This might be the most insane AI founder story you’ll hear all year.

Dropped out of high school.

Met the Queen of England. 👑

Helped pivot Instabase by building a transformer before it was cool.

Now? He’s building a foundation model for the human mind — and raised from a16z, Menlo, and Benchmark.

🎙️ We sat down with Daniel Reid Cahn, cofounder & CEO of Slingshot AI, to unpack how he’s using AI to reinvent mental health — without replacing human therapists.

🔍 What we cover:

• Why the future of therapy isn’t GPT wrappers — it's foundation models for psychology
• How Daniel raised millions pre-PMF from top-tier VCs
• Why LLMs are perfectly suited (and dangerously close) to handling our deepest thoughts
• What it really takes to hire top-tier AI and psych talent
• Building a bi-continental company across the US & UK from Day 1
• Why AI therapy could compete with psychedelics — and what keeps Daniel up at night
• The truth about defensibility in AI today: data, distribution… or something else?

💡 Plus:

His founder playbook, ethical design principles, investor tactics, and what he’d do if launching from scratch today.

This is not your average AI story.

It’s raw, smart, and brutally honest.

🎧 Listen now

🔁 Repost if it makes you think. Trust me — this one will.

This week on Zero to One, we sat down with Arjun Mahadevan, founder & CEO of Doola.

Arjun’s goal? Help 1 billion people become founders with a business-in-a-box: back office and e-commerce analytics handled in one place.

Here’s what you’ll take away from the episode:

🛠 Start by serving just one customer to validate real demand

📖 Build in public—not to influence, but to help

❌ The people at the top? They’ve failed more, not less

📩 How a cold DM on Twitter led to their first paying customer

💼 Why you should treat every lead like it’s your last

🌍 What legal entity should you open for your US-based company depending on your funding strategy

👥 How every founder should delegate

🤝 What is Growth and the tactics that actually work

If you’re starting a business or scaling one globally, this episode is for you !

Have fun listening :)

This week, we sat down with Bernard Aceituno, co-founder & CEO of Stack AI.

Originally from Venezuela, Bernard’s journey took him from a PhD at MIT to building Stack AI, fresh out of Y Combinator. We covered a lot, including:

✅ How Stack AI is revolutionizing AI agents—connecting data sources & tools securely

✅ The real value of YC beyond the hype (including how their first customers came from a YC WhatsApp group)

✅ The role of AI agents as a new software category—automating tasks, interacting with tools, and storing memory

✅ How operationally heavy industries (banks, logistics, healthcare) benefit most from AI automation

✅ Stack AI’s go-to-market strategy—leveraging content, inbound leads, and pilot projects to scale

✅ Why raising money is a distraction and shouldn't take more than two weeks

If you’re building in AI—or thinking about it—this one’s a must-listen.

Key moments:

Introduction (1m13)

YC / Start of the story (8m07)

Vision with Stack AI + AI agent definition + how they integrate into (18m50)

How companies figure out their best use cases with Stack AI, and managing data privacy (23m40)

Data privacy with StackAI (27m12)

Targeting industries - horizontal VS vertical and selling (29m55)

Mistakes made with StackAi (36m37)

Stack AI internal growth (40m35)

The future of the AI space among startups + raising money (44m55)

Resources Bernardo recommended: The hard things about hard things (Ben Horowitz)