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 ...
Jul 03, 2024•59 min
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 ...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 3 min
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 Vasav...
Jun 28, 2024•59 min
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 fo...
Jun 26, 2024•51 min
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 L...
Jun 24, 2024•56 min
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...
Jun 21, 2024•54 min
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 ...
Jun 19, 2024•56 min
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...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr 14 min
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 pr...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 3 min
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 ...
Jun 12, 2024•1 hr
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 commodit...
Jun 10, 2024•1 hr 16 min
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 Ashl...
Jun 07, 2024•54 min
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 care...
Jun 05, 2024•55 min
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 t...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 9 min
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? W...
May 31, 2024•56 min
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 Schroe...
May 29, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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 level...
May 27, 2024•1 hr 14 min
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 h...
May 24, 2024•22 min
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 ...
May 22, 2024•57 min
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 serve...
May 20, 2024•52 min
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 P...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Limitless , a personalized AI powered by what you’ve seen, said, or heard. For his latest funding round, Dan took an unusual approach resulting in 1,000 preliminary offers with valuations as high as $1BN — and resulted in a $350 million Series A valuation. Prior to founding Limitless, Dan was the Founder of Optimizely, scaling the company to $120M in ARR and raising from some of the best in the business including Peter Fenton @ Benchmark who led the Series...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Tom Blomfield is a Group Partner at YC. Before YC, Tom founded two unicorns in the UK. He was co-founder of Monzo (most recently valued at $5BN), one of the first challenger banks in the UK. Monzo raised more than £1bn and counts 15% of the UK population as customers. Before Monzo, Tom founded GoCardless (YC S11), an online payments processor, most recently valued at $2.1BN. In Today's Episode with Tom Blomfield We Discuss: 1. From Founding Two Unicorns to YC Partner: Does Tom believe that all g...
May 13, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Larry Shurtz is the Chief Sales Officer at Genesys where he oversees the company’s global go-to-market strategies, including commercial activities, field sales and partner ecosystem operations. Larry has nearly three decades of experience in the software industry, from leading Confluent to delivering more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count as Chief Revenue Officer, to scaling a 1,300-person team at Salesforce to $2.1 billion in revenue. In Today’s Episode with Larry Shurtz We Di...
May 10, 2024•56 min
Tom Hulme is a Managing Partner of GV (Google Ventures), and leads the European team. Today, GV has over $10BN in AUM and Tom has led investments in Lemonade.com (IPO), Snyk, Secret Escapes, Blockchain.com, GoCardless, Blue Vision Labs (exited to Lyft), and Currency Cloud (exited to Visa). Prior to joining venture full-time, Tom was one of Europe's most successful angel investors with a 5x DPI track record and 20x+ TVPI. In Today's Episode with Tom Hulme We Discuss: 1. Lessons from a 24x TVPI An...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners. Before Greylock, Sarah was the first 30 employees at Pinterest. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. In Today's Episode with Sarah Tavel We Discuss: 1. Be...
May 06, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Eric Glyman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, America's fastest growing corporate card and finance automation platform. Under Eric’s leadership, Ramp has raised more than $1 billion in financing, with a valuation of $8.1 billion. Prior to Ramp, Eric co-founded Paribus, a price-tracking app to help consumers save money (acquired by Capital One). Ramp recently raised another $150 million series D round co-led by Founders Fund and Khosla ventures, with a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion. Keit...
May 03, 2024•43 min
Mark Suster is a General Partner @ Upfront Ventures, one of LA's leading early-stage venture firms. Prior to leading Upfront, Mark was a serial entrepreneur having founded two software companies, selling both with the last selling to Salesforce.com. Mark is also a prolific writer and one of his favourite pieces, Lines Not Dots is one for the ages. In Today's Episode With Mark Suster We Discuss: 1. From Serial Entrepreneur to Leading VC: How Mark made his way into the world of venture having sold...
May 01, 2024•59 min
Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion. Before founding Mistral, Arthur was a research scientist at DeepMind, one of the leading AI institutions in the world. In Today’s Episode with Arthur Mensch We Discuss: From Models to Team Building: Arthur’s Greatest Lessons at D...
Apr 29, 2024•50 min
Adam Gross is one of the masters of product-led growth (PLG). Most recently, Adam was Vimeo's interim CEO. Before Vimeo, Adam was CEO of Heroku, which he joined after selling his startup, Cloudconnect in 2013. Additionally, Adam has held executive leadership roles at Salesforce and Dropbox, and has been an active angel investor & advisor to companies, including Buildkite, Cribl, and Tailscale. In Today’s Episode with Adam Gross We Discuss: PLG Tactics from Dropbox, Heroku and Salesforce: What we...
Apr 26, 2024•42 min
