BILLIONS Podcast | Inside the World’s Billion-Dollar SaaS & AI Empires

Guillaume Moubeche
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After building my company to a $150M valuation in 4 years, I had one question left: How do you build a billion-dollar company? I’m Guillaume Moubeche, and on the BILLIONS Podcast, I’m taking you inside the room with the world’s most iconic builders, founders, and investors to find the answer. This is more than just another startup podcast; it’s a masterclass in high-growth SaaS, AI implementation, and wealth creation. From SaaS growth strategies and AI Agent pivots to the raw truth behind venture capital and exit strategies, we go where others don't. What you’ll learn on BILLIONS: SaaS Scal

  1. The 15-day pivot that saved a $1.3B company - Des Traynor [INTERCOM]

    4 HR AGO

    The 15-day pivot that saved a $1.3B company - Des Traynor [INTERCOM]

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom.In 2023, his company was stuck at 10% growth. Customer service teams were shrinking. The old model was dying.So he did something radical: he launched an AI agent priced at $0.99 per resolved conversation. Not per seat. Per outcome.The result? Growth doubled to 25%. $343M in revenue. And a complete reinvention of a $1.3B company in 18 months.TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:01:02 : Des Traynor - Intercom 00:01:02 - 00:05:22 : The $1.3 billion bet on AI : moving 15 days after ChatGPT launched 00:05:22 - 00:09:08 : Why building AI is not building SaaS 00:09:08 - 00:12:51 : The "torture test" for engineering reliability 00:12:51 - 00:20:14 : Developing the "white smoke" moment for product 00:20:14 - 00:25:16 : Defining what "good" looks like in AI 00:25:16 - 00:34:53 : The Blockbuster warning: Adapt or die 00:34:53 - 00:40:27 : Killing hallucinations with actor-critic logic 00:40:27 - 00:48:55 : Outcome-based pricing and the future of CRM 00:48:55 - 00:55:56 : The end of frontline customer service jobsREFERENCES : Fergal Reid  Ciarán Lee  Eoghan McCabe Marc Andreessen  If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies OpenAI / ChatGPT Zendesk Salesforce  Fin.AI Gong  ClickUp DALL-E Cursor  Windsurf Devin Claude Code Attio Clarify Netflix The Cheeky Pint

    56 min
  2. Building Odoo's American war machine - Wilfried Juncker [Odoo]

    19 MAR

    Building Odoo's American war machine - Wilfried Juncker [Odoo]

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Wilfried Juncker. He's the Managing Director for Odoo's Americas a Belgian software unicorn that just hit a €8 billion valuation. Under Wilfried's watch, Odoo's Americas operation exploded from 35 people in 2016 to over 950 in America only. In this episode, we're digging into how Wilfried built Odoo's American war machine, what it takes to conquer a new market from scratch, and how he's fighting high SMB churn while scaling at breakneck speed. While SAP and Oracle charge millions for ERP, Odoo's open-source model is democratizing enterprise software and Wilfried built the Americas war machine that's making it happen. Wilfried, thanks a lot for being here! TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:01:05 : Odoo's explosive growth from 70 to 2,000 employees 00:01:05 - 00:02:30 : The early days and Wilfried's journey at Odoo 00:02:30 - 00:05:25 : Entering the US market with channel partners strategy 00:05:25 - 00:09:25 : Open source model and freemium conversion tactics 00:09:25 - 00:14:20 : Building the partner ecosystem and revenue sharing 00:14:20 - 00:18:07 : Scaling partner relationships and management approach 00:18:07 - 00:24:12 : Hiring and retention philosophy - promote from within only 00:24:12 - 00:27:14 : Industry specialization vs size-based team structure 00:27:14 - 00:34:32 : Managing SMB churn while maintaining growth 00:34:32 - 00:42:17 : Demo-first culture and bottom-up sales approach 00:42:17 - 00:48:20 : Resource allocation and offline marketing strategy 00:48:20 - 00:52:27 : Unconventional customer acquisition tactics 00:52:27 - 00:54:29 : Building local ecosystems and final thoughts REFERENCES : - Oracle NetSuite - Microsoft Dynamics - SAP - Acumatica - Sage - Epicor - Infor - QuickBooks - HubSpot - GitHub - Lemlist - Clay - Lucia - NPR - NASA

    54 min
  3. From selling startups to Google to backing multibillion‑dollar AI winners - Anish Acharya [a16Z]

    12 MAR

    From selling startups to Google to backing multibillion‑dollar AI winners - Anish Acharya [a16Z]

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Anish Acharya. He sold his first company to Google. His second to Credit Karma — then stayed and helped scale their U.S. Card business to nearly a billion dollars in annual revenue. In 2019, Andreessen Horowitz made him a General Partner. Since then, he's led the Series A in Deel, which just hit a $17.3 billion valuation in October 2025. Most VCs have never operated anything. Anish built, scaled, sold, and then learned how to pick. Anish, thanks a lot for being here ! TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:02:30 : Anish Acharya’s entrepreneurial journey 00:02:30 - 00:06:28 : Why 2008 and today are the most exciting times for founders 00:06:28 - 00:11:38 : The AI model competition and Google's comeback 00:11:38 - 00:14:50 : Why the "LLM wrapper" fear is no longer relevant 00:14:50 - 00:20:07 : Multi-model approach and the future of AI applications 00:20:07 - 00:24:01 : Learning from Credit Karma and the importance of winning 00:24:01 - 00:29:14 : Why paternalism kills products and going with human nature 00:29:14 - 00:35:28 : AI's human impact and why it's different from social media 00:35:28 - 00:42:45 : The future of coding, jobs, and why SaaS isn't dead 00:42:45 - 00:55:21 : Investing in Deel, AI companionship, and what it costs to win REFERENCES Mark Zuckerberg  Sam Altman  Sergey Brin  Nicolas Dessaigne - Billions EP2 Andrej Karpathy  Alex Bouaziz  Shuo Wang  Harry Stebbings - Billions EP4 Eugenia Kuyda  Credit Karma Deel  ChatGPT  Gemini  Claude  Grok Cursor  Lovable  Harvey Replika Wabi Life360  Papaya Qwen

    55 min
  4. The man who helped OpenAI to go from millions to billions in revenue - Zack Kass [Open AI]

    6 MAR

    The man who helped OpenAI to go from millions to billions in revenue - Zack Kass [Open AI]

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with the man who had the hardest sales job in Silicon Valley history: Zack Kass. Before ChatGPT was a household name, it was just a research lab. Zack was Head of Go-To-Market. He joined when OpenAI was around a hundred people doing two million in revenue. His job? Sell human-level intelligence to Fortune 500 executives who didn't even know what a token was. He built the playbook for Microsoft. For Coca-Cola. He turned a nonprofit lab into an eighty billion dollar superpower. Then he walked away. Zack, thanks a lot for being here! TIMELINE 00:00:00 - 00:06:34 : Joining OpenAI as the first sales person 00:06:34 - 00:09:47 : The early GPT-3 wrapper ecosystem 00:09:47 - 00:11:03 : Strategy behind ChatGPT's development 00:11:03 - 00:16:45 : The chat interface decision and market response 00:16:45 - 00:21:04 : ChatGPT's explosive growth and company atmosphere 00:21:04 - 00:26:45 : Lessons from viral growth and Microsoft partnership 00:26:45 - 00:30:21 : Scaling challenges and the "bigger boat" moment 00:30:21 - 00:33:44 : Personal burnout and health crisis 00:33:44 - 00:37:29 : AI as humanity's last invention 00:37:29 - 00:45:21 : Technology, inequality, and policy failures 00:45:21 - 00:48:35 : Global AI competition and geopolitics 00:48:35 - 00:50:18 : AI's potential to solve major problems 00:50:18 - 00:54:33 : The next renaissance and education transformation REFERENCES - Sam Altman - Brad Lightcap - Lukas Biewald - Chris Van Pelt  - John Maynard Keynes - Elon Musk - Jeff Bezos - Koch brothers - "The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential" by Zach Cass - "Attention Is All You Need"  - Figure Eight - Lilt - Weights & Biases  - Scale AI  - Jasper  - Harvey  - Bain & Company - Waymo - Prenuvo - DeepSeek - OpenAI - RLHF - CRISPR  - Jevons paradox - Jaws

    53 min
  5. The growth playbook behind Revolut's $100B+ growth engine - Antoine Le Nel [Revolut]

    27 FEB

    The growth playbook behind Revolut's $100B+ growth engine - Antoine Le Nel [Revolut]

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Antoine Le Nel the guy who spent 7 years scaling Candy Crush into one of the most addictive products ever created... then walked away to go kill traditional banking. At King, he helped turn a mobile game into a machine that prints billions. When Activision bought them for $5.9 billion, he could've stayed forever. Instead, he joined Revolut in 2021 — right as most fintech were collapsing. Three years later? $75 billion valuation. $4 billion in revenue. 65 million customers. His secret? Ignoring everything Silicon Valley preaches about growth. Antoine, thanks for being here! TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:01:07 : Scaling Candy Crush to a $5.9 billion exit 00:01:07 - 00:03:38 : How to avoid the "one-hit wonder" trap in gaming 00:03:38 - 00:06:54 : The Facebook hack that reached 70% of global users for free 00:06:54 - 00:10:35 : Activision's acquisition and the reality of pre-ipo stock options 00:10:35 - 00:16:59 : Why Revolut prioritizes unit economics over venture capital hype 00:16:59 - 00:21:00 : Decoding the exponential LTV curve that defies banking logic 00:21:00 - 00:30:13 : Charging for the card: A masterclass in buying user engagement 00:30:13 - 00:46:01 : Killing the middleman: Revolut's secret to autonomous, lean teams 00:46:01 - 00:54:08 : From ROI to F1: Building a generational brand with Audi 00:54:08 - 01:00:53 : The uncomfortable truth about brand value and engineering mindsets REFERENCES: - ⁠Mark Zuckerberg⁠  - Nik Storonsky - Patrick Collison - King Digital Entertainment  - Activision Blizzard  - Stripe  - Booking.com  - Primavera Sound  - Como football team - Audi F1 - Drive to Survive - Revolut Business

    57 min
  6. The CEO who turned down VCs, bought back his company, and built a $1.7B SaaS empire - Ross Andrew Paquette

    20 FEB

    The CEO who turned down VCs, bought back his company, and built a $1.7B SaaS empire - Ross Andrew Paquette

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Ross Andrew Paquette, the CEO who broke every Silicon Valley rule: he bought OUT his investors before buidling a 1.7 billion dollar empire. He founded Maropost in 2011, and by 2016, it ranked #7 on the PROFIT 500 as one of Canada's fastest-growing companies.Ross, thanks a lot for being here! TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:01:12 : From lifestyle business to a $1.7 billion empire 00:01:12 - 00:03:32 : The 75% ebitda secret and why growth at all costs is a trap 00:03:32 - 00:05:37 : Founder mode and signing clients every single day 00:05:37 - 00:08:18 : Why "experienced" executives fail and the return to young and hungry teams 00:08:18 - 00:12:14 : The $37 million wire transfer to buy out investors 00:12:14 - 00:16:18 : Why advisory boards beat professional investor boards every time 00:16:18 - 00:26:48 : The contrarian ipo strategy for australia and canada 00:26:48 - 00:33:08 : Why you should never take vc money if you want to keep your drive 00:33:08 - 00:51:56 : The brutal reality of m&a and culture integration 00:51:56 - 01:00:48 : Two metrics that actually matter: revenue and profit REFERENCES : - Adam Robinson  - Larry Ellison  - Patrick Campbell  - Elephant & Highland Europe  - Summit, Insight, TA  - Shopify Plus - Atlassian  - Oracle  - Attentive & Klaviyo . - Groq  - Neto & Retail Express - Australian companies acquired by Maropost  - Findify - Swedish search/merchandising company acquired by Maropost - ProfitWell & Baremetrics - Stripe

    1hr 1min
  7. The college dropout who keeps ending up in billion-dollar exits - Cornelius Schmahl

    13 FEB

    The college dropout who keeps ending up in billion-dollar exits - Cornelius Schmahl

    Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Cornelius Schmahl — a college dropout who keeps finding his way into billion-dollar outcomes. At 23, Uber sent him to markets nobody wanted. South Africa. Uganda. Ghana. No playbook. Figure it out or fail. By 27, he was running Uber Russia. One problem: Yandex was winning.He helped engineer a 3.7 billion dollar merger — then walked away from operating entirely. Started writing angel checks. Lime. Liquid Death. BillionToOne.Climeworks. Four bets. Four unicorns. What does this guy see that everybody else misses? Cornelius thanks a lot for being on BILLIONS. TIMELINE : 00:00:00 - 00:03:58: From college dropout to Uber's unwanted markets 00:03:58 - 00:09:02: The brutal reality of launching Uber in hostile territories 00:09:02 - 00:16:06: Engineering violent price cuts and discovering the utilization game 00:16:06 - 00:25:47: The Russia war - infiltrating Yandex and burning millions strategically 00:25:47 - 00:32:35: The $3.7 billion merger and why timing beat fundamentals 00:32:35 - 00:44:26: Angel investing reality check - why unicorns on paper don't pay bills 00:44:26 - 00:52:28: The three-step framework that creates billion-dollar companies 00:52:28 - 00:58:52: From billionaire dreams to therapy - the consciousness shift 00:58:52 - 01:01:48: Marc Benioff email scandal and building leverage through controversy

    1hr 2min
  8. From losing $1B to running a $100m per year business - Noah Kagan [AppSumo]

    6 FEB

    From losing $1B to running a $100m per year business - Noah Kagan [AppSumo]

    Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Noah Kagan — the guy who got fired from Facebook before it was worth a trillion… and turned that loss into the biggest comeback story in online business. He went from losing a fortune on paper to building AppSumo, a $100 million-a-year bootstrapped empire - all without raising a single dollar of VC money. Noah, thanks a lot for being here! TIMELINE 00:00:00 - 00:02:10 : The trillion-dollar miss at Facebook 00:02:10 - 00:06:43 : Leadership lessons from Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar rejection 00:06:43 - 00:12:13 : The lifetime deal dilemma destroying software value 00:12:13 - 00:19:40 : Why most entrepreneurs never take action 00:19:40 - 00:26:49 : Building discipline through small daily choices 00:26:49 - 00:33:10 : The scary reality of AppSumo's uncertain future 00:33:10 - 00:42:09 : Community quality crisis in the AI era 00:42:09 - 00:48:58 : Testing new models before it's too late 00:48:58 - 00:57:07 : Hiring secrets for bootstrap businesses 00:57:07 - 01:04:29 : Finding contentment beyond the billion-dollar dream REFERENCES - Mark Zuckerberg  - Peter Thiel  - Marc Andreessen - Sean Parker - Dustin Moskovitz - Soleio  - Bill Gates  - Steve Jobs  - Moody - Christine Rogers - Jesse Mecham –  - Ayman Al-Abdullah - Reid Hoffman - Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan - AppSumo   - TidyCal   - Airbnb    - Asana   - Lemlist    - Reclaim - Bolt - Hostinger - Emergent - Pika   - YNAB - Vercel - Tabby   - YC

    1hr 4min
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About

After building my company to a $150M valuation in 4 years, I had one question left: How do you build a billion-dollar company? I’m Guillaume Moubeche, and on the BILLIONS Podcast, I’m taking you inside the room with the world’s most iconic builders, founders, and investors to find the answer. This is more than just another startup podcast; it’s a masterclass in high-growth SaaS, AI implementation, and wealth creation. From SaaS growth strategies and AI Agent pivots to the raw truth behind venture capital and exit strategies, we go where others don't. What you’ll learn on BILLIONS: SaaS Scal

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