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. How To Generate Alpha in Venture Capital | Albert Azout, Level Ventures

    -2 J

    How To Generate Alpha in Venture Capital | Albert Azout, Level Ventures

    Albert Azout is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Level Ventures, combining first-principles thinking with state-of-the-art data science to back and build top seed-stage firms and their breakout companies. Venture investing is hard, and this conversation covers all their research unpacking exactly how to generate alpha. We also talk about how Level picks and backs emerging venture managers to invest in, and Albert gives a demo of the custom internal software they’ve built. Thank you to Jake Kupperman, Sasha Kaletsky, Nathan Benaich, Amanda Robson, and Dave Fontenot for helping brainstorm topics for the conversation. Special 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 $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel Try Hanover Park - the modern, AI-native fund admin https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (5:01) Top 3 forms of alpha in VC (10:11) Other ways to generate alpha (12:47) Avoiding false positives (17:11) Optimal fund size and portfolio construction (22:25) The role of Luck (23:55) Spin-out vs outsider funds (25:43) Level’s backchannel reference process (29:29) Finding alpha in Criticality Investing (34:45) Why capital flows drive all returns (43:53) Early, consensus investing has the most alpha (48:46) Networks are more persistent than performance (52:03) The strongest and weakest networks (58:41) Demo of Level’s internal software (1:04:48) Building a Fund of Funds around their data (1:10:01) Ideal LP GP relationship (1:12:39) Benchmarks are relative (1:15:39) VC funds using AI (1:17:43) How venture will change in the next 10 years Referenced Level Ventures: https://levelvc.com/ Level’s Research Papers: https://levelvc.com/research/ Follow Albert LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertazout/ Newsletter: https://albertazout.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/

    1 h 21 min
  2. The Ocean: Earth’s $2.5 Trillion Last Frontier | Will O’Brien, Co-founder of Ulysses

    29 AOÛT

    The Ocean: Earth’s $2.5 Trillion Last Frontier | Will O’Brien, Co-founder of Ulysses

    Will O’Brien is the Co-founder of Ulysses, building autonomous, low cost robots for the ocean. Will considers the ocean humanity’s next great frontier. It makes up over $2.5 trillion of economic activity, considering things like fishing, aquaculture, shipping, mining, communications infrastructure, and defense. Yet we know more about the surface of the moon’s of Saturn than we do the bottom of our own ocean. We talk about Ulysses first product, restoring plant life in the ocean, their modular autonomous underwater robotics platform, advice for anyone selling to governments, crazy businesses that could eventually evolve in the ocean, and why the way we finance startups needs to change. Will also loves conspiracy theories, and we talk about some of our favorites, and why he thinks people who believe them could make good startup founders. Thank you to Will’s brother’s Harry and Jacob O’Brien, and to upcoming guest of the show Eoghan McCabe for helping brainstorm topics for Will. Special 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 $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel Timestamps: (4:03) Peace offering of Dubai Chocolate (5:30) Modern internet theory (7:40) The ocean is the last frontier (11:53) Ulysses: read/write layer of the ocean (13:35) The $2.5 trillion ocean economy (15:14) Current ocean unit economics (18:50) Starting with seagrass ecosystem restoration (24:13) Modular, underwater autonomous robots (27:31) Starting Ulysses with a group chat (29:51) Raising a Seed from Lowercarbon with no network off a cold calendar invite (32:24) Economic use cases for ocean robotics (36:07) Spiritual energy from the ocean (42:36) First Ramp podcast ad in Irish (43:21) Floating cities, sub tours, deep sea mining, iron fertilization (51:47) $10+ billion in shipwrecked treasure (53:18 Atlantis is real (59:46) Craziest alien conspiracy theories (1:01:28) Sinking the titanic to create the Fed (1:04:19) Conspiracy theory believers are good founders (1:07:55) How to sell to the government (1:13:28) Writing a letter to an Irish billionaire (1:16:00) Finding meaning after living with Monks in Nepal (1:27:10) Why financial innovation precludes economic dominance (1:44:01) The SPV peddler business model (1:46:35) Should we bring back SPAC’s? Referenced Ulysses: https://www.ulysses.eco/ Careers at Ulysses: https://www.ulysses.eco/jobs The Richat Structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure Jesse Michael’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JesseMichels Brad Jacobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Jacobs_(businessman) Follow Will Twitter: https://x.com/willobri LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will0brien 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/

    1 h 51 min
  3. How to Build a Content Strategy + CPG Brand Lessons | Isaac Medeiros (Mini Katana, Kanpai Foods)

    21 AOÛT

    How to Build a Content Strategy + CPG Brand Lessons | Isaac Medeiros (Mini Katana, Kanpai Foods)

    Isaac Medeiros is the Founder of Mini Katana and Kanpai Foods. Isaac’s content gets over 1 billion views per month. Our conversation gets into content strategy from a high level down to tactical decisions, differences between the TikTok and YouTube algorithms, and how AI will impact content creation. We also get into Isaac’s origin story building consumer brands, why TikTok made food an interesting category for new products, how to get a product into retail stores, and why you shouldn’t sell into retail. Isaac also shares how tariff’s impacted his company. They became unprofitable overnight, and he had to move his entire supply chain from the US to Mexico in 60 days. Thank you to Sean Frank @ Ridge and Kevin Espiritu @ Epic Gardening for their help brainstorming topics for Isaac. Special 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 $250 for signing-up here. Timestamps: (3:46) 165 million views in two days (5:15) Followers don’t matter, build a binge bank (11:21) How to monetize an audience (14:36) Identify outliers for content ideas (17:13) Should founders make their own content? (19:34) Starting Mini Katana (23:39) $10m revenue in two years w/ $0 CAC (25:56) Difference between TikTok and YouTube algorithms (29:38) When to experiment with a second platform (32:20) Starting Kanpai, a freeze-dried candy company (36:54) Why freeze-dried candy wasn’t popular (38:22) Why you shouldn’t sell in retail (41:12) Why you should sell in retail (47:05) Downsides of selling to large retailers (49:52) Should CPG brands raise money? (57:59) Moving manufacturing from US to Mexico in 60 days due to tariffs (1:04:20) Why you don’t want to be first in a category (1:08:06) Other CPG creators Isaac follows (1:09:15) Elon Musk, Charlie Munger, Mark Cuban (1:11:55) Labubu’s Referenced Mini Katana Kanpai Foods Previous episode with Kevin Espiritu Previous episode with Sean Frank Peachy Babies The Marshmellow Co Follow Isaac Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter: LinkedIn: Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

    1 h 15 min
  4. The Past, Present, and Future of AI, Robotics, Venture Capital, Crypto | Why Deep Tech Startups Mess up Value Capture | Michael Dempsey, Managing Partner, Compound

    14 AOÛT

    The Past, Present, and Future of AI, Robotics, Venture Capital, Crypto | Why Deep Tech Startups Mess up Value Capture | Michael Dempsey, Managing Partner, Compound

    Michael Dempsey is the Managing Partner at Compound, a thesis-driven, research-centric investment firm. We spent two hours talking through the past, present, and future of a bunch of topics in technology and investing. Michael started investing in AI in 2016. He was the first investor in now-unicorns Runway and Wayve. But he hasn’t done much AI investing over the past few years. We talk about why, how AI will intersect with robotics, the future of things like crypto and synthetic biology, and why so many deep tech companies mess up economic value capture. We also talk about what it means to be a thesis-driven venture firm, Compound’s research process and how to replicate it, what private and public market investors can learn from each other, advice for anyone starting in venture today, how to build a brand in VC, and why venture firms don’t compound and actually decay over time. Thank you to Kevin Kwok, Andy Weissman, Cristóbal Valenzuela, Blake Robbins, and Smac at Compound for their help brainstorming topics for this. Special 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 $250 for signing-up here. Timestamps: (4:09) Leading Runway’s Seed in 2018 (10:15) Short-term ARR vs long-term sustainability (16:20) Compound, a research-centric investment firm (18:41) Investing in bio, crypto, real-world AI, and healthcare (23:58) VC firms do not compound, they decay over time (29:27) How to build a research-focused investment firm (41:30) Current state of venture slop (45:43) Building a brand as a VC firm (52:31) Investing in Wayve in 2016 (58:53) Why deep tech companies screw up economic value capture (1:04:57) How to approach massive funding rounds (1:08:36) Should VCs “play the game on the field”? (1:15:33) Compound is a forecasting firm (1:21:37) Advice for young people getting into VC (1:26:48) Public market investors underappreciate narratives (1:31:20) Michael’s crypto thesis + real use cases (1:40:07) Why crypto hasn’t seen mass adoption yet (1:49:00) Humanoid robots won’t work (1:54:42) Should you make a hyped launch video? Referenced Compound Runway Wayve Michael’s Blog Follow Micahel Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

    1 h 58 min
  5. Ryan Hoover on Growth Flywheels, Building Communities, Helping Founders, LP Investing

    8 AOÛT

    Ryan Hoover on Growth Flywheels, Building Communities, Helping Founders, LP Investing

    Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week. Ryan Hoover is the Founder of Product Hunt and Weekend Fund. Ryan’s probably helped more founders launch their products than anyone else on Earth. We talk about starting Product Hunt as an email list, and he open sources the growth flywheel that propelled it to one of the most important places in technology. Ryan unpacks how he built and scaled a community around the product, how online communities have changed over time, how we’re thinking about software in the age of AI (tech will change, human behavior won’t), and how status has changed in Silicon Valley. We also talk about starting Weekend Fund to invest in other founders, his first 400x investment, investing in consumer health, and why he started investing in other funds. 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 $250 signing-up here. Timestamps: (5:52) Helping founders with software (15:36) Early ideas for Product Hunt in 2013 (19:14) Starting as a social email list (26:26) Product Hunt’s growth flywheel (31:15) AI won’t change human behavior (34:12) An audience is not a community (36:42) Why every community needs utility (38:52) Communities have shifted towards group chats (40:10) How AI changes building products (49:35) Importance of craft (52:30) Starting Weekend Fund, Ryan’s 400x investment (56:57) Weekend Fund’s software experiments (59:26) What makes Ryan’s investing unique (1:02:16) Why Ryan has a small fund (1:07:41) Peptides, GLP-1’s, Ketamine (1:18:57) Investing in funds (1:20:53) Ways LPs can add value for GPs (1:23:05) How status has changed in Silicon Valley (1:31:37) Backing founders with secrets, why failing is hard Referenced Weekend Fund Product Hunt Wayve self-driving cars The community trap Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products Get Your Wish - Porter Robinson Social Utilities Silicon Valley’s new status symbols Selfish Investing Follow Ryan Twitter LinkedIn Personal Website Signature Block Follow Turner Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.

    1 h 38 min
  6. PhD to $100M Revenue: Rebuilding SMB Lending with AI | Sahill Poddar, Co-founder and CEO of Parafin

    1 AOÛT

    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.

    1 h 25 min
  7. 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

    24 JUIL.

    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.

    1 h 37 min
  8. Solving the Hardest Problems in Dev Tools | Jake Cooper, Founder of Railway

    18 JUIL.

    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.

    1 h 28 min
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À propos

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.

Informations

  • Création
    Turner Novak
  • Années d’activité
    2023 - 2025
  • Épisodes
    108
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © Turner Novak
  • Site web de l’émission
    The Peel with Turner Novak

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