Episode 6: Scaling AI Startups and Internet Capital Markets

In Episode 6 of Exponential, Dylan Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Pond, joins us to unpack a fast-emerging frontier: helping early-stage AI startups launch, scale, and find product-market fit through a new kind of internet-native capital platform.

At a time when AI tooling is accelerating and the barriers to launching new products are dropping, Pond is building infrastructure for what comes next — connecting early-stage founders with capital, distribution, and feedback loops in real time.

“Pond is an early-stage AI startup marketplace,” Dylan explained. “We help AI projects scale and get funded. Everything else—DevOps, infra, go-to-market—follows from that.”