Ankur Goyal is the founder and CEO of Braintrust, an end-to-end platform for building AI apps. Before that, he founded Impira, a data management platform that was acquired by Figma, where he went on to lead the AI team. Ankur kickstarted his career when he dropped out of college to join the founding team at SingleStore (formerly MemSQL), a formative experience that shaped his views on building for high-bar users.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Ankur’s early lessons on quality from MemSQL

• How frustration with evals at Figma led to Braintrust

• Why they delayed go-to-market (on purpose)

• How to find product-market fit in a new market

• Why building great software comes from a place of “paranoia”

• And much more…

Referenced:

• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/

• Adam Prout: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-prout-0b347630/

• Braintrust: https://braintrust.dev

• Brian Helmig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanhelmig/

• Coda: https://coda.io/

• Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/

• David Kossnick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkossnick/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/

• Kris Rasmussen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristopherrasmussen/

• Manu Goyal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mngyl/

• MemSQL: https://www.singlestore.com/ (now SingleStore)

• Nikita Shamgunov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikitashamgunov/

• OpenAI: https://openai.com/

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/

• Zapier: https://zapier.com/

Where to find Ankur:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankrgyl/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/ankrgyl

Where to find Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/

• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital

• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

Timestamps

(02:02) Dropping out of college to join MemSQL

(02:24) Key lessons from MemSQL

(05:54) How to build quality software

(08:51) The trick to recruiting well

(12:03) Founding Impira and selling to Figma

(19:45) How Braintrust was born

(25:33) Why good founders are paranoid

(28:08) How to recognize a real market opportunity

(33:37) The biggest mistake at Impira

(35:15) Inside Braintrust’s first six months

(40:57) How AI is reshaping Braintrust’s future

(42:32) The evolution of their prompt playground

(46:53) Fighting to stay mission-driven

(52:45) Make big bets, with extreme clarity

(57:00) The cultural choices that shaped Braintrust

(58:49) Hiring mistakes they won’t repeat

(1:03:07) What PMF really looks like