Decentralized Data Foundry for AI | Rowan Stone, CEO of Sapien

Rowan Stone is the CEO of Sapien, a decentralized data foundry where AI models can access verified human expertise worldwide. They"ve raised raised a $10.5M round led by Variant. He"s also the co-creator of Coinbase"s layer 2 network called Base. Rowan"s favorite book: Outlive (Author: Peter Attia) (00:01) Introduction (01:09) The Flaws in Centralized Data Models (04:10) Mechanism of Knowledge Transfer and Expert Incentives (07:08) Supply, Demand, and Market Dynamics for Training Data (10:22) Chain of Thought Reasoning and 3D/4D Data Use Cases (12:22) Building the MVP: What Worked and What Didn’t (15:17) Acquiring the First Five Customers (17:59) What They Got Right and What They’d Change (20:15) How to Scale from Early Customers: Advice to Founders (22:02) Data Infrastructure Opportunities in 2025 (25:57) Designing AI-Native Databases (28:04) Biggest Startup Challenge: Messaging and Clarity (30:22) Future of Data Collection Mechanisms (2 to 5 Years Out) (32:07) Autonomous Vehicles and Demand for 4D Data (35:33) Emerging AI Use Cases: Memory, Wearables, and Robotics (36:19) Rapid Fire Round -------- Where to find Rowan Stone:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowan-stone/ -------- Where to find Prateek Joshi:  Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com  Website: https://prateekj.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19  X: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi