Alex nods, already mentally shifting gears. "Uptime targets. We need to hit 99.99% before Elad brings his associates back for another demo. Anthropic and OpenAI-level workloads mean Anthropic and OpenAI-level reliability."
"And I need to make sure the money keeps flowing," Jian says. "Burn rate is healthy, but fifteen salaries change the math. We need to close two more enterprise deals this quarter."
"Back to work, then."
"Back to work."
They sit in the new conference room, in the new office, with the new team humming just beyond the glass walls. Two kids who somehow built a company, staring at a vision statement that makes them sound like they know what they're doing.
Maybe, Alex thinks, that's half the battle. Sounding like you know what you're doing until you actually do.
He opens his code editor and starts hunting bugs.
From: Alex Vukovic [alex.vukovic@inferthermic.com]
To: Jian Li [jian.li@inferthermic.com]
Date: March 15, 2026
Subject: RE: Finalized Vision Statement
Forgot to mention - the tagline in Maddy's signature. "Building the safety layer for the AI revolution."
That's the one. That's what we put on the website, the business cards, the investor deck. It's perfect.
Also, she used "scaling" three times in a one-paragraph email. I'm starting a betting pool on how many times she'll say it at the all-hands. Current over/under is 12.
-A