In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to Karine Mellata (@karine_exe), co-founder of Variance (@trustvariance), 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…