Startups & Founders
YC、创始人、一人公司(OPC)
English interviews about starting companies, in Chinese — AI-dubbed in each speaker's own voice, faithful translation only. Y Combinator, Sequoia, founders telling their own story, and the One Person Company — what AI makes possible for a team of one.
Unofficial fan channel · not affiliated with Hyperliquid · AI-dubbed, faithful translation.
Curated. Original-voice Chinese dubs.
60 episodes
This is How Pump.Fun Goes to $100 Billion! | Noah Tweedale
Ran sits down with Noah Tweedale, co-founder of Pump.fun, the launchpad that generated over $1 billion in revenue since January 2024 and drives roughly 40% of Solana's activity. Noah breaks down the $2 billion foundation treasury, the 50% buyback and burn, the 25% token unlock, why the founders stay undoxed, and the plan to turn Pump.fun into a mobile-first social trading app with a stablecoin, perps and prediction markets. All of Pump.fun's major next steps are revealed in this interview...
Peter Steinberger: What Happens When 4.7 Million People Let It Cook
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 had 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.
Didn’t go to college, went to startup school.
Y Combinator’s Startup School is effectively open-sourcing its proprietary playbook, democratizing venture capital wisdom that was previously guarded by elite institutions. This strategic move challenges traditional tier-one VCs while delivering high-production value content, highlighted by an extravagant pyrotechnics budget exceeding one million dollars.
Patrick Collison: Is AI Breaking the Lean Startup Playbook?
In 2009, Patrick and John Collison went to Startup School in Berkeley, got sushi in Potrero Hill afterward, and decided on the walk home to start Stripe. The reasoning, as Patrick remembers it, was that “we might as well because it probably won't be that hard.”
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"
Sam reflects on his time in the first Y Combinator batch in 2005, recalling how Paul Graham's mentorship transformed their startups from seemingly hopeless ventures into ambitious projects with global potential. He discusses how Y Combinator has evolved, fostering more hard tech startups and pushing founders towards greater ambition, while remaining committed to promoting the importance of startups for driving economic progress.
Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup
Sam Alman, co-founder of OpenAI, discusses how the landscape for startups has dramatically shifted over the past decade, with AI's rapid advancements and reduced barriers to entry making it easier for small teams to achieve what once took larger companies much longer. He emphasizes the importance of embracing exponential growth and being prepared to tackle increasingly complex challenges as part of building successful startups in today’s rapidly changing environment.
How I Built It: $12K/Month Micro SaaS
Dimitro, a former backend developer turned solopreneur, built Screenshot One, an API product that automates screenshots for companies of all sizes, achieving $12,000 in monthly revenue through persistence and strategic marketing on platforms like Twitter, Google, Zapier, and YouTube.
CeDeFi: VALR’s Integration of Hyperliquid | ft. Jeff Yan
Welcome to the Valor podcast, where Farzam interviews Jeff Yan, co-founder of Hyperliquid, one of the fastest-growing decentralized trading platforms on blockchains. Jeff shares insights into his values rooted in his immigrant upbringing and how these influence his approach to building Hyperliquid, while also discussing his aspirations for making a meaningful impact through intellectual achievements and value creation.
Zynga Founder: Consumer Is Not Investible Right Now - Thats Why You Should Build It
Mark Pinkinis, founder of Zinga and author of "Life at the Speed of Play," shares his insights on building successful consumer products in an era of AI optimism. Drawing from his experiences founding five companies, including two that went public, Mark discusses the holistic approach to product management and the importance of considering long-term strategy, trust, and first principles across all stages of company growth.
The Story Behind ElevenLabs | Interview with CEO Mati Staniszewski
Marty and Peter, co-founders of 11 Labs, discuss the evolution of voice technology from historical attempts to modern digital synthesizers, envisioning a future where voice becomes a fundamental interface for human-computer interaction, enabling seamless language and cultural immersion. At 11 Labs, their team of non-traditional hires and global talent has grown rapidly since its pre-seed stage, with a focus on accelerating research through direct product feedback to develop advanced voice and image technologies.
Reclaiming the Soul of DeFi: Jeff Yan on Hyperliquid’s Grassroots Revolution at KBW2025
Jeff Yan, founder of Hyperliquid Labs, and Christie Choi, founder of Sky GG and a key validator for the Hyperliquid ecosystem, discuss the unique philosophy behind Hyperliquid's success in DeFi. They highlight how Hyperliquid embodies genuine OG DeFi values, fostering integrity and fairness through transparent governance processes, which have attracted major industry players to support their protocol.
The Bull Case For Hyperliquid w/ Jeff Yan
Welcome to Steady Lads, where Jeff, a special guest and co-founder of Hyperliquid, discusses the current market conditions post-Trump tariff announcements, including Bitcoin and Ethereum's price movements, and shares insights on his conviction regarding Trump's economic policies. The conversation also touches on Hyperliquid’s operations during quiet market periods and their long-term strategic goals.
Il veut devenir le prochain GÉANT de la DeFi ?!🤔 Discussion avec le fondateur de Hyperliquid
Jeff, a former market maker at Hudson River Trading, now leads Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange that has seen exponential growth in trading volume. Despite the challenges of traditional finance, Jeff found success by combining his background in mathematics and computer science to build automated trading strategies and liquidity provision on decentralized platforms.
Vladimir Novakovski: Lighter Bull Thesis For 2026 (What’s Changed)
In this interview from DeFi Slate 2022, Vladimir Novakovski, CEO and founder of Lighter, discusses the growing interest in blockchain technology among traditional financial institutions and highlights Lighter’s unique design, emphasizing its robust security features and escape hatch mechanism. He also delves into the educational role Lighter plays in helping institutions understand the complexities of decentralized finance platforms.
EP-38 Exclusive interview with Hyperliquid founder Jeff: How 11 people built "Binance onchain"?
Jeff, founder of Hyperliquid, shares his journey from studying math and computer science at Harvard to working as a quantitative trader at Hudson River Trading before transitioning fully into the crypto space. Motivated by the collapse of FTX and the need for self-custody and user-friendly decentralized exchanges, Jeff founded Hyperliquid with a vision to revolutionize how people interact with finance, focusing on community-driven ownership rather than traditional venture funding or listing tokens on centralized exchanges.
He Skipped Investors, Skipped the Co-Founder, and Built $9M/yr AI Company | Yasser Elsaid, Chatbase
The interview explores the journey of a solo founder who built Chatbase, an AI-driven chatbot platform, by experimenting with early AI models like Da Vinci 03. Despite initial skepticism from others, he capitalized on his belief in the potential of custom data integration and rode the wave of AI advancements to achieve significant growth, reaching $9 million in annual recurring revenue within three years.
How Anthropic uses Claude in GTM Engineering
This interview transcript showcases how Jared, a startup account executive at Anthropic, leveraged Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, to develop Class—a tool for generating customer emails and managing inboxes more efficiently, significantly reducing his workload and enabling him to focus on higher-level product design. By integrating Claude into his workflow, Jared was able to save several hours daily and transition into a go-to-market architect role, transforming his career trajectory.
The CEO Must Be the Chief AI Officer
Pedro Franchesci, co-founder and CEO of Brex, discusses how his company has integrated AI deeply into its operations, drawing parallels between the early days of electricity and the current landscape of AI. Pedro shares his journey from initial experimentation with GPT-3 during the pandemic to fully embracing agentic loops with tools, emphasizing that good AI products are essentially about empowering human agents rather than replacing them.
Can Bitcoin Save AI From Big Tech? Bittensor Co-Founder Explains
The interview discusses the importance of decentralized AI, highlighting Bittensor as a transparent, co-owned solution that aims to prevent mental biases from centralized AI control. It emphasizes the need for transparency, auditability, and community ownership in AI technologies to ensure a more equitable distribution of digital intelligence and computational power.
Why the Co-Founder of LinkedIn Is Betting on NFTs Again
Reed Hoffman, a long-time believer in cryptocurrency and co-founder of AI companies, discusses his continued focus on the application layer while exploring new areas such as AI and identity management through NFTs. He emphasizes the importance of cryptographic networks for providing provenance, truth, and trust in an era dominated by AI-generated content, particularly in light of concerns like deep fakes.
How to Build a Powerful Cult
In a world flooded with AI-generated content, Lulu Chang Maservi, founder of Rostra and a renowned communications strategist, explains how to stand out by leveraging human stories, conviction, and narrative arcs. She emphasizes that effective communication requires understanding both your own priorities and those of your audience, focusing on the intersection of these circles to craft compelling narratives that resonate with multiple stakeholders.
Emergent: How Six Months of Tinkering Led To A $100M ARR Company
Emergent, one of the fastest-growing AI companies in India, has democratized software development by allowing anyone to build and ship applications without programming knowledge. Founded just nine months ago, Emergent boasts over 8.5 million users across 190 countries and a $100 million annual run rate, aiming to bring the economic benefits of software companies to billions around the world.
How Cursor Trained Composer on Fireworks: Distributed Infrastructure for High-Performance RL
This interview transcript discusses the development and training process of Cursor's new agentic coding model, Composer 2, led by Federico from Cursor and supported by Dima from Fireworks. The conversation delves into why Cursor decided to create its own foundation model, the cost benefits of specializing models for specific tasks, and how fine-tuning models can lead to more effective AI products compared to relying solely on prompt engineering.
How to Start a Cult | Lulu Cheng Meservey
In this interview, Lulu Cheng Missouri, founder of Rostra, discusses the principles behind building a cult-like culture around successful founders, emphasizing the role of the cult leader in setting vision, recruiting early members, and maintaining authenticity. She explores different types of charisma that can make a leader compelling, using examples like Palmer Luckey from Oculus and Scott Wu to illustrate her points.
Stanford AI Club: Chamath on How to Win in the AI Era
Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of AI-native company 8090, shares his unconventional career journey from an immigrant background through executive roles at Facebook and SpaceX, venture capital with Social Capital, to building 8090. Reflecting on his path, Chamath discusses the shift from finite to infinite games, emphasizing the importance of self-motivation and embracing challenges without traditional organizational structures or hierarchies.
Live from LA 26 with Barry Silbert, Founder of Digital Currency Group
In this interview, Barry Silbert reflects on his journey from first hearing about Bitcoin in 2011 to founding DCG and Grayscale, detailing how he saw potential in blockchain technology early on and invested both financially and ideologically. He discusses the evolution of investment vehicles within the crypto space and how they have matured over the years.
I Asked 5 Massively Successful Founders Why They Went Solo
This interview transcript covers various aspects of solo founding, including the importance of human judgment in an AI-driven world (as discussed by Ben from Pulsia) and the benefits of clarity and direct alignment in company culture (as shared by Paul from Browserbase). The conversation also explores the unique perspective of Charles Hudson, an investor on the Solo Founders podcast, highlighting both the advantages and potential challenges of solo founding compared to co-founding.
Sal Ternullo: Why NEAR Remains Extremely Undervalued (Full Thesis)
In recent weeks, Near has seen significant market interest and uptake, particularly in relation to its AI and privacy features, diverging from Bitcoin's performance for the first time in a negative correlation. Sal Telo, co-founder of Sovereign and developer behind Near, discusses how the platform is repositioning itself as a unique asset with strong fundamentals, driven by growing institutional investment and the potential bullish catalyst of the Clarity Act.
What do founders need from investors in the AI era? | Tengbo Li at Web Summit
This panel discussion explores the evolving landscape of venture capital, focusing on whether generalist investors are becoming obsolete as fund sizes bifurcate, with larger funds raising substantial amounts while smaller specialist funds compress. The conversation highlights how platform shifts like AI are driving innovation and creating opportunities for both large and small funds to differentiate themselves by focusing on specific value propositions such as early-stage technical companies or specialized sectors.
The Exact AI Skills This Solo Founder Uses to Build 5 Apps at Once | Josh Pigford
Josh, a solo founder who sold his last startup for $4 million, is now developing at least five AI products in parallel. He uses a combination of tools like Opus, GPT 3.5, and But for Real to build these products quickly, while also managing ADHD-like attention ping-ponging across multiple projects.
Mercor CEO on Why Application Layer Companies Have No Defensibility & Token Spend Exceeds Salaries
In this interview, Brandon Foody, co-founder and CEO of McCor, discusses the challenges and realities of running one of the fastest-growing AI companies valued at over $10 billion. Despite facing a significant hack incident that affected customer relationships and revenue perception, McCor has managed to recover quickly, expanding its ARR by 300 million in just 60 days. Foody also addresses the emerging threat of AI-driven cyber attacks, predicting an increase in AI security engineering tools as companies seek better protection against these new threats.
How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)
Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snap, discusses why building a durable social consumer product is so challenging, citing that distribution remains one of the hardest aspects to master in today’s consumer technology landscape. He explains that Snapchat's success lies in connecting users with their closest friends rather than just having the largest network, and highlights how companies like TikTok and Threads have effectively solved distribution issues through innovative strategies such as heavy investment and leveraging existing platforms.
The Most Intense Workplace Culture in America | The Journey from $0 to $2.6BN Valuation
This interview transcript introduces Corgi Insurance, a highly valued startup co-founded by Nico, whose aggressive and unconventional workplace culture has garnered significant attention. Nico discusses his motivation for success, emphasizing the importance of seeking asymmetric upside in business, and reflects on the role of education and legitimacy in the startup world.
Evan Cheng on Why Sui Will Outlast Every L1
Evan, CEO and co-founder of Sui, discusses his company's focus on building core infrastructure for blockchain technology, emphasizing that while finance currently drives much of the interest in blockchain, tokenization has broader applications. He also explores the trend towards automation and integration with AI, highlighting Sui’s strategy to develop its own products and move up the stack from foundational layer one capabilities.
He Turned $400 Into $2.5M Using AI (No Coding)
John Cheney, founder of the General AI Proficiency Institute (Gen AIPI), transformed his idea into a successful business within a year, generating over $2.5 million in revenue and $1 million in net profit with minimal initial investment. By leveraging no-code tools like Replit and targeting businesses that lacked knowledge about AI, John was able to secure significant clients and scale rapidly without traditional coding skills.
The Co-Founder "Blood Bond" Is a Myth | Michael Grinich, WorkOS
This interview explores the challenges and benefits of solo founding a company, emphasizing the responsibility and learning curve involved. The founder shares personal experiences from starting two companies, highlighting the need for high adaptability and self-reliance in navigating various business domains.
The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew
Bob McGrue, an early engineer at PayPal and recent chief research officer at OpenAI, discusses the rise of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) model in AI startups. This model involves sending technical engineers to customer sites to tailor products to specific needs, driving product discovery and value creation, rather than scaling a one-size-fits-all solution. McGrue explains how this approach emerged from early efforts at Palantee, emphasizing its relevance in the current landscape of AI agent companies.
How To Build A Company With AI From The Ground Up
In this interview, YC partner Diana discusses how AI is transforming startup operations by enabling entirely new capabilities that can replace entire teams or previously impossible feats. She argues that founders should view AI not just as a productivity tool but as the operating system for their company, advocating for closed-loop systems where every process is captured and improved by intelligent agents.
14 Billion dollar AI Ideas YC Is Betting On in 2026
Every three months, Y Combinator publishes the Request for Startups (RFS), a document detailing exactly which billion-dollar companies they want to fund, backed by their history of supporting successful startups like Airbnb and OpenAI. This summer's RFS highlights 14 specific categories, including AI-native service companies, physical infrastructure advancements, and counter-swarm defense systems, signaling the next generation of defining industries where YC believes significant opportunities lie.
The Agent Development Lifecycle: Build, Test, Deploy, Monitor | Interrupt 26
The interview transcript discusses the challenges of building and deploying intelligent agent applications, emphasizing the need for new tools and skills due to the unique nature of handling natural language inputs and outputs. Harrison, co-founder and CEO of LangChain, introduces their approach through a lifecycle that parallels software development but requires more iteration, focusing on recent launches like Deep Agents as part of this evolving process.
If You Don't Understand Funding, You Don't Understand Startups
This interview discusses how founders like Travis Kalanick and Stuart Butterfield often end up with less ownership and control of their companies after venture funding, highlighting the complex dynamics of fundraising. It explains that modern startups can now more easily build profitable businesses without outside investment due to advancements in AI technology, but warns that accepting venture capital comes with commitments to rapid growth and public or private sale outcomes.
How to Build a Self-Improving Company with AI
This interview transcript explores how companies can be reimagined using artificial intelligence (AI) as a core component rather than an add-on tool. The speaker discusses the concept of transforming traditional hierarchical organizational structures into AI-powered systems that self-improve continuously, highlighting examples such as intelligent agents and automated loops for product optimization and customer service improvements.
$1.5B AI Founder: The ONE Rule for Building an AI Startup in 2026
Chris Pedreal, CEO and co-founder of Granola (an AI notepad valued at $1.5 billion), believes that staying close to AI is crucial for innovation. He emphasizes the importance of creating a product that stands out through superior quality and user experience, especially in a crowded market where many solo founders are competing.
Jack Dorsey: Every Company Can Now Be a Mini-AGI
In an interview with Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Block, and Roelof Botha from Square, the conversation delves into rethinking organizational structures through a lens of eliminating hierarchy and integrating AI to enhance communication and decision-making processes within companies like Block. Dorsey discusses how traditional hierarchical models are being transformed by leveraging digital artifacts and AI to model company intelligence, aiming for a more efficient and transparent structure that could significantly impact velocity and strategic execution.
Andrej Karpathy: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering
Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of AI at Tesla, shares his insights on the rapid evolution of language models like LLMs, describing them as a new computing paradigm that shifts programming from explicit rules (software 1.0) to prompting context for agentic responses (software 3.0). He discusses how this shift is transforming development practices, citing examples such as automated OpenClaw installation and image-based menu descriptions generated by Gemini, highlighting the profound impact on traditional software engineering approaches.
NASDAQ Startup Bringing Gold Onchain | Co-founder and CEO of Streamex | DROPS E36
Henry McVey, co-founder and CEO of Stream X, explains that tokenized commodities like GLDY allow for exposure to assets such as gold while offering a 3.5% annual yield in additional gold. Stream X aims to bring traditional commodities into the digital age through tokenization, creating a future where these assets are more accessible and efficient.
Inside YC's AI Playbook
Pete Kurn, a general partner at YC and creator of Optimizely, discusses how YC has integrated AI tools internally to transform their organization into an "AI-native" entity. The journey began about a year ago when the finance team was given control over software workflows through agent infrastructure, leading to a more efficient process where non-technical users could use prompts to encode their own workflows, marking a significant shift from traditional software development methods.
How to Build an Internal AI Agent That Evolves Itself
Ayush, founder of Answer This, details how his two-person company achieved $2M ARR by leveraging a self-extending internal AI operations agent. This agent automates high-volume daily tasks like emails and customer support, and critically, can autonomously code new tools for itself and update its own behavioral instructions based on feedback, effectively evolving its capabilities by learning from the company's database and codebase.
Hyperliquid Founder: Why Crypto Must Fix Finance Before AI Takes Over - Jeff Yan | E159
The interview focuses on Hyperlquid, a blockchain project aiming to become the "internet for money." Founder Jeff Yan emphasizes the company’s role in DeFi and its potential to revolutionize finance through a layer 1 blockchain with an on-chain order book exchange. He also discusses the challenges and responsibilities of generating significant revenue early in the project's lifecycle, highlighting the unique opportunity for early adopters to meaningfully participate in network growth.
Marc Andreessen’s Worldview in 60 Minutes | Live on MTS
In the interview, there is a discussion about AI's increasing role as a superpower with potential for dramatic increases in programmer productivity. The concept of "AI vampires" is introduced, referring to individuals who are heavily reliant on AI but also exhausted due to its demands. There's excitement around the future capabilities AI will offer and the emergence of 'super producers'. A conversation about UFOs and government secrecy follows, questioning why certain materials might be hidden if there's nothing to worry about. The discussion then shifts towards an interesting phenomenon called "anthropic blackmailing," where fears about AI being evil have influenced its development in potentially harmful ways according to a concept known as the 'golden algorithm'. This highlights the irony that those who fear AI could inadvertently contribute to outcomes they dread through their own literature and discussions on potential negative scenarios. The interview also touches upon the concept of 'suicidal empathy', which is related to having empathy without understanding or accepting differences in beliefs, lifestyles, or values among people.
Tokenmaxxing: How Top Builders Use AI To Do The Work Of 400 Engineers
Garry Tan, current head of Y Combinator, discusses his return to building after a 13-year hiatus, having shipped popular open-source projects with over 100,000 GitHub stars while working full-time. Motivated by civic issues like algebra education in public schools, he leveraged powerful "open cloud" and AI tools—likened to a Ferrari that demands a skilled mechanic—to achieve incredible productivity, such as rebuilding his blogging platform, Posterous, in just five days for $200.
They Made $0 for 4 Years. Then Built a $22B Startup | The Kalshi Story
The speaker champions prediction markets, arguing that financial incentives lead to more accurate forecasts than mere opinions. Their company, Kalshi, achieved massive growth and success, including a multi-billion dollar valuation, after boldly suing and winning against their own regulator. This drive is attributed to the founder's background in professional ballet, which instilled extreme discipline and a focus on delayed gratification.
Anthropic's Boris Cherny: Why Coding Is Solved, and What Comes Next
Boris Cherny, creator of "Claude code," discussed its accidental origins in late 2024 at Anthropic Labs, aiming to transcend basic code completion by enabling an agent to write entire codebases. Though initially struggling, Claude code experienced exponential growth starting with Opus 4, and is now credited with reinventing modern software development.
Jeff Yan - High Frequency Crypto Market Making & the Hyperliquid Exchange (S6E2)
My guest this episode is Jeff Yan, founder of Chameleon Trading. Jeff began his career in high frequency trading at Hudson River Trading but soon moved over to the world of crypto where he built one of the largest market making firms in the space. After Jeff gets me up to speed with the basics of high frequency market making, we dive into some of the more esoteric components, particularly with respect to centralized crypto exchanges. These include infrastructure quirks, adversarial algori...
Hyperliquid Founder: How to Win in Crypto (by Building for Users, Not VCs) | E95
Jeff is the Founder of Hyperliquid Labs, the company behind Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual exchange offering best-in-class speed, liquidity, and pricing for crypto traders. Hyperliquid is also one of the most awaited Layer 1s launches and aspires to become the "Amazon Web Services of Liquidity". The protocol is setting a new standard in DeFi by prioritizing users and rejecting traditional VC funding structures. In this episode, we explore: -Who is Jeff? His journey to Hyperliquid Labs -B...
Roy Lee Investigation: The Truth Behind Cluely & InterviewCoder
Today we investigate Roy Lee, co-founder of Cluely & InterviewCoder… stay tuned for a new chapter. Business inquiries: danielmin111@gmail.com Thanks for watching, and subscribe!
State-Of-The-Art Prompting For AI Agents
Discussion about the latest developments in prompting techniques for AI agents and their applications.
Interview with Garry, Michael Truell
Interview with Garry and Michael Truell discussing their experiences and insights in the tech industry.
The Next Chapter for Pump.Fun with Co-Founder Alon
Interview with Alon, Co-Founder of Pump.Fun, discussing the next chapter of their platform and future plans.
Cluely Raises $15 Million From a16z | Roy Lee, Founder & CEO
Roy Lee, Founder & CEO of Cluely, announces their $15M from Andreessen Horowitz to build what they call the most viral AI startup in the world. In this deep dive, we break down their product, business model, fundraising strategy, controversial stunt marketing playbook, and what it means to scale with creator-led growth.
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