What startups are building next, according to OpenAI’s Head of Startups

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many see OpenAI as the ChatGPT company while rivals like Anthropic and Cohere eye the enterprise space. Marc Manara, OpenAI's head of startups, says the reality looks different: AI-native companies are hitting $200 million in ARR, and product cycles have shrunk from two-week sprints to single days. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Russell Brandom sat down with Manara at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 to explore how OpenAI is serving the startups building on its platform. Listen to the full episode to hear about: The shift from two-week sprints to one-day development cycles, and what that means for how startups should structure their engineering teams Why some startups are customizing models for specific tasks in healthcare, finance, and other verticals that seemed out of reach Where AI still hasn't fully integrated with companies, and why longer-horizon autonomous tasks remain the next frontier for both models and startups Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a paid ad by Fidelity Private Shares.
0:03.2	A messy or missing cap table might not just slow you down.
0:05.8	It could cost you your next fundraising round.
0:08.2	Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:12.6	I'm Rebecca Balan, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep.
0:18.8	Today, we're bringing you a live interview from TechCrunch Disrupt 2025,
0:22.1	where AI editor Russell Brandom sat down with OpenAI's head of startups, Mark Minara.
0:27.1	The pair took a closer look at how AI native companies are evolving beyond the GPT wrapper label
0:32.1	and how product development cycles are shrinking from weeks to days.
0:41.8	Thank you. cycles are shrinking from weeks to days. I'm Russell Brandom, the AI editor at TechCrunch, and I have with me, Mark Minara,
0:47.3	head of startups at OpenAI.
0:50.3	You may be hearing this in your podcast feed, in which case, no, the weird acoustics
0:55.3	are because this, we're recording live at TechCrunch Disrupt.
0:59.8	We can feel the magic in the air, I think it's fair to say.
1:04.2	So I'm super thrilled to be talking with you.
1:07.8	Obviously Open AI is just an unbelievably exciting company right now.
1:12.6	And I think, you know, what's coming out of Open AI has huge implications for so many
1:21.6	startups in so many different ways. So I want to start with a bit of a sort of challenge for you.
1:30.3	I think there's this idea that I hear a lot in talking to folks in the industry that open
1:38.4	AI is sort of focused on consumer AI. It's the chat GPT company and enterprise AI and B2B is more, you know,
1:49.0	you're anthropic, your cohere, everyone else. Do you agree with that? Is that sort of looking at it
1:55.9	the wrong way? What's your take on that? No, I don't agree with that. I mean, we do have a
	...

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