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

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Where to find Rowan Stone: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowan-stone/

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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