Charlie Songhurst and I drafted a list of founders who explored markets in unique ways before starting their co:
1. DoorDash: Tony/Stanley/Andy/Evan. Interviewed 100+ bay area businesses (and then of course also did deliveries themselves)
2. Weights & Biases: Lukas, Chris and Shawn. Lukas self-taught DL; then taught intro to DL classes; then interned at OAI
3. Dragonfly Insurance: Matthew Granade. Mini-internship with multiple brokerages, got two brokerage licenses, and set up a test kitchen brokerage in Texas
4. OneImaging: Elan. Reached out to >4k radiology imaging centers pre-product
5. Deel: Alex, Shuo, Ofer. Interviewed ~200 yc cos in their batch
6. Aven: Sadi. Read Dodd Frank, talked to lawyers and they didn't believe him, found former Senator Chris Dodd and asked if the idea would be legal
7. Zepto: Aadit and Kaivalya. Ran a store himself
8. Snapdocs: Aaron. Became a notary
9. Delphi (OpenGov): Nate, Dakin, Joe, Zac. Accidental, not intentional: Non-profit (CACS, with Dakin, Joe, Nathan Mintz) to add transparency to local gov spending, but saw that finances were a mess
10. Crosby: Ryan. Went to India to understand the legal outsourcing market
11. SpaceX: Elon. Wanted to do a greenhouse on Mars. Went to Russia to buy a rocket, no success. Went back, quotes seemed overpriced, made a spreadsheet of the costs of a rocket and went down the list talking to people for each line item
12. Alan: Jean-Charles & Charles. Read the whole French code of insurance
13. Qualia: Nate, Joel, Lucas. Moved into a basement to shadow title and escrow ops to see workflows
14. Feanix: Meia, Tom, Mitchell. Meia did farm inspections for the USDA
15. Profound: Dylan and James. Did AI SEO manually for Ramp
16. FurtherAI: Aman and Sashank. Door to door to insurance brokerages for interviews
17. Ergeon: Jenny and Odysseas. Jenny became a licensed general contractor
18. n/a: Vinay. Interning at a robotics company
19. Stealth. Did transmission analysis for a couple of ISOs and the Moldovan government to learn about how the grid works
20. Union Square Cafe: Danny Meyer. Worked as an assistant manager and then apprenticed at multiple restaurants
21. Airbnb: Brian and Joe (pre-Nate). Hosted guests on air mattresses in their apartment
22. QXO, XPO: Brad Jacobs. Reads everything, watches many interviews, interviews bunch of CEOs in industry, interviews bankers, reads on EDGAR, goes to conferences, talks to long only firms, and VC firms
23. Valon: Andrew, Linda, Eric, Jon. The founders and COO did mortgage servicing by hand
24. Method: Adam and Eric. Audited the grocery cleaning aisle
25. Boom: Blake. Wondered how planes worked, built a spreadsheet model, the model said it should be possible to do supersonic in an economical way, went to office hours at Stanford because he assumed his model had an error, it didn't
26. Mercor: Brendan, Adarsh, and Surya. Were trying to build an AI technical voice based interviewer to create a directory of all the world's developers
27. Orchard Robotics: Charlie. Practically lived with his farming customers for the first year
28. Endeavor: Sami. Spent 3 months doing customer service in a factory before launching an AI sales tool for industrials
29. Nox Metals: Zane. Ran a machine shop for a year before launching a tech-enabled industrial company
Would love suggestions
1. DoorDash: Tony/Stanley/Andy/Evan. Interviewed 100+ bay area businesses (and then of course also did deliveries themselves)
2. Weights & Biases: Lukas, Chris and Shawn. Lukas self-taught DL; then taught intro to DL classes; then interned at OAI
3. Dragonfly Insurance: Matthew Granade. Mini-internship with multiple brokerages, got two brokerage licenses, and set up a test kitchen brokerage in Texas
4. OneImaging: Elan. Reached out to >4k radiology imaging centers pre-product
5. Deel: Alex, Shuo, Ofer. Interviewed ~200 yc cos in their batch
6. Aven: Sadi. Read Dodd Frank, talked to lawyers and they didn't believe him, found former Senator Chris Dodd and asked if the idea would be legal
7. Zepto: Aadit and Kaivalya. Ran a store himself
8. Snapdocs: Aaron. Became a notary
9. Delphi (OpenGov): Nate, Dakin, Joe, Zac. Accidental, not intentional: Non-profit (CACS, with Dakin, Joe, Nathan Mintz) to add transparency to local gov spending, but saw that finances were a mess
10. Crosby: Ryan. Went to India to understand the legal outsourcing market
11. SpaceX: Elon. Wanted to do a greenhouse on Mars. Went to Russia to buy a rocket, no success. Went back, quotes seemed overpriced, made a spreadsheet of the costs of a rocket and went down the list talking to people for each line item
12. Alan: Jean-Charles & Charles. Read the whole French code of insurance
13. Qualia: Nate, Joel, Lucas. Moved into a basement to shadow title and escrow ops to see workflows
14. Feanix: Meia, Tom, Mitchell. Meia did farm inspections for the USDA
15. Profound: Dylan and James. Did AI SEO manually for Ramp
16. FurtherAI: Aman and Sashank. Door to door to insurance brokerages for interviews
17. Ergeon: Jenny and Odysseas. Jenny became a licensed general contractor
18. n/a: Vinay. Interning at a robotics company
19. Stealth. Did transmission analysis for a couple of ISOs and the Moldovan government to learn about how the grid works
20. Union Square Cafe: Danny Meyer. Worked as an assistant manager and then apprenticed at multiple restaurants
21. Airbnb: Brian and Joe (pre-Nate). Hosted guests on air mattresses in their apartment
22. QXO, XPO: Brad Jacobs. Reads everything, watches many interviews, interviews bunch of CEOs in industry, interviews bankers, reads on EDGAR, goes to conferences, talks to long only firms, and VC firms
23. Valon: Andrew, Linda, Eric, Jon. The founders and COO did mortgage servicing by hand
24. Method: Adam and Eric. Audited the grocery cleaning aisle
25. Boom: Blake. Wondered how planes worked, built a spreadsheet model, the model said it should be possible to do supersonic in an economical way, went to office hours at Stanford because he assumed his model had an error, it didn't
26. Mercor: Brendan, Adarsh, and Surya. Were trying to build an AI technical voice based interviewer to create a directory of all the world's developers
27. Orchard Robotics: Charlie. Practically lived with his farming customers for the first year
28. Endeavor: Sami. Spent 3 months doing customer service in a factory before launching an AI sales tool for industrials
29. Nox Metals: Zane. Ran a machine shop for a year before launching a tech-enabled industrial company
Would love suggestions
Ft: @t_xu @stanleytang @andyfang @evancharles @l2k @Bouazizalex @SadiSKhan @aadit_palicha @JTLonsdale @ryanjdaniels @jcsamuelian @nbaken @meia_alsup @dbabbs @amangour30 @sgondala2 @vhmth @dhmeyer @bchesky @jgebbia @wangandrewd @bscholl @ccharliewu @shuoshuooshuooo @sahitYAML @elan_was_here @zanehengsperger
Thanks: @EMedVC @jamescham @danielle_a2z @avichal @_ram_ @gaby_goldberg @rzhou186 @theashbhat @Altimor @davidlee @aranibatta @michaelxbloch @rronak_ @alexadelman @bonatsos @kwharrison13 @ejames_c @RealTonyMao @wadeeyerly @aghosn9 @justincormack @zackabaker @brianmwang @theashbhat @valentin_pd @_harm0n @parconley @kdrag0n @vvtechh @stanleytang Josh Singer, Dan Woods
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
