Raja Tabet lives in Austin, TX, but grew up overseas in Lebanon. When he migrated to the states for his education, he did not speak English, and had to go through the process of learning the language to fully integrate. He studied computer science for undergrad, and computer engineering for graduate school. And eventually, went to work for companies like IBM, Freescale, and others, prior to landing in his current role. Outside of tech, he has been married for 35 years, and has 3 kids. He and his wife are empty nesters, so they love to travel, hike and explore new areas.

In 2019, Raja joined Synopsys, specifically in their custom design and manufacturing group. A few years ago, and alongside the advent of AI, he changed roles and began building an AI powered solution for electronic design automation, or EDA.

This is Raja's creation story at Synopsys.

Sponsors

• Vention
• Build with CodeCrafters for free today and enjoy 40% off using this link.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.synopsys.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/raja-tabet-4a83178/

Today, we are talking with Oliver Mitchell, Partner at ff Venture Capital, the most engaged technology venture capital firm in New York City since 2008. They have an extensive portfolio, and have created billions of dollars in market cap value.

Recently, Oliver has released a book titled A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots and AI. In the book, he sets the stage to mentor - and provide mentors - around building a hardware startup in modern day times. The book is full of advice, real life stories from the trenches, and practical information to help you succeed.

Questions:

• Tell me about the book - what was the main goal of you writing it, what were you trying to accomplish?
• In the book, you discuss what it takes to launch a business in this industry. What are the five essential rules for launching a successful automation company?
• How do you attract investors, given their visceral reaction to hardware sensors and robots? How do you prepare, circumvent or comfort these investors when they spot the red flags?
• Hardware startups require the right people, the right R&D, etc. - just to get to MVP. What are some strategies for validating product-market fit in hardware startups?
• At times, the government creates roadblocks through over-regulating and slow pace of play. But how can these partnerships be used for funding and even potentially customer acquisition channels?
• In your book, you've interviewed some of the most respected luminaries in the space. Can you elaborate on these real world case studies? What were the significant challenges they overcame?
• If you could give one piece of advice to someone heading down this path, what would it be?

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://ffvc.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbmitchell/
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/1032827491

Alex Halkin can't remember a time where he wasn't doing tech. Funny enough, he does remember a time before internet was common place. In 6th or 7th grade, he got a computer and immediately disassembled it. And eventually, he built an internet service provider for his community, eventually dropped out of university, and sold his internet provider. Outside of tech, he has always been into sports - cycling, motorcycles, etc. And though he doesn't have much time for it anymore, he is big into Brazilian Jujitsu.

At his old role, Alex started to pitch subscription pricing for their products. The timing wasn't right for deep machine learning for pricing, so his boss turned him down. Several years later, he and his team are leveraging the power of Contextual AI to calculate and optimize price combinations.

This is the creation story of Competera AI.

Sponsors

• Vention
• Build with CodeCrafters for free today and enjoy 40% off using this link.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://competera.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhalkin/

Harish Chandramowli grew up in a small town in India. The goal was simple early on - study well, go to university, and get a job. After undergrad, he realized he can do so much more, eventually coming stateside to get his masters, and meet a ton of really smart people over the last 10 years. Outside of tech, he is a broadway show fanatic, seeing 1-2 on a regular basis. He also follows Manchester United, which can be difficult watching the lose on the regular.

Harish used to work for MongoDB, and spent some time on call and in the weeds. At that time, he realized how much data is used by a business. When he eventually supported the fashion industry, specifically the back office, he wanted to build a solution to make the lives of those back office individuals as easy as possible.

This is the creation story of Flaire.

Sponsors

• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.flairesoftware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/scharish/

Madhavan "Maddy" Malonan has always been in - and around - technology, and fell in love with building things early on. He got a video game console early on, and found it a little boring. BUT, when his Dad got a computer and he played Age of Empires, he got excited about all the possibilities, trying to tinker with building things that mimicked these computer games. Even these days, he writes a lot of code, building side projects with Claude Code. When he's not coding, he's playing sports, primarily tennis.

Maddy and his team identified that verification of age, credentials, employment history, etc. was a big, big problem. So much so, that it was difficult to do so in a tamper proof, zero knowledge proof manner. They set out to create a solution - and protocol - to solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Reclaim Protocol.

Sponsors

• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://reclaimprotocol.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhavanmalolan/

Chris Kline grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and went to school in Boulder to study finance and leadership. He has lived through several significant events that led him to take a risk, and spend some time in small business and entrepreneurship. And eventually, he took a leap of faith, sold everything he had, and flew to California. Outside of tech, he is married with a 12 year old daughter. He is fascinated by macro economics, and loves to dig into alternative assets like real estate and gold.

Chris started to get into crypto back when it was still in the fringes, and people didn't really know what Bitcoin was. Ten years later, his company is solving the retirement process with alternative, crypto assets.

This is the creation story of BitcoinIRA.

Sponsors

• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://bitcoinira.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/klinec/

Theo Bergqvist is an entrepreneur who enjoys working a lot. He started his first venture in 1999 in the gaming industry, building Paradox, which is now listed on the Nasdaq. Of all his ventures, the common core to them all was technology. Outside of tech, he lives a life dedicated to Japanese martial arts. He practices 5-6 times a week, and have made several trips to Japan with his Sensei, focusing on the art 10 hours a day.

At one point during his career, Theo was working for Ericson around their transformation. He noticed how difficult it was for enterprises to adopt AI tooling and automation. He decided to raise some funds and get started trying to create something to help... and started the build and pivot game.

This is the creation story of Turbotic.

Sponsors

• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://turbotic.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodore-bergqvist-/

Jens Neuse grew up in Germany, originally planning to be a carpenter. In his 2nd year as an apprentice, he was in a motorcycle wreck that thrust him into a process of surgery and healing. Eventually, he decided he wouldn't be doing carpentry, and got into sysadmin work. Once he got bored with this, he moved into startups, learned how to code, and starting digging into programming, API's and eventually - GraphQL federation. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 young kids. He loves to sit ski on the mountain - which is the coolest carbon fiber chair on a ski, where you steer with your knees and hips.

After chasing building a better Apollo, Jens and his team ran into a point where their prior product and company was doomed to go under. When they accepted this fact, they started to think about what people actually wanted - and started to dig into the federation of GraphQL.

This is the creation story of Wundergraph.

Sponsors

• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://wundergraph.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-neuse-706673195