Akhil Iyengar ’26 dropped out of Cornell, to go through YC, and start a Startup

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts221/v4/a7/91/75/a79175e0-2330-0a48-9b36-5546c7ed0708/mza_12640904727392346341.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

Big Red Podcast 🐻🎙️

Tony Chen ’12

14 episodes

6 days ago

Interviews with Cornellians!! Not affiliated with or sponsored by Cornell University

Careers

Business

RSS

All content for Big Red Podcast 🐻🎙️ is the property of Tony Chen ’12 and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Interviews with Cornellians!! Not affiliated with or sponsored by Cornell University

Careers

Business

https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_episode/43821080/43821080-1754963682658-d79a2704df937.jpg

Akhil Iyengar ’26 dropped out of Cornell, to go through YC, and start a Startup

Big Red Podcast 🐻🎙️

37 minutes 10 seconds

3 months ago

Akhil Iyengar ’26 dropped out of Cornell, to go through YC, and start a Startup

Akhil Iyengar ’26 dropped out of Cornell, to go through YC, and start a Startup!! we talked about:
- how his startup helps retailers and PE portcos with pricing/promotion strategies
- the YC accelerator, how it made them more ambitious and think bigger
- what it was like dropping out of Cornell in his junior year
Startup: https://www.operand.com/
(0:00) What is his startup? What is pricing strategy? (8:28) How clients use their AI software (11:17) How the AI creates value (14:03) How to become the best in pricing strategy (18:10) Private equity firms are the ideal customers (20:57) Pricing for their own product (22:49) Journey from being a Cornell Junior to being a startup founder (26:02) Applying to Y Combinator (33:20) Startup fundraising process (35:17) Closing question