Inside the New AI Economy: Founders, Funders, and the Fight to Last | Episode 17

Episode 17 of The Offline Network, hosts Utsav and Dhruv are joined by two builders from opposite sides of the table. Two perspectives. One question: what separates the outliers from everyone else in this new AI age?This episode brings together Anand Chandrasekaran, now building HiOctave with Khosla Ventures, reimagining customer experience for small businesses. Anand’s new chapter is about giving small businesses enterprise-grade AI tools to automate bookings, sales, and customer conversations, without losing the human touch.Akshay Mehra, Partner at Hummingbird Ventures, the VC that backs just 0.1% of what it sees. He brings the investor’s lens, forged through early bets on Lovable and Vance, and a philosophy that founder quality is 80% of the outcome.Together, they unpack:What defines a 0.1% founder in today’s AI marketHow to build when speed, compute cost, and retention collideWhy the next wave of outliers won’t follow Silicon Valley’s playbookWhat small businesses get wrong about automationThe one founder habit that changes survival oddsOur first dual-guest segment – raw, real, and built for this AI moment.This episode was made possible by Smartworks – India’s largest managed office platform.Follow us for more unfiltered takes:Twitter/X → https://x.com/OfflineOnAirInstagram → /theofflinenetworkLinkedIn → /offlineonairWebsite → https://www.theoffline.network