Yujian Tang started the r/AI_Agents subreddit in April 2023. For the first year, it barely moved. Then it hit 9,000 members, he went on vacation, came back to 36,000, and now it's approaching 300,000. In this episode, Yujian talks about how that community grew alongside his event business (Seattle Startup Summit, 900+ attendees last year), his two failed startups, and why he just filed paperwork to launch his own venture fund.
Conor and Yujian dig into the mechanics of starting a fund from scratch (Delaware PO boxes, EIN numbers, lawyers), why AI startup valuations have doubled in the last two years, whether a one-person unicorn is realistic, and what failed founders learn that successful ones sometimes miss.
Chapters:
(0:00) Cold Open: The Subreddit Growth Explosion
(0:21) Intro and Meet Yujian Tang
(1:06) From AI Research to Community Building
(7:26) Where AI Applications Are Headed
(10:03) The AI Bubble and a Valuation Reset
(10:39) Getting Deal Flow Through Community Events
(14:02) Filing the Fund: The Boring Side of VC
(16:04) How r/AI_Agents Went from Crickets to 300K
(18:39) Building an Accidental Empire
(26:37) What Two Failed Startups Taught Him
(29:52) Why Pre-Seed Valuations Are Out of Control
(37:37) The One-Person Unicorn Debate
(39:50) Seattle Startup Summit 2026
(42:17) What Chain of Thought Should Cover Next
(43:25) Outro
About the Guest:
Yujian Tang is the founder of Seattle Startup Summit, the largest startup event in the Pacific Northwest. He created the r/AI_Agents subreddit (now nearly 300K members), runs hackathons and developer events across Seattle and the Bay Area, and is launching an early-stage AI venture fund.
Guest Links:
Seattle Startup Summit: seattlestartupsummit.com
Reddit: reddit.com/r/AI_Agents
Show Links:
Chain of Thought Podcast: https://chainofthought.show
Newsletter: https://newsletter.chainofthought.show/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorbronsdon/X/Twitter: https://x.com/ConorBronsdon
Sponsor: Thanks to Galileo. Download their free 165-page guide to mastering multi-agent systems at galileo.ai/mastering-multi-agent-systems
