The AI Ventures Podcast: In Person Interviews With Silicon Valley's Leading VC Backed AI Founders

Adam Knees
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Entrepreneurship

Go inside Silicon Valley's most innovative AI startups with host Adam Knees, as he sits down in person with the VC backed AI technology founders building the future of artificial intelligence. From breakthrough technologies to bold predictions, the AI Ventures Podcast gives you an unfiltered look at the people, ideas and companies shaping the next era of tech. For startup founders, engineers and technology professionals who want to stay ahead in the AI era.

Episodes

  1. Sep 28

    $75M AI Founder: What Most Founders Get Wrong About Building AI Companies | Bernard Aceituno, Stack AI

    What do most founders get wrong about building AI companies? Bernard Aceituno, Co-Founder and President of Stack AI, breaks down what it actually takes to build and scale AI agents, find product market fit, and deploy enterprise AI that works in production. 📩 Get the best insights from AI founders delivered directly to your inbox by subscribing to the AI Ventures newsletter: adamknees.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of the AI Ventures Podcast, Bernard shares the lessons behind building Stack AI from an idea at MIT into a Y Combinator-backed AI startup and its eventual $75M acquisition by Asana. We discuss what separates impressive AI demos from products that can actually scale in the enterprise, why forward-deployed engineers played a critical role in Stack AI finding product market fit, and how Bernard thinks founders should approach fundraising, capital allocation, hiring, GTM, and early customer acquisition. Bernard also explains why he believes building your own AI model is often a waste of time and money, why companies may be overspending on frontier models when cheaper models can accomplish the same task, and why data residency, privacy, reliability, and control increasingly matter when choosing between OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source models, and other LLM providers. We also get into what Y Combinator taught Bernard about growth and retention, his perspective on startup work culture, and how AI agents and enterprise automation could reshape how companies and employees work. Follow the AI Ventures Podcast: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ai-ventures-podcast/ X: x.com/AIVenturesPod Instagram: instagram.com/aiventurespodcast/ TikTok: tiktok.com/@aiventurespodcast Follow Adam Knees: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adam-knees/ X: x.com/AdamKnees Guest Links: Stack AI LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/stack-ai Bernard Aceituno's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/baceituno/ Stack AI Website: stack-ai.com/

    $75M AI Founder: What Most Founders Get Wrong About Building AI Companies | Bernard Aceituno, Stack AI

  2. Jul 27

    Former AWS Head of Product Bets $20,000 His AI Can Hack Any Company

    René Brandel invented Kiro at AWS, the fastest adopted Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Technology in history. 100k downloads in just 3 days. Now he is building Casco: Autonomous Security Testing for Modern Applications which recently raised a Series A at $100M and has gone viral for hacking 7 out of 16 Y Combinator backed AI companies as well as betting any company $20,000 that they can hack their software in under 30 days. Whether you are a AI startup founder or someone trying to understand where artificial intelligence and Silicon Valley AI Technology is headed, this episode is unmissable. In this episode we cover: • How René and his co-founder hacked 7 out of 16 Y Combinator backed AI startups in under 30 minutes, and what it exposed about AI agent security • Why AI generates code that's 98% functionally correct but security is still flat or getting worse, and what that means for every startup shipping with AI • The real story behind AWS Kiro, the fastest adopted IDE in history with 100k downloads in 3 days • Why Casco is betting $20,000 that they can hack any software company in under 30 days • Why AI slop is the biggest hidden cost in software right now, and how the best founders are avoiding it • Casco's long term vision to make all software effortlessly secure Follow the AI Ventures Podcast: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-ventures-podcast/ X: https://x.com/AIVenturesPod?s=20 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiventurespodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@aiventurespodcast Follow Adam Knees Adam Knees LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-knees/ Adam Knees X: https://x.com/AdamKnees Guest Links: Casco Website: https://casco.com/ Casco Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getcasco/ Rene's LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/renebrandel/

    Former AWS Head of Product Bets $20,000 His AI Can Hack Any Company

  3. Jun 5

    Sixtyfour.ai Founders: How They Beat OpenAI to Market & Why AI Will Make Unemployment Surpass 50%

    Sixtyfour.ai founders Saarth Shah and Christopher Price reveal how they shipped their deep research agent before OpenAI, why unemployment could surpass 50% in the next 10 years, and how they are building the central intelligence platform for people and company data. In this episode, Adam Knees sits down in person with the founders of Sixtyfour.ai, a Y Combinator-backed startup building the orchestration layer for company and people intelligence. From hacking at age 12 and manufacturing fidget spinners in middle school to building AI agents that can track down a business owner from a single Facebook post, Saarth and Christopher share the unfiltered story behind one of the most interesting AI startups right now. Whether you are a AI startup founder or someone trying to understand where artificial intelligence and Silicon Valley AI Technology is headed, this episode is unmissable. In this episode we cover: How Sixtyfour.ai beat OpenAI to market by shipping a deep research agent weeks before Deep Research launchedWhy most early stage founders build the wrong thing and how to avoid itThe wildest use cases for AI agents in people and company intelligenceWhat Y Combinator actually teaches founders behind closed doorsWhether or not AI will push unemployment above 50% within 10 yearsTheir long term vision to become the central intelligence platform for people dataFollow the AI Ventures Podcast: AI Ventures LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-ventures-podcast/ Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-knees/ X: https://x.com/AdamKnees Guest Links: sixtyfour.ai Website: https://sixtyfour.ai Saarth's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saarthshah/ Christopher's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-price-59a24b178/ sixtyfour.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sixtyfourai/

    Sixtyfour.ai Founders: How They Beat OpenAI to Market & Why AI Will Make Unemployment Surpass 50%

  4. Apr 29

    AI CEO: Why The Software Industry Is Being Disrupted Faster Than Anyone Realizes

    Is AI about to automate the entire software development lifecycle? In this episode, Adam Knees sits down in person with Rakesh Kothari, CEO and Co-Founder of Deductive AI and former VP of Engineering at ThoughtSpot, to discuss why the software industry is being disrupted by AI agents faster than anyone realizes and what engineers, startup founders and AI leaders need to do about it before it is too late. From building the checkout pipeline at Amazon Go to leading engineering at ThoughtSpot, Rakesh has spent decades solving the hardest problems in distributed systems, machine learning and enterprise software. Now he is building Deductive AI, an AI agent that autonomously debugs and fixes production systems in real time so engineers never have to carry a pager again. Whether you are a Engineer, AI startup founder or just someone trying to stay ahead of where Silicon Valley AI Technology is heading, this episode is unmissable. In this episode we cover: Why the entire software development lifecycle is getting automated by AI agentsHow AI is replacing on call engineers and transforming site reliability engineeringThe biggest barriers to AI adoption inside enterprise companiesWhy you should hire AI agents like employees, not buy them like softwareHow DoorDash and Foursquare are already using Deductive AI in productionFollow the AI Ventures Podcast:  AI Ventures LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-ventures-podcast/  Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-knees/  X: https://x.com/AdamKnees Guest Links:  Deductive AI LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deductive-ai Rakesh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rkots/  Deductive AI Website: https://www.deductive.ai/

    AI CEO: Why The Software Industry Is Being Disrupted Faster Than Anyone Realizes
  • 4 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Go inside Silicon Valley's most innovative AI startups with host Adam Knees, as he sits down in person with the VC backed AI technology founders building the future of artificial intelligence. From breakthrough technologies to bold predictions, the AI Ventures Podcast gives you an unfiltered look at the people, ideas and companies shaping the next era of tech. For startup founders, engineers and technology professionals who want to stay ahead in the AI era.

Information