlights (00:00) Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Co-Founder & CEO, Zipline (01:11) The Cow Ranch origin story and Zipline’s latest fundraise (06:42) Zipline, the world’s largest commercial autonomous system (08:32) Alfred Lin (Alfred Lin) & Sequoia Capital's early bet (10:59) Building healthcare logistics that actually work (16:02) Why Zipline doesn’t need marketing? (20:23) Legos, rotisserie chickens, and delivering almost everything (22:51) When off-the-shelf hardware isn’t good enough (26:55) Defense interest & why Zipline stays commercially focused (29:47) What is Zipline’s “magical portal” model? (32:17) A simple decision that saved Zipline (37:17) Hiring mission-driven builders from Tesla & SpaceX (39:20) Learning how to scale from Tesla’s former CFO (41:28) The trillion-dollar path: 50B deliveries at 10x frequency (44:59) Expanding Africa operations with strong US government backing (47:33) Why this is the best time to be alive

Molly O’Shea

132,445 次观看 • 6 个月前

Drone delivery is about to be cheaper than cars. But the drone is only 15% of the work to get there. A decade after starting in Rwanda flying blood to one hospital, Zipline has flown 140M+ autonomous miles with zero safety incidents, expanded to the US and to food delivery and household items, and delivery costs have fallen from $300 to $12 - now cheaper than a car. Getting there meant building almost everything from scratch: flight computers, motors, GPS modules, even the air traffic software regulators use to track them. And it meant a discipline most engineers find nearly impossible. That's the reality behind Zipline, the largest autonomous system on Earth. Keller Cliffton and Eric Watson joined me and Pat Grady to talk more about their journey. 00:00 Introduction 02:28 Early Vision and Regulation 04:09 Rwanda Launch Hard Lessons 06:49 Scaling to 24/7 Impact 09:35 Real World Ops Surprises 11:15 Safety Redundancy Failover 20:24 Precision Delivery Pod Tech 25:34 Building the Drone Network 26:51 Fleet Commanders Explained 28:22 Scaling to a Million a Day 29:51 Autonomy Enables 24 7 Ops 31:52 Reinventing Air Traffic Control 36:08 Why Zipline Is Vertical 41:40 First Principles Delete Parts 44:45 Market Explosion and Closing Thoughts

Drone delivery is about to be cheaper than cars. But the drone is only 15% of the work to get there. A decade after starting in Rwanda flying blood to one hospital, Zipline has flown 140M+ autonomous miles with zero safety incidents, expanded to the US and to food delivery and household items, and delivery costs have fallen from $300 to $12 - now cheaper than a car. Getting there meant building almost everything from scratch: flight computers, motors, GPS modules, even the air traffic software regulators use to track them. And it meant a discipline most engineers find nearly impossible. That's the reality behind Zipline, the largest autonomous system on Earth. Keller Cliffton and Eric Watson joined me and Pat Grady to talk more about their journey. 00:00 Introduction 02:28 Early Vision and Regulation 04:09 Rwanda Launch Hard Lessons 06:49 Scaling to 24/7 Impact 09:35 Real World Ops Surprises 11:15 Safety Redundancy Failover 20:24 Precision Delivery Pod Tech 25:34 Building the Drone Network 26:51 Fleet Commanders Explained 28:22 Scaling to a Million a Day 29:51 Autonomy Enables 24 7 Ops 31:52 Reinventing Air Traffic Control 36:08 Why Zipline Is Vertical 41:40 First Principles Delete Parts 44:45 Market Explosion and Closing Thoughts

Alfred Lin

32,690 次观看 • 1 个月前

I sat down with Nicolas Sharp, founder of Attio, to talk in depth about how his company is disrupting the $80 billion CRM market. Attio has raised $116m, is 4x'ing ARR and is one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. We talk about: - Why Attio went against all conventional wisdom and spent years 3 years building the product before launching - Why Attio doesn’t hire ‘Software Engineers’ and who they hire instead. - How Attio chose investors who would back a long-term bet against multi-billion $ incumbents - How Attio is building CRM from first principles for the AI era - Who should you avoid hiring at all costs, and who should you hire for your startup And so much more. If you’re interested in learning about the story of how Nick built Attio into the incredible company it is today and is disrupting one of the most important software categories, you’re going to want to see this. Enjoy // Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:39 Why Attio spent 3 years building their product before launch 5:05 The Power of Building Systems, Not a Box of Features 9:05 How to know when it’s time to launch 13:30 Nick’s Playbook For a Killer Product Launch 18:09 How To Go From an Investor to a Founder 23:05 How Failure Led to Attio's Big Break 28:07 Why startups need to hire "Hidden Gems," 34:05 Fundraising 49:36 Why Attio Invests In Inexperienced Talent 55:07 The Case For Not Hiring Software Engineers (& Who You Should Hire Instead) 1:02:46 The 8 Persona Hiring Framework 1:09:05 How Attio doesn’t use OKR's 1:27:11 Where does Nick's Ambition and Grit come from? 1:36:59 How Attio is Building CRM from First Principles for the AI era 1:45:29 How to Successfully Market In A Crowded Industry 1:51:10 Breaking Down Attio’s Viral Marketing Strategies 2:02:15 The Change That Had The Biggest Impact on Customer Conversion 2:05:04 Why Attio created A “Reverse Trial” 2:10:16 Why Nick is building from London, not Silicon Valley 2:22:48 The 10-Year Vision for Attio

I sat down with Nicolas Sharp, founder of Attio, to talk in depth about how his company is disrupting the $80 billion CRM market. Attio has raised $116m, is 4x'ing ARR and is one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. We talk about: - Why Attio went against all conventional wisdom and spent years 3 years building the product before launching - Why Attio doesn’t hire ‘Software Engineers’ and who they hire instead. - How Attio chose investors who would back a long-term bet against multi-billion $ incumbents - How Attio is building CRM from first principles for the AI era - Who should you avoid hiring at all costs, and who should you hire for your startup And so much more. If you’re interested in learning about the story of how Nick built Attio into the incredible company it is today and is disrupting one of the most important software categories, you’re going to want to see this. Enjoy // Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:39 Why Attio spent 3 years building their product before launch 5:05 The Power of Building Systems, Not a Box of Features 9:05 How to know when it’s time to launch 13:30 Nick’s Playbook For a Killer Product Launch 18:09 How To Go From an Investor to a Founder 23:05 How Failure Led to Attio's Big Break 28:07 Why startups need to hire "Hidden Gems," 34:05 Fundraising 49:36 Why Attio Invests In Inexperienced Talent 55:07 The Case For Not Hiring Software Engineers (& Who You Should Hire Instead) 1:02:46 The 8 Persona Hiring Framework 1:09:05 How Attio doesn’t use OKR's 1:27:11 Where does Nick's Ambition and Grit come from? 1:36:59 How Attio is Building CRM from First Principles for the AI era 1:45:29 How to Successfully Market In A Crowded Industry 1:51:10 Breaking Down Attio’s Viral Marketing Strategies 2:02:15 The Change That Had The Biggest Impact on Customer Conversion 2:05:04 Why Attio created A “Reverse Trial” 2:10:16 Why Nick is building from London, not Silicon Valley 2:22:48 The 10-Year Vision for Attio

Wouter Teunissen

26,369 次观看 • 10 个月前

Zipline is operating at a way larger scale than I had realised: more than 1.6 million commercial deliveries to date. Keller Cliffton had a Cheeky Pint and described going from just-in-time blood deliveries in Rwanda to burritos for Chipotle, the lost art of American airplane development, and their path to building 50k drones a year in California. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube for future Cheeky Pint episodes. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:45 115 million miles flown 04:10 Why drone delivery took so long 07:38 Getting started in Rwanda 13:31 51% reduction in maternal mortality 15:33 Access vs waste 21:45 Scaling globally 24:05 Zipline’s Platform 1 25:50 The Right Stuff 27:22 Drone design and safety 30:12 Getting to 99.9% reliability 34:39 Multimodal logistics 38:15 Zipline’s Platform 2 44:03 US drone regs and the FAA 48:02 Progress and stagnation in US aviation 51:30 If Keller ran the FAA 54:24 30% WoW growth in Texas 58:25 Why Texas and not California? 01:00:28 Building 50k drones in California 01:06:18 US vs Chinese manufacturing 01:11:30 Advice for hardtech founders

Zipline is operating at a way larger scale than I had realised: more than 1.6 million commercial deliveries to date. Keller Cliffton had a Cheeky Pint and described going from just-in-time blood deliveries in Rwanda to burritos for Chipotle, the lost art of American airplane development, and their path to building 50k drones a year in California. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube for future Cheeky Pint episodes. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:45 115 million miles flown 04:10 Why drone delivery took so long 07:38 Getting started in Rwanda 13:31 51% reduction in maternal mortality 15:33 Access vs waste 21:45 Scaling globally 24:05 Zipline’s Platform 1 25:50 The Right Stuff 27:22 Drone design and safety 30:12 Getting to 99.9% reliability 34:39 Multimodal logistics 38:15 Zipline’s Platform 2 44:03 US drone regs and the FAA 48:02 Progress and stagnation in US aviation 51:30 If Keller ran the FAA 54:24 30% WoW growth in Texas 58:25 Why Texas and not California? 01:00:28 Building 50k drones in California 01:06:18 US vs Chinese manufacturing 01:11:30 Advice for hardtech founders

John Collison

111,530 次观看 • 11 个月前

In 2014, Keller Cliffton Cliffton shut down his robotic toy startup to build a drone delivery network for life-saving medical supplies. Everyone said it wouldn’t work. Today, Zipline delivers for hospitals around the world. Now it’s reinventing how delivery works with Platform 2 - starting with Walmart and Chipotle in the US. This is a story of betting everything to transform the world. Featuring Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, Maggie Jim, Alfred Lin Hosted by Roelof Botha 00:00 – Chewing Glass 00:55 – Discovering Entrepreneurship 02:00 – From Robots to Real Problems 03:00 – The Vision for Global Health Logistics 04:30 – Betting on Rwanda 06:00 – Building the System 08:00 – The First Flight 09:15 – Breakthrough and Scale 11:15 – The Moment of Validation 12:30 – Platform Two: A New Bet 14:15 – Seeing Is Believing 15:45 – The Next Frontier 16:30 – Never Giving Up

In 2014, Keller Cliffton Cliffton shut down his robotic toy startup to build a drone delivery network for life-saving medical supplies. Everyone said it wouldn’t work. Today, Zipline delivers for hospitals around the world. Now it’s reinventing how delivery works with Platform 2 - starting with Walmart and Chipotle in the US. This is a story of betting everything to transform the world. Featuring Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, Maggie Jim, Alfred Lin Hosted by Roelof Botha 00:00 – Chewing Glass 00:55 – Discovering Entrepreneurship 02:00 – From Robots to Real Problems 03:00 – The Vision for Global Health Logistics 04:30 – Betting on Rwanda 06:00 – Building the System 08:00 – The First Flight 09:15 – Breakthrough and Scale 11:15 – The Moment of Validation 12:30 – Platform Two: A New Bet 14:15 – Seeing Is Believing 15:45 – The Next Frontier 16:30 – Never Giving Up

Sequoia Capital

1,340,956 次观看 • 9 个月前

Confluent just sold for $11 billion. Jay Kreps built it by learning a distinction that sits at the center of every hard company decision. There are two questions you can ask about anything hard: what can we do? And what do we have to do? The first is answered by your team. The second is imposed by the world. When Confluent needed a cloud product, most of the company thought it was a terrible idea. The on-prem business was working. The economics were better. Investors thought they were making a mistake. As Jay put it: if there were two standalone companies, we'd invest in this one and definitely not that one. Jay's answer: we have to do this. There's no question that a huge portion of the market is going to be in the cloud. So we have to serve that part of the market. The fact that it's very hard is not relevant. Once you know you have to do something, you find a way to do it. We cover this insight amongst dozens of others in my most recent "In Depth" conversation. Timestamps: 01:18 Making the leap from engineer to CEO 03:33 The 80% rule: what a CEO actually needs to know 04:54 Scaling different business disciplines 09:31 How Confluent’s story began in LinkedIn 12:13 The growing need for scalable data tech 13:37 What the early Kafka product looked like 16:38 Kafka’s underwhelming open-source launch 18:38 The blog post that accelerated Kafka’s adoption 20:16 Why so many marketing messages fail 28:08 The decision to build Confluent 34:24 Planning to fundraise before building the product 39:19 Confluent’s early years: Tough product decisions 47:07 The underrated growth lever question for companies 55:46 Why founder optimism is an overrated trait 1:00:29 What should founders give up as they scale? 1:02:47 Why people become trapped in a failure mindset 1:08:33 The Chipotle problem: Losing excellence at scale

Confluent just sold for $11 billion. Jay Kreps built it by learning a distinction that sits at the center of every hard company decision. There are two questions you can ask about anything hard: what can we do? And what do we have to do? The first is answered by your team. The second is imposed by the world. When Confluent needed a cloud product, most of the company thought it was a terrible idea. The on-prem business was working. The economics were better. Investors thought they were making a mistake. As Jay put it: if there were two standalone companies, we'd invest in this one and definitely not that one. Jay's answer: we have to do this. There's no question that a huge portion of the market is going to be in the cloud. So we have to serve that part of the market. The fact that it's very hard is not relevant. Once you know you have to do something, you find a way to do it. We cover this insight amongst dozens of others in my most recent "In Depth" conversation. Timestamps: 01:18 Making the leap from engineer to CEO 03:33 The 80% rule: what a CEO actually needs to know 04:54 Scaling different business disciplines 09:31 How Confluent’s story began in LinkedIn 12:13 The growing need for scalable data tech 13:37 What the early Kafka product looked like 16:38 Kafka’s underwhelming open-source launch 18:38 The blog post that accelerated Kafka’s adoption 20:16 Why so many marketing messages fail 28:08 The decision to build Confluent 34:24 Planning to fundraise before building the product 39:19 Confluent’s early years: Tough product decisions 47:07 The underrated growth lever question for companies 55:46 Why founder optimism is an overrated trait 1:00:29 What should founders give up as they scale? 1:02:47 Why people become trapped in a failure mindset 1:08:33 The Chipotle problem: Losing excellence at scale

Brett Berson

19,608 次观看 • 4 个月前

Last November, Peter Steinberger 🦞 was annoyed that there was no good way to talk to his coding agents from his phone, so he built one himself. A few months later, OpenClaw exploded into one of the biggest open source AI projects in the world, with nearly 3,000 contributors and a peak of 4.7 million weekly downloads. At Startup School 2026, Peter tells the story of what happened when OpenClaw took off, what he got wrong as it grew, and how he eventually stopped using the product he had built for himself. He shares why the best products often start with something that annoys you, why focus matters more as building gets easier, and why, in his words, “fun is velocity.” 01:16 — How OpenClaw Started 05:10 — Finding Product-Market Fit 07:01 — The Night OpenClaw Went Viral 09:50 — When the Project Exploded 11:05 — When the Attention Almost Broke Him 12:00 — Did You Sell Out? 14:17 — Your Name Can’t Be Forked 15:03 — What OpenClaw Got Wrong 20:40 — Hype Is Like the Weather 21:37 — When It Stopped Being Fun 25:30 — Fun Is Velocity 26:40 — What’s Next for OpenClaw 28:57 — Three Lessons From Building OpenClaw 30:08 — Q&A

Last November, Peter Steinberger 🦞 was annoyed that there was no good way to talk to his coding agents from his phone, so he built one himself. A few months later, OpenClaw exploded into one of the biggest open source AI projects in the world, with nearly 3,000 contributors and a peak of 4.7 million weekly downloads. At Startup School 2026, Peter tells the story of what happened when OpenClaw took off, what he got wrong as it grew, and how he eventually stopped using the product he had built for himself. He shares why the best products often start with something that annoys you, why focus matters more as building gets easier, and why, in his words, “fun is velocity.” 01:16 — How OpenClaw Started 05:10 — Finding Product-Market Fit 07:01 — The Night OpenClaw Went Viral 09:50 — When the Project Exploded 11:05 — When the Attention Almost Broke Him 12:00 — Did You Sell Out? 14:17 — Your Name Can’t Be Forked 15:03 — What OpenClaw Got Wrong 20:40 — Hype Is Like the Weather 21:37 — When It Stopped Being Fun 25:30 — Fun Is Velocity 26:40 — What’s Next for OpenClaw 28:57 — Three Lessons From Building OpenClaw 30:08 — Q&A

Y Combinator

55,802 次观看 • 5 天前

In 2005, Sam Altman was a Stanford sophomore in YC’s first batch, building a startup in a little Cambridge office while Paul Graham cooked the founders dinner. Twenty years later, as co-founder & CEO of OpenAI, Sam closed Startup School 2026 in conversation with Garry Tan — on agents, ambition, and why the ceiling for what a startup can take on has never been higher. 00:07 — From YC’s First Batch to Today 03:04 — What PG Taught Sam 04:17 — Why Startups Matter More Than Ever 06:57 — The Coming Golden Age of Ambitious Startups 09:30 — Why Startups Win During Technology Shifts 11:46 — Building OpenAI When Nobody Believed in AGI 14:45 — Finding People Who Share Your Conviction 18:05 — Help People Before You Know Why 19:43 — Earnestness, Ambition, and Ignoring the Haters 24:04 — The AI Safety Incident That Changed the Stakes 26:58 — Preventing AI From Concentrating Power 30:41 — How Fast AI Models Will Improve 36:06 — The Best Version of an AI Future 37:47 — “It’s All Going to Work Out”

In 2005, Sam Altman was a Stanford sophomore in YC’s first batch, building a startup in a little Cambridge office while Paul Graham cooked the founders dinner. Twenty years later, as co-founder & CEO of OpenAI, Sam closed Startup School 2026 in conversation with Garry Tan — on agents, ambition, and why the ceiling for what a startup can take on has never been higher. 00:07 — From YC’s First Batch to Today 03:04 — What PG Taught Sam 04:17 — Why Startups Matter More Than Ever 06:57 — The Coming Golden Age of Ambitious Startups 09:30 — Why Startups Win During Technology Shifts 11:46 — Building OpenAI When Nobody Believed in AGI 14:45 — Finding People Who Share Your Conviction 18:05 — Help People Before You Know Why 19:43 — Earnestness, Ambition, and Ignoring the Haters 24:04 — The AI Safety Incident That Changed the Stakes 26:58 — Preventing AI From Concentrating Power 30:41 — How Fast AI Models Will Improve 36:06 — The Best Version of an AI Future 37:47 — “It’s All Going to Work Out”

Y Combinator

68,736 次观看 • 19 天前

CEO of a trillion-dollar company sat in a Stanford classroom in 2011 and explained exactly how he built it. No PR team, no prepared remarks, no investors in the room. No business school has ever added the recording to a syllabus. His name is Jensen Huang. He co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 with $40,000. By 2011 the company was worth $9 billion. Today it is worth over $3 trillion. He walked into the Stanford ASES Summit and gave away the entire playbook to a room of fifty students for free. The lecture is about when to bet everything on one technology before the market knows it exists. He did it with GPUs. Then with CUDA. Then with AI infrastructure. Three bets, same logic, same company, three different industries. The uncomfortable part is what he says about risk. He almost went bankrupt twice. What he did both times is the opposite of what every MBA program teaches. Business schools charge $200K in tuition to teach frameworks he rejected before his company was worth a billion. Every founder podcast repeats the same five lessons. Almost none of them mention what Huang actually did when the company was ninety days from dying. That part is in the lecture. It has been free for fifteen years. Filmed by a student with a handheld camera. Audio cuts in and out. He gave away the playbook of the most valuable company on Earth to fifty people. Almost nobody watched it. One classroom. One camera. The full lecture is free. It is in the video.

CEO of a trillion-dollar company sat in a Stanford classroom in 2011 and explained exactly how he built it. No PR team, no prepared remarks, no investors in the room. No business school has ever added the recording to a syllabus. His name is Jensen Huang. He co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 with $40,000. By 2011 the company was worth $9 billion. Today it is worth over $3 trillion. He walked into the Stanford ASES Summit and gave away the entire playbook to a room of fifty students for free. The lecture is about when to bet everything on one technology before the market knows it exists. He did it with GPUs. Then with CUDA. Then with AI infrastructure. Three bets, same logic, same company, three different industries. The uncomfortable part is what he says about risk. He almost went bankrupt twice. What he did both times is the opposite of what every MBA program teaches. Business schools charge $200K in tuition to teach frameworks he rejected before his company was worth a billion. Every founder podcast repeats the same five lessons. Almost none of them mention what Huang actually did when the company was ninety days from dying. That part is in the lecture. It has been free for fifteen years. Filmed by a student with a handheld camera. Audio cuts in and out. He gave away the playbook of the most valuable company on Earth to fifty people. Almost nobody watched it. One classroom. One camera. The full lecture is free. It is in the video.

Tigerflow

70,947 次观看 • 9 天前

Today, NVIDIA is widely recognized as the most consequential technology company in the world. But when Founder and CEO Jensen Huang hatched the idea more than three decades ago, it was viewed as little more than an incredibly risky bet on a new approach to computing. How did Huang, an immigrant from working class roots in Taiwan, build this company into what it is today? In the first installment of the Hoover Institution's Only in America series, Condoleezza Rice sits down with Huang to explore why his rise—and that of NVIDIA—couldn't have happened anywhere else. 04:42 Jensen Huang's journey to the US 07:54 Jensen's experience at boarding school in Kentucky 14:23 How Jensen came to Silicon Valley 17:23 Founding NVIDIA 23:40 The evolution and growth of NVIDIA 27:08 Sustaining motivation amid challenges 29:01 America's exceptional tech sector 32:28 Why Huang is a "cautious optimist" on AI 35:10 Jensen Huang's Only in America story

Today, NVIDIA is widely recognized as the most consequential technology company in the world. But when Founder and CEO Jensen Huang hatched the idea more than three decades ago, it was viewed as little more than an incredibly risky bet on a new approach to computing. How did Huang, an immigrant from working class roots in Taiwan, build this company into what it is today? In the first installment of the Hoover Institution's Only in America series, Condoleezza Rice sits down with Huang to explore why his rise—and that of NVIDIA—couldn't have happened anywhere else. 04:42 Jensen Huang's journey to the US 07:54 Jensen's experience at boarding school in Kentucky 14:23 How Jensen came to Silicon Valley 17:23 Founding NVIDIA 23:40 The evolution and growth of NVIDIA 27:08 Sustaining motivation amid challenges 29:01 America's exceptional tech sector 32:28 Why Huang is a "cautious optimist" on AI 35:10 Jensen Huang's Only in America story

Hoover Institution

122,733 次观看 • 2 个月前

The year is 2000. Two men walk into Blockbuster's Dallas headquarters in shorts & sandals. Their company was in $50 Million debt. They asked this mammoth($6B company) to buy them. Blockbuster laughs at their ask of $50 Million. That laugh wiped their existence off the planet. Here's how: Blockbuster had $6 billion in revenue, 9,000 stores worldwide, and 60,000 employees. Netflix had $5 million in revenue, 150 people, and $50 million in debt. But still, this ant(Netlix) was able to eat this elephant(Blockbuster). It started with a phone call at a dude ranch. Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, was on a corporate retreat at Alisal Ranch, deep in the mountains outside Santa Barbara. Horses. Dirt roads. No reason to dress up. He was in shorts, a t-shirt, and thong sandals. That's when Blockbuster called. "We'd like to see you. Tomorrow. In Dallas." Randolph turned to Reed Hastings and said there was no way. Different time zones. No direct flight. Impossible. Then they remembered they were $50 million in debt and had been trying to get this meeting for months. They chartered a private jet. The next morning, they walked into the 27th floor of a glass and steel skyscraper in Dallas. Enormous conference room. A hardwood table the size of a small country. Blockbuster executives in suits filing in from one side. Marc Randolph standing there in sandals. He made the pitch anyway. "Combine forces. You run the stores. We run the online business. Build a blended model. Our research shows it's a game changer." The executives leaned in. Questions were flowing. Things felt good. Then came the big question. "How much?" Randolph had rehearsed this on the plane. They were $50 million in the hole. The number was $50 million. Silence filled the room. He watched their faces carefully, trying to read the reaction. Then it hit him. They were trying not to laugh. This tiny company, drowning in debt, at the lowest point of the dot-com meltdown, had just asked to be bought for $50 million. To the people running a $6 billion empire, it was almost comical. The meeting ended shortly after. Quiet cab ride to the airport. Quieter flight back to Santa Barbara. Randolph sat with his head down the entire way, thinking one thing: They are not going to save us. They are going to compete with us. What happened next is where the story gets interesting. Most people assume Netflix simply outworked Blockbuster. Built a better product. Won on merit. The truth is messier and far more human. When Blockbuster finally decided to take Netflix seriously, they nearly destroyed them. They built exactly what Randolph had pitched years earlier. The blended model. Rent online. Return by mail. Or return in-store. Or pick up in-store. It was everything Netflix could not offer because Netflix had no physical locations. Randolph admits it plainly. They could not compete with that. Blockbuster came frighteningly close to taking Netflix down entirely. So why didn't they? Here is where a single human decision changed everything. Blockbuster had been targeted by corporate raiders. Investors who bought large chunks of stock, took seats on the board, and began pushing for short-term profits over long-term survival. John Antioco was the CEO driving the fight against Netflix. He understood the threat. He had pulled a team out of the building, funded them properly, and told them to go after Netflix with everything they had. Then the board denied him his contractually promised bonus. He said: then I quit. And he did. The replacement CEO came from retail and convenience stores. His vision for Blockbuster was not winning the streaming war. It was asking why their 9,000 stores were not selling gum and clothing. The online operation was abandoned. Randolph describes it using a scene from an old Spielberg student film. A robot chases someone, getting closer and closer, almost close enough to grab their ankle. Then a cost calculation hits break-even and the robot just stops, turns, and walks away. One second before victory. That is what Blockbuster did. Netflix scampered to safety. On why Blockbuster never moved fast enough: Imagine you are the CEO sitting on $6 billion in annual revenue. Someone walks in and says let's build an online component. You ask how much it will make in year one. They say $2 million. Do you pull your best engineers off working products and bet them on a $2 million experiment? Of course not. So the B team gets it. Then the C team. Each time underpowered. Each time failing. Meanwhile Netflix was not a movie company. It was a software company built in Silicon Valley with people who had spent their entire careers writing software. Even Blockbuster's A team would have struggled to compete. By the time Blockbuster committed fully, it was almost too late. And then one bonus dispute ended it. Blockbuster did not lose because Netflix was inevitable. They lost because changing a $6 billion business model requires a kind of courage that is nearly impossible to find inside a company that is still winning. They lost because the person with the will to change things was replaced by someone who did not believe change was necessary. They lost because they were one grab away from winning and walked away anyway. Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. Blockbuster killed Blockbuster. Netflix just showed up to the funeral.

The year is 2000. Two men walk into Blockbuster's Dallas headquarters in shorts & sandals. Their company was in $50 Million debt. They asked this mammoth($6B company) to buy them. Blockbuster laughs at their ask of $50 Million. That laugh wiped their existence off the planet. Here's how: Blockbuster had $6 billion in revenue, 9,000 stores worldwide, and 60,000 employees. Netflix had $5 million in revenue, 150 people, and $50 million in debt. But still, this ant(Netlix) was able to eat this elephant(Blockbuster). It started with a phone call at a dude ranch. Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, was on a corporate retreat at Alisal Ranch, deep in the mountains outside Santa Barbara. Horses. Dirt roads. No reason to dress up. He was in shorts, a t-shirt, and thong sandals. That's when Blockbuster called. "We'd like to see you. Tomorrow. In Dallas." Randolph turned to Reed Hastings and said there was no way. Different time zones. No direct flight. Impossible. Then they remembered they were $50 million in debt and had been trying to get this meeting for months. They chartered a private jet. The next morning, they walked into the 27th floor of a glass and steel skyscraper in Dallas. Enormous conference room. A hardwood table the size of a small country. Blockbuster executives in suits filing in from one side. Marc Randolph standing there in sandals. He made the pitch anyway. "Combine forces. You run the stores. We run the online business. Build a blended model. Our research shows it's a game changer." The executives leaned in. Questions were flowing. Things felt good. Then came the big question. "How much?" Randolph had rehearsed this on the plane. They were $50 million in the hole. The number was $50 million. Silence filled the room. He watched their faces carefully, trying to read the reaction. Then it hit him. They were trying not to laugh. This tiny company, drowning in debt, at the lowest point of the dot-com meltdown, had just asked to be bought for $50 million. To the people running a $6 billion empire, it was almost comical. The meeting ended shortly after. Quiet cab ride to the airport. Quieter flight back to Santa Barbara. Randolph sat with his head down the entire way, thinking one thing: They are not going to save us. They are going to compete with us. What happened next is where the story gets interesting. Most people assume Netflix simply outworked Blockbuster. Built a better product. Won on merit. The truth is messier and far more human. When Blockbuster finally decided to take Netflix seriously, they nearly destroyed them. They built exactly what Randolph had pitched years earlier. The blended model. Rent online. Return by mail. Or return in-store. Or pick up in-store. It was everything Netflix could not offer because Netflix had no physical locations. Randolph admits it plainly. They could not compete with that. Blockbuster came frighteningly close to taking Netflix down entirely. So why didn't they? Here is where a single human decision changed everything. Blockbuster had been targeted by corporate raiders. Investors who bought large chunks of stock, took seats on the board, and began pushing for short-term profits over long-term survival. John Antioco was the CEO driving the fight against Netflix. He understood the threat. He had pulled a team out of the building, funded them properly, and told them to go after Netflix with everything they had. Then the board denied him his contractually promised bonus. He said: then I quit. And he did. The replacement CEO came from retail and convenience stores. His vision for Blockbuster was not winning the streaming war. It was asking why their 9,000 stores were not selling gum and clothing. The online operation was abandoned. Randolph describes it using a scene from an old Spielberg student film. A robot chases someone, getting closer and closer, almost close enough to grab their ankle. Then a cost calculation hits break-even and the robot just stops, turns, and walks away. One second before victory. That is what Blockbuster did. Netflix scampered to safety. On why Blockbuster never moved fast enough: Imagine you are the CEO sitting on $6 billion in annual revenue. Someone walks in and says let's build an online component. You ask how much it will make in year one. They say $2 million. Do you pull your best engineers off working products and bet them on a $2 million experiment? Of course not. So the B team gets it. Then the C team. Each time underpowered. Each time failing. Meanwhile Netflix was not a movie company. It was a software company built in Silicon Valley with people who had spent their entire careers writing software. Even Blockbuster's A team would have struggled to compete. By the time Blockbuster committed fully, it was almost too late. And then one bonus dispute ended it. Blockbuster did not lose because Netflix was inevitable. They lost because changing a $6 billion business model requires a kind of courage that is nearly impossible to find inside a company that is still winning. They lost because the person with the will to change things was replaced by someone who did not believe change was necessary. They lost because they were one grab away from winning and walked away anyway. Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. Blockbuster killed Blockbuster. Netflix just showed up to the funeral.

Yasmine Khosrowshahi

492,302 次观看 • 3 个月前

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 3 - starring Dada, CEO of Sorce Jobs Dada You only get to live once. So you have to use the best software you can. Dada, daniel ajayi and david built Sorce (YC F25) into Tinder for Jobs—20 million swipes, companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, DoorDash, and Lyft hiring through their platform. 2.7 million video views. Got into YC three days after the deadline. Dada didn't plan to start a company. He built Sorce to apply to jobs faster for himself. Then SpaceX hired someone through Sorce. Then Anduril did too. "Our biggest fear was: are you just going to destroy the industry? Then Anduril hired someone from Sorce, and SpaceX hired someone from Sorce. I was like, okay, they actually like us." Now Sorce is contributing to the economy: - 20 million swipes in total - Every major tech company has interviewed or hired someone from Sorce - On track to contribute to 1% of all applications in the world - Built the first version in 2-3 weeks, launched the app in 7 weeks - Team of 5 moving at Gabriella Warp Speed In this conversation: (0:00) "I didn't want to start a company. I just wanted to apply to jobs faster" (0:36) Why Y Combinator: Working with world-class people like the founder of Google Photos David Lieb (0:48) The problem: Applying to jobs is painfully repetitive (01:07) Viral launch: 2.7M views—LinkedIn loved it, Twitter said "you're going to destroy the world" (01:45) From 30,000 swipes to 20M: On track for 1% of all applications in the world (02:45) Building the team: 5 people shipping at Warp speed (03:45) Shipping velocity: Built Tinder for Jobs in 7 weeks (04:20) Switching from Rippling: "The UI was very confusing. I paid a contractor twice" (04:33) Switching to Warp: “Warp is a breath of fresh air, it’s like moving from Teams to Slack. The design is just really beautiful” (04:58) Setting the bar: "You want to be inspired by everything you use. It also helps you as a founder to know where the bar is. I’m building a B2B product soon and it should look like Warp and it should be as simple as warp”

WARP SPEED: EPISODE 3 - starring Dada, CEO of Sorce Jobs Dada You only get to live once. So you have to use the best software you can. Dada, daniel ajayi and david built Sorce (YC F25) into Tinder for Jobs—20 million swipes, companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, DoorDash, and Lyft hiring through their platform. 2.7 million video views. Got into YC three days after the deadline. Dada didn't plan to start a company. He built Sorce to apply to jobs faster for himself. Then SpaceX hired someone through Sorce. Then Anduril did too. "Our biggest fear was: are you just going to destroy the industry? Then Anduril hired someone from Sorce, and SpaceX hired someone from Sorce. I was like, okay, they actually like us." Now Sorce is contributing to the economy: - 20 million swipes in total - Every major tech company has interviewed or hired someone from Sorce - On track to contribute to 1% of all applications in the world - Built the first version in 2-3 weeks, launched the app in 7 weeks - Team of 5 moving at Gabriella Warp Speed In this conversation: (0:00) "I didn't want to start a company. I just wanted to apply to jobs faster" (0:36) Why Y Combinator: Working with world-class people like the founder of Google Photos David Lieb (0:48) The problem: Applying to jobs is painfully repetitive (01:07) Viral launch: 2.7M views—LinkedIn loved it, Twitter said "you're going to destroy the world" (01:45) From 30,000 swipes to 20M: On track for 1% of all applications in the world (02:45) Building the team: 5 people shipping at Warp speed (03:45) Shipping velocity: Built Tinder for Jobs in 7 weeks (04:20) Switching from Rippling: "The UI was very confusing. I paid a contractor twice" (04:33) Switching to Warp: “Warp is a breath of fresh air, it’s like moving from Teams to Slack. The design is just really beautiful” (04:58) Setting the bar: "You want to be inspired by everything you use. It also helps you as a founder to know where the bar is. I’m building a B2B product soon and it should look like Warp and it should be as simple as warp”

Ayush S

20,553 次观看 • 8 个月前

Ulysses is coming out of stealth today with: ‣ $1 million in revenue ‣ $2 million raised ‣ 5 hardware generations ...one year after their founding. They're building autonomous underwater drones — first to restore seagrass, and someday to counteract narco-subs. Ulysses co-founder and CEO Akhil Voorakkara met me at my office in San Francisco to talk through the technical details. HD Version at the link in my bio. Timestamps: 00:00 — Introducing Ulysses 02:20 — What is their robot capable of? 04:20 — How are they iterating so quickly through hardware prototypes? 12:57 — Why not buy more off the shelf? 16:15 — What technical requirements drove the hardware design? 21:06 — What other designs inspired this one? 23:28 — Underwater Design 101 30:38 — Why make it autonomous? 32:39 — What is their approach to autonomy? 36:44 — How did Ulysses decide to focus on sea restoration? 44:47 — Who else is building underwater drones? 47:57 — How do their drones differ from the more expensive existing ones? 49:05 — What limits drone working lifetime? 50:35 — How can you make technical progress with <5 employees? 54:51 — What's the next technical milestone to clear?

Ulysses is coming out of stealth today with: ‣ $1 million in revenue ‣ $2 million raised ‣ 5 hardware generations ...one year after their founding. They're building autonomous underwater drones — first to restore seagrass, and someday to counteract narco-subs. Ulysses co-founder and CEO Akhil Voorakkara met me at my office in San Francisco to talk through the technical details. HD Version at the link in my bio. Timestamps: 00:00 — Introducing Ulysses 02:20 — What is their robot capable of? 04:20 — How are they iterating so quickly through hardware prototypes? 12:57 — Why not buy more off the shelf? 16:15 — What technical requirements drove the hardware design? 21:06 — What other designs inspired this one? 23:28 — Underwater Design 101 30:38 — Why make it autonomous? 32:39 — What is their approach to autonomy? 36:44 — How did Ulysses decide to focus on sea restoration? 44:47 — Who else is building underwater drones? 47:57 — How do their drones differ from the more expensive existing ones? 49:05 — What limits drone working lifetime? 50:35 — How can you make technical progress with <5 employees? 54:51 — What's the next technical milestone to clear?

Christian Keil

79,534 次观看 • 1 年前

Varun Vummadi (Varun Vummadi) is the co-founder of Giga, which builds AI agents for customer support for some of the biggest companies in the world, including DoorDash, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the US, and a top-three global telecom provider. At Startup School India, Varun sat down with YC's Ankit Gupta to talk about why he turned down a high-paying quant job to start a company, the multiple pivots it took to find the right problem, and how their small team of eight beat a 400-person competitor to land a contract with DoorDash. 01:33 — Early Days & Origin Story 03:37 — The YC Interview Disaster 06:28 — Pivoting Away From EdTech 07:25 — Finding the Real Idea 08:39 — Beating a Well-Funded Competitor 10:00 — Winning DoorDash With 8 People 11:09 — What GigaML Looks Like Now 12:40 — Advice for College Students 15:51 — Why Charge Early? 17:33 — The Next Big Bet 18:43 — Running the Company on AI 20:19 — How They Hire Engineers 22:04 — Product Over Sales 23:37 — Burn the Boats

Varun Vummadi (Varun Vummadi) is the co-founder of Giga, which builds AI agents for customer support for some of the biggest companies in the world, including DoorDash, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the US, and a top-three global telecom provider. At Startup School India, Varun sat down with YC's Ankit Gupta to talk about why he turned down a high-paying quant job to start a company, the multiple pivots it took to find the right problem, and how their small team of eight beat a 400-person competitor to land a contract with DoorDash. 01:33 — Early Days & Origin Story 03:37 — The YC Interview Disaster 06:28 — Pivoting Away From EdTech 07:25 — Finding the Real Idea 08:39 — Beating a Well-Funded Competitor 10:00 — Winning DoorDash With 8 People 11:09 — What GigaML Looks Like Now 12:40 — Advice for College Students 15:51 — Why Charge Early? 17:33 — The Next Big Bet 18:43 — Running the Company on AI 20:19 — How They Hire Engineers 22:04 — Product Over Sales 23:37 — Burn the Boats

Y Combinator

150,246 次观看 • 2 个月前

🚨ELON MUSK'S BROTHER SOLD HIS COMPANY FOR $307 MILLION AT 26.. THEN GAVE UP TECH COMPLETELY TO COOK FOR FIREFIGHTERS IN THE RUBBLE OF 9/11.. THIS IS THE MUSK NOBODY TALKS ABOUT.. Most people only know Kimbal Musk as Elon's younger brother.. But his actual life path makes almost no sense on paper.. In 1989, at 17, he left South Africa for Canada with almost no money.. He paid his way through university running a house-painting franchise.. And won manager of the year doing it.. Then in 1995 he moved to Palo Alto with Elon and they started Zip2.. An online city guide and mapping company, years before Google Maps existed.. They were broke.. They slept on the office floor and showered at the local gym.. To impress investors, they built a giant fake casing around a normal PC to make it look like a supercomputer.. In 1999 Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million.. Kimbal, at 26, walked away with around $22 million.. He could have done anything.. Retired.. Started another tech company.. Coasted on the PayPal and Tesla fortunes that were coming.. Instead he enrolled in culinary school in New York to become a chef.. His timing was brutal.. He graduated in 2001.. Right as 9/11 happened.. He lived steps from the World Trade Center.. So he grabbed his new skills and spent six weeks cooking for firefighters and rescue workers at Ground Zero.. 10 to 12 hour days in the wreckage.. Feeding the people pulling bodies from the rubble.. He said that experience changed everything.. Watching exhausted workers find comfort in a shared meal convinced him that food was his actual life's purpose.. He moved to Colorado and started building farm-to-table restaurants that sourced straight from local farmers.. Then in 2010 came the second turning point.. He broke his neck in a tubing accident and was temporarily paralyzed for three days.. He called it a near-death experience.. And it pushed him even harder into his mission.. He started a nonprofit that built outdoor learning gardens in hundreds of underserved schools.. Reaching hundreds of thousands of kids.. He co-founded an urban farming company growing food inside shipping containers in cities.. Each one producing the equivalent of two acres of farmland.. And then in 2022 he did the strangest pivot yet.. When Intel decided to shut down its light-drone division, Kimbal bought the whole thing.. 9,000 drones and the engineering team.. Now his company flies massive drone shows that act as pixels in the sky.. Including over 3,000 drones above St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.. Recreating Renaissance art in the night sky.. One brother is trying to colonize Mars and build humanoid robots.. The other made his fortune in the same rooms.. Then spent the next 25 years on something almost nobody expected.. Feeding people, teaching kids to grow food, and turning the sky into art.. Same beginning.. Completely different definition of what to do with a fortune.

🚨ELON MUSK'S BROTHER SOLD HIS COMPANY FOR $307 MILLION AT 26.. THEN GAVE UP TECH COMPLETELY TO COOK FOR FIREFIGHTERS IN THE RUBBLE OF 9/11.. THIS IS THE MUSK NOBODY TALKS ABOUT.. Most people only know Kimbal Musk as Elon's younger brother.. But his actual life path makes almost no sense on paper.. In 1989, at 17, he left South Africa for Canada with almost no money.. He paid his way through university running a house-painting franchise.. And won manager of the year doing it.. Then in 1995 he moved to Palo Alto with Elon and they started Zip2.. An online city guide and mapping company, years before Google Maps existed.. They were broke.. They slept on the office floor and showered at the local gym.. To impress investors, they built a giant fake casing around a normal PC to make it look like a supercomputer.. In 1999 Compaq bought Zip2 for $307 million.. Kimbal, at 26, walked away with around $22 million.. He could have done anything.. Retired.. Started another tech company.. Coasted on the PayPal and Tesla fortunes that were coming.. Instead he enrolled in culinary school in New York to become a chef.. His timing was brutal.. He graduated in 2001.. Right as 9/11 happened.. He lived steps from the World Trade Center.. So he grabbed his new skills and spent six weeks cooking for firefighters and rescue workers at Ground Zero.. 10 to 12 hour days in the wreckage.. Feeding the people pulling bodies from the rubble.. He said that experience changed everything.. Watching exhausted workers find comfort in a shared meal convinced him that food was his actual life's purpose.. He moved to Colorado and started building farm-to-table restaurants that sourced straight from local farmers.. Then in 2010 came the second turning point.. He broke his neck in a tubing accident and was temporarily paralyzed for three days.. He called it a near-death experience.. And it pushed him even harder into his mission.. He started a nonprofit that built outdoor learning gardens in hundreds of underserved schools.. Reaching hundreds of thousands of kids.. He co-founded an urban farming company growing food inside shipping containers in cities.. Each one producing the equivalent of two acres of farmland.. And then in 2022 he did the strangest pivot yet.. When Intel decided to shut down its light-drone division, Kimbal bought the whole thing.. 9,000 drones and the engineering team.. Now his company flies massive drone shows that act as pixels in the sky.. Including over 3,000 drones above St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.. Recreating Renaissance art in the night sky.. One brother is trying to colonize Mars and build humanoid robots.. The other made his fortune in the same rooms.. Then spent the next 25 years on something almost nobody expected.. Feeding people, teaching kids to grow food, and turning the sky into art.. Same beginning.. Completely different definition of what to do with a fortune.

Evan Luthra

1,097,522 次观看 • 2 个月前

In this special live event, Founders In Arms Podcast brings together a room full of founders at Mercury's San Francisco headquarters for an intimate conversation about building, investing, and the future of AI. Max Mullen is co-founder at Instacart, where he led product and grew it from a contrarian idea into the leader in online grocery delivery and eventually a publicly traded company. Now Max Mullen is an active investor and runs a founder community in San Francisco called Workshop. Max shares lessons from over a decade of building and his perspective on AI's transformative potential. In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome to the first live Founders in Arms event at Mercury HQ (00:43) Introduction to Max Mullen and his early investment in Mercury (03:58) Max's origin story and first startup at Startup Weekend (04:36) Building a social network and getting acquihired (05:39) The path from acquihire to founding Instacart (06:19) Why Max wanted to solve real-world operational problems (07:17) Starting Instacart when there was no gig economy (09:15) Overcoming the "grocery delivery is dead" narrative (11:48) Market timing and why Webvan was too early (14:37) Being a non-technical co-founder in a technical role (17:45) The PARE framework for building company culture (22:09) Max's approach to M&A at Instacart (24:00) The Caper smart shopping cart acquisition story (25:31) How founders can position for acquisition (28:26) Why product-market fit attracts acquirers (29:46) Evaluating investments: market size vs. founder quality (32:54) Max and Immad's differing investment philosophies (35:39) The current state of VC funding and AI companies (36:51) The three best times to raise money as a founder (39:15) Instacart's seasonal business patterns and fundraising timing (39:59) The most interesting opportunities in AI right now (40:24) Why every profession will have AI agent co-pilots (41:44) What AI-native companies will look like for the next generation

In this special live event, Founders In Arms Podcast brings together a room full of founders at Mercury's San Francisco headquarters for an intimate conversation about building, investing, and the future of AI. Max Mullen is co-founder at Instacart, where he led product and grew it from a contrarian idea into the leader in online grocery delivery and eventually a publicly traded company. Now Max Mullen is an active investor and runs a founder community in San Francisco called Workshop. Max shares lessons from over a decade of building and his perspective on AI's transformative potential. In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome to the first live Founders in Arms event at Mercury HQ (00:43) Introduction to Max Mullen and his early investment in Mercury (03:58) Max's origin story and first startup at Startup Weekend (04:36) Building a social network and getting acquihired (05:39) The path from acquihire to founding Instacart (06:19) Why Max wanted to solve real-world operational problems (07:17) Starting Instacart when there was no gig economy (09:15) Overcoming the "grocery delivery is dead" narrative (11:48) Market timing and why Webvan was too early (14:37) Being a non-technical co-founder in a technical role (17:45) The PARE framework for building company culture (22:09) Max's approach to M&A at Instacart (24:00) The Caper smart shopping cart acquisition story (25:31) How founders can position for acquisition (28:26) Why product-market fit attracts acquirers (29:46) Evaluating investments: market size vs. founder quality (32:54) Max and Immad's differing investment philosophies (35:39) The current state of VC funding and AI companies (36:51) The three best times to raise money as a founder (39:15) Instacart's seasonal business patterns and fundraising timing (39:59) The most interesting opportunities in AI right now (40:24) Why every profession will have AI agent co-pilots (41:44) What AI-native companies will look like for the next generation

Rajat Suri

144,067 次观看 • 6 个月前

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

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

167,992 次观看 • 10 天前

Marc Andreessen: Revolutionary technologies were often viewed as “trivialities” or “jokes” “If you read history, the great innovations of the past are now well understood as being very important. In almost every case, they were not widely understood as such at the time. In fact, I would assert that they were often actually viewed as trivialities or jokes.” He gives three examples: 1. The telephone. “When Thomas Edison was first working on the telephone, the assumption of the use case motivating his early work was the idea that telegraph operators needed to be able to talk to each other. It was considered implausible that you would have a system that would let any ordinary person pick up the telephone and talk to another person - that was clearly impossible… Completely missing the larger opportunity.” 2. The Internet. “I have personal experience with this one. The Internet was laughed at. It was heaped with scorn from 1993 to 1997-98. In fact, those of you who were in the industry at the time will remember the New York Times had a reporter on staff named Peter Lewis… I’m convinced he was specifically hired by the editors to just write negative stories about the Internet. It was all he did, and it was always the Internet was never going to be a consumer medium. The Internet is not nearly as big as these people think. Nobody is ever going to trust the internet for e-commerce.” 3. The car. “The car was absolutely viewed as a triviality and a toy when it first emerged. In fact, J.P. Morgan himself refused to invest in Ford Motor Company with the response that it’s just a toy for rich people, which is in fact what it was at the time. If you had one of the first cars, you had to be a rich person. You had to have a driver. You often actually had to also have a stoker with your early cars to keep the engine going. And then you also had to travel with a full-time mechanic because the thing would break down every three miles.” Marc concludes: “The great innovations of the present, I believe, are virtually guaranteed to be viewed as trivial and to be viewed as jokes. I think history 50 to 100 years from now will enshroud them in legend. In our time, they won’t be recognized as such. Of course, in the future, when they become legends, our descendants will themselves have their own trivial innovations to laugh at.” Video source: Milken Institute (2013)

Marc Andreessen: Revolutionary technologies were often viewed as “trivialities” or “jokes” “If you read history, the great innovations of the past are now well understood as being very important. In almost every case, they were not widely understood as such at the time. In fact, I would assert that they were often actually viewed as trivialities or jokes.” He gives three examples: 1. The telephone. “When Thomas Edison was first working on the telephone, the assumption of the use case motivating his early work was the idea that telegraph operators needed to be able to talk to each other. It was considered implausible that you would have a system that would let any ordinary person pick up the telephone and talk to another person - that was clearly impossible… Completely missing the larger opportunity.” 2. The Internet. “I have personal experience with this one. The Internet was laughed at. It was heaped with scorn from 1993 to 1997-98. In fact, those of you who were in the industry at the time will remember the New York Times had a reporter on staff named Peter Lewis… I’m convinced he was specifically hired by the editors to just write negative stories about the Internet. It was all he did, and it was always the Internet was never going to be a consumer medium. The Internet is not nearly as big as these people think. Nobody is ever going to trust the internet for e-commerce.” 3. The car. “The car was absolutely viewed as a triviality and a toy when it first emerged. In fact, J.P. Morgan himself refused to invest in Ford Motor Company with the response that it’s just a toy for rich people, which is in fact what it was at the time. If you had one of the first cars, you had to be a rich person. You had to have a driver. You often actually had to also have a stoker with your early cars to keep the engine going. And then you also had to travel with a full-time mechanic because the thing would break down every three miles.” Marc concludes: “The great innovations of the present, I believe, are virtually guaranteed to be viewed as trivial and to be viewed as jokes. I think history 50 to 100 years from now will enshroud them in legend. In our time, they won’t be recognized as such. Of course, in the future, when they become legends, our descendants will themselves have their own trivial innovations to laugh at.” Video source: Milken Institute (2013)

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286,477 次观看 • 7 个月前