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Founder Mode – Episode 10 – How to Bootstrap Your Tech Team Using AI with JJ Zhuang

by Caitlin Escarciga

Episode 10: Serial CTO and Acompli co-founder JJ Zhuang joins Kevin and Jason to explain why the next generation of great products will be built by tiny, AI-super-powered teams. He unpacks lessons from taking Acompli’s first line of code to a $200 million Microsoft exit, steering Instacart through pandemic hyper-growth, and relearning to code with tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor and Devin now writing the majority of his team’s code. Along the way JJ outlines the shift from hiring stack specialists to adaptable generalists, the rise of agentic “AI teammates,” and his mantra of “fast software” that lets founders prototype, test and ship at the speed of imagination—while still cutting through the 2025 hype cycle around agents and other buzzwords.

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