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EPISODE INFO
- Released
- November 13, 2026
- Duration
- 25m
- Channel
- YC Root Access
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Intelligence (YC S25), the creators of DesignArena, measures how well AI models handle creative work. It turns people’s choices and edits while creating websites, images, and videos into feedback that helps AI labs improve their models. The platform has over seven million users across 192 countries, and the company reached a $60 million annualized run rate in about a year. In this episode of Founder Firesides, founder and CEO Grace Li joins YC’s Ankit Gupta to discuss how AI-generated games led to Design Arena, her vision for a marketplace of AI models, and building a high-trust team of fast learners. She also shares why “an idiot in motion will always go farther than a genius at rest.” https://www.designarena.ai Chapters: 00:00 — How Design Arena Works 03:21 — From AI Games to Creative Benchmarks 06:43 — Measuring Human Taste at Scale 09:56 — A Marketplace for Specialized AI 13:52 — The Small Team Behind a $60M Run Rate 17:04 — Hiring Fast Learners and Taking Action 20:56 — Handling Rejection and Living in the Future Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
SPEAKERS
Ankit Gupta
hostHost on YC Root Access (Y Combinator) who interviews founders about their startups and product strategy.
Grace Li
guestCEO of Intelligence and creator of Design Arena, working on benchmarking/evaluating frontier AI models in hard-to-verify domains.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Ankit Gupta and Grace Li, How Intelligence Measures the Frontier explores Product-led benchmarks turn human taste into real-world creative AI evals Grace Li explains that Intelligence benchmarks frontier models in hard-to-verify, subjective domains by turning user interactions in Design Arena into real-world evaluation signals.
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