“We really try to avoid non-player characters (when recruiting) - people who just go through life as if they’re on a stream and they have no agency over themselves.” @WilliamBryk. Co-founder and CEO of Exa. The founder who listens to the Mission Impossible soundtrack every morning, and finds more inspiration in fictional superheroes than real-life ones, on how he’s building the company powering the internet of agents. Knuckle Up ↓ In this conversation with Will: 00:00 Who is Will Bryk? 01:49 Why do agents need a different search engine than humans? 02:53 How can an independent search company survive the big labs? 07:33 What does the internet look like when agents do the searching? 10:19 How did writing a book on the history of civilization lead to Exa? 15:39 Why does Exa hire first-principles thinkers, not rebels? 18:05 What is a “non-playable character,” and why does Exa screen for it? 19:49 How does Exa win engineers against the labs’ packages? 21:30 Why does Will kill process “before it lays eggs”? 26:27 Does the “bitter lesson” apply to humans? 29:52 What breaks when a company outgrows a single room? 34:47 Are there 100x and 1000x engineers now, not just 10x? 37:32 Why should nothing at Exa ever take a month to ship? 45:30 Where does Will’s drive actually come from? 48:28 Why are Will’s role models fictional, not real? 51:05 What does “We’ll figure it out” mean at Exa? 54:05 Why do Will’s best thoughts happen at 2:00 AM? 57:47 Quickfire: red flags, young founder myths, and Will’s mission impossible