Latest Interviews
Showing 376–390 of 466 interview transcripts.
Clear all filtersAdam Besnivick: How to Invest in Pre-Seed & Seed Stage Companies; Looking Glass Capital | E1020
Adam Besnivick, Harry Stebbings, Chris Sacca
Looking Glass Fund's General Partner deploys capital from a $20 million second fund into 27 to 30 mission-driven companies across secondary U.S. hubs, prioritizing pre-seed rounds capped at $11 million post-money. The strategy emphasizes acting as a catalyst "lead investor" rather than a large check writer, aiming to secure 5.25% ownership while building a reputation that compels higher-quality deal flow. By targeting sectors like healthcare and climate, the fund seeks to generate strong returns despite a volatile market that has left later-stage venture capital in a "death zone."
Guy Podjarney: $7.4B Startup Founder; How to Analyse Market Size; Good vs Great Messaging | E1018
Guy Podjarney, Harry Stebbings
Guy Shapira, the founder of Snyk and former CTO of Akamai, leverages his background in Israeli cyber defense and serial entrepreneurship to apply first-principles thinking to application security and product-market fit. He outlines a strategic framework for founders that prioritizes iterative speed over traditional market definitions, emphasizing the critical distinction between developer adoption and commercial monetization. Shapira further advises caution against premature fundraising and "obvious" investment plays, advocating instead for structural moats and a team-oriented leadership culture that transcends emotional family dynamics.
Ryan Wiggins: Scaling WhatsApp from 0-100M; How to Build a Growth Team; Mercury Neobank | E1016
Ryan, a former Growth Marketing lead at Facebook and WhatsApp who now scales Mercury, outlines a holistic growth philosophy that prioritizes fixing retention leaks and identifying a single high-impact lever over executing numerous minor hacks. He advises founders to delay hiring growth teams until product-market fit is established, emphasizing that the first leader must be a strategic architect capable of building systems rather than a tactical executioner. Drawing from WhatsApp's experience of reaching 1.5 billion users without early A/B testing, Ryan argues that sustainable scaling relies on native product experiences and direct customer empathy rather than expensive ad formats or vanity metrics.
Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War & Why We Need National Data Sets
Emad Mostaque, Harry Stebbings
Emad Asimolowo, CEO of Stability AI, forecasts a turbulent near-term future for generative AI driven by capital misalignment and data toxicity, predicting a consolidation where only five to six foundation model companies will dominate the market. He advocates for a pivot toward curated national datasets and open-source infrastructure to enable personalized healthcare, ensure regulatory compliance, and prevent the stagnation caused by proprietary "black box" systems. Looking ahead, Asimolowo envisions a deflationary economic shift where AI agents transform traditional industries and social dynamics, provided that leaders prioritize high-quality data curation and psychological safety over rapid, unchecked deployment.
Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014
Yann LeCun, Elon, David Marcus, Harry Stebbings
Yann LeCun traces the historical resurgence of deep learning from his 1980s postdoctoral work with Jeff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio to his prediction that current autoregressive large language models will soon become obsolete due to their lack of planning capabilities and persistent memory. He advocates for a shift toward open-source ecosystems that enforce hardwired safety constraints and hierarchical objectives, arguing that such architectures will replace text prediction with systems capable of genuine world modeling and common sense. LeCun concludes by dismissing doomer narratives and mass unemployment fears, asserting that the AI revolution will ultimately generate a new renaissance of creative roles while requiring societal adjustments to wealth distribution rather than technological restriction.
Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013
Clem Delangue, Elon, Harry Stebbings
Hugging Face, founded by Clem, Thomas, and Julia, evolved from an initial consumer chatbot experiment into a global AI infrastructure platform by leveraging open-source collaboration and a decentralized talent strategy across Paris, New York, and San Francisco. The company currently serves approximately 15,000 organizations through a freemium model that prioritizes massive adoption and network effects over immediate revenue, while advising startups to build custom models rather than relying on external APIs to ensure long-term differentiation. By maintaining strict investor communication protocols and focusing on community-driven scientific progress, Hugging Face aims to navigate regulatory hurdles and talent shortages as it transitions the industry from niche usage to mainstream scale.
20Sales: How to Scale a Career While Scaling a Family; Work-Life Balance; Parental Leave | E1012
Maggie Hott, Stevie Case, Renu Gupta, Lauren Schwartz, Julie Maresca, Jessica Arnold, Harry Stebbings
Six sales leaders, including Jessica Arnold, Stevie Case, and Maggie Hott, convened to discuss the dual challenges and unique advantages of balancing motherhood with high-level sales careers. The panel detailed how integrating family responsibilities fosters leadership superpowers like time efficiency and empathy while highlighting systemic barriers such as career pauses and the lack of equitable parental leave policies. By advocating for structural changes like protected quotas during leave and cultural shifts that normalize vulnerability, the group emphasized that organizational support is essential to transforming perceived work-life conflicts into competitive advantages.
Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009
Vince Hankes, Sam Altman, Josh Kushner, Lee Fixel, Harry Stebbings
Thrive Capital partner Vince Leverett details the firm's transition from Tiger Global's financial rigor to a founder-empathy model that prioritizes product-market fit and transparent partnership dynamics. Leverett contrasts this approach with past missteps like the missed Canva investment, emphasizing that future success in the competitive AI landscape requires evaluating qualitative strengths over rigid pattern matching. He argues that while infrastructure plays a critical role, the majority of value will accrue to application-layer startups capable of creating entirely new user experiences outside incumbent control.
Mark Carney: First Republic Bank Fails; Will Interest Rates Rise? Global Warming's Net Zero | E1008
Mark Carney analyzes the US banking sector's shift from systemic crisis to consolidation, attributing regional failures to specific regulatory gaps while noting that superior liquidity buffers prevent a repeat of 2008. He contrasts these financial tensions with a robust global transition toward net zero, citing accelerated clean energy investment and the pivotal role of nations like China and the US in decarbonization. The discussion concludes by identifying fusion power as an imminent commercial reality and outlining the critical need for concessional capital to address emerging market financing gaps.
Sarah Guo: On Her New $101M Fund; How AI Impacts Inequality; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1007
Sarah Guo, Elad Gil, Harry Stebbings
Sarah Tavel has launched Conviction, a $100 million early-stage fund dedicated exclusively to Artificial Intelligence companies that leverage existing models to build billion-dollar ventures with lean teams. The strategy prioritizes capital efficiency and strategic matchmaking over large upfront check sizes, aiming to support founders in navigating a market where speed and specialized execution outweigh traditional defensibility. Tavel's thesis challenges prevailing venture norms by focusing on high-conviction, niche applications in sectors like legal tech and code generation while advocating for LP discipline to ensure structural sustainability.
Snap's VP of Product Jack Brody: The Future of AR; Snap Glasses; Evan Spiegel's Product Mind | E1006
Jack Brody, Evan Spiegel, Harry Stebbings, Gustav Soderstrom
Jack, a Snap product leader who transitioned from mechanical engineering to design, advocates for a philosophy that prioritizes rapid hypothesis validation and the intentional disruption of industry conventions to drive innovation. Under his guidance, Snap leverages low-fidelity prototyping and diverse team input to de-risk bold features like Stories, accepting short-term user friction to secure long-term market dominance. This approach, rooted in balancing analytical rigor with creative intuition, has allowed the company to evolve from a messaging app into a global AR platform while maintaining agility against larger competitors.
AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli: The Funding Market Today; Last-Mile Delivery; Competing w/ Carta | E1005
Following Naval Ravikant's invitation, former founder Avlok assumes the CEO role at AngelList and immediately pivots the firm toward a ruthless operational culture that eliminates all non-essential processes to accelerate product iteration. This strategic shift coincides with a bear market where the company leverages AI automation to scale its infrastructure, shuts down European operations to focus on capturing over 50% of the US market share, and targets a future as the immutable financial fabric of the venture sector without planning an IPO.
Tomasz Tunguz: How I Raised $230M; ChatGPT vs. Google; How LLMs Work; Trump vs DeSantis | E1004
Tomasz Tunguz, Trump, DeSantis, Harry Stebbings
Tom, a solo general partner, successfully raised a $230 million fund to pursue thesis-driven investments in AI infrastructure, utilizing a concentrated portfolio strategy that targets 10% ownership in Series A companies. His investment thesis centers on the convergence of closed and open-source models, predicting that superior execution and unique data moats will allow startups to outmaneuver incumbents like Google and Adobe in the coming decade. The campaign achieved a single close by securing two Institutional LPAC members as anchors and leveraging data room analytics to convert 50% of limited partners from previously unknown relationships.
Mark Goldberger: The Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Sales | E1003
Mark Goldberger, Harry Stebbings
Mark, a former wine industry entrepreneur who transitioned to enterprise SaaS sales at companies like TripActions and Ramp, outlines a rigorous methodology for building high-performing sales teams by prioritizing the "Four H's" of talent and utilizing deep qualification frameworks like MedPick. He advises founders to hire their first junior salesperson immediately, compensate them with significant equity, and replace traditional recruitment rubrics with candidates displaying race-car adaptability rather than conventional experience. Drawing on his personal journey and current success in driving Ramp's 400% revenue growth, Mark emphasizes that persistence in outbound outreach and strict deal validation are critical for navigating complex enterprise environments and achieving sustainable market expansion.
Joost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000
Joost de Valk, Harry Stebbings
Joost de Valk and his wife Marika scaled Yoast from a hobby project into a €15 million lifestyle business serving 13 million websites by rejecting venture capital and prioritizing organic cash flow over hyper-growth. De Valk highlights critical strategic shifts, including the transition to data-driven product decisions and the adoption of "decisions not options" design principles to serve the 90% of average users. His current angel investment strategy focuses on early-stage founders with strong partner dynamics who aim for rapid self-sustainability, while he warns that AI integration will soon reshape developer roles and amplify the value of human-curated content.