Barnacle Labs

AI From The Trenches

Technology EN ↓ 5 episodes

A series focused on the people who are working with AI in real organisations and dealing with the reality rather than the hype. Each conversation looks at how someone with a non-technical background actually got something built, what they had to figure out along the way, and how their role shifted once AI became part of the work instead of a distant idea. The aim is to show what adoption looks like from the inside, the decisions that shape it, and the practical moves that make progress possible.

Author

Barnacle Labs

Episodes

Inside a YC Startup Building a Brainwave Foundation Model | Kris Pahuja (Piramidal) 18.02.2026 48:00

In this episode, JD talks with Kris (Pyramidal) about building a time-series foundation model trained on millions of hours of EEG, why healthcare AI is defensible but slow, and why regulation, reimbursement, and incentive misalignment are the real bottlenecks. The Bet: A foundation model for EEG brainwaves that makes brain disorder diagnosis scalable, starting with epilepsy and ICU monitoring. We...

Can AI Save Scientists From Information Overload? 09.01.2026 46:48

How do you stay on top of science when over 500 cancer papers are published every day? In this episode of AI From the Trenches, Duncan talks with Dr Oliver Bogler about AI in cancer research, scientific curiosity, and what happens when the literature becomes impossible for humans to track on their own. They cover how AI can help with literature surveillance, what might replace the traditional scie...

JD and Duncan reflect on their journey from IBM Watson to founding Barnacle Labs 18.12.2025 26:11

JD and Duncan reflect on their journey from IBM Watson to founding Barnacle Labs. They talk about building AI too early, why Watson struggled to become a real product, what went wrong with Humanise, and how early access to GPT-3 reshaped their thinking. The conversation covers AI hype, agents, biotech, client responsibility, and what it actually takes to build systems that matter. A practical, hon...

Inside Shopify’s Scout: The Scrappy AI Tool That Went All The Way To The Boardroom 12.12.2025 46:16

Shopify’s Rich Brown tells the inside story of Scout, the internal AI tool that started as a side project, spread through the company, hit leadership meetings and even reached the board. This episode cuts through the hype and shows how AI actually gets adopted in a large organisation: How non-engineers used tools like Cursor and Claude Code to build real products How Scout merged support, sales an...

Former TV Ad Producer Builds AI Platform to Revolutionise Luxury Shopping ft. Muna 04.12.2025 46:15

Muna started in old-school advertising, making one of the UK’s best-performing TV ads. Today, she runs Circler, an AI-driven platform for high-end secondhand fashion that personalises outfits down to body shape, style and budget. In this episode of AI From The Trenches, she explains how a “non-technical” founder built a serious AI product, automated styling with agents, and turned WhatsApp into a...