Powell is a community of technologists with deep engineering backgrounds building generational AI companies.
Founded in 2024, Powell has produced nine companies. Each team met their co-founders and developed their initial ideas through our network.
- DoubleSpeed (a16z)
- Jooba (a16z)
- Canvas (YC F24)
- Sciloop (YC F25)
- Antigen (YC F25)
- Hex Security (YC W26)
- Twolabs (YC X26)
- Cybe (YC X26)
- Kaaro (a16z SR006)
We host private fireside chats throughout San Francisco. To date, we've hosted:
- Thariq from Anthropic
- Rohan from OpenAI
- Tanay from Wispr Flow
- Travers from Parallel
- Andi from Humans&
- Eno from Factory
- Grace from Arcada Labs
- Jeffery from Exa
- Paul from Browserbase
Folks tend to join Powell when they're looking for an accelerant to build their next thing.
Abdullah Nauman
Antigen (YC F25)
Led infra for $1b project at Google
Yasin Ehsan
Headstarter
a16z Scout
Faizan Ahmed
Headstarter
Published ML research at 19
Saad Jamal
Antigen (YC F25)
On leave from UChicago Law
Hassan Syed
Doublespeed
Built Google's data warehouse for Ads ML
Zuhair Lakhani
Doublespeed
Scaled creative agency for top brands
Ahmad Khan
Hex Security (YC W26)
First intern class at OpenAI
Prama Yudhistra
Hex Security (YC W26)
Founding Eng at Codegen
Huzaifa Ahmad
Hex Security (YC W26)
Scaled consumer apps to millions
Bilal Asmatullah
Sciloop (YC F25)
Represented Pakistan at the IPhO
Osman Siddique
Sciloop (YC F25)
Represented Pakistan at the IPhO
Mark Benliyan
Jooba
Worked on the Mars Rover
Burhan Drak Sibai
Jooba
Did pre-training for Ashish Vaswani
Sardor Rahmatulloev
Twolabs (YC X26)
Was on Meta Superintelligence Labs
Roy Jad
Head of Design @ Context
Scaled 7-figure design agency
Joseph Jojoe
sampling latent space
with elad gil
Essam Sleiman
Canvas (YC F25)
Trained Twitch's video foundation model
John Bachmann
Cybe (YC X26)
19 yo from Switzerland
Sai Surisetti
Kaaro (a16z SR006)
Won +$10,000 on Fortnite & Valorant
Sean Wu
Synphony (YC P26)
Serving top US robotics labs
Abdulla Abubakre
CEO @ InterviewCoder
Designed VR headsets at ByteDance
Shrey Pandya
Growth @ Browserbase
Created the startup scene at Michigan
Tawsif Kamal
Founding Engineer @ Google Jules
Sameel Arif
Founding Engineer @ Browserbase
Essays
Connect
Feel free to contact us at team@powell.st
Apply
Powell has been invite-only since 2024. For the first time, applications are open to anyone whose work meets the bar. Read the admissions criteria and apply.