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Fondo is an all-in-one accounting platform for startups. Get your books closed, taxes filed, and cash back from the IRS.

  1. 15h ago

    START: Rodney Fong, President & CEO, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

    What does it take to build a world-class startup ecosystem? Rodney Fong's answer starts with connection. As President & CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, he brings together founders, established businesses, policymakers, finance, technology, and the broader community - helping turn San Francisco’s density of talent into opportunity. Through YES SF, the Chamber hosts 300+ events a year, creating a physical hub where ideas, industries, and people can collide. Rodney’s philosophy is simple: Put ambitious people in the same room. Make it easier to build. Give new ideas room to grow. 🎙️ Rodney A. Fong, President & CEO, San Francisco Chamber of Commerc on Fondo START with Guest Host: Grace Gong, Founder @ Smart Venture Media 01:01 SF Tech Week 01:48 the Chamber’s role and history 02:10 How YES SF connects founders and businesses 03:31 San Francisco’s comeback 04:50 Why SF’s talent density matters 06:10 YES SF’s 300+ annual events 06:53 Why this startup cycle feels different 07:35 A sea urchin startup idea 08:33 Robotics and everyday automation 09:13 The human side of technology

    START: Rodney Fong, President & CEO, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

  2. 1d ago

    START: Thomas Chan & Justin Tang, Co-Founders, Lantern AI "End-to-end AI hiring manager"

    Most hiring software finds the candidates you ask for. But what if you're asking for the wrong person? Lantern AI, founded by Thomas Chan and Justin Tang, is building an AI hiring manager for the question that comes before the search: who should you actually hire? It learns what strong talent looks like at your company, then searches 50+ data sources for people a keyword match on the job description would miss. As hiring managers react to its picks, Lantern sharpens its sense of what they want. And when their requirements don't match the talent market, it pushes back instead of just following the brief. That's the interesting part. Sometimes the best candidate misses a box or two; sometimes the person a company thinks it needs isn't the one who'd help it most. A great headhunter knows when to challenge the brief, and Thomas and Justin are building that judgment into the software. "Turn your taste into hires."  ‍ 🎙️ Thomas Chan & Justin Tang, Co-Founders, Lantern AI on Fondo START   ‍ 01:27 Thomas introduces Lantern's AI hiring manager and personalized talent discovery.01:53 Explains why static job descriptions can overlook exceptional candidates.02:39 Justin describes Lantern's interactive approach to learning hiring preferences.03:26 Thomas explains how Lantern challenges unrealistic hiring requirements.04:17 Discusses Lantern's sourcing strategy using 50+ data providers.05:19 Shares how AI is influencing demand for engineering talent.06:43 Explains why companies need to rethink hiring as technology evolves.08:25 Describes how Lantern evaluates candidates beyond their resumes.09:48 Explains how AI can assess supporting evidence of candidates' work.10:24 Discusses how Lantern helps hiring managers streamline recruiting. ‍ Check out www.lantern.md

    START: Thomas Chan & Justin Tang, Co-Founders, Lantern AI "End-to-end AI hiring manager"

  3. 3d ago

    START: Anand Pajaniradjane, CEO & Founder, Scope: "The Agent Experience Platform"

    Scope already had a live product with revenue when its customers started pulling founder Anand Pajaniradjane somewhere else. It started in GEO and AI search optimization.In customer conversations Anand kept showing people a testing suite the team had built around its own MCP, and they got more excited about that than the product he was actually selling. Then one Wednesday a unicorn told him the GEO product was well thought out and well done but they weren't sure they had budget for it.Anand brought up AI agents in the same conversation and got forwarded to the right person on the spot. He built a small MVP that night.The next morning he talked to about 15 companies and roughly 12 said they'd pay for it if he could make it work.That became Scope's new direction. AI agents now discover software, evaluate it and use it to complete tasks, but they don't use it exactly the way people do.An agent might click through a UI, dig into a GitHub repo or go looking for examples, and its behavior can shift a lot depending on the product and context. Scope has now logged millions of agent runs studying that behavior.The company is building an Agent Experience Platform that shows software companies how agents find and use their products and where that experience breaks down. 🎙️ Anand Pajaniradjane, CEO & Founder, Scope on Fondo START   ‍ 01:04 Scope’s mission: making software discoverable and usable by AI agents01:58 How customer demand pulled Scope away from its original GEO product02:32 The week Anand realized the new product had stronger customer pull02:57 The unicorn conversation that strengthened the signal03:27 Building the first MVP overnight and validating demand in person03:53 Roughly 12 of 15 companies indicate they would pay for a working product04:39 How AI agents discover and evaluate software differently from AI search05:12 What agents actually inspect: interfaces, repositories, and examples06:03 Why context changes agent behavior and one-size-fits-all doesn’t work yet06:51 Anand’s experience in Founders Inc.’s Artifact program08:18 Applying to YC as a solo founder08:47 Anand’s first YC interview experience09:58 Why AI agents are becoming a new class of software user10:31 Scope’s focus on sharing what it has learned from customers and agent behavior11:43 Where to follow Anand and Scope Learn more at www.tryscope.com

    START: Anand Pajaniradjane, CEO & Founder, Scope: "The Agent Experience Platform"

  4. 6d ago

    START: Sam Mathew, CTO & Co-Founder, twentyfour26: "On Demand CNC Prototyping"

    Wait two weeks to find out a part doesn’t work.Then wait two more weeks to try again. Sam Mathew knows what that does to a builder. He started in hardware. During COVID, he switched to software because he couldn’t get parts. Slow iteration wasn’t just costing him time. It was discouraging him from building hardware. Now he’s back, making parts for other builders. twentyfour26 manufactures metal parts in San Francisco for robotics and consumer hardware startups.But it didn’t start as a machine shop. Sam and his co-founder, Hemant Mahendru, were building software for manufacturers. Selling it was hard. So on the first day of Founders Inc., they changed the business: instead of selling software to manufacturers, they became one and started taking orders themselves. Their approach is deliberately focused. Rather than trying to manufacture everything, they standardize the machine, materials, tools and workholding around a narrower set of parts. Their software handles quoting and programming, and they run production themselves. Upload a STEP file. The software checks whether the design fits their setup, flags anything that needs changing, and turns accepted designs into a quote and machining plan. When the part fits and capacity allows, they can cut it the same day. For a hardware team, that’s more than a shorter delivery time. It changes how often they can test a design, learn what’s wrong and try again. The obvious cost of waiting is a delayed prototype. The less obvious cost is a builder deciding to work on something else. Sam’s building for the people who want to stay in hardware. "Send CAD. Get metal." 🎙️ Sam Mathew, CTO & Co-Founder, twentyfour26 on Fondo START  01:57 Making new toys from old ones 02:22 Dropping out in 10th grade to build an edtech startup 04:05 The outdated spreadsheet that sparked the company 04:43 Lessons from their first YC interview 05:18 Pivoting from manufacturing software to making parts 06:00 Turning CAD files into metal parts 06:28 Why faster access to parts matters for hardware builders 06:52 The cost of waiting between prototypes 07:35 The practical reason Sam shaved his head 07:48 How a seed-round joke became a viral video ‍ Check out twentyfour26.com

    START: Sam Mathew, CTO & Co-Founder, twentyfour26: "On Demand CNC Prototyping"

  5. Oct 1

    START: Dekai Li, CTO & Co-Founder, Trident "Autonomous offensive security agents."

    Shipping code got faster. Security has to keep up. Before starting Trident, Dekai Li’s co-founder saw a workflow that concerned him: A product manager supplied a project description. An engineer pasted it into a coding agent. The output became a pull request. Dekai’s concern: manual pentesting couldn’t keep pace with how quickly developers were shipping. That’s the problem they built Trident to address. Trident uses AI to continuously pentest applications and APIs, review code, and identify security issues across cloud infrastructure. But finding a possible vulnerability isn’t enough. You have to prove it’s real. Dekai says validation is one of the hardest parts of AI pentesting. That’s why Trident’s findings come with reproducible evidence, and fixes can be proposed as draft pull requests for engineers to review and merge. The goal isn’t to give back the speed AI makes possible. It’s to build security that can keep up with it. Check out Trident "Continuous Security. AI agents test your apps, APIs and cloud, review every pull request, and answer your team in Slack." ‍ 🎙️Dekai Li Co-Founder & CTO, Trident on Fondo START  w/ Guest Host, Grace Gong, Founder, Smart Venture Media ‍ 01:05 Why manual pentesting struggles to keep pace with development02:12 Earning trust as young cybersecurity founders03:25 Validating vulnerabilities and navigating AI guardrails04:02 Building credibility through experienced hires and product results05:18 A customer case: five critical vulnerabilities in 20 minutes06:10 The founders’ cybersecurity backgrounds and path to Trident07:02 How AI coding workflows helped inspire the company08:13 Lessons from YC and building around customer feedback09:32 Scanning software packages before they enter the codebase10:21 Focusing on the security problems customers prioritize‍ Check out tridentsecurity.io

    START: Dekai Li, CTO & Co-Founder, Trident "Autonomous offensive security agents."

  6. Sep 30

    START: Ryan Nowicki Stewart, CEO & Co-Founder, Pennant: "The Corporate Governance OS for Public Markets"

    The earnings call gets the headlines. The shareholder vote can change the company. CEO compensation. Board control. Major corporate transactions. Some of the biggest decisions at public companies are shaped through shareholder votes - but most people never see the work behind them. Ryan Nowicki Stewart spent years inside that process. At State Street, he met with boards and C-suites and helped the firm arrive at voting decisions as a major institutional shareholder. Later, at PJT, he sat on the other side of the table, advising companies navigating those same investors. And behind a single decision could be thousands of pages of SEC filings, third-party research and years of internal notes. Ryan describes the workflow as “a total patchwork.” So he and his co-founder Tommy - who he’s known since undergrad and started alongside at BlackRock -  built Pennant. Pennant is building the corporate governance OS for institutional investors. The platform brings meetings, filings, proposals, voting policies and decision records into one place - helping teams analyze and coordinate proxy voting, apply their own principles at scale and maintain a clear record of how decisions were made. And because Ryan and Tommy spent years working with the exact people they’re now building for, their product bar is simple: Would our former bosses and teammates use this day in and day out? That mindset has shaped how they build. Instead of guessing what customers need, the Pennant team spends time on the desk with institutional investors, starts with their biggest problem and builds from there. Know the workflow deeply enough, and your former job can become your startup’s unfair advantage. ‍ 🎙️Ryan Nowicki Stewart, CEO & Co-Founder, Pennant on Fondo START  ‍ 00:57 From BlackRock and State Street to building Pennant01:27 The hidden governance layer behind public companies02:05 Meeting Tim Cook as Nike’s compensation committee chair03:47 How boards think about CEO pay and incentives05:42 Why shareholder voting matters to institutional investors06:08 The thousands-of-pages “patchwork” Pennant is replacing07:18 Building software their former teammates would actually use08:17 Why Pennant starts with each client’s biggest problem ‍Check out getpennant.ai

    START: Ryan Nowicki Stewart, CEO & Co-Founder, Pennant: "The Corporate Governance OS for Public Markets"

  7. Sep 29

    START: Sky Yang, CEO & Co-Founder, Imagine AI "Reverse engineer B2B growth, starting with LinkedIn.

    Most companies ask what they should post on LinkedIn. Sky Yang is focused on a more valuable question: How does all that activity actually translate into growth? At Imagine AI, his team is treating LinkedIn less like a content calendar and more like a measurable growth system. They study how content performs, who it reaches, and how those interactions connect back to prospects and the deal cycle—then use that data to help companies make better decisions about what to say and who should say it. It starts before a post is ever written. Imagine AI works with companies to define their strategy, positioning, audience, differentiation, and KPIs. That becomes context the agent can use to create content grounded in what the company is actually trying to accomplish. Then Sky looks at distribution differently. A founder, company account, and growth leader each have their own network. Imagine AI uses that to help companies reach more of the people they actually want to reach instead of relying on a single account to carry the entire strategy. And it doesn’t stop at engagement. Imagine AI integrates with CRM data so teams can map content interactions to prospects and follow those touchpoints through different stages of the deal cycle. With enough data, the goal is to build a clearer picture of which content decisions are contributing to revenue. His team has studied how LinkedIn engagement is distributed and is building around the parts companies can make more intelligent. Imagine AI is taking LinkedIn from “we should probably post more” to a data-driven growth system companies can actually learn from. ‍ 🎙️ Sky Yang, CEO & Co-Founder, Imagine AI on Fondo START   ‍ 01:12 Imagine AI’s data-driven approach to LinkedIn01:43 The data behind why some LinkedIn posts take off02:37 Building content from strategy and positioning04:08 Reaching more of the right audience through your team06:18 Connecting content engagement to CRM and revenue08:47 Why Imagine AI is going deep on LinkedIn10:42 Using AI to surface the DMs that actually matter11:54 Relationship data, repeated touchpoints, and smarter outreach14:03 Sky’s advice for growing on LinkedIn Check out at imagineai.me

    START: Sky Yang, CEO & Co-Founder, Imagine AI "Reverse engineer B2B growth, starting with LinkedIn.

  8. Sep 28

    START: Silen Naihin, CTO & Co-Founder, Experiential Labs: "Open source AI gateway that turns your traffic into a model you own"

    Every AI model. One key. Zero markup. That’s the starting point. The bigger ambition: help companies turn their AI traffic into better models they own Silen Naihin helped grow AutoGPT to 160,000 GitHub stars. Now, at Experiential Labs, he’s working to bring model access, evaluation and training into one unified experience.  The open-source gateway gives companies control over model access. From there, the team is building simulations around their traffic to understand different workloads and recommend models based on three things: cost, quality and speed. The goal goes beyond choosing a model. It’s helping companies evaluate performance and train specialized models around their own work when they need them. Silen expects agents to do most of the work. So the product has to serve both: humans who need to understand what’s happening and agents that need to use it.   Start with access. Build toward ownership. "The open source AI gateway. Hosted providers, your own keys, and your own GPUs behind one endpoint, at the provider's price." ‍ 🎙️Silen Naihin, CTO & Co-Founder, Experiential Labs on Fondo START   02:51 Going off the beaten path: TKS, Minerva & dropping out03:37 Getting into YC & the research behind Experiential Labs05:00 From 8 H100s and continual learning to building a company05:58 Why every company will become an AI company06:42 Cost, quality & speed: the “holy trinity” of AI models07:00 When fine-tuning beats prompting08:14 What happens when powerful AI gets incredibly cheap09:00 Why the future could be a model—or LoRA—per customer10:00 Open-source models get the tokens; closed models get the spend10:27 Jevons paradox, DeepSeek & exploding AI usage11:06 Why OpenAI and Anthropic aren’t the next Yahoo13:05 Experiential Labs’ bigger vision beyond the AI gateway13:45 Building AI infrastructure for humans and agents14:01 Optimizing models across cost, quality & speed Check out experientiallabs.ai

    START: Silen Naihin, CTO & Co-Founder, Experiential Labs: "Open source AI gateway that turns your traffic into a model you own"
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Fondo is an all-in-one accounting platform for startups. Get your books closed, taxes filed, and cash back from the IRS.

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  • Creator
    Fondo
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    123
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Fondo
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