This week on Zero to One, we sat down with Arjun Mahadevan, founder & CEO of Doola.

Arjun’s goal? Help 1 billion people become founders with a business-in-a-box: back office and e-commerce analytics handled in one place.

Here’s what you’ll take away from the episode:

🛠 Start by serving just one customer to validate real demand

📖 Build in public—not to influence, but to help

❌ The people at the top? They’ve failed more, not less

📩 How a cold DM on Twitter led to their first paying customer

💼 Why you should treat every lead like it’s your last

🌍 What legal entity should you open for your US-based company depending on your funding strategy

👥 How every founder should delegate

🤝 What is Growth and the tactics that actually work

If you’re starting a business or scaling one globally, this episode is for you !

Have fun listening :)

This week, we sat down with Bernard Aceituno, co-founder & CEO of Stack AI.

Originally from Venezuela, Bernard’s journey took him from a PhD at MIT to building Stack AI, fresh out of Y Combinator. We covered a lot, including:

✅ How Stack AI is revolutionizing AI agents—connecting data sources & tools securely

✅ The real value of YC beyond the hype (including how their first customers came from a YC WhatsApp group)

✅ The role of AI agents as a new software category—automating tasks, interacting with tools, and storing memory

✅ How operationally heavy industries (banks, logistics, healthcare) benefit most from AI automation

✅ Stack AI’s go-to-market strategy—leveraging content, inbound leads, and pilot projects to scale

✅ Why raising money is a distraction and shouldn't take more than two weeks

If you’re building in AI—or thinking about it—this one’s a must-listen.

Key moments:

Introduction (1m13)

YC / Start of the story (8m07)

Vision with Stack AI + AI agent definition + how they integrate into (18m50)

How companies figure out their best use cases with Stack AI, and managing data privacy (23m40)

Data privacy with StackAI (27m12)

Targeting industries - horizontal VS vertical and selling (29m55)

Mistakes made with StackAi (36m37)

Stack AI internal growth (40m35)

The future of the AI space among startups + raising money (44m55)

Resources Bernardo recommended: The hard things about hard things (Ben Horowitz)

A Gen Z reinventing Gen Z investment 💸🧞‍♂️

This is the best way to describe what Eve Halimi, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Alinea, is doing these days!

After graduating from Columbia University, Eve had her first immersion into entrepreneurship when she joined the French unicorn 🦄 Contentsquare as a Strategic Project Associate. Even though she was flourishing at her job, she had that desire to start her own venture 🚀.

Destiny is well-made since their pitch of Alinea got her and her Co-founder accepted into YC’s 20-21 batch, propelling them all the way from NYC 🍎 to the Silicon Valley…

In just 15 months, they raised a Pre-Seed 💸, hired more than 50 employees 🤯📈 and follow a very specific mission: making responsible investing easy, social and more inclusive!

In this fun episode, Eve tells us, amongst other tips:

🎙 How to get into Y Combinator? ⚙️🤤

🎙 How to build a Fintech company in NYC 🍏

🎙 How to differentiate yourself from your competitors? 💡🧞‍♂️

🎙 Challenges with targeting GenZ 👶

🎙 How to hire your first employees? 👩‍💻👨‍💻

Good listening !! 🚀

Links to the episode in the description 😃

PS: If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to give us 5⭐ on your favourite streaming platform 😉