Carl Rivera is the Chief Design Officer at Shopify, where he previously led both Merchant Services and the Shop App as VP of Product. Before joining Shopify through its acquisition of Tictail, Carl was the co-founder and CEO of Tictail, the “Tumblr for e-commerce,” where he built one of the most beloved design-forward commerce platforms of its era.
AGENDA:
05:05 Biggest Lessons from Selling My Company to Shopify
09:55 Where Does Shopify Suck at Product: Lessons from that?
17:37 What makes Truly Great product Design: The Five Pillars
31:02 The Future of Design in an AI-Driven World
36:00 Do We Skip the Design Phase in AI: Figma's Evolving Role in Design
40:09 Remote Work vs. In-Person Collaboration: Where Remote Loses?
42:43 What Happens to the Vibe Coding Market
47:06 Product Management and Team Dynamics
59:48 Does AI Favour Incumbents or Startups
AGENDA:
04:22 Sequoia's Leadership Transition
09:46 Michael Burry's Big Short on Nvidia and Palantir
17:41 Gamma Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation
32:34 Does Defensibility Exist Today When Copying is Easy
40:31 Should All Funds Be Way More Diversified
47:12 How to Run a Fundraising Process & What Not To Do
57:57 Datadog Surges 20% and Duolingo Crashes: What Happened
Ev Randle is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the best funds in venture capital. In their latest fund, they have Mercor ($10BN valuation), Sierra ($10BN valuation), Firework ($4BN valuation), Legora ($2Bn valuation) and Langchain ($1.4Bn valuation). To put this in multiples on invested capital, that is a 60x, two 30x and two 20x. Before Benchmark, Ev was a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and before Kleiner, Ev was an investor at Founders Fund and Bond.
AGENDA:
05:25 Biggest Investing Lessons from Peter Thiel, Mary Meeker and Mamoon Hamid
14:36 OpenAI Will Be a $TRN Company & OpenAI or Anthropic: Who Wins Coding?
22:27 Why We Should Not Focus on Margin But Gross Dollar Per Customer
30:25 Why AI Labs are the Biggest Threat to AI App Companies
44:26 Do Benchmark Fire Founders? If so… Truly the Best Partner?
54:38 People, Product, Market: Rank 1-3 and Why?
57:36 Why the Mega Funds Have Just Replaced Tiger
01:04:08 GC, Lightspeed and a16z Cannot Do 5x on Their Funds…
01:14:09 Single Biggest Threat to Benchmark
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?
AGENDA:
04:27 Navan's IPO: Winners, Losers and 20% Crater
12:55 Harvey Raises $150M at an $8BN Valuation
35:36 Was Sam Altman Wrong to Snap at Brad Gerstner
41:25 Why GOOG is a Buy and Amazon is a Short
47:43 Meta Down 10%, Buy or Sell?
51:12 If You Have Not Accelerated with AI, You Are Dead
01:05:20 Why Now is the Best Time for Series A and Worst for Seed
Joelle Pineau is the Chief AI Officer at Cohere, where she leads research on advancing large language models and practical AI systems. Before joining Cohere, she was VP of AI Research at Meta, where she founded and led Meta AI’s Montreal lab. A professor at McGill University, Joelle is renowned for her pioneering work in reinforcement learning, robotics, and responsible AI development.
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction to AI Scaling Laws
03:00 How Meta Shaped How I Think About AI Research
04:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning
10:00 Is It Possible to be Capital Efficient in AI
15:52 AI in Enterprise: Efficiency and Adoption
22:15 Security Concerns with AI Agents
28:34 Can Zuck Win By Buying the Galacticos of AI
32:15 The Rising Cost of Data
35:28 Synthetic Data and Model Degradation
37:22 Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015
48:46 If Joelle Was a VC Where Would She Invest?
52:17 Quickfire: Lessons from Zuck, Biggest Mindset Shift
00:00 – “How Do You Stay True to Yourself When You Have to Perform for the World?”
06:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Refused to Go All-In on YouTube”
09:00 – “You Don’t Need 10 Million Fans—You Need 1,000 True Believers.”
12:00 – “The Internet Is Not a Relevance Machine—It’s a Sensationalism Machine.”
15:00 – “Money Fixes Money Problems—And Nothing Else.”
22:30 – “When Did Tim Ferriss Feel Completely Lost?”
27:00 – “The Million-Dollar Mistake That Still Haunts Tim Ferriss.”
36:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Never Raised a Fund—Even Though He Could Have.”
45:00 – “The Truth About Uber, Duolingo, and the Power of Relationship Investing.”
54:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Stopped Angel Investing at His Peak.”
1:04:00 – “The Podcast That Changed Everything.”
1:15:00 – “The Real Cost of Love: Is Efficiency Killing Connection?”
1:31:00 – “What Tim Ferriss Has Changed His Mind About Most.”
1:36:00 – “Erections Matter.”
AGENDA:
05:17 OpenAI's Restructuring: Winners and Losers
17:17 Andreessen Horowitz's Raise $10BN in New Funds
26:38 Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation
43:08 Spray and Pray: Does it Work: Data Breakdown
47:04 The Role of Option Checks Venture Capital
48:36 The Three Ways to Win in VC Today
54:26 Why IRR is a BS Metric and What Matters More
01:08:47 Amazon's Struggles: How Do They Return to Greatness in AI
David Cahn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and one of the world’s leading AI investors. At Sequoia David has led investments in Clay, Juicebox, Sesame, Kela, Stark, etc.. Before Sequoia, David was a General Partner @ Coatue where he led investments in Notion and Hugging Face.
AGENDA:
00:00 We Are in an AI Bubble
05:04 Why Building Physical Data Centres is a Moat
13:58 Winners and Losers in a World of AI
19:13 The Role of Big Tech and Monopolies
23:37 Breaking Down Circular Deals in AI: The Truth No One Sees?
38:19 Why Kingmaking is BS and VCs Do Not Make or Break Companies
41:30 The Importance of Margins in AI Investments
43:41 The Required Growth Rates in AI to Get Funded by Sequoia
45:30 The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
51:53 Why the Most Important Hire for Startups Today is 23 Year Olds
01:01:19 The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses
01:10:15 Quickfire: Biggest Miss, Parenting Advice, Doug Leone Advice
Sandy Diao is one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy has scaled products to over 200M+ users and led growth teams at Descript, Meta and Pinterest. She is also a prolific writer all on things growth here.
AGENDA:
03:59 Biggest Growth Lessons from Pinterest
08:01 What is a Good vs a Bad Growth Hypothesis
11:11 Common Mistakes in Growth Strategies
14:57 Channel Fit: When You Have It & What To Do
25:43 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 101: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine
30:08 How to Do SEO and Long-Term Growth Investments
33:22 Doubling Down on Successful Channels
36:31 The Unchanging Foundations of SEO
37:52 Generative AI Engines vs. Traditional Search Engines
41:12 Paid Marketing Channels: What's Overrated?
43:42 The Rise of User-Generated Content (UGC)
46:34 TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality
49:55 Brand Marketing: What is Real vs What is BS?
53:33 The Importance of Feature Launches
01:01:50 Hiring for Growth: When and Who?
01:08:55 Quick Fire Round: Onboarding, Notifications, and Growth Channels
AGENDA:
04:50 Benchmark's New Partner: Everett Randall
10:19 Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation: Another Loss for Public Markets?
28:39 Why Today is as Bad as the Hype of COVID in 2021
32:10 Why Vertical SaaS is a Bad VC Investment Today
36:14 Why Everyone Investing in Legal SaaS Will Lose Money
44:16 Why King Making is More Real Than Ever
55:23 Why Your Smallest Customers Need to Pay $10K Minimum
01:01:37 Why VC is a S*** Asset Class
01:09:29 Why Today is Harder Than It Has Ever Been in VC
01:25:18 Closing Thoughts and Reflections
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Deel, the $17BN global payroll juggernaut that just last week announced their latest $300M fundraise led by Ribbit, a16z and Coatue. Deel has been on the most insane journey, they do $1BN+ in ARR, they just had their first $100M revenue month and they have been profitable for over 3 years.
AGENDA:
03:38 Announcing $300M Fundraise at a $17BN Valuation
06:24 Rippling vs Deel: WTF is Going On? Where is the Lawsuit?
14:01 Why 1-1s Are BS and Leaders Should Stop Doing Them
17:31 Do Rich Leaders Make Better Leaders
28:33 Biggest Lesson from Ben Horowitz? Why Most CMOs Are Bad?
34:48 Lessons from Nik @ Revolut and Why Companies Need to Make Their Own Software
42:23 Deel’s Acquisition Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions
45:17 How to Price Acquisitions? How to Align Incentives with Founders?
55:45 Deel is Profitable and Growing Fast: When is the IPO?
01:01:35 Best Acquisition Ever + Worst Ever: What Did We Learn?
Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Field, and Elad Gil. Before founding Warp, Zach was Principal Engineer at Google, where he led development of Google Docs, and later served as CTO at Time. He’s one of the most respected engineering minds redefining the future of developer tools.
AGENDA:
04:14 Biggest Product Lessons from Rewriting Google Sheets
07:10 Why I Would Short Google: Leadership and AI Strategy
09:55 Comparing AI Models: GPT, Claude, and Gemini: Who Wins and Loses
17:04 Do Margins Matter in AI?
24:57 Adding $1M in ARR Every Week: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
33:58 How to Build Defensibility in a World of AI?
43:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins and Why?
44:25 Biggest Fundraising Lessons Raising from Sequoia, Elad Gil and GV
50:56 Why Sequoia are the Best VC
53:51 What Every Founder Gets Wrong in Fundraising
01:01:30 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts
AGENDA:
03:44 Rory Is So Old He Worked with Arthur Rock!!!
07:28 Goldman Sachs Acquires Industry Ventures for $665M
16:37 Thinking Machines Co-Founder Raises $2BN and Then Leaves for Meta
29:36 SoftBank Goes for $5BN Leverage Against ARM Stock To Buy More OpenAI
39:35 More Data Centres Than Offices: Are We In a Bubble
43:28 Where is the Alpha in Venture in 2025
51:48 What 90% of Managers Get Wrong About Portfolio Management
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers globally, generating more than $5BN in annual revenue. Atlassian now employs over 10,000 people across 13 countries and is one of the most successful bootstrapped-to-IPO stories in tech history. Mike is also a leading climate investor and co-owner of several major sports teams.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Unreasonable Men Win in Startups
07:22 How to Make Co-CEOs Work
13:22 Are We in an AI Bubble? Is Everything Overvalued?
26:46 The Future of Software Development: More or Less Devs
32:53 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI
34:02 The Future of Vibe Coding…
36:35 Does Defensibility Exist in a World of AI
42:09 Is Per Seat Pricing Dead in a World of AI
49:01 The Founder Journey and Leadership
54:28 Quick Fire Round: Parenting Advice, Relationship to Money
Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team from to more than 6,000 globally. Under his leadership, Snowflake became one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in history, achieving a record-breaking IPO in 2020.
AGENDA:
AGENDA:
03:29 OpenAI and AMD's Major Partnership
07:35 Microsoft Have F***** Up the OpenAI Partnership
17:08 OpenAI's Developer Day Announcements
20:45 Why VC is the Most Forgiving Asset Class on Price and Valuation
29:10 What Does it Take to IPO in 2025: Why Snyk Will Not IPO
42:30 Four Strategies Companies Need to Take to Own Their Own Destiny
49:31 Vercel Raises $300M at $9BN: Suicide Round or Strategic
55:39 Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Legora vs Harvey
01:08:11 Chamath Raises Latest SPAC: SPACs are Back
01:10:56 Polymarket Raises $2BN at a $9BN Valuation
01:14:53 Quick Fire Questions and Wrap-Up
Andrew Feldman is Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebras, building the world's fastest AI inference and training. Cerebras recently closed a $1.1BN Series G round at an $8.1 billion valuation, backed by top names including Fidelity, Atreides, Tiger Global, Valor Equity and 1789 Capital. Under his leadership, they’ve leapfrogged GPU limits in inference, operate at trillions of tokens per month, and are filing to go public soon.
AGENDA:
02:43 Why We Did Not IPO and Raised $1BN From Fidelity
05:03 Analysis of Chip and Compute Landscape Today
07:14 NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Running Out of Ideas
13:57 The Real Questions to Ask on Chip Depreciation
24:54 Energy Requirements for AI: Is it Feasible?
29:25 Mag7 Value Concentration: Feature or a Bug
31:57 Talent is the Bottleneck and Trump Makes it Worse
32:55 The War for Talent: Secrets No One Sees
34:22 Evaluating the Data Centre Economy: Many Will Lose Money
38:01 Three Changes the US Could Make to Beat China in AI
42:30 Why 80% of our Revenues are in the UAE
47:26 Quick Fire Questions
58:59 Why Work Life Balance is Total BS
Ketty Slonimsky is Chief Growth Officer at Palta, the platform behind apps like Flo (the #1 female health app with 77M+ MAU), Simple, and Zing AI, where she leads a centralized growth function across the portfolio. She was previously first VP Product & Growth at HeliosX (£900M+ ARR, bootstrapped D2C healthtech), has advised companies like SonderMind, Runna, Guardio, Cheddar, P&G Digital Ventures, and is a board advisor at HeliosX.
AGENDA:
02:33 What is Growth and When to Hire For It
06:04 Three Profiles of Successful Growth Leaders
10:07 Challenges and Learnings from Failed Ventures
21:17 How to Optimise User Onboarding for Growth
26:14 Biggest Lessons on Retention
30:25 How to Artificially Create Organic Growth and Community Building
32:10 Why LTV Models are BS
37:35 How to Use Influencers to Grow Insanely Fast
47:07 The Metrics that Matter in Growth
49:48 Push Notifications and Engagement: What To Do vs What Not to Do?
51:57 Quick Fire Round
AGENDA:
03:58 Understanding Burn Multiples and Capital Efficiency in an AI World
11:54 What Metrics Founders Need to Focus on in a World of AI
19:31 The Role of Kingmakers in Venture Capital: Harvey, Abridge, Profound
33:42 Klarna, Figma, Stubhub, all Down: Are Public Markets Turning?
36:35 OpenAI Needs the Same Energy as Japan… WTF!
41:09 How Can We Fund the $1TRN Sam Altman Needs for Energy
52:39 FiveTran and DBT: Is the Wave of Consolidation About to Begin?
59:44 Does Private Equity Need to Change in a World of AI
01:06:23 Political Expression and Corporate Responsibility
Jonathan Ross is the Founder & CEO of Groq, the AI chip company redefining inference at scale. Under his leadership, Groq has raised over $3B from top investors. The company has reached a valuation of nearly $7B, positioning itself as one of NVIDIA’s most formidable challengers. Previously at Google, Jonathan led the team that built the first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), making him one of the leading architects of modern AI hardware.
AGENDA:
00:00 The Future of AI and Compute
05:07 Why the Hyperscalers Have to Keep Spending Recklessly on AI
12:49 Why OpenAI and Anthropic Will Have to Build Their Own Chips
19:47 OpenAI and Anthropic Will be $5BN Companies: The Bull Case
29:50 Why China is Behind the US in AI and Deepseek is More Expensive to Run
33:55 How Europe Could Compete in AI and Why the US is More Risk Averse Than Europe
42:51 Why AI Will Lead to Too Many Not Too Few Jobs
43:19 Deflationary Pressures and New Job Markets
45:51 The Future of Vibe Coding
47:14 Why AI Companies Should Strive to Have Low Margins
49:31 Why We Have to Have Nuclear Energy and How to Bring it Back
56:55 How Permits are Ruining the Potential of AI
01:03:58 Why OpenAI and Anthropic are so Undervalued
01:16:53 Quickfire: Biggest Fear, Nvidia: $10TRN, Zuck Buying AI: Work or Not
James Gibson is Head of Revolut Business. Under his leadership, Revolut Business now processes over $33 billion in monthly transaction volume and generates more than $1BN in annualised revenue.
AGENDA:
04:10 Is Consulting the Worst Background for Aspiring PMs
07:09 How Revolut Hires for it’s Product Team
17:21 How Revolut Sets Goals: What Works, What Does Not
19:37 How Revolut Structures Their Product Teams
22:13 How Revolut Structures Product Review Sessions
27:23 New Bets Process at Revolut
29:11 How Revolut Balances Super Users and General Customers
36:55 How Revolut Drives Product Velocity and Efficiency
39:26 Future of Product with AI
44:56 Quick Fire Questions and Reflections
AGENDA:
00:00 Why I am 100% Equities and 0% Cash
04:35 Nvidia's Massive $100BN Investment in OpenAI
08:39 Is Anthropic Negatively Positioned by OpenAI Gaining NVIDIA Investment
27:30 Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead
44:00 Navan Files to Go Public at $8BN
49:31 Lockup Periods and Liquidity
50:35 Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Startups
01:02:42: Notion Hits $500M ARR Re-Accelerating
01:09:42 Why Founder Friendly is Total BS Today
Hemant Taneja is the CEO and leader of General Catalyst, the firm he has scaled over the last decade into one of the largest with over $40BN in AUM. He has been one of the most influential investors of the past two decades, leading early bets in Stripe, Snap, Gusto, Samsara, Grammarly, and Canva. He also played a pivotal role in Livongo’s $18.5B merger with Teladoc, one of the largest digital health deals in history.
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction
03:37 Is Hemant a CEO or an Investor?
05:42 With $40BN AUM Is General Catalyst Still a VC Firm?
12:11 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?
13:25 No One is Talking About the True Impact of AI on Jobs
21:30 Is Hemant Concerned by the Concentration of Value in MAG 7?
27:30 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?
30:27 GC’s Anthropic Investment: Upside from a $60BN Price
37:06 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI
45:23 Does Revenue Growth Matter in a World of AI
49:39 Why it is BS to Turn Down a Company Based on Price
56:06 We Have Invested $5BN Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds
01:00:02 VC is About To Be Flooded with Retail Investment: What Does It Mean for VC
01:08:51 “What I Learned Losing the Series A of Snap, Stripe, Samsara”
01:11:25 Future of Venture Capital: Walmart vs Chanel
Jesse Zhang is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Decagon, the conversational AI platform for customer experience. As one of the fastest growing companies in the valley, they have raised over $230M at a last round price of $1.5BN. Prior to Decagon, Jesse founded Lowkey (acquired by Niantic), studied CS at Harvard, and worked at places like Google, HRT, Citadel, and Intel.
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Messages
03:43 Olympiad Mathematician to Startup Founder
05:34 Selling to Niantic and What I Did Differently the Second Time
07:16 Why 90% of Founders Build Companies the Wrong Way
12:19 Scaling to $50M ARR in 15 Months
31:31 Is the AI Talent War Out of Hand: How To Compete with Meta Pay Packets
32:38 Why Remote Work is Total BS
34:06 Competitors in AI Customer Experience: Sierra, Intercom and more
37:34 AI Market Predictions
44:56 Embracing Stress and Winning Culture
50:13 Quick Fire Questions: Most Underrated AI Founder, Biggest Changed Opinion