Andrew Ross Sorkin does the work of about five people. He founded and writes the DealBook newsletter for the New York Times. He hosts Squawk Box on CNBC every morning at 6am. He runs the DealBook Summit, which has become the premier annual interview event across business, policy, and technology. He co-created the TV show Billions. He wrote the definitive account of the 2008 financial crisis, "Too Big to Fail", and now he's written "1929," a 600-page epic about the greatest crash in Wall Street history. So how does he actually do all of this?
Today we sit down with Andrew to answer exactly that question. We dive into his philosophy on interviewing, his start as a teenage freelancer at the New York Times, how he built DealBook from a daily column into a media empire, and his actual daily routine that somehow fits all of this into 24 hours!
Tobi is one of the most thoughtful people in the technology industry. He's also one of the very few people who started as a programmer -- just trying to solve his own problem -- and still runs his company as CEO today even as it approaches a $200B market cap. Tobi has done this in two big ways: first, a willingness throw away his past beliefs in the face of new data, growing into the leader the company needed. And second, by remaining a close observer (and participant!) in how new technology emerges that changes what is possible.
Today we talk with him about both. The first half of the episode is about what has changed for him in the AI era. How he spends his time with AI throughout the day, how he thinks about what AI unlocks philosophically, and what he thinks the impact will be on all of us and what we build. The second half is more about Shopify. How he dealt mentally with the explosion in stock price in 2021 from a 20x revenue multiple to a 70x revenue multiple. And then, what he subsequently did when it all came crashing down. We also talk with him about the leadership and product principles that he's employed to steadily grow the company's revenues to an all-time high today.
Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the world to tackle that question. Bret and Clay are the co-founders of the AI company Sierra.
Brett's resume reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley: co-creator of Google Maps, founder of FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook where he became CTO), founder of Quip (acquired by Salesforce where he became co-CEO), former Chairman of the Board at Twitter, and current Chairman of the Board at OpenAI. Clay spent 18+ years at Google, starting as an APM alongside Brett and eventually running product for Gmail, Drive, Docs (all of Google Workspace), Google Labs, and the company's AR/VR efforts.
In addition to AI, today’s conversation has some great tech industry history discussion and old Google stories, perfect to tide us all over between Google Part I and Part II!
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The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter’s box... it’s a strike. If you bunt, you’re out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you’re also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It’s sacrilegious to traditional baseball fans everywhere. But it’s hard to argue with their numbers: they have 3.2 million fans on a waiting list to see them and have been selling out 80,000-seat football stadiums over the past few months!
Today, we sit down with Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. We unpack the whole story, staring with a failing college summer league team, an air mattress, and a $30 weekly grocery budget. But these days... it's safe to say that Jesse and his wife don’t have to sleep on an air mattress anymore! And they have built the business in their own way, fully under their control, and uniquely “fans first”. They have a unique all-in ticketing model, where your game ticket gets you full access to food along with your seat. There are no ads or sponsorships. There are no ticket fees or middlemen. And in fact, Jesse and crew will even pay the sales tax on your ticket for you! Jesse is just totally obsessed with delighting fans, controlling the end-to-end experience, and thinking long term… even if it means leaving (a lot) of money on the table today.
This may be our most fun ACQ2 (or Acquired!) episode ever. Enjoy!
On our AWS episode, we talked briefly about the next chapter of cloud: data warehouses. But what makes them so powerful? Why do enterprises rely on them? And how will cloud customers collaborate on data stored in multiple clouds?
We sit down with Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO of Samooha, a new company backed by Altimeter and Snowflake Ventures to tackle the problem of secure data sharing and collaboration in the cloud. Kamakshi has an impressive background to speak to this problem, having been a part of AdMob (sold to Google), and the founder/CEO of Drawbridge, which sold to LinkedIn. She then went on to work in Microsoft's Office of the CTO, where she obviously had a lot of experience understanding the needs of cloud customers.
If you want a better understanding of how enterprises use the cloud, multi-cloud architecture, and how security and privacy works with customer data at scale, this episode is for you!
Statsig CEO and former Facebook VP Vijaye Raji joins us to discuss democratizing the tools of big tech. Before starting Statsig, Vijaye spent 10 years at Facebook where he led the development of their mobile ad product (yes — THAT mobile ad product that’s the core of FB today).
We talk all about about Facebook’s early days in mobile, and the internal building and shipping process that let them continuously experiment and roll out features out to billions of users, which Statsig is now bringing to engineering and product teams everywhere. This episode is a must-listen for product builders at all stages!
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We sit down with Altimeter Capital’s head of Capital Formation Meghan Reynolds (who previously was TPG’s global co-head of Capital Formation for 10 years) to talk about everything that goes into the LP - GP relationship at venture funds. We cover how (and why) to think strategically about Capital Formation, why it should be about so much more the just investor relations / fundraising, and also why and how it’s going to change dramatically over the next decade. This was a GREAT conversation, and very relevant for GPs, LPs, and also company founders and employees heading into 2023 and post zero-interest-rate capital markets.
Listen in any podcast player.
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We’re super excited to be joined by Brian Tolkin, one of Uber’s first ~100 employees who built their “Product Ops” organization and then went on to lead Product Management for UberPOOL and all shared rides on the platform. We dive into the nitty gritty of how Uber built their “twin turbine” engine of decentralized real-world Ops and centralized Tech Product, and how the organization evolved as it scaled. We also cover Brian’s new role at OpenDoor, and the even tight ops + product coupling they’re building now in real estate.
Ben & David take their turn at the "power ballad" of VC blogging/podcasting, explaining how venture term sheets work. From valuation to pro rata rights to founder vesting, we leave no stone unturned in this episode. If you're a founder, work at a startup, or are considering doing one of those someday, this episode is for you!
We’re joined by Upfront Ventures partner Kevin Zhang to discuss the evolution of both Upfront as a venture firm and the LA tech ecosystem more broadly. We cover the journey from Upfront’s founding as “Global Retail Partners” in 1996 to its place today as the premier and largest tech investor in Southern California. We talk about rebranding the firm and choosing Upfront as a name, launching the Upfront Summit, what LA is "good and not good at", and Kevin’s thesis around gaming as a great place for venture investing.
We dive deep into the nitty gritty details of SaaS investing and company building with the best in the business, Jake Saper from Emergence Capital. Emergence has been around since the beginning of the SaaS industry and -uniquely for a venture firm- is entirely focused on early-stage investing within it. They were early investors in major successes like Salesforce, Veeva, SuccessFactors, Box and Yammer, and more recently, Gusto, Zoom, and many more.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone investing in, operating in, or thinking about modern SaaS companies!
You can also sign up for Emergence's regular email newsletter on SaaS topics at: eepurl.com/c1IPvf
We continue the conversation with Emily White, covering topics including her career path, what it was like working with Sheryl Sandberg for so many years, her time at Snap, her experience serving on public company boards, and how she operates as an investor now at Anthos Capital.
As promised in our holiday special, we dive into the past, present and future of clean energy funding, with the absolutely perfect guest: the former Obama administrations Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Doug Rand. This episode was totally eye opening for us, and we hope inspires many of you to think about energy and climate through an entrepreneurial lens.
Ever wondered what's really going on during the Monday Meetings of your friendly neighborhood VC firm? Ben and David take you behind the scenes to discuss structure (especially how the management company works), staffing, LPs, and most importantly decision-making and motivations for VC firms and their partners. Whichever side of the table you're on, we hope you find this episode useful!