What comes after ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini?

A founder who sold an AI company to Microsoft for $160 million just told us that LLMs are heading toward a dead end. And he's betting his next company on what comes after.

On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Sam Pasupalak, Co-Founder & CEO of Skyfall AI, sits down with host Boris Epstein to discuss what a post-LLM world looks like. Sam believes LLMs will become the low-level execution layer underneath something much more powerful: Enterprise World Models. 

In this conversation, Sam explains:

• The two research breakthroughs that made ChatGPT inevitable

• A simple analogy that exposes why LLMs are fundamentally limited

• What world models are and how they differ technologically from LLMs

• What a business simulation video game revealed about LLMs than no benchmark could

• Why Sam thinks humans should eventually be freed from operational work

• How Skyfall plans to acquire and autonomously operate businesses

• Why an AI CEO is much harder to build than an AI software engineer

and

• Why Sam is hiring hungry researchers for Skyfall and not established AI stars

The thing that WILL stick with you is how calmly Sam walks you through what it actually looks like to hand the keys of a real business to an algorithm. Like, someone who's already seen the next wave forming and is just waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up.

Chapters

00:00 Preview of the episode

01:00 Introductions

03:23 Building AI Before AI Was Cool

06:37 Did Sam Predict Today's AI Boom?

10:01 Was AI Just Another Bubble?

13:46 Are We at Peak LLM?

17:53 "Smart Soccer Analyst"

21:32 What Is an Enterprise World Model?

26:06 The Beginning of the End for LLMs

28:48 Skyfall's Bet: The Autonomous Enterprise

34:33 Putting Money Where (World) Models Are

38:45 What Happens to the Human CEO?

41:40 Hiring for Hunger, not Hype

44:58 Bold Prediction: AI in Politics by 2050?

47:14 The Future of Autonomous Enterprises

Quotes

• "When I sold my company to Microsoft, I was like, 'I'm never gonna do a technology-first company again.' I promised myself that." - Sam Pasupalak (10:54)

• "LLMs are like a very smart soccer analyst - goes through all the videos about soccer on the internet, reads about everything about soccer on the internet, but has never ever played a game of soccer in real life." - Sam Pasupalak (17:53)

• "The Scaling Laws moment for world modeling is coming up in the next 12 to 18 months." - Sam Pasupalak (26:41)

• "Let's say you throw trillions of dollars, increase the context window as much as possible, it will not matter. It doesn't matter." - Sam Pasupalak (28:38)

• "We ran the best LLMs, and we found that LLMs just can never run a theme park. It's impossible." - Sam Pasupalak (36:48)

• "If you want to build a completely autonomous enterprise, you have to buy the enterprise. You have to run all the algorithms across all the systems within the enterprise." - Sam Pasupalak (37:33)

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Links

Sam Pasupalak on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-pasupalak-57b4a220a

Skyfall AI: https://www.skyfall.ai/ (LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/skyfallai)

Sam’s OpenReview Page: https://openreview.net/profile?id=~Sam_Pasupalak1

Maluuba, on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maluuba

Music by Roman Senyk from Pixabay

Producer: Shrikant Joshi (https://42quirks.com)

The easy part of voice AI takes 10 minutes. The hard part is everything that follows.

Voice AI can handle a basic appointment in 10 minutes - but handling tens of millions of calls without failing is the one Brooke Hopkins left Waymo to solve. On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, host Boris Epstein sits down with Brooke Hopkins, ex-Waymo tech lead and founder/CEO of Coval, which recently announced their $28M Series A round. Brooke pointed out the surprising parallels between teaching self-driving cars to navigate real roads and teaching voice agents to handle real conversations at scale. 

During their conversation, Brooke and Boris talked about:

• The hidden architectural flaw causing most voice agents to fail in production.

• The critical maturity milestone conversational AI is facing right now.

• A lesson from driverless cars that changes how teams should judge an agent before launch.

• The reshaping of the workflow that once made sequential engineering feel natural.

• The surprising reason that Coval's veteran Head of Design stopped relying on Figma.

Along the way, she shares how Coval's engineers build software with parallel AI agents, why her Head of Design abandoned Figma for code, and what $28 million in fresh funding means for the next phase of voice AI.

00:00 Preview of the Episode

00:38 Introducing Brooke Hopkins

01:34 Brooke's Journey From Abu Dhabi To SF

04:44 What Google Assistant And Waymo Had In Common

06:00 3 Layers -- 1 Pattern

08:34 Watching Waymo Grow Up In Public

11:07 Voice AI's "2016 Problem" 

14:58 What "Critical" Really Means For Voice Agents

17:52 Voice Unlocks More Than A Phone Call

21:27 How Coval'S Engineers Build Software

25:00 Measuring Engineering Judgment

29:01 $28M Series A! What's Next?!

31:01 A Bold Prediction For 2027

• "Anyone can build a voice agent that handles appointments basically in 10 minutes. But to get it to be able to handle tens of millions of calls, the last 20% of edge cases - that is really the crux and the hard part of this product." - Brooke Hopkins (07:12)

• "I would definitely say we're in the 2016 era of self-driving where it feels like you've made this massive progress. [...] But really it's this last 10%, last 5% that's that long tail of issues." - Brooke Hopkins (11:23)

• "Voice AI is the most natural interface to AI. Or conversation in general is the most natural interface to AI." - Brooke Hopkins (17:52)

• "When I started the company, I was delightfully naive. And I think that's a great way to start." - Brooke Hopkins (25:37)

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Twitter www.x.com/1st10engineers

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Brooke Hopkins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bnhop/

Coval AI: https://www.coval.ai

Music by Roman Senyk from Pixabay

Producer: Shrikant Joshi (42quirks.com)

An Amazon VP who helped build Prime Video from a team of six is now telling people inside the FAANGs to seriously consider leaving... On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Boris Epstein sits down with Ethan Evans, former VP at Amazon, to talk about the conventional wisdom around AI, management, and career growth and how it may all be backwards. Ethan spent over 15 years at Amazon - rising from engineering manager to VP, launching Prime Video, the Amazon AppStore, and Prime Gaming. He retired in 2020 to coach the next generation of leaders through his "Level Up" community. Tune in to hear them discuss:The Illusion of Efficiency: The assumption that AI-driven productivity means fewer managers has run headfirst into a very different realityThe New Fiefdom Bottleneck: AI has accelerated individual productivity but ONE bottleneck is choking the market agility of AI tools.The "Reverse Centaur" Danger: Artificial intelligence is leaving top-tier ICs feeling overworked rather than liberated. Riding the Wrong Tide: A blunt, numbers-based question Ethan uses to tell people whether it's time to leave their companyThe Coming Cleansing: One of AI's longest-standing believers still thinks "Winter is coming..."Ethan spent fifteen years riding a wave that lifted an entire generation of Amazon careers along with his own. Now he's doing the math, out loud, for anyone still waiting for the water to rise again. Whether you're an engineer, founder, hiring manager or executive navigating the AI era, Ethan's sharp insights are definitely the candid look you need into where technology careers (and the companies behind them) may be heading next.Chapters00:00 Preview: A Prediction That Challenges AI00:51 Introducing Ethan Evans04:04 A Blind Job Offer That 'Unboxed' Amazon08:12 Amazon's 700 VPs (Who Are Actually CEOs)10:08 "Terminal Status" Versus The "Climbers"13:28 Amazon vs Startups - Hack vs Hustle18:18 Amazon Has Always Been "Relentless"23:50 Is AI Killing The Management Career?27:57 The 24/7 Assembly Line In The New Age31:39 FAANG Employee? Play This Chapter NOW!34:52 Teams of 90 People - Teams of 90 Agents39:29 Is This an AI Bubble?43:13 Who Will Win the AI Revolution?45:23 A Simple Math to Help Plan Your Exit49:21 "Winter Is Definitely Coming BUT..."50:55 Connect With Ethan EvansQuotes:"If one worker now does the work of ten... great! But you have to organize 10 times as much work!" - Ethan Evans (26:22)"The current belief, at least for many mid-to-senior level ICs, is AI has made them more productive, but also more overworked." - Ethan Evans (29:15)"I'm relatively negative on the same large corporations that, frankly, made me successful and wealthy. I'm rooting for those companies because I own their stock, but I'm actually like in this podcast talking myself into some selling!" - Ethan Evans (32:41)"Many of the big companies are in trouble. They are in the IBM position and it's going to be very hard to be nimble into the future." - Ethan Evans (41:22)"Waves sweep deadwood into shore. It's what they do! And I'm not saying be deadwood. I am saying at least be a surfer or a swimmer." - Ethan Evans (48:43)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Ethan Evans on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/Website: https://www.ethanevans.com/Newsletter: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EthanEvansVPEthan Evans AI Announcement Post: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/p/announcing-ethan-evans-aiMusic by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

What do you do when the guy who helped launch GPT-4 (and now leads Google Gemini) tells you that competing with trillion-dollar AI labs is actually the EASY part?!On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Boris Epstein sits down with Logan Kilpatrick, a leader who has been stationed at the absolute epicenter of the Generative AI revolution. Logan Kilpatrick has helped shape the AI tools that millions of developers use every day. And he thinks most founders are thinking about competition completely wrong. Now leading Gemini AI Studio, the Gemini API, and Kaggle as part of Google DeepMind, Logan breaks down why the ground shifting beneath our feet creates unprecedented opportunities for early-stage founders. Tune in to hear them talk about:The Big Lab Paradox: Why competing against elite AI frontier labs is much easier than it appears.The Understanding Boundary: The critical cognitive boundary you shouldn't let AI coding assistants cross.Accidental Research: Everyday software tinkering could be accidental cutting-edge research exploration.An Underdog Story: Logan's "mind-bending" decision to choose Google at the height of OpenAI's momentumPrompting vs Understanding: The difference that will separate good engineers from the great ones.Abundance to Exits: Why AI-powered software creation will unlock a 1000x explosion of new markets and massive startup exits.AI labs may be building the future - but Logan Kilpatrick genuinely believes the biggest winners will be the founders who build on top of them!Chapters00:00 Preview Of The Episode00:48 Introducing Logan Kilpatrick01:52 AI & The 4-Day Work Week Hypothesis 04:09 Why Is Staying On The Frontier SO Hard?*06:22 The Habit That Keeps Logan Ahead of AI09:19 From Apple to OpenAI, via PathAI14:45 Being Inside The Room When ChatGPT Exploded17:04 How to Pick the Right Startup 20:48 What DevRel @ OpenAI Really Looks Like23:10 Should Founders Fear OpenAI and Google?23:56 Competing With Trillion-Dollar AI Labs28:39 Why Logan Left OpenAI for the "Underdog" Google31:43 Inside Google DeepMind's AI Culture36:07 What A Successful Developer Looks Like Today38:38 Logan's Bold Prediction for 202640:12 What To Say When You Connect With LoganQuotes:"I have a hypothesis that actually if everyone was only working four days a week, we would probably have greater AI adoption in the world." - Logan Kilpatrick (02:17)"The delta between engineering work, product work, and research discovery is actually very blurry." - Logan Kilpatrick (04:23)"I'd be really excited to go build a coding startup right now." - Logan Kilpatrick (25:26)"You can outsource intelligence, but you can't outsource your understanding." - Logan Kilpatrick, quoting Andrej Karpathy (36:42)"It's not like, 'Software creating is solved and thus there's no opportunity anymore!' It's actually like, 'Software creating is solved and thus there's a 1000x more opportunity than it was before!'" - Logan Kilpatrick (39:18)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Logan Kilpatrick on:- LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/logankilpatrick/- Twitter/X: https://x.com/officiallogank- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Kilpatrick- GitHub: https://github.com/logankilpatrickMusic by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

The long-trodden path to wealth-creation (through job-security) is completely broken. So, the next generation of elite founders is taking control of their own trajectories in a different way!On this episode of the *1st10 Podcast*, Boris Epstein sits down with Alkis Toutziaridis and Shashi Salavath, the prodigy co-founders of Tacit Intelligence, a stealth AI startup backed by Entrepreneurs First, Berkeley Skydeck, and the OpenAI Startup Accelerator. Tune in to hear them talk about:Alkis' opinion on critical difference between "doing a startup" and "starting a company".Shashi's theory for how he decides which work is worth doing which has nothing to do with salary or prestige.A refreshingly unique (and surprisingly mature) way to think about using AI in your codebase from two young builders.Their mutually-agreed take on why founders should never be in a hurry to hire a salesperson.A framework for thinking about startup valuations or "the Collapse of Terminal Value" as Alkis calls it!A mutually-shared deep optimism about what AI unlocks for human creativity and job creation.From winning national Economics Olympiads and publishing clinical AI research as teenagers, to dropping out of school to build in the relentless San Francisco startup ecosystem, Alkis and Shashi share what it truly takes to pursue outlier greatness.Chapters00:00 Preview: Three Lines That Set the Tone00:48 Introductions and ice-breakers04:03 Alkis and Shashi's Origin Stories 09:26 Of Battery Drain and Michael Jordan14:19 Managing Family Fear and Financial Realities17:32 Joining an Accelerator vs. Going It Alone22:09 The Accelerator Timeline29:16 "Collapse of Terminal Value"32:56 What Is Tacit Intelligence?36:23 When Do They Start Hiring?39:14 On Being AI-Pilled 41:23 Bold Predictions for 2026 43:51 How to Get in Touch with Alkis & ShashiQuotes:"You drain your battery every single day when you're doing a startup!" - Shashi Salavath (09:59)"TL;DR, the reason I'm doing it is for the pursuit of greatness." - Shashi Salavath (10:44)"A very, very small subset of people have the confidence and the delusion - the early-stage delusion - to take the risk to start a company." - Alkis Toutziaridis (13:26)"If we're Mr. Robot, huddled in a corner, hoodies on, just like coding 24/7... there is a mental aspect that needs to be serviced to make this successful." - Shashi Salavath (21:05)"If you're a founder and you can't sell your own product - or you don't learn what's your go-to-market motion and structure - then who's going to do it?" - Alkis Toutziaridis (37:15)"We don't outsource any of our thinking to AI. None of it. We outsource 0% of our thinking to AI." - Shashi Salavath (39:46)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Alkis Toutziaridis on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkistoutzi/Shashi salavath on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/shashi-salavath/Tacit Intelligence: https://www.tacitintelligence.ai/Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

Boris Epstein built the tech-recruiting firm Binc over 19 years and got acquired by Robinhood in 2021. Then, he walked away from all of it...On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, host and founder of 1st10, Boris Epstein, shares the origin story of 1st10 and why he decided to get into the hardest version of Tech Recruiting viz., recruiting for early-stage startups. Tune in to hear Boris share super-valuable insights from the world of early-stage recruiting such as:Why most recruiting firms are optimizing for the wrong thing entirelyWhy the ceiling on the quality of your team is set well before your first engineering hire.Why founders consistently lose top candidates at the offer stage.Why it's a HUGE mistake to rely on the most popular industry compensation databases.What makes early-stage hiring SO "ridiculously hard".What *actually* makes a founder attractive to top engineering talentAlong the way, Boris shares a VERY uncomfortable truth about startups and founders that reveals why the ultimate ceiling of any startup is a very specific skill possessed by its leadership - tune in to find out!Chapters00:00 Episode Preview 00:42 Starting a Recruiting Firm After the Dot-Com Bust02:04 Dropping Recruiting SWAT Teams into Pinterest & Airbnb04:53 The Decision To Walk Away...07:09 The 1st10 Origin Story10:01 How 1st10 Decides Who They Work With11:53 Embedded & Retained Recruiting16:21 5 Startups From The 1st10 Portfolio22:53 "Talent Magnet" Founders And Their Blueprint25:56 3 Recruiting Mistakes Made by Startup Founders32:10 Why IS Early-Stage Hiring "Ridiculously Hard"? 36:32 3 Values That Define How 1st10 Operates39:56 The Truth of Truths For ALL Startup Founders41:28 A 30-Year Vision for the Next Tech Renaissance43:41 Contact Details & ConclusionQuotes:"I watched Stripe go from these two founders building this early team, to now where they're one of the most-storied technology companies in Silicon Valley worth $50 or $100 billion right now. And it all started from the ambition of the founder, the recruiting ability of the founder, and the talent-dense team that they built." - Boris Epstein (09:00)"We've made the decision to work with a fewer number of startups at a deeper level than working with a broader number of startups at a more superficial level. I believe one of the problems with recruiting is that they optimize for the latter." - Boris Epstein (11:53)"You have to be THE ONE for these candidates to want to join you! Not the 'one of many', not 'the ones building in this space'... You have to be THE ONE!" - Boris Epstein (30:19)"The startup's ceiling - from a talent perspective - is the recruiting abilities of the founder." - Boris Epstein (38:04)"Not AI, not technology, not executive assistance, not even third party recruiters - NOTHING will replace the founder's need to invest at that level. And the founders who invest at that level are the ones who build the standout teams." - Boris Epstein (40:42)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Boris Epstein on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/borisepstein/Contact Form: - Founders: https://www.1st10.com/wt-founders- Engineers: https://www.1st10.com/wt-engineersEpisodes Referenced:Alice Zhang - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcejiN-6JOAAshley Pelzel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hyOIi8h95cShashank Chiranewala - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwDaut7XGHcMusic by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

The biggest shift in software isn't AI itself - but the moment software started *talking back*... semantically!On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Boris Epstein sits down with Peter Terrill, former Stripe engineering leader and CTO/Co-founder of Grounded Agents, to unpack the real meaning of "agentic software" in 2026. Peter systematically breaks down the transition from "words-to-JSON" software into fully semantic systems where both the input and the application itself are powered by LLMs and shares his opinion on why the industry may still be underestimating what AI agents can actually do.Tune in to hear them talk about:Why AI agents are not just "better chatbots" - they represent a fundamentally different software architecture.How the role of software engineers is shifting from writing code to reviewing and steering generated systems.How coding agents already produce productivity gains that many teams describe as transformational.Why enterprise AI adoption will be constrained mostly by trust, privacy, and security.Why the companies winning in AI are often the ones most willing to rethink old assumptions about software structure.This episode is a rare look at the bleeding edge of AI-native software engineering from someone who is *actively* building it!Chapters00:00 - Episode Preview 00:40 - Introducing... Peter Terrill!02:10 - Peter's Entrepreneurial Instinct04:30 - How Peter Spots Major Tech Shifts Early07:47 - The 20-Year-Old (Prescient) AI Textbook10:05 - The Framework: Tools vs. Applications13:40 - End of The "Words-to-JSON" Era17:28 - Where Agents Should NEVER Be Used20:11 - What It Really Means To Be "AI-Pilled"25:57 - Who Thrives Inside Grounded Agents29:32 - What You'd Actually Build at Grounded Agents32:51 - Peter's Bold Prediction For AI Agents in 202635:51 - Where to Find Peter and What to SayQuotes:"I think of LLMs as a tool in some ways, and then agents are applications - they're software applications!" - Peter Terrill (10:23)"You're not looking for files anymore. You're reviewing the files that already changed." - Peter Terrill (23:48)"Seven people coding in this environment versus seven people building a Ruby on Rails app in 2015 - it's a different scale of change and process!" - Peter Terrill (25:08)"I'm not sitting here with a secret playbook that I'm interviewing people to see if they get the right answer! We're hiring people to figure out the answer with us!" - Peter Terrill (31:12)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Peter Terrill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterterrill/Grounded Agents: https://www.groundedagents.ai/Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

Alex Vogenthaler built a billion-dollar product at Google, ran the P&L for 93% of Stripe's revenue and then... simply walked away from it all because he wanted to build the exact AI tool that could improve his job!On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Boris sits down with Alex Vogenthaler, Co-Founder and CEO of Grounded Agents. Alex's career is fascinating - it begins with NAND gates and research assistance for policy papers for the Fed and reaches the operator's seat at two of the most admired companies in the world, and then takes an abrupt left turn into the founding of Grounded Agents - a stealth AI startup tackling a class of problems most companies have simply accepted as "unsolvable.".Tune in to hear them talk about:What made Stripe exceptional The traditional career advantage signal rapidly losing relevanceSolving "Big company stuff" (i.e., enterprise dysfunction) using the right AI architectureThe real bottleneck in companies - Invisible Coordination FailureA historical parallel of the current agent ecosystem's inflection point.The importance of ability to operate in genuine open-ended ambiguity over "pedigree".Alex breaks down how the rise of agentic AI is reshaping not just individual productivity, but the very structure of organizations. So, if you think AI is just about copilots and productivity boosts, this episode will force you to rethink the game entirely. Chapters00:00 Teaser and Introductions01:46 From NAND Gates to the Fed to Google06:51 Why the Old Career Advice Is Breaking11:23 The Hidden Dysfunction Inside Enterprises17:28 What Grounded Agents Is Actually Solving24:55 The Past, Present, and (Possible) Future of Agents32:15 A Peek Behind The Grounded Agents Curtain36:19 The Engineer Profile Alex Is Actually Hiring38:47 "You Will Get Left Behind"Quotes:"Everything you've learned in school is going to be completely outdated in three years." - Alex Vogenthaler (08:01)"I don't think anyone cares about the brand on the resume. What people care about is, 'Have you built agents?'" - Alex Vogenthaler (09:27)"Stripe is nice to people... but they're super-freaking ruthless about the ideas." - Alex Vogenthaler (12:39)"I just felt compelled to go bring this thing into existence - and that's what we're doing!" - Alex Vogenthaler (20:43)"Everything that needs to get built is getting built... you just don't know which 10% matters." (29:10) "It's like if you're only working on mainframe software in 1999. [...] You just gotta be on board or you're gonna get left behind." - Alex Vogenthaler (38:47)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Alex Vogenthaler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexvogenthaler/Grounded Agents: https://www.groundedagents.ai/:Grounded Agents on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/108753115Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

A new class of AI-native startups is accelerating at a pace that feels unnatural, while SaaS companies that looked "perfect" two years ago are suddenly stuck… On this episode of the 1st 10 Podcast, Luke Beseda goes into detail about why the traditional logic of startup hiring - build headcount, develop junior talent, scale the pipeline - has been quietly dismantled by AI. Luke is Partner, Talent Infrastructure at Lightspeed Venture Partners and he anchors Lightspeed's Launch Program for seed-stage founders. He has spent over a decade supporting hundreds of founders from pre-incorporation through pre-IPO. Tune in to hear Boris and Luke discuss:Why the "safe middle" for startups is disappearingHow and why hiring strategies are quietly excluding early-career talentWhy venture is becoming a "barbell game"Why the "headcount" as a metric of success is deadONE crucial mistake that locks a founding team's ceiling permanentlyIf you're building, hiring, or trying to break into startups, this episode is the new baseline you need to learn and incorporate very quickly into your own journey!Chapters00:00 Episode preview and Introductions03:46 The "Dystopian" Phase of AI?09:48 What Lightspeed Actually Does11:24 A Tale of Two Startup Worlds16:04 The Lightspeed Launch Program19:49 The Founder Attribute Nobody Talks About25:04 Collapse of the Entry-Level Pipeline29:05 Startups Can't Afford to "Develop Talent" Anymore32:11 New Comp Strategy: Fewer People, More Equity!34:19 What Winning Early Teams Look Like Today37:12 Rapidfire Round: The Early-Team Blueprint44:31 Luke's Bold Predictions for 202646:38 AI + Hardware = Real Robots??Quotes:"If you're not AI-native, you're in dystopian land." - Luke Beseda (11:24) "Being a little more junior and not having preset notions of how things are done, how an industry can move, what you can build - is actually an advantage to a large extent." - Luke Beseda (16:54)"That ability to learn things and do things really quickly is the make-or-break skill set for any founder." - Luke Beseda (19:35)"Very few of our companies - and the ones outside our portfolio - are prioritizing fresh-grad junior hires in the same way, because the tooling's already gotten so good that it can do a lot of this junior-level work for you, in almost any function." - Luke Beseda (25:04)"It's both easier to be a founder and much harder to be a founder than ever." - Luke Beseda (33:59)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Luke Beseda on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbeseda/Luke’s Official Bio on Lightspeed Venture Partners: https://lsvp.com/team-member/luke-beseda/Launch - Lightspeed Venture Partners: https://lsvp.com/launch/Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi

Almost every founder is hunting the exact same 5000 people. And most of them are losing without even knowing it?On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Samantha Price breaks down the uncomfortable reality of early-stage hiring: it's not meritocratic, it's not efficient, and it's definitely not passive.Samantha Price is the Founding Talent Partner at Audacious Ventures and she has spent 15 years in the trenches of engineering recruitment - scaling teams at Intercom and OneLogin. and now embedding herself inside seed-stage startups to do the actual work of team-building. Tune in to hear them talk about:The secret scoreboard most founders never see.A three-part formula that most founders skip entirely.Why most founders avoid the most prestigious engineering resumes. 🚩The cruel paradox in Silicon Valley junior employees encounter when 'graduating' to senior leadership.The popular hiring ritual costing seed companies $15K a pop.Together, Boris and Samantha offer a ground-level view of startup hiring in 2026: aggressive, asymmetric, and brutally competitive.Chapters00:00 Introductions02:51 Fight Harder Than Your Recruiter06:00 Candidates Don't Know What They Want10:24 Venture Talent's "Ivory Tower" 18:11 The "5,000 Engineer" Bottleneck20:13 FAANG Isn't Enough Anymore21:47 "Force-of-Nature" Founders24:09 The Perfect Early Engineer Profile27:14 The 55% Comp Spike 31:11 "Excitement Convergence"37:30 Work-Trials Are A Trap40:19 Samantha's Predictions for 202643:05 A Paradox And A ConclusionQuotes:"You don't get the team you deserve. You get the team that you fight for!" - Samantha Price (02:40)"We have companies offering $250K to new grads and 1% of the business." - Samantha Price (27:14)"Everything dies at seed! You have a great couple of meetings and then the candidate doesn't hear back from you for six days? That's death at our stage." - Samantha Price (34:55)"On one hand, we're telling these kids, 'Go all in. Go 9-9-6. Be obsessed.' But then, on the other side, when you become an executive, you better show that you have personal growth too!" - Samantha Price (43:27)Follow:Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Samantha Price on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-price-5b453532/Audacioius Ventures: https://www.audacious.coSamantha on X/Twitter: https://x.com/hellospriceSamantha’s Blog Post on “Timing Your Offer: https://www.audacious.co/thoughts/timing-your-offer-rightMusic by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi