Latest news with #YC
Business Insider
a day ago
- Automotive
- Business Insider
Elon Musk is going founder mode on Tesla's $16.5 billion chip deal with Samsung
Two particular lines in Elon Musk's posts about Tesla's new chip deal highlight just how far his "founder mode" approach extends. In this case, right down to his stated terms of Tesla's manufacturing agreement with Samsung. In a $16.5 billion deal, Samsung will produce Tesla's new AI6 chip from the manufacturing plant it is building in Taylor, Texas, which is expected to open in 2026. Located outside of Austin, Samsung's plant is close to where Musk moved in 2020, and where his company Tesla later moved in 2021. In an X post, Musk wrote that he would personally monitor the plant's activity. "This is a critical point, as I will walk the line personally to accelerate the pace of progress," Musk wrote. "And the fab is conveniently located not far from my house." In other words — "founder mode." Musk also wrote that Samsung "agreed to allow Tesla to assist in maximizing manufacturing efficiency." The Tesla CEO wrote that the deal, which Bloomberg first reported, was one of "strategic importance" for the automaker. Neither Tesla nor Samsung responded to a request for comment. Musk has long been known for taking a founder-mode approach to running his companies, an in-the-details entrepreneurial mindset that has flourished in Silicon Valley. He famously slept on the factory floor during Tesla's Model 3. He personally renamed and reorganized an entire company when taking over Twitter, now X, and he set up shop in D.C. during his DOGE era. The term "founder mode" itself, though, is newer. Its origins stem from a 2024 talk that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky gave for the startup accelerator Y Combinator. In it, he advised against the common principle that leaders of large-scale companies should hire good employees and give them space to do their job. In a September essay titled "Founder Mode," YC cofounder Paul Graham reflected on Chesky's talk, writing that there are "things founders can do that managers can't." Graham coined the term "founder mode," describing leaders of big companies who work on the ground across the company, delving into the details at a granular level, and not just via their direct reports. Chesky later embraced the mantra named after his talk, along with much of Silicon Valley. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke wrote on X that "we need founder mode companies in all industries." In his essay, Graham thanked a variety of tech leaders for reading early drafts, including YC CEO Garry Tan, venture capitalist Ron Conway, and Musk himself. While the terms Musk describes for Tesla's manufacturing deal and his plans to personally walk the Samsung assembly line are very "founder mode," he's not the only CEO keeping a close eye on a company's supply chain. Tim Cook rose through the ranks at Apple before becoming CEO by closely managing Apple's supply chain. The iPhone giant famously keeps a very close eye on its manufacturing partners, many of which are in China. A United airport sign photographed in 2019 and confirmed to be legitimate by the airline revealed that Apple was buying 50 business class seats a day for its employees to travel from San Francisco to Shanghai, a travel hub connecting to Zhengzhou and Shenzhen, which have been called " iPhone cities." The iPhone maker is also known for having a broad team of operations overseers. Samsung's new chip deal with Tesla marks a major win for its foundry business. As of 1 p.m. in New York, the company's stock price was up 6.8%. And while Tesla's assembly line workers have experienced Elon Musk's founder mode approach, it sounds like soon Samsung's will too.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Five Lessons From Scaling A Fintech Platform In A Regulated Industry
Kevin Meyer , Founding Engineer at Pure (YC W23), a fintech platform for precious metals. Dual degrees in CS & Economics. getty In fintech, speed is often treated as the ultimate currency. But in regulated sectors like physical asset trading, speed without trust is meaningless, or worse, dangerous. Startups entering these markets often underestimate the complexity of compliance, auditability and institutional expectations. Moving fast is easy. Moving fast safely is where the real challenge begins. Over the past year, I've helped build a trading platform for physical precious metals—a niche where compliance isn't optional and infrastructure must be bulletproof. The platform has since processed over $200 million in transactions and serves more than 3,500 businesses, ranging from individual traders to institutional clients. Along the way, we've learned what it takes to move quickly without breaking the trust that's critical in regulated environments. Here are five lessons that may serve other engineers, founders and product leaders building in similarly high-stakes spaces. Startups often treat compliance like a tax—something to pay later. In regulated industries, that strategy fails. Compliance must be designed into the product architecture from the start. For us, that meant implementing real-time identity verification through a KYC/KYB integration using Footprint. It also meant building a fully automated ledger system from the beginning, so that every transaction was auditable, compliant and reconciled, without manual intervention. Those early investments saved us hundreds of hours in operations and eliminated regulatory blind spots as we scaled. Takeaway: If compliance is blocking your roadmap, it's already too late. Build it in; don't bolt it on. 2. Speed is worthless without stability. Shipping fast is meaningless if your platform can't handle real-world complexity. Too many teams confuse velocity with fragility, pushing features quickly, then burning time fixing avoidable outages. We invested heavily in core infrastructure, cutting query times by 60% and tripling system throughput. These improvements enabled us to scale transaction volume from $7 million to $22 million per month in just five months, without sacrificing uptime or responsiveness. Takeaway: Move fast, but only on systems engineered to hold the weight. 3. Transparency beats hand-holding. In high-value markets, users don't want to call an account rep to ask about fees. They want clarity upfront. So we built a tier-based pricing engine with live updates, letting customers see real-time rates based on their account level. That reduced friction in onboarding and built confidence among institutional users. Transparency isn't just a UX detail—it's a trust multiplier. Takeaway: In regulated environments, clarity is more valuable than persuasion. 4. Developer speed starts with good architecture. Compliance demands don't have to kill agility, if you get the architecture right. Applying large-scale engineering practices (inspired in part by my time at Google) helped us move quickly without skipping testing, observability or documentation. We cut development time by 30% while increasing platform reliability, not through heroism, but through systems thinking. Takeaway: Fast teams aren't reckless. They just operate on better rails. 5. Compliance can be a competitive edge. Treating compliance as a feature, not a burden, became one of our greatest advantages. It helped us win institutional clients, pass diligence with ease and maintain a high-trust posture as we scaled past 3,500 organizations and $200 million in volume. Many platforms avoid regulated markets because they seem slow. But with the right mindset, those same constraints can become defensible moats. Takeaway: In fintech, trust compounds, and trust starts with infrastructure. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
New Indian Express
5 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Complaint against actor Vinayakan
KOCHI: The Youth Congress (YC) Ernakulam unit has accused actor Vinayakan of making offensive remarks about Mahtama Gandhi and others in a social media post following the demise of late chief minister V S Achuthanandan. The complaint by YC Ernakulam district president Sijo Joseph was addressed to the state police chief with a copy attached to the Ernakulam Town North police. Sijo alleged Vinayakan's Facebook post was deeply offensive and hurt the conscience of readers. He alleged it contained insulting references to Mahatma Gandhi, former PMs Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, among others.
Hindustan Times
10-07-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Indian-origin woman featured on Forbes exposes shady startup stories of fraudulent ‘desi' founders
An Indian-origin woman's claims about 'desi' founders' fraudulent behaviour in San Francisco's startup ecosystem have gone viral. Ash Arora, a LocalGlobe partner featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe Finance) list, alleged that she met two Indian founders who were inflating metrics and making false client claims. Indian-origin Ash Arora, currently living in London, exposed two shady startup stories. (LinkedIn/Ash Arora) 'Have met two founders in SF this month. Both fraud: 1. Is subletting a rented apartment and showing that as revenue for his startup. 2. Is claiming Amazon and Google are clients who have signed LOIs when they have never even heard of them,' Ash Arora wrote. 'What's common among them? Both desi men Beware of these people!' she continued, adding, '4 VCs have pinged me correctly guessing both these founder names. Is this Soham Parekh 2.0? We need a BS radar community out here.' Take a look at the post: What did social media say? An individual suggested, 'Agent to detect and keep a LIVE list if the company's fundamental patterns indicate that it's a fraud.' Another remarked, 'A sample of two. What's the point of including their race?' Arora replied, 'Because it breaks my heart that Indians are doing this and ruining the reputation of my country.' A third posted, 'The 'desi men' part is a spicy take, but honestly, the patterns of fraud in SF are pretty universal. Desperation or greed, it always comes back to the same stuff.' Arora responded, 'Idk, man, maybe my network, but both of them being Indian, above 30, mid backgrounds and extremely arrogant threw me off. I didn't see it coming. Even 2 years ago when I met a YC startup that was completely fraudulent, and after our diligence, even YC threw them out - a desi male founder. Why this pattern.' A fourth wrote, 'Even in crypto, people avoid projects who have desi founders. That is the sad reality and we all know why.' Who is Ash Arora? According to a Forbes report, Arora rose from a Delhi refugee colony. As per her LinkedIn profile, she is an alum of Lady Shri Ram College For Women in Delhi and started her career as an associate at a bank. Over the years, she assumed various roles in different fields associated with trading and blockchain. She is currently staying in London.
Business Insider
09-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan warns students that a 'fake it till you make it' business mindset could land you in jail
Garry Tan says too many business students today are being taught to fudge the truth — and warns that going down that road could lead to serious consequences, like jail time. Speaking to an audience of undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students during a live recording of Y Combinator's Lightcone Podcast, Tan criticized unnamed academic entrepreneurship programs that he claimed teach a "fake it till you make it" attitude. "I'm very worried about them because what we're coming to understand is they are teaching you to lie," Tan told the audience at Y Combinator's AI Startup School conference. "Software is the most empowering thing in the world. Why do you have to lie?" Tan runs Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that pulls from a similar talent pool and has produced breakout successes like Airbnb and Doordash. After a competitive application process, YC promises mentorship, investor connections, and a $125,000 seed and $375,000 SAFE note in exchange for a 7% equity stake in startups selected for the program. Jared Friedman, YC's managing director of software and former cofounder of Scribd, said that academic programs suffer because they aren't run by founders. "Anytime you try to bottle up entrepreneurship and teach it as a college course, what you end up with is basically a cheap facsimile," Friedman says. "They teach you to follow a particular method or a particular practice and that's just not what startups are actually like." Tan said that these programs were teaching students to "fake it till you make it" and "lie to investors." He also warned that such ideas could lead students to become founders like FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes, who was sentenced to over 11 years in prison. "That's a waste of time, and you're going to go to jail," Tan said. He spoke against how Bankman-Fried, Holmes, and other "fake" founders grew to represent the tech industry, chanting, "They don't represent us!" to applause from the audience. Earlier in the conversation, Tan and his YC colleagues also said the unnamed academic entrepreneurship programs don't promote AI use. Diana Hu, YC group partner and former cofounder of Escher Reality, asked which students in the audience were allowed to use Cursor, an AI code editor. When limited hands were raised, Hu said, "This is the future." "They're quite literally prohibiting the students from learning the tools that they are going to need," Friedman said.
