Co-host Pratik Desai pulls back the curtain on something he's never talked about publicly — how he went from scribbling a business plan on a bus to Machu Picchu at 2 AM to landing his first contract before he even left Peru. This episode digs into the early chaos of bootstrapping a tech consulting company: figuring out insurance, benefits, quarterly taxes, and all the unglamorous back-office realities that nobody writes down in their business plan.

From there, Pratik walks us through what it actually looks like to get into Techstars — the sub-1% acceptance rate, the intense interview process, and what the program's managing directors are really evaluating when they sit across from you. He shares what day-to-day life in the accelerator looked like, how he balanced active consulting clients with building a product, and what it felt like to be the first founder on stage at demo day in front of a packed house at Google's NYC pier.

And then — the exit. Pratik gets candid about how the landscape shifted, why they made the call they made, and what he'd tell anyone considering applying to an accelerator today. If you're a consultant thinking about making the jump to founder, or just curious what the startup-to-exit journey actually looks like from the inside, this is the episode.

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, and the guys think it has nothing to do with the $40M — it's pure Dr. Evil energy. World domination doesn't come cheap, but apparently it might come with a refund.

The bigger story? Anthropic and OpenAI just launched partner networks for consultants... and then immediately announced they're building their own consulting arms. Cool timing, guys. Chris and Pratik dig into what this actually means for the consulting world, whether the "AI is killing jobs" narrative holds up against what these companies are signaling, and why the gap between a working pilot and a working product is where all the real opportunity lives.

They also get into the honest stuff: what does a sustainable consulting career look like when the tools keep changing? Spoiler — it's less about picking the right platform and more about never being too attached to the last one.

What happens when you lock two AI models in a room with no memory and tell them to talk? Pratik found out — and things got weird fast. We kick off with his deep dive into multi-agent LLMs, complete with unsanctioned starship roleplay, a 150-turn identity crisis, and an accidental recreation of OpenClaw. Then we pivot to a shoe company that pivoted to AI, watched its stock jump 600-700% overnight, and may or may not have a plan. We dig into why that's either genius or tulip-level mania — you decide.

From there, Pratik makes a compelling case for why the future of AI might be a lot of small, culturally-specific models rather than one model to rule them all. Then we get into our new segment, Use Case Bonanza, where we get surprisingly practical: AI as your home repair coach, your sous chef, and your cooking co-pilot. Yes, we talk about dryer vents. Yes, it's actually interesting.

Recorded while Pratik was on a food tour in Toronto (connection permitting lol).

Anthropic keeps shipping, and this week Tik and Chris try to make sense of the pace. They cover managed agents — what they are, who they're actually built for, and whether the cost makes sense for anything beyond a serious build. They also get into the rumored Mythos model, why Anthropic chose a controlled rollout over a public launch, and what Project Glasswing signals about where cybersecurity is headed. The conversation then turns to the partner program and what it really means to add Anthropic to your consulting toolkit. And through all of it, one question keeps coming up: OpenAI has been quiet — suspiciously quiet — and Tik and Chris aren't sure if that means they're falling behind or loading up for something big. If you've been trying to keep up with how fast this space is moving, this is a good episode to start with.

It's Pratik's birthday, and the best gift he gets is being right.

Chris and Pratik kick things off debating AI's growing role in baseball's ball-and-strike review system — robots in the dugout, anyone? — before diving into why they started this podcast in the first place: the belief that AI puts a billion-dollar toolkit in the hands of literally anyone willing to pick it up.

From the rise of the one-person unicorn company to how AI is quietly reshuffling the employer-employee relationship, this episode covers the big picture before getting tactical. Chris used AI to plan a family trip and the itinerary passed the ultimate stress test — the wife test. Pratik approves.

Then the main event: they called it weeks ago, and now it's happening. Claude is throttling usage, Claude Code is hitting credit limits, and a suspiciously "helpful" new credits system showed up in everyone's inbox pre-enabled. Chris and Pratik break down the $20 and $8 pricing story behind how AI companies hooked the world — and why the bill is about to go up one way or another.

The takeaway? Get in now, learn the tools now, so when the pricing rug gets pulled, you'll know if it's worth it.

Oh, and the website is live :)

🎙️ tikandchrispodcast.com

Chris and Pratik break down three bold claims from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's latest keynote — that every company needs an agentic AI strategy, that imagination is the bottleneck (not compute), and that token usage should be a performance metric. They push back on the hype, debate whether small businesses or enterprises stand to gain more from autonomous agents right now, and land on a striking idea from a developer friend: English is the new coding language. The conversation shifts from theory to practice as both hosts share how they're actually using AI at home — from Chris wiring his diabetes sensor into Apple Health through an AI-powered shortcut, to Pratik feeding his entire house (floor plans, HOA bylaws, and all) into Gemini so he can literally talk to his home. If you're wondering what an "agentic strategy" looks like beyond the buzzwords, this is the episode.

Still barely into their podcasting journey - Tik & Chris encounter an unexpected hurdle when the Google AI blocks their AI centric Podcast.

Also this episode:

Tik & Chris discuss access and pricing to AI tools and why the time is now to take advantage.

Tik introduces everyone to his favorite new wire-framing tool, stitch.withgoogle.com

Christopher Long and Pratik Desai kick off their first episode by swapping unlikely origin stories, roasting each other just enough, and attempting a perfectly logical first project: vibe coding a tool to tell them what to vibe code next. Along the way, they test Gemini AI Studio and Claude Artifacts, compare notes, and explore what happens when AI makes building feel a lot more accessible—and a lot more fun.