Mar 27, 2026

What Tesla and SpaceX Teach Founders About Building Hardware | a16z

Ex-Tesla and SpaceX engineers Chandler Luzsicza and Turner Caldwell share the practical lessons they learned about building complex hardware and how they apply them at their own startups. They cover core principles like decision velocity, strategic vertical integration, managing the critical path without creating new bottlenecks, and using aggressive milestones as a forcing function to reveal true priorities. The discussion also delves into the value of a 'factory mindset,' the importance of a rigorous hiring process, and advice for young engineers.

Mar 08, 2026

The most successful AI company you’ve never heard of | Qasar Younis

Qasar Younis, CEO of Applied Intuition, discusses the future of AI, arguing its most significant near-term impact will be in physical industries like farming, mining, and construction. He shares his philosophy on building a company quietly, the importance of early traction, and the core values that drive Applied Intuition, while also offering a nuanced perspective on China's AI capabilities and how to develop leadership taste.

Mar 05, 2026

This Startup Built the Infrastructure Powering Voice AI

In a YC Founder Fireside chat, AssemblyAI founder Dylan Fox discusses his journey from a solo founder in 2017 to leading a major voice AI infrastructure platform. He covers the early challenges, the technological shifts that fueled growth, the development of intelligent, promptable voice models, and the lessons learned in scaling a deep-tech company.

Jan 16, 2026

Lessons from Building Open Source Libraries

Thomas Wolf, co-founder of Hugging Face, discusses his journey from physics to AI, the power of open-source models to accelerate innovation, the practical challenges of productionalizing AI demos, and why the biggest opportunities for founders now lie in the application layer on top of powerful foundation models.

Nov 20, 2025

Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield

Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, shares the product frameworks and leadership principles that guided his success. He delves into concepts like "utility curves" for feature investment, the "owner's delusion" in product design, and why focusing on "comprehension" is often more important than reducing friction. He also introduces powerful mental models for organizational effectiveness, such as combating "hyper-realistic work-like activities" and applying Parkinson's Law to team growth.

Nov 12, 2025

Sim: The Visual, End-to-End Agent Builder

Emir Karabeg, co-founder of Sim, shares the journey of building a visual, end-to-end platform for AI agents. He discusses their pivot from a failed idea, their explosive open-source growth strategy, the philosophy of building an AI-native workflow tool, and the operational culture that took them from a YC batch to 60,000 developers.