Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a $15 billion AI company that adds intelligence to cars, tractors, planes, submarines, and other vehicles—essentially, Tesla or Waymo without the hardware. He was previously COO of Y Combinator, started his career as an engineer at GM and Bosch, and was born on a farm in Pakistan.
We discuss:
1. Why the biggest AI revolution will play out in mining, farming, construction, and trucking over the next 5 to 10 years, not in software
2. Why Qasar intentionally stayed under the radar for nearly a decade while building Applied Intuition, and why most founders shouldn’t do that
3. The truth about China’s AI capabilities and why comparisons to American companies are fundamentally flawed
4. The company values that drive Applied Intuition: speed above everything, laugh a lot, half the work is follow-up, never disappoint the customer
5. The biggest lessons from Qasar’s stint as YC’s COO, including that the most successful companies show traction very early6. How reading old books is the best way to build taste
