Jake Cooper is the Founder of Railway.

This conversation explores how AI accelerates the need for strong backend infrastructure, when to build vs buy in AI software, and why there are only two moats: solving hard problems and doing hard things.

We also unpack Railway’s bold product bets, like enabling creators to earn revenue with backend templates, building their own data centers, and not building their own AI models.

Jake also talks about their four week new hire onboarding, how they build a problem roadmap, why operators should be managers, and why you should almost never work weekends.

Thank you to Angelo Saraceno @ Railway and Erica Brescia Bacon @ Redpoint for help brainstorming topics for the conversation.

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