Rebuilding a Company for the AI Era
Aug 14, 2026 · 1:21:31
Shensi Ding, co-founder and CEO of Merge, explains how the integration platform rebuilt itself twice for the AI era after starting in 2020, and why AI agents are useless without integrations. Merge began with accounting and HR connectors, watched early customers die, then pivoted to serve AI companies with unified APIs and a smart LLM router. Ding describes building the first AI product at night with her co-founder and one engineer, and how marketing became an engineering function, including a dinner bot that 10x'd customer events (from one or two per quarter to three to five per month). She argues most public MCP servers quietly fail, with a 60% success rate, and that startups should go all-in on enterprise for stickier revenue. The episode also covers the Embarrassment Framework for uncomfortable outreach and Merge's 6% marriage rate among its 140 employees.
