Episode 01: Yijie Feng - Silicon, Society, Scend.ai
Yijie Feng is the co-founder and CTO of Scend.ai Instagram and all episodes (00:00) Photoshop sparks business interest (02:18) Slipknot website and computer trouble (03:52) Peter Thiel fellowship weekend (06:34) Immigrant family risk mindset (09:12) Discovering computer science fit (12:06) Grad school and side projects (14:15) Corporate jobs and Robinhood (16:48) Gym buddy becomes co-founder (19:38) Making the founder leap (22:05) Building Scend for M&A (24:42) Middle-market private equity customers (27:06) AI-native research tools (30:14) Pivoting toward buyer demand (33:10) Founder-led sales and LinkedIn content (35:55) Customer meetings and demos (37:42) Vibe coding skepticism (40:08) AI hype and engineering reality (42:04) Entry-level tech challenges (43:48) AI as a historical shift (45:16) Pattern matching and human work (46:15) Why LLMs broke through
