Ali Ansari was born in Tehran, moved to the US at 10, graduated Berkeley in three years, and started micro1 as an AI recruiter in April 2022. Then one customer hired 500 engineers in two weeks. Ali figured out they were training models, shut down a business doing millions in revenue, and went all in on data.
His first podcast in Persian: how RL environments and verifiers work, why micro1 refuses to work with China, the expert happiness index, the 10,000 person robotics project, why he never gave up board control, and the three principles every founder needs.
Takeaways from SecondPod conversations, plus essays on AI, private markets and the people building what comes next. Written by Ardalan Javadi.
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