Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, discusses how their AI agents are revolutionizing customer service for large enterprises by replacing mundane human labor. He covers their go-to-market strategy, the importance of a hardworking in-office culture, his journey as a second-time founder, and the future of an agentic world where AIs interact on behalf of companies and consumers.
Bob McGrew, an early executive at Palantir and former Chief Research Officer at OpenAI, explains the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) model he helped pioneer. He details its origins, operational structure, and why it has become the dominant strategy for AI agent startups navigating a new market with immense product discovery needs.
Ben Scharfstein from Scale AI and a16z's Joe Schmidt discuss the nuances of enterprise AI adoption, contrasting vertical AI products with custom solutions. They delve into the 'forward-deployed engineering' model as a strategy to build durable moats by solving complex, specific enterprise problems, effectively 'trading margin for moat' in the new AI paradigm.
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.
Leaders from VMware and Cisco share hard-won lessons on navigating disruption, fostering a founder's mindset at scale, and rebuilding for the AI era. They cover GTM strategies for new products, the importance of storytelling as strategy, and why AI represents a 100x shift for infrastructure.
Bret Taylor discusses the AI market's shift to autonomous agents and outcome-based pricing, the future of coding with AI, and strategic advice on GTM, pricing, and where to build in the new AI landscape. He shares career-defining lessons from Google, Facebook, and Salesforce.