Sonith

Z Fellows / The Cannon Project | interviewing people I’m curious about...

[Sonith @_sonith]

Someone stopped me on the street earlier to say how much they liked this episode.

I didn’t catch your name, but thank you & glad you enjoyed !

[Sonith @_sonith]

Here's my conversation with @JTLonsdale

We explore:

- immigrant roots, philosophy, and warfare
- chess & investing billions with Peter Thiel
- founding stories behind Palantir and 8VC

Plus, US & Japanese bond markets, what drives him, the University of Austin, and much more.

YouTube link below and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:24 Poor Irish Immigrants and Holocaust Survivors
6:44 A 20-Year Chess Dynasty
9:37 Why Great Men Quit Chess
13:15 Stanford Nerds, Protests & Palantir Recruiting
14:25 Rejected from PayPal and Arguing with Max Levchin
23:23 Investing Billions With Peter Thiel
30:25 A Year of Loss and Failure
33:54 The Painful Beginnings of Palantir
39:15 The Palantir CIA Conspiracy Theory
41:18 Losing a $300M Military Contest
46:44 Raising the Largest VC Fund Since 2000
55:57 Most People are Cowards

[Sonith @_sonith]

Maria is incredible. There's something special about Oxford Union Presidents :)

Congrats to you and everyone involved!

[Maria Davidson @MariaDavidson]

I'm excited to launch Relational Capital, a $50m solo GP fund.

I spent the last 8 years as a founder, building @usekojo into the largest US construction procurement platform.

Now I'm backing founders at the earliest stages with $1m-$5m checks.

An abundant future lies ahead 🇺🇸

[Cameron @czoob3]

YC rejected Whop in fall 2021 batch, but there was a better program that accepted Whop and that was Z Fellows.

Cory was the first check in Whop, has been by our side through it all, and joined our board when it was formed.

ZF >

[Billy Gallagher @GallagherBilly]

We’re hiring for 3 of the most fun jobs I can imagine @crosbylegal:

1. Head of Brand: craft the look and feel of a brand new type of company. Neither software, nor services but a third type of company blending the two. You think all day every day about one of our most enduring assets.

[Sonith @_sonith]

https://t.co/XeDKsoqXHp

[Willem @vanlancker]

Terrain library install with a helper

[Justin Lopas @JLopas]

We are growing faster than ever 📈

A year ago we started expanding outside of Texas. Today @basepowerco is in three states, with several more coming soon. Every new market brings a new utility, new permitting rules, and new homeowners to win.

[Sonith @_sonith]

Speed

https://t.co/AuwpCUoaCR

[Sonith @_sonith]

@JLopas @basepowerco @UMich Go BLUE @tommypotter_

Haha

[Sonith @_sonith]

@ryanjdaniels @gaby_goldberg @jsarihan !! Go Crosby

[Sonith @_sonith]

@ryanjdaniels @gaby_goldberg @jsarihan !! Go Crosby & co

[Cory Levy @cory]

huge milestone!!

thank u Marc for the original intro to Ali. you were totally right. Ali was sooo hungry when we first met. and is even hungrier today.

i'll always remember our first few calls. we first met several years ago in June...and then a few months later he was apart an early (fwiw we are still early) Z Fellows cohort. the business has had its ups and downs but in those down moments... Ali always finds a way.

Ali wrote this about himself to me four years ago when describing himself and the business:

"Hi everyone, I'm Ali! I was born in Iran, moved to the
U.S when I was 10 years old, and sucked at school (didn't even graduate middle school). I decided to turn things around Freshman year of high school: I got straight As, started my 1st company, and got into UC Berkeley for CS. Ever since, I've had two small acquisitions (cashbooksnow & peerlinc), and graduated Berkeley a year early to focus on my company: micro1. Micro1 is a 40 person talent as a service company. We help companies hire the best remote developers easily. We've recently raised a pre-seed round and I'm super excited to have it grow to be my 1st unicorn"

proud to be Ali's first believer and investor in Micro1 and work with him. excited for what's to come!!

[Sonith @_sonith]

@jacksondahl @jgebbia @tbpn Class

[Sonith @_sonith]

@traestephens @lulumeservey @ACTS17org !

[Jonathan Neman @JonnyNemo]

Lunch Means Business!

Our new collab with Chef in Residence Molly Baz

Some are saying the most crave-able thing we've done (especially if you love pickles)

[Justin Lopas @JLopas]

Ep 2 talking about how we engineered Base Core.

https://t.co/T7LeAtJmfP

[calix @calixo888]

this is exactly why we love open-source. great to see new work being built on top of of Argus

[Cory Levy @cory]

i first met zain in july 2025. he was living in the tenderloin in sf paying $35 a night for a room. i remember really liking him and thinking the world would know his name soon...

he did z fellows shortly after (and moved out of the tenderloin). he joined two other experiences we hosted as well that fall. every time we spent more time together....i felt like the world still hadn’t caught up.

my favorite thing in the world is helping people before the world knows their names. a year or so later, zain is still the underdog....but i’m excited for people to see what he’s been working on. keep it up zain!!!

[Sonith @_sonith]

@zainmfj !!

[calix @calixo888]

Argus: an open-source robotics data annotation and quality pipeline.

With new frontier VLMs like GPT-6 Astra, we can generate rich, high-quality annotations for robotics data for both training and dataset analysis. Argus delivers detailed, timestamp-level annotations while catching issues like mislabeled instructions, sped-up recordings, swapped camera streams, and unflagged operator mistakes.

To support better data quality for the robotics community, we’re open-sourcing Argus for anyone to use 🧵

[Cory Levy @cory]

congrats to Alfred, Florian and the entire Listen team!!

honored to have been their first check and first believer back in 2022!