Sequoia Capital

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Kanal • 3 serier

Erhverv

Erhverv

Hver anden uge
Teknologi

Teknologi

Ugentligt
Iværksætteri

Iværksætteri

Hver anden uge

5 DAGE SIDEN

How Autonomous Labs Will Transform Scientific Research: Ginkgo Bioworks’ Jason Kelly

Jason Kelly founded Ginkgo Bioworks in 2008 with a simple but radical idea: DNA is code, and cells are programmable. Sixteen years later, AI is finally making that vision real in ways that could reshape science itself. Jason describes a landmark collaboration with OpenAI in which a reasoning model with access to a robotic lab beat the state of the art in biochemistry by 40% - not by being smarter than scientists, but by running experiments 24 hours a day and sharing data across a hundred parallel hypotheses simultaneously. He argues that the biggest inefficiency in science isn't intelligence, it's manual labor. Once AI helps scale research, the cost of discovery collapses and breakthroughs follow, with profound implications for biopharma, national competitiveness, and human health. Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

5 dage siden

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58 min.
19.12.2024

Robinhood ft. Vlad Tenev - Reinventing Finance for a New Generation

Millions of Americans use their smartphones to invest and manage their finances every day—but before Robinhood started in 2013, finance looked very different. Investing was something for the wealthy, with steep fees charged on every trade, and was done exclusively on computers with arcane trading software. In this episode, co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev explains why Robinhood set out to democratize access to investing and reinvent it for a new generation, how it overcame immense challenges in that pursuit, and how it reinvented itself amid a market downturn with a holistic suite of customer offerings to mount an historic comeback. Host: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital Featuring: Vlad Tenev, Micky Malka, Andrew Reed, Jason Warnick

19.12.2024

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48 min.
6. JAN.

Training General Robots for Any Task: Physical Intelligence’s Karol Hausman and Tobi Springenberg

Physical Intelligence’s Karol Hausman and Tobi Springenberg believe that robotics has been held back not by hardware limitations, but by an intelligence bottleneck that foundation models can solve. Their end-to-end learning approach combines vision, language, and action into models like π0 and π*0.6, enabling robots to learn generalizable behaviors rather than task-specific programs. The team prioritizes real-world deployment and uses RL from experience to push beyond what imitation learning alone can achieve. Their philosophy—that a single general-purpose model can handle diverse physical tasks across different robot embodiments—represents a fundamental shift in how we think about building intelligent machines for the physical world. Hosted by Alfred Lin and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital

6. jan.

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1 t. 2 min.
3 DAGE SIDEN

Oura’s Tom Hale: What People Don’t Tell You About Being CEO

Tom Hale didn't originally set out to be a CEO - then he put it on his bucket list to prove something to himself. Now he runs Oura, the Finnish health tech company behind the most talked-about wearable on the market - the Oura ring. In this conversation, we get into what the job actually feels like from the inside (spoiler: the kibble-to-champagne ratio is not what you think), and Tom shares some of the sharpest frameworks I've heard for scaling a company through the 200-to-2,000 employee gauntlet. We dig into Oura's controversial pivot to a subscription model - the Reddit flames, the one moment Tom almost blinked, and why he's now calling it an unqualified success. He breaks down the asymmetry between work and headcount that causes politics to metastasize in growing companies, what he looks for in middle managers to keep bureaucracy from setting in, and how he thinks about staying close to customers as layers accumulate between you and them. We also get into the Gucci partnership, what a Roman emperor has to do with it, and the unexpected retail insight that came out of it. And Tom shares why he sleeps soundly despite Apple being the 800-pound gorilla in wearables. If you're a founder navigating the messy middle of company building, this one is worth your time.

3 dage siden

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1 t.
12. MAR.

The Most Founder Mode CEO Working Today Isn’t the Founder: Opendoor’s Kaz Nejatian

Kaz Nejatian reveals how he left Shopify to pull off a highly unusual feat: refounding a struggling public company in just 16 days. From first attempting to take the company private and then becoming CEO with an unwavering commitment to prioritizing product, Kaz shares his unconventional playbook and approach to life. We go deep on why most enduring companies are built on "first derivatives" of their core business and not the obvious thing everyone focuses on. Kaz explains why he reads the Bible every day, how overriding life's defaults requires going full force (not halfway), and why founder mode means taking responsibility for outcomes, not processes. He breaks down the mechanics of the Opendoor turnaround, why he tethered his compensation to stock performance, and how he’s making the company AI-native. Essential listening for understanding true founder mode, or for anyone building something that matters.

12. mar.

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1 t. 3 min.
04.12.2025

Palo Alto Networks ft Nir Zuk & Nikesh Arora - The Grudge That Transformed Cybersecurity

In the early 2000s, the cybersecurity industry was dominated by incumbents focused on high margins, not innovation. Nir Zuk tells the story of how, frustrated by this stagnant culture, he set out on his own with a radical idea: the Next-Generation Firewall. His vision was to unify dozens of security functions into a single, intelligent platform delivered via cloud—an approach everyone thought was crazy. Palo Alto Networks started as a disruptive startup with Nir sporting a "Check Point Killer" vanity license plate, and grew to dominate cybersecurity. We explore the crucible moments that defined its path: the controversial decision to insist on being a new kind of "firewall" vs. a “firewall helper,” the challenge of scaling a hyper-growth company, and the critical pivot from building everything in-house to current CEO Nikesh Arora’s aggressive acquisition strategy that remade the company for the cloud era. Nir, Nikesh, and the core leadership team offer a masterclass in product conviction, strategic transformation, and the courage to disrupt yourself before the market does it for you. Featuring: Nir Zuk, Nikesh Arora, Lee Klarich, Rajiv Batra, Mark McLaughlin, Jim Goetz, Asheem Chandra Hosted by: Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital

04.12.2025

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47 min.
26. FEB.

Ben Horowitz On What Makes a Great Founder

A16z’s Ben Horowitz joins me for a raw, unfiltered conversation on what actually breaks founder CEOs, and what separates the great ones from the rest. We unpack founder mode, where it works and where people are taking it too far. Ben shares why overly deferring to experienced executives creates politics and fiefdoms, but avoiding senior talent altogether is just as risky. Founder mode is not about micromanaging. It’s really about taking responsibility for outcomes and having the confidence to manage people who may have more experience than you. Ben goes deep on “constructive confrontation” and why running away from the truth to preserve feelings is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a tech company. He explains why bad news has to travel fast, how decision debt paralyzes organizations, and why hesitation, not lack of intelligence, is what usually gets CEOs replaced. We also dive deep into hiring, especially the VP of Sales role founders mess up more than any other. Ben breaks down why great sales leaders qualify you in the interview, why references matter more than charisma, and why selling a hard product builds a different kind of operator. Along the way, we cover the psychology of being a first-time CEO, what Zuckerberg, Jensen, and Elon actually have in common, why culture is defined by behavior not values, and why feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing is more normal than most founders admit.

26. feb.

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49 min.
21. JAN.

Context Engineering Our Way to Long-Horizon Agents: LangChain’s Harrison Chase

Harrison Chase, cofounder of LangChain and pioneer of AI agent frameworks, discusses the emergence of long-horizon agents that can work autonomously for extended periods. Harrison breaks down the evolution from early scaffolding approaches to today's harness-based architectures, explaining why context engineering - not just better models - has become fundamental to agent development. He shares insights on why coding agents are leading the way, the role of file systems in agent workflows, and how building agents differs from traditional software development - from the importance of traces as the new source of truth to memory systems that enable agents to improve themselves over time. Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady

21. jan.

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40 min.
10. MAR.

Physics Gets a Vote: Nominal Cofounders on Hardware Development in an AI World

Nominal’s cofounders (Cameron McCord, Jason Hoch and Bryce Strauss) realized that the new age of reindustrialization requires a new approach to hardware engineering and testing that’s closer to how software is developed. They founded Nominal with the insight that while SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril built proprietary internal platforms for hardware testing, the thousands of new hardware entrants can't afford to replicate that work. Nominal serves as the system of record for hardware testing, helping companies move from PDF-based workflows to modern data infrastructure that catalogs telemetry from sensors producing millions of data points per second. The platform enables engineers to author validation logic that follows hardware systems from initial testing through manufacturing and field deployment. We discuss their belief that all hardware companies will become physical AI companies, and why they think Nominal's role as the verification layer will be critical - because unlike a video game, physical products require rigorous validation before they enter the real world. Hosted by: Alfred Lin and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital

10. mar.

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41 min.
14. JAN.

How Ricursive Intelligence’s Founders are Using AI to Shape The Future of Chip Design

Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini created AlphaChip at Google, using AI to design four generations of TPUs and reducing chip floor planning from months to hours. They explain how chip design has become the critical bottleneck for AI progress -- a process that typically takes years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Now at Ricursive Intelligence, they're enabling an evolution of the industry from “fabless” to "designless," where any company can create custom silicon with Ricursive Intelligence. Their vision: recursive self-improvement where AI designs more powerful chips, and faster, accelerating AI itself. Hosted by Stephanie Zhan and Sonya Huang

14. jan.

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37 min.

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