The "Marionette Threat" of Generative AI with All Tech is Human’s David Polgar
Today’s episode is something a little different.
I’m doing a feed swap with Humans of AI, a podcast from the team at Writer.
What you’re about to hear is their conversation with David Ryan Polgar, the Founder and President of All Tech Is Human, a leading organization in the Responsible Tech movement.
He’s a pioneer in tech ethics and responsible innovation, and someone who’s been thinking about the societal impact of AI long before it was mainstream.
If you’re building in AI, investing in it, or just trying to understand where this whole industry is headed, his perspective is a valuable counterweight to the hype cycles.
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On this episode of Humans of AI, presented by Writer, we’re joined by David Polgar, founder of All Tech is Human, a non-profit and community dedicated to bringing together people, organizations, and ideas to grow and strengthen the Responsible Tech ecosystem. David shares some harrowing stories from the early days of social media that led him to where he is today – at the intersection of tech and human rights, AI and ethics. A lawyer and educator at the forefront of a movement “altering the DNA of tech development,” David is determined to create spaces and communities for human conversations and connections so that together we can shape the future of AI.
Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode!
Check out Writer’s Youtube channel to watch the full interviews.
Learn more about Writer at writer.com.
RUNTIME 19:50
LINKS
David Ryan Polgar
Humans of AI: Presented by Writer (podcast)
Navigating the ethical implications of generative AI with All Tech Is Human’s David Polgar (Writer blog)
Alaura Weaver
Communicating Your Vision with May Habib (CEO, Writer) and Gaurav Misra (CEO, Captions)
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Thanks for listening!
– Walter.
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Cyan Banister & Cristian Cibils Bernardes: Early Signals, Founder-Investor Fit, and Trustworthy Consumer AI
Recorded live in San Francisco during TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 week, this Fund/Build/Scale session brings together Cyan Banister (Long Journey Ventures) and Cristian Cibils Bernardes (Autograph) for a practical look at building consumer AI and the investor-founder dynamics that make it work. We dig into pre-traction signals that actually predict momentum, how to validate a weird idea, raise smart money, and ship products people return to. Cristian shares Autograph’s first moment of value, retention indicators, and a trust-by-design stance; Cyan unpacks the decision rules and behaviors that earn a second meeting. Together, they outline small-budget experiments and the frameworks they use to create products that stick. For first-time founders and early operators, this episode delivers concrete steps you can start taking tomorrow.
Thanks very much to Jenna Birch and the team at SISU for co-hosting and making this live recording possible!
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(1:54) Why Cristian named Autograph’s AI agent “Walter.”
(3:37) When they connected, Cristian saw “a bunch of synchronicities along the way that just kept pointing in this direction.”
(4:59) Cyan: “When he showed up and we were sitting together having coffee, I immediately was like, ‘yes.’”
(6:03) The sheer number of coincidences linking these two is unsettling — “quantum entanglement” comes to mind.
(8:18) Cristian and Cyan share their non-consensus takes on consumer AI.
(10:53) Cyan describes the framework she’s using to assess early signals as an investor.
(12:51) “I will not look at your résumé. I won’t look at what you did. Whatever you tell me in that interview is what I’m going to go off of.”
(14:42) “Fundraising is grueling. It was 50 conversations before I met Cyan, and then I had, I think, another 30.”
(16:53) Cyan’s framework for backing vs. passing.
(18:26) The three essential ingredients Long Journey Ventures seeks in founders.
(22:00) What a “magically weird” founder looks like — and why they’re so valuable.
(26:15) A red flag that ensures you won’t get a second meeting with Cyan.
(27:52) A behavior that virtually guarantees a second meeting.
(29:45) Cristian describes Autograph’s moat.
(34:40) “This whole thing doesn’t work if the trust element isn’t there.”
(38:08) What founder-investor fit looks like in their working relationship.
(41:57) One experiment founders should run this week.
(43:10) The most underrated founder superpower.
(44:10) “If you were interviewing for a job at an early-stage startup, what’s one question you’d have to ask the CEO before you could take the offer?”
RUNTIME 47:19
LINKS
Cristian Cibils Bernardes
Cyan Banister
Autograph
Long Journey Ventures
The Ugly Duckling
SISU
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Thanks for listening!
– Walter.
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This event and recording are independently produced by Fund/Build/Scale and co-hosted with SISU. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by TechCrunch or TechCrunch Disrupt. “TechCrunch” and “Disrupt” are trademarks of their respective owners.
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47:19
From Engineer to CEO: Ryan Wang on Building Assembled and Finding Product-Market Fit
I interviewed Ryan Wang, co-founder and CEO of Assembled, in his San Francisco office to unpack how he turned lessons from Stripe into a fast-growing startup that powers customer support teams at Robinhood, Canva, and Notion.
We talk about:
Finding the right co-founders and surviving a CEO hand-off
Discovering product-market fit by asking one powerful question
Turning a “sleepy” support category into a $200 billion opportunity
Launching a second product with a startup-within-a-startup mindset
What it takes to lead through AI disruption and build for adaptability
Whether you’re building your first team or figuring out your second act, Ryan’s story is a masterclass in scaling deliberately while staying flexible.
RUNTIME 53:40
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EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(2:35) “ I was employee number 80 or so at Stripe, working on machine learning for fraud detection.”
(5:08) If you’re doing diligent customer discovery, working harder does not get you ahead faster.
(7:27) How Assembled’s founding team, er, assembled.
(8:47) “ There was a period, maybe the first year and a half or so, where there was no CEO.”
(10:33) Ryan explains the mindset that took him from software engineer to CEO.
(12:30) “ ‘Brother mode’ is both a feature and a bug at the same time.”
(14:58) How Assembled arrived at workforce management as its unique value proposition.
(17:48) Ryan talked to more than 100 prospects during the customer discovery process.
(19:00) The exercise they used to develop their initial customer personas.
(22:24) “ We took a really, really long time to hire for product. It was probably four or five years into the company.”
(25:00) Who was Assembled’s first design hire?
(27:26) To acquire product-market fit, “ we started with just a simple automation value proposition.”
(30:26) “ A lot of folks wanted to invest in Stripe alums, and Stripe led our seed.”
(33:35) Why customer support ops is — and will continue to be — such a huge opportunity.
(36:41) A good mission statement defines the change you want to see in the world.
(41:41) “ People who really do feel committed to a large mission, they understand that to get there is gonna require a lot of schlep.”
(43:55) How Assembled used a startup-within-a-startup mindset to innovate.
(48:47) “ We reassigned folks internally, and the key really was the order of operations.”
(51:31) If you were interviewing for a job with an early-stage startup, what’s one question the CEO would have to answer before you could take the offer?
LINKS
Assembled
Ryan Wang
Brian Sze
John Wang
Stripe
Kelly Sims, Thrive Capital
Jack Altman, Alt Capital
Jen Ong Vaughan, Head of Strategic Ops, Stripe
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Thanks for listening!
– Walter.
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53:40
The Starting Five: How to Build a Leadership Team That Can Scale
When startups fail to scale, it’s rarely because of bad code or bad luck. More likely, it's because they didn’t hire the right people at the right time.
Chris Barbin, founder and CEO of Tercera, shares a playbook for assembling your “Starting Five” — the essential leadership roles every professional services startup needs to grow from $10M to $100M and beyond.
Drawing from decades as an operator and investor, he explains how to spot founder-market fit, when to swap out co-founders, and why hiring someone with a flashy resume can set you back two years.
If you’re building a people-first business, this episode is your blueprint for doing it right the first time.
RUNTIME 35:14
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(2:24) Chris explains how his career path led him to become CEO of Tercera.
(6:18) The most common problems and challenges he helps founders navigate.
(9:17) What stage are the professional services startups Chris typically meets with?
(11:06) How he defines founder-market fit.
(13:31) Red flags that indicate a founder isn’t ready to work with investors.
(16:15) One of the constructs of our fund is [that] none of our investments compete with each other.”
(17:34) After the CEO, “ those five supporting cast members — key lieutenants — are essential.”
(19:11) In most cases, three of the original Starting Five need to be replaced.
(22:29) “ I've fallen into that trap myself — I hired a bunch of those that look amazing on paper.”
(24:29) A framework for finding your first executive marketing hire.
(27:17) Don’t let your board pressure you into making rushed staffing decisions.
(29:37) Managing the ripple effects associated with rebuilding the Starting Five “is really, really hard to do.”
(31:29) Chris shares his preferred format for board meetings.
(33:00) The one thing he wishes every founder understood before they started raising money.
LINKS
Chris Barbin
Tercera
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Thanks for listening!
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35:14
From Code to Customer: The Strategic Power of a Field CTO
I’ve explored different aspects of product-market fit on the podcast, but when you’re scaling an open-source business with enterprise customers and a global developer community, you also need customer–engineering fit — the ability to translate between what’s being built and what the market actually needs.
At Astronomer, Viraj Parekh is that bridge. He is part engineer, part strategist, and part customer advocate, working across product, sales, and engineering.
In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Viraj explains what a Field CTO really does, how the role evolved at Astronomer, and when founders should consider creating one. He also shares lessons on customer discovery, team dynamics, and how to turn technical insight into business momentum.
RUNTIME 31:16
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(2:20) What is Astronomer, and when did the company get started?
(3:51) How the founding team came together.
(6:39) How Viraj collaborated with CTO Julian LaNeve to develop the Field CTO role.
(8:28) Where their roles overlap — and where they each take ownership.
(11:42) “We were at a point where we were really trying to standardize our sales process.”
(13:20) How the Field CTO role is different from a sales engineer or solutions architect.
(15:39) “ Talking to customers is a very humbling thing every day because you just realize how much you have to learn.”
(19:14) “ At a really early stage of customer development, the Field CTO role is almost like an external-facing product manager.”
(21:46) Viraj talks about the processes and tools he uses to share customer feedback internally.
(24:48) How to be a staunch customer advocate without losing your business focus.
(26:55) What’s the biggest opportunity cost associated with not having a Field CTO?
(30:13) If you were interviewing for a job with an early stage startup, what's one question the CEO would have to answer before you could take the offer?
LINKS
Viraj Parekh
Julian LaNeve
Astronomer
Apache Airflow
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Thanks for listening!
– Walter.
After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned:
1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck.
2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge.
3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it.
There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if you’re a woman or person of color — you can be a startup founder.
Here’s why I founded Fund/Build/Scale:
1. To help founders make fewer mistakes.
2. To share successful strategies that can accelerate your go-to-market journey.
3. To inspire more people to see themselves as potential founders. There’s a lot of overlooked talent out there, and we are missing out.
This podcast is for anyone who’s interested in learning the basic skills required to launch a startup, secure initial funding and transform an idea into a sustainable business.
I’m talking to guests about everything: finding a co-founder, conducting customer discovery, recruiting early employees, developing a PLG strategy, fundraising when you’re outside a major tech hub — all of it.
Interested? Subscribe to Fund/Build/Scale on all major platforms and follow the podcast on LinkedIn to get articles, excerpts, transcripts and more.
Fund/Build/Scale is a production of Truth and Soul Media LLC.
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