Ryan welcomes RunPod co-founder and CEO Zhen Lu to discuss circumventing VC money by going straight to your community for funding, how Zhen balances founder intuition with user feedback when the community is the one backing the project, and RunPod’s journey from basement servers to global infrastructure partnerships with a software-layer approach and data-first paradigm.&nbsp;Episode notes:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.runpod.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RunPod</a> is an end-to-end AI cloud that provides developers with GPUs so they can build and run custom AI systems that scale.Connect with Zhen on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> or email him at <a href="mailto:zhenlu@runpod.io" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">zhenlu@runpod.io</a>.&nbsp;Today’s shoutout goes to Famous Question badge winner <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/10820852/cigol-on" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cigol on</a>, who won the badge for getting 10,000+ views on their question <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56715755/using-javascript-is-it-possible-to-capture-the-body-payload-from-an-outgoing-fe" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Using JavaScript, is it possible to capture the body payload from an outgoing fetch request?</a>.<a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/14/who-needs-vcs-when-you-have-friends-like-these/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TRANSCRIPT</a>See Privacy Policy at <a href="https://art19.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://art19.com/privacy</a> and California Privacy Notice at <a href="https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info</a>.

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