First Commit

This week’s guests are Henry and Ani, co-founders of Smithery. Smithery is building the marketplace and runtime for MCP, making it easier for developers to distribute, discover, and monetize tools in the emerging agent ecosystem. 

 Smithery provides a platform to connect your repo, integrate with CI/CD, and handle hosting for servers seamlessly. MCP shines when agents become more general, but it only scales if demand grows for more connections between tools and systems. Drawing from their experiences at Browserbase, Whatnot, and prior AI startups, Ani and Henry saw the need for standardization across the agent stack and set out to build the distribution and trust layer for MCP. 

We cover what early traction they’re seeing from developers, how they’re approaching payments and identity to reduce configuration friction, and what the broader shift toward open, composable AI infrastructure means for the future of agents. 

Episode chapters:

1.  1:51 — Getting into AI
2.  5:30 — The Origin of Smithery
3.  7:40 — Building the Supply Side
4.  9:10 — Why Smithery Is the Easiest Way to Discover MCPs
5.  13:30 — Agent Authentication and Identity
6.  17:08 — The Most Popular MCPs
7.  19:50 — MCP and the Principle of Separation of Concerns
8.  22:50 — How AI Is Being Used Today
9.  25:57 — Defining Success as Founders 
10. 31:45 — Quire Fire Round

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 Dean Leitersdorf, CEO of Decart. Decart is a vertically integrated AI research lab building some of the world’s most advanced audio and video models, including Mirage, a real-time generative video system where users can transform themselves or their environments instantly.

We dive into Dean’s path from finishing his PhD in computer science at 21 to founding Decart with the ambition of creating a true “before-and-after” company in AI. We cover how Decart evolved from GPU optimization to leading-edge video models, why Mirage has attracted massive adoption in advertising and ecommerce, and what it means to build entirely new consumer experiences on the internet. We also discuss the broader enterprise interest in real-time video, how Decart balances continuous consumer iteration with lab-first research, and why Dean believes this is one of the few moments in history where founders can truly build trillion-dollar businesses.

Episode Chapters: 

• 2:10 — From Israel to Palo Alto
• 4:22 — What Dean is running toward
• 6:15 — Building for the future of AI
• 9:40 — How people use Decart
• 14:05 — Building a model from scratch
• 19:08 — Who adopts these models first
• 24:05 — Decart’s focus areas
• 27:06 — Attracting world-class talent
• 30:00 — Choosing to integrate or partner
• 34:04 — Thinking about consumer impact
• 39:38 — Quick fire round

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 guests are Samir and Kunal from Farsight. Farsight is transforming how financial firms operate by automating the most time-consuming parts of dealmaking, from drafting pitch decks to generating investment insights, in seconds instead of weeks.

We dive into Samir’s journey from Wall Street to building Farsight, and why AI is reshaping the workflows at the heart of finance. We cover how power users are creating entire pitchbooks in minutes, how firms leveraging Farsight are winning more deals and sharpening pricing strategies, and why owning the full workflow is the key to lasting advantage. We also discuss their approach to high-sensitivity use cases, where models are deployed directly into customer environments and tuned for bespoke needs.

Episode Chapters:

1. 2:02 - CS at MIT
2. 5:30 - The catalyzing factor
3. 10:36 - Agents to automate financial services
4. 13:20 - Your new PE analyst
5. 16:30 - Owning the workflow
6. 19:25 - Selling to banks 
7. 21:45 - Build vs buy
8. 25:20 - Foundation models & frameworks
9. 31:27 - Becoming a manager
10. 34:10 - Fundraising advice
11. 36:40 - Augmenting junior analysts
12. 41:00 - How AI teaches us to work 
13. 42:25 - 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 Jordan Dearsley, CEO of Vapi. Vapi enables enterprises to deploy humanlike voice agents in minutes. Whether you are building a new voice product or managing millions of calls, Vapi’s infrastructure and flexible APIs make it simple and reliable.

We explore why Waterloo continues to produce world-class engineers and founders, Jordan’s journey from building calendar apps and AI therapy tools to leading Vapi, and why enterprises are turning to voice AI to save engineering time and resources. We also cover the toughest technical challenges including latency, tool calls, determinism, and multi state environments, and why generative voice systems require constant tuning and forward deployed models rather than one size fits all solutions.

Episode Chapters:

1. 2:10 - The MIT of Canada
2. 4:03 - Pivoting 10+ times
3. 6:00 - Why voice AI
4. 11:07 - A faster path to production
5. 12:05 - Voice challenges from enterprises
6. 15:05 - Why stay horizontal
7. 17:20 - Actively moving away from being an AI BPO
8. 19:45 - Forward deployed engineers
9. 21:40 - From scoping to production
10. 22:40 - Recruiting as an early stage startup
11. 26:05 - ElevenLabs leading the model pack
12. 29:00 - Distribution & enterprise integrations
13. 32:35 - 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 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.