5 Year Frontier

#38: The 100X Engineer, Vibe Coding Bottlenecks, Agents As Evaluators, AI Roll-ups, And The Future Of Software Creation w/ Graphite CEO Merrill Lutsky

The future of coding. We cover multiplying engineering output, vibe coding bottlenecks, agents as reviewer, AI roll-ups, and the future of developing software. Merrill Lutsky is co-founder and CEO of Graphite, bringing AI-acceleration and automation to code review. Founded in 2020 out of New York, Graphite has become a key part of the developer ecosystem — as more code is generated with AI, they enable developers to scale the evaluation, testing, and review process before it is released. A growing bottleneck that has become incredibly important. The startup has raised over $70M from leading VC’s such Accel, A16Z, Menlo as well as a receiving a strategic investment from model provider Anthropic. Last year Graphite grew its revenue 20X and is trusted by over 45,000 developers at top engineering organizations such as Shopify and Figma. His second startup, Merrill has helped develop and manage software products for high output engineering companies such as Square, Oscar Insurance, and SelfMade. He holds a degree in Applies Math and Economics from Harvard. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#37: Global Energy Race, Creating With Carbon, CO2 As Fuel, Powering Mars, And The Future Of Clean Energy w/ AIRCO CEO Greg Constantine

The future of carbon conversion. We cover the global energy race, turning CO2 into biofuels, propelling interplanetary travel, modular military refueling stations, and the future of clean energy. Guiding us will be Greg Constantine CEO of AIRCO, one of the most ambitious startups reimagining the role of carbon in our economy and climate future. Headquartered in New York, AIRCO has developed a proprietary technology that captures carbon dioxide and converts it into high-value products, including sustainable aviation fuel, rocket fuel, and even consumer-grade ethanol. Rather than burying carbon underground, AIRCO turns it into something useful—fueling commercial flights, defense operations, and potentially even Mars missions. To date, AIRCO has raised over $100 million from a roster of strategic investors including Carbon Direct Capital, Patriot Capital, Toyota, JetBlue, and has secured large contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA—including recent work on developing rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere. Greg Constantine brings a rare blend of operating and investing experience—previously holding senior roles at Diageo and serving as a venture partner at LocalGlobe, where he backed early-stage deep tech and climate companies. Now, he’s at the helm of one of the most frontier-pushing climate startups in the world, blending advanced chemistry, automation, and strategic focus to rewire how we think about carbon. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#36: Sales Co-Pilots, AI Revenue Intelligence, Procurement Agents, CRO in 2030, and The Future of Selling w/ Clari CEO Andy Byrne

The future of selling. We cover AI-copilots for sales, forecasting engines for CROs, real-time procurement layers, and the future of revenue intelligence. Guiding us will be Andy Byrne CEO of Clari, the #1 Enterprise Revenue Platform trusted by over 1,500 companies managing more than $4 trillion in revenue. From pipeline to close, renewal to expansion, Clari brings end-to-end visibility, control, and predictability to every revenue-critical function in the enterprise. The company has raised $520 million in funding from top-tier investors including Blackstone, Silver Lake, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures. Recognized as a 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ winner and growing at 227% over three years, Clari is leading a movement to modernize how businesses run their revenue process — transforming it from siloed and reactive to unified, intelligent, and data-driven. Andy is a defining voice in the future of revenue operations. A serial entrepreneur and two-time CEO, Clari marks the fourth company he’s helped build with backing from Sequoia Capital — a rare feat that speaks to his track record and long-term vision. Known for being thoughtful, resilient, and a true builder, Byrne has helped scale Clari into a global platform used by the world’s most sophisticated sales and finance teams. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#35: AI Employees, Managing Agent Workforces, Crypto Micropayments, End Of SaaS, Rewiring Developing Nations and The Future of Agents w/ Ema CEO Surojit Chatterjee

The future of AI employees. We cover training and managing an AI workforce, instant agentic collaboration, new AI economics, the death of SaaS, AI lifting up the developing world and the future of agents. Surojit Chatterjee is CEO of Ema — short for Enterprise Machine Assistant. Ema is on a mission to reimagine how work gets done in large organizations by building “universal AI employees.” These aren’t just standalone chatbots — they’re sophisticated, mesh-like networks of specialized agents that can autonomously execute workflows across departments like HR, customer support, sales, and compliance. What sets Ema apart is its no-code, fully agentic platform — allowing non-technical users to configure, onboard, and manage AI employees using only natural language instructions. With over 150 pre-built agents and a proprietary ensemble model called EmaFusion that orchestrates over 100 large language models, the company is pushing the edge of what’s possible in enterprise AI. Ema last raised a $50M Series A led by Accel and has become a rapid riser in the AI landscape. Surojit has one of the best product resumes in tech. He was most recently Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, helping scale one of the most important companies in the crypto economy. Before that, he led product teams at Google for nearly a decade, overseeing products across Mobile Ads, Shopping, and Search, and earlier served as Chief Product Officer at Flipkart, where he helped build India’s leading e-commerce platform. In addition to building Ema, Surojit is also an active angel investor, backing startups like Udemy and Palantir. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from SUNY Buffalo, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#34: Agents In The Enterprise, Cloning Experts, Organizational Memory, Grounded Language Models, Thin AI Orgs, and The Future of Work w/ Contextual AI CTO Aman Singh

Aman Singh is Co-founder and CTO of Contextual AI, a company helping enterprises deploy AI and agents with accuracy, control, and safety. Founded by the team that pioneered Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Contextual is building next-generation AI that is deeply specialized to each business — answering with the context of your organization, not just the internet. With customers like Qualcomm and over $100 million raised from Greycroft, Lightspeed, Bain Capital Ventures, and Nvidia, Contextual is fast becoming one of the most important startups in enterprise AI. Aman leads the company’s technology development and brings a deep background in research engineering. He previously worked at Hugging Face, a leading force in open-source AI, and at Meta’s FAIR lab, where he contributed to the development of RAG and cutting-edge multimodal models. He holds a master’s in computer science from NYU, where he focused on the intersection of language and vision. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.