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. Inside Eight Sleep | Using AI to Sleep Better | CEO Matteo Franceschetti

    HÁ 1 DIA

    Inside Eight Sleep | Using AI to Sleep Better | CEO Matteo Franceschetti

    Matteo Franceschetti is the Co-founder and CEO of Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep created one of the original breakout consumer health products in 2014, quietly building a business that’s raised over $300 million dollars and was reportedly free cash flow positive in the first half of 2025. But things weren’t always easy, and Matteo shares the challenges of starting a hardware company, why hardware has stronger moats, and the fundraising mindset he adopted that eventually got Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund to invest. We also get into the importance of sleep, how the company’s Sleep Butler uses AI to help you sleep better, and the big opportunity building more consumer health products. Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode. It’s the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: ⁠https://www.numeral.com⁠ Timestamps: (2:18) Three pillars of health: sleep, nutrition, fitness (4:02) Creating a sleep routine (6:59) Importance of body temperature in sleep (8:43) How Eight Sleep works (12:14) Using AI to help you sleep (18:35) The AWS outage (24:12) It’s too hard to build in Europe (28:09) Why hardware has stronger moats (32:23) How to fundraise for a hardware company (35:30) The opportunity in Sleep tech (38:43) Hiring is easy when you have a mission (40:37) How to fight jet lag (43:03) Opportunities in women’s health (45:54) Evolving from single purchase to subscription model (47:12) Matteo’s personal health stack (49:41) Racing sports cars Referenced Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/ Compliant VC Meme Account: https://x.com/compliantvc Follow Matteo Twitter: https://x.com/m_franceschetti LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matteofranceschetti/ 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/

    53min
  2. Inside the New Superhuman: $700M ARR, 40M Daily Users with Rahul Vohra

    HÁ 6 DIAS

    Inside the New Superhuman: $700M ARR, 40M Daily Users with Rahul Vohra

    Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO of Superhuman Mail. Rahul sold his company to Grammarly in July of 2025, which had just acquired Coda in 2024. Following the acquisitions, the combined companies rebranded to Superhuman in October of 2025. And it’s quietly one of the most underrated businesses that no one is talking about, with over $700 million ARR and 40 million Daily Active Users. Grammarly spent 15+ years building integrations with over a million other products, that they’re now layering more AI products on top of. We talk about Rahul’s journey building Superhuman, go inside the acquisition, all the lessons he’s learned from selling two companies, why you should design your product like a video game, and we also re-visit his famous quantitative guide to finding PMF. Thanks to Todd Goldberg, Ed Sim, Shomik Ghosh, Ryan Hoover, and Rahul’s brother Gaurav Vohra for helping brainstorm topics for this conversation. Thank you to Hanover Park for supporting this episode! Upgrade your fund admin to the 21st century https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (2:42) Inside the Superhuman acquisition (11:09) Grammarly: $700M ARR, 40M DAUs (18:53) How to sequence your product roadmap (24:43) Vision for the new Superhuman (32:43) Build your product like a video game (38:24) Designing Karamja island in Runescape (41:10) Build products like toys and games (44:53) Starting a Machine Learning PhD in 2006 (48:49) Dropping out to start his first company (50:47) Rapportive’s crazy accidental launch (57:56) Meeting Superhuman co-founders (1:02:17) Being 1 of 20 to access LinkedIn’s API (1:06:38) Almost getting acquired by LinkedIn (1:10:32) Nearly dieing, getting acquired with 2 weeks of runway (1:20:08) Diligence from VCs vs Acquirers (1:26:37) Rahul’s quantitative framework for PMF (1:30:45) How to build an enduring brand (1:31:51) Rahul’s AI-powered productivity stack (1:35:01) Todd and Rahul’s angel fund (1:36:45) We need more solo founders Referenced Superhuman: https://www.superhuman.com Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com High Resolution Fundraising: https://paulgraham.com/hiresfund.html High Resolution Fundraising: https://paulgraham.com/hiresfund.html Superhuman Quantitative Framework for Finding PMF: https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/ Whisper Flow: https://wisprflow.ai Follow Rahul Twitter: https://x.com/rahulvohra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ 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/

    1h40min
  3. Inside Stripe: Stablecoins, AI, and (not) Going Public | Will Gaybrick, President of Technology and Business at Stripe

    13 DE NOV.

    Inside Stripe: Stablecoins, AI, and (not) Going Public | Will Gaybrick, President of Technology and Business at Stripe

    Will Gaybrick is the President of Technology and Business at Stripe. Stripe builds financial infrastructure for the internet, and if you’ve ever purchased a product online, you’ve probably used Stripe. We talk about what Stripe’s doing in crypto and stablecoins, how AI is changing commerce and payments, how they’re thinking about going public, how they build products internally, and interesting data they’re seeing around AI-native companies, like how they’re growing 3.5x faster than SaaS companies. Thank you to Claire Hughes Johnson, Josh Kushner, and Cosmin Nicolaescu for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Numeral and Amplitude for sponsoring this episode.Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://www.numeral.com Amplitude: Listen to users at scale with AI https://www.amplitude.com/AI-Feedback Timestamps: 2:42 Will’s promotion 5:29 Build vs Buy in AI 6:39 Inside the Bridge acquisition 8:54 Stripe’s stablecoin strategy 11:20 Why building Stripe is so complicated 13:22 How Stripe builds new products 18:29 AI companies growing 3.5x faster than SaaS 22:58 New fraud vectors in AI businesses 25:19 Agentic commerce in ChatGPT 29:34 Building modular products 34:05 How Stripe uses AI internally 42:12 Building the first payments foundation model 48:23 Link, Stripe’s 200M user consumer product 56:52 Will Stripe ever IPO? 59:14 Blurring of private and public companies 1:03:39 Starting Hack Yale 1:08:23 Joining Thrive’s $5 million Fund 1 1:12:30 Low margin businesses are underrated 1:16:30 Joining Stripe as CFO 1:21:59 How Stripe’s go-to-market has evolved 1:25:56 Stripe’s margins 1:29:52 Why financial services are so hard to use 1:33:04 Lessons from Alan Mulally Referenced Stripe: https://stripe.com/ Careers at Stripe: https://stripe.com/jobs/search Follow Will Twitter: https://x.com/gaybrick LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-gaybrick-5730347 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/

    1h36min
  4. Roger Ehrenberg | Investing in Sports, 10x Funds, Traits of Top Founders, Current Seed Stage Market, Investing in Detroit

    6 DE NOV.

    Roger Ehrenberg | Investing in Sports, 10x Funds, Traits of Top Founders, Current Seed Stage Market, Investing in Detroit

    Roger Ehrenberg is the Co-founder of Game Changers Ventures and IA Ventures. We talk about the current Seed stage venture environment, what he learned investing in sports teams, how COVID changed sports, what he’s investing in today, characteristics of the top founders, advice for emerging managers, and his real estate and consumer brand projects in Detroit. Thank you to Michael Kim, Jon Oberheide, Jesse Beyroutey, James Fitzgerald, Dan Feder, Sarah Smith, Marc Weisser, and Charles Hudson for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Hanover Park for supporting this episode. Upgrade to an AI-native fund admin at https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: 3:45 Current Seed stage market 7:17 Starting Game Changers to invest in sports 12:25 Investing in the Miami Marlins 16:45 Investment opportunities in sports 18:21 Tomorrow Golf League 23:54 Investing in sports teams 25:50 Business models in sports 27:12 Importance of real estate development, gambling 32:53 How COVID changed sports 38:41 Clippers experimenting with cheap tickets & concessions 41:51 Opportunities monetizing super fans 46:51 Sports as an investable venture asset 53:24 Great founders find big TAMs 56:31 The desire to win 58:09 Sending letters to break into Wall Street from Michigan 1:02:38 Raising IA Ventures Fund 1 in 2009 1:07:58 Advice for emerging managers 1:13:18 The Trade Desk’s three bridge rounds 1:18:03 Lessons on recycling capital 1:20:16 What it’s like working with your kids 1:24:53 Brand Detroit 1:29:14 Being world class at multiple disciplines Referenced Game Changers Ventures: https://gamechangers.vc IA Ventures: https://www.iaventures.com Eberg Capital: https://www.ebergcapital.com TGL Golf: https://tglgolf.com Brand Detroit: https://www.branddetroit.com Follow Roger Twitter: https://x.com/infoarbitrage LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rehrenberg 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/

    1h31min

  5. 31 DE OUT.

    Why AI Coding Will Never be 100% Autonomous, How Engineering Teams Are Actually Adopting AI, Inside the 996 Discourse, How to do Creative Marketing | Daksh Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Greptile

    Daksh Gupta is the Co-founder and CEO of Greptile, the AI code reviewer that understands your entire code base. Greptile just closed a $25M Series A led by Eric Vishria at Benchmark, and we get into their long and winding journey to build one of the fastest growing AI companies. Thanks to Suds at SF1 for helping brainstorm topics for the conversation. Thank you to Numeral and Hanover Park for sponsoring this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Hanover Park: Modern, AI-native fund admin at https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (3:15) Evolution of AI coding + code review (11:23) Coding will never be fully automated (18:07) Why you need a separate code reviewer (24:34) How eng teams adopting AI is changing (27:37) Why LLM costs will come down (31:54) Pricing AI products (35:27) Getting your team to adopt AI (38:17) How Daksh started the 996 discourse (42:10) Recruiting is a funnel, open roles are a product (49:19) Making an energy drink for programmers (51:19) Brainstorming marketing stunts (57:22) Don’t do hype marketing too early (59:41) Starting a band, hitting #14 on Spotify (1:06:35) Evolution of the startup meta (1:12:39) Starting Greptile in class at Georgia Tech (1:19:18) Moving to SF, getting into YC (1:23:44) Pivoting from codebase chat to code review (1:27:09) Crazy growth and mimetic desire (1:29:47) Pricing AI software (1:34:44) How to market developer tools (1:39:46) Greptile's fundraising journey (1:42:57) Why YC is worth the 7% dilution (1:46:39) Treat fundraising like dating Referenced Greptile: https://www.greptile.com/ Careers at Greptile: https://www.greptile.com/careers Monetizing Innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Monetizing-Innovation-Companies-Design-Product/dp/1119240867 Greptile Work Culture: https://www.greptile.com/blog/work-culture Episode with Adit @ Reducto: https://youtu.be/h98dLRJFHMM Follow Daksh Twitter: https://x.com/dakshgup LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakshg/ 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/

    1h55min
  6. Inside Reducto: YC to Series B in 18 Months, From Pivot to Fortune 10 Customers, Lessons in Founder-Led Sales | Adit Abraham, Co-founder and CEO of Reducto

    23 DE OUT.

    Inside Reducto: YC to Series B in 18 Months, From Pivot to Fortune 10 Customers, Lessons in Founder-Led Sales | Adit Abraham, Co-founder and CEO of Reducto

    Sign-up here to get weekly episodes + transcripts in your inbox: https://www.thespl.it/ Adit Abraham is the Co-founder and CEO of Reducto. Reducto’s product takes PDFs and physical documents, and extracts all the data, just like a human would if they were reading it. At the time of recording, they’ve processed over 1 billion pages, grew 6x over the past five months, and are fresh off a $75 million Series B led by a16z. And Adit told me they’ve only burned $1 million of capital so far to get here. And the craziest part, Adit told me they’ve only burned $1 million of capital so far to get here. Anyone building an AI product probably sees Reducto as essential infrastructure. Our conversation gets into how they built the best product in the space, landing a Fortune 10 customer as a two-person startup, getting to $1 million in ARR within a few months, lessons doing founder led sales to over $5 million in ARR, and what the future of PDF’s, and human / computer data looks like. Thank you to Liz Wessel at First Round, Chetan Puttagunta at Benchmark, and Adel Wu at Reducto for helping brainstorm topics for Adit. Thank you to Numeral and Hanover Park for sponsoring this episode. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel Hanover Park: Modern, AI-native fund admin at https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (3:35) Reading unstructured human data (10:44) Growing 5x in four moths (12:38) Insurance, healthcare, legal, logistics (19:13) Where LLM’s still struggle (28:23) Starting Reducto from a blog post during YC (32:01) Landing a Fortune 10 customer with two people (35:48) Limiting the product and growth early on (40:57) Getting an MIT professor fired (43:50) How to avoid pivot hell (49:00) $108M from First Round, Benchmark, a16z (51:48) Chetan convincing them to raise a Series A (55:50) Raising a Series B in 48 hours (59:36) Redeye flight to hire the 1st AI researcher (1:05:42) Lessons hitting $5m ARR with founder-led sales (1:13:09) Staying on top of changes in AI models Referenced: https://reducto.ai https://reducto.ai/careers Follow Adit Twitter: https://x.com/aditabrm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditabraham Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Sign-up here to get weekly episodes + transcripts in your inbox: https://www.thespl.it/

    1h19min
  7. Building AI-Native Infrastructure for Developers | Erik Berhnardsson, CEO of Modal

    16 DE OUT.

    Building AI-Native Infrastructure for Developers | Erik Berhnardsson, CEO of Modal

    Erik Bernhardsson is the Co-founder and CEO of Modal, building high-performance AI infrastructure. We talk about building what is essentially a new cloud provider, created from the ground up, optimized for AI. We also talk about what actually happened with the great GPU shortage, how Modal fixes the inference problem in AI, and why he thinks AI will lead to 10x more developers. He also shares lessons on culture from joining Spotify as the 40th employee, treating hiring like a prediction problem, what most people get wrong working with early customers, why more people should start companies in their 30’s and 40’s, and reflections on fundraising in a hot market. Thank you to Tim Chen at Essence Venture Capital and Erik’s Co-founder Akshat for their help brainstorming topics for this conversation. Thank you to Meow and Hanover Park for supporting this episode. Meow: Get free bookkeeping for your startup at https://www.meow.com Hanover Park: Modern, AI-native fund admin at https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (4:26) Modal: AI-native infrastructure (9:02) Why its so hard to get GPU’s (15:00) Hitting PMF with AI generated media (20:37) Competing in IOI competitions (23:09) 40th employee at Spotify (27:17) Lessons from Spotify (31:17) Starting Better[dot]com (34:05) Treating hiring like a prediction problem (36:12) Erik’s favorite interview question (39:07) Sales + common design partner mistakes (42:02) Startups should solve hard problems (44:05) Evolution of Modal’s product over time (50:15) Rise in importance of inference in AI (52:07) AI development post-GPU scarcity (58:51) Building a brand in dev tools (1:04:31) Fundraising from Seed to Series B (1:07:42) More 30+ year old’s should start companies (1:10:00) Reducing developer tax, increasing productivity (1:20:37) Why Erik’s bullish and bearish on AI (1:26:17) Bubbles, downsides to inappropriate valuations (1:34:58) High CO2 levels make you dumb (1:37:38) Difference between US and European startups Referenced Modal: https://modal.com Careers at Modal: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/modal Suno: https://suno.com Planet Scale: https://planetscale.com How to hire smarter than the market: https://erikbern.com/2020/01/13/how-to-hire-smarter-than-the-market-a-toy-model Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem: https://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-prediction-problem Cloud in 2030: https://erikbern.com/2021/11/30/storm-in-the-stratosphere-how-the-cloud-will-be-reshuffled Follow Erik Twitter: https://x.com/bernhardsson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikbern 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/

    1h41min
  8. Howie: The AI Secretary | Austin Petersmith, Co-founder and CEO

    9 DE OUT.

    Howie: The AI Secretary | Austin Petersmith, Co-founder and CEO

    Austin Petersmith is the Co-founder and CEO of Howie, the AI secretary. We talk about why AI assistants are so hard to build, why they decided to build Howie super narrow, and everything that went into their brand, name, and viral launch. Thank you to Adam D’Augelli, Sophia Amoruso and Alex Cohen for help brainstorming topics for the conversation. Thank you to Hanover Park for supporting this episode. Try the modern, AI-native fund admin at https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner Timestamps: (3:35) Howie: The AI Secretary (6:08) Why AI assistants are so hard to build (16:19) Why Howie started in email (20:49) Adding a human in the loop (30:48) AI software vs AI-powered humans (36:21) How a meme inspired Howie (39:29) Inside the making of Howie’s launch video (44:15) Howie’s viral launch video + Discussion (53:47) Designing the brand (1:01:37) Long-term opportunity and roadmap (1:07:53) Working for Jason Calacanis (1:12:00) Jason's media lessons (1:16:51) Getting Howie's first users (1:19:35) Pitch deck strategy that raised $6m (1:24:09) The mistake of optimizing for growth too soon (1:29:48) Building an AI company outside of SF (1:33:13) Being Superhuman’s 1st customer, Mercury’s 3rd Referenced Try Howie: https://howie.com/ Jobs at Howie: https://app.dover.com/jobs/howie Howie Dewitt Meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/howie-dewitt NewKid: https://newkid.services/ Follow Austin Twitter: https://x.com/awwstn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awwstn 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/

    1h40min
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Sobre

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.

Informações

  • Criado por
    Turner Novak
  • Anos de atividade
    2023 - 2025
  • Episódios
    120
  • Classificação
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © Turner Novak
  • Site do podcast
    The Peel with Turner Novak

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