In Depth The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth in generative media | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)
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Oct 22, 2025 Gorkem Yurtseven, the Co-founder and CEO of fal, discusses the company's meteoric rise in the generative media space, scaling from $2M to over $100M ARR. He reveals the bold pivot from data infrastructure to generative inference, driven by market demand. The conversation explores unique hiring philosophies, the significance of prioritizing developer experience, and predictions for 2027, when AI-generated video is expected to become mainstream. Gorkem also shares insights on managing rapid growth and the challenges of building a diverse tech team.
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Founders' Early Pivot From Data To Inference
- Gorkem and Burkay met in San Francisco, left their jobs during COVID, and experimented with ideas before founding fal.
- They initially built a data-infrastructure product and even had paying customers before pivoting to inference.
Pretrained Models Changed The Stack
- Pretrained models reversed the value chain: data prep matter less when models are ready off-the-shelf.
- That shift pushed fal from data transformation to focusing on inference and serving ready models.
Compare Ideas By Revenue Horizons
- Use a time-horizon framework: which idea hits $1M faster and which hits $10M faster to decide pivots.
- Choose the path with bigger long-term upside even if short-term is slower.