Vercel Employee Shares the Secret to Building Viral Projects | Steven Tey | EP35

Zuhayeer is the founder of Levels.fyi, a platform that lets you compare salaries across big tech companies. This is the story of how he turned Levels.fyi from a side project into a million dollar startup. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Zuhayeer: https://twitter.com/zuhayeer · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Levels.fyi: https://www.levels.fyi Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:19 - Meeting his cofounder 8:41 - How they monetized 20:03 - Shifting from growth to company building 21:58 - Why they built a mobile app 27:29 - What's next marketing-wise 30:06 - Will Devin kill engineers? 37:44 - How to land a job in tech 40:56 - What's Levels.fyi built on 43:34 - Are you hiring?

Evan is the founder of The SF Compute Company, a cloud computing company that sells GPU clusters for AI models. This is the story of how he became one of the fastest growing AI companies in less than a year by betting the entire company every month. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Evan: https://twitter.com/evanjconrad · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · The SF Compute Company: https://twitter.com/sfcompute Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:12 - Betting the company every month 7:59 - $1M in profit in 6 months 9:36 - Getting their first customers 14:33 - SF founders and politics 19:08 - Is SaaS dying? 29:20 - Managing time as a founder 31:44 - Joining YC because of exposure therapy (crazy) 35:32 - What to prioritize in a startup 41:20 - Mitigating risk

Aman is the founder of Deeptrust, an AI deepfake detection startup that's helping you trust what you see and hear on the Internet. We talked about OpenAI's new text to video model SORA , the terrifying success rate of AI fraud, and how to (theoretically) scam someone for $1M using AI. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Aman: https://twitter.com/amanmibra · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Deeptrust: https://twitter.com/deeptrustAI Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 4:26 - OpenAI SORA 12:09 - Fighting deepfakes 17:10 - Election fraud 18:34 - How Deeptrust helps 23:15 - AI scams to look out for 30:33 - How to scam $1M 35:56 - Managing priorities as a founder 37:34 - How to trust what you see

Prady is the founder of Sync Labs, an AI research company that’s building real time lip-syncing. This is the story of how he used viral Twitter marketing to build a deep tech research startup. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Prady: https://twitter.com/therealprady · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Sync Labs: https://synclabs.so/ Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 3:04 - Going viral on Twitter 12:00 - YC, F.inc, and Buildspace 15:29 - How will AI impact communication? 19:20 - Will AGI replace us? 22:09 - AI lifehack as a founder 27:04 - Making content for your personal brand 30:02 - Synthetic humans are coming 33:11 - What’s the longterm plan?

Dylan is the founder of Evergreen, a crypto mining hardware company that he started out of his dad's garage. This is the story of exactly how he growth hacked his way to over $3.5 million in revenue. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Dylan: https://twitter.com/dylanmrose · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Evergreen: https://evergreenminer.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 11:31 - How they went to market 17:33 - The hard thing about hardware 25:04 - Building the team 28:15 - Learnings from big tech 33:01 - Will we run out of energy? 38:27 - The future of consumer electronics 40:07 - How to get into crypto mining

Sharif is the founder of Lexica, a Midjourney killer that he grew to 1 million users with basically 0 zero employes. This is the story of how he went from couch surfing to building one of the most popular AI image generators. We're on Skool: https://skool.com/thedock Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/devs Links: · Sharif: https://twitter.com/sharifshameem · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Lexica: https://lexica.art/ · Founders, Inc.: https://f.inc Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 7:38 - Pivoting from his last startup 19:53 - The future of AI content creation 25:08 - Why the team has 0 marketers 28:16 - Moving to SF (Furqan’s couch) 35:36 - How far is AGI? 46:07 - Will the Vision Pro replace our phones?

Rahul is the founder of Julius, an AI app that he scaled to 300k users in just 6 months. This is the story of how he pranked global news, met Elon Musk, and built a ChatGPT killer. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: https://f.inc/studio Links: · Rahul: https://twitter.com/0interestrates · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Founders, Inc.: https://f.inc · JuliusAI: https://julius.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 7:24 - Reviving dead users 10:47 - How to ask your friends for help 17:43 - Pranking the world 21:55 - Meeting Elon Musk 26:45 - Managing a small team 30:11 - Do you need a mobile app? 36:08 - Live brainstorm

Julian cofounded and scaled Wisdolia to over $300,000 in less than a year. This is the story of how he used TikTok marketing to go from an almost failing startup to a viral AI education tool. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: f.inc/studio Links: · Julian: https://twitter.com/InfiniteJulian0 · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Founders, Inc.: https://f.inc · Wisdolia: https://www.wisdolia.com/Cred Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:39 - The experiment that saved Wisdolia 5:27 - The TikTok growth playbook 11:27 - How to reach your target customer 19:56 - Why paid ads didn't work 25:06 - Structuring a small team 27:21 - Current product experiments 29:08 - How to use referrals as a growth hack 33:21 - Suspended from college 40:00 - How AI will change education forever

Alex Schachne cofounded and grew Leap from 0 to $500k+ in his first 10 months. This is the story of how he went from booking a one-way ticket across the country to building an AI company with a $10M valuation. Help us start companies from scratch in the Studio: f.inc/studio Links: · Alex: https://twitter.com/thealexshaq · Omar: https://twitter.com/omarwasm · Founders, Inc.: https://f.inc · Leap: https://tryleap.ai Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:22 - Background 6:32 - Choosing a marketing channel 17:02 - Turning viral moments into brand partnerships 24:33 - Do you need a personal brand? 34:57 - How AI will disrupt traditional media 40:32 - The plan for $5M ARR 58:01 - The next big AI opportunity 1:02:58 - Live brainstorm (Resend)

Omar ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@omarwasm)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and Vishal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(@vishalkolr)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ sit down with Steven Tey ⁠(@steventey)⁠ from Vercel to talk about why he joined the company, his secret for making projects go viral on Twitter, how Vercel got its name, the problem with conferences for devs, the importance of company branding, and more.... The Dock is a Founders, Inc. show. Learn more about Founders, Inc. at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://f.inc⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links: · ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven's Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ · ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dock⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:02 - His Background 5:23 - Why Vercel is winning 6:13 - How Vercel got its name 9:37 - His secret to virality 18:33 - Austin vs SF 20:12 - His Day in the life 22:44 - Vercel's branding 23:49 - Are conferences a waste of time? 32:25 - Omar's SF movie night 36:56 - Will he become a founder? 52:11 - Rapid fire (lol)