Founders You Should Know Jan. 28th Recap 📀🌟
The 10 breakout startups engineers should be paying attention to
🍽️ Apply now to the Founders You Should Know community to join our February Dinner Series: intimate, off-the-record conversations with breakout founders.
We kicked our 2026 showcases off with a bang last week! Our first show of the year brought together 10 breakout founders and a room packed with engineers and for an evening of breakout stories, great conversations, and lasting connections.
The timing here matters.
At FYSK, we don’t wait until the story is obvious. We introduce founders while the team is still small, the roadmap is still fluid, and the right early hires can actually shape what gets built. The engineers in the room aren’t just there to watch — they’re potential co-builders of what comes next.
We’re no stranger to early signs of success. Last year, Görkem Yurtseven pitched fal when his team was around 20 engineers with no sales org. Ten months later, the company had doubled in size and increased its valuation by 10x, and engineers in the room had the opportunity to join during that breakout phase.
When we featured Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour in New York last April, the company had just gotten approval to distribute nationwide. Since then, Kalshi raised a $1B Series E and grew trading volume more than 12x, and early engineers in the audience had the chance to build this critical infrastructure.
These aren’t outliers. This is what happens when talented engineers meet ambitious founders before the market catches on.
If you were in the room, or you’re reading this now, these moments are for you. Our shows are for people who want to join at critical moments of inflection, ask the right questions, and actually shape a company’s direction. The founders who pitched last week and the engineers who showed up to listen are at the start of something we’ll be talking about for years.
We’re grateful for the generosity and support of our wonderful cohosts at Rippling and Digital Ocean.
Not seeing the breakout startup you’ve been following at our showcases? Nominate them, and they might just be sharing their story at our next show.
Parallel
Parallel builds web data APIs for AI agents, turning web search and complex human knowledge tasks into programmable, business-ready infrastructure.
Founder: Parag Agrawal
Open Roles: Across the board
Applied Compute
Applied Compute builds Specific Intelligence for enterprises: agents that perform reliably on your workflows, learn continuously from your data, and operate in your environment.
Founder: Rhythm Garg
Open Roles: Software Engineers
Inertia
Inertia is the commercial fusion energy company creating limitless energy through proven fusion science - star power for life on Earth.
Founder: Jeff Lawson
Open Roles: All engineering disciplines
Midi Health
Midi Health is the virtual care clinic transforming women’s health.
Founder: Joanna Strober
Open Roles: Across the board
Wispr Flow
Wispr Flow is the voice-to-text AI that turns speech into clear, polished writing in every app.
Founder: Tanay Kothari
Open Roles: Software/ML Engineers, Sales, Marketing
Matter Intelligence
Matter is building superhuman perception, enabling machines and humans to see and understand the physical world at the molecular level.
Founder: Vishnu Sridhar
Open Roles: All engineering disciplines
Quilter
Quilter makes building hardware as fast and iterative as building software.
Founder: Sergiy Nesterenko
Open Roles: Software Engineers
Outtake
Outtake’s agentic AI secures modern attack surfaces with advanced search, real-time threat classification, and automated response.
Founder: Alex Dhillon
Open Roles: Across the board
Code Metal
Code Metal leverages AI for automated code translation and optimization across industries requiring precise coding standards like defense and manufacturing.
Founder: Peter Morales
Open Roles: Software Engineers, AI Engineers, Growth, Ops
/dev/agents
/dev/agents is a cloud-based operating system designed to coordinate and manage autonomous AI agents across all a user’s devices.
Founder: David Singleton
Open Roles: Software Engineers, Business Operations
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Brilliant insight on timing and access over brand name. The idea that engineers aren't just evaluating but co-buildign product direction early on gets overlooked in most career advice. Saw this firsthand when I joined a team pre-PMF and the product pivoted twice based on engieer feedback.