Secondpod

Ali Partovi is a generational entrepreneur and investor. A Harvard Computer Science graduate (class of 1994), he cofounded LinkExchange and sold it to Microsoft when he was 26, then cofounded iLike. As an angel investor he backed Facebook, Uber, Airbnb and Dropbox. He then started Neo, a mentorship community that has backed Cursor, Kalshi and many more. He also cofounded Code.org with his brother Hadi, helping millions of kids around the world learn to code. Ali has just launched his own podcast, Confession with Ali Partovi. Check it out here: https://app.magellan.ai/listen_links/JX3oYF   Ali Partovi's LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/apartovi Ardalan Javadi LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Second Newsletter: https://substack.com/@seondnewsletter   📬 SECONDPOD Newsletter: https://secondnewsletter.substack.com Website: https://secondpod.co Subscribe: https://youtube.com/@Secondpod Instagram: https://instagram.com/thesecondpod X: https://x.com/thesecondpod LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/secondpodcast https://app.magellan.ai/listen_links/JX3oYF

Ali Ansari was born in Tehran, moved to the US at 10, graduated Berkeley in three years, and started micro1 as an AI recruiter in April 2022. Then one customer hired 500 engineers in two weeks. Ali figured out they were training models, shut down a business doing millions in revenue, and went all in on data. Fifteen months later micro1 went from $7M to over $500M ARR, Forbes called him one of AI's youngest billionaires, and every major lab, most robotics labs, and Fortune 500 enterprises are customers. This is his first podcast in Persian. We talk about how RL environments and verifiers actually work, why micro1 refuses to work with China, the "expert happiness index" that decides manager commissions, the 10,000 person robotics project, why he never gave up board control, and the three principles he thinks every founder needs. Second Group News Letter : https://substack.com/@seondnewsletter Ali Ansari : https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliansarinik/ Ardalan Javadi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Farzam Hejazi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzam-hejazi-5b608081/ About Us : Linkedin : / secondpodcast Twitter : /thesecondpod Instagram : / thesecondpod #Secondpod #Second_Pod #پادکست ـ دوم #secondpod #پادکست Ask

Yasi Baiani built sleep and female health at Fitbit, took revenue from $700M to $2.2B, and watched Google buy the company for $2.1B. She started at Citi, moved into venture, launched a startup out of Harvard Innovation Lab alongside Whoop founder Will Ahmed, then wrote her way into Fitbit. After Fitbit she taught product manager at UC Berkeley, unlocked the teen and elder care market at Cleo, and founded Raya Advisory, which helps growth stage AI, software, health tech and fintech companies with product strategy and executive hiring. In this episode: the three rules behind a network of half a million followers, why Fitbit chose sleep over weight loss, how Fitbit lost 90% market share to Apple, who wins wearables in the age of OpenAI hardware, why she never hires from Google for startups, and whether the PM role exists in 2030 Thanks to our Partner Human Agency : https://www.humanagency.com Our News Letter : https://substack.com/@seondnewsletter Yasi Baiani Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasibaiani / Ardalan Javadi Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/   About Us : Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/secondpodcast/ Twitter : /thesecondpod Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thesecondpod/ #Secondpod #Second_Pod #پادکست ـ دوم #secondpod #پادکست

Babak Hodjat has been building AI agents since 1998. He said that in front of a room in San Francisco last week, sitting next to his brother Siamak for the first time in 25 years. His argument is narrower than the bubble talk, and more useful. Enterprises are not buying AI because a need has been identified. They are buying because the business side expects productivity in return. The engineering that would actually deliver that productivity has not been done yet. Until it is, the revenue is running ahead of the value. He also thinks most of the layoffs attributed to AI were cuts companies could already afford. Babak co-founded Dejima in 1998. The patent behind it, "Adaptive interaction using an adaptive agent-oriented software architecture," carries a June 15 1998 priority date and became foundational to Apple's Siri. Sybase acquired the company in 2004. He went on to co-found Sentient Technologies, applying evolutionary algorithms to trading, and now leads AI at Cognizant. Siamak Hodjat was at Dejima from the start and stayed in the assistant world through Siri, Viv Labs and Gameplanner alongside Adam Cheyer. Recorded live in San Francisco on July 25, 2026, in front of a room of founders and researchers. Our Partner : www.humanagency.com News letter : https://secondnewsletter.substack.com Babak Hodjat : https://www.linkedin.com/in/babakhodjat/ Siamak Hodjat: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siamak-hodjat-98669/ Caroline Hoogland: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-hoogland-a092b25a/ Ardalan Javadi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Farzam Hejazi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzam-hejazi-5b608081/ About Us : Linkedin : / secondpodcast Twitter : /thesecondpod Instagram : / thesecondpod #Secondpod #Second_Pod #پادکست ـ دوم #secondpod #پادکست

Ramin Hasani is the co-founder and CEO of Liquid AI, and he has done what almost no one in AI has: built a real alternative to the transformer, the architecture behind ChatGPT and nearly every model you touch. Liquid AI raised a $250M Series A led by AMD, and by his own account now sits around $4.5 billion. The core idea did not come from a bigger data center. It came from the 302-neuron brain of a 2mm worm. We also get into the part most founders never put on a slide. While the whole field was stripping complexity out of neural networks to make them scale, Ramin spent seven years adding it back in, chasing an equation about how two neurons talk that had sat unsolved since 1907. He cracked it on a chalkboard at MIT, one now headed to the MIT history museum. Ramin was born in Iran and left for Politecnico di Milano, then a PhD at TU Wien in Vienna, where modeling the brain of a worm became Liquid Neural Networks. From there: MIT, CSAIL, a 2022 Nature paper, and in March 2023 spinning the research into Liquid AI alongside Daniela Rus, Mathias Lechner, and Alexander Amini. Our News Letter : https://substack.com/@seondnewsletter Ramin Hassani Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alikashani Ardalan Javadi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Farzam Hejazi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzam-hejazi-5b608081/ 00:00:00 Introduction  00:03::24 Why Noise Is Actually a Resource for Computation  00:06:01 Where the Whole Worm Idea Came From  00:6:56 Why Ramin Chose the C. elegans Worm as the Basis of His Research  00:10:19 How Ramin Found His First Co Founder  00:18:08 The Equation Ramin and His Team Solved That Had Been Unsolved Since 1907 00:19:06 The First Mathematical Attempt in 1953 to Show Neuron Relationships 00:19:41 What Is the Problem With Differential Equation Based Machine Learning? 00:21:29 The Aha Moment Behind Liquid AI  00:22:16 The Birth of Liquid AI  00:22:46 How Sergey Levine Inspired the Name  00:24:09 How Liquid AI's Architecture Differs From Transformers  00:25:09 The Relationship Between Bias and Algorithm Scalability  00:28:05 Why Liquid Neural Networks Have an Efficiency Advantage at Scale  00:29:41 Do Scaling Laws Apply to Liquid Models?  00:31:26 Attention Is Not the Only Thing You Can Scale  00:34:08 How the Liquid Search System Works  00:34:53 Why Liquid AI Has the Lowest Memory Usage and Latency and Why It Is Hybrid  00:35:00 The Best Foundation Model for CPUs  00: 37:30 How to Close Enterprise Customers in the AI Era  00:38:29 What Vanguard Taught Ramin About Financial Strategy  00:41:58 125 Enterprises Are Now Using the Liquid AI Model  00:42:56 How to Design a Revenue Model for Enterprise in the AI Era00:43:19 How Shopify Uses Liquid AI 00:44:00 How Mercedes Uses Liquid AI With a 600 MB Model  00:45:51 The Quality of $1 of Liquid AI Revenue Compared to $1 of Anthropic  00:47:13 Why Liquid Is Going After Arm's Business Model  00:52:53 The Story Behind Another Iranian Founded AI DNA Startup That Raised $200M in Seed  00:55:47 The Story Behind Liquid AI's $290M Fundraise  00:59:30 How to Close a Seed Round  00:1:00:17 The Mastermind Behind the Fundraising  00:1:02:57 The Story Behind AMD Leading the Round  1:04:56 Why Revenue Matters So Much for Fundraising  1:05:22 Liquid AI Is Now at a $4.5 Billion Valuation  1:05:51 Ramin's Insight on Building a World Class Network  1:07:32 Ramin's Takeaways From Meeting Jamie Dimon  1:08:31 Jamie Dimon's Pitch for Liquid AI  1:08:51 How to Build an Effective Short Narrative for Your Pitch  1:10:31 Leading by Example  1:11:07 What Is the Best Definition of Intelligence?  1:14:32 Silicon Valley Is a Gossip Town  1:16:22 Why an Exponential View Matters and How Sam Altman Does It References: Check our News Letter : https://substack.com/@seondnewsletter?r=2v0lej&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page About Us : Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/secondpodcast/ Twitter : /thesecondpod Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thesecondpod/ #Secondpod #Second_Pod #پادکست ـ دوم #secondpod #پادکست