Gou Rao is CEO of NeuBird, an agentic AI Site Reliability Engineer for IT teams. They've raised $44.5 Million from Mayfield and M12. He was previously the CTO of Citrix and Portworx.

(00:01) Introduction
(01:07) What Does an SRE Do?
(02:19) Inside a Typical Incident Flow
(04:16) What Can Be Automated?
(05:52) Deploying Hawkeye: Day 1 to Day 100
(11:59) Earning Trust for Autonomous Agents
(14:57) Versioning Agent Behavior & Chain of Thought
(17:02) Building Agentic Infra Products
(18:38) Access Control for Agents
(20:29) Company Building in the AI Era
(23:53) Competitive Edge in AI + Infra
(26:35) Model Choice & Agent Reasoning Quality
(29:33) Biggest Product Bet
(31:22) Exciting AI Advancements
(33:04) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Gou Rao: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gouthamrao/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Research Column: https://www.infrastartups.com
Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekj 

Brian Moore is CEO of Voxel51, a data infra platform for visual AI. They most recently raised a $30M Series B led by Bessemer.  

Brian's favorite books: Trillion Dollar Coach (Author: Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle)

(00:01) Introduction and setup
(00:22) Defining visual AI — beyond traditional computer vision
(02:14) Why visual data is so hard to manage
(04:17) Common “gotchas” in image and video datasets
(06:43) Is it a data problem or a model problem?
(09:41) The importance of edge cases and scenario analysis
(10:46) Coverage and handling rare events in datasets
(13:35) Using synthetic data and foundation models to fill data gaps
(14:25) The origin story of Voxel51 and the birth of FiftyOne
(17:56) Open source strategy and community growth
(19:31) Handling massive visual datasets — storage best practices
(22:03) Cost vs. quality tradeoffs in video storage
(23:54) Cleaning and indexing messy datasets
(25:49) Measuring real progress — beyond simple metrics
(27:40) Compute bottlenecks and faster iteration loops
(30:05) The economics of data infrastructure
(31:53) Labeling inefficiencies and smarter annotation workflows
(33:56) Hidden costs of data wrangling and wasted engineering time
(35:10) Positioning Voxel51 and lessons for founders
(37:53) The future of visual AI and missing industry standards
(40:36) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Brian Moore: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brimoor/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Research Column: https://www.infrastartups.com
Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Carina Hong is CEO of Axiom Math, where they're building a self-improving superintelligent reasoner, starting with an AI mathematician. She's a Rhodes Scholar, first-gen college grad and mathematics prodigy who earned dual degrees in mathematics and physics from MIT in 3 years. And a joint JD/PhD at Stanford. They just raised a $64M seed round from B Capital, Greycroft, Madrona, and Menlo Ventures. 

Carina's favorite books: Proofs from THE BOOK (Author: Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler)

(00:02) Intro
(00:38) What self-improving mathematical superintelligence means
(04:04) Proofs as programs: Lean and the data gap
(06:36) How AI proves: human-style vs. Lean-style reasoning
(10:43) Carina’s journey: from Olympiad problem-solver to theory-builder
(14:47) The engine room: data, infra, and building a math knowledge graph
(17:42) Verifying results: compile checks vs. LLM judges
(18:56) Self-improvement loops: skills libraries, memory, and conjecture↔prover curricula
(21:30) Synthetic data & auto-formalization strategy
(24:00) Benchmarks that matter: miniF2F, CombiBench, miniCTX v2
(26:24) Why combinatorics is uniquely hard for AI
(31:13) Compute footprint & scaling philosophy
(32:20) In-house Lean tooling and productization path
(33:57) Early use cases: formal verification in hardware/software
(36:19) Team blueprint: AI, programming languages, and math
(37:35) Scaling laws, efficiency, and bottlenecks
(38:26) If Axiom works: what becomes cheaper/faster for the world
(40:22) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Carina Hong: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carina-hong/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Research column: https://www.infrastartups.com
Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Mukund Jha is CEO of Emergent, an agentic vibe-coding platform. They've raised $23M from Lightspeed, Y Combinator, Together Fund, and Prosus. He was previously the cofounder and CTO of Dunzo, a hugely popular ecommerce company in India.

Mukund's favorite books: The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Author: Ben Horowitz)

(00:01) Intro
(00:07) State of vibe-coding and where we are today
(01:42) Emergent in plain English: what the product delivers
(03:07) From prototype to traction: the first 90 days
(06:03) What changed in the last 24 months (models + infra)
(08:13) Early infra bets that enabled speed
(12:07) Precision vs. control: editing and debugging without code
(14:21) One-click to production: the unglamorous infra behind it
(15:55) Points of failure across prompt → plan → code → test → deploy
(17:53) Models division of labor: planning, codegen, tests, commits
(20:05) What “reasoning” means and how they evaluate it
(22:13) Context & memory strategy (beyond naive RAG)
(24:22) Representing large codebases so agents don’t hallucinate structure
(27:03) Orchestration walkthrough: adding SSO end-to-end
(29:40) Agent coordination protocols (how agents talk)
(31:05) Debugging long-running agents and trace observability
(32:37) Company-building lessons from Dunzo to Emergent
(36:10) Philosophy: offloading decisions to models
(36:57) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Mukund Jha: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mukund-jha-a1596413/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Stefano Ermon is the cofounder of Inception Labs and an associate professor at Stanford. Inception is developing a new type of AI models called Diffusion LLMs.

Stefano's favorite book: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Author: Italo Calvino)

(00:01) Introduction
(00:38) What are autoregressive LLMs and how do they work
(02:28) How diffusion LLMs rethink generation
(04:02) The ceiling of autoregressive LLMs: cost, latency, reliability
(06:19) Why diffusion LLMs are commercially viable now
(09:12) Parallel refinement: how diffusion models generate text
(12:05) Understanding diffusion steps and efficiency
(13:49) Hardest engineering challenges at Inception
(15:23) From research to production: the power of data
(16:24) Where diffusion LLMs still lag behind
(18:18) Evaluations and benchmarks for diffusion LLMs
(20:20) Developer experience and OpenAI-compatible API
(21:47) Economics and GPU efficiency
(23:38) Hardware and runtime stack
(24:58) Competition and the evolving diffusion LLM landscape
(27:01) Where diffusion will win first — coding and agentic systems
(30:13) How diffusion changes infra, serving, and hardware design
(33:04) What’s next at Inception: reasoning and multimodality
(35:20) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Stefano Ermon: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ermon/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Research column: https://www.infrastartups.com
Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Idan Plotnik is the CEO of Apiiro, an application security platform built for the AI era. They've raised $135M in funding from investors like Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and General Catalyst.

Idan's favorite books: Zero to IPO (Author: Frederic Kerrest)

(00:01) Introduction 
(00:07) How LLMs Generate Code
(02:11) Rise of Vibe Coding: Opportunities and Risks
(05:24) Debugging and Security in Vibe Coding
(09:13) Vulnerabilities Introduced by AI Code Assistants
(12:20) Security Basics for Builders Using AI and Cloud Platforms
(15:44) Security by Design and Organizational Standards
(18:08) Making Security Dead Simple: The Appiro Approach
(22:28) Winning Developer Trust Through UX and Integration
(26:59) Biggest Technical and GTM Challenges in Building Appiro
(33:55) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Idan Plotnik: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idanplotnik/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Astasia Myers is a GP at Felicis, an iconic VC firm with investments in companies like Shopify, Canva, Adyen, Notion, Mercor, Plaid, Supabase, Flexport, and more. 

Astasia's favorite books: God's Bankers (Author: Gerald Posner)

(00:01) Introduction
(00:26) Astasia’s Infra Thesis
(03:59) Golden Age of Infra & Innovators Network
(06:22) RL Environments & AI Agents
(08:57) Disruption Opportunities: Data & Observability
(11:31) Where to Find Infra Founders
(16:31) Early Signals & Thesis-Driven Investing
(18:01) Picking & Decision-Making Process
(20:11) Red Flags in Infra Investing
(22:20) References & Diligence
(24:35) Proof of Usage & Production Signals
(26:24) Building Edge as an Investor
(28:01) How Felicis Helps Founders Post-Investment
(30:05) Consensus vs. Contrarian Views in Infra
(32:09) Tourist Traps in Infra Investing
(34:43) GTM & Sales Motion in Infra
(37:25) Pricing Strategies for Infra Startups
(40:09) Ecosystem vs. Core Product Focus
(42:15) Lessons from Outlier vs. Good Companies
(44:30) Infra Wedges to Fund Today
(45:23) Commoditized but Promising Categories
(47:06) Exciting AI Advancements
(48:21) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Astasia Myers: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/astasiamyers/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi
Research column: https://infrastartups.com 

Spiros Xanthos is the CEO of Resolve AI, a platform to put AI on-call for humans. He previously started Log Insight that was acquired by VMware. And started Omnition that was acquired by Splunk. He also helped start OpenTelemetry. They've raised $35M from amazing investors such as Greylock.

Spiros's favorite books: 
- Zero to One (Author: Peter Thiel)
- Build (Author: Tony Fadell)

(00:01) Introduction & Setting the Stage
(00:42) AI’s Impact on Software Engineering
(02:55) What Reliability Means in Software
(04:34) Resolve AI Explained in Plain English
(06:33) Real-World Example of Resolve in Action
(08:28) Early Customers & Lessons from Company Building
(11:40) OpenTelemetry & The Open Source Journey
(16:55) Positioning a Developer Tool in a Crowded Market
(18:58) Philosophy of Product Building
(21:06) Cultural Norms: What to Keep and What to Change
(24:33) Radical Transparency & Team Dynamics
(26:50) Recruiting for Resilience in Early Team Members
(28:59) Future of AI in Software Engineering
(31:25) Resolve AI Roadmap & Expansion Plans
(33:28) Exciting AI Advancements on the Horizon
(35:17) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Spiros Xanthos: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spiros/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Nick Schrock is the founder of Dagster Labs, a data platform that helps you build, schedule, and monitor reliable data pipelines. They've raised $49M in funding from investors such as Sequoia, Index, Amplify, Slow, and 8VC. He is also the cocreator of the popular query language GraphQL. 

Nick's favorite books: The Great CEO Within (Author: Matt Mochary)

(00:01) Introduction and Welcome
(00:39) The Origins of GraphQL at Facebook
(05:24) Explaining Data Orchestration in Plain English
(09:03) What Dagster Is and Why It Matters
(12:37) Assets vs. Tasks: A New Philosophy
(16:51) Balancing Open Source and Commercial Features
(22:18) Growing the Early Open Source Community
(25:26) Signals of Community Health
(27:59) Landing the First 10 Customers
(32:25) Culture Shift: From Engineering-Heavy to Go-to-Market
(37:49) Mistakes DevTool Founders Often Make
(41:21) Selective Micromanagement and Leadership Style
(44:36) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Nick Schrock: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schrockn/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Rehan Jalil is the CEO of Securiti, a platform that enables the safe use of data and generative AI. They've raised $156M in funding from investors such as General Catalyst, Mayfield, and others. He was previously the CEO of Elastica, which was acquired for $280M by Bluecoat. Before that, he was the CEO of WiChorus, which was acquired by Tellabs for $180M.

Rehan's favorite books: Good to Great (Author: Jim Collins)

(00:00) Introduction 
(02:14) Founding Securiti and the Evolution of Data Privacy
(06:08) Why Data Security Needs a Unified Platform
(09:32) Scaling Challenges and Product Decisions
(13:17) The Role of AI in Data Security
(17:20) Navigating the Enterprise Sales Motion
(21:56) Go-to-Market Lessons from Elastica to Securiti
(25:43) Competing in a Crowded DSPM Market
(29:00) Shifting Buyer Personas and GenAI Adoption
(32:11) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Rehan Jalil: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rehanjalil/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Alberto Rizzoli is the CEO of V7 Labs, an AI agent platform to automate knowledge work. They've raised a total of $43M in funding from Radical Ventures, Temasek, Air Street Capital, and others. 

Alberto's favorite books: Sapiens (Author: Yuval Noah Harari)

(00:01) Introduction and What V7 Labs Does
(01:23) The Founding Insight and Early MVP
(04:54) Getting the First Five Customers
(07:01) Darwin vs. Go: Product Differentiation
(10:16) Infrastructure and Chaining Models at V7
(12:34) Product Philosophy: Killing Your Darlings
(15:56) Surprising User Behavior and Composability
(17:32) Human-in-the-Loop vs. Fully Autonomous
(19:38) Identifying High-PMF Sub-Verticals
(22:37) Positioning V7 in a Crowded Agent Market
(26:33) Advice for Founders Post-Pre-Seed
(29:22) Exciting AI Trends: MCP and AI-to-AI Communication
(31:18) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Alberto Rizzoli: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertorizzoli/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Dave Selinger is the CEO of Deep Sentinel, an AI-powered video surveillance system. They have raised $38M in funding from Intel Capital, Shasta Ventures, and others. Prior to this, he was the cofounder and CTO of Redfin. And he was also the cofounder of RichRelevance. 

Dave's favorite books: 
- The Speed of Trust (Author: Stephen Covey)
- Snow Crash (Author: Neal Stephenson)

(00:01) – Origin Story: A Near-Miss and the Broken Security Market
(04:22) – What Deep Sentinel Does and Why It Works
(06:23) – Benefits of Vertical Integration in Security Tech
(10:20) – How Deep Sentinel Tackles False Positives with AI
(14:06) – Balancing Escalation Risk and Deterrence
(17:06) – How Deep Sentinel Processes and Uses Its Data
(19:36) – Positioning Deep Sentinel in the Competitive Landscape
(21:12) – Go-to-Market Learnings for Hardware-Software Companies
(23:39) – Residential vs. Commercial Security: A Comparison
(26:41) – Regulation and Public Sentiment Around Security AI
(29:03) – Insurance, Security, and Incentive Alignment
(31:23) – Company Building and Lessons from 20 Years of Founding
(39:26) – The Role of Distillation and LLMs in Deep Sentinel’s Future
(42:27) – Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Dave Selinger: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selly/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Brennan Pothetes is the CEO of Infinity Constellation, an AI-native holding company. They've raised $17M from Freestyle Capital, Charlie Songhurst, and others. 

Brennan's favorite books: Zero to One (Author: Peter Thiel)

(00:01) Lightning Bolt Moment – Origin of Infinity Constellation
(03:48) Transitioning from Founder to Holdco CEO
(07:00) How Infinity Incubates vs Acquires Companies
(09:05) Infinity vs Traditional Venture Studios
(10:58) Aligning Incentives: Founders, Holdco, and Investors
(16:32) Target Markets and How They’re Chosen
(20:27) When a Company Graduates from the Holdco
(23:04) Resource Allocation and “Too Many Toddlers” Problem
(26:29) Shared Infrastructure and the Code Commons
(29:48) Model Choices, Full Stack AI, and the Infinity Playbook
(32:05) First 3 Hires at a Portfolio Company
(33:53) Who is the Real Competition?
(37:03) Infinity’s 5-Year Vision and AI Trends
(38:37) Rapid Fire Round

Mark Fussell is the CEO of Diagrid, a developer platform that provides tools and services for building cloud native applications. They've raised $24.2M from Amplify and Norwest. He is also the co-creator of Dapr, an open source tool used by 40,000 companies. 

Mark's favorite books: 
- Crossing the Chasm (Author: Geoffrey A. Moore)
- Good to Great (Author: Jim Collins)
- The Dispossessed (Author: Ursula K. Le Guin) 

(00:01) Opening and Introduction
(00:09) The Origins of Dapr: Solving Developer Pain
(01:53) Why Launch Diagrid After Building Dapr at Microsoft
(03:36) Why Dapr Gained Traction Among Developers
(05:30) Open Source Commercialization: What to Charge For
(07:51) When Do Companies Turn to Diagrid for Help?
(09:53) Key Features: PubSub, Workflow, and Catalyst
(11:48) North Star Metrics and Innovation Philosophy
(13:17) Pricing Strategy for Infra and Dev Tools
(15:28) Competing Against Hyperscalers Like AWS & Azure
(17:32) Who Diagrid Competes With and Role of Platform Engineering
(19:29) The Agentic Shift in Microservices
(21:28) How AI Is Changing Microservices Design
(22:59) What's Coming Next at Diagrid: Roadmap and AI Features
(24:51) Lessons from the First Five Customers
(26:59) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Mark Fussell: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfussell/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Jan Liphardt is the founder of OpenMind, where they're building an operating system for intelligent machines. He is an associate professor at Stanford and was previously an associate professor at UC Berkeley. He got his PhD from University of Cambridge.

Jan's favorite books: The Little Prince (Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

00:01 — Introduction
00:32 — Gap Between Movie Robots and Real-World Robotics
02:35 — Vision for a New Robotics OS
07:14 — Robotics OS Stack Breakdown
11:01 — Biggest Technical Challenges in Robotics
15:06 — Data Volume, Processing, and Cloud vs. Local
19:09 — Shared Intelligence Layer: What is Fabric?
23:15 — Filtering Good vs. Bad Ideas in a Robot Network
26:06 — Business Model for Robots and Machine Economy
29:55 — Standards and Interoperability in Robotics
33:14 — Most Exciting AI Advancements Today
35:00 — Rapid Fire Round 

--------
Where to find Jan Liphardt: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-liphardt/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Anna Patterson is the cofounder of Ceramic, an AI infrastructure platform for large scale model training. They raised their seed round led by NEA along with amazing investors such as Lukas Biewald, Laszlo Bock, Sean Carey, Jeff Hammerbacher, Ankit Jain, Seval Oz, Joanna Rees, Gokul Rajaram, and Ram Sriram. She was previously the founder and managing partner at Gradient Ventures. She was the VP Engineering at Google for 14 years. 

Anna's favorite book: Books she reads with her daughters as part of their family book club

(00:01) Introduction & AI Infra 101
(01:11) Budget Breakdown: Training vs Inference
(02:16) Mapping the AI Infra Landscape
(04:18) Verticalized vs General-Purpose Infrastructure
(06:22) Why Ceramic Was Built From Scratch
(08:35) MVP Tradeoffs and Decision Framework
(10:16) Achieving 2.5x Speedup in Long Context Training
(11:50) Short vs Medium vs Long Context: A Primer
(13:38) Long Context vs RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
(15:24) Real-World Impact of Long Context Models
(16:38) Bottlenecks at 96K Token Contexts
(17:51) Data Pruning 101: What to Keep, What to Drop
(21:01) What Is “Good Data” in Subjective Domains?
(22:32) How to Grade Reasoning, Not Just Answers
(24:15) Synthetic Data: Use Cases & Limits
(26:19) Staying Current in Fast-Moving Domains
(27:30) Will Every Company Have Its Own Model?
(29:23) Unlocking the Next 10x in Infra
(31:27) Favorite Recent AI Advancements
(32:33) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Anna Patterson: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-patterson-15921ba/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Tom Chavez is the cofounder of super{set}, a startup studio that founds, funds, and builds data and AI startups. Prior to this, he was the CEO and co-founder of Krux, a martech platform acquired by Salesforce in 2016. Before Krux, he was the CEO and co-founder of Rapt, a provider of software for media monetization acquired by Microsoft in 2008. He went to Harvard for undergrad and Stanford for his PhD.

Tom's favorite book: The Three Musketeers (Author: Alexandre Dumas)

(00:01) Origin Story and Starting Superset
(02:58) How Superset Evaluates Ideas and Risk
(06:24) What Is a Venture Studio and How Superset Works
(10:49) Underfunded Layers in AI Infrastructure
(14:55) Orchestration Opportunities in LLM Workflows
(15:49) The Future of Data Infra and ETL in the AI Era
(20:46) Code Infra: Code Quality and AI-Generated Software
(24:55) Model Infra, MLOps, and Why It’s Underwhelming
(27:22) Cloud Economics and Gross Margins in AI Companies
(32:15) Early Team Structure in AI Infra Startups
(34:49) Full Stack vs Composable Infra in AI
(37:52) Fragmentation vs Consolidation in AI Tooling
(41:02) Where Moats Will Accumulate: Data In, AI, Data Out
(45:10) Biggest Challenge in Building Superset
(46:23) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Tom Chavez: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommychavez/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Rowan Stone is the CEO of Sapien, a decentralized data foundry where AI models can access verified human expertise worldwide. They've raised raised a $10.5M round led by Variant. He's also the co-creator of Coinbase's layer 2 network called Base.

Rowan's favorite book: Outlive (Author: Peter Attia)

(00:01) Introduction
(01:09) The Flaws in Centralized Data Models
(04:10) Mechanism of Knowledge Transfer and Expert Incentives
(07:08) Supply, Demand, and Market Dynamics for Training Data
(10:22) Chain of Thought Reasoning and 3D/4D Data Use Cases
(12:22) Building the MVP: What Worked and What Didn’t
(15:17) Acquiring the First Five Customers
(17:59) What They Got Right and What They’d Change
(20:15) How to Scale from Early Customers: Advice to Founders
(22:02) Data Infrastructure Opportunities in 2025
(25:57) Designing AI-Native Databases
(28:04) Biggest Startup Challenge: Messaging and Clarity
(30:22) Future of Data Collection Mechanisms (2 to 5 Years Out)
(32:07) Autonomous Vehicles and Demand for 4D Data
(35:33) Emerging AI Use Cases: Memory, Wearables, and Robotics
(36:19) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Rowan Stone: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowan-stone/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Rish Gupta is the cofounder and CEO of Spot AI, a video AI platform for the physical world. They've raised $93M from amazing investors such as Scale, Bessemer, and Qualcomm Ventures.

Rish's favorite book: Atlas Shrugged (Author: Ayn Rand)

(00:01) Introduction
(00:32) Video-AI basics: ingesting camera feeds across diverse networks ​
(02:42) Edge-vs-cloud trade-offs for compute, storage, and bandwidth ​
(05:40) Mapping the sector: hardware waves to cloud cameras to pure-software layer ​
(07:43) Founding insight: why Spot AI attacked the video layer now ​
(11:35) Bare-bones MVP: two-page dashboard that unified camera access ​
(15:34) First-10-customer lessons & pruning the ideal customer profile (ICP) ​
(18:54) Go-to-market experiments: ICP variants, pain points, and channels ​
(23:00) Early-team blueprint: engineering-heavy, founders run sales ​
(24:03) Hardware stance: free IP cameras to simplify one-vendor buying ​
(26:01) Biggest tech hurdle: supporting thousands of camera brands & configs ​
(27:00) Sales challenge: outbound fatigue forces novel GTM motions ​
(28:55) Future vision: each camera becomes an autonomous AI agent with a "job" ​
(30:25) Key AI unlock: massive context windows enabling flow-state reasoning ​
(32:14) Rapid-fire round

--------
Where to find Rish Gupta: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/profilerish/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Alex Levin is the cofounder and CEO of Regal, a platform for AI phone agents. They've raised $82M from amazing investors such as Emergence Capital.

Alex's favorite book: The PayPal Wars (Author: Eric M. Jackson)

(00:01) Introduction
(02:37) Evolution of customer contact tools and legacy players
(06:02) Launching Regal: Origin story and early challenges
(08:41) MVP strategy and problems worth solving
(11:46) Lessons from 0 to 10 customers: Growth mistakes and hiring
(16:13) Ideal early-stage team construction and hiring philosophy
(19:06) Sequencing hires as company scales
(20:58) What makes a good investor and how to leverage them
(25:42) Best and worst experiments while building Regal
(29:04) Internal use of AI at Regal across teams
(31:49) The future of AI phone agents and near-term blockers
(34:13) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Alex Levin: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlevin1/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Colin Zima is the cofounder and CEO of Omni, a data platform that combines the consistency of a shared data model with the speed and freedom of SQL. They recently raised their $69M Series B led by ICONIQ Growth. He was previously the Chief Analytics Officer at Looker.

Colin's favorite book: Blink (Author: Malcolm Gladwell)

(00:01) Introduction
(01:10) What Is a Data Model and Why It Matters
(03:27) Gaps in the Modern Data Stack
(05:38) The Staying Power of SQL
(07:29) Origin Story: Why Omni Was Created
(10:13) Lessons from Building the MVP
(12:48) Go-to-Market Insights: Zero to Ten Customers
(16:02) Founder-Led Sales and Marketing Tactics
(18:58) Company Building: Recruiting and Product Challenges
(21:34) Product Positioning in a Crowded Market
(23:26) Design Philosophy in Enterprise Software
(28:21) Omni's Tech Stack and Development Strategy
(28:57) Real-World Use of AI Inside the Company
(31:01) Future of Data Tooling and Role of AI
(33:49) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Colin Zima: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinzima/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Alvaro Morales is the cofounder and CEO of Orb, a usage-based billing product for modern software companies. They've raised $44M to date from amazing investors such as Mayfield, Menlo Ventures, and Greylock. 

Alvaro's favorite book: Conversation in the Cathedral (Author: Mario Vargas Llosa)

(00:01) Introduction 
(00:35) What is Usage-Based Billing?
(02:27) Challenges in Metering Usage
(04:14) Examples of Consumption-Based Products
(05:49) Tools for Usage Metering and Billing
(09:08) Founding Story and Validation of Orb
(12:11) Building the MVP for a Billing System
(14:48) Acquiring the First 10 Customers
(18:33) Scaling Sales & Marketing After Initial Traction
(21:09) Building the Team & Ideal Candidate Profile
(23:26) Technology Stack Behind Orb
(25:55) Real-Time Analytics vs Streaming for Billing
(27:18) Other Key Components of Orb's Solution
(28:38) Why Incumbents Haven’t Solved This Problem
(31:09) How Orb Uses AI Internally
(32:53) Most Exciting AI Advancements for the Future
(34:30) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Alvaro Morales: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvaro-morales/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Jay Madheswaran is the cofounder and CEO of Eve, a legal AI platform for plaintiff law firms. They recently raised their $47M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, and Menlo Ventures. He was previously a partner at Lightspeed and the first engineer at Rubrik.

Jay's favorite book: The Truth Detector (Author: Jack Schafer)

(00:01) Introduction
(00:44) Overview of Legal AI and Industry Impact
(03:53) Daily Operations in Plaintiff Law Firms
(05:49) Identifying and Launching Eve's MVP
(08:58) Framework for Building an Effective MVP
(12:02) Acquiring Early Customers (Zero to Ten)
(14:20) Scaling Beyond Early Customers: Growth Strategies
(16:08) Encouraging Word-of-Mouth and Inbound Growth
(18:21) Product Development and Customer Feedback Loops
(20:27) Eve's Technology Stack and Internal AI Usage
(22:16) Team Structure and Leadership Development
(24:20) Role and Impact of Designers in Early Startups
(27:15) Future Trends in Legal AI: Consolidation vs. Specialization
(30:29) Exciting AI Advancements Relevant to Eve
(31:58) Rapid Fire Questions

--------
Where to find Jay Madheswaran: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayanth1/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Anant Bhardwaj is the founder and CEO of Instabase, an AI-native unstructured data platform. They've raised $322M in funding to date from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, and Index Ventures. He did his masters from Stanford and PhD from MIT. 

Anant's favorite book: The Singularity Is Near (Author: Ray Kurzweil)

(00:07) Defining Unstructured Data
(01:18) The Growth of Unstructured Data and Its Challenges
(02:05) Evolution of Tools for Analyzing Unstructured Data
(04:25) How Large Language Models (LLMs) Changed Data Processing
(05:27) Do We Still Need ETL in the LLM Era?
(06:05) Structured Queries vs. Direct Unstructured Querying
(08:22) Applying LLMs in Enterprise Settings
(09:34) Ensuring Accuracy in AI-Driven Data Analysis
(11:29) SQL vs. AI-Driven Queries in Business Use Cases
(13:48) Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for Enterprise AI
(15:02) The Founding of Instabase and Its Early Vision
(19:03) Building the MVP of Instabase
(22:52) First 10 Customers: Lessons from Early Sales
(26:01) Scaling Customer Acquisition: Experiments and Failures
(30:35) When to Hire a Sales Team: Key Lessons
(33:52) AI Adoption at Instabase for Internal Productivity
(37:48) The Technology Stack Behind Instabase
(42:36) Transition from OS-Based Architecture to LLM-Based System
(43:45) Rapid Fire Questions

--------
Where to find Anant Bhardwaj: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anantpb/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Malte Kosub is the cofounder and CEO of Parloa, an AI agent platform for customer service. They raised their $66M Series B led by Altimeter.

Malte's favorite book: The Qualified Sales Leader (Author: John McMahon)

(00:01) Introduction
(00:26) Overview of AI in Customer Support
(01:33) The Current Landscape of AI Agents
(02:46) Enterprise Adoption of AI Agents
(04:16) The Founding Story of Parloa
(06:25) Deciding What Goes into V1 of a Product
(07:56) Achieving 99.9999% Accuracy in AI Agents
(09:29) How to Identify Customer Needs for AI Products
(10:55) Scaling from Early Customers to the Next 10
(12:41) Growth Experiments: What Worked and What Didn’t
(14:42) Current State of Parloa: Capabilities and Scale
(16:36) Structuring Teams for AI-First Companies
(18:49) Technology Stack and Internal AI Use Cases
(21:29) How to Pitch an AI Product to Enterprises
(23:32) Essential Tools Used Inside the Company
(25:41) AI’s Role in Daily Life and Workflows
(27:54) The Future of AI Agents in Customer Support
(28:37) Can AI Agents Fully Replace Human Agents?
(29:05) Exciting AI Advancements Impacting Parloa
(30:06) Rapid Fire Round

--------
Where to find Malte Kosub: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maltekosub/

--------
Where to find Prateek Joshi: 

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com 
Website: https://prateekj.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi