65: Turner Novak, General Partner at Gelt VC

Square One: Conversations with the Best in Business

Tik Tok is one of the most phenomenal consumer stories of all time. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Tik Tok has made an absolute splash in US culture over the past year. But the start of TikTok has a more deep rooted story in the way consumer social products have been evolving over the past decade. In this conversation, I chatted with Turner Novak, General Partner at Gelt VC on all things consumer social. Turner is one of my favorite sources of knowledge on what’s going on in consumer today - he has a deep perspective on international social products and how they translate in the US. In this conversation, we dove deep into the history of consumer social, how TikTok differentiates from other products from a front and back end perspective, what he thinks about Facebook Reels, the impending/potential TikTok-MSFT merger and what are future business models that are byproducts of social he’s excited to see.