Brennan Pothetes is the CEO of Infinity Constellation, an AI-native holding company. They've raised $17M from Freestyle Capital, Charlie Songhurst, and others.

Brennan's favorite books: Zero to One (Author: Peter Thiel)

(00:01) Lightning Bolt Moment – Origin of Infinity Constellation
(03:48) Transitioning from Founder to Holdco CEO
(07:00) How Infinity Incubates vs Acquires Companies
(09:05) Infinity vs Traditional Venture Studios
(10:58) Aligning Incentives: Founders, Holdco, and Investors
(16:32) Target Markets and How They’re Chosen
(20:27) When a Company Graduates from the Holdco
(23:04) Resource Allocation and “Too Many Toddlers” Problem
(26:29) Shared Infrastructure and the Code Commons
(29:48) Model Choices, Full Stack AI, and the Infinity Playbook
(32:05) First 3 Hires at a Portfolio Company
(33:53) Who is the Real Competition?
(37:03) Infinity’s 5-Year Vision and AI Trends
(38:37) Rapid Fire Round

Mark Fussell is the CEO of Diagrid, a developer platform that provides tools and services for building cloud native applications. They've raised $24.2M from Amplify and Norwest. He is also the co-creator of Dapr, an open source tool used by 40,000 companies.

Mark's favorite books:
- Crossing the Chasm (Author: Geoffrey A. Moore)
- Good to Great (Author: Jim Collins)
- The Dispossessed (Author: Ursula K. Le Guin)

(00:01) Opening and Introduction
(00:09) The Origins of Dapr: Solving Developer Pain
(01:53) Why Launch Diagrid After Building Dapr at Microsoft
(03:36) Why Dapr Gained Traction Among Developers
(05:30) Open Source Commercialization: What to Charge For
(07:51) When Do Companies Turn to Diagrid for Help?
(09:53) Key Features: PubSub, Workflow, and Catalyst
(11:48) North Star Metrics and Innovation Philosophy
(13:17) Pricing Strategy for Infra and Dev Tools
(15:28) Competing Against Hyperscalers Like AWS & Azure
(17:32) Who Diagrid Competes With and Role of Platform Engineering
(19:29) The Agentic Shift in Microservices
(21:28) How AI Is Changing Microservices Design
(22:59) What's Coming Next at Diagrid: Roadmap and AI Features
(24:51) Lessons from the First Five Customers
(26:59) Rapid Fire Round

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Where to find Mark Fussell:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfussell/

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Where to find Prateek Joshi:

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com
Website: https://prateekj.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infinite
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi

Jan Liphardt is the founder of OpenMind, where they're building an operating system for intelligent machines. He is an associate professor at Stanford and was previously an associate professor at UC Berkeley. He got his PhD from University of Cambridge.

Jan's favorite books: The Little Prince (Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

00:01 — Introduction
00:32 — Gap Between Movie Robots and Real-World Robotics
02:35 — Vision for a New Robotics OS
07:14 — Robotics OS Stack Breakdown
11:01 — Biggest Technical Challenges in Robotics
15:06 — Data Volume, Processing, and Cloud vs. Local
19:09 — Shared Intelligence Layer: What is Fabric?
23:15 — Filtering Good vs. Bad Ideas in a Robot Network
26:06 — Business Model for Robots and Machine Economy
29:55 — Standards and Interoperability in Robotics
33:14 — Most Exciting AI Advancements Today
35:00 — Rapid Fire Round

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Where to find Jan Liphardt:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-liphardt/

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Where to find Prateek Joshi:

Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com
Website: https://prateekj.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19
X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi