Articles

How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma)
In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Jon Noronha, co-founder and CPO of Gamma, the AI-native presentation platform used by more than 100 million people. In this conversation, he walks through Gamma’s distinct eras of product-market fit: from a pre-AI struggle with

How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)
In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase, the open-source Postgres platform now serving more than seven million developers. Before Supabase, Paul launched a Thumbtack-style marketplace in Southeast Asia and co-founded an office-management startup called Nimbus,

Firsthand: Seven Years Inside Applied Intuition, the Quietly Dominant Physical AI Company
I joined Applied Intuition as a new-grad engineer back in early 2019, when it was just a handful of us working above a bar on Murphy Ave in Sunnyvale. Today I'm Deputy CTO of the company (that now has over 1,000 engineers). Here's why I've stayed all these years.

“AI-Powered” Isn’t a Position
A playbook for building a distinctive brand when too many AI products sound the same, look the same and have the same positioning.

Firsthand: How I Bet On Clay (And It Bet On Me)
I joined Clay as one of its earliest employees and a reluctant marketing hire. This is how, over the last three years, we built a role around my strengths as a storyteller, scaled past $100M ARR, and created a brand that startups study.

Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis)
In this episode of In Depth, First Round Partner Josh Kopelman sits down with Shachar Hirshberg and Dan Shiebler, co-founders of Artemis, the AI-native security platform that just emerged from stealth with $70M in combined seed and Series A funding.

Reluctantly Influential: Inside Lenny Rachitsky’s Demandingly Chill Life
With millions of subscribers across platforms, Lenny Rachitsky is one of the most prolific people in tech media. But what drives him — and what keeps him up at night — is a story most people don’t know.

What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the company built around Apache Kafka — the open-source data streaming platform he originally built while at LinkedIn.

Guideline's Path to Product-Market Fit — The Early Decisions That Powered Its Acquisition by Gusto
Ten years after shaking up the retirement fund industry for SMBs, Guideline has been acquired by Gusto. Here, co-founder Kevin Busque shares the early-stage decisions and pivots that put the startup on the path to success.

Serval's Path to Product-Market Fit — Win Enterprise Buyers by Treating Them Like Consumers
Notes from an AI founder taking a swing at a hundred-billion-dollar incumbent.

So You Want to Hire a Forward Deployed Engineer: How to Know If You Need One and How to Get the Role Right
Founders and operators who’ve successfully built forward deployed engineering teams share the nuances that make this idiosyncratic role work, along with advice for hiring your own team.

Applied Intuition’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The $15B Founder’s Formula for a Winning Company
Co-founder and CEO Qasar Younis lays out the personal and business moves he's made to build a company only he could start.