8Spotlight

"Can something artificial create something real?" This is one of the questions we tackle in this poignant episode of 8Spotlight with Dorothy Li, the co-founder of RealRoots. A Y Combinator–backed company growing at lightning speed, RealRoots is on a mission to help women form genuine friendships in a world that often makes that harder than ever.

RealRoots started with a simple but profound realization: women experience constant disruption in their social circle. From moving cities and changing jobs to marriage, motherhood, and beyond, maintaining deep connections has become an uphill battle.

Dorothy and her team built an AI-powered matching engine that helps women reconnect, rebuild, and root themselves in authentic friendships. This episode is for anyone who ever struggled to make friends as an adult, or wondered where technology fits in our most human experiences...you might leave more hopeful than you started.

In this episode of 8Spotlight, we sit down with Noah Palansky, co-founder of Taiv, the company turning everyday TVs in restaurants, gyms, and retail spaces into dynamic, revenue-generating media networks.

Since its early days in Y Combinator, Taiv has grown rapidly: now with more than 3,000 signed partners and a freshly closed Series A led by IDC Ventures. Noah takes us behind the scenes of that growth, sharing how Taiv built and scaled a product that works for business owners, advertisers, and consumers alike.

For anyone interested in startups, media, or the future of advertising, this conversation offers a candid look at what it means to build a category-defining company from the ground up.

8Spotlight is brought to you by Eight Capital, a pre–Demo Day YC fund with a portfolio of 200+ companies. Each episode shines a light on the founders and startups shaping the future.

In the debut episode of 8Spotlight, we sit down with Josh Gardner, co-founder of Verata, to explore his journey from early career insights to building a YC-backed company tackling big problems in private equity platforms. Josh shares the pivotal moments (I believe the exact words used in this episode are "pivot hell"), tough decisions, and lessons learned along the road to PMF, offering a candid look at what it really takes to turn an idea into impact.