The Peel with Turner Novak

Turner Novak
  • 4.6 (11)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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.

  1. 30M AGO

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    1h 32m
  2. Cursor + Kalshi Seed Investor on Spotting Outlier Talent | Ali Partovi, Neo

    MAY 7

    Cursor + Kalshi Seed Investor on Spotting Outlier Talent | Ali Partovi, Neo

    Ali Partovi is the Co-founder and CEO of Neo. Neo started in 2017 as a network for the top college students. Neo is a “people-first” investor, a thesis it developed missing out on early investments in PayPal and Google at three employees. Neo has since invested in the Seed rounds of Cursor and Kalshi, and Ali shares everything he’s learned about spotting outlier talent, how to hire the best people, how computer science is the best business education, and why the best entrepreneurs start young. Special thanks to Hadi Partovi, Fuzzy Khosrowshahi, Alan Shusterman, and Claire Shorall for their help brainstorming topics for Ali. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude 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 Timestamps: (0:09) Neo’s two 10x funds (2:19) Missing PayPal led to Neo (9:32) Not investing in Google at 3 employees (11:31) Backing Facebook despite the idea (13:01) Starting Neo to help top college students (17:21) How to identify outlier talent (24:38) Neo’s coding test (27:41) Bootstrapping the first cohort of Neo Scholars (34:58) How Cognition President Russel Kaplan changed Neo forever (39:21) Starting Neo after talking to Steph Curry (46:42) Launching [Code.org](http://Code.org) to teach 20M kids to code (59:38) Is coding still relevant in 2026? (1:03:43) How to hire outlier talent (1:07:25) Why you should aggressively apply for one job (1:11:09) Neo Residency: $750k uncapped (1:19:51) Growing up in Iran during the revolution (1:26:03) Impact of the immigrant mentality (1:29:15) Most entrepreneurial roots start very young (1:39:18) Lessons investing in Cursor + Kalshi seed rounds (1:50:27) Confession: a podcast about failure (1:52:36) F*****g up a $50m deal by lying to Steve Jobs Referenced Neo: https://neo.com/ Neo Scholars Application: https://neo.com/scholars Neo Residency: https://neo.com/residency Code.org: https://code.org/ Lying to Steve Jobs: https://x.com/apartovi/status/1447251334814523392 Losing a deal with Yahoo: https://x.com/apartovi/status/1449856639331340289 Follow Ali Twitter: https://x.com/apartovi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apartovi/ 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/

    1h 56m
  3. How a Hillbilly in Nevada Bootstrapped a $140M ARR Manufacturing Company | Jim Belosic, SendCutSend

    APR 30

    How a Hillbilly in Nevada Bootstrapped a $140M ARR Manufacturing Company | Jim Belosic, SendCutSend

    Jim Belosic is the Co-founder and CEO of SendCutSend, a sheet metal manufacturing business he bootstrapped to a $140 million revenue run rate in eight years. We talk building a manufacturing business in the US, creative ways he financed the company early on, using speed and trust to compete with overseas competitors, lessons from restaurants, and why you can’t run a factory from a spreadsheet. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Timestamps: (0:16) Automating sheet metal manufacturing (5:59) Zero to $140 million ARR in 8 years (7:58) Acquiring a $750k laser with $0 (13:38) Automating factories is like baking cookies (15:17) Being legible to capital (17:31) Unlocking custom, low order manufacturing with software (20:00) Building more factories instead of selling the software (24:50) Run your company like a lemonade stand (28:30) Raising an angel round in 2021 as a safety net (33:21) SendCutSend’s unique bottoms-up GTM (38:24) Fun coupons (40:12) Building a moat with speed and trust 45:55) How US factories can beat China (47:40) Gaslight product launches (52:05) Lessons from non-manufacturing businesses (55:19) You can’t run a factory from a spreadsheet (58:10) Using data in manufacturing (59:50) Lessons from Factorio (1:03:17) Unlocking a negative cash conversion cycle (1:06:14) You need to resist automating everything (1:13:51) Surviving COVID with six weeks of cash (1:15:47) Solving the US skilled labor shortage (1:26:17) Teaching kids about manufacturing Referenced SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com/ Careers at SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com/careers Sandy Kory: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandykory Horizon VC: https://www.horizon.vc/ Concrete Canoe Competitions: https://www.asce.org/communities/student-members/conferences/asce-concrete-canoe-competition Follow Jim Twitter: https://x.com/jimbelosic LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/belosic 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/

    1h 32m
  4. The $5B Venture Growth Buyout Playbook | Alex Israel, Metropolis

    APR 24

    The $5B Venture Growth Buyout Playbook | Alex Israel, Metropolis

    Alex Israel is the Co-founder and CEO of Metropolis.He unpacks the unique strategy they used as a tech startup to rollup parking lots and become the largest parking operator in the world.Thank you to Will Quist, Yoni Rechtman, Adam Bain, and Jamie Siminoff for their help brainstorming topics for the conversation.Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episodeNumeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.comFlex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFzAmplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.comTimestamps:(1:10) Helping 50m Americans park(4:00) Building “Buy Now” for the physical world(9:02) Real-world checkout technology that works(16:07) Why parking never institutionalized as an asset class(18:34) Using tech to make parking assets more valuable(21:53) Parking lots as autonomous robotics hubs(29:07) Going to film school, working at MTV(30:55) Starting his first parking data company(33:47) Culture of pranking each other(36:27) A Fortune 500 CEO convinced him to start a 2nd parking company(42:55) Realizing they couldn’t sell to real estate operators(46:09) Acquiring a company 10x their size to jumpstart GTM(50:20) How to do a successful AI growth buyout(54:48) Revenue growth must be driven by technology(1:00:33) Why companies should do growth buyouts(1:03:55) Being legible to capital(1:09:16) You need creativity to take risks(1:13:30) AI is the first ever disruption to skilled labor(1:19:14) CEO challenges growing zero to 23,000 employees(1:24:31) Alex’ personal AI stackReferencedMetropolis: https://www.metropolis.io/Careers at Metropolis: https://www.metropolis.io/careersRoy Amara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_AmaraFollow AlexTwitter: https://x.com/Alex__IsraelLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-israelFollow TurnerTwitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovakLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovakSubscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

    1h 30m
  5. How Agentic AI is Reshaping Science, Education, and the Economy | Karthik Duraisamy at the University of Michigan

    APR 17

    How Agentic AI is Reshaping Science, Education, and the Economy | Karthik Duraisamy at the University of Michigan

    Karthik Duraisamy is a professor at the University of Michigan. He is co-leading U of M's newly created Institute of Agentic Computing, the first of its kind. The institute will serve researchers and developers building agentic AI infrastructure to advance scientific discovery, engineering, and the knowledge economy. It will also be a central node for managing developers and maintainers of the OpenClaw platform. Karthik's research spans a broad spectrum of computational science and engineering, including new modeling approaches for complex physical systems, numerical methods, algorithms and uncertainty quantification. This is the first conversation Karthik’s had going deep on the institute. We talk about using AI to advance scientific research, two new discoveries announced yesterday, how universities work, how AI is impacting students and education, and his advice for young people. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.com/ Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Timestamps: (0:25) The Institute for Agentic Computing (4:27) OpenClaw Foundation and Lobster Compute Company (8:19) How Universities actually work (12:33) ClawCon in Ann Arbor (15:24) Two scientific discoveries made with ScienceClaw (20:06) How AI is speeding up scientific discovery (25:42) Supporting AI and OpenClaw development (29:55) Why universities function like VC funds (34:29) How Universities get money from the government (40:55) Why some academics believe AI is a fad (46:17) Biggest bottlenecks in AI today (49:26) How AI will change the world (53:10) Karthik's Code Red advice for students (59:19) Separating learning and doing (1:03:10) Ways COVID and AI impacted college students (1:14:53) How the role of universities is changing (1:23:21) Why college classes suffered from grade inflation (1:26:05) How AI is actually impacting the job market (1:32:49) Karthik’s advice for students (1:39:16) Winning two NCAA basketball national championships (1:43:04) Almost dying in the Grand Teton National Park Referenced More on Karthik: https://aero.engin.umich.edu/people/duraisamy-karthik/ Institute for Agentic Computing: https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-launches-institute-for-agentic-computing/ ClawCon Announcement: OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/ ScienceClaw: http://scienceclaw.science/ MIT OpenCourseWare: https://ocw.mit.edu/ ASU iPhone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfk7-3iN-U Follow Karthik LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-duraisamy-66705025 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/

    1h 49m
  6. How US Healthcare Actually Works, the WWII Tax Loophole that Broke it Forever, and How AI Can Fix it | Nikhil Krishnan, Out of Pocket

    APR 9

    How US Healthcare Actually Works, the WWII Tax Loophole that Broke it Forever, and How AI Can Fix it | Nikhil Krishnan, Out of Pocket

    Nikhil Krishnan is the Founder of Out of Pocket, a media company that makes understanding healthcare more entertaining and accessible. We spend 100 minutes talking about how the US healthcare system actually works, how World War II changed it forever, all the ways AI is seeing real adoption across the industry, and most common bad startup ideas in healthcare. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance [https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.com/) Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask [https://www.amplitude.com](https://www.amplitude.com/) Timestamps: (1:23) How the US healthcare system works (4:26) Why US healthcare is different from the rest of the world (12:01) Why healthcare costs keep going up (15:58) Core problem: is healthcare a marketplace or not? (21:04) How money flows + Two-way price negotiation (27:34) Why payments are seeing early AI adoption (30:08) How AI could change healthcare delivery (35:40) Doctor’s are trapped on a productivity hamster wheel (39:28) How incentives shape healthcare delivery (43:53) Healthcare is an implicit jobs program in the US (48:45) Areas AI is overhyped, worst healthcare startups (55:30) Consumerization of healthcare (1:01:58) Rise of Peptides, understanding risks and downsides (1:09:35) Why all medical software is so bad (1:11:58) How to do enterprise sales in healthcare (1:14:51) The battle forming between Scribes, Search, and EMRs (1:18:33) Why we need more physician independence (1:26:51) Starting Out of Pocket in February of 2020 (1:2912) Write to meet your audience (1:37:54) Using AI as a content creator (1:42:13) How to get started writing on the internet Referenced Out of Pocket: https://www.outofpocket.health/ Doctronic: https://www.doctronic.ai/ Follow Nikhil Twitter: https://x.com/nikillinit LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkboi/ 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/

    1h 45m
  7. Sophia Amoruso on Bootstrapping Nasty Gal to $120M Revenue, Turning Down $400M, Declaring Bankruptcy, Public Failure, Starting Trust Fund to Back Other Founders

    APR 2

    Sophia Amoruso on Bootstrapping Nasty Gal to $120M Revenue, Turning Down $400M, Declaring Bankruptcy, Public Failure, Starting Trust Fund to Back Other Founders

    Sophia Amoruso is the Founder of Nasty Gal and Trust Fund, an early stage venture capital firm. We talk through her journey of starting Nasty Gal as an Ebay store in 2006 to sell vintage clothing, bootstrapping it to $28 million in revenue, raising $50 million, scaling it to $120 million and a massive team, turning down a $400 million acquisition offer, and ultimately declaring bankruptcy. She takes us inside what it was like to fail so publicly, what she’d do differently next time around, lessons from building the brand, and why she started her VC firm Trust Fund to back the next generation of founders building consequential companies. 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: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge Gateway https://www.merge.dev/gateway Timestamps: (0:59) Selling vintage on Ebay while working at an art school (04:31) Lessons in marketing and perceived value (12:38) Knowing when to make your first hire (18:31) Borrowing from others to build a unique brand (25:17) Growing to $120m revenue in seven years (27:24) Sharing the pitch deck that raised $50m (30:17) Mistakes scaling to 100’s of employees too fast (34:48) Downsides of raising at too high of a valuation (39:56) Why being a CEO is fun (42:57) Declaring bankruptcy (50:38) How it feels to fail publicly (54:41) Writing a book, Netflix series, starting the Girlboss movement (59:13) How to create a new brand in 2026 (1:05:34) Starting Trust Fund to invest and help founders (1:13:45) Raising $5m from a poker game (1:18:47) Sophia asks for Turner’s LP pitch (1:26:53) Traits of the best founders Trust Fund: https://www.trustfund.vc/ Pitch Trust Fund: https://www.trustfund.vc/pitches Nasty Gal: https://www.nastygal.com/ Follow Sophia Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sophiaamoruso Twitter: https://x.com/sophiaamoruso LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiaamoruso Website: https://www.sophiaamoruso.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/

    1h 32m
  8. Footwork’s Secret Sauce | Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi

    MAR 26

    Footwork’s Secret Sauce | Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi

    Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith are the Co-founders of Footwork where they invest up to $15 million in Seed and Series A rounds. This is the first time they've ever sat down to record a conversation together on video. We talk about starting the firm in 2020, their secret sauce for working with founders, lessons investing in Canva’s Seed round, scaling Stitch Fix from $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital, why AI will enable a new wave of entrepreneurship, and how public company boards are discussing AI today. Thank you to Tony Staehelin, Andrew Riesen, and Hunter Walk for helping brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Flex for supporting this episode. Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Timestamps: (0:24) Starting Footwork from a tweet in 2021 (3:11) Difference between startup and public company boards (4:52) 20-40% of board meetings are now about AI (7:48) How Footwork’s investing in AI today (10:37) AI will enable millions of new entrepreneurs (15:04) 37 questions to ask when starting a VC firm (17:40) Importance of differences (23:08) The pace of VC is faster than operating (26:26) Footwork’s secret sauce (2x board seats, 1-pager) (31:59) Investors should talk to and help employees (37:05) Building an equal-carry partnership (39:33) How Footwork makes decisions (43:21) Navigating short-termism and politics in VC firms (51:18) “You’re only as good as your next investment” (53:30) Characteristics of great founders (58:13) Canva’s Seed pitch in 2014 (1:02:54) Joining Stitch Fix as 4th employee (1:06:40) Scaling Stitch Fix $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital (1:16:48) Raising from Bill Gurley after a failed Series A (1:19:40) Footwork’s office near YC (1:22:10) Opportunities in consumer health (1:25:20) Using flash mobs to win deals (1:26:15) Dad life Referenced Footwork: https://www.footwork.vc/ Anything: https://www.anything.com/ Table22: https://www.table22.com/ Canva: https://www.canva.com/ Stitch Fix: https://www.stitchfix.com/ Honeydew: https://www.honeydew.com/ Follow Mike Twitter: https://x.com/msmith492 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcsmith1 Follow Nikhil Twitter: https://x.com/nbt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilbt Substack: https://nbt.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/

    1h 32m
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4.6
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Turner Novak
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    141
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Turner Novak
  • Show Website
    The Peel with Turner Novak

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