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Adarsh Hiremath

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2025-02-20
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2025-02-20
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  1. “So we raised over $3 million, and it came very, very quickly. General Catalyst led the round and really, really enjoy working with Max and Nico.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “We were 19 at the time, so that was just surreal. So what ended up happening is initially we thought we wanted to base the company in New York. So I'll take credit for making the wrong call there. I very, very quickly realized that it was the wrong decision. But what ended up happening is we had moved to New York before raising the seed round. For me, actually, the more surreal moment wasn't actually when the money hit for the seed round. It was actually when we changed our salaries in Gusto to $500 a month. I felt like we made it at that time. I was like, amazing. You know, we just moved to New York. We changed our salaries to $500 a month. And then afterwards, we closed our seed round. And then when the money was wired, we were just looking at the account, like, you know.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No seed round, a little bit of revenue, no teal fellowship, nothing. We were just three friends working in a small office in Palo Alto with our amazing team in India.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's an emotional decision. Like, you can try to rationalize dropping out or starting a company or try to figure out the exact set of prerequisites that you have to do. But for me, for example, the moment I knew that I wanted to drop out was actually back when we had an office in Palo Alto. And the office had exactly three desks, one for Brendan, one for Surio, one for me. I was like, Suria man, should we drop out? And then he just looked at me and he was just like, dude, how hard could this be? Wasn't a logical argument at all, but in that moment, I was just like, let's do this. Let's drop out of school.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “At the time, it wasn't obvious at all that we should drop out, and I really, really sympathize with my parents at the time for not approving because here I was. We hadn't raised our seed round. We hadn't raised the series A. There was no Teal Fellowship. There was one side of the marketplace that had a little bit of revenue, and I was telling them that I wanted to abandon my degree program. So it wasn't an obvious decision at all, but I think like most of these decisions, you just make them completely emotionally. And I just knew I wanted to work with my best friends.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, it's funny that you say I was at Harvard. I was definitely there physically, not sure about mentally. I was pretty much doing everything I could to avoid going to classes. And I actually have a pretty funny story about this. So Brendan would visit me pretty frequently at Harvard. And my roommate at the time, Artemis, had this like really, really weird sleep schedule. He would just like go to the engineering building and pretty much be nocturnal. So the routine that we would typically follow is Brendan would visit me. He would just crash on Artemis' bed because he'd be in the engineering building just working on problem sets. And then he'd come back, wake Brendan up, and then we'd get to work together, and then he would go to sleep during the day.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Actually, so Brendan Surrey and I started working together without any business ambition. We just started a dev shop together. So we were like, cool, let's learn how to build software really, really quickly. Let's go to these startups. Let's figure out things they want built. Let's build it together. And what we ended up doing is recruiting these really, really exceptional folks from India to help us out with our dev shop. And then very, very quickly, we realized the software was one thing, but we had found some really, really exceptional people. And it was more about the people than the software. So then we were like, okay, we found these people in a completely manual way. Can we automate this? And that's how the automated candidate side of the platform was born. Very quickly, we realized Brendan Sir and I couldn't scale well by doing sales manually. So then we had to automate the other side of the platform too, the company facing platform, and that's how the marketplace was born.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “One thing about Brendan Surrey and I is that we actually go quite a ways back. So I actually first met Surya when I was 10 years old. And the reason we got along so well is because we were pretty much the only elementary schoolers who wanted to compete in high school debate. And then we ended up at the same high school, which is also where I met Brendan. All three of us were on the debate team together. Suria and I decided to do policy, so we ended up being debate partners together and then going on and competing in all of these national tournaments. But debate is a lot like founding in a lot of ways, right? Like I like to think of my debate partnership with Suria as sort of my first startup just because we had 50-50 equity in each other's success. If one of us were to mess up, it would tank the odds for both of us. There's like this constant feedback loop after every debate round about whether you won or lost, picking the right debate partner is like the most important decision you can make in policy debate and similarly picking the right founding team is the most important decision you can make while starting a company. So there's that parallel.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “It was at 2 billion. I think we'll live in a world with many, many models with different use cases. We're already seeing this with a lot of application layer companies where they all have these specialized use cases for how they want to leverage the models. I think being a recruiter is the highest prestige position in any company. The recruiter is the one who controls the talent inflows and outflows of every company. And pretty much you can gather all you need to know about a company from seeing the talent inflows and outflows, the businesses that succeed in a world where software costs approach zero will be built on network effects.”

    2025-02-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source