This week’s guest is Brooke Hopkins, Founder of Coval, a company building automated testing infrastructure for AI agents starting with voice and chat assistants. 

We unpack her journey from studying in Abu Dhabi to leading simulation infrastructure at Waymo, where she helped ensure autonomous vehicles could operate safely at scale. Brooke shares how that experience shaped Coval’s approach to agent evaluation, why voice is the hardest modality to test, and what it means to simulate human-to-agent interactions in a way that actually reflects user intent.

Episode Chapters:

1. 1:54 - Abu Dhabi for college
2. 4:06 - Searching for engineering challenges
3. 5:08 - Joining Waymo
4. 9:00 - Scaling simulations
5. 10:17 - Balancing cost, latency, and signal
6. 14:40 - Starting with voice
7. 18:16 - Building evals
8. 23:44 - Persona surprises
9. 26:50 - MCP 
10. 27:15 - AI operating system for conversational workflows
11. 32:28 - Voice to voice 
12. 35:55 - Quick fire round

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week’s guest is Christopher Chedeau, better known as Vjeux, Front-End Engineer at Meta and the mind behind React Native, Prettier, Excalidraw, and more.

We unpack his journey from modding Warcraft at 13 to shaping some of the most widely used developer tools in the world. Christopher shares his thoughts on why React took off, how side projects become developer staples, and what AI means for the future of software creation.

Episode Chapters:

1. 1:55 - Christopher aka Vjeux
2. 2:55 - Learning to code
3. 6:30 - Programming in France
4. 8:53 - Open sourcing React
5. 13:01 - Moving to Facebook
6. 15:25 - The framework wars
7. 18:25 - The React community
8. 22:40 - AI <> React
9. 26:30 - What's next for Vjeux?
10. 29:46 - Active procrastination leading to virality
11. 32:42 - Future of whiteboarding 
12. 37:26 - Quick fire round

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week’s guest is Karan Vaidya, Co-Founder and CTO of Composio, a platform enabling AI agents to connect with hundreds of tools and take autonomous actions to streamline workflows. 

We dive into his journey building “Devin” for integrations, why the rise of AI is creating demand for thousands of application connectors, how 90% of Composio’s use cases today are agent-driven, and the role early product virality played in their traction. 

Episode Chapters:

1.  2:00 – Founding with a friend (of 13 years)
2.  3:35 – Evolution of integrations
3.  6:50 – Lightbulb moment
4.  9:20 – Pivoting Composio
5.  12:40 – Agentic workflows
6.  14:30 – Why Composio?
7.  16:47 – Winning developers
8.  25:20 – Build vs. buy
9.  26:20 – AI toolset
10.  28:25 – Agentic internet
11.  30:52 – Quick fire round 

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week’s guest is Taranjeet Singh, Founder and CEO of Mem0, a company building the self-improving memory layer for AI agents and LLMs.

The conversation covers his path to founding Mem0, from applying to YC 7x and learning to "think bigger," to identifying a core pain point after launching a viral app in India. Taranjeet breaks down why memory is essential for agents, how Mem0 works across any LLM, and why solving one core problem deeply is a competitive advantage.

He also discusses how to stay lean and ship fast by hiring high-agency contributors.

Episode Chapters:

1. Building startups since 2012 - 1:56
2. Finding PMF in India - 3:59
3. X growth hacks - 7:25
4. Applying to YC - 12:25
5. Why memory? - 15:05
6. Primary use case - 17:21
7. Relevant verticals for memory - 21:57
8. Partnerships - 25:41
9. Lean team & shipping fast - 27:44
10. Future of agent infra - 32:28
11. Quick fire round - 34:07

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week, we’re chatting with Jonathan Baer, Co-Founder and CEO of Overlap. Overlap is building an AI-native video editing platform that helps podcasters and media teams turn long-form content into clips for social media. The product is designed to scale distribution with minimal manual input, making agents feel more like collaborators than tools.

Jonathan shares how Overlap is harnessing video understanding models and advanced reasoning to drive autonomy in editing. We explore what makes video such a challenging medium for AI, why the best outbound strategies still rely on human nuance, and how Overlap is positioning itself as the creative assistant for the next generation of content teams.

Episode Chapters:

1. Post YC updates - 2:18
2. What podcasters want - 6:14
3. Where to post clips - 8:50
4. GTM strategy - 11:03
5. Switching between LLMs - 13:19
6. Customer requests - 16:37
7. Pricing - 19:40
8. How does Overlap land customers - 23:15
9. YC impact - 26:25
10. Future of Overlap - 29:10
11. Quick fire round - 31:57

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week, we are chatting with Daniel Mason, Co-Founder and CEO of Anon. Anon is an integration platform that aims to become the go-to infrastructure layer for the AI-powered internet.

Daniel shares his journey from joining a startup straight out of college to building Anon, highlighting why distribution is often the biggest unlock when building a company. We dive into the evolving and often contradictory landscape of digital identity, how authentication is now split between defensive and offensive strategies, and why the user experience layer is critical for agent-native workflows.

We also explore the tradeoffs between building internal tooling versus using existing systems, and why today’s most successful AI use cases might be limited in number but are incredibly deep. Daniel reflects on how relevant past infrastructure is in a world increasingly shaped by agents

Episode Chapters:

1. Journey to entrepreneurship - 2:00
2. Starting Spring Labs - 5:03
3. Building in a post AI world - 7:27
4. Auth for agents - 10:50
5. Adding integrations - 14:51
6. Controlling how agents work - 18:28
7. Learning from the market - 21:35
8. Deterministic workflows - 25:01
9. How to price - 27:32
10. Perplexity v. Google - 31:42
11. Quick fire round - 32:20

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week we sat down with James Flynn, an investor at Sequoia. James focuses on growth-stage investments for Sequoia and was previously an investor at General Atlantic.  

During the episode, we cover James's journey to Sequoia, highlighting intellectual curiosity and his competitive spirit as key attributes in his path to the firm. The conversation features a number of fascinating perspectives across investing in "daring" companies, including James's take on the relative importance of business model / founder / market in making an investment decision. We also cover how James thinks about absolute valuation as opposed to a multiple, and how he believes junior investors can add value.  

James's energy is infectious and his eloquence and clarity of thought stand out, making the conversation one of our most fascinating yet. 

Episode Chapters:

1. Key personal characteristics - 2:19
2. James's journey post-college - 9:30
3. Breaking in to Sequoia - 12:55
4. Taking the shot - 13:55 
5. Underwriting thoughts - numbers support the story - 21:33
6. Sequoia's singular KPI - 27:45
7. How junior investors can add value - 30:10
8. Absolute valuation matters - 35:31 
9. James's areas of focus - 38:32 
10. Implications on education - 41:12
11. Quick fire round - 43:26

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week, we have Rahul Sonwalkar, Founder and CEO of Julius, on the show. Julius is your AI Data Scientist, where users can quickly analyze, visualize, and transform data.

Rahul covers his journey from traveling across the country to hackathons in college, the importance of not being afraid of failing as a founder, how Rahul seeks out mentors, the four key ways Julius delivers value, and how Julius continues to add AI to data analysis.

We also cover the decision to start selling bottoms up, how that enabled revenue in the early days, and how smarter models directly benefit Julius.

Episode Chapters:

1. Undergrad at UT Dallas - 1:47
2. Being okay with being wrong - 4:18
3. Overcoming ego - 7:15
4. The Julius DNA - 9:20
5. Your AI data analyst - 12:15
6. Building trust with Julius - 15:30
7. Maintaining infrastructure - 19:20
8. Building out new features - 22:32
9. Two kinds of AI startups - 27:13
10. The next wave of SEO - 29:07
11. Assessing talent - 32:12 
12. Quick fire round - 33:26

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week, we have Trey Holterman, Co-Founder and CEO of Tennr, on the show. Tennr automates manual tasks in healthcare operations using a proprietary LLM and has raised over $61 million in VC funding from Lightspeed, a16z, Y Combinator, and others. 

Trey covers his journey from captaining the Stanford rowing team to navigating improv comedy and building Tennr. We dive into how Tennr defines success through improved patient experience and why hard problems attract great engineers.

Trey also unpacks why his team avoids buzzwords like “AI”, despite having a clear real-world application of a LLM.

Episode Chapters:

1. How rowing influenced Trey - 2:33
2. Building leadership skills - 4:15
3. Dabbling in standup comedy - 8:04
4. Tennr's founding story - 10:10
5. How Tennr delivers ROI to customers - 13:25
6. Hard problems attract great engineers - 17:03
7. RaeLM (proprietary vision model) - 22:06
8. Positioning as Healthcare Cowboys - 26:43
9. Summoning God through a machine - 31:14
10. The future patient journey - 34:01
11. Quick fire round - 41:47

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.

This week, we are chatting with Matan Lamdan, a cloud infra investor at CRV. Matan started his career as an officer in Unit 8200, the security unit of the IDF, before transitioning to investigative journalism. Now, Matan is a Principal on the infra team at CRV, where he primarily focuses on early-stage security investments. 

During the episode, we discuss the screening process for the IDF and how Matan ended up in the cyber intelligence unit (which is very well known in the valley). We also cover how chance encounters landed Matan in VC, the importance of being in the right networks, and how CRV acts as a thought partner to their founders. Matan also dives into where AI agents will impact security and why CISOs are excited about this opportunity. 

Episode Chapters:

1. Growing up in the US and Israel - 1:52
2. Serving in the IDF - 2:32
3. Transitioning to CRV - 7:41
4. Evaluating a team - 8:40 
5. Sourcing in Israel from SF - 11:40
6. Passing but staying in touch - 13:22
7. Winning deals - 15:47
8. Where Matan spends his time - 18:26
9. AI for pen testing - 24:15
10. If not VC? - 26:50 
11. Quick fire - 28:28

*Episode was recorded pre Wiz acquisition

As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.

This episode is brought to you by Grata, the world's leading deal sourcing platform. Our AI-powered search, investment-grade data, and intuitive workflows give you the edge needed to find and win deals in your industry. Visit grata.com to schedule a demo today.

Fresh out of Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Overlap is an AI-driven app that uses LLMs to curate the best moments from podcast episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every podcast transcript, finds the best parts or parts most relevant to your search, and strings them together to form a new curated stream of content - that is what Overlap does. Podcasts are an exponentially growing source of unique information. Make use of it! Check out Overlap 2.0 on the App Store today.