Ashish Pandhi 🦁

Thiel Fellow, Shiba Parent 🐕, Coffee Addict. I make things. Founder @GetZurp. Prev eng @runwayco

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@mikulaja Their disclosures at the bottom of the email had me dying of laughter. Who is their chief compliance officer?

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@rauchg @heyaleksandr @vercel Honestly this is the most frustrating thing for me. I set up each vercel account for each company I’m working at, each with a paid seat. I have one GitHub account shared across the companies. I don’t mind paying for extra seats but vercel to GitHub shouldn’t be 1:1

[Molly O’Shea @MollySOShea]

Thiel Fellowship upped the stakes this year.

$100,000 → $200,000. 2 Years.

These are the 15 names under the age of 22 you're going to want to watch.

From Anchorage, AK to Hong Kong, Tokyo to Germany, Miami to Colombia, Luxembourg to Waterloo, the Thiel Fellow Class of 2025 are disrupting biotech, hardware, AI, crypto, & more.

Ferdinand Dabitz @FerdiDabitz
Jackson Denka @jacksondenka
Juan Ebrath @RealJPGE
Colton El-Habr
Elias Fizesan @Eliasfiz
Fabian Gruber
Carlo Kobe @CarloWKobe
Jennifer Lin @Jlindig0
Koki Mashita @koki_mashita
Soren Monroe-Anderson @soren_ma
Steven Pang @thewildstevenp
Hooman Reza Nezhad @hoomanrenezhad
Aidan Smith @aidanmantine
Teddy Warner @WarnerTeddy
Sigil Wen @0xSigil

“Per the Roman dictum “corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the best is the worst - higher education is the worst institution we have. For these exceptional fellows, we are providing an alternative,”

Peter Thiel, Chairman of the Thiel Foundation.

[Thiel Fellowship @thielfellowship]

Welcome 2025 Thiel Fellows!

WHO ARE THEY?

Ferdinand Dabitz, Berlin, Germany - @FerdiDabitz
Ivy is building the world trade bank — a global instant payments platform.

Jackson Denka, Los Angeles, CA - @jacksondenka
Azura is a trading platform that utilizes on-chain rails to enable price discovery for everything from crypto and equities to beliefs and memes.

Juan Ebrath, Bogota, Colombia - @RealJPGE
Phase is a research lab on a mission to unlock whole-body regeneration and make living matter programmable — from healing hearts to regrowing limbs.

Colton El-Habr, Philadelphia, PA
Orbit builds non-invasive neurostimulators that utilize the brain’s existing infrastructure to modulate the body’s autonomic nervous system — an API to the human mind.

Elias Fizesan, Luxembourg - @Eliasfiz
Canopy Labs is building the foundation models to power digital humans that are indistinguishable from real ones.

Fabian Gruber, Erlangen, Germany
Manex AI is developing an AI-powered solution to automate manufacturing processes for dark factories.

Carlo Kobe, Hamburg, Germany - @CarloWKobe
Fizz is developing an AI financial advisor for the pocket of every young adult.

Jennifer Lin, Miami, FL - @Jlindig0
Jennifer’s startup is giving patients with rare diseases accelerated access to new cures with clear indications of efficacy.

Koki Mashita, Tokyo, Japan - @koki_mashita
Aeolus is building the planetary defense system for extreme weather.

Soren Monroe-Anderson, Anchorage, AK - @soren_ma
Neros is a defense technology company building drones critical to a modern arsenal at massive scale.

Steven Pang, Hong Kong - @thewildstevenp
Orbit builds non-invasive neurostimulators that utilize the brain’s existing infrastructure to modulate the body’s autonomic nervous system — an API to the human mind.

Hooman Reza Nezhad, Waterloo, Canada - @hoomanrenezhad
Solcoa Industries is producing the first zero-carbon, American-made rare earth metals at scale.

Aidan Smith, Mountain View, CA - @aidanmantine
Innerphases is developing human-native communication devices that change the way we work and think.

Teddy Warner, Charlotte, NC - @WarnerTeddy
Intempus is equipping robots with emotional intelligence, making them more predictable and easier to understand.

Sigil Wen, Toronto, Canada - @0xSigil
Extraordinary brings the world’s top talent to America’s technology companies.

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@0xDawggy this is actually really interesting

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@shaoruu @cursor_ai Being able to have .cursorrules or similar at a per directory basis (for monorepos with multiple apps and packages). Also it never gets the shadcn command right in yolo mode even if I add the right command to the global prompt in settings

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@mckaywrigley @shaoruu @cursor_ai Honestly this. An example of use case here is that chat was really good at understanding the code and building a mermaid chart of how the data flows. Wanted to act on it from there but had to ask it for a prompt with context for composer. Felt hacky

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@KianSadeghi5 constantly killing it 🔥🔥🔥

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@RoryOReilly @Millions Honestly, @KnotAPIs is one of the best fintech products I’ve seen. I just recommended it to another fintech founder today

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@yo Strong agree. Startups are hard enough as is. If the culture sucks and the work is grueling, people will burn out quickly and leave.

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@yo https://t.co/O2uF11oyC8 next?

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@pitdesi I think plaid revenue will increase a decent amount as they roll out more of their fraud tooling for fintechs. Cognito acq has paid off nicely for and plaid signals looks like a promising competitor to sardine. Kyc, transfers, and fraud tools in one place

[jon drake @DrakeGatsby]

Adopting a cat with a weird little meow is like winning the lottery

[Troy Osinoff 🕺 @yo]

you know an engineer is cooking when they start chewing on the hoodie strings 😮‍💨

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@yo Facts

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@_Liso_ May not be good for the body but it’s good for the soul

[@awejones @awejones]

Gossip? Oh you mean trickle down yaponomics

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@RogueCfpb @kmdrew This is why I’m a fan of @synctera’s approach here. You still have a direct relationship with the bank and Synctera provides a compliance team + APIs for you to start with. As you scale, you can swap in your own vendors/team

[Ashish Pandhi 🦁 @AshPanGeek]

@RogueCfpb @kmdrew The downside to this is that it is incredible expensive. It’s the route we went with for Zurp (direct relationships with bank, card network, etc) but it’s extremely slow and expensive to go that route. May not be a bad thing to have that as a barrier to entry though