Building Strong Foundations for Startup Success

In this episode of Spotlight On, Accel’s Christine Esserman sits down with Merrill Lutsky, co-founder and CEO of Graphite, to discuss how his company is redefining code review for the AI era. Merrill shares how he and his co-founders have fostered an unconventional yet deeply effective approach to building trust through weekly Monday dinners and co-founder “therapy” sessions. They discuss the unique challenges of building a developer tools platform inspired by Meta’s engineering culture and how Graphite’s AI-powered code review companion, Diamond, enables teams to work smarter and faster.

From navigating pivots to scaling a fast-growing AI startup headquartered in New York City, Merrill offers insights into the messy, exhilarating process of building a company that’s reshaping how developers collaborate in the age of AI.