The Peel with Turner Novak

Turner Novak

0.0 (0)
Technologie
Wöchentlich

Exploring the world’s greatest startup stories. Get a behind the scenes look into the founding stories of your favorite companies. Learn how the industries they operate in actually work, and learn playbooks and tactics you can use to launch and scale your own business.

vor 4 Tagen

Inside Solana's Plan to Replace Wall Street | Anatoly Yakovenko

Anatoly Yakovenko is the co-founder of Solana, the fastest scaled blockchain in the world. We start by talking about how non-US residents were trading SpaceX on Solana pre-IPO, and which parlayed into the last 130 years of US financial markets. We then get into how Solana is removing eight layers of middlemen that make-up the legacy financial system, whether you actually need to use blockchain to do this, the 4am inspiration to start Solana, how Solana was 10,000x faster than Bitcoin, why a16z passed on investing then paid a 1,000x higher price, how launching Solana at the bottom of the market right as COVID hit led to their success, why AI won’t take your job, growing up sharing one toilet with four families in the USSR, and playing competitive underwater hockey. Thanks to this episodes sponsors! Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) Trading SpaceX on Solana (3:02) Why Wall Street runs on 100 year old tech (10:51) US dominance created demand for tokenized stocks (13:58) Complexity reduces risk of the financial system (15:51) Do you need to use blockchain? (18:34) Privacy tradeoffs of public ledgers (23:45) Making a 10,000x faster blockchain (30:05) A new data structure based on time (32:54) Trading was Solana’s first use case (37:41) Advice from his wife that led to Solana (40:05) Why a16z passed (then paid up 1,000x) (43:50) Rejection and COVID led to Solana’s fast adoption (48:30) Best time to launch is the bottom of a market (52:56) Why Bitcoin and Ethereum were so slow (57:38) Rebuilding Solana with Alpenglow (1:01:23) 35% of all stablecoin volume runs on Solana (1:04:26) Motors replaced 200 billion jobs, AI will replace 100 billion (1:08:17) It’s selfish to protest data centers (1:10:11) Growing up in the USSR: one toilet, four families (1:12:27) Culture shock moving to the US (1:13:23) Government spending is fake GDP (1:15:49) Playing competitive underwater hockey (1:18:01) Armani at Backpack (1:19:23) How Solana survived the FTX collapse (1:22:47) There won’t be massive AI job loss Referenced Solana: https://solana.com/ Jobs at Solana: https://jobs.solana.com/companies/solana-foundation-2 Slow Ventures: https://slow.co/ Foundation Capital: https://foundationcapital.com/ Multicoin: https://multicoin.capital/ Follow Anatoly Twitter: https://x.com/toly?lang=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatoly-yakovenko Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
17. Juli

The Hidden Layer Every AI Agent Runs On | Tony Holdstock-Brown, Inngest

Tony Holdstock-Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Inngest, the durable execution platform that quietly powers your favorite AI agents. We get into why agents work in a demo and die in production, building their own cloud to get 20x lower cost, growing 35x after AWS and Cloudflare copied them, growing a dev tools company without a personal brand or Twitter account, why he thinks evals today are like “asking the criminal if they committed the crime”, and the thing they built to score 100% of your production agents without paying for LLM as a judge. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, Merge, and Monaco for supporting this episode. Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) The hidden infra layer every AI agent runs on (1:46) Building complex chains of logic (3:31) Why agent SDK's don't go far enough (4:49) Healthcare was the original event-driven nightmare (6:32) Storing traces on your infrastructure enables self-improving loops (14:26) Why Inngest was already in the right place for AI (15:49) Score agents off product events, not LLM's (17:31) The OpenAI copy-paste signal (21:24) Swap in LLMs and cut costs 20x (23:44) How customers pulled the product forward (25:41) Orchestration belongs outside the sandbox (29:48) Building a neocloud to cut costs 20x (32:09) Most neoclouds just resell AWS (32:54) All AI infrastructure is converging (34:49) Why Claude can't just build your backend (36:44) How to build a software factory (39:12) Agents are a lottery you get addicted to (42:44) Loops must exist until AGI hits (45:38) If models keep getting better, why orchestrate? (48:28) When incumbents steal your features (52:30) Why you can't vibe code infrastructure (55:54) Why Tony has no personal brand (59:38) Dev tools GTM without Twitter (1:03:20) Lessons from the founder of DuckDuckGo (1:10:39) Truth as a company value (1:13:08) Taking too long adapting to AI (1:15:10) Startups are 100% R&D (1:17:19) Ali from Databricks (1:19:03) Writing his own code, Voice-to-text with local models (1:23:53) Evals are batshit insane Referenced Inngest: https://www.inngest.com/ Principles by Ray Dalio: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501124021?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Traction - How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591848369?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Follow Tony Twitter: https://x.com/itstonyhb LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyhb/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
10. Juli

Rebuilding a $600M Company From Scratch | Peter Rahal, David

Peter Rahal is the Founder and CEO of David. Before David, he built RXBAR in his parents' basement with $10k and sold it to Kellogg for $600M. We get into why he basically rebuilt the same company again, how buying his own ingredient supplier made a food business venture-backable, why RXBAR's paleo positioning was a trap, the EPG fat technology behind David, how GLP-1’s have changed diet trends forever, selling cans of fish as a marketing weapon, the lawsuit that got him 120M impressions in a week, and why he studies fashion houses instead of food companies. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (0:00) David: Tools to increase muscle, decrease fat (2:24) Making nutrition evidence-based, not ideological (4:27) $300M revenue in year two (5:19) Why he rebuilt the same company again (7:12) Do what you're already good at (9:57) In food, the only edge is brand (12:13) The RXBAR playbook and $600M exit (14:20) RXBAR's original positioning was too fragile (15:25) Designing David from first principles (18:22) Why people don't eat protein bars (19:33) Building a multi-brand company that lasts (25:44) How EPG made David venture-backable (29:44) The Medici name and structure (31:38) Food entrepreneurs are Luddites (33:37) Why Big Food can't innovate (38:21) Beverage is a better business than food (40:34) Deciding which products to launch (43:21) GLP-1's ended diet trends forever (48:09) Looking good is the new status symbol (51:30) Sleep first, exercise second, nutrition third (54:35) Brand is just a unique human being (59:05) Humor travels (1:01:09) Marketing is finding mispriced attention (1:06:35) When to bail on a marketing trend (1:09:05) What makes a good meme (1:10:00) Why David sold cans of fish (1:13:30) How to navigate a lawsuit (1:17:02) 120M impressions from a lawsuit (1:18:52) Lessons from Bezos and Brad Jacobs (1:23:30) Why the best brands are fashion and beauty (1:25:00) Women set culture Referenced David: https://davidprotein.com/ EPG / Epogee: https://epogee.com/ Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/ Oura: https://ouraring.com/ Fort: https://fort.cx/ David Rumors TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@davidprotein/video/7616855415875210510 Founders Podcast: https://www.founderspodcast.com/ How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs: https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Few-Billion-Dollars/dp/B0CHTQP25T Follow Peter Twitter: https://x.com/PeterRahal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-rahal-037bba43 Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
3. Juli

Inside Goldman’s $22B Bet on Venture Capital | Hans Swildens, Industry Ventures

Hans Swildens started Industry Ventures in 2000, and this is his first podcast since selling it to Goldman Sachs in 2026. Hans has been buying venture secondaries longer than almost anyone, and the combined business is one of the largest VC portfolios in the world: 525 firms, 1,600 funds, and over $22B in capital commitments. We get into why he sold to Goldman, the barbell market quietly killing middle-stage venture, how VC's are manufacturing their own exits, why most seed funds without a real angle have 5 years left, the LP base that's a completely different species every fund cycle, how he started Industry by acquiring funds at 99% discounts during the Dot Com Collapse, the day he passed on a multi-billion-dollar data center, and why the secondary market may eventually be multiples the size of the primary market. Thank you to Zach Coelius, Will Quist, Emily Zheng, and Andrea McGee for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (0:00) Inside Goldman’s $22B venture bet (7:57) 1,600 funds over 525 firms (11:11) Why scale lets you “see the cube” (14:17) Most humbling lesson in 26 years (16:19) Three types of Seed funds (18:47) LP's evolve every fund cycle (22:00) VC is a sales game (24:38) A strong CRM is non-negotiable (29:06) Buying secondaries during the Dot Com Collapse (31:33) Triangulating opinions across GP’s, founders, and LP’s (37:22) Seed without differentiation doesn’t work (42:16) Biggest mistakes by first-time GP’s (44:31) Buying Enron’s VC portfolio at a 99% discount (50:15) Entrepreneurial finance is underappreciated (52:15) Why asset managers are acquiring venture firms (58:47) Why it’s hard to start venture programs (1:03:20) Secondaries: $250M to $150B market in 25 years (1:08:06) Continuation funds & debt structured secondaries (1:12:02) “Secondaries might be multiples bigger than primaries” (1:19:52) How to structure secondary transactions (1:26:00) What happens after SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic IPO’s (1:30:35) How Seed survives the asset manager era (1:35:16) How to manufacture liquidity (1:41:41) How AI is impacting secondary markets Referenced Industry Ventures: https://www.industryventures.com/ How Big Is The Secondary Market for Venture Capital?: https://www.industryventures.com/insight/2023-2025e-how-big-is-the-secondary-market-for-venture-capital/ Exploring the Growth of Venture Secondaries: https://www.chronograph.pe/exploring-the-growth-of-venture-secondaries/ Pitchbook’s US Secondaries Market Watch: https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/2025-annual-us-vc-secondary-market-watch Follow Hans Twitter: https://x.com/HansSwildens LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansswildens Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
25. Juni

The Past, Present, and Future of Pre-Seed | Charles Hudson, Precursor

Charles Hudson started Precursor Ventures in 2015, and helped create pre-seed as a category. Ten years and hundreds of Day 0 checks later, few investors have backed as many first-time founders, making him the perfect person to talk through the state of the category today. We talk about why this is the hardest moment for pre-seed/seed investing he can remember, why sitting out of bubbles can be more dangerous than joining, how he hands his junior team real money to make their own bets, and urgency and “the last $250k effect”. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (0:00) Is Pre-Seed dead? (4:15) Do round names matter anymore? (12:27) Multi-stage signaling risk doesn’t exist (16:42) Smart LP’s love multi-stage funds (22:03) Is the traditional Seed model broken? (26:31) Velocity of capital deployment drives all incentives (30:30) How to compete with megafunds at early stage (34:24) Megafunds have Seed funds in a vice-grip (38:34) “The best Series A’s are all expensive" (39:33) Are we doing 2021 all over again? (41:53) It’s safer to participate in bubbles than sit out (47:35) Price you pay is everything (50:22) The system incentivizes an addiction to consensus (55:22) High valuation + high CapEx grows AUM (59:56) How Precursor actually invests today (1:01:32) Precursor’s Principal investor program (1:05:56) Deciding when to selling your winners (1:10:53) Raising as a pre-consensus founder (1:12:39) What Charles looks for in founders (1:17:20) What it’s actually like to start a fund (1:20:56) Misconceptions of first-time fund managers (1:26:22) 300+ LP meetings to raise Precursor Fund 1 (1:29:24) The single tweak to his pitch that raised the fund (1:31:54) Precursor’s evolution over time (1:34:57) The second desert of venture capital (1:37:34) The last $250k effect Referenced Precursor: https://precursorvc.com/ a16z’s State of Markets report https://x.com/TurnerNovak/status/2015830796393742599?s=20 Follow Charles Twitter: https://x.com/chudson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chudson Charles Substack: https://chudson.substack.com/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
18. Juni

Inside Elbow Grease, NYC's Hands-On Accelerator | Dan Teran, Gutter Capital

Dan Teran is the co-founder Gutter Capital, a concentrated seed fund in NYC, and Elbow Grease, the accelerator that puts 15 startups in one building and helps build their teams for them. Gutter just announced a $75M Fund III and opened applications for the second Elbow Grease batch (apply below by July 31st) We get into starting an accelerator when there’s already a hundred of them, why Gutter prefers very concentrated portfolios, what it was actually like selling Managed by Q to WeWork, why raising a fund turned out to be harder than selling a company, why he thinks startups should form a board and use OKR’s from day one, and the time he went big-wave surfing with Adam Neumann and Laird Hamilton. Thank you to James Gettinger, Satya Patel, Abhinav Kapur, and JT White for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (0:00) Elbow Grease: NYC’s new accelerator (7:39) Building a small, hands-on, in-person experience (13:39) Recruiting 100 people into portfolio companies (16:25) Portfolio concentration makes investors more helpful (24:58) Why raising Fund 1 was so hard (28:08) Advice for new fund managers (30:30) “Hiring today is as competitive as ever” (32:23) Selling Managed By Q to WeWork (35:23) “Never raise too much money” (39:43) Almost buying his company back from WeWork in Feb 2020 (43:50) Starting Gutter Capital in the depths of COVID (49:34) Funding angel investing with gambling proceeds (52:39) Behind the name “Gutter Capital” (54:49) “Raising a fund is like getting punched in the face” (59:03) Writing long LP letters (1:06:45) Investing in real world problems (1:09:48) What a Gutter founder looks like (1:12:46) How Gutter makes new investments (1:18:41) Importance of customer calls at pre-seed (1:21:59) Evolution of NYC tech over last 15 years (1:26:15) Why you should form a board at Seed (1:28:29) How to run a Seed stage board meeting (1:34:04) Sharing carry with portfolio founders (1:35:56) The best founders need lots of help (1:39:30) Big wave surfing with Adam Neumann and Laird Hamilton Referenced Apply to Elbow Grease: https://forms.gutter.cc/eg0002-application Elbow Grease: https://elbowgrease.cc/ Gutter Capital: https://www.gutter.cc/ WeWork Acquires Managed By Q: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/03/wework-acquires-managed-by-q/ Follow Dan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danteran/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
11. Juni

The AI-Native GTM Playbook | Sam Blond, Monaco

Sam Blond is the Co-founder and CEO of Monaco, the revenue engine for startups. Sam is one of the best sales operators in tech. He spent four years as CRO at Brex, where he helped scale it to a ~$12B valuation, ran sales at Zenefits before that, and got his start at EchoSign. If there’s a modern GTM playbook, Sam helped write it. Our conversation walks through how AI has rewritten a big chunk of it. But most importantly, we talk about what hasn’t changed. We get into the sales work AI is now better at than humans, and why Sam thinks 90% of startups misdiagnose their bottleneck as conversion when it’s really demand gen. He explains why he doesn’t measure early brand marketing at all and trusts anecdotes over attribution, walks through the full Monaco launch playbook including the Super Bowl box-truck story, and shares a rev-ops insight from Brex, including how they figured out a specific ICP converted at 4x the rate of another. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (0:00) Scaling Brex to $12B (1:14) How AI speeds up prospecting and TAM building (5:19) Using AI to get more leverage (9:15) Incubating Monaco at Founders Fund (12:56) Innovator’s dilemma in AI (15:57) Why AI companies build full platforms, not wedge products (23:30) Revenue is just a math equation (27:18) Two ways AI increases conversion rates (36:56) AI will never replace spending time with customers (39:46) Don’t measure the impact of brand marketing (49:03) Your marketing must be different (and hard) (58:39) Customer discovery calls and working with design partners (1:03:03) The zero to 100 launch (1:11:00) Monaco’s launch playbook (1:19:00) Send gifts that are unique and social (1:22:17) Naming your company (1:28:04) Founders should send early outbound (1:32:38) How multi-channel augments AI outbound (1:39:42) Using intent signals and outreach timing to increase conversions (1:43:28) Two common ways founders mess up when scaling revenue (1:50:22) Monaco’s Forward Deployed AE's Referenced Try Monaco: https://www.monaco.com/ Careers at Monaco: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/monaco Sam’s launch post: https://x.com/samdblond/status/2026420015793320129?s=20 Follow Sam Twitter: https://x.com/samdblond LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-blond-791026b/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
5. Juni

Inside the First Quant-Driven VC Fund | Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Chamaeleon

Nuno Goncalves Pedro is the Founder and Managing Partner at Chamaeleon. He won't describe it this way, but I'd call Chamaeleon something like "The RenTech of VC." Chamaeleon is built around its proprietary data platform, Mantis, which borrows tools like factor analysis from public-market investors and operates more like a quant hedge fund than a traditional venture firm. We talk through a bunch of data that cuts against the common narrative in venture, including why repeat founders aren't always the safer bet, why sub-$100m funds catch the majority of fund-returning deals, and why 10x might be a better target than 100x. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner Timestamps: (1:00) When 1st time founders outperform serial entrepreneurs (8:05) Mantis: factor-driven quant model for VC (18:33) Why most VC’s are not data-driven (22:28) Top 1% VC fund performance (27:41) Early customer sentiment stronger success indicator than PMF or Team (34:09) Importance of co-investors on performance (39:42) Sub-$100M funds capture 70% of fund-returning deals each year (43:53) The Neolab AI bubble (52:16) Marketing games that VC’s play (55:22) Most investors are not high conviction (56:43) Startups not raising for at least 3 years are 5x less likely to succeed. 10x less likely at 5 years. (1:00:19) Emerging managers have lowest LP interest in the last 15 years (1:11:19) LP capital is much less concentrated than in 2011 (1:16:28) The importance of remaining relevant (1:21:01) You must lean into your unique edge as an investor (1:23:18) Pros/Cons of an alumni network venture strategy (1:28:29) Specialist funds outperform generalists (with a catch) (1:35:22) The data says go for 10x, not 100x returns (1:41:41) Should you start or join a VC firm today? (1:48:07) Nuno’s collection of 270+ phones (1:53:16) Racing cars (and winning championships) Referenced Chamaeleon: https://www.chamaeleon.vc/ Tech Deciphered Podcast https://decipheredshow.com/ Say It With Charts: https://www.amazon.com/Say-Charts-Executives-Visual-Communication/dp/007136997X How To Lie With Charts: https://www.amazon.com/How-Charts-Gerald-Everett-Jones/dp/1419651439 Redmagic Phone: https://redmagic.gg/ ASUS Rog phone: https://rog.asus.com/phones/rog-phone-model/ Follow Nuno LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngpedro/ Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

Alle anzeigen (151)

Exploring the world’s greatest startup stories. Get a behind the scenes look into the founding stories of your favorite companies. Learn how the industries they operate in actually work, and learn playbooks and tactics you can use to launch and scale your own business.

Erstellt von

Turner Novak
Jahre aktiv

2023 - 2026
Folgen

151
Bewertung

Anstößig
Copyright

© Turner Novak
Sendungswebsite

The Peel with Turner Novak

Technologie

Technologie

Wöchentlich
Technologie

Technologie

Wöchentlich
Geldanlage

Geldanlage

Täglich
Technologie

Technologie

Wöchentlich
Geldanlage

Geldanlage

Wöchentlich
Technologie

Technologie

Wöchentlich
Technologie

Technologie

Täglich