The Innovators & Investors Podcast · 2026-06-24 · 34 min
Episode Overview: In the mid-2026 landscape of shifting markets and sweeping tech layoffs, early-stage companies face a unique paradox: an unprecedented surplus of pedigree talent hidden behind broken evaluation systems. In this episode of the Innovators and Investors Podcast, host Adam Chen sits down with Kingshuk Khan, a former Google and IBM engineer and the founder and CEO of Ikigai. Khan breaks down why the traditional resume and interview process has devolved into "theater" and introduces a behavioral AI framework designed to quantify qualitative alignment, reduce devastating startup mishires, and protect organizational momentum. Key Takeaways: The Failure of Pattern Matching: Why relying solely on elite corporate pedigrees frequently leads to execution friction in early-stage environments. Quantifying the Qualitative: A look inside Ikigai's predictive engine, which accurately identified 16 distinct post-hire failure modes in a retroactive case study using only pre-hire data.
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