Startup Grind @StartupGrind

@BigBrainBizness So amazing 🔥

My Divot conversation this week is with 3X best selling author @Markmanson. He's sold 20M books across 65 languages. We talked about therapy's dirty secret, how wanting happiness actually makes you unhappy, and why happiness is the wrong question. Timestamps: 00:01:39 — Why He Turned His Attention to AI Mental Health 00:06:09 — Meeting His Co-Founder at a Poker Game 00:10:47 — How Purpose Hit 7 Figures in 12 Days 00:12:15 — Why the Therapy Industry Is Fundamentally Broken 00:20:05 — What Most Authors Get Wrong About Books 00:32:15 — Inside the Will Smith Memoir 00:37:45 — The Take on the Oscars Slap He's Never Shared 00:47:48 — The Biggest Lie About Happiness 00:50:29 — Why Wanting Happiness Makes You Less Happy 00:54:50 — Why Happiness Is the Wrong Question 01:03:41 — The Real Mechanism Behind All Self-Help 01:17:39 — "Ironically, He Gave a F*ck" 01:24:08 — Struggle Is Inevitable - Choose Your Struggles

My Divot conversation this week with @gregisenberg where we cover $2/hour AI co-founder, how to find the right idea, why creatives will win the age of AI, the 1,000 hour master rule of AI, and why this is the age of the age of the multi-preneur. Timestamps: 00:01:52 — The $2/Hour AI Co-Founder 00:03:21 — How to Find the Right Startup Idea 00:07:38 — Why Your AI Keeps Giving You Bad Results 00:11:26 — What AI Will Replace in the Next 18 Months 00:14:46 — Why Creatives Win the Age of AI 00:18:45 — The Age of the Multi-Preneur 00:24:56 — The Builder-Distributor Advantage 00:26:32 — How to Run a Startup on Autopilot 00:30:30 — 3 Hours vs. 6 Months: What AI Changed 00:33:06 — Why AI Just Killed the Startup Gatekeepers 00:41:32 — The 1,000-Hour Rule to Master AI 00:43:34 — Build a Business in 90 Days: The ACP Framework 00:47:00 — The Rejection That Changed Everything 00:55:12 — "He Helped Me" — On Legacy and Purpose

@BigBrainBizness 🔥🔥🔥

Sequoia Capital Partner Doug Leone on why his firm deliberately hires edgy people with something to prove: Doug Leone explains that his firm's relentless work ethic starts with hiring a very particular kind of person. "We hired people that had a shock in their system when they were growing up. Maybe they were shunned. Maybe they were too smart for their own good. Maybe they were left by a parent. Maybe they were in a vicious competition with a twin brother. We have all those." He includes himself in that description: "In my case, I came from Europe. I got abused in high school. I was pissed off." These early struggles produce a distinctive type of person — one Doug's firm actively seeks out: "We find these folks are a little edgy and for the rest of their lives they have something to prove in some ways not very different than founders." But hiring edgy, driven individuals is only half the equation. The real magic happens in how the firm shapes them once they arrive. Because they were set aside growing up, Doug explains, these hires tend to be "I people," and he admits he was one himself. So the firm deliberately places them in what he calls a circle of trust: "We put those people in an environment of trust. We teach them because those people and starting with myself, we were not pros at using the we pronoun... we put them in a circle of trust and we teach them that we is better than I." Compensation reinforces the shift from "I" to "we": "We get compensation right. We don't have a situation that Johnny makes 10% more than Susie. It's pretty flat, which means we share things among us." The result is a rare combination: people with a deep, innate need to prove themselves, working inside a flat, trusting culture that redirects that drive toward the team. @dougleone sums it up: "We have this need, this incessant need to do something, to win that never goes away. And so when you say we work hard, it's all we've ever known."

@lqiao Congrats Lin! ❤️‍🔥 you guys rock

Fireworks AI (@FireworksAI_HQ) just closed a $1.5B Series D at a $17.5B valuation. 40 trillion tokens a day, 95%+ specialized models running in production. @lqiao was on our Startup Grind Conference stage this year, incredible to watch what's come since. Huge one 👏

The guy who got the internet to hate him on purpose? yeah, you need to hear how that story ends. Great one from @divotpod 🔥

Divot @Divotdotorg

3 weeks ago

the guy the internet loved to hate was a character all along. @chooserich baited his way onto national tv, built a business making millions a year, then got a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis. his take on optimism is the most grounded thing you'll hear. new episode with

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@santoretech cool 🔥

Everyone's building with AI right now. Very few founders can answer one question: which layer are you building on? Infrastructure: models, compute. The giants own it, that fight's over. 
Agents: tools on top. Great demos, brutal to defend. 
Companies: your data, your distribution, an edge no model update can erase. We've spent 15 years around founders, and the pattern doesn't change: the people who win aren't the ones with the best tech. They're the ones who turn it into a company. Which layer are you on? 👇

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Steve Jobs was secretive about everything. except for Pixar's research. Ed Catmull, Pixar co-founder, published everything the team did, and jobs never touched it. he knew openness was how Pixar attracted the talent that made him buy it in the first place. full story with @DerekjAndersen, link in the replies

My @Divotdotorg chat with Ed Catmull, the legendary co-founder of Pixar. He holds many distinctions including being the visionary behind bringing to life the first computer animated movie, dozens of Pixar successes, and working with Steve Jobs for +20 years. Timestamps: 01:39 - Why Great Companies Fail to Think Long-Term 07:35 - Why VR, Oculus, and Tech Hype Got Ahead of Reality 19:13 - The 14-Year Math Behind Toy Story 24:57 - Why the Right Environment Creates Pioneers 37:34 - Why Steve Jobs Let Pixar Publish Everything 42:26 - Steve Jobs’ $54M Bet on Pixar 44:53 - Why Great Teams Create Great Ideas 54:20 - Why Pixar Did Not Call Every Mistake a Failure 59:08 - Why Steve Jobs Stayed Out of Pixar’s Braintrust 01:03:06 - Why Powerful Leaders Should Speak Last 01:15:03 - How Pixar Made Steve Jobs a Billionaire 01:21:15 - The Steve Jobs Transformation Most People Missed 01:24:17 - Why Ed Catmull Believes He Is Wrong Half the Time 01:33:10 - Ed Catmull Was Removed as Pixar President Twice 01:37:27 - Why Creativity Inc. Was Really About Building Great Teams 01:42:26 - How Pixar Almost Lost Toy Story 2 01:46:36 - How Pixar Became a Repeatable Creative Studio 01:47:19 - Why Ratatouille and Up Should Not Have Worked 01:49:13 - How Ed Catmull Measures a Good Life

Not surprised at all. After the class James Dumoulin gave us on viral content at the SG Conference this year, this was only a matter of time. Congrats, @tvmjames!

Forbes @Forbes

a month ago

James Dumoulin (@tvmjames) has built an audience by asking one simple question: What financial lessons did you learn the hard way? The cofounder and face of The School of Hard Knockz reaches millions with content promoting financial literacy, alongside brand partners including

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So proud to see so many familiar Startup Grind voices in this one! From the Divot studio to the SG stage, these are the kinds of conversations that remind us why builders need real rooms, real stories, and real community.

Derek Andersen @DerekjAndersen

a month ago

After 50 episodes of Divot interviews from the top builders, authors, creators, and investors in the world, these are some of the top learnings and best clips.

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After 50 episodes of Divot interviews from the top builders, authors, creators, and investors in the world, these are some of the top learnings and best clips.

My conversation with @aliansarinik the CEO of @micro1_ai, the human data engine helping AI labs train foundational models and enterprises build better AI agents. We talk about why AI still needs human experts, never stop learning, the talent war for researchers, and why the model is not the product. 01:32 — Building Micro1 in the Center of the AI Boom 06:57 — A Once-in-a-Lifetime AI Opportunity 08:44 — How Micro1 Helps Train Smarter AI Models 10:43 — Why AI Models Never Stop Learning 14:56 — Why AI Still Needs Human Experts 17:49 — The Model Is Not the Product 21:23 — Who Wins and Loses in the AI Era 27:25 — When AI Agents Become Team Members 29:19 — The Talent War for AI Researchers 33:38 — Why Your Company Data Is Training AI 38:35 — From Iran to the American Dream 44:33 — Why Taking a Unique Path Can Win 48:04 — Embrace the Chaos 49:50 — Why AI Will Create New Jobs 53:02 — How Ali Measures His Life #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #AIData #AIAgents #MachineLearning #Startups #DivotPodcast

There's something so special about watching a company you've crossed paths with hit a moment like this. @tuhinone and the @baseten team just locked in a $1.5B Series F at a $13B valuation, putting them among the biggest AI infrastructure raises anyone's seen this year. What makes it land harder is how recent it all is. Tuhin was standing on our Startup Grind Conference stage just a few months ago, talking through where Baseten was headed. Inference used to be the unglamorous corner of AI nobody talked about. Now it's the layer everything depends on, and Baseten is right at the center of it. That kind of climb in such a short window doesn't happen by accident. Huge congrats to Tuhin and the entire team. This one's earned ❤️‍🔥

Baseten @baseten

a month ago

We’re excited to announce our $1.5B Series F. Baseten exists to help companies own their intelligence and run AI products in production with speed, reliability, and control. As we enter this next chapter, three things are clear: 1. Customers like Abridge, Clay, Cursor, Decagon,

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What a week for Oliver Cameron and the @odysseyml team. They just raised a $310M Series B at a $1.45B valuation to keep pushing the frontier of world models. Oliver was on our Startup Grind Conference stage back when Odyssey had raised around $27M. Wild to see how far they've come since. Huge congrats to Oliver and the whole team, so well deserved!

Odyssey @odysseyml

2 months ago

We’ve raised a $310M Series B to accelerate world models! We believe AI that can understand and simulate the world will be one of the most important technologies of our time. We're excited to partner with Natural Capital, Amazon, GV, AMD, IQT, and others to bring this to life.

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A close friend amassed +5M rabid followers/fans as an expert in a specific enterprise vertical. He wants to partner with a team to co-found and build a product in the space. If your small team is amazing, and your startup isn’t working and you’re willing to pivot, DM me!