Emergent: How Six Months of Tinkering Led To A $100M ARR Company
Y Combinator
Jun 6, 2026
Mukun Jha, co-founder of Emergent, argues that building a global company requires the same effort as a local one, making it irrational to limit your scope. By focusing on autonomous coding agents that deliver functional software rather than simple prototypes, Emergent scaled to $100M in ARR in just nine months by targeting a global user base.
Key insight: Mukun Jha reveals that Emergent was rejected by over a dozen VCs who believed AI was not yet capable of automating software engineering, proving that the best startup ideas often exist in the gap between current limitations and future exponential progress.
