Siqi Chen On How To Go Viral, Secrets To Storytelling, And Forgetting Best Practices The Peel With Turner Novak podcast

1:14:56

Dan Lorenc is the Co-founder and CEO of Chainguard, the safe source for open source. The internet runs on free, open source software. But because its gotten so popular, its become a crucial vulnerability now targeted by hackers and nation states. This conversation with Dan gets into the history of open source software, the software supply chain, how AI will impact it, and what the next big cyber attack will look like. We also get into the history of cloud computing, how it works, and what Linux is. Dan is an engineer, but he also loves sales and go-to-market. We unpack how Chainguard went from zero to 150 customers and a $40 million revenue run rate in two years. Chainguard just announced a $350 million Series D led by Kleiner and IVP, and Dan unpacks the round, plus shares his secret methodology for valuing the company A big thank you to Dan’s Co-founder Kim Lewandowski, to Clay Fischer @ Spark, Bogomil Balkansky & Andrew Reed @ Sequoia, and Tom Loverro @ IVP for their help brainstorming topics for Colin. Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Timestamps: (3:26) A safe source for open source (4:57) The software supply chain (7:19) Can you trust open source code with contributors in Russia? (9:43) Malware attack that almost took down the entire internet (12:40) What the next big cyber attack will look like (15:12) How will AI impact the software supply chain (17:53) The history of cloud computing (21:42) Why all cloud computing runs on Linux (23:16) How Linux + Linux distros work (29:28) Automating open source security (32:43) Chainguard roadmap: Libraries and VMs (36:40) Focusing on FedRAMP (42:44) Impact of DOGE (44:06) Zero to $40m ARR in two years (45:40) Learning to love sales as a technical founder (47:24) Lessons from Frank Slootman (51:15) How to create urgency in sales (53:16) How to build a sales team (58:23) Hiring Ryan Carlson from Wiz & Okta (1:01:45) Chainguard’s $350m Series D (1:07:41) Vibe coding + Dan’s software stack (1:09:51) Cutting his hair in front of the whole company (1:10:27) Wearing a different suit to each board meeting (1:12:32) Bogomil, world’s best SDR Referenced Check out Chainguard: https://www.chainguard.dev/ Jobs at Chainguard: https://www.chainguard.dev/careers Prior episode with Dan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC4cOJ9n_Z8 Linux Origin Email: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/mmmlh3/linux_has_a_interested_history_this_is_one_of/ The Qualified Sales Leader: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064 Julius, AI data analysis: https://julius.ai/ Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code World’s best SDR: https://x.com/BogieBalkansky/status/1913269714882814350 2025 Chainguard Assemble Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adfU9LJg3I0 Follow Dan Twitter: https://x.com/lorenc_dan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlorenc/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Surviving Two Seed Extensions, Fixing Auth for AI Agents | Clerk Founder & CEO Colin Sidoti 1:39:38

11天之前1:39:38

1:39:38

Colin Sidoti is the Co-founder and CEO of Clerk, the best way to build authentication and user management. I loved this conversation, because Colin is currently in the arena building Clerk. It has not been easy, and he takes us inside some of the harder moments of the past six years. We hit on three main themes: authentication; lessons raising multiple hard Seed extensions in the early days, including a recap before the A, and the demo that got a16z to invest; and things AI and MCP. We also talk founding a company with his brother, building a compound startup, why components are the new APIs, and what he learned about audacious goals from John Collison @ Stripe A big thank you to Reid Christian @ CRV, Paul Klein @ Browserbase, and Joseph Nelson @ Roboflow for helping brainstorm topics for Colin. Timestamps: (3:39) The best developer tool for authentication and user management (5:45) The easiest way to set up billing (7:13) Building a compound startup (9:15) Lesson on audacious goals from John Collison (12:40) Developer tools are now trusted category experts (13:47) How auth impacts billing, CRM, marketing, analytics (19:44) Why auth is always changing (25:40) Coming up with the idea for Clerk (29:24) What its like starting a company with your brother (30:58) Living in a basement during Clerks early days (35:33) Getting early users narrowing focus in South Park Commons (40:10) Fundraising lessons from struggling to raise (43:46) The trick that raised Clerk’s first round from S28 (45:09) Launching + the first Seed extension (50:15) Sequoia’s feedback that improved conversion rates (52:22) Why a16z led Clerk’s 2nd Seed extension (58:11) How to do a recap before Series A (1:03:34) Changing Clerk’s pitch to scare investors (1:08:56) Fundraising advice “Why partner alignment is all that matters” (1:11:42) Fast Series A and breaking 7%/week growth (1:16:32) Negotiating Clerk’s Series B at the bar (1:22:15) Investors in the arena vs in their mansions (1:27:57) The three ways AI is changing authentication (1:31:21) Why AI agents all try to steal free AI credits (1:33:09) Remember to have fun (1:36:24) Building a better product to compete in a crowded market Referenced Try Clerk: https://clerk.com/ Jobs at Clerk: https://clerk.com/careers Martin Casado’s tweet https://x.com/martin_casado/status/1558134697753841664 Try Inngest: https://www.inngest.com/ Follow Colin Twitter: https://x.com/tweetsbycolin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-sidoti-751a219 Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Building Verkada, the $4.5B Physical Security Company | Filip Kaliszan, Founder and CEO 1:42:51

18天之前1:42:51

1:42:51

Filip Kaliszan is the Founder & CEO of Verkada, the physical security company. Verkada started in 2016 by building the best camera for physical security teams, and has since evolved into a full suite of security products for buildings. Filip takes us inside Verkada’s rapid growth to almost a billion in annual revenue, over 2,000 employees, and raising capital from investors like Sequoia, Meritech, First Round, General Catalyst, and Next47. We get into how AI and LLMs are changing hardware, the power of customer therapy, how Filip iterated on early startup ideas, inside Verkada’s very difficult first funding round, how signing their first big customers changed the trajectory of the business, and how to think about adding new products over time. We also talk through Verkada’s commitment to in-person work in the summer of 2020, how you should evaluate joining a startup as an employee, Verkada’s “software zero” employee bonus policy, and building a rooftop bar for the office. Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Timestamps: (4:20) Verkada, the physical security technology company + Demo! (11:02) Building software powered hardware (12:56) LLM opportunities in cameras (15:49) Filip’s lifelong fascination with photography (17:57) Taking one year to come up with the idea for Verkada (22:27) Building his own home security system to learn the $16B market (27:14) Why hardware experimentation is cheaper and easier than you’d think (30:36) The importance of customer therapy (32:37) How to get your first customers, importance of quick time to demo (35:06) Why early fundraising was so hard (40:38) Verkada’s first big customer (42:23) How to decide what startup to join (45:45) The opportunity in “smart building tech” (50:34) How to launch new product lines (58:07) Re-architecting the security industry to be software-native (1:02:31) How hiring and managing a team changes as you scale (1:08:55) Why each team at Verkada has its own recruiters (1:14:00) Adding senior leaders to the team as you scale (1:17:06) Evolving from introverted engineer to CEO of multi-thousand person company (1:21:59) Verkada’s cool office and focus on in-person work during COVID (1:28:12) Building a rooftop bar on the office (1:32:20) Verkada’s Software Zero employee bonus program with 40x ROI (1:36:00) How Filip thinks about IPO vs staying private Referenced Verkada: https://www.verkada.com/ Open roles at Verkada: https://www.verkada.com/careers/ Follow Filip LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliszan/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Forage: The Trillion Dollar Opportunity in Restricted Payments | Ofek Lavian 1:13:06

25天之前1:13:06

1:13:06

Ofek Lavian is the Co-founder and CEO of Forage, the mission driven payments company. This is a special episode, because I’m an investor in Forage, and Ofek shares everything he’s learned building the company. We go deep on food stamps, also known as EBT or SNAP, the government program that provides over $200 billion dollars per year in benefits that help 42 million low income Americans buy food. Our conversation gets into lessons from Ofek’s time leading payments teams at Uber and Instacart, building Instacart’s EBT program up to 40 employees and 10% of its total revenue, and why Ofek is so passionate about helping low income Americans. We get into the history of food stamps, market dynamics that led to low online adoption, the days Ofek thought Forage might not make it all the way to now working with the biggest players in online grocery, like Uber and DoorDash, and the long-term opportunity Forage has to build the rails the government uses to distribute trillions of dollars of restricted consumer benefits. Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Timestamps: (4:53) Forage: Helping 42m Americans buy food (5:24) History of food stamps & EBT (9:26) Growing up as an immigrant family with low food access (11:39) 90% of EBT recipients are elderly, disabled, or working parents (12:39) How Forage sells revenue to its customers (14:15) Building Instacart’s EBT program during COVID (18:25) Why no one built an EBT payments product (22:13) Joining Forage as a Co-founder (25:01) Why government payments are so hard (30:25) Growing 15x in six months (33:52) Underdiscussed mental health challenges of startups (37:06) How the political environment impacts EBT (43:20) Why Forage charges more than competitors (45:58) Seasonality in EBT spend (46:59) Why early investors passed on Forage (48:10) The trillion dollar opportunity in restricted payments (50:56) “ There's no single idea that has destroyed more business value on planet Earth than the idea that micromanagement is bad.” (54:45) Why Forage doesn’t care about job titles (58:51) Lessons backpacking across 28 countries after college (1:02:09) How to travel on a budget (1:04:24) Importance of health (1:06:15) Saving a friends life on Mount Everest Referenced Forage: https://www.joinforage.com/ Ofek’s viral tweet: https://x.com/OfekLavian/status/1766950034581700697 Follow Ofek Twitter: https://x.com/OfekLavian LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofeklavian/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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How the World’s Most Active Angel Investor Operates | Ed Lando, Founder of Pareto Holdings 1:44:42

6 weeks之前1:44:42

1:44:42

Ed Lando is the Co-founder of Pareto, where he’s been an early investor in over 25 unicorns, started and incubated over 10 companies, and was recently named the most active angel investor in the world according to Crunchbase. We get into how Ed first got started angel investing, how he built up deal flow, why he’s historically kept a low profile, and why he hasn’t raised outside capital. We also talk concentration vs diversification, why there’s many ways to build successful companies, advice on hiring your first employees, and his playbook for incubating companies at Pareto, which is where he focuses most of his time. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (2:51) Getting into angel investing (3:58) Debating high vs low PR strategies (8:27) How to start building deal flow when angel investing (10:00) Pareto: first investor in people leaving school or their job (12:05) Evolving from angel to fund (14:57) Why Ed didn’t raise outside capital (20:33) Concentration vs diversification (28:29) Investing in non-sexy categories (32:50) There’s no one right way to build a company (36:03) When to go against traditional wisdom (39:36) Lessons from his anti-portfolio (45:59) Ed’s close relationship with his parents( (49:04) How we’re using AI (54:04) Incubating companies (58:38) Investing beyond spreadsheets and DCF models (1:05:49) How to trust your intuition investing (1:09:47) How to move fast (1:14:24) What most people get wrong when incubating companies (1:18:40) How to hire your first employees (1:26:27) Navigating hype when building and investing 1:29:59 Venture math and the Power Law 1:35:33 How Ed and Pareto’s strategy might break 1:38:45 Differences between the US and Europe Referenced Pareto: https://pareto20.com/ Misfit Market: https://www.misfitsmarket.com/ Catalina Crunch: https://catalinacrunch.com/ Zamp: https://zamp.com/ Magnus Carlsen on Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybuJ_nIXwGE Follow Ed Twitter: https://x.com/edwardlando LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardlando/ Substack: https://edwardlando.substack.com/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Alloy’s Unconventional Path to $1.5B with Tommy Nicholas, Co-founder and CEO 1:29:54

6 weeks之前1:29:54

1:29:54

Tommy Nicholas is the Co-founder and CEO of Alloy, the identity and fraud prevention platform trusted by over 700 financial service companies. Our conversation explores the early days of fintech, why more consumer financial protections actually lead to more fraud, and gets into the weeds of various tactics he’s learned building a technical platform company like Alloy. We talk about embracing that the hard parts of company building are actually the best parts, why you’re most likely to give up when things first start getting better, using hands-on sales implementations in the early days to gave Alloy product market fit on steroids, how hiring changes as you scale, getting 100’s of no’s over 20 months raising their Seed round, and why TAM doesn’t matter. Thanks to Charley Ma for his help brainstorming topics for Tommy! Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try them here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Timestamps: (3:56) The platform to manage fraud (5:48) What fintech risk was like in the early 2010’s (14:34) Why company building never gets easier (19:30) Reasons the hard stuff is actually the good stuff (24:00) You’re most likely to give up when things start getting better (33:47) Doing hands-on sales implementation to get PMF on steroids (42:26) Deciding when PLG or hands-on sales will work best (52:33) Why more consumer financial protections leads to more fraud (58:14) 20 months to raise $2m vs $200m from a spreadsheet (1:06:32) “Make yourself look like a good investment” (1:10:14) Why TAM doesn’t matter (1:14:35) How to hire collaborative problem solvers (1:24:38) Why Alloy didn’t do much marketing early on Referenced Try Alloy: https://www.alloy.com/ Charley Ma’s Pod Episode: https://youtu.be/5cxgB1_q2lw Try Artie: https://www.artie.com/ Follow Tommy Twitter: https://x.com/tommyrva LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommynicholas Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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The $750 Billion AI Opportunity in Customer Service | Mike Murchison, Co-founder and CEO of Ada 1:32:45

8 weeks之前1:32:45

1:32:45

Mike Murchison is the Co-founder and CEO of Ada, the AI-powered customer service automation platform. Ada’s product and scale puts Mike at the forefront at how AI is changing software and labor markets, and this conversation felt like both a glimpse into the future, and a look into the past, at a story of pure grit and determination, working seven customer service jobs at once. We talk about why management capabilities becomes even more important in AI-native companies, how customer service is changing from a cost center to a revenue driver, and how to talk to customers more as you scale. We also get into why AI is still underhyped, what truly AI native software looks like, the realities of selling enterprise AI software today, and advice for anyone building an AI agent from scratch. Thanks to Boris Wertz and Fahd Ananta for their help brainstorming topics for Mike! Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:49) Making customer service extraordinary for everyone (05:44) Management becomes more important in AI-first companies (12:13) From customer inquiry to solution in production, fully autonomously (16:01) Why companies talk to customers less as they grow (20:36) Creating new products from customer service data (22:45) Broken incentives in customer service (26:10) Working 7 customer service agent jobs at once for a year (37:19) Why pivoting to Ada felt like failure (46:11) How Mike would build an AI agent from scratch today (49:15) Ways AI will change how we build and manage companies (56:44) Why the best managers are great users of AI (1:00:27) How the top 1% of people are using LLMs (1:06:22) Realities of selling enterprise AI software today (1:11:02) Building a sales team from scratch (1:15:21) Reflecting on Ada’s scale + doubling the last six months (1:16:41) Biggest software category of all-time ($750B) (1:19:51) Why AI is still under hyped (1:21:01) Ego is the biggest inhibitor to AI adoption (1:23:33) How AI will fuel explosion of creativity and productivity (1:25:20) Large companies will benefit the most from AI (1:27:41) Multi-modal language models and autonomous (computers Referenced Try Ada: https://www.ada.cx/ Follow Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/mimurchison LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemurchison Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Why Founders are Moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee to Lock-in | Cam Doody at Brickyard 1:45:47

9 weeks之前1:45:47

1:45:47

Cam Doody is the Co-founder and General Partner of Brickyard, the venture capital firm moving founders to Chattanooga, Tennessee to lock-in with no distractions until they find product market fit. Brickyard is one of the most unique venture firms you’ll ever come across, and we get into how it how it was inspired by a 16x fund based in Chattanooga, why Cam and his co-founders started it during ZIRP, and why they hope everyone copies their model. We also get into Cam’s startup Bellhops, which he started in 2011 and has since grown into the third largest moving company in the US. We talk running a local services business, why 5-star review systems don’t work, and how U-Haul almost killed Bellhops overnight back in 2016. Thanks to Nader Khalil, Matt Harb, Austin Beveridge, and Spencer Levitt for their help brainstorming topics for Cam! Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (03:33) Chattanooga: Dirty manufacturing city to high tech (05:23) Brickyard’s precursor, the Lamp Post Group (a 16x fund) (09:46) How ZIRP screwed up early stage investing (13:49) What is Brickayrd? (21:14) Getting Brickyard off the ground in 2021 (26:25) 100+ year old rug warehouse + maintenance nightmares (33:13) Cam wants everyone to copy Brickyard (36:31) Why economic development startup programs don’t work (38:59) YC teams doing Brickyard to escape the Trough of Sorrow (44:07) How Brickyard companies raise Series As (46:10) Nvidia acquiring Brev (52:18) How to deal with a co-founder breakup (55:45) Starting Bellhop to build a better moving company (1:02:27) How U-Haul almost killed them overnight (1:06:54) Marketing tactics for a local services business (1:12:05) Why 5-star review systems don’t work (1:18:16) How Cam’s view of VC’s changed after becoming one (1:20:37) Ways VC’s actually add value (1:25:05) The thesis for Bitcoin (1:39:21) Cam’s annual remote desert island vacation Referenced Check out Brickyard: https://www.justlaybrick.com/ The Trough of Sorrow: https://andrewchen.com/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the-trough-of-sorrow/ Bellhops: https://www.getbellhops.com/ Follow Cam Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/camdoody LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cam-doody-b489a124 Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Zero to $20m ARR in Two Months: Inside Bolt’s 7-Year Journey to Overnight Success | Eric Simons, Co-founder & CEO 1:52:57

10 weeks之前1:52:57

1:52:57

Eric Simons is the Co-founder and CEO of StackBlitz, best known for its breakout product Bolt, letting anyone build full stack apps from text, in the browser. Bolt launched in October of 2024, quickly growing from zero to a $20 million revenue run rate in two months, making it one of the fastest growing products ever. But Eric will be the first to tell you it wasn’t an overnight success - the product didn’t even work the first time they tried building it. We go behind the scenes of the seven year journey building the tech that eventually led to Bolt, how to avoid distractions, being capital efficient, living in a frat house for $100/month, and squatting in AOL’s headquarters for $1/day when he was 19. Eric also takes us inside the weeks after Bolt’s viral launch, figuring out a new business model on the fly, his strategy for fundraising and PR, why you should open source your code, Bolt’s playbook for building a community around the product that enabled their viral launch, and how AI is changing software forever. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (2:24) Building full stack apps from text, in your browser (4:19) Running an operating system in the browser (11:48) Why Bolt failed the first time, almost shutting down the company last summer (20:18) How Bolt went viral from one tweet (28:33) Differences between ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor (39:38) Why AI code gen changes the software world order (42:01) What happened inside Bolt going from zero to $20m ARR in two months (47:32) Not sharing fundraises publicly + his PR strategy (58:57) Why the team never gave up for seven years (1:01:07) Living in a frat house for $100/month (1:04:07) How to be capital efficient (1:09:00) Living on $1/day in AOL’s HQ when he was 19 (1:14:01) Inside Bolt’s Series B (1:21:03) Bolt’s hiring and product roadmap (1:32:58) Creating a new inference-based AI business model (1:38:07) Eric's playbook for building a community of users (1:44:05) Why you should open source your code Referenced Try Bolt: https://bolt.new/ Bolt on X: https://x.com/boltdotnew Check out Webcontainers: https://webcontainers.io/ $0 to $4m ARR case study with Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/customers/stackblitz Bolt’s open source code: https://www.bolt.diy/ Bolt / StackBlitz is hiring! https://stackblitz.com/careers Eric’s favorite cafe, The Lighthouse SF: https://thelighthousessf.com/ Lady Gaga’s “one person” montage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRxsX_30tjs Living inside AOL HQ at 19 years old: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/meet-the-tireless-entrepreneur-who-squatted-at-aol/ Bloomberg coverage of StackBlitz Series B: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-21/ai-speech-to-code-startup-stackblitz-is-in-talks-for-a-700-million-valuation?embedded-checkout=true Joel Spolsky’s blog: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Follow Eric Twitter: https://x.com/ericsimons40 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-simons-a464a664/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

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Rick Zullo on Building Equal Ventures, Why Traction is Overrated, Advice for Emerging Managers 1:39:31

11 weeks之前1:39:31

1:39:31

Rick Zullo is the Founder of Equal Ventures. Our conversation gets into Equal’s unique approach to venture capital, thinking more like public market and private equity investors, and why they also think traction is overrated at Seed. We talk through Equal’s thesis-driven model, employing a team of product owners, only investing in only 3 to 5 themes at once, and Rick’s admiration of Charlie Munger. We also talk AI - who will benefit the most, what he does and doesn’t like in terms of investing in the space, why venture capital is not really venture capital anymore, and why it sucks to be a Seed investor right now. Rick also runs the Emerging Manager Circle, a group for emerging fund managers. We get into the origin story of the group, his own struggles raising his first fund, and why talent is leaving the mega funds. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:38) Why venture capital isn’t venture capital anymore (11:33) How founders should approach raising a Seed round (14:13) The realities of downrounds (15:55) Rick’s favorite founders that raised little capital (18:54) Biggest fundraising mistake founders make (21:21) Why we need to stop funding AI companies (28:34) How AI will benefit private equity the most (33:30) Three levels of opportunity in AI right now (38:36) Why traction is overrated at Seed (41:38) Investing in businesses with compounding returns on capital (52:07) VC lessons from PE firms (56:24) Why Seed investing sucks right now (1:04:15) The beauty of small exits (1:12:52) How failing to start a fund in college led to Equal Ventures (1:20:06) The struggle raising Equal’s $55m Fund 1 (1:23:23) Why the best talent is leaving mega VC firms (1:30:16) The Emerging Managers Circle Referenced * Equal Ventures: https://www.equal.vc/ * EMC Summit: https://www.emcsummit.com/ Follow Rick Twitter: https://x.com/Rick_Zullo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickzullo/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

1
Illegal Immigrant to $160m Fund 1: Inside Villi Iltchev’s Journey Building Category Ventures 1:49:19

12 weeks之前1:49:19

1:49:19

Villi Iltchev is the founder of Category Ventures, where he invests early in enterprise software startups. And he’s done it longer than almost anyone, building Salesforce’s corporate venture arm and investing early in companies like Airtable, Zapier, GitLab, Remote, Hubspot, Gusto, and Box. Fresh off raising his $160m Fund 1, we get into the opportunity he saw to start Category, and how San Francisco and Silicon Valley have changed over the past 30 years. He also shares his story growing up as an illegal immigrant in Greece, moving to the US by himself in high school, the biggest mistake of his career, advice for founders selling their company, why unit economics and profitability always matters, how developer tools went from terrible to amazing businesses, the mistake that almost killed GitLab after he invested, and why you should raise your seed round from a seed fund. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:22) Illegally immigrating from Bulgaria to Greece (05:14) Moving to the US by himself in high school (13:15) Moving to SF in the Dot Com Bubble (15:49) How SF changed over the last 25 years (22:27) Why HP fell from the top of Silicon Valley (25:36) Building Salesforce’s corporate VC arm (30:29) Why SaaS was so transformative (34:35) Angel investing in Airtable (39:52) The biggest mistake of his career (42:13) Why unit economics always matter (47:20) Biggest mistake when selling a tech company (49:00) Almost starting a software PE firm and landing in VC (55:45) Lessons from August Capital + Evolution of venture (59:22) Early days of dev tools + Investing in GitLab (1:09:50) Why being contrarian is dumb (1:11:45) How GitLab almost died and emerged stronger (1:16:48) Villi’s journey to starting Category (1:25:22) Category’s thesis (1:30:48) Why startups always come in batches (1:31:57) The importance of track record in venture (1:35:32) Deciding a $160m fund size (1:39:26) Why you should raise seed rounds from seed firms (1:43:40) What Villi looks for in a startup Referenced Category VC: https://www.categoryvc.com/ Category’s $160m Fund 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2024/12/17/villi-iltchev-raises-160-million-debut-fund-category/ Aaron Levie (Box) on The Peel: https://youtu.be/cLn_tqPvNf4 GitLab’s Recovery Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0TRHLvYGE0 Guy Podjarny (Snyk) on The Peel: https://youtu.be/BzKlZ_v4uCw Why SaaS won’t consolidate: https://medium.com/@villispeaks/why-saas-consolidation-is-not-happening-2b9b722e0250 Follow Villi Twitter: https://x.com/villi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villi04/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

1
Govtech + Drones Crash Course, Lessons From 2 Exits | Rahul Sidhu 1:28:52

13 weeks之前1:28:52

1:28:52

Rahul Sidhu is the co-founder of SPIDRTech and Aerodome, two companies in the public safety space. He’s sold both of them, and our conversation unpacks all the lessons he learned, what he did differently with his second company Aerodome, and why he sold only 17 months after starting it. If you tuned into last week’s episode, Paul told us to never talk to the cops. Rahul gives us the other side of the story, sharing his playbook for selling to police, the government, how he met Nikita Bier in high school, and why he’s still bullish on drones, robotics, and AI in the physical world. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (04:07) What its like testifying to Congress (08:06) Why 90% of what he knew about police was wrong (13:15) How to sell to police departments (15:24) His first business selling WoW accounts (19:00) Meeting Nikita Bier in high school (21:29) Starting SPIDRTech to improve police + community relationships (27:45) Two biggest mistakes building SPIDR (31:47) How startups break down when scaling (34:19) Selling SPIDR instead of raising a Series B (40:12) Why Aerodome was so much easier to start (42:55) Why Rahul loves unsexy markets with founder market fit (46:03) Starting Aerodome, drones as first responders (53:39) Building a capital efficient hardware startup (56:46) How regulatory changes made an opening for Aerodome (01:00:13) Inside Aerodome’s Series A (01:03:57) Selling Aerodome to Flock Safety within 17 months (01:09:31) Saying “would I work for this team?” when getting acquired (01:14:35) Seeing a homeless guy in an Aerodome shirt (01:17:02) The massive Robotics + AI opportunity this decade (01:21:42) What’s really happening with drones in New Jersey Referenced: SPIDRTech: https://www.spidrtech.com Aerodome: https://www.aerodome.com/ Nikita Bier’s Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QTVII_lkg Follow Rahul: Twitter: https://x.com/rahoolsidoo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulsidhu/ Follow Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

1
Infrastructure for AI Browsers with Paul Klein, Founder + CEO of 🅱️ Browserbase 1:53:13

14 weeks之前1:53:13

1:53:13

Paul Klein is the Founder and CEO of Browserbase, building infrastructure for AI browsers. Our conversation gets into the future of software and AI agents, why authentication is a huge problem in AI, how the best infrastructure companies become product companies, and the memo he wrote that convinced him to start Browserbase despite not wanting to build another company. A year ago, Paul was a relatively unknown commodity, and definitely did not want to raise venture capital again. He shares the playbook he used to go from zero to raising $27 million in nine months “as a non-famous person” (his words). He shares all his lessons learned in the arena as he’s processing them, like what he thinks will unlock better AI agents, why you should like your own tweets, and how Browserbase competes with incumbents. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:39) How LLMs unlock automation online (08:34) The future of software (AI agents) (11:21) Why AI agents need better authentication (12:59) Lessons from Twilio on building an infrastructure company (17:27) Learnings from his first startup (19:56) Bubbles, and how they drive innovation (20:37) Reasons this moment in AI is special (29:58) Why technical founders love post-PMF (31:55) The memo that started Browserbase (34:09) Why a startup should be a means of last resort (36:53) Being a solo founder (42:24) Importance of in-person culture (45:56) The best place to find engineers (48:34) How Paul hired a contractor army to build Browserbase (50:16) Why you can’t hire mercenaries (54:28) The power of emojis in marketing (57:39) Browserbase's early growth playbook (3 videos) (01:04:00) Benefits of sharing an office with other startups (01:06:00) Sales lessons from his parents (01:08:07) Why startups are like video games (01:13:43) Successful founders work the hardest and are shameless (01:18:44) Customer support is a startups greatest differentiator (01:22:06) Paul’s playbook that raised $27m in nine months as a non-famous person (01:29:03) How investors make decisions (01:33:10) Risks help startups avoid competition (01:36:37) Great infrastructure needs its own frameworks (01:39:05) Long-term thinking in LLMs will enable mass AI agents (01:42:21) Avoiding tech debt with AI moving so fast (01:43:48) Infrastructure companies need to become product companies (01:46:54) The Sine Wave philosophy to startups Referenced: Browserbase: https://www.browserbase.com/ An Internet Browser for AI: https://memos.hawkhill.ventures/p/an-internet-browser-for-ai Rise of the Product Engineer: https://memos.hawkhill.ventures/p/rise-of-the-product-engineer Death to the Backend: https://memos.hawkhill.ventures/p/death-to-the-backend The three Browserbase marketing videos Pre-Seed: https://x.com/pk_iv/status/1775183751800377344 Seed: https://x.com/pk_iv/status/1798731220005883935 Series A: https://x.com/pk_iv/status/1851270308701106383 Follow Paul: Twitter: https://x.com/pk_iv LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkleiniv/ Follow Turner: Twitter: https://x.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

1
Robinhood Co-founder Baiju Bhatt on the Journey to $40B, Building Space Solar Power with Lasers 1:17:59

15 weeks之前1:17:59

1:17:59

You’re probably familiar with Baiju Bhatt’s work as the co-founder of Robinhood. But he’s also obsessed with space, and recently started Aetherflux, a space solar power company. We get into the physics of using lasers to beam solar power to the Earth, Aetherflux’s early roadmap, and how he went from zero to one going from building software to physical products. We also talk through the early days of Robinhood, getting turned down by hundreds of early investors, the accidental launch, how to know if you really have product market fit, how Aaron Levie at Box helped get Robinhood.com, the value of creativity and design, Baiju’s philosophies on combining qualitative and quantitative user research, and his favorite animal and classic car. He also tried to cut my hair. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:31) Aetherflux: a space solar energy company (02:50) Origins of space solar power in the 40's & 70's (10:31) Safely beaming energy from space to Earth with lasers (13:46) Building floating space solar farms (21:27) Aetherflux's early roadmap (27:08) Growing up with dad as a Physics professor (32:18) Going zero to one building physical products (35:15) Baiju's favorite car, attempting a haircut, contemplating mustaches (38:27) Trying to prove Einstein wrong (41:42) Meeting Robinhood Co-founder Vlad at Stanford (44:10) Starting an algorithmic trading company (46:41) The beginnings of Robinhood (52:04) Getting turned down by hundreds of early investors (56:49) How they convinced Tim Draper to invest (59:39) Getting Robinhood.com because of Aaron Levie (01:01:28) Accidentally launching on a Friday afternoon (01:03:09) How to know if you have Product Market Fit (01:06:35) Combining qualitative and quantitative user research (01:14:23) Loving cats despite being allergic Referenced: Robinhood: https://www.robinhood.com Aetherflux: https://www.aetherflux.com/ TechCrunch coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/09/billionaire-robinhood-co-founder-launches-aetherflux-a-space-based-solar-power-startup/ Seinfeld mustache scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzZsLaLChRg The Michelson–Morley experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment Episode with Aaron Levie @ Box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLn_tqPvNf4 Follow Baiju: X/Twitter: https://x.com/BaijuBhatt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bprafulkumar Follow Turner: X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/…

The Peel with Turner Novak

1
Sheel Mohnot on All Things Fintech, Starting Better Tomorrow Ventures 1:32:10

16 weeks之前1:32:10