The Tool the Best Engineers Are Using Right Now

Conductor is a Mac app that lets you run multiple coding agents at the same time. Create an isolated copy of your codebase in one click, tell Claude or Codex to go work, and review and merge the results. The company just raised a $22 million Series A, and today is launching Conductor Cloud, which lets agents keep working even after you close your laptop. In this episode of Founder Firesides, co-founders Charlie and Jackson sat down with YC's Aaron Epstein to talk about cycling through a dozen ideas before landing on the one that stuck, how building dev tools for themselves led to Conductor, and what they've learned from watching the best engineers in the world work with coding agents every day. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Download Conductor: https://www.conductor.build/

Aaron EpsteinhostCharlieguestJacksonguest

May 8, 202629mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: May 8, 2026
Duration: 29m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Conductor is a Mac app that lets you run multiple coding agents at the same time. Create an isolated copy of your codebase in one click, tell Claude or Codex to go work, and review and merge the results. The company just raised a $22 million Series A, and today is launching Conductor Cloud, which lets agents keep working even after you close your laptop. In this episode of Founder Firesides, co-founders Charlie and Jackson sat down with YC's Aaron Epstein to talk about cycling through a dozen ideas before landing on the one that stuck, how building dev tools for themselves led to Conductor, and what they've learned from watching the best engineers in the world work with coding agents every day. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Download Conductor: https://www.conductor.build/

SPEAKERS

Aaron Epstein
host
Host of YC Root Access who interviews founders about their products and YC experience.
Charlie
guest
Co-founder of Conductor; previously an engineer at Replicate focused on growth and demo-driven product launches.
Jackson
guest
Co-founder of Conductor; previously worked on machine-learning infrastructure at Netflix.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Aaron Epstein and Charlie, The Tool the Best Engineers Are Using Right Now explores conductor orchestrates multiple coding agents, reshaping how engineers ship code Conductor is a Mac app that spins up isolated codebase copies so multiple AI coding agents can work in parallel, with humans reviewing and merging results.

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