Latest Interviews
Showing 91–102 of 102 interview transcripts.
Clear all filtersText-to-CAD: AI Revolutionizing Hardware Design with Jordan Noone of Zoo
Jordan Noone, Molly O'Shea, Jessie Frazelle, Ben Horowitz, Vinod Khosla, Alfred Lin, Mike Maples, Roger Ehrenberg
Zoo is launching a cloud-based, GPU-optimized computational geometry engine designed to replace manual, labor-intensive CAD workflows with AI-driven automation for the $1 trillion hardware development market. Led by Aerospace engineer and Relativity Space co-founder Jordan Noon alongside CEO Jess, the company has already generated 13,000 CAD files via its generative AI interface while securing $6 million in funding from investors including GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. The firm plans to expand its workforce to 50 employees and construct an in-house factory to integrate Design for Manufacturability checks directly into its machine learning models.
John Coogan, EIR at Founders Fund, Founder of Soylent & Lucy
Former Soylent founder John Coogan launched Lucy in 2016 to introduce nicotine replacement products into a market where regulatory barriers now make entry nearly impossible without massive capital. The company successfully achieved profitability by targeting older demographics with a conservative strategy that avoids youth-culture marketing while competing against big tobacco giants like Altria. Coogan also uses this venture to critique the venture capital ecosystem's over-reliance on massive scale-ups, advocating instead for sustainable micro-businesses and practical AI applications.
Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures: Investing in Space, Defense, & Exit Opportunities
Mark Suster and Upfront Ventures articulate a strategy centered on disciplined seed and early-stage investing to navigate a private equity landscape where valuation spreads have narrowed, forcing acquirers to focus on $100M to $500M targets rather than billion-dollar exits. Their approach utilizes a barbell fund structure that avoids overvalued Series A/B rounds while prioritizing founder-centric deals in sectors like space, defense, and robotics to mitigate the risks of an increasingly difficult IPO environment. By targeting companies with exceptional product economics and long-term founder commitment, the firm aims to position its portfolio for acquisition when market conditions correct, anticipating a surge in aggressive buyouts within the next two to three years.
Hunter Walk, Homebrew & Screendoor
Hunter Walk and Satya Patel restructured Homebrew into a self-funded evergreen vehicle to eliminate external LPs and align 100% of incentives with founders, while also co-founding Screen Door to provide structural mentorship and capital to emerging managers in North and Latin America. This approach counters the industry's trend toward commoditization by operating without fund life deadlines and prioritizing concentrated, differentiated strategies over fee-driven scale. The firms collectively aim to disrupt the venture capital sector by fostering diverse, high-performing portfolios and advising new GPs on raising "minimum viable funds" to maximize operational efficiency.
Radiant CEO Doug Bernauer on Portable Nuclear Microreactors & the Future of Clean Energy
Radiant is advancing the development of a portable one-megawatt nuclear reactor designed to replace diesel generators in remote locations, backed by $60 million in venture funding and seven government contracts. Led by former SpaceX engineer Doug Bernauer, the company utilizes helium-cooled TRISO fuel and a factory-based manufacturing model to achieve mass production and eliminate on-site nuclear waste storage. With a first fuel test scheduled for 2026 to break a fifty-year hiatus on U.S. reactor designs, Radiant aims to deliver safe, off-grid power by 2025 through its partnership with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Founder of Fundera (Nerdwallet) & GroupMe (Skype/Microsoft) Path to VC | Jared Hecht, USV
Venture Partner Jared Hecht joins Union Square Ventures to apply his serial founder experience from exits at GroupMe and Fundera toward backing contrarian startups operating at the edge of large markets. Under USV's collaborative, generalist partnership model, the firm prioritizes deep founder support, honest feedback, and consistent pro-rated follow-on investing to navigate transformative sectors like AI and healthcare. This approach is bolstered by a shifting New York tech landscape where traditional finance alumni are increasingly dominating the founder ecosystem, effectively moving the region's startup culture from the fringe to the epicenter.
Embracing American Dynamism to Upgrade Manufacturing Production With Oden CEO Willem Sundblad
Odin Technologies secured a $28.5 million Series B investment led by Sweden's North Star Growth, with participation from Flat Capital and current customers to accelerate the deployment of its real-time Process AI platform. The company targets large-scale manufacturing operations in sectors like paper, pulp, and plastics, where its interpretability-focused technology reduces operator dependency and shortens sales cycles by half. Following over three times growth since 2022, the capital will fund the integration of domain-specific foundation models and data enrichment tools to expand operations from North America into Europe and Latin America.
Kyle Harrison, GP at Contrary on Techno-Optimism, Talent Vortexes, & Writing “Investing 101”
Kyle Harrison, a former film major who transitioned into venture capital through diverse roles at TCV, Coatue, and Index, now applies a holistic framework at Contrary to support talent from undergraduate studies through company exits. Contrary operates as a "talent vortex" that leverages a productized research arm and a generalist investment strategy across sectors like defense and AI to identify the "smartest people" early and facilitate career growth via its open-source reports. Harrison's approach emphasizes navigating geopolitical shifts and hype cycles by treating truth as a narrative construct while preparing for an upcoming age of acquisition driven by capital recycling and market correction.
Morgan Housel: Understanding Elon Musk, Jensen Huang and Other Outliers in Tech
Morgan Housel, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Molly O'Shea
Financial writer Morgan Housel discusses how 90% of outlier success in fields like venture capital and publishing stems from uncontrollable luck rather than replicable strategies, challenging the validity of morning routines and predictive forecasting. He contrasts this by analyzing the post-2020 capital cycle, noting that the transition from zero interest rates to a 5.5% discount environment has forced a return to valuing current cash flows over speculative stories to flush out unsustainable "tourist investors." Drawing on themes from *The Psychology of Money* and *The Same as Ever*, Housel argues that while specific market conditions and technologies evolve, human behavioral constants regarding greed and fear remain the only reliable guide for navigating financial uncertainty.
Get Tesla Big | Chris Power, Hadrian
Chris Power, Hadrian, Molly O'Shea
Hadrian, a US-based manufacturer of precision components for the defense and aerospace sectors, secured a $117 million Series B round led by Andy Grayson and RTX Ventures to finance a new debt-backed capital expenditure strategy and expedite a second factory location. The company leverages its proprietary software and robotics to deliver 10x productivity gains over traditional labor models, aiming to reach full production capacity by Q1 2025 before expanding into a new state by mid-year to meet surging demand from tier-one primes. Founder Chris Power describes the venture as a mission-critical effort to preserve American industrial competitiveness against China, forecasting a high-stakes trajectory toward becoming a $10 billion entity through a "human-in-the-loop" operational model and aggressive global scaling.
Varda's Landing, Peter Thiel, & the Future of El Segundo, Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund
Peter Thiel, Delian Asparouhov, Molly O'Shea
Delian, a recent father and Founders Fund partner, founded Varda Space Industries to commercialize space manufacturing by deploying a low-cost, Starlink-like re-entry capsule under new FAA regulations. By pivoting exclusively to small-molecule pharmaceuticals and utilizing novel ground-based centrifuge research, the company targets a per-mission cost of $3.5–$4 million while implementing risk-sharing agreements for flight discoveries. Complementing this venture, Delian leverages his operator experience to advocate for decentralizing investing culture and predicting Eastern Europe's economic rise over stagnating Western markets.
Alex Kolicich, 8VC: Exodus of Venture Capital, AI Predictions
Alex Kulisic, founding partner of 8VC, outlines a market correction driven by post-2021 leverage distortions while forecasting a temporary AI overhype followed by a decade of transformative knowledge work. He identifies a shift toward disciplined capital allocation across software, biotech, and defense, noting that current enterprise value creation remains nascent despite infrastructure enthusiasm. Ultimately, Kulisic advises founders to capitalize on available dry powder by prioritizing durable product-market fit over transient feature parity as the sector matures.