The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth in generative media | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)

Jake is the founder and CEO of Serval, an AI-driven IT automation and service management platform that just raised $47M in Series A funding this week. Before founding Serval, Jake spent over five years at Verkada, where he led multiple products from 0-1 and helped scale the company across hardware and software. His years at Verkada taught him that winning in enterprise means delivering consumer-quality experiences to business buyers — a lesson that shapes how Serval turns complex IT automation into something that feels magical. In this episode, Jake and Brett dive into the lessons from Verkada that inspired Serval's founding, what it takes to disrupt entrenched enterprise categories, and practical tips for getting deeply embedded with customers and hiring high-quality candidates. In today’s episode, we discuss: Why building “in existing categories” can be more powerful than creating new ones The lessons from Verkada that shaped Serval's platform strategy The customer interview question that unlocked the IT buyer’s hidden pain points How Serval's automation builder uses AI to generate code-based workflows Redefining engineering and PM roles with forward-deployed engineers Keeping the hiring bar high in an AI-native startup Why there’s a “land grab” moment right now in enterprise AI And much more... Where to find Jake: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestauch/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/jakeserval 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 References: Alex McLeod: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmcleodio/ Clay: https://www.clay.com Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com Cursor: https://cursor.sh Filip Kaliszan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliszan/ Hans Robertson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansrobertson Linear: https://linear.app Okta: https://www.okta.com Rippling: https://www.rippling.com Serval: https://www.serval.com/ ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com Verkada: https://www.verkada.com Workday: https://www.workday.com Timestamps: (02:25) Lessons from holding different product roles (07:29) Turning “hard mode” into a moat (10:49) The early days of Serval (12:59) Scratching the founder itch (14:57) Unconventional interview techniques (17:47) Solving core interview challenges (21:10) Planning the early product roadmap (23:03) The surprising power of patience (26:12) Serval’s impressive technical advantage (27:35) Disrupting legacy incumbents (31:13) Building for mid-market and enterprise (33:35) Serval’s enduring roadmap (36:08) How to sell to an existing market (39:16) The evolving role software plays (43:55) Building for AI that didn’t exist yet (49:49) Serval’s forward-deployed engineers (58:31) The hybrid PM-GM (1:00:27) “You can over-prioritize” (1:02:48) The unexpected value of panic buttons (1:04:50) What Serval looks for in new talent (1:07:01) The ultimate hiring litmus test (1:13:59) Building out Serval’s go-to-market function (1:16:31) The evolving IT market in 2025

Gorkem Yurtseven is the co-founder and CTO of fal, the generative media platform powering the next wave of image, video, and audio applications. In less than two years, fal has scaled from $2M to over $100M in ARR, serving over 2 million developers and more than 300 enterprises, including Adobe, Canva, and Shopify. In this conversation, Gorkem shares the inside story of fal's pivot into explosive growth, the technical and cultural philosophies driving its success, and his predictions for the future of AI-generated media. In today's episode, we discuss: How fal pivoted from data infrastructure to generative inference fal’s explosive year and how they scaled Why "generative media" is a greenfield new market fal's unique hiring philosophy and lean <50-person team Building a brand that resonates with developers What the world looks like in 2027 when AI-generated video becomes mainstream And much more… Where to find Gorkem: LinkedIn X / Twitter Where to find Todd: LinkedIn X / Twitter 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 References: Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ Base10: https://base10.vc/ Black Forest Labs: https://blackforestlabs.ai/ Burkay Gur: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkaygur/ Canva: https://www.canva.com/ Clay: https://www.clay.com/ Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/ Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/ DALL-E: https://openai.com/dall-e-2 Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/ Dylan Patel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanpatelsa/ fal: https://fal.ai/ Google DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/ LLaMA: https://ai.meta.com/llama/ OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/ Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/ Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/ Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/ Sora: https://openai.com/sora Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL): https://stability.ai/stable-diffusion Stability AI: https://stability.ai/ Together AI: https://www.together.ai/ All images and videos generated using models run on fal.ai Timestamps: (01:43) The generative media industry (02:29) From $2M to $100M ARR: fal's explosive year (04:06) How Gorkem met co-founder Burkay Gur (05:38) The hardest decision that saved the company (09:52) Spotting the opportunity in generative media (13:28) Turning Todd into George Clooney (15:29) The early adopters of the first fal product (17:54) The transition from toy to tool (19:27) Why 2025 is the year of AI-generated video (21:44) Staying nimble as a 45-person company (24:42) Predicting AI-generated film in 2027 (27:24) Why generative media is a greenfield market (30:33) fal’s greatest optimization wins (34:42) Why fal has 500 Slack channels (36:02) Competing in a fast-moving, fragmented market (42:06) How to build a world-class team (47:24) Learning sales as a technical founder (50:55) How fal built a brand without a marketer (53:21) The story behind "GPU Rich / GPU Poor" (54:22) Inside fal’s rule-breaking playbook (56:09) The hardest part of scaling fal

Michael is the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, the AI assistant for 911 calls that helps dispatchers capture information faster, translate emergency calls in real time, and deliver lifesaving context to first responders. Founded out of Yale in 2019, Prepared grew from a school safety app into a critical platform for emergency communications, disrupting a notoriously tough market. This mission-driven journey just reached a major milestone: Prepared was acquired by Axon, the global public safety technology company. In this conversation, Michael joins Meka to share the inside story of building in a tough market, the counterintuitive strategies used to crack government procurement, and why their mission is a competitive moat. In today’s episode, we discuss: Why school shootings were the catalyst for building safety software Navigating the most challenging customer base: government and public safety agencies Why Prepared gave away its first product for free — for years Lessons from evolving a wedge product into an AI-driven suite How Michael balanced conviction with customer feedback Building long-term investor relationships Staying true to the mission through headwinds and tailwinds And much more… Where to find Michael: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelchime/ Where to find Meka: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mekaasonye/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/bigmekastyle 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 References: Axon: https://www.axon.com/ Dylan Gleicher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-gleicher/ March for Our Lives: https://marchforourlives.org/ Neal Soni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neal-soni/ OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Peter Thiel Fellowship: https://thielfellowship.org/ Prepared: https://www.prepared911.com/ Sam Altman: https://x.com/sama Slack: https://slack.com/ Uber Eats: https://www.ubereats.com/ Yale University: https://www.yale.edu/ Timestamps: (3:03) Staying mission-oriented under pressure (3:54) Negotiating an acquisition from a hospital bed (06:25) How Sandy Hook shaped the Prepared story (09:15) From school safety app to 911 platform (10:02) Why are 911 systems so outdated? (13:02) Prepared’s first product iteration (16:04) Why attempt to tackle the govtech market? (18:36) Mission as fuel: staying resilient through endless rejections (20:03) Should young people drop out of college? (23:10) How Michael nurtured a learner’s mindset (25:23) Forging unwavering founder conviction (31:41) Landing Prepared’s first user (32:39) “I want to be terrible at sales” (34:35) Expanding to a premium product line (36:55) Leveraging AI to expand the product surface area (41:49) How much should you listen to customers? (45:35) Building in headwinds vs. tailwinds (47:18) Navigating partnerships and competition (54:52) Michael’s unconventional approach to fundraising (1:02:54) Has Prepared found product-market fit? (1:04:00) Reflecting on the founder journey

Kiren Sekar is the CPO of Samsara, a company that brings real-time visibility, analytics, and AI to physical operations. Before Samsara, Kiren was an early leader at Meraki, which was acquired by Cisco for $1.2B. In this episode, he walks us through Samsara’s origin story: from hardware hacking in a basement to scaling a cross-industry IoT platform. He shares how early customer feedback loops led to the company’s first product, why starting with the mid-market was a deliberate choice, and how Samsara kept a startup mindset even as it scaled. In this episode, we discuss: Lessons from Meraki’s acquisition by Cisco How Kiren hires for intrinsic motivation Why Samsara was built for operations industries The early hardware prototype and the Cowgirl Creamery insight Building broad vs. niche from day one The shift from founder-selling to a scalable sales motion Organizing product teams around revenue vs. experience How Samsara uses LLMs and AI today What Kiren learned from longtime co-founder Sanjit Biswas Where to find Kiren: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirensekar/ Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson References: Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Clay: https://www.clay.com/ Cowgirl Creamery: https://cowgirlcreamery.com/ IBM: https://www.ibm.com/ Meraki: https://meraki.cisco.com/ Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Samsara: https://www.samsara.com/ Sanjit Biswas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjitbiswas/ Uber: https://www.uber.com/ Timestamps: (01:27) Meraki’s growth and acquisition by Cisco (03:25) The "evaporating" exit strategy from Meraki (04:42) Identifying the IoT market gaps (07:38) The early keys to success at Samsara (09:39) What does quality mean to Kiren? (10:54) Building a customer-centric roadmap (17:34) Early customer research and the failed fridge monitoring idea (20:57) How a cheese producer helped create Samsara’s first prototype (28:06) Balancing depth and breadth in customer profiles (33:45) Developing customer trust to build feedback loops (40:27) How “ease of use” became a growth secret (44:23) Pricing strategies and market positioning (51:51) How Meraki influenced Samsara’s GTM strategy (57:19) Helping customers navigate change management (1:00:48) How Samsara’s team evolved during rapid growth (1:04:03) What AI means for an IoT giant

Sam Chaudhary is the co-founder and CEO of ClassDojo, a multi-product education platform used in 95% of U.S. schools and over 180 countries globally to connect teachers, students, and families. In this episode, Sam shares the full arc of building ClassDojo, from early skepticism about education and a failed group-making tool, to creating a communication platform loved by millions. In this episode, we discuss: Why ClassDojo was built for consumers (teachers, students and parents) instead of schools How ClassDojo grew entirely by word-of-mouth Sam’s unusual approach to building multiple new businesses The founder mindset required to build an industry leader Why relentless resourcefulness is an underrated skill And much more… References: Accel: https://www.accel.com/ Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/ Bill Gates: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/ Brendan Kereiakes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/product/ ClassDojo: https://www.classdojo.com/ Dominick Bellizzi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominickbellizzi/ Geoff Ralston: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffralston/ Gonzalo Aguilar Málaga: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gonzalodecheck/ Hamilton Helmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamilton-helmer-42983/ Imagine K12: https://www.imaginek12.com// Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/ Liam Don: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamdon/ McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/ Paul Graham: https://x.com/paulg Plaid: https://plaid.com/ Reid Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/ Roblox: https://www.roblox.com/ Sal Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khanacademy/ Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/ Tim Brady: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-brady-7a632510/ Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/ Where to find Sam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samchaudhary/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/samchaudhary Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Timestamps: (01:36) Why education is a “bad market” (02:52) Why enterprise education is broken (03:35) Building for families, not schools (06:53) Early challenges and insights (09:45) Sam’s unusual background (11:42) Meeting co-founder Liam at a hackathon (13:22) Getting into Imagine K12 with a group-making tool (19:47) The conversation with Reid Hoffman that changed everything (21:52) Building a network to reach more families (23:30) Scaling by building a community (33:18) Designing for delight and word-of-mouth growth (40:09) Launching the first monetization feature after 7 years (41:35) How to pick markets and when to go broad (46:04) The explosive expansion into the tutoring industry (55:11) Creating safe online spaces for kids (58:01) Harnessing AI in education (59:52) Lessons from ClassDojo’s playbook

Abhinav Asthana is the co-founder and CEO of Postman, the world's leading API collaboration platform used by millions of developers and thousands of companies. What began as a personal itch, a simple Chrome extension Abhinav built to make his own API work easier, became a global phenomenon within weeks. In this episode, we discuss: Making the leap from India to Silicon Valley The moment Abhinav realized Postman could win His principles behind building for developers and non-developers alike The early monetization experiments that led to their SaaS model The value of progressive complexity in product design How community building became a powerful growth lever And much more… References: Abhijit Kane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhijitkane/ Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/ Ankit Sobti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-sobti/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Kong Inc.: https://konghq.com/ National University of Singapore: https://nus.edu.sg/ Postman: https://www.postman.com/ Ram Gupta: : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ram-gupta-39b9711/ Slack: https://slack.com/ Stripe: https://stripe.com/ Stewart Butterfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/butterfield/ Yahoo: http://yahoo.com/ Where to find Abhinav: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavasthana/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/a85 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: (01:18) Why early computer access changed everything (03:39) The first taste of the entrepreneurial bug (09:58) Building BITS360 in college (11:14) Curating entrepreneurial taste (15:49) The ventures that didn’t make it (20:53) The problems that preceded Postman (29:56) How Postman’s team was formed (34:01) Why clear roles prevent chaos (34:50) Scrappy startup life in the early days (36:26) Postman’s path to monetization (39:59) Building a truly collaborative platform (43:00) Navigating market and customer needs (46:02) Cracking the go-to-market code (49:39) Bridging the developer-enterprise divide (54:43) The open-source dilemma

Cameron Adams is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the design platform valued at $42B as of July 2025, used by over 230 million people every month. Before starting Canva, Cameron was a designer and engineer at Google and co-founded Fluent, an email startup. In this episode, Cameron walks through Canva’s earliest days — from the remarkably fast courtship with co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, to the counterintuitive product decisions that helped Canva instantly resonate with users who thought they would never design anything. In this episode, we cover: How Canva turned social media managers into early evangelists Balancing a huge vision with scrappy execution Hard lessons from their near-silent launch day The two growth levers that changed everything And much more… References: Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/home Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/ Campaign Monitor: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/ Canva: https://www.canva.com/ Cliff Obrecht: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliff-obrecht-79ba9920/ Dave Greiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegreiner/ Lars Rasmussen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larserasmussen/ Melanie Perkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieperkins/ Mike Cannon-Brookes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcannonbrookes/ New York Stock Exchange: https://www.nyse.com/ Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/ Scott Farquhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottfarquhar/ Where to find Cameron: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/ 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/ X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: (01:24) The birth of Canva (04:32) Meeting Canva’s co-founders (11:22) Building the first iteration of Canva (15:26) The discovery that changed prototyping (20:48) Why onboarding was the unlock for retention (27:36) The anticlimactic launch day (32:43) How word-of-mouth spurred early retention (36:33) Targeting different user personas (41:02) Building a community on social media (43:38) Two impactful growth levers (47:14) Why Canva should have gone mobile sooner (48:12) What underpins Canva’s dominance today (53:37) Rebuilding for enterprise (58:38) Lessons from Canva’s tough times

Parag Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Parallel, a startup building search infrastructure for the web’s second user: AIs. Before launching Parallel, Parag spent over a decade at Twitter, where he served as CTO and later CEO during a period of intense transformation, as well as public scrutiny. In this episode, Parag shares what he learned from his time at Twitter, why the web must evolve to serve AI at massive scale, how Parallel is tackling “deep research” challenges by prioritizing accuracy over speed, and the design choices that make their APIs uniquely agent-friendly. We also discuss: Why Parallel designs for AI as the primary customer Lessons from 11 years at Twitter and applying them to a startup Potential business models to keep the web open for AI Hiring philosophy: balancing high potential and experienced talent The evolving role of engineers in an AI-assisted world Why “agents” are finally becoming useful in production And much more… References: Bloomberg launch coverage: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-14/twitter-ex-ceo-parag-agrawal-is-moving-past-his-elon-musk-drama Clay: https://www.clay.com/ Index Ventures: https://www.indexventures.com/ Josh Kopelman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkopelman/ KLA: https://www.kla.com/ OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Parallel: https://parallel.ai/ Patrick Collison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison/ Stripe: https://stripe.com/ Where to find Parag: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paragagr/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/paraga Where to find Todd: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/tjack Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: (1:26) Founding Parallel with an AI-first mission (3:23) From Twitter CTO/CEO to startup founder (6:20) What the AI era spells for companies (7:58) The CEO to founder pipeline (11:18) Reflections on Twitter’s transformation (17:48) How Parallel was born (22:31) Early use cases for Parallel (31:42) How has Parallel’s ICP changed? (34:37) AI’s impact on competitor dynamics (36:06) When should founders launch? (37:43) Parag’s fundraising framework (40:14) Building a high-impact engineering team (44:49) Counterproductive uses of AI (47:35) How will the software engineer role evolve? (49:10) How are Parallel’s customers using AI? (53:27) Defining agents in 2025 (55:02) Parallel’s long-term vision (1:03:43) Parag’s growth as a founder

Immad Akhund is the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a digital banking platform that’s become the go-to financial infrastructure for startups. Before Mercury, Immad spent nearly two decades founding companies, learning the hard way what separates a good idea from a great business. In this episode, Immad shares the hard-earned lessons from launching Mercury as his third startup. He unpacks how he recognized this was the right idea to pursue, what strong product-market fit feels like, and why trying to "iterate" your way to success often leads founders astray. In this episode, we discuss: Mercury’s unusual culture playbook – and why it works How to hire with intention The trap of weak product-market fit Shipping under intense pressure during the SVB crisis And much more… References: Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/ Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com/ Apple: https://www.apple.com/ Block: https://block.xyz/ Brex: https://www.brex.com/ Chime: https://www.chime.com/ Gusto: https://gusto.com/ Mercury: https://mercury.com/ Paul Graham: https://x.com/paulg Plaid: https://plaid.com/ Stripe: https://stripe.com/ SVB (Silicon Valley Bank): https://www.svb.com/ True Link Financial: https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/ Varo: https://www.varomoney.com/ Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/ Where to find Immad: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iakhund/ 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: (1:07) Hard-won lessons from serial entrepreneurship (2:02) You shouldn’t copy-paste advice (6:57) Why personality trumps culture playbooks (8:48) How do you hire for cultural fit? (12:38) The values that shaped Mercury’s DNA (14:08) The drivers underpinning Mercury’s success (15:50) The significance of product-market fit (20:41) Don’t fall into the weak product-market fit trap (25:49) How to evaluate startup ideas that scale (30:14) Mercury’s unlikely origin story (33:51) Breaking into the fintech space (37:31) Mindset shift: From “This is hard” to long-term gains (39:43) Building Mercury’s MVP (44:25) Overcoming early obstacles to reach launch (47:36) Navigating Mercury’s rapid growth phase (51:18) Competition isn’t the reason you’re failing (55:58) Crisis management during the SVB collapse

Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a leading vehicle intelligence platform that helps companies develop and deploy autonomous systems at scale. In June 2025, the company raised $600M at a $15B valuation. Before Applied Intuition, Qasar was the COO and a group partner at Y Combinator, and earlier founded TalkBin, which was acquired by Google. He’s also held engineering roles at General Motors and Bosch. In today’s episode, we discuss: • The two founder traits Silicon Valley undervalues • How to get 1–3 extra months of work done every year • Lessons from YC on pattern matching and founder feedback • The battle-tested startup formula Qasar used at Applied • Why co-founder fit is make-or-break • Applied’s playbook: vertical SaaS, product-led GTM, and leveraging VC networks • Why Applied went multi-product in the early days • Contrarian takes on startup culture, compensation, and cost control • Why domain expertise is making a comeback • And much more… Referenced: • Applied Intuition: https://www.appliedintuition.com • Ansys: https://www.ansys.com • Bilal Zuberi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bzuberi • Bosch: https://www.bosch.com • Elad Gil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eladgil • General Motors: https://www.gm.com • “Google’s Acquisition of TalkBin”: https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/25/google-acquires-talkbin-a-feedback-platform-for-businesses-thats-only-five-months-old/ • “High Output Management”: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884 • Kyle Vogt: https://x.com/kvogt • Marc Andreessen: https://x.com/pmarca • “Only the Paranoid Survive”: https://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Strategic-Inflection/dp/0385483821 • Paul Graham: https://x.com/paulg • Peter Ludwig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwludwig • Sam Altman: https://x.com/sama • TalkBin: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/talkbin • “The History of the Standard Oil Company”: https://www.amazon.com/History-Standard-Oil-Company-Volumes/dp/1519455860 • Waymo: https://waymo.com • Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com • Zoox: https://zoox.com Where to find Qasar: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qasar/ 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: (01:26) Two founder traits Silicon Valley undervalues (04:23) Gain 1-3 extra months of productivity yearly (05:52) Why founders should read outside the startup canon (07:27) Lessons from YC (13:44) Why it's harder to start than to quit (15:52) The moment you become a real founder (20:24) How great founders master luck (21:46) Qasar’s battle-tested startup formula (25:37) The founding insight for Applied (31:42) How Applied expanded beyond automotive (38:05) Why Applied went multi-product early (45:45) What no one says about startup secondaries (49:02) Why being cheap is a startup superpower (51:04) The myth of "competition doesn’t matter" (53:50) Early scrappiness: The Sunnyvale house setup (54:50) Why domain knowledge is making a comeback (58:32) The mentors who shaped Qasar