Eoghan McCabe is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Intercom, one of the largest private software companies in the valley with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of customers. To date, Eoghan has raised over $238M from Index, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, GV, Bessemer and more incredible firms. Intercom’s goal is to reinvent customer service with AI agents replacing human agents over the next 10 years.
10 Questions with One of the Largest Private Company CEO’s:
AI Investing: Why will most AI investments not do better than the S&P 500?
Building SaaS Tools with AI: Why is it crazy for companies to follow Klarna and use AI to build their own tools?
Going Public: Why is Bill Gurley wrong that more later stage companies should go public? Why did Intercom shelve plans to go public in 2022?
Early-Stage is F*******: Why is the early-stage venture ecosystem as an asset class f******?
Founder Mode: Why does Eoghan believe all of the best founders are unbalanced? What is the difference between Founder vs Manager mode?
Political Voice: Why did Eoghan decide he had to voice his political opinions now?
The Danger of Harris: Why does Eoghan believe a Harris administration would rob the US of immense freedom, democracy and civil liberty?
Why Vote Trump: Why does Eoghan believe that Trump will regain immense freedom for the sovereign individual?
Freedom of Speech: How does Eoghan determine right vs wrong when freedom of speech leads to harm and injustice?
Middle East and Nuclear War: Why does Eoghan believe that nuclear war is much closer than we think? Will we see the Middle East descend into war?
Jeff Wang is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Global Equities (SCGE), a public/private crossover investment firm with investments spanning from late-stage private companies to public companies. As Managing Partner, Jeff has primarily focused on public growth technology companies but has also invested $3 billion in private companies including Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe. Prior SCGE private investments that have since gone public include Airbnb, Doordash, MongoDB, Nubank, and Snowflake. Before joining SCGE in 2010, Jeff also worked at TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners where he focused on investments in technology buyouts.
10 Questions with the Leader of Sequoia’s $9BN Global Equities Fund:
1. Crossover Fund Opportunity: Why are crossover funds more attractive today than ever? Have the tourists gone?
2. Public Market Opportunity: Why is the opportunity in the public markets, not the private markets today?
3. IPO Markets: When will IPO markets open? What will cause them to open?
4. Breaking Hedge Fund Rules: What are the biggest ways that Sequoia break the traditional rules of hedge funds?
5. Google: Why does Jeff believe that Google’s cash cow of search is under threat?
6. Meta: Why does Jeff believe Meta will be the biggest competitor to Google?
7. NVIDIA: Why is NVIDIA’s price today reasonable? What is the bull and bear case?
8. China: Is there a recovery for China? How do Sequoia play China in this market?
9. AI in Public Markets: How are Sequoia playing the AI game in the public markets?
10. Investing Lessons: What have been Jeff’s biggest investing lessons from Mike Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha?
Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside.ai, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world’s first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software.
1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race:
What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs?
How much of Poolside’s latest raise will be spent on compute?
How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider’s funding rounds?
Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia?
Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs?
2. The Big Questions in AI:
Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs?
What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute?
To what extent will Nvidia’s Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance?
What will OpenAI’s GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again?
3. Compute, Chips and Cash:
Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; “you need $100BN to play the foundation model game”? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price?
Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve?
Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing?
Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, “you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice”?
Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development?
4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic…
Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised?
What would Eiso do if he were Sam Altman today?
Is $6.6BN really enough for OpenAI to compete against Google, Meta etc…?
OpenAI at $150BN, Anthropic at $40BN and X.ai at $24BN. Which would Eiso choose to buy and why?
Maria Angelidou is a seasoned product leader, having spent close to a decade at Meta where she was VP of Product and General Manager for some of the largest products such as Facebook Groups (2B+ users), Events, Profile, and Search. Before that, Maria led the Facebook App Monetization team, driving billions of dollars in revenue. Today, Maria is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Personio, an HR tech company with an ambitious mission to unlock the power of people for SMEs.
1. How to Hire the Best Product Teams:
2. How the Best Product Teams Do Product Reviews:
3. Europe vs US: How Product Teams Differ:
Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.
1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today:
2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History?
3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website:
4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising:
Donald Tang is the Executive Chairman of SHEIN, with oversight of public affairs, business strategy, corporate development, and finance. Donald began his career at Merrill Lynch & Co. He later joined Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. in Los Angeles as Senior Managing Director of Investment Banking. At Bear Sterns, Donald quickly rose to become the Vice Chairman of the firm, as well as Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings, Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asia, Ltd, and a member of the board of directors at Bear Stearns & Co.
1. How SHEIN Became a Global Giant:
2. The Big Questions: IPOs, Impact on Climate and Worker Conditions:
3. Marriage, Fatherhood and Happiness:
Jeetu Mahtani was an early member of the HubSpot team. Under his leadership and the sales organization, the business grew its non-US revenue from $3M ARR to close to $1B ARR. After running the International business as the global MD and Sales leader, he then moved to lead the customer success org which expanded to managing 1,500 people in customer success.
1. How to Go International for Startups:
2. Scaling Sales from $3M to $1BN in ARR:
3. Scaling Customer Success to 1,500 CS Reps:
4. Hiring the Best and Ramping Them:
20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani
Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013.
1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today:
2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully:
3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions:
4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models:
Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch).
1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS:
2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps:
3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users:
4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader:
Phil Carter is one of the best growth leaders of the last decade helping world-class companies like Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta accelerate their growth. Today, Phil is a growth advisor and angel investor who helps Seed - Series C consumer subscription businesses define their growth strategy.
The Seven Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription:
Step:
Target Metrics:
Target Metrics:
Target Metrics:
Target Metrics:
Target Metrics:
Target Metrics:
Akshay Kothari is Co-Founder at Notion, one of the fastest-growing companies of the last decade. Akshay has run every function in the company from sales, to marketing to finance and even led their fundraising efforts raising $340M+ from Sequoia, Index and Coatue with the latest round pricing them at $10BN. Before Notion, Akshay was VP Product at Linkedin for 5+ years, leading all of their content efforts. He joined LinkedIn when his previous company, Pulse, was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013.
1. Founder Mode, Veto Powers and Focus:
2. Raising $50M @ $2BN Valuation:
3. Raising $270M @ $10BN Valuation:
4. Boards and Social Media are F*******:
Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and one of the greatest cyber security investors of the last two decades. Among his many wins, Shardul has led rounds in Datadog, Wiz, Duo Security, Coalition and more. Shardul is also the only Partner investing at Index to have worked in every single Index office from London, to SF, to NYC to Geneva. Prior to Index, Shardul worked with Summit Partners, focusing on healthcare and internet technologies.
1. Investing Lessons from Wiz and Datadog:
2. How the Best VCs Make Decisions:
3. The Core Pillars of Venture: Sourcing, Selecting, Securing and Servicing:
4. Lessons from the Best Investors in the World:
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.
1. Product: Art vs Science:
2. Lessons from Leading Ads at Facebook:
3. Leading Product at Deliveroo: What I Learned:
4. Building the Biggest Bank in Britain with Monzo:
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.
2. From OG Operator to Newbie Investor:
3. VC Value: Do 90% of VCs Really Damage Companies:
4. Lessons from the Greats: Doug Leone, Bill McDermott, Frank Slootman:
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.
1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App:
2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship:
3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office:
4. Love, Death, Marriage:
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.
1. Why Venture Capital is Broken Today:
2. How to Make Money in VC in 2024:
3. Lessons from 3xing a Fund on One Check:
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.
1. Model Performance: What are the Bottlenecks:
2. Sam Altman, Sequoia and Frontier Models on Data Centres:
3. AI Safety: What People Think They Know But Do Not:
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.
1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers
2. The City Expansion Playbook:
3. Travis Kalanick and What Uber Could Have Been:
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.
1. Compute, Data, Algorithms: What is the Bottleneck:
2. The Future of Models:
3. Education, Healthcare and Misinformation: When AI Goes Wrong:
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.
1. The IPO Market: When Does it Open:
2. Is M&A F******:
3. AI's $600BN Question: Capex Spend:
4. Going Public: The Process, The Players and Jack Ma & Jamie Dimon:
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.
1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product:
2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams:
3. How to Build a Hiring Machine:
4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake:
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. The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make:
2. Lessons Scaling to a $14BN Market Cap:
3. Crucible Moment Decisions: Expansion:
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.
1. Compute vs Data: What is the Bottleneck:
2. The Value of the Model:
3. Enterprise AI: It is Changing So Fast:
4. The Wider World: Remote Work, Downfall of Europe and Relationships:
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.
1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing:
2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging:
3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside:
4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS:
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.
1. Learnings From the Greats:
2. Shopify: Why We Build Our Own Tools:
3. Eight Truths The Startup World Gets Wrong: