About this episode

Ang Li discusses the challenges of building a defensible business in the rapidly changing AI landscape.

For years, founders have been told to build a defensible moat. But in AI, where platforms, models, and capabilities can shift overnight, that advice is starting to feel outdated. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Simular CEO and co-founder Ang Li talks about what it actually means to build a company when the underlying technology won’t sit still. Rather than evangelizing agents or predicting the future of work, Ang gets unusually candid about fragility, speed, judgment, and how founders should think when technical advantages may be temporary by default. The conversation digs into small-team execution, founder productivity, decision-making under uncertainty, and the uncomfortable question many AI founders avoid: what if the next platform update eats your product? Note: This interview was recorded before Simular closed its $21.5M Series A in December 2025. RUNTIME 56:44 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (1:52) What is Simular, and how does it work? (6:11) How Ang and co-founder Jiachen Yang connected (9:00) How much time passed between Day Zero and serving their first customer? (13:54) The moment Ang realized " this is gonna be like something huge." (17:21) How he approaches founder-led sales…

People in this episode

Host: Walter Thompson

Guest: Ang Li

Topics covered

• AI
• founder challenges
• business strategy
• technology shifts
• decision-making
• team dynamics

Keywords

• defensible moat
• AI
• founders
• business strategy
• technology
• decision-making
• fragility
• team execution

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Simular

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