We’ve been busy.
Some companies go quiet when they’re building.
We host Mediterranean engineering salons, reenact spy thrillers at SFO, and drop wooden horses on LinkedIn.
Business as usual.
Operation Ugo: Complete
In a highly classified mission, four agents from 14.ai successfully extracted our founding engineer intern from SFO. Disguises were deployed. Luggage was secured. No agents were harmed in the making of this video.
And the internet loved it.
Watch the classified footage if you haven't yet.
Workshop: AI QA – Teach Your Bot Some Manners
Last week, we taught your agent to read.
This week, we teach it not to hallucinate while doing it.
Join us for a workshop on AI quality assurance: how to make sure your agent is smart, stable, and not confidently wrong in front of customers.
📆 July 16 @ 9 AM PT
YC Ping Pong & Pitch Night @ SPIN SF
We almost called it Pitch Pong.
Mini-pitches. Big pong energy. Startup chaos.
Co-hosted by Crustdata (F24), Fondo (W18), Index (S19)… and us.
Come for the bottomless snacks. Stay for the surprise guests. Leave with a new cofounder (or at least a paddle).
📆 July 19 @ 6PM PT
Want to join? Reply and tell us a bit about what you’re building.
Engineering Mediterranean Night: The recap
We brought engineers together in the Lower Haight for a night of TypeScript, Effect, and dangerously good olive oil cake (courtesy of our chef intern Pinkie).
We walked through how we're building reasoning agents that don’t break when your LLM provider does.
Workflows, reliability trade-offs, and garlic.
If you missed it, don’t worry. More dinners are on the way. And yes, we’ll keep feeding you.
Other cool stuff
Michael broke down how we process chats after they’re sent: thanks, Effect Stream
Marie shared why joining YC wasn’t just strategic: it was personal
We hosted our first workshop with a guest: Nivedha Venkatesh, CEO of Pageloop
Calendly link if you want to jam on AI support workflows that don't suck.
If the Trojan Horse happened on Slack
I know, I know, so much Trojan Horse content lately.
On that note, if anyone sees a huge wood horse and/or our intern Corey, please let us know.
🐴 #in-the-horse
𝗠𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘂𝘀: dude there’s no way this works
𝗢𝗱𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘂𝘀: shhh
they’re literally wheeling us in right now
❤️ 2
𝗠𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘂𝘀: it’s a giant horse
we’re inside a giant horse
they’re not suspicious???
𝗔𝗷𝗮𝘅: who brought onions
it reeks in here
😂 2
𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗻𝗼𝗻: bro I can’t feel my legs
how long is “wait until nightfall” again
𝗢𝗱𝘆𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘂𝘀: signal’s the torch
if you see fire: stab everything
🔥 1
𝗘𝗽𝗲𝗶𝘂𝘀: ps this is technically a feature rollout
so expect bugs
👍 2
𝗠𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘂𝘀: still think this is the dumbest plan ever
𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗻𝗼𝗻: someone’s asleep in the back
do we wake him up or just count him as a surprise attack
👂 1
𝗘𝗽𝗲𝗶𝘂𝘀: guys not to freak anyone out but
i just remembered I forgot to add an air hole
so like
stab fast
𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗻𝗼𝗻: someone’s sharpening a sword in here. it’s echoing like hell
use mute
𝗗𝗶𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗲𝘀: lowkey this is what happens when you let marketing design the war plan
Cool jobs at 14.ai (and friends)
Looking for a new role? Or just need a new tab to keep open while you pretend to job hunt?
🛠️ Founding Engineer @ 14.ai (San Francisco)
🧑💻 Customer Support Operations @ Central (San Francisco)
💬 Customer Support Engineer @ Vercel (Remote, United States)
Need an intro? We got you.
What we’re reading & listening to this week
Maya: How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory, Ben Brubaker
Pinkie: Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Marie: Don't be thirsty, Garry Tan
Michael: Mercury: Ultra-Fast Language Models Based on Diffusion, Inception Labs et al.
That’s all for now!
Thanks for reading all the way down here. That’s commitment.
Until then: build weird things, text us when you land, and don’t forget dessert.
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