This episode features co-founders of fal, Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven.
fal is a generative media platform. They just raised their Series C round of $125M, which values them at a $1.5B valuation.
In 2020, during the COVID bubble in Palm Springs, two Turkish engineers – one from Amazon, one from Coinbase – started exploring startup ideas together. Starting with just image models when everyone said the market was too small, they stuck to their vision while competitors chased LLMs. They foresaw the video revolution coming. They obsessed over speed, becoming #1 on every benchmark.
From two Turkish immigrants to a billion-dollar AI unicorn – this is their story.
00:00 From Zero to $1.5B: fal’s Milestones
02:18 How Two Immigrants Without Connections Built a $1.5B Startup
05:14 Why We Bet on Gen AI Video Instead
08:32 Kill Your AI Product If It Doesn’t Sell on Day1
10:37 Stay Small to Grow Big
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