Summation with Auren Hoffman

Auren Hoffman

Non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government.  Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious.  Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).  

  1. GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent

    1 day ago

    GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent

    This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the GTMnow podcast  --------------------------------------------------- Auren Hoffman (Flex Capital) joins the GTMnow podcast to share some of the most contrarian takes in tech today, from why AI moats are gone, to why your next VC meeting will be with a bot, to why AI is secretly going to trigger a baby boom. In this episode: Why Auren runs 500+ AI agents to source deals, and what that means for founders raising capitalThe "agent-to-agent" meeting prediction: by end of 2026, first VC conversations will be fully automatedWhy every software moat has been "blown up" and what Salesforce, LinkedIn & DocuSign need to do to surviveThe OpenAI x The Hustle acquisition breakdown: why it's the smartest (and cheapest) distribution play in AIWhy missing a great deal is 10x more painful than making a bad one, Auren's honest VC mistake frameworkThe baby boom thesis: why AI, IVF, self-driving cars & cheaper energy could reverse the fertility declineWhy companies won't sign yearly SaaS contracts anymore, and what that means for every B2B founderAuren Hoffman is the founder of NQB8, Flex Capital, SafeGraph, and LiveRamp. He's an early backer of Replit, Perplexity, Rippling, Vercel, Coinbase, Chime, and AppLovin. Max’s socials:  https://x.com/hackitmax https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/ Auren’s socials: https://x.com/auren https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/ https://auren.substack.com/ GTMnow: https://gtmnow.com

    40 min
  2. Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn

    26 May

    Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn

    Jake Stauch is the co-founder and CEO of Serval, the AI-native enterprise service management platform. Serval was founded in 2024 and has already raised over $125M across rounds led by Redpoint and Sequoia at a $1B+ valuation. Before Serval, Jake spent five years on the product team at Verkada and earlier founded NeuroPlus, a brain-sensing hardware company that made video games for kids with ADHD. In this episode of Summation, Jake and Auren discuss: Why Anthropic has added more ARR in the past few months than ServiceNow has in the past 20 yearsThe "forward deployed engineer" hire and why he recruits future founders instead of solutions engineersWhy talent density is the only remaining moat in the age of AIThe Silicon Valley collusion around not poaching each other's employeesYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jake Stauch on X at @jakeserval

    50 min
  3. Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource

    19 May

    Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource

    Dmitry Shevelenko is Chief Business Officer at Perplexity. He previously co-founded Tortoise, a robotics and commerce automation startup and held business development roles at Uber, LinkedIn, and Meta. He also serves on the board of Lazard.  In this episode of Summation, Dmitry and Auren discuss: Why CEOs and executives are Perplexity Computer’s biggest power users and what that says about who wins the AI eraScaling Perplexity past $500M ARR with only 34% headcount growthThe $34.5B Chrome bid and the TikTok bid before itWhy AI's biggest constraint right now is adoption and not capabilityYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitry Shevelenko on X at @dmitry140

    1 hr
  4. Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office

    12 May

    Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office

    Ben Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, an alternative asset management platform that gives individual investors access to private real estate, private credit, and venture capital. In March 2026, he listed the Fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker VCX, one of the first publicly traded venture capital funds. VCX gives retail investors direct exposure to private companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and SpaceX. The fund manages over $650 million and has over 100,000 individual investors. Ben is a returning Summation guest. In this episode of Summation, Ben and Auren discuss: Why VCX traded up 700% on day one while Bill Ackman's fund traded down the next weekWhy ETFs fall apart for private markets and closed-end funds are the right structureHow AI will reshape real estate by 2031 and which markets get hit hardestThe hidden truth that SoHo, Wynwood, and Miami Beach were all built by the same personYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ben Miller on X at @benmillerise

    1hr 2min
  5. Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war

    5 May

    Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war

    Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition. In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss: Why blackmail almost never works in espionage and ideology still doesWho is actually dying for PutinWhy China is the biggest winner of the Ukraine warHow technological surveillance transformed CIA tradecraft You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ralph Goff on Linkedin

    1hr 5min
  6. Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office​

    28 Apr

    Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office​

    Glenn Youngkin was the 74th Governor of Virginia. Before politics, he spent nearly 25 years at The Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, where he rose to co-CEO. During his four-year term, Virginia generated $10B in surplus revenue, delivered $9B in tax relief, attracted $156B in capital investment, and became one of the first states in the country to mandate cell-phone-free classrooms. In this episode of Summation, Glenn and Auren discuss: Why every Virginia state agency got OKRs and how it transformed a 110,000-person governmentWhy decommissioning baseload power was one of the dumbest decisions ever made How Loudoun County gets more than 25% of its tax base from data centersHow a startup used AI to cut more Virginia regulations in 7 months than 3 years of manual workYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Glenn Youngkin on X at @GlennYoungkin

    58 min
  7. Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on why trades are AI-proof, the trillion-dollar home services market, and why software stopped being a capital asset

    21 Apr

    Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on why trades are AI-proof, the trillion-dollar home services market, and why software stopped being a capital asset

    Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, the home services marketplace he started in 2008. Thumbtack connects homeowners to 300,000+ local service professionals, with nearly 100M projects started on the platform.  In this episode of Summation, Marco and Auren discuss: Why home services is bigger than groceries but barely any is booked onlineHow AI collapsed Thumbtack's product pod sizesWhy Silicon Valley underrates leadership and overrates management The single trait to screen every executive hire forYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Marco Zappacosta on X at @mlz

    59 min
  8. Eric Ries on why "bad governance" outperforms, the case against shareholder primacy, and AI's Chernobyl moment

    14 Apr

    Eric Ries on why "bad governance" outperforms, the case against shareholder primacy, and AI's Chernobyl moment

    Eric Ries created the Lean Startup methodology and authored the bestselling book of the same name, which has sold over a million copies. He's also the founder and executive chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the co-founder of Answer AI (an AI R&D lab), and the author of the upcoming book Incorruptible, releasing May 26th. In this episode of Summation, Eric and Auren discuss: why "bad governance" companies have outperformed "good governance" since 2008financial gravity - the invisible force that bends companies away from their missionthe foundation-controlled blueprint behind Novo Nordisk, IKEA, and Zeisswhy vibe coding is headed for its Chernobyl momentYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Eric Ries on X at @ericries

    59 min
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About

Non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government.  Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious.  Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).  

Information

  • Creator
    Auren Hoffman
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    270
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Summation with Auren Hoffman
  • Show Website
    Summation with Auren Hoffman

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