This Startup Secretly Detects Fraud For Fortune 500s

This Startup Secretly Detects Fraud For Fortune 500s

Author: Y Combinator March 31, 2026 Duration: 31:23

In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to Karine Mellata, co-founder of Variance (W23), who is coming out of stealth and announcing their $21 million Series A.


Variance builds purpose-built AI agents for risk and compliance — automating fraud detection, content review, and identity verification for Fortune 500 companies and platforms like GoFundMe. They discuss why Variance built in the shadows for three years, detecting state-sponsored fraud rings, and the accident that nearly ended the company.


Behind every successful startup is a story, and the Y Combinator Startup Podcast is where those stories are told in full. This isn't about polished theory; it's the raw, practical conversation happening between founders who have been in the trenches and the Y Combinator partners who advise them. You'll hear directly from people who have navigated the chaotic journey from a flicker of an idea to building a company that scales, discussing not just their victories but, more importantly, the hard lessons and tactical decisions that aren't found in any textbook. Each episode feels like a candid office-hours session, stripping away the hype to focus on the real work of making something people actually want. For anyone curious about the mechanics of building a technology company-the early uncertainties, the pivotal moments, and the relentless focus on execution-this podcast offers an unfiltered look at the craft. Tune in for genuine insights from the frontlines, where the focus remains squarely on the art and science of building things that matter.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Podcast Episodes
The Sales Playbook for Founders | Startup School [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:38
Navigating B2B sales for the first time can feel slow and overwhelming.Drawing from his experience founding Monzo and GoCardless, YC's Tom Blomfield shares his playbook for running a tight sales process that lands real,…
Figma CEO Dylan Field: How AI Will Transform Design [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:36
Dylan Field on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Dylan Field co-founded Figma to bring the design process online and make it multiplayer. From a meme maker built on WebGL to a design platform powering…
The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:15
Brothers Chaz and Arnie Englander started Model ML after building and selling two YC companies. What began as a tool to help them analyze deals has grown into a full AI-powered workspace purpose-built for financial servi…
Brand Design Tips From Linear Founder Karri Saarinen [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:41
For this episode of Design Review, YC’s Aaron Epstein is joined by Karri Saarinen, co-founder & CEO of Linear, one of the top designer-founders working today. Together, they'll review several sites from the YC community…
Chelsea Finn: Building Robots That Can Do Anything [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:52
Chelsea Finn on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.From MIT through her PhD at Berkeley, where she pioneered meta‑learning methods, and Google Brain, Chelsea Finn has built her career around teaching m…
John Jumper: AlphaFold and the Future of Science [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:12
John Jumper on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.John Jumper is a physicist-turned-computational biologist who led DeepMind’s AlphaFold team—and earned the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving prot…
Aravind Srinivas: The Race to Build the AI Browser of the Future [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:12
Aravind Srinivas on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Aravind Srinivas started Perplexity with one goal: to rethink how we search, browse, and interact with information online. In this conversation, he…