Episode notes
Martin Basiri built ApplyBoard into a $3.2B company in 10 years, helping over 2 million students study abroad. He is among the very few Iranian immigrants to build a multibillion dollar company in North America, and ApplyBoard alone now contributes 0.6% of Canada's GDP. In this first time Martin shares his full playbook, before his first $3M raise, his vision for the future of immigration, and what he is building next with Passage, a new financial aid platform reimagining how students fund their education. Martin Basiri Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinbasiri/ More about Passage…
Podcast
Secondpod
ardalanJavadi · Tech & Science · English
Join our dynamic quarter of friends with a passion for business and Technology.
More from Secondpod All episodes →
-
E47 · 15 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
She Took Fitbit From $700M to $2.2B | Yasi Baiani
Yasi Baiani built sleep and female health at Fitbit, took revenue from $700M to $2.2B, and watched Google buy the company for $2.1B. She started at Citi, moved into venture, launched a startup out of Harvard Innovation Lab alongside Whoop founder Will Ahmed, then wrote her way into Fitbit. After Fitbit she taught product manager at UC Berkeley, unlocked the teen and elder care market at Cleo, and founded Raya Advisory, which helps growth stage AI, software, health tech and fintech companies with product strategy and executive hiring. In this episode: the three rules behind a network of half…
-
E46 · 2 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 22 min
Is AI Revenue Inflated? | The Dejima Mafia
Babak Hodjat has been building AI agents since 1998. He said that in front of a room in San Francisco last week, sitting next to his brother Siamak for the first time in 25 years. His argument is narrower than the bubble talk, and more useful. Enterprises are not buying AI because a need has been identified. They are buying because the business side expects productivity in return. The engineering that would actually deliver that productivity has not been done yet. Until it is, the revenue is running ahead of the value. He also thinks most of the layoffs attributed to AI were cuts companies…
-
E45 · 7 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 28 min
Ramin Hassani I Co-Founder & CEO of Liquid AI
Ramin Hasani is the co-founder and CEO of Liquid AI, and he has done what almost no one in AI has: built a real alternative to the transformer, the architecture behind ChatGPT and nearly every model you touch. Liquid AI raised a $250M Series A led by AMD, and by his own account now sits around $4.5 billion. The core idea did not come from a bigger data center. It came from the 302-neuron brain of a 2mm worm. We also get into the part most founders never put on a slide. While the whole field was stripping complexity out of neural networks to make them scale, Ramin spent seven years adding it…
-
E44 · 28 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
Young AI Researcher Disrupting the Entire Industry - Ali Behrouz
Ali Behrouz is an AI researcher and the author of two of the most talked about papers in machine learning right now, Titans and Nested Learning. He is a PhD student at Cornell University and a researcher at Google, and his work takes direct aim at one of the field's biggest questions: what comes after the transformer. His paper Nested Learning, which Google's Jeff Dean called a possible paradigm shift, rethinks the whole deep learning stack. In this conversation we get into the back story behind Titans and Nested Learning, how Ali thinks about transformers and where they fall short, the idea…
-
E43 · 4 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Ali Kashani, Serve Robotics
Ali Kashani is the co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics, and he has done what almost no one in Robotics has: put robots on real streets in dozens of cities and made people love them. He is the youngest Iranian-born CEO on the Nasdaq, the youngest CEO of any robotics company on the exchange, growing revenue around 600 percent year over year and scaling from 100 robots to thousands in a single year. We also get into the part most founders never put on a slide. Between spinning out of Uber and ringing the Nasdaq bell, Serve hit its last payroll ten times. Two of those times Ali made payroll out…
-
E41 · 31 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
Two Kings, One Board | Anthropic vs OpenAI
We sat down in March 2026 to break down the two most important companies in AI. This episode is a full deep dive into Anthropic and OpenAI, comparing everything from corporate structure and revenue models to business strategy, research philosophy, and the politics shaping both companies. We cover the founding stories, the safety vs scale debate, enterprise adoption, fundraising dynamics, the Pentagon ban, and where both companies are headed next. Whether you're a builder, investor, or just following the AI race closely, this is the episode. ur Newsletter :…
-
E40 · 6 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
Second Prize Awards 2025, Celebrating the Best Iranian AI Scientists
Why will Google & NVIDIA struggle next year? We're celebrating the best Iranian AI scientists, roboticists, VCs & startups while revealing what's coming in 2026. Newsletter : https://secondnewsletter.substack.com/ Ardalan Javadi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Farzam Hejazi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzam-hejazi-5b608081/ 0:00 Introduction 3:04 Best AI Scientist of the Year 10:03 Best Roboticist of the Year 13:46 Best Robotic Startup of the year 16:25 Best Venture Capitalist of the year 33:08 Best none AI Business 38:19 Best CEO of the Year 42:06 Best AI Model or Product…
-
E39 · 27 Aug 2025 · 1 hr 31 min
$8.5M in 10 Days with VERIS AI Founders
در این قسمت میزبان دو همبنیانگذار Veris، اندی پرتوی و مهدی جامعی هستیم؛ یکی از سریعترین استارتاپهای روبهرشد در حوزه هوش مصنوعی. Veris در حال ساخت سندباکس ایجنتهاست: محیطهای ایمن و مقیاسپذیر که در آن ایجنتهای هوش مصنوعی میتوانند قبل از ورود به دنیای واقعی، آموزش ببینند، تست شوند و کارایی واقعی خود را ثابت کنند.در این گفتوگو، اندی و مهدی درباره محصول، داستان شکلگیری، کاربردهای واقعی، و اینکه چطور فقط در ۱۰ روز ۸.۵ میلیون دلار از سرمایهگذاران طراز اول جذب کردند صحبت میکنند—از تاکتیکها و اشتباهات تا نکاتی که واقعاً برای سرمایهگذاران جذاب بود. در این قسمت، امیرعلی مهاجر…
-
E38 · 1 Nov 2024 · 57 min
What's Next in the Next 12 Months?
SecondGroup podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide stock or securities recommendations. The co-hosts may own stocks or assets discussed on the show In this episode, we explore various scenario analyses for the next 12 months of AI reasoning models and examine different asset classes, with a specific focus on the private market. This episode was recorded in the Bay Area. We missed having Shirin with us, as she was traveling Ardalan Javadi Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardalanjam1369/ Farzam Hejazi Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzam-hejazi-5b608081/…
-
E37 · 8 Oct 2024 · 59 min
Reframing Entrepreneurship With Narges Baniasadi
In this special episode, we have a fascinating conversation with Narges Baniasadi, a prominent figure in the biotech ecosystem and founder of Bina Technologies, which was successfully acquired by Roche in a deal worth over $100 million. Narges holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Tehran and a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford. Following the acquisition, she embarked on what she calls her "second journey"—a shift towards meaningful entrepreneurship, or what she refers to as "impact entrepreneurship." She also launched the Emergence program at…
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
