Founders You Should Know - May 29 Showcase recap

our 2 year anniversary extravaganza

Jun 12, 2024

Our last Founders You Should Know showcase was really special to me because May marked the two year anniversary of running the show in person. And it was our “season finale” – our next show will kick off our fall season at the end of August.

Taking you behind the scenes of the very first FYSK, I remember being scared no one would show up. I begged my friends to come so the room wouldn’t feel empty. Many investors gave me feedback that helping talent and companies connect was already well served. Every venture firm already has recruiters and platform services teams. But we believed Founders You Should Know could be a new way to serve the startup ecosystem. Instead of building a platform service or a recruiting agency, we would come together to build a community. Community members would help us find breakout companies to feature, as well as refer friends to join these companies. Together, we’d accelerate the assembly of the best teams to work on some of the most challenging problems in technology.

Fast forward two years later, we have over 4,000 applications for 200 spots at our show, and we see founders and attendees flying in from across the country to attend. Each show gets bigger and better. This month we hosted over 200 attendees and made over 750 connections for the 12 founders we featured.

Two years is forever in startup time. It’s long enough that we’ve seen:

Founders we’ve featured hire talent from the community
Attendees find their dream jobs
Attendees meet at FYSK and start companies together

However, one of the coolest trends we’ve seen over the past two years is how the FYSK community derisks, to some extent, the whole enterprise of startups. Two years is long enough that we’ve seen attendees start their own companies, then come back looking for talented engineers. We’ve also seen founders come back to attend the show as jobseekers. And finally, we’ve even seen founders get some liquidity and invest in the FYSK fund as LPs.

As we’ve seen from all the transitions our community members have made over the past couple of years, startups are never certain. But what’s stayed constant is whether you’re looking for a new job, or starting a new company, or hitting escape velocity and doubling the size of your team, having a community of the most talented people who can support you is an invaluable resource wherever you are in your career.

This summer, we’re taking a short break to finish raising the FYSK fund so we can hit the ground running in the fall and invest in more of you who are starting or scaling new companies. If you’d like more information about the FYSK fund, let us know.

Below is our recap of May’s Founders You Should Know showcase. If you’re interested in meeting any of these founders, send us a forwardable email blurb so we can suggest the connection. Apply here for our next show on August 28th. Wishing everyone the most relaxing summer and looking forward to seeing you in the fall!

MagicSchool

What it is: AI platform for teachers and students

Founder: Adeel Khan

Open roles: AL/ML Engineers, Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Product Engineer, DevOps, First Product Manager, First Product Designer, Data Scientist, Head of Marketing, and Head of People

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