Tejas Agarwal

Co-founder & CEO at Nivara (YC F25) | Built scalable systems for 100M+ users @Uber. Love open source. Previously: @Oracle @UWMadison

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Quite possible for any mid-to-large company with microservices. Spotify has 2000+ microservices, 1 deploy/day + add in feature flags, rollbacks, experimentation and it will add up quickly to a lot of deploys.

[Klaas @forgebitz]

“4,500 production deploys a day”

is spotify adding new songs in git storage or something

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@dbmikus @amikadev Amika is great, congrats on the launch @dbmikus!

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@sixtensor @mercor_ai @usnews @UseCorgi Congrats on the launch @sixtensor !

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Silicon Valley is usually a preview of what plays out in the rest of the US and the world in 2-3 years.

The combination of extreme winner-take-all outcomes and the feeling that traditional paths no longer work is also fueling the rise of speculative trading and prediction markets in the US, especially in the current favourable regulatory climate.

People increasingly feel like steady work alone won’t meaningfully change their lives.

This won’t end well.

[Deedy @deedydas]

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.

Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).

Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.

Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.

As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.

2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"

3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.

4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."

I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.

Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".

Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@0xAndros @tizimmer And we're solving the local distribution problem - 6M+ local businesses with decision makers and timing signals.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@lennysan I wrote exactly why this would happen a while back:

https://t.co/9XFHWueSjh

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

https://t.co/pUnp7LXIrJ

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@chamath Writing code has become faster but the decision making process at large companies hasn’t evolved. And until that changes, the ROI will be minimal.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@ay_ushr My experience is Google Meet tends to eat up way more memory during demos. Makes it harder to actually run through the product smoothly.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Found this comment from 2016 on HN.

Amazing how far we’ve come and every single thing on that list is possible today. Technology and progress is off the charts, what a time!

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Every month there’s a new AI theme and startups begin to rebrand themselves around it - so far I’ve seen, context engineering, context graph, operating system.

New in for March 2026 is agent harness.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Seeing a lot of takes about AI replacing engineers. I disagree.

If anything, this is the most exciting time in decades to be an engineer.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

https://t.co/pUnp7LXIrJ

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

https://t.co/pUnp7LXIrJ

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@never_settles_ @alexandr_wang @sdianahu @erikqu_ Wow!! Good luck @never_settles_ @refresh_dev is amazing!

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

The best time to start was yesterday. The second-best time? Right now. @ycombinator Spring batch deadline.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

The deadline to apply for the spring batch is tonight at 8pm PT!

All you need is an idea: https://t.co/OnqI05W53Z

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Alex and team are the real deal - relentless and extremely customer obsessed! Congrats on the raise.

[Alex Danilowicz @alexdanilowicz]

Announcing Magic Patterns 2.0 and our $6M Series A led by @Standard_Cap

Since our first launch in 2023, we’ve grown profitably, hit $1M ARR with no employees, and quietly built an AI design tool loved by PMs, designers, and website builders.

1,500+ product teams use us to go from idea to production every day, prompting features to life with their existing styles.

Free to try with a new brand look.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

We’re building the co-pilot for engineering managers and this is just the start.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

30% of code at top tech companies is now AI-generated. Most engineering leaders have no idea what that means for speed, quality, or ROI.

Nivara (https://t.co/Ir6fwaoqHX) gives them visibility into how humans and AI build together. The future of engineering is hybrid.

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@agupta Absolutely! And these stats are incorrect even if you just include F25 batch. My cofounder got his extraordinary ability VISA after getting into YC last month.

[Awesomic @awesomic]

Our customers @nivaraAI just launched 🚀
They’re building the future of how humans and AI work together.

Congrats to @teagarwal &amp; @pkj__m !

Go show them some love and support their YC launch too 💛

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

@ycombinator @KalpaLabsAI @pshishodiaa @JhaGauti Congrats on the launch, this is a cracked team!

[Tejas Agarwal @teagarwal]

Super excited to show what we’ve been up to.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

30% of code at top tech companies is now AI-generated. Most engineering leaders have no idea what that means for speed, quality, or ROI.

Nivara (https://t.co/Ir6fwaoqHX) gives them visibility into how humans and AI build together. The future of engineering is hybrid.