Zero Shot

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TECNOLOGÍA
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Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.

HACE 11 H

'The application layer is dead': SpotDraft's Shashank Bijapur on why System of Record is the real moat

Another day and another Anthropic announcement has spurred conversation. This time, it is Claude for Legal services. On May 12, Anthropic unveiled 20+ new "MCP connectors that link Claude to the software the legal industry runs on". Think Westlaw, LexisNexis, DocuSign. Alongside this, it announced 12 "new plugins tailored to specific legal work". With every new Anthropic announcement, we typically ask two questions on Zero Shot. Are actual workflows impacted? And what does this do to companies building in similar spaces? In our latest episode, we sat down with Shashank Bijapur, the co-founder and CEO of SpotDraft, to find out more. SpotDraft works on contracts, a crucial component of a lawyer's workflow that Anthropic wants to augment. But Shashank is not worried. He calls Claude the UPI layer. What you build on top of it is "heavily defensible," he adds. But what exactly is SpotDraft building that enables it to work with Claude as opposed to being pressured by its entry into the legal tech stack? Tune in! ____ Additional material: An AI System Built by Litigators, for Litigators https://law-disrupted.fm/ai-system-built-by-litigators/ Claude for the legal industry https://claude.com/blog/claude-for-the-legal-industry Mike OSS https://mikeoss.com/ ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

1 h 6 min
13 MAY

Anthropic's agents are your new finance professionals. They don’t offer investment advice

On May 5, Anthropic released 10 financial services agents. The company said they "pair best" with Claude Opus 4.7, a "state-of-the-art" model that leads the industry on financial agent benchmarks. And the hype followed. The media called the agents a threat to Wall Street. The reality is more complicated. In today’s episode of Zero Shot, hosts Brady Ng and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Musheer Ahmed, founder of FinStep Asia and ex-trader, and Sharath Chandra, founder of EmpowerEdge Ventures, to make sense of what actually changed. The conversation covers why financial services keeps attracting AI investment, why the 10 agents are more useful to junior analysts than to the industry at large, and why trust remains the real bottleneck in finance. They also get into data residency, the regulatory moat protecting incumbent banks, and what happens to a service like the Bloomberg terminal. Tune in!____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Additional Resources Who watches the AI watching your money? https://the-ken.com/kaching/who-watches-the-ai-watching-your-money/ Anthropic releases new AI agents for financial services firms https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-releases-new-ai-agents-for-financial-services-firms-e2829b37 Anthropic unveils AI agents for financial services tasks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3RLgeUiUXY AI for financial services https://www.anthropic.com/news/finance-agents

43 min
6 MAY • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

The AI wearable market is full of dead devices. NeoSapien thinks India can turn the tide

What is the market for AI wearables? And what does they do that a phone already doesn’t? These were the two main questions we asked Dhananjay Yadav, the co-founder and CEO of NeoSapien, a startup that makes an AI-powered pendant that “transcribes in real time, summarises what matters, and reminds you to follow through”. He calls it a “productivity tool” that will change how we interact with devices. But the AI wearable market is tricky. Remember Humane? The AI pin company? It raised $230 million, shipped fewer than 10,000 devices, and permanently bricked every single one of them on February 28, 2025. And Rabbit, the other AI wearable startup that made a big splash, sold 100,000 units and watched 95% of its users disappear within five months. And yet here is Dhananjay who is building a pendant in Bengaluru, telling us India can win the global AI wearable race. And the product, he says, will be used by regular people: small business owners, real estate agents, and even journalists. Tune in! ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Cymasonic productions.____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! Recommended Reading: NeoSapien What Anthropic’s Mythos can hack in hours, Indian banks take months to fix Note taking app Plaud Can a Note-Taking AI Bracelet Really Make You More Productive? I Tested One to Find Out.

50 min
29 ABR • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

How Presentations.AI went from $0 to $5M in revenue with zero new hires

Most AI startup success stories start in November 2022. For the story of Presentations.AI, however, we have to go back to 2005. That year, Sumanth Raghavendra, who is also the co-founder of The Ken, started his first venture. It was called InstaCall. The idea was to build an online office suite in Bangalore with a team of six engineers. They ended up cracking the product, but had no way to market and sell it. In 2012, when the iPhone opened up the App Store, they dropped the full office suite and bet everything on one slice of it — presentations. That became Deck, a mobile-first presentation app. Deck’s thesis was that users came to a presentation tool knowing what they wanted to say, and just needed help saying it visually. But that assumption fell apart really quickly. People would land on the first slide, type a title, and freeze. This insight sent the team down a years-long road of trying to solve presentations with traditional machine learning tools. Then ,GPT arrived. And Deck rebuilt itself entirely, changed its tech stack, and cracked its unit economics. It reinvented itself and launched as Presentations.AI in 2023. It hit one million users in 84 days and soon surfaced at the top of every search for "AI presentation maker". It survived and rode the AI wave. Sumanth tells you the story of how that panned out. Tune in! ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Cymasonic Productions.____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!___ Recommended Reading: Your Startup Is Probably Dead on Arrival ( https://steveblank.com/2026/03/17/your-startup-is-probably-dead-on-arrival/ ) AI and the end of SaaS playbooks ( https://the-ken.com/podcasts/zero-shot/ai-and-the-end-of-saas-playbooks/ ) https://presentations.ai ( https://presentations.ai ) https://aiboomi.org ( https://aiboomi.org )

58 min
22 ABR • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

China built AI differently than the US. Can India do the same?

"People in Silicon Valley and in China often have assumptions about each other. And their assumptions about each other are extremely self-centered." Our guest today is Afra Wang, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and the writer behind Concurrent, a Substack that translates the tech culture of Silicon Valley and China from angels you wouldn’t typically expect. Afra understands both these tech ecosystems and is specific about what that self-centeredness looks like on both sides. Chinese entrepreneurs assume the American government has a heavy hand in pushing AI infrastructure, for example, the way Beijing does. This is just the tip of the iceberg of assumptions that both sides keep building on. Instead, in reality, there are specific ways in which AI development occurs in both places. Consider a leather factory in China using AI to scan cowhide in real time — it maps flaws, computes optimal cutting patterns, and eliminates waste. Silicon Valley has no equivalent because America doesn't have this sector. Afra sums it up: "You cannot map everything from Silicon Valley to China. You cannot map a lot of things from China to Silicon Valley." So, what’s similar and what’s different? What’s moving between these two competing systems? And what lessons does that have for India? Tune in. ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. ____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Additional Resources China OS vs. America OS (2026 version)https://afraw.substack.com/p/china-os-vs-america-os-2026-version ( https://afraw.substack.com/p/china-os-vs-america-os-2026-version ) Chinese Open Source: A Definitive Historyhttps://interconnected.blog/chinese-open-source-a-definitive-history/ ( https://interconnected.blog/chinese-open-source-a-definitive-history/ ) Chinese Tech Workers Are Starting to Train Their AI Doubles–and Pushing Backhttps://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/20/1136149/chinese-tech-workers-ai-colleagues/ ( https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/20/1136149/chinese-tech-workers-ai-colleagues/ ) Jack Dorsey’s Block to Cut Nearly Half Its Workforce in AI Overhaul, Shares Surgehttps://www.reuters.com/business/blocks-fourth-quarter-profit-rises-announces-over-4000-job-cuts-2026-02-26/ ( https://www.reuters.com/business/blocks-fourth-quarter-profit-rises-announces-over-4000-job-cuts-2026-02-26/ ) The Dark Forest Theory, Explainedhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dark-forest-theory-alien-life ( https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dark-forest-theory-alien-life ) The Dark Forest by Liu Cixinhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest ) US bans sale of Huawei, ZTE tech amid security fears (2022)https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450 ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450 )

52 min
14 ABR • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

Zero Shot Live: Who will survive Agentic AI in India?

Today is not regular programming for Zero Shot. We present to you a glimpse of our first live event, which we dramatically titled “The Great Unbundling”. It had a simple premise: agentic AI is coming. Soon. Hard. Fast. For India's consumer internet companies. Who will survive it? We posed this question to Muralikrishnan B, former President of Xiaomi India; Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and former CTO of Flipkart; Anant Choubey, co-founder of Capillary; and Thomas Fenn, co-founder of Mahabelly and joint secretary of the National Restaurant Association of India. This was The Ken's fifth live event, and it was sold out. A big thank you to all of you who were there. We are doing a lot more events this year and if you want to be there next time, keep an eye on our website. Tune in. ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. ____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ___ Recommended Reading: The Great Unbundling ( https://the-ken.com/events/zeroshot-great-unbundling/ )

32 min
8 ABR • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

Kuku used AI to crack micro dramas. It is now coming for Bollywood

"We have 353 billion data points on user behaviour. Why wouldn't I use them to make a better story and get into newer businesses within content?" That's Kunj Sanghvi, the vice president and head of content at Kuku, explaining their next big bet on theatrical films. Kuku has seen 10 million paid subscribers and 350 million downloads so far. This is precious data of “micro segments”, people’s consumption behaviour, preferences, sentiments and indulgences. Kuku says this is the bedrock of what they do: “turning creativity into a science”. AI has been the central to how they achieved this with audio and microdramas. It is also key to what they did with their first full-length feature film, which is ready for release on May 8. In this episode of Zero Shot, Kunj walks us through how Kuku uses AI in production. It starts off with their “proprietary content genome” that ingests millions of data points, scores incoming story pitches, flags weak cliffhangers, predicts which micro-segment an idea will resonate with, and tells you what to fix before a single frame is shot. And come production, AI is helping create scale, making possible complex shots that would require budgets, extras, and massive resources. The result? A film called Indian Institute of Zombies, made at a fraction of regular film budgets. "The audience going to cinemas wants spectacle," says Kunj. "AI lets you cheat that. You can show scale without it feeling like a low-cost production." Tune in. ____ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. ____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears! ____ Recommended Reading: ‘Indian Institute of Zombies’ Marks Kuku’s Big-Screen Debut With Campus Horror Comedy ( https://variety.com/2026/film/news/indian-institute-of-zombies-kuku-theatrical-debut-1236697577/ ) MS Dhoni Invests in AI-driven Storytelling Platform Kuku ( https://www.hollywoodreporterindia.com/features/insight/ms-dhoni-invests-in-ai-driven-storytelling-platform-kuku )

1 h 1 min
31 MAR • SÓLO PARA THE KEN PREMIUM

Salary, Bonus, Equity… Tokens?

Your next job offer might just come with a "token budget" line item. The idea has been gaining steam in Silicon Valley. In February, a VC named Tomasz Tunguz dropped a blog post arguing that inference costs are becoming the fourth pillar of engineering compensation alongside salary, bonus, and equity. Here is the math: the 75th percentile software engineer in the US draws $375k. Add $100k in inference costs and you're at $475k. That's 21% in tokens. A month later, Jensen Huang took this up a notch. The Nvidia CEO said he'd be alarmed if a $500k engineer wasn't burning through at least $250k worth of tokens. What does this actually mean if you're running an AI startup today? As agents go mainstream and the competition heats up, how do you stay ahead? How is the token bill allotted and negotiated? Akash Anand, CEO of Clueso, a Y Combinator-backed startup turning raw screen recordings into polished product videos, joins Zero Shot to break down his real token math. Spoiler: more tokens does not simply equal more productivity. Tune in! ___ This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____ Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!____ Additional Resources How AI is making and remaking the products that we build ( https://the-ken.com/events/how-ai-is-breaking-and-remaking-the-way-products-are-built/ )More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technology/tokenmaxxing-ai-agents.html )Jensen Huang says he would be 'deeply alarmed' if his $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 of tokens ( https://www.businessinsider.com/jensen-huang-500k-engineers-250k-ai-tokens-nvidia-compute-2026-3 )

1 h 4 min

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