This Founder is Making 1B+ Excel Workers 20x Faster | Meridian, John Ling

Why did Silicon Valley’s top VC invest $17M in this startup founder? John Ling, co-founder & CEO of Meridian, is building AI for one of the most overlooked but massive categories in software: spreadsheets. After seeing how fast AI could change the way people work, he set out to help the millions of people still buried in Excel move 20x faster. Before Meridian, John spent years obsessing over how AI systems actually work, from data quality and evaluations to real-world workflows. His edge? First-principles thinking, relentless curiosity, and a willingness to spend thousands of hours where others won’t. 00:00 Intro 01:30 How he became a top 1% performer at ScaleAI 02:59 Why I Bet on This Founder - a16z, Kimberly Tan 07:26 Bias Towards Action 10:08 Spend 10,000 hours with AI - Own your unfair advantage 🔗 Read the EO article about Meridian's fundraising: https://www.eomag.io/article/meridian-john-ling EO stands for Entrepreneur& 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

John Lingguest

Mar 12, 202611mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: March 12, 2026
Duration: 11m
Channel: EO Studio
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Why did Silicon Valley’s top VC invest $17M in this startup founder? John Ling, co-founder & CEO of Meridian, is building AI for one of the most overlooked but massive categories in software: spreadsheets. After seeing how fast AI could change the way people work, he set out to help the millions of people still buried in Excel move 20x faster. Before Meridian, John spent years obsessing over how AI systems actually work, from data quality and evaluations to real-world workflows. His edge? First-principles thinking, relentless curiosity, and a willingness to spend thousands of hours where others won’t. 00:00 Intro 01:30 How he became a top 1% performer at ScaleAI 02:59 Why I Bet on This Founder - a16z, Kimberly Tan 07:26 Bias Towards Action 10:08 Spend 10,000 hours with AI - Own your unfair advantage 🔗 Read the EO article about Meridian's fundraising: https://www.eomag.io/article/meridian-john-ling EO stands for Entrepreneur& 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

SPEAKERS

John Ling
guest
Founder of Meridian, focused on using AI/LLMs to augment spreadsheet/Excel-based knowledge work.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of EO Studio, featuring John Ling, This Founder is Making 1B+ Excel Workers 20x Faster | Meridian, John Ling explores meridian aims to make Excel work 20x faster using AI Meridian is building “AI for spreadsheets,” treating Excel as the world’s most distributed programming language and targeting massive productivity gains for spreadsheet-heavy roles.

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