How to Build $1.5B AI Startup in Just 3 Years | fal's co-founders

This episode features co-founders of fal, Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven. fal is a generative media platform. They just raised their Series C round of $125M, which values them at a $1.5B valuation. In 2020, during the COVID bubble in Palm Springs, two Turkish engineers – one from Amazon, one from Coinbase – started exploring startup ideas together. Starting with just image models when everyone said the market was too small, they stuck to their vision while competitors chased LLMs. They foresaw the video revolution coming. They obsessed over speed, becoming #1 on every benchmark. From two Turkish immigrants to a billion-dollar AI unicorn – this is their story. 00:00 From Zero to $1.5B: fal's Milestones 02:18 How Two Immigrants Without Connections Built a $1.5B Startup 05:14 Why We Bet on Gen AI Video Instead 08:32 Kill Your AI Product If It Doesn't Sell on Day1 10:37 Stay Small to Grow Big EO stands for Entrepreneurship & Opportunities. As we're looking to feature more inspiring stories of entrepreneurs all over the world, don't hesitate to contact us at partner@eoeoeo.net LinkedIn | @EO STUDIO X | @eostudi0 Instagram | @eostudio.official Substack | @eostudio

Burkay GurguestGorkem Yurtsevenguest

Jul 31, 202512mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: July 31, 2025
Duration: 12m
Channel: EO Studio
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

This episode features co-founders of fal, Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven. fal is a generative media platform. They just raised their Series C round of $125M, which values them at a $1.5B valuation. In 2020, during the COVID bubble in Palm Springs, two Turkish engineers – one from Amazon, one from Coinbase – started exploring startup ideas together. Starting with just image models when everyone said the market was too small, they stuck to their vision while competitors chased LLMs. They foresaw the video revolution coming. They obsessed over speed, becoming #1 on every benchmark. From two Turkish immigrants to a billion-dollar AI unicorn – this is their story. 00:00 From Zero to $1.5B: fal's Milestones 02:18 How Two Immigrants Without Connections Built a $1.5B Startup 05:14 Why We Bet on Gen AI Video Instead 08:32 Kill Your AI Product If It Doesn't Sell on Day1 10:37 Stay Small to Grow Big EO stands for Entrepreneurship & Opportunities. As we're looking to feature more inspiring stories of entrepreneurs all over the world, don't hesitate to contact us at partner@eoeoeo.net LinkedIn | @EO STUDIO X | @eostudi0 Instagram | @eostudio.official Substack | @eostudio

SPEAKERS

Burkay Gur
guest
Co-founder of fal, building infrastructure to run and scale generative AI (image/video/audio) models.
Gorkem Yurtseven
guest
Co-founder of fal, focused on startup strategy and bringing AI model capabilities to market quickly.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of EO Studio, featuring Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven, How to Build $1.5B AI Startup in Just 3 Years | fal's co-founders explores fal’s founders on speed, focus, and scaling generative media infrastructure fal positions itself as an infrastructure layer for generative media, offering APIs and an in-house inference engine optimized for diffusion models to reduce latency and improve developer iteration speed.

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