Episode 01: Yijie Feng - Silicon, Society, Scend.ai

Fri, 22 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Yijie Feng is the co-founder and CTO of Scend.ai

(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

Founders of New York