Founders

The founder playbooks

The tech founders worth studying when you build a startup, one playbook per founder. Each page distills how they actually operate, from their own talks and interviews in our research base, into concrete moves you can copy this week. It pairs with the AI Operating System for Startups.

• Deep research bets

  Demis Hassabis

  Co-founder and CEO · Google DeepMind

  How Demis Hassabis timed the AI wave, built conviction before consensus, and turned decade-long deep-tech bets into AlphaFold and a Nobel Prize.

  Read the playbook
• Technical intensity

  Greg Brockman

  Co-founder and President · OpenAI

  What founders can copy from Greg Brockman, OpenAI's co-founder and President: ration attention, prototype by default, and treat operating AI as a discipline.

  Read the playbook
• Speed and distribution

  Aravind Srinivas

  Co-founder and CEO · Perplexity

  How Aravind Srinivas built Perplexity into a 20 billion dollar answer engine by playing offense, focusing on the limiting problem, and shipping what Google refused to.

  Read the playbook
• First principles

  Paul Graham

  Co-founder · Y Combinator

  The essays and rules Paul Graham set at Y Combinator, turned into a playbook a founder can run this week.

  Read the playbook
• Hard decisions

  Ben Horowitz

  Co-founder and General Partner · Andreessen Horowitz

  The operator turned investor who ran a company to the brink and back, then wrote the book on the hard decisions founders actually face.

  Read the playbook
• AI-native operating

  Amjad Masad

  Co-founder and CEO · Replit

  How Amjad Masad built Replit into a $9B company by serving creators instead of developers and rethinking what a company is for.

  Read the playbook
• Founder conviction

  Garry Tan

  President and CEO · Y Combinator

  How Garry Tan, president and CEO of Y Combinator, runs AI agents like an engineering team and stays a builder while leading the world's most influential startup accelerator.

  Read the playbook
• Ruthless focus

  Michael Seibel

  Co-founder of Twitch, former Managing Director · Y Combinator

  How Michael Seibel, the Justin.tv co-founder who became Twitch and ran Y Combinator for eight years, teaches founders to focus, launch, and follow their users.

  Read the playbook
• Contrarian research

  Francois Chollet

  Creator of Keras, co-founder · Ndea

  The Keras creator's playbook for founders: take asymmetric bets, win on usability, and build for where AI is going, not where it is.

  Read the playbook
• Product velocity

  Mati Staniszewski

  Co-founder and CEO · ElevenLabs

  How Mati Staniszewski built ElevenLabs into an $11B AI audio company by picking an overlooked frontier, keeping teams small, and making voice feel human.

  Read the playbook
• Going all-in on AI

  Henrique Dubugras

  Co-founder and Chairman · Brex

  How Henrique Dubugras built two fintechs before 30, from Pagar.me to Brex, and what founders can copy from his pivots, market picks, and leadership calls.

  Read the playbook