Jan 29 2025 35 mins
DTC's Radhika Malik in conversation with RunPod CEO and Co-founder Zhen Lu on the company's modest beginnings, accelerated growth, and learning to evolve with and for your ideal customers.
- RunPod launched with a classic tech startup story -- in the basements of co-founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh, requiring some electrical rewiring and circuit breaker shenanigans at both homes.
- Immediately found traction with creatives playing around with Disco Diffusion but then began to attract developers and development teams working on GenAI-driven projects with commercial aspirations.
- Zhen talks about learning as much as possible from the platform's earliest customers and then evolving RunPod through a strategy partnering with some of the most promising projects to prioritize feature development and rollout.
- Some surprising early use cases with many that have already hit on popular and financial success
- Is this an AI bubble? Yes, but...