Miami’s Winter Residency, ConductorOne’s rise, and Molly O’Shea’s viral Palantir interview

Momentum’s shifting from talk to traction as Q4 belongs to the ambitious

Author

Michael Morgenstern
November 18, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex Community,

Early stage investors are no longer content to write checks from the sidelines; they’re now increasingly building environments where the next generation of companies will begin. The newly launched Miami Founder Residency is a standout amongst those places. From focal.vc and The LAB Miami, it is backed by founders from many $B companies including Digital Ocean, Mural, Papa, Quicknode, Spotnana.

Ten elite teams. Fully in person. Capital at market terms up front. Moving costs covered. No heavy dilution. A workspace built for speed and community, surrounded by unicorn founders and operators who’ve already done what most only talk about. It offers all the benefits of a top accelerator designed for strong technical AI builders at the start without the heavy dilution.

I’ll be on the ground in Miami this winter, working alongside these founders. If you’re a technical builder, engineer, researcher, or product mind ready to trade noise for momentum, this is your moment. Three months in Miami, $1M+ in perks from partners like OpenAI and Stripe, and a network that actually picks up the phone. No posturing. No noise. Just builders.

Apply at focal.vc/residency before December 14 2025, or if you know a technical founder ready to build, share this with them.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

Brex Supper Club - Fintech Nerdcon

🌊 11/19 · Miami · Fintech Founders and Investors

Off-record, on-point. An invite-only dinner for the fintech insiders shaping what’s next.

Alex Bovee and Paul Querna are the co-founders of ConductorOne

ConductorOne is the first AI-native identity security platform that protects every identity: human, non-human, and AI. With powerful automation, platform-level AI, and out-of-the-box connectors, it centralizes access visibility, enforces fine-grained controls, enables just-in-time access, and automates user access reviews across all apps. It’s easy to use, quick to deploy, and trusted by enterprises like Brex, DigitalOcean, Instacart, and Zscaler.

Ambassador POV: ConductorOne is defining the future of identity security in a world where human, non-human, and AI identities are exploding identity counts faster than legacy tools can keep up with. Fresh off a $79 million Series B, the company is scaling its AI-native platform to automate access at enterprise scale. With identity now one of the most critical control surfaces in security, ConductorOne is emerging as the platform to watch. 

 

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Trusted by 1 in 3 US startups, Brex is the financial stack you can bank on — from MVP to IPO. Get up to $6M FDIC insurance, no-fee corporate cards with high limits and top rewards, built-in spend management, seamless travel booking, and AI-powered bill pay.

💡 New customers unlock over $180K in partner perks, including $5K AWS, $4K Google Cloud, and $2.5K OpenAI credits. All free to use.