Founders You Should Know Oct. 15th Recap 🚀🦾
Founders building the future, from napkin-folding robots to friendly AI aliens
Last week’s SF startup showcase was our best yet — our largest audience, the biggest energy, and a palpable excitement that carried through the room.
As is the magic of all FYSK showcases, unseen connections forged over years made this event happen. Before our cohost Sarah Goomar joined Rippling, she came to one of the first Founders You Should Know events as a jobseeker with her husband. That single decision created a ripple (😉) effect we’re still feeling today.
Sarah’s husband joined Unit21 as an early engineer after the show. Through him we met founder Clarence Chio, who hired four community members from the show, including Riya Jagetia. Riya recently started Socratix AI. We’ve invested in both Clarence’s new company Coverbase and Riya’s Socratix AI through our community fund, and continue supporting their growth.
None of this would have happened if Sarah had stayed home that evening instead of attending Founders You Should Know.
You can meet people online, you can send 100 LinkedIn requests, but you can’t engineer serendipity through a screen. The best introductions happen because someone overheard your conversation. The best hires come from the person you weren’t planning to meet. You have to be in the room for that.
We’re grateful for the generosity and support of our wonderful cohosts at Rippling and Radical Ventures. Thank you to long-time FYSK supporters Rob Toews and Molly Welch at Radical Ventures for sponsoring our event, and Sarah Goomar, Yingjie Wang, and team at Rippling for hosting us in their beautiful office.
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.
Exa
Exa is a powerful search engine for developers, providing a custom search engine for LLMs and other AI applications.
Founder: Jeffrey Wang
Open Roles: Software Engineering, AI Research, Operations
Dyna
Dyna Robotics builds general-purpose robots that use an AI foundation model to perform tasks in real-world environments.
Founder: Lindon Gao
Open Roles: Software/ML Engineering, Hardware/Mechanical Engineering
Base Power
Base Power is fixing the grid through its designed, manufactured, installed, owned and operated fleet of thousands of batteries.
Founder: Justin Lopas
Open Roles: Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Design & Growth, Operations
Rillet
Rillet automates and streamlines financial operations by providing an AI-powered enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for finance teams.
Founder: Nicolas Kopp
Open Roles: Engineering, Product, Design, Sales, Marketing
Wisdom AI
Wisdom AI helps businesses analyze their data and make informed decisions.
Founder: Soham Mazumdar
Open Roles: Engineering, Product, Design, Sales, Marketing
Portola
Portola builds and develops the friendly AI companion app Tolan.
Founder: Quinten Farmer
Open Roles: iOS Product Engineer, Backend Product Engineer, Product Designer
Rox
Rox transforms your sales process by leveraging AI agents to boost productivity, gain actionable insights, and close deals faster.
Founder: Shriram Sridharan
Open Roles: Software Engineer, Founding Designer
Known
Known is an AI-powered matchmaker that aims to create authentic connections by using an AI voice agent to understand a user’s needs and match them with compatible people.
Founder: Celeste Amadon
Open Roles: Engineering, Design
Solace Health
Solace Health provides patient advocacy services by connecting patients with healthcare professionals who help them navigate their medical journey.
Founder: Jeremy Gurewitz
Open Roles: Engineering, Product, Design, Marketing, Ops, People
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