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Why experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history | Brendan Foody (CEO of Mercor)

Overview

Shownote

Highlights

Transcript

Chapters

Pins

Why experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history | Brendan Foody (CEO of Mercor)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Sep 18
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Sep 18
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Brendan Foody is the CEO and co-founder of Mercor, the fastest-growing company in history to go from $1M to $500M in revenue (in just 17 months!). At 22, he is also the youngest American unicorn founder ever. Mercor works with 6 of the Magnificent 7 and al...

Highlights

At just 22 years old, Brendan Foody has built Mercor into the fastest-growing company in history to reach a $500M revenue run-rate, all within 17 months. His company sits at the heart of the AI revolution, not by building models, but by solving a critical bottleneck: evaluations. As AI systems grow more powerful, ensuring they behave correctly and perform reliably has become paramount—and that’s where human expertise comes in.
05:44
Evals are the key barrier to applying AI across the economy
09:27
Mercor grew from $1M to $400M in revenue run-rate in 16 months, the fastest in history.
22:58
AI won't replace you, people good with AI will.
29:26
ChatGPT can interpret x-rays when assisted by human input
32:42
The top 10% of hired experts drive the majority of model improvement.
38:59
Operated without sales or marketing for 18 months, focusing entirely on product and customer experience.
56:10
It's not just a shift from data to experts, but about labs collaborating with experts to understand AI evals and push the frontier.
1:00:15
AI serves as a thought partner for reasoning through problems
1:03:12
Dyslexia makes reading hard but helps me think differently

Chapters

Introduction to Brendan Foody and Mercor
00:00
The “era of evals”
05:38
Understanding the AI training landscape
09:26
The future of work and AI
17:10
The evolution of labor markets
25:54
Understanding how AI models are trained
29:55
Building Mercor
38:58
Lessons from past ventures
53:27
The future of AI and model improvement
56:55
His personal use of AI and final thoughts
1:00:41

Transcript

Brendan Foody: The wealthiest companies in the world are willing to spend whatever it takes to improve model capabilities. Lenny Rachitsky: We're entering the era of evals. Brendan Foody: We started working with all the top AI labs. What the labs need is...