I had a blast sitting down with Qasar Younis, Co-Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a company that’s on a mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of safe and intelligent machines. The company builds software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomous systems to market. Last valued at $6B, Applied Intuition has raised a total of $602M since its inception in 2017 and plays a critical role in both the commercial and defense sectors. 

Previously, Qasar was a Partner and COO of Y Combinator, the renowned startup accelerator that has invested in companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Stripe, among others. Prior to Y Combinator, Qasar founded a technology firm, which was later acquired by Google, and worked as an automotive engineer at General Motors and Bosch. Younis has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Kettering University (formerly known as General Motors Institute) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:31) Psychology of starting a company

(17:04) Love for the automotive industry

(22:54) Autonomous vehicle landscape

(25:45) Deep partnership with customers

(28:49) Complexities of being dual use

(34:44) Culture being intrinsically contrarian

(40:01) Gen AI and humanoid robotics

(42:28) More noise than signal in investing

(44:14) Evolving with your work

(47:43) Companies working is a state in time 

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