Varun Vummadi is the co-founder of Giga, a company that builds AI agents for customer support and works with DoorDash as well as a number of large telecom providers.
At Startup School India, Varun sat down YC General Partner Ankit Gupta to discuss what made him decide to turn down a high paying quant job, go through multiple pivots, and how his team of eight was able to beat a 400 person competitor to land a contract with DoorDash.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro
01:33 — Early Days & Origin Story
03:37 — The YC Interview Disaster
06:28 — Pivoting Away From Ed Tech
07:25 — Finding the Real Idea
08:39 — Beating a Well-Funded Competitor
10:00 — Winning DoorDash at 8 People
11:09 — What GigaML Looks Like Now
12:40 — Advice for College Students
15:51 — Why Charge Early?
17:33 — The Next Big Bet
18:43 — Running the Company on AI
20:19 — How They Hire Engineers
22:04 — Product Over Sales
23:37 — Burn the Boats + Outro
