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

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. In Today's Episode with Mike Hudack We Discuss: 1. Product: Art vs Science: What is the true art of product? What makes the great product leaders and PMs? Is simple always better in product? How do you retain product simplicity with time? When should data be used over intuition in product building? 2. Lessons from Leading Ads at Facebook: What are Mike's single biggest product lessons from building the ads product at Facebook? How did a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg discussing a product change, alter how Mike thinks about product today? What makes Zuck so special on product? What are the biggest mistakes that Facebook made when it came to the ads product? What did they not do that he wishes they had done? 3. Leading Product at Deliveroo: What I Learned: What are Mike's biggest takeaways from his time at Deliveroo on how to make consumer products? What did Deliveroo do from a product perspective that worked so well? What did he learn? What were the single biggest product mistakes that Deliveroo made? What did he learn? How fast do you know when a consumer app is working or not working? When do you go against data and follow your intuition? 4. Building the Biggest Bank in Britain with Monzo: What are Mike's biggest lessons on product building from his time at Monzo? What did Monzo not do that he wishes they had done? Why does Mike think the US is crucial for Monzo? How did Monzo change how Mike thinks about competition? What do you do when your competitor, Revolut, is outshipping you at such a speed?

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. In Today's Episode with David Schneider We Discuss: ServiceNow: Secrets to Scaling to $5BN in ARR: What are David's biggest lessons from scaling ServiceNow to $5BN ARR? What worked? What did not work? What are the most common reasons companies plateau? How did ServiceNow roll out so many different products so effectively? How did David hire and ramp 180 people in 90 days? 2. From OG Operator to Newbie Investor: What have been the single most challenging elements of making the transition to VC? What advice did David get from the biggest names on entering venture? How long did it take David to do his first deal? What advice does he give other operators entering? How does doing deals in 2024 compare to when David started doing deals in 2021? 3. VC Value: Do 90% of VCs Really Damage Companies: Does David agree that 90% of VCs actually detract value? What does David mean when he says that the worst VCs are "seagull VCs"? What are David's biggest tips to founders on how to get the most out of their board? What is enough ownership for David to really give the time needed to a company? 4. Lessons from the Greats: Doug Leone, Bill McDermott, Frank Slootman: Doug Leone: What has David learned from Doug on what it takes to be a great investor and board member? Frank Slootman: What has David learned from Bill on how to be the best leader of a mega company? Bill McDermott: What has David learned from Frank about decision-making and execution.

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. In Today's Episode with Sean Rad We Discuss: 1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App: Starting: How did the idea for Tinder come to Sean in a restaurant in LA? Scaling: What are Sean's biggest lessons for consumer apps scaling to their first 10,000 users? User Acquisition: How did a party change the entire user acquisition strategy for dinner? What did Tinder not do that Sean wishes they had done? What did Tinder do that with the benefit of hindsight, they should not have done? 2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship: Annual Product Redesign: Why does Sean believe that every consumer company should have a complete redesign of the app every year? What are the benefits? Detachment: How does Sean advise founders when it comes to detaching their happiness from the performance of the company? What works? What does not work? Common Mistakes: What are the most common mistakes that Sean sees early-stage founders make when it comes to leadership? 3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office: How does Sean analyse his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time? At what stage of wealth does Sean believe you have true financial freedom? What is the single best investment Sean has made? What did he learn? What is the worst investment he has made? What did he learn? What have been the single hardest and most surprising elements of creating a family office? 4. Love, Death, Marriage: In what ways does Sean think love has changed with time? How do we deal with the loneliness pandemic? What does Sean believe are the most non-obvious but important secrets to a happy marriage? How does Sean approach and think about his own spirituality today? Why does he not fear death?

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. In Today's Episode with Nick Chirls We Discuss: 1. Why Venture Capital is Broken Today: Why is VC a ponzi scheme today? Why are most VCs sheep and have lost all creativity? Why are most investors today incentivised to get dollars out of the door and not to make great investments? Why are services functions within VC firms total BS? Why do no VCs provide significant enough value to a company that it is needle-moving? 2. How to Make Money in VC in 2024: What are the two ways to make money at seed in 2024? Why do founders in unloved markets care more than those in hot markets? Why will large institutions lose a ton of money investing in the large firms of today? Why does Nick believe VCs should always sell when their founders sell shares? 3. Lessons from 3xing a Fund on One Check: Why does Nick think about not purchasing preferred shares and only buying common shares? Why does Nick believe that investing in competitive markets is stupid? What does Nick believe are the conditions you must accept if you are doing a $5M on $25M seed?

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. In Today's Episode with Zico Colter We Discuss: 1. Model Performance: What are the Bottlenecks: Data: To what extent have we leveraged all available data? How can we get more value from the data that we have to improve model performance? Compute: Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns where more data does not lead to an increased level of performance? Algorithms: What are the biggest problems with current algorithms? How will they change in the next 12 months to improve model performance? 2. Sam Altman, Sequoia and Frontier Models on Data Centres: Sam Altman: Does Zico agree with Sam Altman's statement that "compute will be the currency of the future?" Where is he right? Where is he wrong? David Cahn @ Sequoia: Does Zico agree with David's statement; "we will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice?" 3. AI Safety: What People Think They Know But Do Not: What are people not concerned about today which is a massive concern with AI? What are people concerned about which is not a true concern for the future? Does Zico share Arvind Narayanan's concern, "the biggest danger is not that people will believe what they see, it is that they will not believe what they see"? Why does Zico believe the analogy of AI to nuclear weapons is wrong and inaccurate?

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. In Today's Episode with Scott Gorlick We Discuss: 1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers How did Uber acquire 1M drivers? What was the playbook? What worked? What did not work? How much of a role did driver-to-driver referral payments have in driver acquisition? What did Lyft do on the driver acquisition side that Uber should have done? What did the retention look like for drivers on a 30, 60 and 90 day period? 2. The City Expansion Playbook: What was the expansion playbook that Uber used for new cities? What worked in ramping demand in a new city? What did not work? How much of a role did promotions and discounting play? Lessons from them? Why did Uber often let Lyft launch in a new market first? What was the benefit of this? How did Scott see the maturation rate change with new markets opening? How fast did each subsequent market reach profitability? 3. Travis Kalanick and What Uber Could Have Been: How would Uber be different today if Travis was still in charge? What are the biggest mistakes that Dara has made with their M&A strategy? What are some of Scott's biggest leadership lessons from working with Travis? How did Travis create such strong followership and cult around him? What were the single biggest management mistakes made by Travis?

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. In Today's Episode with Arvind Narayanan We Discuss: 1. Compute, Data, Algorithms: What is the Bottleneck: Why does Arvind disagree with the commonly held notion that more compute will result in an equal and continuous level of model performance improvement? Will we continue to see players move into the compute layer in the need to internalise the margin? What does that mean for Nvidia? Why does Arvind not believe that data is the bottleneck? How does Arvind analyse the future of synthetic data? Where is it useful? Where is it not? 2. The Future of Models: Does Arvind agree that this is the fastest commoditization of a technology he has seen? How does Arvind analyse the future of the model landscape? Will we see a world of few very large models or a world of many unbundled and verticalised models? Where does Arvind believe the most value will accrue in the model layer? Is it possible for smaller companies or university research institutions to even play in the model space given the intense cash needed to fund model development? 3. Education, Healthcare and Misinformation: When AI Goes Wrong: What are the single biggest dangers that AI poses to society today? To what extent does Arvind believe misinformation through generative AI is going to be a massive problem in democracies and misinformation? How does Arvind analyse AI impacting the future of education? What does he believe everyone gets wrong about AI and education? Does Arvind agree that AI will be able to put a doctor in everyone's pocket? Where does he believe this theory is weak and falls down?

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. In Today's Episode with Imran Khan We Discuss: 1. The IPO Market: When Does it Open: How does Imran assess the state of the IPO market today? Can companies really go out with $100-$200M in revenue? Will we see revenue multiples reflate? Can venture continue as an asset class if they do not? When does Imran expect the IPO market to really open? 2. Is M&A F******: How does Imran assess the state of the M&A market today? How do founders need to change how they think about M&A? Why are they to blame for the lack of M&A activity we have today? To what extent can we blame Lina Khan for the lack of M&A? Why would a company go do an M&A process today when it is unlikely to be approved by the SEC? Why does Imran believe in the case of Wiz, it was a mistake for the company not to do the M&A? 3. AI's $600BN Question: Capex Spend: How does Imran analyse the insane capex spend we are seeing from Meta, Google and Amazon? How does Zuck not having his cash cow as the cloud business change how he can act? How does this compare to Google's capex spend 20 years ago? What can we learn from that? 4. Going Public: The Process, The Players and Jack Ma & Jamie Dimon: What is the literal process to take a company public? Who sets the price? What do large institutions want in companies going public? What are some of Imran's biggest lessons from taking Snap and Alibaba public? What are some of Imran's biggest lessons from Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel?

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. In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We Discuss: 1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product: Why does Chad believe that SaaS companies need a CRO pre-product? Should the founder not be the right person to create the sales playbook? What should the founder look for in their first CRO hire? Does any great CRO really want to go back to an early startup and do it again? 2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams: Why are most sales reps not performing? How long does it take for sales teams to ramp? How does this change with PLG and enterprise? What are the benchmarks of good vs great for average sales reps? How do founders and VCs most often hurt their sales teams and performance? 3. How to Build a Hiring Machine: What are the single biggest mistakes people make when hiring sales reps and teams? Are sales people money motivated? How to create comp plans that incentivise and align? Why does Chad believe that any sales rep that does not want to be in the office, is not putting their career and development first? Why is it harder than ever to recruit great sales leaders today? 4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake: What are the single biggest lessons of what worked from scaling Snowflake's sales team? What did not work? What would he do differently with the team again? What did Snowflake teach Chad about success and culture and how they interplay together?

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: $1.2bn in ARR with 48.4% from payments. Toast Capital has reached $1bn in annualised loans originated. 875k restaurants in the US (Toast has 112k: 13% market share) 75% of locations are coming from inbound channels The first investor in the company invested $500K at a $3M price In Today's Episode with Aman Narang We Discuss: 1. The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make: Why does Aman believe that founders should spend more time fundraising and with investors early? Why does Aman believe founders should hire managers before they think they need them? Why does Aman believe that founders do not give up control early enough? 2. Lessons Scaling to a $14BN Market Cap: What did Aman and Toast do so successfully that allowed them to scale to $14BN market cap in 12 years? What worked? What are the single biggest mistakes Toast made that hindered their growth most? What are the first things to break in hyperscaling companies? What opportunity did Aman and Toast not take that with the benefit of hindsight, he wishes they had taken? 3. Crucible Moment Decisions: Expansion: How did Aman and Toast know when was the right time to release a second product? What has enabled Toast Capital to scale to $1BN in loans so efficiently? How did Aman and Toast scale so successfully into both enterprise and SMB? What are the biggest lessons from doing so? What did not work? How do Aman and Toast approach geographic expansion? How do they choose which countries to expand into?

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. In Today's Episode with Aidan Gomez We Discuss: 1. Compute vs Data: What is the Bottleneck: Does Aidan believe that more compute will result in an equal increase in performance? How much longer do we have before it becomes a case of diminishing returns? What does Aidan mean when he says "he has changed his mind massively on the role of data"? What did he believe? How has it changed? 2. The Value of the Model: Given the demand for chips, the consumer need for applications, how does Aidan think about the inherent value of models today? Will any value accrue at the model layer? How does Aidan analyze the price dumping that OpenAI are doing? Is it a race to the bottom on price? Why does Aidan believe that "there is no value in last year's model"? Given all of this, is it possible to be an independent model provider without being owned by an incumbent who has a cloud business that acts as a cash cow for the model business? 3. Enterprise AI: It is Changing So Fast: What are the biggest concerns for the world's largest enterprises on adopting AI? Are we still in the experimental budget phase for enterprises? What is causing them to move from experimental budget to core budget today? Are we going to see a mass transition back from Cloud to On Prem with the largest enterprises not willing to let independent companies train with their data in the cloud? What does AI not do today that will be a gamechanger for the enterprise in 3-5 years? 4. The Wider World: Remote Work, Downfall of Europe and Relationships: Given humans spending more and more time talking to models, how does Aidan reflect on the idea of his children spending more time with models than people? Does he want that world? Why does Aidan believe that Europe is challenged immensely? How does the UK differ to Europe? Why does Aidan believe that remote work is just not nearly as productive as in person?

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. In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy We Discuss: 1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing: What does Laela know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC? What is the biggest miss for Laela? How did it change her mindset and approach? What are Laela's biggest takeaways from Stripe and UiPath? How did they change what she looks for in companies today? What is Laela's biggest advice to all new entrants to venture today? 2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging: What does Laela mean when she says she will never take a risk on a company being able to complete a "second act"? How does Laela approach market sizing? How does Laela think about the notion that the best companies will always expand their markets? Is Laela willing to take market timing risk? What have been her biggest lessons on timing? Does Laela prefer founders who are new to a market and have optimistic naivety? Or prefer an expert in a market who knows every element of it? 3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside: How does Laela think about price today? When is she willing to pay up vs not? What price did Laela pay that at the time seemed super high but turned out to be super cheap? What price did Laela pay that seemed super cheap but turned out to be super high? What upside is Laela underwriting towards? What does she need to see in base and best case? 4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS: Does Laela believe that the best founders really need help from their VC? Who is the best board member Laela works with? Why are they so good? What are the core areas where the VC and the founder are misaligned? What would Laela most like to change about the relationship that founders and VCs have?

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. In Today's Episode with Kaz Nejatian We Discuss: 1. Learnings From the Greats: Mark Zuckerberg: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Zuck? Why does Kaz believe Zuck is massively under-appreciated? Keith Rabois: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Keith? How did it change how he operates on a day to day basis? Tobi Lütke: What have been Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Tobi? What has he changed most significantly since working with Tobi? 2. Shopify: Why We Build Our Own Tools: Why does Kaz believe it is crucial for Shopify to build their own tools? When did he doubt this strategy most? What caused him to question it? Why does Kaz believe the Stripe <> Shopify partnership is the most important in business? What is the role of a PM at Shopify? Why do Shopify focus on how not what product is built? 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. In Today's Episode with Shaun Maguire We Discuss: 1. Why Iran is the Greatest Evil in the World: What specifically makes Iran the greatest danger to the world today? How should the US respond to the threat posed by Iran? Does the US have to go to war with Iran knowing that they now have nuclear weapons? How did the Biden-Harris administration worsen relations both with Iran and Saudi? Is Trump the best chance we have of bringing peace and stability to the Middle East? 2. Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Israel: What is the Right Next Step: Does Shaun believe that the US should remove funding from Ukraine? How would Trump change the US' relationship with Putin? What does Shaun believe is the right next step for the US in Gaza and Israel? What does Shaun mean when he says the public have no idea how much crazy s**** happens? 3. Freedom of Speech and DEI: Remnants of the Past: Does Shaun believe we live in a society with freedom of speech? How does it differ between the US and Europe? Is Shaun negative on the future of Europe? Does he agree with Larry Summers that "it is a museum"? How does Shaun evaluate the state of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)? Why does Shaun believe that wokeness and cancel culture is one of the greatest dangers to society? When does Shaun believe that transgender becomes a problem in children? Where is the line? 4. The Election: Who Wins and What Happens: Does Shaun agree that Kamala is pulling ahead and Trump is now chasing her? How does Shaun analyse the chances of Trump winning? To what extent is it a real threat that there will be civil unrest if Trump does not win? Why does Shaun argue that too much blame is placed on Trump for Jan 6th and he did nothing that Hilary Clinton had not done in disputing prior elections? How does Shaun evaluate the appointment of JD Vance? Does Shaun agree with the echoes from the crowd for Trump to remove him? 5. Elon Musk, US Selling All BTC & Inside Sequoia: What does Shaun believe are the three qualities that make Elon Musk one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time? Why does Shaun believe that it is a massive mistake for the US to sell all BTC holdings? Who is the best picker in Sequoia? Who is the best at sourcing? Does Shaun get told off internally for his opinions being shared so freely externally? What have been Shaun's biggest lessons from working alongside Doug Leone? 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? In Today's Episode with Dax Dasilva We Discuss: 1. VC Funding is Distorting SaaS: Why did Dax decide not to raise money for Lightspeed in the early days? Does Dax believe Lightspeed would have been successful had they have raised a seed round like many do today in SaaS? Why does Dax believe venture funding is distorting a generation of SaaS companies today? How does Dax advise founders scaling their business today from $0-$1M in ARR? 2. What Went Wrong: The Founder Returns: Why did Dax feel he had to come back to the role of CEO in 2024? What was not working? What was the single biggest problem that the public markets had with Lightspeed? What were some of the biggest challenges that came with the intense amount of M&A? What would Dax most like to do that the public market will not allow? 3. What Makes a Great Leader: How it Changes: What required skills in leadership change with the changing scale of the company? What skill does Dax have that he is slightly ashamed of but has most contributed to his success? What did Dax not know when he founded Lightspeed that he wishes he had known? What question is Dax never asked that he should be asked more?

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. In Today's Discussion with Alexis Ohanian We Touch On: 1. $31M in Revenue: The P&L of a Sports Team: What are the core revenue drivers for Angel City Football Team? How did Alexis convince Tony @ Doordash to write the largest-ever brand sponsorship check to have the Doordash name on the Angel City shirt? How much money does Angel City make from ticket sales per year? What does the revenue from merchandise look like for Angel City? How has it changed with time? 2. How to Spend $31M Annually To Run a Team: What are the single biggest costs in running a sports team? Does Alexis believe that salary caps are good or bad for leagues? How much money is spent by clubs on content and software today? How should that change? 3. More Cash in Sports Than Ever: Prices for teams are at an all-time high. Are we in a bubble for sports assets? What remains under-priced and what is over-priced today? What are the pros and cons of private equity entering sports ownership in a meaningful way? Who is the worst sports team owner who despite his mismanagement, still made billions? 4. Alexis Ohanian: AMA: How did Alexis and Serena William's children become millionaires through sports team ownership? How did Alexis turn a $10,000 check into $17.1M? How did a $10,000 check into a shoe company make Alexis $7M? Why does Alexis believe that sports becomes even more valuable in a world of AI?

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. In Today's Episode with David Cahn We Discuss: 1. AI's $600BN Question: What is the $600BN question in AI today? Is it possible to believe "AI will change the world" and "Capex levels are too high" at the same time? Why do the cloud players have to act now? When does the Capex reduce for them? How does Meta not having a core cash cow in cloud change the way they can respond? Why is all the risk today being borne by the large incumbents? Why is that good for startups? How will we see Satya and Zuckerberg change their narrative towards their Capex spend to the public markets? 2. The Data Centre is the Most Important Asset: Why does David believe that data centre is the most important asset? What does he mean when he says "servers, steel and power" are the pillars of AI? What happens when the development of models outpaces the construction of data centres? Why does David believe no one will ever train a frontier model on the same data centre twice? 3. The Biggest Opportunities in AI: Why does David believe the biggest opportunity right now is in the build-out of data centres? What does the supply chain look like for the build-out of data centres? Who are the winners? Why does David believe the biggest opportunity in finance is in creating new debt instruments that will allow the largest incumbents in the world to move this data centre spend off balance sheet? Why does David believe that AI will drive more energy innovation than any policy has done? 4. The Secrets of Sequoia: Inside the Walls of the Greatest Firm in Venture: What does David and Sequoia believe is the one definition of success in venture? Who is the best at find companies in Sequoia? Who is the best at picking? Why does David believe conviction, not picking is the hardest part in venture? How do Sequoia want to shape and mould every investor in the firm? 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. In Today's Episode with Ben Fiechtner We Discuss: 1. How to Close Deals Faster: What are the top 3 ways sales reps can increase urgency in a deal cycle? Should reps be discounting? If so, what level can be appropriate? What is the right way to ask prospects for their internal buy process? How do you know if you are dealing with a champion? What are the single biggest reasons that deals are delayed in closing? 2. SMB to Enterprise: How and When: When is the right time to move into the enterprise? What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when making the transition? How does Ben advise startups to do it but with minimal spend and investment? 3. Verticalisation: Why, When and How: Why is it important for founders to consider a verticalised sales strategy? What are the benefits? When is the right time to consider a verticalised approach? What is the right way to resource each sales team for a verticalised approach? What are the biggest mistakes companies make when verticalising sales teams? 4. How to Hire the Best Reps: What are the top signals that a candidate will make for an amazing sales rep? What question does Ben ask in every interview? What do the best answers have? What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring sales reps? How fast do you know when a hire is a good hire or not?

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. In Today's Episode with Ethan Mollick We Discuss: 1. Models: Is More Compute the Answer: How has Ethan changed his mind on whether we have a lot of room to run in adding more compute to increase model performance? What will happen with models in the next 12 months that no one expects? Why will open models immediately be used by bad actors, what should happen as a result? Data, algorithms, compute, what is the biggest bottleneck and how will this change with time? 2. OpenAI: The Missed Opportunity, Product Roadmap and AGI: Why does Ethan believe that OpenAI is completely out of touch with creating products that consumers want to use? Which product did OpenAI shelve that will prove to be a massive mistake? How does Ethan analyse OpenAI's pursuit of AGI? Why did Ethan think Brad, COO @ OpenAI's heuristic of "startups should be threatened if they are not excited by a 100x improvement in model" is total BS? 3. VCs, Startups and AI Labs: What the World Does Not Understand: What do Big AI labs not understand about big companies? What are the biggest mistakes companies are making when implementing AI? Why are startups not being ambitious enough with AI today? What are the single biggest ways consumers can and should be using AI today?

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. In Today's Episode with Delian Asparouhov We Discuss: 1. Venture Capital: Winners, Losers and Everyone Else: Who are the Top 3 venture firms in the world today according to Delian? Why does Delian believe that Benchmark are not the firm they were? Who will be the winners in venture in the next 10 years? Who will be the losers in venture in the next 10 years? 2. Inside Founders Fund: What No One Sees: What are the most important and impactful elements of Founders Fund that no one knows about? What does Delian believe that the Founders Fund partnership will strongly disagree with him on? Why does Founders Fund believe the path of most resistance is the best way to make decisions? What single topic has Delian publicly disagreed with Peter Thiel on most? How did it go? 3. What Every Young VC Needs to Know: What are Delian's single biggest tips to young VCs looking to scale the VC ladder today? What are the five core pillars of venture according to Delian? What should young VCs focus on? Why does Delian disagree with Founders Fund partners that "the best founders do not need the help of their VCs?" Does Delian agree with Vinod Khosla that "90% of VCs do detract value?" What are the biggest ways that Delian believes VCs can and do detract value? 4. Europe Will Be Third World, Parenting and Marriage: Why does Delian believe that Western Europe will become like the third world? What are Delian's single biggest tips on finding a life partner? What have been the biggest changes to Delian since becoming a father? What question does no one ask Delian that someone should ask him?

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. In Today's Episode With Nilan Peiris We Discuss: Lessons Scaling Transferwise to the First 1M Users: What growth tactics worked in scaling Wise to 1M users? What growth tactics did not work? What did they learn? What did Wise not do that Nilan wishes they had done? What single product change completely changed the trajectory of their growth? 2. How to Use Content to Crush Competition: What are the two different types of content that all companies must now make? What are the single biggest mistakes companies make with content today? What do you do when your competition can spend 7-8x more on marketing? Is SEO and SEM dead today or does it still play the same prominent role? 3. Wise's Framework on How to Win at Performance Marketing: What have been Nilan's single biggest lessons on how to win in performance marketing? What are the biggest mistakes companies make today in performance marketing? When is the right time to diversify and add new channels? What level of channel concentration would concern Nilan to see? 4. The Secret to Adding More Products: When is the right time to add a second product? How does Nilan define great product marketing today? How can one do amazing and targeted product marketing with several products aimed at different customers? What are the single biggest mistakes that companies make with brand marketing?

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. In Our Second Episode of This Week in SaaS: 1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer: How does Jason analyse the price of the offer? $23BN for a $500M ARR business growing 120% YoY? What is the reasoning for Google in pursuing the acquisition? If Wiz had of proceeded in the process, what are the chances it would have made it through regulators? Why did Wiz walk away from the offer? If Jason were on the board, what would he have done? Is there a correlation between the downfall of Crowdstrike and Wiz turning down the offer? What does this mean for the M&A market moving forward? Will there be a secondary round now in place for Wiz at $23BN? 2. Crowdstrike: WTF Happens from Here: Did Crowdstrike manage the crisis in the right way? What would Jason have done differently? What is the bull case for Crowdstrike moving forward from this point? What are the bear case for the company? Could this snowball and be the end? What will this do to company requirements on having single point of failure solutions? Where will the market cap of Crowdstrike be at the end of 2024? 3. LegalTech: Show Me the Money: $1BN in a Single Day: Clio announced a $900M round at a $3BN valuation. How does Jason analyse this? What does Jason make of Harvey's $100M raise at a $1.5BN valuation? Why does Jason think 2025 will be the year for AI parity? Why will we see the majority of SaaS features be commoditised in 2025? What is the single biggest regret that Jason has in his investing career?

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. In Today's Episode with Kevin Hartz We Discuss: 1. What Makes the Best Founders: What questions does Kevin always ask founders in the investment process? Does Kevin prefer serial or first time founders? Why? Does Kevin prefer founders who are new to a problem or who are insiders and experts? When Kevin has gotten a founder bet wrong, what did he not see that he should have seen? 2. The Exploding Term Sheet That Cost $10BN: How did an exploding term sheet for the seed round of Airbnb cost Kevin $10BN? What did Kevin see in the seed round of Airbnb that so few other investors saw? Does Kevin agree that the best businesses often start off as ridiculous or toys? 3. From World's Greatest Angel to VC with $600M AUM: Why does Kevin think a barbell strategy of Seed and Series C is best today? Does Kevin agree that the Series B and growth stage is dead today? Why does Kevin strongly disagree that seed is the hardest stage of the market? Why does Kevin think that venture is less collaborative than ever? How does Kevin approach when to sell vs when to hold a position? What are his biggest lessons from seeding and holding Opensea? 4. Learning From the World's Best Investors: What have been Kevin's lessons from his relationship with Peter Thiel? What have been Kevin's biggest takeaways from investing alongside Roelof Botha in many deals? What have been Kevin's biggest lessons from watching and observing the great Pierre Lamond?

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. In Today's Episode with Cameron Adams: 1. From Accidental Joining to Most Valuable Private Company: How did Cameron go from working on Google wave with Lars Rasmussen to co-founding Canva with Mel and Cliff? What was the single closest near-death experience in the life of Canva? Why did Canva fail as a social network? What did Cameron learn from that? 2. How to Create Users that Truly Love Your Products: What have been Canva's biggest lessons on what it takes to do world class onboarding? What is Cameron biggest advice to founders on how to create moments of delight in your product? Is simplicity always best in product? What, when made more complex, is better for the user? 3. Scaling Canva into the Enterprise: What are the biggest product changes that are required to move into enterprise? What does Cam know about moving up market that he wishes he had known when he started? What are the biggest product and design mistakes founders make when making the transition from PLG to enterprise sales? 4. AI Changes Everything: More Money or Better Products Only Who will win the foundation model layer landscape? What will it be in 10 years? Will companies actually make more revenue from having AI in products or will it just create better products? How does Canva's implementation of AI in their products impact the margins of their products?

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. In Today's Episode with Pedro Franceschi We Discuss: 1. The Challenge is in Your Own Head: Why does Pedro believe all founders underestimate their own mental health? When was Pedro most anxious/depressed in the Brex journey? Why? What have been the single biggest needle movers for increasing his own mental health? How does Pedro advise other founders struggling with their own mental health? 2. From a 13-Year-Old Hacker in Brazil to Billionaire in LA: How did Pedro come to make $200K on the internet when he was just 12? Does Pedro agree that the best founders always started entrepreneurial pursuits young? How does Pedro reflect on his own relationship to money today? How has it changed? Pedro has famously taken large secondaries, how did that impact his mindset? How does Pedro advise other founders and VCs when it comes to secondaries? 3. The Importance of the Idea: What Everyone Misunderstands: What does Pedro mean when he says everyone does not appreciate enough how important the idea selection process is? How does he advise founders entering this process? Why does Pedro believe it is not that easy for founder to just pivot to a new idea? How did YC almost miss out on investing in Brex, now a $12BN company, due to the original idea? 4. Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins: How does Pedro feel when I say, "Ramp have gotten ahead on marketing and visibility"? Why does Pedro believe that "Ramp is a marketing company"? What does he mean when he says "great products will win over time"? Why does Pedro fundamentally disagree with Ramp's positioning of the best companies focus on saving and their giving away their software for free? How does this market play out over time? Winner take all or gains split across several?

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. In Today's Conversation We Discuss: 1. Seed Today is Frothier than 2021: How does Saam evaluate the seed market today? With seed pricing being so high, how does he reflect on his own price sensitivity? When does he say too much and does not do it? Despite seed pricing being higher than ever before, why does Saam believe it is rational? How has the competition at seed changed in the last few years? 2. Series B and Growth are not a Viable Asset Class Today: Why does Saam believe that you cannot make money at Series B today? Why has pricing gone through the roof? Who is the new competition? When does it make sense to "play the game on the field" vs say this is BS and do something else? What would need to happen in the public markets for Series B to be a viable asset class again? 3. Markets vs Founders: The Billion Dollar Mistake and Lessons: How does Saam prioritise between founder vs market? What have been Saam's biggest lessons when it comes to market sizing and timing? What is Saam's biggest miss? How did it change his approach and company evaluation? Which other VC would Saam most like to swap portfolios with? Why them? 4. Saam Motamedi: AMA: What does Saam know now that he wishes he had known when he got into VC? Saam has had a meteoric rise in Greylock, what advice does Saam have for those younger investors look to really scale within a firm? Sourcing, selecting and servicing: Where is he best? Where is he worst? Why does Saam believe that most VCs do not add value? 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. In Today's Episode with Mark Roberge We Discuss: 1. Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot to $100M in ARR: What are Mark's biggest lessons in what worked in their sales strategy in scaling to $100M in ARR? What elements of Hubspot's sales strategy did not work? What would he have done differently with the benefit of hindsight? What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known when he started at Hubspot? 2. How the Best Startups Scale into Enterprise: What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when scaling into enterprise? When is the right time? What do founders get most wrong on timing of scale into enterprise? What do you need to have in place both from a team and product perspective to make the transition? 3. Second Product and Second Channel: When is the right time to launch the second product? Why does Mark believe that you should be turning down customers in the early days? Why is not every customer right for your company? How does Mark think about channel diversification? Does Mark agree you only need one channel to scale to $50M in ARR and two to scale to $100M in ARR? 4. 99% of SaaS Founders Do Partnerships Wrong: What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when doing channel partnerships? What can and should they do to set channel partnerships up for success? What do the channel partners need to have to be equipped to sell the partner solution? What level of buy-in and from who on the channel partner side is needed for the partnership to be successful? What did Mark learn from Hubspot's partnership with Salesforce scaling to 10% of Hubspot's revenue?

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. In Today's Episode with Ara Mahdessian We Discuss: 1. We Did Not Want To Raise VC Money: Why did Ara not want to raise VC funding in the early days? What convinced Ara to change his mind? Why did he choose Byron and Bessemer? Does Ara believe that ServiceTitan would have been the success that it is, if it had raised in today's market, a $5M on $25M seed round? What would they have done differently? 2. How to Master Going Upmarket: What are Ara's biggest lessons on what it takes to go upmarket? How does the product need to change? How does the org of the company change? When is the right time to go upmarket? What did ServiceTitan get wrong in their move into enterprise? What did Ara learn from this? 3. How to Build a Brand in SaaS and Have Premium Pricing: What are some of Ara's biggest lessons in how to build the best brand in vertical SaaS? What works in brand building in SaaS? What does not? What would he do differently? What have been Ara's biggest lessons on pricing? ServiceTitan is 3x their competitors, how does Ara think about what is required to have such premium pricing? 4. How to Master the Second Product & Be the Best at Customer Success: When is the right time to do a second product? Why is it too late to wait for PMF with your first product to do the second product? What product did ServiceTitan wait too long to release? What did they learn? What product did they release too early? What did they learn? What are the two core reasons why customer success is the most important element in a business? 5. The Core Pillars of Great Leadership: Why do product builder founders have such an increased chance of success in startups? Why do you have to have expertise in the domain you are hiring for to hire the best? What does truly great leadership mean to Ara today? How has his style of leadership changed? What has Ara learned from soccer that he has applied to being a CEO?

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. In Today's Episode with Pat Grady We Discuss: 1. The Sequoia Investment Process: What is the Sequoia investment process today? How has it changed over time? What could be improved about the process? Where is it weak? What is the biggest strength of the process? How do Sequoia remove politics from the investment decision-making process? Are the best deals "contrarian"? What does Pat mean when he says you do not "get extra points for being contrarian and right"? 2. What Sequoia Look for When Investing: What is Pat's framework for assessing founders? How does it differ when investing early vs late? Team, traction, TAM, how does Pat rank the three when investing? What have been Pat's biggest lessons on market sizing? Does Pat take market timing risk? How much weight does Pat place on "traction" when investing? How sustainable is PMF? 3. The Three Core Pillars of Venture: Sourcing: What does Pat rank Sequoia for sourcing? Who is the best at sourcing in the firm? Selecting: How does Pat rank Sequoia at picking? How has it changed over time? What could Sequoia do to improve their picking ability? Servicing: What does Pat give Sequoia for their "value add"? To what extent does Pat truly believe that venture investors do add value? 4. Pat Grady: AMA: Pat has hired some of the best in the next generation of venture investors; what are his biggest lessons in what he looks for when hiring investing talent? What is his single biggest takeaway from working with Alfred Lin, Roelof Botha and Doug Leone? What are his biggest takeaways from working with Hubspot, Snowflake and ServiceNow?

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. In Today's Episode with Avi Eyal We Discuss: 1. The Biggest BS "Rules" in Venture Capital: Why does Avi believe that it is BS for every deal to need to be a homerun and return the fund? Why does Avi believe that signalling is real and it is BS to suggest otherwise? Why does Avi believe that it is BS that ownership is crucial to make mega venture returns? Why does Avi believe that you do not have to win every deal to be one of the best in venture? Why should venture investors not manage the positions of their companies when they go public? Why is it BS to think they have asymmetric information when the company goes public? 2. What Makes the Best Founders: Does Avi prefer first or second time entrepreneurs? Why? Would Avi rather back a founder that is an expert in a market or one that is new to a market and has the naivety to not know what is hard? Are the best CEOs the best fundraisers? How does Avi rank the following when investing; team, market, traction and technology? When Avi has misread a founder, what was it that he missed? 3. The Biggest Hits and Biggest Misses: Monday: How did Entrée build such a large position in Monday over time? How did a Series A lead dropping out leading to a $1.5BN gain for Entree? Stripe: Entrée has now 50% of his Stripe position. Why? What is the three step process for Avi in selling positions? How does he know when to and what is the right amount? PillPack: Entrée made $15M from PillPack's exit. What did that teach Avi about ownership? Cazoo: How was Entrée the only one to make money from Cazoo? How did Entrée's sell strategy help him make millions when everyone else did not sell?

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. In Today's Episode with Matt Clifford We Discuss: 1. The Most Important Questions in AI: Are we seeing diminishing returns where more compute does not lead to a significant increase in performance? What is required to reach a new S curve? What do we need to see in GPT 5? Why does Matt believe that search is one of the biggest opportunities in AI today? 2. The Biggest Opportunities in AI Today: How does Matt see the future for society with a world of autonomous agents? What is the single biggest opportunity around agents that no one has solved? Is society ready for agentic behaviours to replace the core of human labour? How does warfare change in a world of AI? Does AI favour states and good actors or criminals and bad actors more favourably when it comes to offence and defence? 3. China and the Race to Win the AI War: Does Matt believe that China are two years behind the US in terms of AI capability? What are Matt's biggest lessons from spending time with the CPP in China working on AI policy? In what way is the CCP more sophisticated in their thinking on AI than people think? What is the bull and the bear case for China in the race for AI? What is the core impact of US export controls on chips for China's ability to build in AI? Does a Trump vs a Biden election change the playing field with China? 4. What Makes Truly Great Founders: Does Matt agree that the best founders always start an entrepreneurial activity when they are young? What is more important the biggest strength of one of the founders or the combined skills of the founding team? What did EF believe about founders and founder chemistry that they no longer believe? Does Matt believe that everyone can be a founder? What are the two core traits required?

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. In Today's Episode with Samir Vasavada We Discuss: 1. The Biggest Hiring Mistakes That Broke Us: Why is hiring people who come with a playbook one of the most damaging things you can do? Why is it impossible to build a remote company that performs the same as in person? Why is it the worst thing to hire people who have a reputation they are obsessed with maintaining? Why do you never want to hire people who join because of who your investors are? Why does Samir regret not firing people faster? How much time is enough time to know? Why is hiring in a hot market one of the most dangerous things you can do? 2. Fundraising: 3 Rounds and $126M in 6 Months: Does Samir regret raising so much money so soon in the company life? What did Samir do that he regrets doing, having had so much money so early? How did the need for free food at an event lead to a term sheet and $50M from Sequoia? Did Samir feel that he could talk to investors when things were going really badly? Why does Samir believe that liquidation preference matters more than valuation? 3. The Depression, The Pressure and Wisdom From Jensen Huang: What did Jensen Huang teach Samir when it comes to wealth and leadership? How did Samir deal with the pressure of raising $126M in 6 months and being the youngest unicorn founder, ever at the time? Was Samir hurt when people he thought were his friends, no longer stuck with him when the company was no longer "hot"? What was Samir's darkest time? How did he overcome and get out of it? Does Samir blame his parents for the pressure they put on him from such a young age?

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. In Today's Episode with David Luan We Discuss: 1. The Biggest Lessons from OpenAI and Google Brain: What did OpenAI realise that no one else did that allowed them to steal the show with ChatGPT? Why did it take 6 years post the introduction of transformers for ChatGPT to be released? What are 1-2 of David's biggest lessons from his time leading teams at OpenAI and Google Brain? 2. Foundation Models: The Hard Truths: Why does David strongly disagree that the performance of foundation models is at a stage of diminishing returns? Why does David believe there will only be 5-7 foundation model providers? What will separate those who win vs those who do not? Does David believe we are seeing the commoditization of foundation models? How and when will we solve core problems of both reasoning and memory for foundation models? 3. Bunding vs Unbundling: Why Chips Are Coming for Models: Why does David believe that Jensen and Nvidia have to move into the model layer to sustain their competitive advantage? Why does David believe that the largest model providers have to make their own chips to make their business model sustainable? What does David believe is the future of the chip and infrastructure layer? 4. The Application Layer: Why Everyone Will Have an Agent: What is the difference between traditional RPA vs agents? Why is agents a 1,000x larger business than RPA? In a world where everyone has an agent, what does the future of work look like? Why does David disagree with the notion of "selling the work" and not the tool? What is the business model for the next generation of application layer AI companies?

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. In Today's Show with Michael Eisenberg We Discuss: 1. The State of AI Investing: Why does Michael believe that "foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history"? Are we in an AI bubble today? As an investor, what is the right way to approach this market? Who will be the biggest losers in this AI investing phase? Where will the biggest value accrual be? What lessons does Michael have from the dot com for this? 2. Where Is the Liquidity Coming From? Why does Michael believe that it is BS that private equity will come in and buy a load of software companies and be the primary exit destination? Why does Michael believe that IPO windows are always open? Should founders go out now? What is good enough revenue numbers to go out into the public markets? Why does Michael believe that Lina Kahn is a threat to capitalism? How does Michael predict the next 12-24 months for the M&A market? 3. AI as a Weapon: Who Wins: China or the US: Does Michael agree with the notion that China is 2 years behind the US in AI development? Does Michael agree that AI could be a more dangerous weapon in wars than nuclear weapons? Why does Michael suggest that for all founders in Europe, they should leave? US, China, Israel, Europe, how do they rank for innovating around data regulation for AI? 4. Venture 101: Reserves, Selling Positions and Fund Dying: Why does Michael only want to do reserves into his middle-performing companies? What framework does Michael use to determine whether he should sell a position? Which funds will be the first to die in this next wave of venture? Why does Michael not do sourcing anymore? Where is he weakest in venture? Why does Michael believe that no board meeting needs to be over 45 mins?

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. In Today's Discussion with Danny Rimer We Cover: 1. The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook: How did Danny miss investing in Brian Chesky and Airbnb when Brian says "Index is the best investor that Airbnb never had"? What was Danny's biggest takeaway from turning down Daniel Ek and Spotify multiple times? Why did Danny turn down the chance to invest in Facebook at $10BN? What did he learn from this? Why did Index not lead Snapchat's Series B? How did that decision change Danny's mindset towards the concentration of positions in a fund? 2. The Biggest BS Rules in Venture: Market Sizing, Valuations and Signalling Why does Danny believe that "valuation is a mental trap"? Why does Danny believe that TAM is "noise" and should not be used to assess an investment? Why does Danny believe that stage, sector and geo-specific funds are BS? Why does Danny believe there are no IPO windows? Are IPO markets always open to the best? Why does Danny believe that signalling is BS and does not exist today? 3. Lessons from the Biggest Wins and Losses: What are Danny's biggest lessons from Index's $BN win in King (Candy Crush)? How did the Discord deal come to be? What are Danny's biggest takeaways from it? What are Danny's biggest reflections from losing 10s of millions on Nasty Gal? What is Danny's biggest advice to a new investor today? 4. Lessons from Two Decades Building Index into a Premier Firm: What specifically has Index done to enable them to do what no one else has done and win on both sides of the Atlantic? How did the Benchmark partnership shape much of how Danny has constructed Index today? Who does Danny view as Index's biggest competition? How has it changed with time? Why is Danny more bullish than ever on the UK despite Brexit?

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. In Today's Episode with Janie Lee We Discuss: 1. Inside the Product Building Machine of Rippling and Opendoor: What are Janie's single biggest product lessons from Rippling? How do they build so much product so fast? Can you have breadth and high quality? What are Janie's biggest lessons from Opendoor on talent and pricing? What does Janie know now that she wishes she had known when she started her product career? 2. What Makes a Truly Great PM: What core skills do the best PMs have? What is the difference between good vs great? Writing: What are Janie's biggest pieces of advice to PMs who want to write better? Communicate: How do the best PMs and product leaders communicate with their teams? Question Asking: How do the best PMs ask questions of their team and other orgs? 3. How to Find and Pick the Best PMs: How does Janie structure the interview process when hiring new PMs? What questions should one ask in every interview with a PM? Does Janie do a case study? What is she looking to achieve from it? How do the best do? What are Janie's biggest mistakes in hiring PMs? How did she change from it? 4. Onboarding PMs and Crushing Product Reviews: What do the first 30 days look like for new PMs? What are the biggest signs that a new PM is not going to work out? How does the product review process work at Loom? How does Janie prioritise when there is so much volume and data? How has AI changed the way Loom builds products today?

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. In Today's Show with Alex Wang We Discuss: 1. Foundation Models: Diminishing Returns: What are the three core pillars that can meaningfully improve foundation models performance? Why is data the single largest bottleneck to the performance of models today? What data do we need to capture that we do not currently, that will have the biggest impact on model performance moving forward? Will we see the largest companies in the world revert back to on-prem with the increasing security challenges of migrating all customer data to foundation models? 2. AI: A Military Asset in Global Conflict: China + Russia Why does Alex believe that AI has the potential to be an even more powerful military asset than nuclear weapons? If this is the case, should we have open systems? Do we not have to have closed systems? Why does Alex believe that the CCP's approach to industrial policy is better than anyone else's? How does Alex evaluate the rise of Chinese EV car manufacturers in the last few years? Does Alex really believe that China is two years behind the US in the AI race? 3. "I Get Fairer Treatment in Congress than in the Press": Why does Alex believe that the best PR is no PR? Why does Alex believe that he got fairer treatment in congress than he does in the media? Why does Alex believe that all founders should look to own their own distribution channels today? 4. Alex Wang: AMA: What are some of Alex's biggest lessons from Patrick Collison on the impact that a hot company brand has on the ability for that company to hire the best? Does Alex think Trump is going to win? What would be the impact if he were to? Why does Alex believe that enterprise software will be changed forever in the next few years? What question is Alex never asked that he thinks he should be asked?

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. In Today's Show with Reid Hoffman We Discuss: 1. Foundation Models: Commoditisation, Business Models, Incumbents: Does Reid believe we are seeing the commoditization of foundation models? Is it too late for new foundation models to be born today? Are they VC backable? How will foundation models eventually make money? What will be the sustainable business model? Does Reid believe that foundation models will be acquired by large cloud providers? Who goes first? 2. Inflection & Microsoft: What Went Down: How did the Microsoft and Inflection deal go down? Did Satya call up one day and make it happen? With the decay rate of models, Microsoft did not do it for the models, so why did they do it? Was Inflection a sustainable business in it's own right? Does this not prove that to win at this game, you have to be an incumbent with incumbent cash? 3. OpenAI: Board, Lessons and Management: What are 1-2 of Reid's biggest lessons from being on the OpenAI board with Sam? Why did Sam ask Reid in front of the whole company if Reid would fire him if he did not perform? Scarlett Johannsen, super alignment team quitting, NDAs tied to equity, this is a lot in a short amount of time, how does Reid analyse this? 4. Trump is the Biggest Threat to Democracy: What Lies Ahead? Why does Reid believe that Trump is a threat to democracy and evil? What were Reid's biggest takeaways from a two hour lunch with Joe Biden? How does a Trump administration change the world of AI, technology and startups? 5. The Future of TikTok: Is TikTok a threat to US democracy? Should it be banned? What will be the outcome of the current judicial process? Will they sell to a US entity? How could Trump impact the future of TikTok in the US? 6. Reid Hoffman: AMA: What are Peter Thiel's biggest strengths and weaknesses? I believe Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most unappreciated public market CEOs, what are the core components that Reid believes makes Mark so special? How did Reid miss out on investing in SpaceX's first round? What did he not see that he should have seen? What do we think is crazy today but will be a no brainer and very normal in 10 years?

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. In Our First Ever Episode of This Week in SaaS 1. PluralSight Goes to Zero: WTF happened to PluralSight? How did it go from $3.5BN to $0? Will this have a wider impact on the willingness of PE to buy tech companies? Who are the next contenders to go from hero to zero? Zendesk? Anaplan? Will this generation of PE funds be let off by their LPs for a poor vintage? 2. Salesforce's Worst Stock Market Drop Since 2004 + Mongo Takes a 23% Hit: Why did Salesforce lose $50BN of market cap in a single day? Is the same true for MongoDB taking a 23% hit in one day? What does it mean when the new normal is these once hyper-growth companies now growing only 6% per annum? 3. The Settlers into Slow Growth: Why does Jason believe that Dropbox and Box have both settled into a world of slow growth? What happens to Twilio from here in a world post Jeff Lawson? What happens to Retool from this point on? Would Jason be a buyer of Notion at $10BN? 4. Venture Capital is Broken: Why does Jason believe that we need to see a relation of public multiples for the math in venture capital to work again? Why does Jason believe that the way we mark portfolios with TVPI leads to corrupt and bad behaviour? How does Jason think we will solve the problem of liquidity with IPOs being shut, M&A being out of the window and now PE being a doubt as the source of buyers?

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. In Today's Show with Mike Schroepfer We Discuss: 1. Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Meta: What are Schrep's biggest lessons from Zuck on truly effective leaders? Why does Schrep believe the best leaders are like music conductors? What does Schrep mean when he says, "building a company is a game of inches"? Why does Schrep believe "inertia is one of the most underappreciated forces in company building?" 2. The Future of Energy: Why does Schrep believe that the "availability of cheap, clean energy is the biggest rate limiter to human progress?" Does Schrep agree with Sam Altman that energy will be the currency of the next decade? Or does he believe Mustafa Suleyman is right and it will soon be free and abundant? How does Schrep predict the next five years for both fusion and nuclear? Why does Schrep believe the next few years will be "messy but with huge opportunity"? 3. Investing in Climate: It has to be Profitable: Why does Schrep believe that markets and not governments or philanthropy will solve the climate challenges we face? What leads Schrep to suggest that the climate change transition is a $10TRN opportunity for investors? What is the single hardest element of investing in climate change solutions today? Why do climate change solutions need to reshape how they market to consumers? How much capital does it take to build a defensible moat in climate? 4. Schrep: The Man Behind Whatsapp and Instagram: AMA: How does Schrep reflect on his own relationship to money? How has it changed? How does Schrep think about what it takes to be a great father? How did Schrep manage the physical stress and pressure of managing engineering for products that serve billions of people in WhatsApp and Instagram?

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. In Today's Episode with Jason Lemkin We Discuss: 1. Growth Rates and Churn Rates: Average/Good/Great: What is a growth rate that would excite Jason in a SaaS company? What is average? What levels of churn would worry Jason to see? What would excite him to see? What does Jason never tolerate when it comes to either growth rate or retention? 2. What Founder Combination Always Wins: Why does Jason believe you cannot lose money on a CEO salesperson and a technical CTO founding partnership? Why does Jason always meet the CTO for a second meeting in the diligence process? What questions does he ask? What do the best CTOs do or say? Why does Jason always want to sell his shares when the founders want to sell? Why does Jason believe that a company is never the same when the founders leave? 3. WTF is Happening in the World of VC: Why does Jason believe that pricing is worse than it has ever been in venture? Why does Jason believe that traditional seed VC is systemically broken? Why are companies getting stuffed with more cash than ever before? What does Jason know now about dilution that he wishes he had known when he started? Why does Jason believe that you should always recycle everything? 4. WTF is Happening in PE and Later Stage Markets: What happens to all the overpriced acquisitions like Zendesk and Salesloft where private equity way overpaid for them, they have no growth and no product innovation? What happens to the generation of public companies like Box, Dropbox and Twilio, all with low growth and little product innovation in the single-digit market caps? Why does Jason believe that Klaviyo is the most undervalued public company today? What does Jason believe will happen to Anaplan with Pigment eating their lunch?

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. In Today's Episode We Discuss: 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. In Today's Episode with Nikesh Arora We Discuss: 1. From Investing with Masa @ Softbank to CEO of Largest Cyber Company: What are Nikesh's biggest lessons from working and investing with Masa @ Softbank? What are Nikesh's biggest takeaways from 10 years at Google and working with Eric Schmidt? What does Nikesh know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career? 2. What Makes the Most Valuable Businesses in the World: How does Nikesh think about competition and monopolies? How does Nikesh assess the idea of defensibility, moats and sustaining competitive advantages? What are the most common reasons why incumbents are overtaken? How have Palo Alto Networks been so successful in their M&A strategy? What has worked in M&A? What has not worked? What is their process? 3. What Makes the Best Leaders in the World: Does Nikesh agree that the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? How do the best leaders communicate with large teams at scale? How do the best leaders approach decision-making? What is Nikesh's framework? How does Nikesh approach the idea of delegation? What does he delegate vs what does he not? 4. Behind the CEO: Nikesh Arora: Husband and Father: How does Nikesh reflect on his own relationship to money today? What are Nikesh's biggest lessons in what it takes to bring children up in a world of affluence and ensure they have hunger and ambition? What are some of Nikesh's biggest lessons on parenting? How does Nikesh reflect on what it takes to have a great marriage?

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?