Founders Alex and Teddy of Magic Patterns discuss their journey from numerous pivots to building a profitable, $1M ARR AI design tool with a two-person team. They share insights on finding product-market fit by focusing on customer obsession, the technical details of their prompt-to-prototype platform, and their experience in YC.
Augusto Marietti, CEO of Kong, shares his remarkable founder story, from arriving in the US with $600 to building a category-leading API infrastructure company. He details the seven-year struggle of the initial company, Mashape, the critical pivot to open-sourcing their internal API engine which became Kong, and the explosive growth that followed. Marietti also provides his vision for the future, where APIs serve as the essential connectivity layer for a new generation of AI agents, transforming how machines interact with the internet.
Co-founders David Paffenholz and Ishan Gupta share their journey building Juicebox, an AI recruiting platform. They discuss their pivot from a music app to leveraging LLMs for talent search, how they achieved product-market fit, and their vision for AI agents that automate top-of-funnel recruiting.
Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, shares insights on building a successful vertical AI company for the legal industry. He discusses their product strategy, the technical stack designed for a multi-model future, the go-to-market motion for conservative industries, and the challenges of scaling from 10 to 100 people in 13 months.
Garrett Lord, CEO of Handshake, details the company's extraordinary pivot from a college career network to a dominant AI data provider. He explains how they leveraged their proprietary network of 500,000 PhDs and 3 million advanced degree holders to build a business on track to surpass $100 million ARR in its first year by providing high-quality, expert-generated data for training frontier AI models.