The Peel with Turner Novak

Turner Novak

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. PhD to $100M Revenue: Rebuilding SMB Lending with AI | Sahill Poddar, Co-founder and CEO of Parafin

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    PhD to $100M Revenue: Rebuilding SMB Lending with AI | Sahill Poddar, Co-founder and CEO of Parafin

    Sahill Poddar is the Co-founder and CEO of Parafin, helping marketplaces, vertical SaaS, and point of sale providers offer financial services their merchants. Sahill and his team have quietly built Parafin to nearly a $100m GAAP revenue run rate in only four years, and they've done it in an industry that's become a Silicon Valley graveyard: SMB lending. Sahill talks about how they partnered with other marketplaces, vertical SaaS, and point of sale providers to offer financial services to SMBs at scale, landing DoorDash as their first customer before building the product, and advice for technical teams learning enterprise sales. Sahill's a fascinating founder, as he started his career getting a PhD discovering the Higgs boson particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. We talk about physics, he explains how the Large Hadron Collider works, why physics is just real world machine learning, and all the lessons he learned on the growth teams at Facebook and Robinhood (including the way Robinhood acquired most of its userbase!) A thank you to Hans Tung at Notable Capital, Nick Shalek at Ribbit, and Mahdi Raza at Pathlight for their help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get your $250 here. Timestamps: (4:06) Lending to SMBs inside marketplaces and platforms (9:39) Why SMB lending is so hard (12:50) Three ways AI is changing Fintech (16:47) Silicon Valley’s graveyard of SMB lenders (22:44) Getting a PhD in Particle Physics (26:15) How CERN's Large Hadron Collider works (31:49) Discovering new dimensions (34:10) Building billion user data sets at Facebook (39:53) Working with other physicists at Robinhood (50:29) Growth lessons from FB + Robinhood (1:00:57) Starting Parafin, embedded, horizontal SMB lending (1:06:09) Why credit is the biggest problem for SMBs (1:10:53) Raising a Seed from Ribbit pre-product (1:13:25) Landing DoorDash as the first customer (1:16:51) Mastering B2B sales as a technical founder (1:22:58) Lessons from Vlad at Robinhood Referenced Parafin:Careers at ParafinEpisode with Charley & MahdiJuliusCERNLarge Hadron Collider Follow Sahill Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  2. Sleeping in Parking Lots to $250M+ Revenue: How Handshake Built Gen Z's Career Platform, Inside its Fast Growing AI Data Labeling Business, Scaling a Three-Sided Marketplace, How AI Changes Hiring

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    Sleeping in Parking Lots to $250M+ Revenue: How Handshake Built Gen Z's Career Platform, Inside its Fast Growing AI Data Labeling Business, Scaling a Three-Sided Marketplace, How AI Changes Hiring

    Garrett Lord is the Co-founder and CEO of Handshake, the career and social network for Gen Z, connecting a million employers, 1,600 universities, and 18 million students and alumni. We talk through the explosive growth in Handshake’s human AI data labeling business, how AI is changing the job market and careers, advice for scaling a three-sided marketplace, and Garrett’s approach to hiring executive-level talent. We also get into the early days of Handshake, tapping out his dad’s retirement account to fund the first years, driving across the US landing the first customers, sleeping in McDonald’s parking lots, sneaking into careers fairs, and inside Handshake’s first fundraise that took over seven months. Shoutout to Jeff Richards, James Alcorn, Ilir Sela, and Ben Christensen for helping brainstorm topics for Garrett. Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get your $250 here. Timestamps: (3:44) More Gen Z than LinkedIn (7:11) Helping frontier labs label AI data (14:43) Masters and PhD students flock to Handshake (16:52) Why Handshake will win in AI data labeling (19:24) Growing to $250m+ Revenue (21:56) KPIs in recruiting marketplace (24:45) How AI will change careers (33:57) How to build a Seal Team Six AI team (37:06) Interning at Los Alamos (40:00) Breaking into Silicon Valley from Michigan (44:19) Helping friends get jobs at Palantir (48:13) Driving across the US sleeping in McDonald’s parking lots (54:52) Funding early days with his dad’s retirement account (57:37) Handwriting letters to get the first six customers (1:03:06) Early product failures and iterations (1:11:01) Fundraising, crashing on couches for seven months (1:17:07) Finally closing a Seed round (1:20:05) Moving from Michigan to SF with no money (1:23:38) Importance of sequencing new features (1:29:10) Handshake’s exec recruiting process (1:32:01) Building a company with your best friends Referenced Try Handshake Careers at Handshake Gumloop Peter Thiel Startup School Paul Graham’s blog Follow Garrett Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  3. Solving the Hardest Problems in Dev Tools | Jake Cooper, Founder of Railway

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    Solving the Hardest Problems in Dev Tools | Jake Cooper, Founder of Railway

    Jake Cooper is the Founder of Railway. This conversation explores how AI accelerates the need for strong backend infrastructure, when to build vs buy in AI software, and why there are only two moats: solving hard problems and doing hard things. We also unpack Railway’s bold product bets, like enabling creators to earn revenue with backend templates, building their own data centers, and not building their own AI models. Jake also talks about their four week new hire onboarding, how they build a problem roadmap, why operators should be managers, and why you should almost never work weekends. Thank you to Angelo Saraceno @ Railway and Erica Brescia Bacon @ Redpoint for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get your $250 here. Timestamps: (3:33) Solving the hardest problems in dev tools (8:16) Starting with the hardest thing (11:18) How AI accelerated the need for Railway (12:50) Importance of backend in AI-native software (16:52) Jake’s angel fundraise strategy (20:51) Resisting AI for so long (25:32) Using AI to get leverage (29:57) Build vs buy in AI software (33:22) When Jake knew Railway was working (34:27) Creating infrastructure templates (38:04) Building data centers and a cloud service (40:27) Two moats: Hard problems and hard things (46:25) Hitting 8-figures in revenue (48:47) Railway’s four week onboarding (54:25) Building a problem roadmap (56:16) You can’t set your own culture (1:01:58) Railway’s viral “How We Work” post (1:08:39) Using Discord instead of Slack (1:11:25) How hypergrowth companies mess up org design (1:14:03) Why you shouldn’t work weekends (1:19:45) Not betting big on AI models (1:21:53) Lessons from Zuck, Martin Scorsese Referenced Railway Careers at Railway The Inward Draw of Capitalism How We Work Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Follow Jake Twitter LinkedIn Substack Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  4. How WordPress Powers 43% of the Internet | Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder and CEO, Automattic

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    How WordPress Powers 43% of the Internet | Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder and CEO, Automattic

    Today’s guest is Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder of WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, and founder of Automattic. Our conversation explores the 2000’s internet, the early days of Automattic, and the decisions and philosophies that set them up for success 20 years later. We talk open source software, why Matt’s such a big proponent of it, how Automattic built its business model as one of the first SaaS companies (that now owns companies like Tumblr and WooCommerce), and how AI is changing engineering. Matt also shares how to build a community around your product, “Conscious Capitalism”, what he learned running one of the first distributed teams, and lessons on optimism from Walt Disney. Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Sign-up for Ramp and get $250 here. Timestamps: (3:48) WordPress: Powering 43% of the internet (8:30) Outcompeting Reid Hoffman’s startup in the early days (14:03) Why open source wins over the long-term (16:21) Business models in open source (21:12) Starting Automattic in 2005, one of the first SaaS companies (28:45) Spending most of Automattic’s Seed round on servers (33:36) How to use Community + Word of Mouth for early growth (38:38) Matt’s current situation with WP Engine (43:30) How to give back in open source (53:55) Best practices from 20 years of running a remote company (59:59) Lessons on optimism from Walt Disney (1:12:33) How AI is changing coding (1:16:09) Automattic's internal employee secondary market (1:23:51) How open source increases longevity (1:26:08) Matt’s favorite classical thinkers Referenced: Automattic Wordpress Matt’s Blog Bay Lights in SF Innocence Project Vesuvius Challenge Plastic List The Giving Pledge DAFFY Pessimist Archive Matt's favorite quote from Rudy Francisco Maintenance by Stuart Brand We are as Gods by Stuart Brand Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cohen Follow Matt Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  5. Gamma's Journey to $50M ARR with 30 Employees | Co-founder and CEO Grant Lee

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    Gamma's Journey to $50M ARR with 30 Employees | Co-founder and CEO Grant Lee

    Grant Lee is the Co-founder & CEO of Gamma, building instant PowerPoints, presentations, and websites with AI. As someone who’s made a lot of decks, its refreshing how Gamma thinks about slides starting with the words and narrative, using AI to build the design around the story. Gamma has put up impressive metrics, growing from zero to $50 million in ARR and 50 million users with only 30 employees. They’ve also had zero employee attrition, and a negative lifetime burn rate, with more cash in the bank than they’ve raised. We talk about building a horizontal product instead of for a specific vertical, why Grant likes hiring generalist’s, how a quarter of the team is designers, why they’ve never raised large funding rounds, and how they run the company with an efficient team while not subscribing to 996 working hours. Grant also shares how Gamma rebuilt their entire product to be AI-native in the months after ChatGPT launched, and how every department at Gamma uses AI internally. Thanks to Anamitra and Gaurav at Afore, Shiyan @ Hustle Fund, Evan @ South Park Commons, and Vas @ Accel for helping brainstorm topics for Grant. Special thanks to presenting sponsor of The Peel, Ramp. Ramp: Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Join 40,000+ companies, go to https://ramp.com/ThePeel Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Timestamps: (3:46) Gamma: The anti-Powerpoint (5:56) How to be efficient with a small team (7:58) Importance of full-stack generalists (12:15) How to hire problem solvers (15:57) Changing slides from designs to narratives (20:13) Gamma’s freemium AI business model (22:36) Ignoring conventional wisdom with a horizontal product (28:47) Why Gamma started with Slides (32:21) Raising a Pre-Seed for a horizontal product (38:25) Why Gamma avoided hyped funding rounds (40:57) How fundraising impacts recruiting (43:40) Liquidation preferences and employee equity (47:08) Gamma’s zero employee attrition (49:54) Working in-person during COVID (52:15) Using waitlists to batch new user cohorts (56:08) Re-building the product to be AI-native (58:17) How to improve your onboarding (1:00:46) Benefitting from AI models getting better (1:05:10) Growing from 60k to 50 million users (1:07:30) How to stand out as an AI company (1:09:23) Creating a Gamma API (1:11:37) How Gamma uses AI internally (1:15:06) Why Gamma doesn’t do 996 working hours (1:19:54) 4-month product sprints (1:22:16) Parenting hacks: sleep, exercise, nutrition (1:24:26) Brand and community lessons from Nike and Apple Referenced Gamma Careers at Gamma Optimizely NotebookLM Fin / Intercom: Afore Capital Follow Grant Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter here to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  6. Inside the $2 Trillion Employee Benefits Market | Ryan Sachtjen, Threeflow

    ٢٦ يونيو

    Inside the $2 Trillion Employee Benefits Market | Ryan Sachtjen, Threeflow

    Ryan Sachtjen is the Co-founder and CEO of Threeflow, building software for employee benefits brokers and insurance carriers. We start with a deep dive into the nearly $2 trillion dollar employee benefits market, including the structural issues that actually give the smallest companies the most leverage. We also talk about insurance more broadly, AI opportunities in insurance, lessons from kickstarting a marketplace doing nearly $3B in volume, when his wife got cancer two months after closing Threeflow's seed round, and how his co-founders adjusted to support him. Special thanks to Bolt for supporting this episode! Join the world’s largest hackathon - up to $1m in prizes. Sign-up here. Timestamps: (3:57) Threeflow: B2B benefits marketplace (5:50) How the benefits industry works (9:20) The importance of brokers in insurance (12:32) Benefits broker software stack (15:36) How to make money in employee benefits (21:11) Ways to compete in insurance (26:34) How AI is changing insurance (31:01) What its like to be an insurance broker (35:37) Starting ThreeFlow in 2016 pre-LLMs (40:13) The 128 day walk through Europe before Threeflow (44:47) When his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer (50:23) Advice for founders on surviving large personal events (52:46) Threeflow’s unorthodox Seed round (59:46) How to vet your investors (1:04:14) Why insurance brokers exist (1:05:08) How to build a marketplace on top of Vertical SaaS (1:10:53) Choosing a marketplace entry point (1:15:05) $2.5B in premium volume on Threeflow workflows (1:26:39) Importance of supply side volume in a marketplace (1:31:21) Fundraising without a formal process (1:33:03) Hiring for “just get stuff done” (1:36:22) AI opportunities in insurance (1:41:05) Building software in insurance (1:44:56) Tactics for running a distributed team (1:49:04) Creating your own playbooks Referenced Try Threeflow Careers at Threeflow Follow Ryan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansachtjen/ 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/

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  7. How to Raise a VC Fund Today, How AI is Changing Fintech, Traits of Top Emerging Managers, Why Everyone is Selling Secondaries, Triple-Layered SPVs | Samir Kaji, Co-founder and CEO of Allocate

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    How to Raise a VC Fund Today, How AI is Changing Fintech, Traits of Top Emerging Managers, Why Everyone is Selling Secondaries, Triple-Layered SPVs | Samir Kaji, Co-founder and CEO of Allocate

    Samir Kaji is the Co-founder and CEO of Allocate. This conversation is a deep dive into the private markets, the evolution of venture capital as an asset class, and how there are now 10x more private investment firms than public companies. We also unpack why 90% of venture funds simply can’t raise capital right now, advice for anyone raising a fund today, how to stand out as an emerging manager, why secondaries have become a primary driver of liquidity in venture, and how to navigate SPVs as a GP and LP. We also talk through the AI products they built to evaluate fund managers at Allocate, and how AI is changing venture and company building. A special thanks to Bolt and Warp for supporting this episode. Bolt: Join the world’s largest hackathon - up to $1m in prizes. Sign-up here. Warp: Automates payroll, handles multi-state tax compliance, and streamlines international contractor payments, so founders can focus on building, not busywork. Try it here. Timestamps: (5:31) Evolution of the private markets (17:55) VC markets post-2020 (21:09) Risk / return profiles of various fund sizes (24:04) Secondaries will drive future venture returns (33:17) Creative ways to return capital (36:27) “Curiosity Revenue” in AI (41:52) Allocate’s Beyond Summit (43:42) Samir's AI fund analyzer (46:15) Fintech only 1% of financial services revenue (50:13) Triple-layered SPVs (54:50) Breaking down returns in venture (58:27) How to gauge a fund manager’s access (1:00:14) Determining appropriate fund size (1:05:02) 90% of venture funds cannot raise right now (1:09:50) How to raise a fund today (1:15:37) ChatGPT roasts Banana Capital (1:19:56) Traits of the best VCs (1:22:41) Vetting grit, hustle, and obsession (1:31:12) Why using AI is table stakes (1:36:49) Value of podcasts Check out Allocate The Peel episode with Eric Vishria Samir’s Venture Unlocked Podcast Follow Samir Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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  8. How to Skip Your Seed, Pre-Seed Lessons Building Afore to $500M+ AUM | Anamitra Banerji

    ١٢ يونيو

    How to Skip Your Seed, Pre-Seed Lessons Building Afore to $500M+ AUM | Anamitra Banerji

    Anamitra Banerji is the Co-founder of Afore Capital, an SF-based VC firm that specializes in investing in pre-seed stage companies. Our conversation gets into the evolution of Pre-Seed as a category, why Pre-Seed is more than option checks, what Afore looks for when backing founders before they even have a product, how to skip your Seed and go straight to a Series A, and how to run a fundraise process. We also get into Afore’s Founder in Residence program, why every VC started an accelerator, how AI is changing venture, joining Twitter as the first PM, and how Oprah helped create the legendary verified checkmark. Thanks to Gaurav Jain and Derrick Li at Afore for their help brainstorming topics for Anamitra. And special thanks to Bolt and Warp for supporting this episode. Bolt: Help them break a world record for the largest hackathon - up to $1m in prizes. Sign-up. Warp: Automates payroll, handles multi-state tax compliance, and streamlines international contractor payments, so founders can focus on building, not busywork. Try it here. Timestamps: (4:00) Afore: Starting in 2016 to build the pre-seed category (8:11) The unstructured data Afore underwrites at pre-seed (11:21) Pre-seed is determining bronze from gold (16:03) Why pre-seed is more than option checks (20:33) The secret to raising a Series A (23:20) Running a tight fundraise process (32:05) Skipping your Seed round (34:01) How to measure obsession in a founder (39:20) Knowing when to follow-on (40:54) Figuring out what really matters in a business (42:36) Afore’s Founder in Residence program (49:44) Pros / Cons of more access to capital for founders (52:27) Two reasons YC made every VC launch an accelerator (1:01:05) Why AI is forcing VCs to invest earlier (1:06:55) Will AI commoditize software? (1:08:29) Growing up in India, starting his first company (1:10:39) Coming to the US for school, joining Overture + Yahoo (1:14:05) Joining Twitter as first PM, creating the Verified check for Oprah (1:18:55) Building Twitter’s first ad product (1:20:28) Why non-founders can’t take foundational risks (1:23:02) Starting Afore for the Pre-Seed opportunity (1:27:47) Raising Afore Fund 1 (1:31:14) How to raise your first fund (1:33:33) Was Turner the best Afore intern ever? Referenced Afore Capital K9 Capital Afore’s Founder in Residence Program: Speedrun PearX Neo Accelerator Gamma Develop Health Follow Anamitra Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

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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.

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  • صناع العمل
    Turner Novak
  • سنوات النشاط
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    فاضح
  • حقوق النشر
    © Turner Novak
  • موقع البرنامج على الويب
    The Peel with Turner Novak

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