The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Matt Grimm is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Anduril Industries, an American defense technology company that specializes in advanced autonomous systems. To date, Anduril has raised over $3.7BN with the latest round pricing the company at a whopping $14BN. Before Anduril, Matt was a Principal at Mithril Capital Management alongside Peter Thiel. Before Mithril, Matt was an early hire at Palantir, where he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan to ensure U.S. forces had the best technology for the mission. 

                           In Today’s Episode with Matt Grimm We Discuss:

1. China/Taiwan, Ukraine/Russia & Israel/Gaza:

How will a Trump administration change US foreign policy and approach to conflict?

Will China invade Taiwan? What does Matt expect to see happen there?

Will Trump put an end to the war in Ukraine? What will be the outcome?

Is Israel wrong to defend itself in the way it has? How will the situation in Gaza be resolved?

2. The Future of War:

What will war look like in the future?

How is software and autonomy changing the world of war? 

Why does the incentive structure of governments buying military equipment need to change around the world?

Will we see a world of robodogs fighting on battlefields? What does weaponry of the future look like?

3. Are We In a Defence Bubble:

With the massive increase in funding to defence companies, does Matt think we are in a defence bubble?

What does Matt believe all investors should know about the defence industry before they make investments in the space?

What should defence founders at the early stage know about building a defence company at scale? What changes?

Who will be the buyer for the many defence companies that have raised early rounds of funding and go out of business? 

4. Matt Grimm: AMA:

Does money make you happy?

What is the biggest luxury purchase you have made?

Should TikTok be banned in the US?

What would Matt do today if he knew he would not fail?

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the most important companies in history. OpenAI is on a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President of Y Combinator and an angel investor in Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit and Instacart. 

                                         15 Questions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman:

1. Will the trajectory of model capability improvement keep going at the same rate as it has been?

2. When did Sam doubt the continuance of scaling laws most? What has been the hardest technical research challenge OpenAI have overcome?

3. How worried is Sam about semiconductor supply chains and international tensions around them? 

4. What is Sam’s biggest worry today? How has it changed over the last 12 months and 5 years?

5. In what ways does Sam feel he was and is unprepared for the role of CEO of OpenAI?

6. Was Masa Son right to suggest that $9TRN of value will be created every year by AI?

7. Why does Sam disagree with Larry Ellison’s statement that it will cost $100BN to enter the foundation model race?

8. Was Keith Rabois right that the best way to build companies is to hire under 30s? 

9. What unmade decision weighs on Sam’s mind most often?

10. What is Sam most grateful to Y Combinator for? 

11. What would Sam build if he were a 23 year old starting today with the foundational AI technology that is already in place?

12. What should startups not try and build as OpenAI will steamroll them? What should they try and build where OpenAI will not go?

13. What does Sam believe is the most exciting use of agents that he has not seen created yet?

14. How does Sam believe that human potential is most wasted today?

15. Who does Sam most respect in the world of AI today? Why them?

Vlad Tenev is a Co-Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the commission free stock trading and investing app with a market cap today of $20.7BN. Over the incredible 11 year journey Vlad has raised over $5BN from some of the world’s best investors including Sequoia, a16z, DST, Ribbit and Index. Before Robinhood, Vlad started two finance companies in New York City. 

In Today’s Episode with Vlad Tenev We Discuss: 

1. Surviving a Scandal: The Gamestop Saga:

What was the single hardest element of the sage for Vlad?

What did the sage teach Vlad about how to tell stories effectively?

What did Vlad not do in the period that he wishes he had of done?

What did he do that he wishes he had not done?

What advice does Vlad have for any founder going into a crisis?

2. Founder Mode and The Biggest BS Myths of Leadership:

How does Vlad analyse and assess Paul Graham’s “Founder Mode”?

Where is Founder mode right? Where is it dangerous?

What canonical leadership statements and lessons does Vlad most disagree with?

How has Vlad changed most significantly as a leader?

3. 8x $100M Revenue Lines: Scaling a Juggernaut:

What have been the single biggest challenges of scaling 8 lines of revenue each with over $100M in them?

What have been Vlad’s biggest lessons on when and how to release new products?

Why did Vlad decide to abandon the Europe launch? Was it right with the benefit of hindsight?

What did Vlad not invest in with Robinhood that he wishes he had of done?

Karri Saarinen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Linear. The company has raised from some of the best in the business including Sequoia and Accel. Before founding Linear, Karri was the principal designer at Airbnb and the founding designer at Coinbase. 

10 Lessons with One of Silicon Valley’s Most In-Demand Founders:

How to Become a Master Fundraiser:

Why does Karri believe it is BS advice that founders should “always be raising”?

What is Karri’s biggest advice to founders on minimising dilution?

What do most founders think they know about fundraising but do not?

What is the best way to put your VCs to work? How can you give them homework to do?

What has been the single best VC meeting Karri has had?

What has been the worst VC meeting?

Product and Growth:

What does Karri mean when he says “founder must focus on quality growth over hypergrowth?”

How does Karri advise founders on how soon to release and monetise their first product? Wait for platform ready or ship more feature products and monetise?

What have been the single biggest product lessons for Karri from Airbnb and Coinbase?

What are the most commons ways that growth plateaus? What breaks first?

Karri AMA:

Brian Armstrong or Brian Chesky; who would you invest in first?

Would you sell Linear today for $3BN in cash?

What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started?

What did you believe that you now no longer believe?

Daniel Khachab is the co-founder and CEO of Choco. Today, Choco’s AI platform facilitates half of all food traded in major cities like New York, Paris, London, and Berlin, cutting food waste and streamlining distribution. Since its founding in 2018, Choco has raised $330 million from Bessemer, Coatue (its first European investment), and Insight, reaching unicorn status within 2.5 years. Previously, Daniel was the youngest Managing Director at Rocket Internet, where he oversaw growth across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.

                                    From Seed to $1BN in 30 Months:

1. We Killed a $BN SaaS Business to be AI First:

Why does Daniel believe that SaaS is dead?

What does an AI-first company mean? 

Why does Daniel believe AI-first companies will win the next 10 years?

What foundation models does Daniel and Choco use today?

How has the cost of using different models changed?

What categories are vulnerable to being attacked with vertical products from the foundation model providers?

2. Europe is F*******: Why and What To Do:

Why does Daniel believe Europe is at a massive disadvantage in the next 10 years of AI?

Chips: What can Europe do to encourage chip production and manufacturing to take place on European soil?

Energy: What can European governments do to encourage energy providers and new forms of renewable energy to innovate to provide the energy AI needs?

Talent: Why does Daniel believe AI talent is the hardest problem that Europe faces? What can governments in EU do to resolve this problem?

3. Lessons Scaling to $1BN in 30 Months:

Does Daniel regret raising at a $1.1BN valuation? 

Why did he throw a unicorn party with the round? Why does he regret it so much?

What did Daniel spend money on that he wish he had not spent money on?

What did Daniel not spend money on that with the benefit of hindsight, they should have spent money on?

When your competition raises a lot of funding, does that mean you should also?

Mark Goldberg is a Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Chemistry, a $350M fund announced just yesterday with the mission to lead the best seed and Series A rounds. Before Chemistry, Mark was a Partner at Index Ventures, where he led early stage investments in Plaid, Bridge, Pilot, Anrok and Persona. Prior to Index Ventures, Mark was one of the first business hires at Dropbox.

In Today’s Episode with Mark Goldberg We Discuss:

1. The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms:

Why are portfolio services there to help the investing partners and not the founders?

What are the most broken elements within a multi-stage firm?

How does decision-making break down in large partnerships?

When is the right time to work with multi-stage firms? When is not?

2. From Boutique High Margins to Commoditised Low Margins: 

With the immense amount of cash that has entered VC, will returns simply get worse?

Who will be the winners in the next 10 years of venture?

Who will be the losers? What can they do today to change this?

What element of the future of venture are not enough people spending time on?

3. Lessons from Leading Unicorn Company Rounds:

What happens to all the unicorns with insanely high prices they cannot grow into?

What has been Mark’s biggest hit? What did he learn?

What has been his biggest miss? How did that change his go-forward approach?

Does Mark agree that 90% of VC do not add value?

AJ Tennant is the Vice President of Sales & Success at Glean, Glean has more than 20x'd its revenue and 100x'd its user base in the just two and a half years he's been there. Before Glean, AJ had incredible runs at Slack and Facebook. At Slack, AJ helped grow revenue from $6 million to more than $1 billion. 

In Today’s Episode with AJ Tennant We Discuss:

1. How to Sell AI Tools in 2024:

Are we still in the experimental budget phase for AI?

How does selling AI tools differ to selling traditional SaaS?

What are enterprises biggest concerns when it comes to adopting AI tools?

What buzzwords get enterprises most excited in the sales process?

Will we see a massive churn problem when the first renewal cycle for many of these AI products comes?

2. Outbound, Discounting, Closing:

Is outbound dead in 2024? What does no one do that everyone should do?

How does AJ approach discounting? Biggest lessons and advice?

What can sales teams do to create a sense of urgency in a sales cycle?

How does AJ do deal reviews and post-mortems? What is the difference between good and bad post-mortems?

3. How to Master Customer Success:

What are the biggest mistakes founders make today in managing their CS teams?

Should CS be compensated for upsell? How should the comp structure of CS teams change?

What can be done to create a good handoff experience for the customer when handing from AE to CS?

What are the most common ways CS teams break over time?

4. Hiring the Best Sales Teams:

How does AJ structure the hiring process for all new sales hires?

What questions does AJ always need to ask when hiring sales reps?

What are clear signs of outperformers when hiring new reps?

Does AJ give candidates a take-home assignment? What does he want to see from them?

Mamoon Hamid is a General Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and one of the greatest venture investors of our time. In the past, Mamoon has led rounds in Figma, Slack, Rippling, Intercom, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). 

In Today’s Episode with Mamoon Hamid We Discuss: 

1. The Greatest Venture Deal of All Time: Figma or Slack:

What is Mamoon’s highest returning deal?

What did Mamoon see in Dylan and Figma when they had no revenue and very little user data?

What compelled Mamoon to write Stewart the check with Slack? What did he not see with Slack that he should have seen?

2. Taking Control of the Great Brand in Venture: Kleiner Perkins:

Is it true that Kleiner approached Mamoon and gave him the keys to the Kleiner kingdom? How did it go down?

Will Kleiner go back to having multiple products, large growth funds, international funds? What does Mamoon want Kleiner to be in 5 years?

What was the hardest element of the transition into Kleiner? What did Mamoon not know that he wishes he had known?

3. Becoming a Generational Defining Investor:

Market, founder, product, how does Mamoon rank them 1-3?

How has Mamoon changed most significantly as an investor?

What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he became a VC 19 years ago?

What is his biggest loss? How did it shape his mindset and go forward investing approach?

4. AI Supercycle: The Greatest Time to Invest

Where does Mamoon believe the value will accrue in this wave of AI?

Where are many investors spending a lot of time but Mamoon believes is not worthy of that time? 

Will scaling laws continue?

Have we ever seen an incumbent set spend like this incumbent class? How does that change the game for VCs?

Antoine Le Nel is the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut, one of the fastest growing fintechs on the planet. Prior to Revolut, Antoine spent an incredible 7 years at King (Makers of Candy Crush) overseeing continuous expansion of the world's most famous mobile game as VP of Growth. 

10 Questions with Revolut’s Chief Growth Officer: 

Why does Antoine believe that the best product and growth teams do not need to do A/B tests?

Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams do not believe in anything?

What growth tactics have worked best for Revolut? What did they learn?

What have been the biggest growth flops? How did that change their approach? 

Why does Antoine believe localisation in product is BS and overrated? 

Why does CAC never come up at Revolut? Why do they not believe it is a metric to focus on? What metrics do they focus on instead?

What does Antoine mean when he says “growth is a bidding war”? How does one win the “bidding war” today?

Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams focus on optimisations and 1% gains not moving the needle for a company?

What are the single biggest mistakes growth teams make today? What used to work that no longer works?

What growth tactic is most effective but also most under-utilised? How can startups take advantage of this?

Zach Perret is the CEO and Co-Founder of Plaid, a technology platform reshaping financial services. To date, Zach has raised over $734M for Plaid from the likes of NEA, Spark, GV, Coatue and a16z, to name a few. Today, thousands of companies including the largest fintechs, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks use Plaid. In addition, Zach is also a Co-Founder of Mischief, an early-stage venture fund in San Francisco. 

In Today’s Episode with Zach Perret We Discuss:

1. Founder Mode:

Why “Founder Mode” will be the most dangerous blog post written in the last decade for founders? What is most misleading about it?

What are “grinder problems”? Why does Zach believe that grinder problems are the best problems for startups to try and solve?

Why does Zach believe that OKRs are BS and should be removed? What should be used instead?

2. Lessons from Raising $734M for Plaid:

What is the worst advice that VCs give that most founders take?

Why does Zach believe that angel investing is more distracting than helpful for founders to do? What are the pros of investing alongside running a company?

Why does Zach encourage founders to raise money as infrequently as possible? What does this mean for the size and price of rounds Zach thinks we should see occur?

3. The $5BN Exit and the $13.4BN Round:

Why did Zach turn down the $5BN exit to Visa? Was it the right choice?

Does Zach regret raising at such a high price of $13.4BN when the exit did not happen?

Would Zach sell the company today for $13.4BN if offered it?

What did Zach not do that he wish he had done? What did he do that he wishes he had not done?

David Frankel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, one of the best seed firms of the last decade. David has led rounds in companies such as Suno, Coupang, SeatGeek and PillPack (sold to Amazon for ~$1B). Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT Japan. David has been named to the Midas List six times. In 2023, he was #11 and in 2024, he appeared at #15 on the Midas List of the world's best venture capital investors and at #2 on the Midas list of seed investors. 

10 Questions With One of the World’s Best Seed Investors:

1. Reserves: Why are reserves the hardest part of venture? What have been David’s biggest lessons in how to do them well?

2. Why does David believe that pro-rata is the original sin of VC? 

3. Has DPI died in 2024? Is PE the salvation for the VC exit market and liquidity?

4. Why does David believe LPs are so pissed of with VCs right now? What will change that?

5. When will IPO markets open? Are M&A markets shut? What would cause them to open?

6. How does David reflect on price today? When will he pay up and break his rules?

7. Biggest lessons for David on knowing when is the right time to sell? Why does David believe you should never sell your winners? What has David sold that he regrets most?

8. What companies returned the most to Founder Collective Funds? Uber? Coupang? Airtable? The Trade Desk? What did he learn from those mega hits?

9. What have been David’s biggest losses? How did losing the company change his mindset and approach to investing?

10. What does David believe is the future of venture capital? How can seed funds play in a world of mega multi-stage funds? Who wins? Who loses?

Eoghan McCabe is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Intercom, one of the largest private software companies in the valley with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of customers. To date, Eoghan has raised over $238M from Index, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, GV, Bessemer and more incredible firms. Intercom’s goal is to reinvent customer service with AI agents replacing human agents over the next 10 years.

10 Questions with One of the Largest Private Company CEO’s:

AI Investing: Why will most AI investments not do better than the S&P 500?

Building SaaS Tools with AI: Why is it crazy for companies to follow Klarna and use AI to build their own tools?

Going Public: Why is Bill Gurley wrong that more later stage companies should go public? Why did Intercom shelve plans to go public in 2022?

Early-Stage is F*******: Why is the early-stage venture ecosystem as an asset class f******?

Founder Mode: Why does Eoghan believe all of the best founders are unbalanced? What is the difference between Founder vs Manager mode? 

Political Voice: Why did Eoghan decide he had to voice his political opinions now?

The Danger of Harris: Why does Eoghan believe a Harris administration would rob the US of immense freedom, democracy and civil liberty?

Why Vote Trump: Why does Eoghan believe that Trump will regain immense freedom for the sovereign individual?

Freedom of Speech: How does Eoghan determine right vs wrong when freedom of speech leads to harm and injustice? 

Middle East and Nuclear War: Why does Eoghan believe that nuclear war is much closer than we think? Will we see the Middle East descend into war? 

Jeff Wang is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Global Equities (SCGE), a public/private crossover investment firm with investments spanning from late-stage private companies to public companies. As Managing Partner, Jeff has primarily focused on public growth technology companies but has also invested $3 billion in private companies including Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe. Prior SCGE private investments that have since gone public include Airbnb, Doordash, MongoDB, Nubank, and Snowflake. Before joining SCGE in 2010, Jeff also worked at TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners where he focused on investments in technology buyouts.

10 Questions with the Leader of Sequoia’s $9BN Global Equities Fund:

1. Crossover Fund Opportunity: Why are crossover funds more attractive today than ever? Have the tourists gone?

2. Public Market Opportunity: Why is the opportunity in the public markets, not the private markets today?

3. IPO Markets: When will IPO markets open? What will cause them to open?

4. Breaking Hedge Fund Rules: What are the biggest ways that Sequoia break the traditional rules of hedge funds?

5. Google: Why does Jeff believe that Google’s cash cow of search is under threat?

6. Meta: Why does Jeff believe Meta will be the biggest competitor to Google?

7. NVIDIA: Why is NVIDIA’s price today reasonable? What is the bull and bear case?

8. China: Is there a recovery for China? How do Sequoia play China in this market?

9. AI in Public Markets: How are Sequoia playing the AI game in the public markets?

10. Investing Lessons: What have been Jeff’s biggest investing lessons from Mike Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha?

Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside.ai, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world’s first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software.

1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race:

What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs?

How much of Poolside’s latest raise will be spent on compute?

How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider’s funding rounds? 

Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia?

Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs?

2. The Big Questions in AI:

Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs?

What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute?

To what extent will Nvidia’s Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance?

What will OpenAI’s GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again?

3. Compute, Chips and Cash:

Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; “you need $100BN to play the foundation model game”? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price?

Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve?

Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing? 

Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, “you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice”? 

Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development?

4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic…

Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised?

What would Eiso do if he were Sam Altman today?

Is $6.6BN really enough for OpenAI to compete against Google, Meta etc…?

OpenAI at $150BN, Anthropic at $40BN and X.ai at $24BN. Which would Eiso choose to buy and why?

Maria Angelidou is a seasoned product leader, having spent close to a decade at Meta where she was VP of Product and General Manager for some of the largest products such as Facebook Groups (2B+ users), Events, Profile, and Search. Before that, Maria led the Facebook App Monetization team, driving billions of dollars in revenue. Today, Maria is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Personio, an HR tech company with an ambitious mission to unlock the power of people for SMEs.

1. How to Hire the Best Product Teams:

2. How the Best Product Teams Do Product Reviews:

3. Europe vs US: How Product Teams Differ:

Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.

1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today:

2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History?

3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website:

4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising:

Donald Tang is the Executive Chairman of SHEIN, with oversight of public affairs, business strategy, corporate development, and finance. Donald began his career at Merrill Lynch & Co. He later joined Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. in Los Angeles as Senior Managing Director of Investment Banking. At Bear Sterns, Donald quickly rose to become the Vice Chairman of the firm, as well as Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings, Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asia, Ltd, and a member of the board of directors at Bear Stearns & Co.

1. How SHEIN Became a Global Giant:

2. The Big Questions: IPOs, Impact on Climate and Worker Conditions:

3. Marriage, Fatherhood and Happiness:

Jeetu Mahtani was an early member of the HubSpot team. Under his leadership and the sales organization, the business grew its non-US revenue from $3M ARR to close to $1B ARR. After running the International business as the global MD and Sales leader, he then moved to lead the customer success org which expanded to managing 1,500 people in customer success.

1. How to Go International for Startups:

2. Scaling Sales from $3M to $1BN in ARR:

3. Scaling Customer Success to 1,500 CS Reps:

4. Hiring the Best and Ramping Them:

20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani

Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013.

1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today:

2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully:

3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions:

4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models:

Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch).

1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS:

2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps:

3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users:

4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader:

Phil Carter is one of the best growth leaders of the last decade helping world-class companies like Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta accelerate their growth. Today, Phil is a growth advisor and angel investor who helps Seed - Series C consumer subscription businesses define their growth strategy.

The Seven Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription:

How to Optimize Subscription Pricing and Packaging:

Step:

How to deliver immediate value through new user onboarding?

Target Metrics: 

How to boost paid marketing efficiency by investing in desktop web flows?

Target Metrics: 

How to optimize paywall visibility and conversion?

Target Metrics: 

How to distinguish and emphasize premium value props?

Target Metrics:

How to leverage motivation tactics (stats, streaks, badges, leaderboards, notifications)?

Target Metrics:

How to leverage strategic discounts and promotions?

Target Metrics:

Akshay Kothari is Co-Founder at Notion, one of the fastest-growing companies of the last decade. Akshay has run every function in the company from sales, to marketing to finance and even led their fundraising efforts raising $340M+ from Sequoia, Index and Coatue with the latest round pricing them at $10BN. Before Notion, Akshay was VP Product at Linkedin for 5+ years, leading all of their content efforts. He joined LinkedIn when his previous company, Pulse, was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013.

1. Founder Mode, Veto Powers and Focus:

2. Raising $50M @ $2BN Valuation:

3. Raising $270M @ $10BN Valuation:

4. Boards and Social Media are F*******:

Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and one of the greatest cyber security investors of the last two decades. Among his many wins, Shardul has led rounds in Datadog, Wiz, Duo Security, Coalition and more. Shardul is also the only Partner investing at Index to have worked in every single Index office from London, to SF, to NYC to Geneva. Prior to Index, Shardul worked with Summit Partners, focusing on healthcare and internet technologies.

1. Investing Lessons from Wiz and Datadog:

2. How the Best VCs Make Decisions:

3. The Core Pillars of Venture: Sourcing, Selecting, Securing and Servicing:

4. Lessons from the Best Investors in the World:

Mike Hudack is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sling, a peer-to-peer payments app whose vision is to simplify the way the world connects financially. Previously, he held roles at Monzo Bank as Chief Product Officer, Deliveroo as Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Facebook where he led ads product and sharing product.

1. Product: Art vs Science:

2. Lessons from Leading Ads at Facebook:

3. Leading Product at Deliveroo: What I Learned:

4. Building the Biggest Bank in Britain with Monzo:

David Schneider is a General Partner @ Coatue and one of the great operators of the last 20 years. Prior to Coatue, David was instrumental in ServiceNow’s growth to over $100B+ public market value. David led the growth of the company from $100M to $5BN in revenue. Before joining ServiceNow, David held senior positions at Data Domain, the company he joined at $0 in revenue and scaled to $1BN in revenue and an IPO and acquisition.

ServiceNow: Secrets to Scaling to $5BN in ARR:

2. From OG Operator to Newbie Investor:

3. VC Value: Do 90% of VCs Really Damage Companies:

4. Lessons from the Greats: Doug Leone, Bill McDermott, Frank Slootman:

Sean Rad is the Founder and former CEO of Tinder. Sean has made more romantic connections between humans than anyone in history with Tinder having matched 50BN different people. Sean is also the Founder of Rad Fund which has made over 100 investments in companies and funds.

1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App:

2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship:

3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office:

4. Love, Death, Marriage:

Nick Chirls is the Founder of Asylum Ventures, a new venture firm dedicated to the creative act of building companies; treating founders like artists, not assets. Asylum raised $55 million to invest $1-2 million in early-stage founders practising the art of making startups. Prior to Asylum, Nick co-founded Notation Capital, one of NYC's most successful pre-seed firms.

1. Why Venture Capital is Broken Today:

2. How to Make Money in VC in 2024:

3. Lessons from 3xing a Fund on One Check:

Zico Colter is a Professor and the Director of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University.  His research spans several topics in AI and machine learning, including work in AI safety and robustness, LLM security, the impact of data on models, implicit models, and more.  He also serves on the Board of OpenAI, as a Chief Expert for Bosch, and as Chief Technical Advisor to Gray Swan, a startup in the AI safety space.

1. Model Performance: What are the Bottlenecks:

2. Sam Altman, Sequoia and Frontier Models on Data Centres:

3. AI Safety: What People Think They Know But Do Not:

Scott Gorlick was employee #99 at Uber. Over 6 years, Scott built Uber in Atlanta and helped the company scale from 10 cities to $10B in revenue. Scott is also a prolific angel investor having written early checks into Lime and Standard Cognition to name a few.

1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers

2. The City Expansion Playbook:

3. Travis Kalanick and What Uber Could Have Been:

Arvind Narayanan is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil and a big proponent of the AI scaling myths around the importance of just adding more compute. He is also the lead author of a textbook on the computer science of cryptocurrencies which has been used in over 150 courses around the world, and an accompanying Coursera course that has had over 700,000 learners.

1. Compute, Data, Algorithms: What is the Bottleneck:

2. The Future of Models:

3. Education, Healthcare and Misinformation: When AI Goes Wrong:

Imran Khan is the OG of IPOs having taken some of the biggest companies public including Alibaba, Snap, Box, Weibo and more. Today, Imran is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Proem Asset Management. Prior to co-founding Proem, Imran served as Snap Inc.’s Chief Strategy Officer. Under his leadership, Snap’s annual revenue run rate increased to $1.6 billion from zero in less than four years. Previously, Imran was a Managing Director and Head of Global Internet Investment Banking at Credit Suisse where he advised on more than $45 billion-worth of Internet M&A and financing transactions.

1. The IPO Market: When Does it Open:

2. Is M&A F******:

3. AI's $600BN Question: Capex Spend:

4. Going Public: The Process, The Players and Jack Ma & Jamie Dimon:

Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio.

1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product:

2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams:

3. How to Build a Hiring Machine:

4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake:

Aman Narang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Toast, one of the best-in-class vertical SaaS companies of our time with a market cap today of $13.5BN. Five astonishing stats that show the quality of the Toast business today:

1. The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make:

2. Lessons Scaling to a $14BN Market Cap:

3. Crucible Moment Decisions: Expansion:

Aidan Gomez is the Co-founder & CEO at Cohere, the leading AI platform for enterprise, having raised over $1BN from some of the best with their last round pricing the company at a whopping $5.5BN. Prior to Cohere, Aidan co-authored the paper “Attention is All You Need,” which introduced the groundbreaking Transformer architecture. He also collaborated with a number of AI luminaries, including Geoffrey Hinton and Jeff Dean, during his time at Google Brain, where the team focused their efforts on large-scale machine learning.

1. Compute vs Data: What is the Bottleneck:

2. The Value of the Model:

3. Enterprise AI: It is Changing So Fast:

4. The Wider World: Remote Work, Downfall of Europe and Relationships:

Laela Sturdy is Managing Partner of CapitalG, Alphabet’s $7 billion independent growth fund, where she has invested in Stripe, Duolingo (DUOL), Gusto, UiPath (PATH), Webflow and Whatnot. Laela joined CapitalG shortly after its inception in 2013 and was promoted to Managing Partner in 2023, making her one of few women to be promoted into the sole leadership role within an established multibillion-dollar venture firm. Before joining CapitalG, Laela served as Managing Director of emerging businesses at Google and held leadership roles on the YouTube and Google Search teams.

1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing:

2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging:

3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside:

4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS:

Kaz Nejatian is Shopify’s VP of Product & Chief Operating Officer. Before Shopify, Kaz founded Kash, a payment technology company which was acquired in 2017 by one of the largest fintech companies in the U.S. Kaz then served as Product Lead for Payments and Billing at Facebook, reducing the barriers for businesses in cash-dependent markets to purchase digital ads without a credit card.

1. Learnings From the Greats:

2. Shopify: Why We Build Our Own Tools:

3. Eight Truths The Startup World Gets Wrong:

Why does Kaz believe "The Lean Startup" has done more damage than any other startup book? Why does Kaz believe that 90% of companies do not know what they want when they hire? Why does Kaz believe the way that companies pay their staff is totally wrong? Why does Kaz believe that most companies pick fights they do not need to pick? Why does Kaz believe that for 90% of companies remote work is a terrible idea? Why does Kaz believe that everyone in sales and marketing should be able to code? Why does Kaz believe that married people with kids are more, not less productive? Why does Kaz believe that we totally misunderstand divorce rates?

Shaun Maguire is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. At Sequoia he led their investment into SpaceX, The Boring Co and X among many others. Before Sequoia he co-founded a cybersecurity company called Expanse which Palo Alto Networks acquired for $1B. Before Expanse, Shaun worked at DARPA and was deployed to Afghanistan.

1. Why Iran is the Greatest Evil in the World:

2. Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Israel: What is the Right Next Step:

3. Freedom of Speech and DEI: Remnants of the Past:

4. The Election: Who Wins and What Happens:

5. Elon Musk, US Selling All BTC & Inside Sequoia:

20VC: Sequoia's Shaun Maguire on Will We See WW3 Shortly | Why DEI is a Cancer for Society | Why Iran is the World's Greatest Evil | Why Trump is the Only Hope for Peace in the Middle East | Trump vs Harris: Who Wins & What Happens 

Dax Dasilva is the Founder & CEO Lightspeed Commerce, one of the most incredible stories in startups. For 7 years they did not raise outside funding and ran a very profitable business. Ultimately they partnered with Accel and Innovia before going public on the Canadian Stock Exchange with just $70M in ARR. Lightspeed also undertook 9 acquisitions over the course of a four year period to consolidate the global market. Today they have a whopping $900M in ARR but are only valued at $2.6BN. Today we ask the question, is Lightspeed one of the public market's most misunderstood companies?

1. VC Funding is Distorting SaaS:

2. What Went Wrong: The Founder Returns:

3. What Makes a Great Leader: How it Changes:

Alexis Ohanian is the Founder and General Partner of Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm with $970M AUM. Prior to 776, Alexis was the Co-Founder of Initialized, one of the most successful early-stage firms in history with their first fund returning 56x DPI. Before Initialized, Alexis was a Partner at the world-famous Y Combinator and before that was one of the Co-Founders of Reddit.

1. $31M in Revenue: The P&L of a Sports Team:

2. How to Spend $31M Annually To Run a Team:

3. More Cash in Sports Than Ever:

4. Alexis Ohanian: AMA:

David Cahn is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the great venture firms of the last 5 decades. Before joining the Sequoia partnership, David led Coatue's venture business as a General Partner and COO where he led investments in Hugging Face, Runway and Supabase. David also joined the boards of Weights & Biases and Replit.

1. AI's $600BN Question:

2. The Data Centre is the Most Important Asset:

3. The Biggest Opportunities in AI:

4. The Secrets of Sequoia: Inside the Walls of the Greatest Firm in Venture:

20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI

Ben Fiechtner is Chief Revenue Officer at Clari, where he drives global go-to market & revenue operations. Ben previously served as SVP at UiPath, growing their key accounts and regulated industry verticals from $150m to $450m. Before UiPath, Ben was at Salesforce where he held multiple senior roles, achieving significant year-over-year growth and always on the bleeding edge of Vertical teams. 

1. How to Close Deals Faster:

2. SMB to Enterprise: How and When:

3. Verticalisation: Why, When and How:

4. How to Hire the Best Reps:

Ethan Mollick is the Co-Director of the Generative AI Lab at Wharton, which builds prototypes and conducts research to discover how AI can help humans thrive while mitigating risks. Ethan is also an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship, and also examines the effects of artificial intelligence on work and education. His papers have been published in top journals and his book on AI, Co-Intelligence, is a New York Times bestseller. 

1. Models: Is More Compute the Answer:

2. OpenAI: The Missed Opportunity, Product Roadmap and AGI:

3. VCs, Startups and AI Labs: What the World Does Not Understand:

Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and Co-Founder and President of Varda Space Industries, which is building the world's first space factories. At Founders Fund Delian has led deals in the likes of Ramp ($7BN) and Sword Health ($3BN) among others. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a Principal at Khosla Ventures, Head of Growth at Teespring, and Founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale.

1. Venture Capital: Winners, Losers and Everyone Else:

2. Inside Founders Fund: What No One Sees:

3. What Every Young VC Needs to Know:

4. Europe Will Be Third World, Parenting and Marriage:

Nilan Peiris is Chief Product Officer at Wise, where he leads on growth across channels including product and platform. Prior to Wise, Nilan was VP Growth at HouseTrip, in charge of scaling the company’s growth in the European market. He’s also worked as Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Holiday Extras, where he was responsible for all areas of technology, marketing and customer acquisition. Nilan also advises a number of early-stage startups on growth and getting to traction.

Lessons Scaling Transferwise to the First 1M Users:

2. How to Use Content to Crush Competition:

3. Wise's Framework on How to Win at Performance Marketing:

4. The Secret to Adding More Products:

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com.

1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer:

2. Crowdstrike: WTF Happens from Here:

3. LegalTech: Show Me the Money: $1BN in a Single Day:

Kevin Hartz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at A*, an early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to founding A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite, a publicly traded company, and served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company. Before Eventbrite, Kevin co-founded Xoom, a money remittance company that was acquired by PayPal in 2015 for over $1BN. Kevin is also a prolific angel investor having backed companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril at the seed stage, and was an early investor in Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto and many others.

1. What Makes the Best Founders:

2. The Exploding Term Sheet That Cost $10BN:

3. From World's Greatest Angel to VC with $600M AUM:

4. Learning From the World's Best Investors:

Cameron Adams is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Canva where he is responsible for heading up the design and product teams. Since launching in 2013, Canva’s global community has grown to over 185 million monthly users in over 190 countries. In 2021, Canva was valued at $40 billion, following a $200m funding round. This saw it become one of the most valuable private software companies in the world. Prior to joining Canva, Cameron found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realise the design vision for Google Wave.

1. From Accidental Joining to Most Valuable Private Company:

2. How to Create Users that Truly Love Your Products:

3. Scaling Canva into the Enterprise:

4. AI Changes Everything: More Money or Better Products Only

Pedro Franceschi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Brex, the AI-powered spend platform with tens of thousands of customers, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood and Roblox. Pedro has raised over $1.2BN for the company from the likes of Greenoaks, Ribbit, DST, Bond and YC. The latest reported valuation was $12.3BN. Before Brex, Pedro was the first person to “jailbreak” the iPhone 3G in Brazil and co-founded payments company Pagar.me with Dubugras when he was 15. In three years, Pedro scaled it to over 100 people and US$1.5 billion in transactions processed.

1. The Challenge is in Your Own Head:

2. From a 13-Year-Old Hacker in Brazil to Billionaire in LA:

3. The Importance of the Idea: What Everyone Misunderstands:

4. Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins:

Saam Motamedi is a General Partner at Greylock, where he has led investments in Abnormal Security (incubated at Greylock), Apiiro Security and Opal Security, as well as AI companies like Adept, Braintrst, Cresta, Predibase, Snorkel, and more. Before Greylock, Saam founded Guru Labs, a machine learning-driven fintech startup, and worked in product management at RelateIQ, one of the first applied AI software companies.

1. Seed Today is Frothier than 2021:

2. Series B and Growth are not a Viable Asset Class Today:

3. Markets vs Founders: The Billion Dollar Mistake and Lessons:

4. Saam Motamedi: AMA:

20VC: Why We Are in a Bubble & Now is Frothier Than 2021 | Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | Why Seed Pricing is Rational & Large Seed Rounds Have Less Risk | Why Many AI Apps Have BS Revenue & Are Not Sustainable with Saam Motamedi @ Greylock

Mark Roberge is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark was the founding CRO at HubSpot, where he scaled ARR from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference.

1. Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot to $100M in ARR:

2. How the Best Startups Scale into Enterprise:

3. Second Product and Second Channel:

4. 99% of SaaS Founders Do Partnerships Wrong:

Ara Mahdessian is the Co-Founder and CEO @ ServiceTitan, one of the great vertical SaaS business of the last decade. Today the company powers over 11,800 trade customers and has raised over $1.4BN from some of the best including Bessemer, Battery, Index, ICONIQ and more. Their latest valuation pegged the business at a reported $7.3BN.

1. We Did Not Want To Raise VC Money:

2. How to Master Going Upmarket:

3. How to Build a Brand in SaaS and Have Premium Pricing:

4. How to Master the Second Product & Be the Best at Customer Success:

5. The Core Pillars of Great Leadership:

Pat Grady is one of the most successful growth investors of the last decade. As the Head of Sequoia's growth investing practice, Pat has invested in companies with a combined market cap exceeding $250BN. Among Pat's immense portfolio is Hubspot, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Okta, Amplitude, Zoom and Qualtrics. Pat is also one of the best acquirers of talent in venture hiring Andrew Reed, Matt Huang, Julien Bek.

1. The Sequoia Investment Process:

2. What Sequoia Look for When Investing:

3. The Three Core Pillars of Venture:

4. Pat Grady: AMA:

Avi Eyal is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Entrée Capital, an early-stage VC fund with a portfolio including the likes of Monday.com, Stripe, Coupang, PillPack, and Snap. From their $15M investment into Monday, Entrée distributed a whopping $1.5BN, one of their $45M funds is a whopping 37x DPI. Avi is one of the greatest venture investors you might not have heard about.

1. The Biggest BS "Rules" in Venture Capital:

2. What Makes the Best Founders:

3. The Biggest Hits and Biggest Misses:

Matt Clifford is the Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First (EF), the leading global talent investor and incubator. EF has incubated startups worth over $10bn, including Cleo, Tractable and Aztec Protocol. Matt is also Chair of ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and advises the UK government on AI and in 2023 served as the Prime Minister’s Representative for the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.

1. The Most Important Questions in AI:

2. The Biggest Opportunities in AI Today:

3. China and the Race to Win the AI War:

4. What Makes Truly Great Founders:

Samir Vasavada is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vise, a technology-powered asset manager. Samir and his co-founder, Runik founded Vise from the Midwest at 16 years old. They bootstrapped the company before dropping out of high school and raising $128M in just 6 months from some of the best including Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. The company achieved unicorn status when the pair turned 20 years old, making them the youngest founders of a $BN company at the time.

1. The Biggest Hiring Mistakes That Broke Us:

2. Fundraising: 3 Rounds and $126M in 6 Months:

3. The Depression, The Pressure and Wisdom From Jensen Huang:

Andrew Bialecki is the Co-Founder and CEO of Klaviyo, the platform that powers smarter digital relationships for businesses and their data. To date, Klaviyo has raised over $778M from the likes of Accel, Summit Partners, Sands Capital, and Shopify, and raised an additional $700M after its IPO in September 2023. 

In Today’s Episode with Andrew Bialecki We Discuss:

Founding a $6.23BN Machine in Klaviyo: The Aha Moment

What was the aha moment for Klaviyo?

How important does Andrew think it is for founders to stick with their initial vision vs when is the right time to pivot?

Does a great product sell itself? If you build it, will they come?

Bootstrapping Klaviyo: Would it Have Worked with More VC Cash Earlier?

Why did Andrew decide to bootstrap & not take VC money with Klaviyo?

Does Andrew think Klaviyo would have been successful if they raised a seed round? What would they have done differently?

Why does Andrew believe companies should take their time to find product-market fit? What are the most common mistakes founders make?

What is Andrew’s advice to founders on fundraising?

When did Andrew decide to raise a seed round when he did? 

How to IPO in an IPO Winter: Advice & Lessons

Why did Andrew decide to take Klaviyo public in a bad public market?

How was the IPO roadshow process? What were Andrew’s lessons from it?

How has Andrew’s role as CEO changed after taking Klaviyo public?

Does Andrew think Klaviyo is undervalued today?

What is Andrew’s advice to founders on secondaries?

Behind the Shopify Partnership

How did Klaviyo’s partnership with Shopify happen? What were Andrew’s lessons working with Tobi Lütke & Harley Finklestein?

How does Andrew define a win-win partnership? 

What does Andrew mean by “Partnerships are like a tug of war?”

What does Andrew think are the most common reasons partnerships go sideways?

David Luan is the CEO and Co-Founder at Adept, a company building AI agents for knowledge workers. To date, David has raised over $400M for the company from Greylock, Andrej Karpathy, Scott Belsky, Nvidia, ServiceNow and WorkDay. Previously, he was VP of Engineering at OpenAI, overseeing research on language, supercomputing, RL, safety, and policy and where his teams shipped GPT, CLIP, and DALL-E. He led Google's giant model efforts as a co-lead of Google Brain.

1. The Biggest Lessons from OpenAI and Google Brain:

2. Foundation Models: The Hard Truths:

3. Bunding vs Unbundling: Why Chips Are Coming for Models:

4. The Application Layer: Why Everyone Will Have an Agent:

Val Scholz is the former Head of Growth @ Revolut, where he led the company to their first 10M users. Post Revolut, Val played a crucial role in scaling several high-growth companies including VEED, Simple & Busuu (exited for $400M). Today, Val is the Head of Growth at Kittl, an intuitive design platform empowering graphic designers.

In Today’s Episode with Val Scholz We Discuss:

Lessons from Scaling Revolut to 10M Users

What were Val’s biggest takeaways during his time at Revolut?

What does Val consider the secret sauce behind Revolut’s success?

What did Val think Revolut understood about customers that no other bank did?

The Secrets to Revolut’s Growth Playbook

What was Val’s best growth decision? What was his worst?

Why does Val think most companies don’t do referrals well?

What made Revolut’s signup strategy so successful?

What are Val’s two ways to master content marketing?

Does Val think it’s good to diversify growth channels? When should founders diversify?

What are Val’s strategies to make Youtube influencers successful?

Product Marketing 101:

Why does Val think traditional marketing methods are outdated?

If traditional marketing methods are outdated, what should startups do instead?

What does Val think is the most dangerous myth around product-led growth?

What does Val believe are the most common mistakes founders make on optimizing products?

Growth Hires: Who, What, When & How

When does Val think is the best time to hire a head of growth?

What is the profile Val looks for in a growth hire? What traits does he look for?

What are the most common reasons founders fail at hiring?

What does Val think are the biggest red flags to look out for in a CV?

How does Val define good culture? Did Revolut have a good culture?

Michael Eisenberg is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Aleph, one of Israel's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Wix, Lemonade, Empathy, Honeybook and more. Before leading Aleph, Michael was a General Partner @ Benchmark.

1. The State of AI Investing:

2. Where Is the Liquidity Coming From?

3. AI as a Weapon: Who Wins: China or the US:

4. Venture 101: Reserves, Selling Positions and Fund Dying:

Danny Rimer is a Partner @ Index Ventures and one of the most prominent VCs of the last two decades. Danny has led Index to be one of the top global firms on both sides of the Atlantic. Among Danny's incredible portfolio, he has led or been involved with Figma, Discord, Dream Games, Etsy, Glossier and Patreon.

1. The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook:

2. The Biggest BS Rules in Venture: Market Sizing, Valuations and Signalling

3. Lessons from the Biggest Wins and Losses:

4. Lessons from Two Decades Building Index into a Premier Firm:

Janie Lee is the Head of Product and the owner of the Self-Serve business at Loom. Janie previously worked at Rippling, leading the Identity Management and Hardware teams. Prior to that, she worked at Opendoor launching markets and developing pricing algorithms. During this time, Opendoor scaled from 2 to 20+ markets, $5B+ revenue, and 1500+ employees.

1. Inside the Product Building Machine of Rippling and Opendoor:

2. What Makes a Truly Great PM:

3. How to Find and Pick the Best PMs:

4. Onboarding PMs and Crushing Product Reviews:

Alex Wang is the Founder and CEO @ Scale.ai, the company that allows you to make the best models with the best data. To date, Alex has raised $1.6BN for the company with a last reported valuation of $14BN earlier this year. Scale tripled their ARR in 2023 and is expected to hit $1.4BN in ARR by the end of 2024. Their investors include Accel, Index, Thrive, Founders Fund, Meta and Nvidia to name a few.

1. Foundation Models: Diminishing Returns:

2. AI: A Military Asset in Global Conflict: China + Russia

3. "I Get Fairer Treatment in Congress than in the Press":

4. Alex Wang: AMA:

Reid Hoffman has been one of the most impactful people in technology over the last two decades. He is the Co-Founder of Linkedin (acq by Microsoft for $26BN) and Co-Founder of Inflection.ai. As an investor, Reid has backed the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, Zynga and more. Reid is also a Board Member @ Microsoft and was on the board of OpenAI.

1. Foundation Models: Commoditisation, Business Models, Incumbents:

2. Inflection & Microsoft: What Went Down:

3. OpenAI: Board, Lessons and Management:

4. Trump is the Biggest Threat to Democracy: What Lies Ahead?

5. The Future of TikTok:

6. Reid Hoffman: AMA:

Ashley Kelly is the VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling, the all-in-one platform for HR, IT, and finance. Before Rippling, Ashley played a crucial role in scaling Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR, and has hired over 800 SDRs during her time in some of the best tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Lever and Zenefits. 

In Today’s Episode with Ashley Kelly We Discuss:

From NASCAR to Silicon Valley SDR

How did Ashley make her way into the world of sales?

Why does Ashley think the best AEs and leaders start off as SDRs?

What is Ashley’s advice to new SDRs starting their jobs today?

Age of AI: Is SDR Outbound Dead?

Does Ashley agree that outbound is dead today? Is SDR dead?

How will AI change SDR? Why is Ashley hesitant to adopt AI?

Why does Ashley think founders should always build the first sales playbook?

What did Ashley mean by SDR is the 3rd pillar between sales and marketing? 

What does Ashley think most companies get wrong about outbound?

SDR Hiring: Who, What, When & How

When does Ashley think founders should hire their first SDR?

How does Ashley structure the hiring process? What questions does she ask?

What profile does Ashley look for when hiring for an SDR?

How does Ashley structure the finance package? How is it different for each team?

Why did Ashley avoid hiring SDRs with SDR experience? Why has she changed her mind?

What was Ashley’s biggest hiring mistake? What were her takeaways?

Onboarding New SDR Hires

How does Ashley onboard new SDR hires? What is her onboarding timeline?

How does Ashley set targets for new hires? When should they be fully productive? 

When does Ashley know if a new hire isn’t working?

What are common traits among Ashley’s most successful hires?

Aravind Srinivas is the Co-Founder & CEO of Perplexity, the conversational "answer engine" that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $100 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, and Susan Wojciki.

In Today’s Episode with Aravind Srinivas We Discuss:

Biggest Lessons from DeepMind & OpenAI

What was the best career advice Sam Altman @ OpenAI gave Aravind?

What were Aravind’s biggest takeaways at DeepMind?

How did DeepMind shape how Aravind built Perplexity?

What did Aravind mean by “competition is for losers?” What did he learn about talent assembly at DeepMind?

The Next AI Breakthrough: Reasoning

Does Aravind think we are experiencing diminishing returns on compute & model performance?

Does Aravind agree reasoning will be the next big breakthrough for models?

What are the reasons Aravind thinks models suck at reasoning today?

What is the timeline for reasoning improvement according to Aravind?

What does Aravind think are the biggest misconceptions about AI today?

Will Foundation Models Commoditise?

Does Aravind think foundation models will commoditise? What will the end state of foundation models look like?

Why does Aravind think the second tier models will get commoditised?

Why does Aravind think the subscription model will not work for AI models with true reasoning? 

Why does Aravind think the application layer companies will benefit from foundation models commoditising?

Why does Aravind think foundation models will not verticalize?

When does Aravind think is the right time to go enterprise? What is his strategy to differentiate Perplexity from its competitors?

AI Arms Race: Who Will Win?

Who does Aravind think will be the winners of foundation models?

What do AI companies need to do to win the model arms race?

How does Aravind think startups can compete against incumbents' infinite cash flow?

What are the reasons Aravind thinks Perplexity’s browsing is better than ChatGPT?

What is Aravind’s biggest challenge at Perplexity today?

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com.

1. PluralSight Goes to Zero:

2. Salesforce's Worst Stock Market Drop Since 2004 + Mongo Takes a 23% Hit:

3. The Settlers into Slow Growth:

4. Venture Capital is Broken:

Matt Lerner is one of the OGs of growth having spent 11 years leading growth teams at PayPal. Post PayPal, Matt led the growth marketing program at 500 Startups. He is also the bestselling author of Growth Levers and How to Find Them. Today, Matt is the Co-Founder and CEO of SYSTM, an accelerator program helping startups find their growth drivers. 

In Today’s Episode with Matt Lerner We Discuss:

From Philosophy Student to PayPal Growth Leader:

How did Matt make his way into the world of growth?

What were Matt’s biggest lessons from 11 years at PayPal?

What did Matt know now that he wished he’d known when he entered the world of growth?

How to Master Growth in a World of AI:

What is growth to Matt? What is it not?

Why does Matt think growth is more science than art?

Does Matt Agee with Adam Gross @ Vimeo that paid acquisition below $100M ARR isn’t PLG?

How does Matt think AI will change the world of growth today?

What does Matt think are the most common growth mistakes founders make?

Optimizing Growth Channels: Dos & Don’ts

Why does Matt believe there are only six types of growth channels?

What is the “locksmith moment" & how do startups find channels that work for them?

How does Matt pick a Northstar metric? 

What are the most common mistakes founders make when picking North Star metrics? When is the right time to change them?

How does Matt approach horizontal product messaging? What works? What doesn’t work?

How to Hire & Manage Growth Teams

What does Matt look for in the first head of growth hire?

What questions does Matt ask when interviewing?

What were Matt’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn?

Why does Matt think the best growth hires have no marketing experience?

What are Matt’s two steps to master onboarding?

What are the 3 most common patterns in leaders according to Matt?

Mike Schroepfer (Schrep) is the Founder & Partner @ Gigascale Capital, a new kind of climate-focused investment firm. Prior to Gigascale, Mike was the CTO @ Meta where he scaled products to billions of users, shipped millions of units of consumer hardware, constructed tens of millions of sq ft of data centres, built teams of up to 35,000, and made breakthroughs in AI. Before Meta, Mike led engineering at Mozilla and founded a company acquired by Sun Microsystems.

1. Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Meta:

2. The Future of Energy:

3. Investing in Climate: It has to be Profitable:

4. Schrep: The Man Behind Whatsapp and Instagram: AMA:

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com.

1. Growth Rates and Churn Rates: Average/Good/Great:

2. What Founder Combination Always Wins:

3. WTF is Happening in the World of VC:

4. WTF is Happening in PE and Later Stage Markets:

Sam Altman is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue.

Brad Lightcap is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue.

Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion. 

Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Today Des leads all of Intercom’s R&D efforts, and parts of Intercom’s marketing.

Tom Hulme is a Managing Partner of GV (Google Ventures), and leads the European team. Today, GV has over $10BN in AUM and Tom has led investments in Lemonade.com (IPO), Snyk, Secret Escapes, Blockchain.com, GoCardless, and Currency Cloud (exited to Visa).

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more.

Will foundation models be commoditised? What is the end state for the foundation model landscape in 10 years? How will large cloud provider incumbents approach M&A with smaller foundation model providers? When will we see marginal revenue exceed marginal cost in the foundation model business model? Where is the value: the application layer or the infrastructure layer? How can startups know whether they will be threatened by OpenAI? What are good tests/questions to know if you are in the path of one of the large foundation models? How does the business model of SaaS fundamentally change in a world of AI? Will we see the end of per-seat pricing in a new world of AI? What is the right way to approach pricing in a world of AI? Consumption? Tokens?

Aaron Levie is one of the OG founders of the last two decades as the Co-Founder and CEO of Box. Today, Box does over $1BN in revenue with a market cap of $3.85BN, and has raised over $560 million from the likes of DFJ, Andreesen Horowitz, and Coatue. 

In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie We Discuss:

What You Need to Know Entering This AI Wave:

Why does Aaron think we are currently in a transformative window in AI?

What does Aaron think it takes to be successful in this next wave?

Which areas does Aaron think founders should be focusing on today? Where should they not?

AI Adoption: Business Model, Implementation, Regulation.

How does Aaron think AI will change how we work & run a business?

What does Aaron think is the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption in large organizations?

Does Aaron agree with Sarah Tavel @ Benchmark AI companies will be selling work not tools? 

How does Aaron think AI will change the SaaS business model?

Why is Aaron not as worried about AI regulation? What are his biggest concerns today?

The Next AI Breakthrough: AI Agents

Why does Aaron believe the next big breakthrough in AI will be agents?

How does Aaron think AI agents will change org structures?

How does Aaron think agents will differ from RPA? How will RPA companies benefit from AI? 

What does Aaron think AI agents will look like in five years?

Startups vs Incumbents: Who Wins?

What is Aaron’s advice to startups today building against OpenAI?

Does Aaron think startups have more advantage in foundational models or the application layer?

What advantages do incumbents have? What are their biggest weaknesses?

Who does Aaron think are the biggest winners in AI today? Who is underperforming?

Why does Aaron think Apple isn’t losing the AI race?

Nikesh Arora is the CEO @ Palo Alto Networks, the leading cybersecurity company in the world with a market cap of $102BN. Before joining Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh was the President and COO of SoftBank Group. Before that, he spent ten years at Google as a senior exec, and President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before that Nikesh was CMO for the T-Mobile International Division of Deutsche Telekom AG. Nikesh serves on the board of Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A. Previously, he served on the boards of SoftBank, Sprint, Colgate-Palmolive Inc., Yahoo! Japan and Tipping Point.

1. From Investing with Masa @ Softbank to CEO of Largest Cyber Company:

2. What Makes the Most Valuable Businesses in the World:

3. What Makes the Best Leaders in the World:

4. Behind the CEO: Nikesh Arora: Husband and Father:

Jiaona “JZ” Zhang is the Chief Product Officer at Linktree, the world’s leading link-in-bio platform empowering 45M+ creators, brands and SMBs. JZ joined Linktree from Webflow, where she served as SVP of Product. Before that, she spent four years at Airbnb where she built and led numerous teams on the host side. JZ’s also held leadership roles at the likes of Wework, Dropbox and teaches at Stanford University and Reforge.

In Today’s Episode with Jiaona Zhang We Discuss:

Entry into the World of Product

How did JZ first fall in love with product?

Why does JZ believe the best PMs have experience in the gaming industry?

Does JZ think Linktree could be a $100BN business? How could Linktree become a $100BN business?

Mastering Product Metrics

Why does JZ think product is the most chameleon role? Where does product start & end? 

Why does JZ think every function should have tension with product?

What is a KPI tree? How does JZ branch business & product metrics?

When does JZ think startups should set up a metric infrastructure?

What are the three levers of product? How does JZ determine which ones to trade off?

How to Run Product: Planning, Strategy, & Rituals

Why does JZ think planning should not exist?

What are strategy and rituals? When should founders do either?

What are JZ’s three core rituals?

What is the scorecard method? How do they help team transparency?

What are product jams? When does it work? When does it not work?

Product Career Advice

When does JZ think founders hire a product person? 

What are the most common mistakes early stage founders make when hiring for product?

Does JZ think domain expertise is important? What does she look for in product hires?

What is JZ’s advice to PMs who want to get promoted today? 

What is JZ’s advice to young people who want to get into product?

Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Limitless, a personalized AI powered by what you’ve seen, said, or heard. For his latest funding round, Dan took an unusual approach resulting in 1,000 preliminary offers with valuations as high as $1BN — and resulted in a $350 million Series A valuation. Prior to founding Limitless, Dan was the Founder of Optimizely, scaling the company to $120M in ARR and raising from some of the best in the business including Peter Fenton @ Benchmark who led the Series A.

1. Serial Entrepreneurs are More Investable:

2. The Secret to Fundraising: How to Speak VC

3. How to Raise the Best Funding Round:

4. Dan Siroker: AMA:

Tom Blomfield is a Group Partner at YC. Before YC, Tom founded two unicorns in the UK. He was co-founder of Monzo (most recently valued at $5BN), one of the first challenger banks in the UK. Monzo raised more than £1bn and counts 15% of the UK population as customers. Before Monzo, Tom founded GoCardless (YC S11), an online payments processor, most recently valued at $2.1BN.

1. From Founding Two Unicorns to YC Partner:

2. The YC Application Process: How it Works:

3. The YC Batch: How it Works:

4. AI: Consumer vs Enterprise/ Infrastructure vs Application Layer:

20VC: Behind the Scenes at Y Combinator: The Interview Process | What the Best & Worst Do in the Program | Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | Why the Value is in Application Layer AI with Tom Blomfield

Larry Shurtz is the Chief Sales Officer at Genesys where he oversees the company’s global go-to-market strategies, including commercial activities, field sales and partner ecosystem operations. Larry has nearly three decades of experience in the software industry, from leading Confluent to delivering more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count as Chief Revenue Officer, to scaling a 1,300-person team at Salesforce to $2.1 billion in revenue.

In Today’s Episode with Larry Shurtz We Discuss:

From Robotics Student to $2.1BN Sales Leader at Salesforce

How did Larry lead 1300 people to $2.1 billion revenue at Salesforce? What were his takeaways?

What did Larry learn about building vertical sales playbooks at Salesforce?

Which framework did Larry learn at Salesforce that he still uses at Genesys?

Mastering Sales Leadership

What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make on prioritization today?

What are Larry’s “3 Rs” to master prioritization?

What does Larry think are the most common reasons fast-scaling teams break in sales?

Has Larry ever caused bad culture in a sales team? What did he learn from the experience?

Does Larry think sales is more art or science? How does Larry blend the two?

Building the Best Sales Team

How does Larry structure the hiring process for a new sales hire?

How big should your recruitment team be? 

What are Larry’s most commonly asked questions when interviewing?

What were Larry’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn from them?

How does Larry structure the comp? How does he get it right? What do most new hires care about today?

The Onboarding: The Dos & Don’ts

How does Larry structure the onboarding process?

Why does Larry onboard new hires with big customers? What is the buddy system?

How does Larry tell if a new hire is bad? What are the biggest red flags to look out for?

What does Larry mean when he says “You can make all the physical errors, you cannot make mental errors?”

Does Larry agree with Max Levchin @ Affirm that “When there’s doubt, there’s no doubt?”

Tom Hulme is a Managing Partner of GV (Google Ventures), and leads the European team. Today, GV has over $10BN in AUM and Tom has led investments in Lemonade.com (IPO), Snyk, Secret Escapes, Blockchain.com, GoCardless, Blue Vision Labs (exited to Lyft), and Currency Cloud (exited to Visa). Prior to joining venture full-time, Tom was one of Europe's most successful angel investors with a 5x DPI track record and 20x+ TVPI.

1. Lessons from a 24x TVPI Angel Track Record:

2. The Four Pillars of Venture Capital:

3. The Conventional Wisdom in Venture That is Not True:

4. AI: Foundation Models, Generative AI, The Incumbents: Where Does the Value Go:

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners. Before Greylock, Sarah was the first 30 employees at Pinterest. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners.

1. Becoming a GP at The Most Renowned Firm in Venture:

2. Foundation Models: Is it All Going to Zero:

3. Application Layer: Where $BN Companies Will Be Built:

4. Inside Benchmark: How the Best Do Venture:

Eric Glyman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, America's fastest growing corporate card and finance automation platform. Under Eric’s leadership, Ramp has raised more than $1 billion in financing, with a valuation of $8.1 billion. Prior to Ramp, Eric co-founded Paribus, a price-tracking app to help consumers save money (acquired by Capital One). Ramp recently raised another $150 million series D round co-led by Founders Fund and Khosla ventures, with a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion.

Keith Rabois is a Managing Director @ Khosla Ventures and one of the most respected venture investors of the last decade. Keith has led investments in Stripe, Faire, Ramp, Affirm and many more. Prior to Khosla Ventures, Keith was General Partner at Founders Fund, where he led investments for Ramp, Trade Republic, and Aven. 

In Today’s Episode with Eric Glyman and Keith Rabois We Discuss:

Behind Ramp’s Partnership with Founders Fund & Khosla Ventures

How did the first Founders Fund deal come to be? How was the first meeting?

What does Keith mean when he says Ramp has the “secret sauce” to be successful?

What are 1-2 things Keith thinks Eric is world-class at? What are 1-2 things Eric thinks Keith is world-class at?

How did the latest Khosla deal come to happen?

Ramp: The Fastest Executing Company on the Planet.

How is Eric so good at executing at Ramp? What is his biggest advice to founders on speed of execution?

What are Eric’s biggest challenges in the next 12 months at Ramp?

Why does Keith believe momentum is crucial for early stage startups? What are some easy ways founders can build momentum?

How does Eric think AI will accelerate Ramp and the world of finance?

Leadership Lessons From the Best Founders 

What are Keith’s biggest lessons from Brian Chesky @ Airbnb?

What did Keith learn from Jack Dorsey @ Square about leadership?

What does Eric think founders today should build? What should they not build?

What did Eric learn from Keith on how founders should measure time & progress?

Hiring & Team Management

How did Ramp build a solid talent team? What did they do differently?

Does Keith & Eric believe it is better to hire externally or promote internally? What is the right balance?

Does Keith agree founders should hire & get out the way or micromanage?

How many direct reports does Keith think is enough?

Mark Suster is a General Partner @ Upfront Ventures, one of LA's leading early-stage venture firms. Prior to leading Upfront, Mark was a serial entrepreneur having founded two software companies, selling both with the last selling to Salesforce.com. Mark is also a prolific writer and one of his favourite pieces, Lines Not Dots is one for the ages.

1. From Serial Entrepreneur to Leading VC:

2. How to Raise a Fund:

3. Exit Environments are F******: What Now:

4. Trump, The Woke Left and The World Around Us:

Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion. Before founding Mistral, Arthur was a research scientist at DeepMind, one of the leading AI institutions in the world.

In Today’s Episode with Arthur Mensch We Discuss:

From Models to Team Building: Arthur’s Greatest Lessons at DeepMind

What were Arthur’s biggest lessons from his time at DeepMind?

How did DeepMind shape how Arthur built Mistral?

Why does Arthur believe smaller teams are better for AI?

Why did Arthur decide to leave DeepMind and start Mistral?

Scaling Mistral to $2 Billion Valuation Within a Year

What made Mistral 7B so successful? What did Arthur learn from the model release?

What are the biggest barriers at Mistral today?

How does Arthur balance the sales and research teams at Mistral?

What does Arthur know now that he wishes he had known when he started Mistral?

How to Win in AI: Open Source, Cost, & Adoption

Why did Arthur open-source some models? Why did he close some?

How quickly will the cost of compute go down? Why does Arthur believe marginal costs will not go to zero?

How will open-sourcing LLMs affect the marginal cost?

Does Arthur think open source is ready for enterprise adoption?

What questions should enterprises be asking about AI adoption today?

What are the biggest challenges to AI adoption today?

The Future of LLMs

What does Arthur think are the largest bottlenecks of model quality today?

Does Arthur think future models will be more generalized or vertical-focused?

What does Arthur think about the future of commoditization in models?

Why is Arthur optimistic about the profitability of the application layer of AI?

How should models differentiate themselves today?

Adam Gross is one of the masters of product-led growth (PLG). Most recently, Adam was Vimeo's interim CEO. Before Vimeo, Adam was CEO of Heroku, which he joined after selling his startup, Cloudconnect in 2013. Additionally, Adam has held executive leadership roles at Salesforce and Dropbox, and has been an active angel investor & advisor to companies, including Buildkite, Cribl, and Tailscale.

In Today’s Episode with Adam Gross We Discuss:

PLG Tactics from Dropbox, Heroku and Salesforce:

What were Adam’s biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce? How did it shape his growth mindset?

What did Adam learn about customer acquisition at Dropbox?

What would Adam most like to change about growth today?

Product-Led Growth: The Fundamentals:

What is growth? What is it not? What do founders get wrong about growth?

Why does Adam think PLG is not for everybody?

What do most great PLG businesses have in common?

How are value propositions segmented in PLG? How can startups transition from individual to enterprise clients?

Why does Adam think startups doing paid acquisition sub $100M aren’t actually PLG?

The Secrets to Optimizing Growth Channels:

What are the most common reasons fast-growing companies plateau?

How does Adam advise founders on diversifying channels?

What are the biggest mistakes founders make when scaling into enterprise?

How should startups do effective product marketing in horizontal products?

What is emotive & strategic marketing? How should startups balance both?

How Angel Investing Changes How You View Companies:

What are Adam’s top 3 pieces of advice for founders?

What does Adam mean when he says you are either hiring a poet or a librarian?

What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring?

What was Adam’s biggest investment miss? What did he learn from it?

Rujul Zaparde is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, the world’s leading Intake-to-Pay solution, adopted by leading enterprises and startups including Snowflake, Canva, Airtable, Webflow, and others. In 2023, Zip raised $100 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Before founding Zip, Rujul was a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and a product manager at Airbnb.

In Today’s Episode with Rujul Zaparde We Discuss:

From Airbnb PM to $1.5BN Founder

How did Rujul’s first company fail? What were his lessons?

What did Rujul learn from his time at Airbnb?

How did Rujul come to co-found Zip? What was the aha moment?

What did Rujul wish he’d known when he started Zip?

Standing Out in a Hyper-Competitive Market

Why did Rujul pick such a competitive market? How did they stand out?

Does Rujul think founders should focus on pain points or platform solutions on day one?

What is Rujul’s advice to founders who are in the discovery process?

Does Rujul agree with Trae Stephens @ Founders Fund that serial entrepreneurs doing B2B enterprise SaaS are wasting their talent?

The Biggest Lessons Scaling Zip to $1.5BN Valuation

Which key moment caused Zip to accelerate?

Why does Rujul think speed is the most important element in startups?

Why does Rujul not believe in design partners?

Why does Rujul believe repeatability is the most important thing when pitching?

Does Rujul think AI will destroy outbound sales?

How to Hire & Manage Teams

What was Rujul’s “rude awakening” building a sales team?

What was Rujul’s biggest hiring mistake? What did he learn from it?

How does Rujul decide where to focus his attention and resources?

Why does Rujul believe younger managers are more creative?

Daniel Dines is the Co-Founder @ UiPath, one of the most incredible journeys in startups. For 10 years, UiPath was a bootstrapped company that scaled to just $500K in revenue. Then it all changed, product market fit became obvious and the rest is history. The company went on to raise funding from Sequoia, Accel, Kleiner Perkins and more. Today, the company is worth over $10BN, listed on the NASDAQ and does $1BN+ in revenue.

1. From a Dollar a Day to Romania's Richest Man:

2. Becoming a Billionaire: The Mental Journey:

3. 10 Years to $500K ARR: The Miracle Bootstrapping Journey:

4. Journey to a $10BN Public Company: The Crucible Moments:

Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, India’s first SaaS company to list on NASDAQ. Today, Freshworks has over $596M in ARR with a $5.27BN market cap, with investors like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, and CapitalG. Girish is also a founding member of SaaSBOOMi, Asia’s largest community of founders and product builders, and has invested in over 60 startups. On top of that, Girish is also the Founder of Together Fund, a $150M fund focusing on Indian B2B companies going global from day 1.

In Today’s Episode with Girish Mathrubootham We Discuss:

From Online Forum to the Founding of a $5BN Company:

How did a horrible customer service experience prompt Girish to start Freshworks? What was the aha moment?

What were Girish’s biggest challenges founding Freshwork in 2010?

How was building the first product? What worked? What didn’t work?

Biggest Lessons on Product, Pricing and People Scaling to $5.2BN:

Why does Girish believe Indian companies have to win globally before winning India?

What were Girish’s biggest mistakes scaling Freshworks? What were his lessons?

Why does Girish believe starting high and going down never works in software?

When does Girish think is the best time to build the second product?

How did Freshworks lose against Slack? What did he learn from the experience?

The Biggest Lessons to Becoming the Best Leader:

How has Girish’s leadership style changed over time?

What were Girish’s biggest hiring mistakes?

What was Girish’s biggest challenge in building culture during COVID?

What is one piece of advice Girish believes every CEO should follow?

How India Will Become a Global Player in Tech, AI and Football:

Why does Girish believe now is the time for India tech?

What are the most common misconceptions of India tech?

What traits does Girish look for in founders he invests in?

What was Girish’s biggest investment mistake? What did he learn from it?

Vickie Peng is a Product Partner at Sequoia and the co-creator of Arc, their company-building immersion programme for pre-seed and seed stage founders. Prior to Sequoia, Vickie was a product manager at Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo for $200M) and Instagram, where she grew SMB advertising from $200M to $1BN.

In Today’s Episode with Vickie Peng We Discuss:

Lessons from 15 Years in Product

How did Vickie make her way into the world of product?

How did Vickie turn a small side business into a massive revenue machine at TrialPay?

How did Vickie scale Instagram SMB ads to $1BN? What were her takeaways?

What was Vickie’s business model at Polyvore that eventually led to the $200M acquisition by Yahoo?

Lessons from Scaling 100+ Companies in Sequoia

What does Vickie believe are the biggest mistakes early stage founders make when telling stories?

Which 2 components does Vickie believe every great product mission should include?

How should pre-product-market fit founders set their north star metric?

Perfecting Product Strategy

What was Vickie’s biggest product mistake? What were her lessons?

Why does Vickie think the best product people build less product?

What is Vickie’s advice to product leaders starting their first day on the job?

What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring product teams?

Product-Market Fit Masterclass

Why does Vickie believe product-market fit is a journey not a destination?

What are the biggest reasons founders fail to get product-market fit?

What are the 3 types of product-market fit?

How does Vickie advise founders to differentiate themselves in competitive markets?

What is Vickie’s framework for competing against incumbents?

Sam Altman is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President and CEO @ Y Combinator and made angel investments in the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Pinterest, Asana and more.

Brad Lightcap is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue. Before OpenAI, Brad was an investor at Y Combinator, where he met Sam and before that led finance and operations initiatives at Dropbox.

1. The Partnership: The Most Powerful Double Act in Tech:

2. The Next 12 Months for OpenAI: Bottlenecks, Compute and Commoditisation:

3. OpenAI: The Fastest Scaling Company in History:

4. How to Invest and Operate in a World of OpenAI:

5. Sam Altman: AMA:

Sam Blond is the former CRO at Brex, where he led the company from near $0-$400M in ARR and a $12.5B valuation. Before Brex, Sam was VP of Sales at Zenefits, where he led the company from $0-$70M ARR in 2 years and a $4.5B valuation. Sam joined Founders Fund as a Partner in 2022 and recently left to focus more on operating.

1. Lessons From Scaling Brex to $400M ARR & Zenefits to $70M ARR:

2. Who, What and When to Hire:

3. How to Hire the Best Sales Reps:

4. How to Have the Best Performing Sales Team:

Kevin Ryan is one of the leading serial entrepreneurs and investors in New York. Previously he co-founded MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, Nomad Health, Pearl Health, and was the CEO of DoubleClick (Acquired by Google for $3.1B). Today, Kevin is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, a venture capital firm that incubates and invests in transformative companies in healthcare, diversified tech, robotics, and impact. Just yesterday, Alleycorp announced their $250M fund, their first ever external capital. 

In Today’s Episode with Kevin Ryan We Discuss:

Early Signs of Entrepreneurship

How did Kevin’s early life shape his career? How would his parents and teachers describe him?

Does Kevin agree that successful entrepreneurs always show signs early?

What does Kevin think about luck vs. skill? Why does Kevin think that most things are out of your control as an entrepreneur?

Lessons from Founding 10+ Companies Worth $27BN

Does Kevin agree the best CEOs are also the best fundraisers?

What were Kevin’s biggest lessons from scaling DoubleClick from 20 to 2000 employees?

What was Kevin’s a-ha moment behind Business Insider? What was the reason behind its success?

Why does Kevin believe the best founders are always in unfamiliar fields?

Incubating World’s Best Companies

How does Kevin allocate resources between incubations vs. investments?

What are the biggest commonalities between successful companies at AlleyCorp?

Is Kevin a market-led or people-led investor?

What does Kevin think is the most important element in achieving product-market fit?

What was Kevin’s biggest miss on selecting founders? What were his takeaways?

Current State of Venture

Why does Kevin believe venture is more competitive now than ever before?

What does Kevin know now that wish he’d known when he started investing?

Does Kevin agree rich investors make better investors?

Why does Kevin not care about ownership?

Does Kevin agree with Doug Leone that venture has transitioned from a high boutique margin industry to a low margin commoditised industry?

Does Kevin agree with Peter Fenton that price is a mental trap?

Basti Lehmann is the co-founder and former CEO of Postmates, the on-demand delivery service that raised over $900M from the likes of Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Spark Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. Following Uber’s $2.65BN acquisition in 2020, Basti founded TipTop, a platform for fast tech sales which Marc Andreesen led the $20M seed round for.

In Today’s Episode with Basti Lehmann We Discuss:

From US Immigrant to Billion Dollar Founder

How did Basti start his career hacking AT&T?

How did early hardships shape Basti’s work ethic?

What were Basti’s biggest challenges building Postmates?

Lessons from Raising $900M

How did Basti raise $20M from Marc Andreesen?

How does Basti select which VCs to work with?

Why does Basti think 99% of VCs are sheep?

Why does Basti think great VCs add no value?

Why does Basti think having to educate investors is a massive red flag?

Selling Postmates for $2.65BN

Why did Basti sell Postmates to Uber? How did the acquisition happen?

Was there anything Basti would have done differently?

What does Basti think makes Dara Khosrowshahi a great CEO?

What is Basti’s biggest advice to founders on acquisitions?

Future of AI: Startups or Incumbents?

What does Basti think is the biggest challenge of LLMs today?

Why does Basti think inference computing will be the future of AI?

Why does Basti think incumbents can be replaced?

Why does Basti think the biggest companies are being born today?

Mario Schlosser is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Oscar Health. The public company that went public with a market cap of $7.1BN. Following a tumultuous time in the markets, their stock price dropped 94%. Today, the company has rebounded and has a market cap of $3.2BN with an astonishing $5.8BN of revenues. Before co-founding Oscar, Mario also co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America.

1. From German Middle-Class to Public Company Founder:

2. Why Did Oscar Tank 94% in the Public Markets:

3. The Mental Challenge of a 94% Market Cap Decline:

4. Firing Yourself as CEO:

Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund, one of the world's leading funds where he has worked with some of the best and backed the likes of Palmer Luckey with Oculus and Ryan Peterson @ Flexport since the very early days. Trae is also Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous systems, and Co-founder of Sol, a next-generation wearable e-reader. Previously, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he was also an integral part of the product team, leading the design and strategy for new product offerings.

1. From Hustling into Georgetown to Peter Thiel Ushering You into VC:

2. How the Best Venture Firm in the World Invests:

3. Do VCs Really Add Value:

4. The Future of VC: Who and How to Win:

Billy Hult is Chief Executive Officer of Tradeweb Markets (Nasdaq: TW), as Billy puts it, they are the "electronic interface that connects Citadel and Goldman". They are also one of the most under the radar but incredible businesses of the last 20 years. Through no glitz acquisitions or specific moments, TradeWeb has compounded organic growth for the last 27 years to today, with a market cap of $22BN.

1. From Betting Shop Worker to Public Company CEO:

2. What it Takes to be a World-Leading CEO:

3. Hiring World-Class Teams in 2024:

4. Money, Power and Family:

Chris Dixon is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with investments in Oculus (acquired by Facebook), Coinbase, and many more. Chris also founded and leads a16z crypto, a division of the firm that he has grown from $300 million in 2018 to more than $7 billion of committed capital. Due to his many successes, Chris was named #1 on the Forbes Midas List in 2022.

From Founder to Leading GP in Venture:

Lessons from 12 years Investing:

Are Incumbents Too Big To Be Replaced:

Biggest Challenges in Crypto:

David Clark is the CIO of Vencap, one of the leading fund of funds in the venture landscape. David has been at Vencap for 32 years and has been an LP his entire career.

1. From Unemployed Student in Love to Leading LP:

2. Is Being an LP Harder than Ever Before:

3. What Makes the Best Performing Funds:

4. Five Things LPs Hate In Potential VC Investments:

5. Fund Sizes, Exits and Concentrating Returns:

Bryan Johnson is the founder of Blueprint, the man is at war with death and is mastering longevity. Bryan is on a mission aimed at enhancing human intelligence and being respected by people in the 25th century. Before starting Blueprint, Bryan also founded Braintree (acquired by PayPal for $800M) and OS Fund – a $100M venture capital fund investing in genomics, synthetic biology, and complex systems.

In Today’s Episode with Bryan Johnson We Discuss:

The Philosophy of Don’t Die

What does Bryan think is the biggest existential threat to humankind?

Why does Bryan believe humans are unfit to manage their own affairs?

Why does Bryan care about being liked by the 25th century?

Does Bryan think society is ready to adapt to immortality?

How to Process New Ideas

What 3 questions does Bryan ask to test new ideas?

How does Bryan combat against his own biases?

How does Bryan adapt to change? What has been his most painful experience?

Why does Bryan think religion is humanity’s most durable technology?

The Most Measured Human in the World

What did Bryan learn about himself as the most measured human in the world?

How does Bryan use algorithms to take care of himself?

What has been Bryan’s most expensive test?

How did Bryan use data to rejuvenate his sexual function?

How will tech & AI play a role in human longevity?

Health & Parenting Advice

How does Bryan raise his children? 

How does Bryan get perfect sleep every night? What are his tips?

What is Bryan’s advice to people who think it’s too late to start becoming healthy?

What health advice does Bryan think is BS?

Jean-Michel Lemieux is one of the OGs of engineering and product having been the CTO at Shopify and the VP Engineering at Atlassian. Jean-Michel helped grow both Shopify and Atlassian from single-product to multi-product companies and led the building of their platforms. 

In Today’s Episode with Jean-Michel Lemieux We Discuss:

From band class to Shopify CTO

How did Jean-Michel make his way into the world of product?

What were Jean-Michel’s biggest lessons from his time at Atlassian & Shopify?

How are Shopify & Atlassian the same? How are they different?

Why does Jean-Michel think Shopify could have been 10x bigger?

Building the Perfect Product

How does Atlassian & Shopify build movements instead of product?

What does Jean-Michel know now that he wishes he had known before he joined Atlassian & Shopify?

How does Jean-Michel balance between shipping speed vs. quality?

Why does JM think scrums and TDDs are BS? How did his last year at Shopify change his approach in product development?

What is a time horizon friction? And how does it impact teams?

How to Lead a Product Team:

What is micro alignment, and why does Jean-Michel think it is so important?

What 3 types of decisions every team makes?

What does Jean-Michel think are the most common reasons teams become average? How does he prevent it?

What do Jean-Michel think are the most common mistakes CEOs make today?

Hiring the Best Product Team:

How does Jean-Michel structure the interview process for new product hires?

What signals does Jean-Michel look out for when hiring? Why does he believe experience does not matter?

What are Jean-Michel’s biggest hiring mistakes? What were his lessons?

What are 2 of the most common mistakes founders make when hiring a product team?

Gili Raanan is the Founder of Cyberstarts and one of the most successful seed investors ever. In his 19 company portfolio, Gili has invested in a decacorn (Wiz), seven unicorns and had three others acquired. Prior to Cyberstarts, Gili spent over 15 years as a General Partner @ Sequoia Capital investing in some of the world's best cyber security companies.

1. From Founder to World's Best Seed Investor:

2. How to Find and Pick the Best Founders:

3. What it Takes to be the Best Seed Investor:

4. 2021 is Back: Pricing, Uprounds and more

Luca Ferrari is Co-Founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, one of the most incredible but untold success stories in startups. Luca has scaled Bending Spoons to 100M monthly active users, $380M in sales in 2023 and aiming to reach $500M in EBITDA by the end of 2026. The company’s products include Evernote, Meetup, Remini, and Splice and their products have now been downloaded more than 500M times.

From McKinsey Associate to $2BN Founder

Bootstrapping Bending Spoons 

How to Find the Best Talent

Mastering Acquisition & Growth