Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Taggar: Post-Series A AI startups still require traditional hiring to scale

Harj Taggar · The Truth About The AI Bubble · Y Combinator · Dec 22, 2025 · at 26:18

Harj Taggar, partner at Y Combinator, discusses whether ultra-lean AI startups that hit early revenue milestones can scale to $10M ARR without hiring traditional teams.

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“Yeah, like, post-series A, it actually largely feels, like, the playbook is the same, and the companies might be smaller for the same amount of revenue, but it Feels it's entirely because they hit the revenue so fast and there's still just bottlenecked on how long it takes to hire people versus they have demand for less people.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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