The Peel with Turner Novak

Turner Novak
  • 4.6（11則評分）
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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.

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

    3 小時前

    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/

    1 小時 31 分鐘

  2. 6 天前

    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/

    1 小時 55 分鐘
  3. 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

    10月23日

    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/

    1 小時 19 分鐘
  4. Building AI-Native Infrastructure for Developers | Erik Berhnardsson, CEO of Modal

    10月16日

    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/

    1 小時 41 分鐘
  5. Howie: The AI Secretary | Austin Petersmith, Co-founder and CEO

    10月9日

    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/

    1 小時 40 分鐘
  6. How Loops Fixes Email for Developers with Co-founder and CEO Chris Frantz

    10月2日

    How Loops Fixes Email for Developers with Co-founder and CEO Chris Frantz

    Chris Frantz is the Co-founder and CEO of Loops, the email platform for software companies. We get into why sending emails is still a big problem, his hilariously simple framework for building products, getting in to YC with a last minute application, and why they skipped raising a Series A. We also talk through Chris decade of working in marketing, like when to lean into PLG vs Sales vs hype led growth, early stunts they did to get their first users, why they do no marketing now, and why Loops’ customer support team is all engineers. 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: (4:37) Email for software companies (8:28) Why email is a big deal (14:05) The future of email (17:00) Product vs Sales vs Hype led growth (24:33) Coming up with the idea for Loops (29:36) Building one of the first GPT wrappers in 2020 (34:34) Lessons selling his first company (37:13) Doing their YC app in 10 minutes (40:53) Avoiding VC’s who add value (46:58) Skipping a Series A (51:37) Building in stealth for 18 months (53:21) Marketing stunts to get the first waitlist sign-ups (58:44) Four step cadence of building Loops (1:01:58) Personally onboarding every new customer (1:04:03) Balancing 996 with family (1:11:11) Cleaning wasp nests with a shop vac Referenced Loops: https://loops.so Careers at Loops: https://loops.so/careers Curiosity: https://curiositystream.com Snazzy AI / Unbounce: https://unbounce.com/product/smart-copy Atlas customer support: https://atlas.so Follow Chris Twitter: https://x.com/frantzfries LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctfrantz 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 小時 17 分鐘
  7. Untold Startup Lessons from Dozens of Academic Research Papers with Dan Gray at Equidam

    9月25日

    Untold Startup Lessons from Dozens of Academic Research Papers with Dan Gray at Equidam

    Dan Gray is the Head of Insights at Equidam. If you’re a tech and investing nerd like us, you’ll love this conversation. We cover everything Dan’s learned reading dozens of academic research papers on startups and venture capital, debunking many popular narratives of the industry. We talk about the dangers of pre-mature startup scaling, the importance of origination stage investing, the concept of startup catering and why so many startups look the same, and the role of mega funds play in the ecosystem. We also discuss what the data says about concentration vs diversification, what VC’s get wrong about pattern matching, and why pivoting is more valuable than you think 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 Harmonic - The startup discovery engine https://harmonic.ai/turner Timestamps: (6:43) What’s the required rate of return in VC? (9:29) Venture capital needs new definitions (16:10) QSBS (18:23) Are we in an AI bubble? (24:07) Re-branding early and late stage venture (28:25) We need more origination stage capital (40:05) Survivorship bias in emerging manager outperformance (42:57) Incentives driving larger fund sizes (48:10) Raising overvalued rounds re-risks a startup (52:08) Startup catering: why all startups look alike (58:42) Are VC mega funds still an experiment? (1:08:06) Late stage VC is competing with PE (1:13:42) a16z’s Fund 1 strategy (1:18:18) How diversified should VC funds be? (1:25:06) Performance of Generalist vs Specialist firms (1:30:35) How to value a startup (1:40:58) Why VC firm location correlates to returns, but startup location does not (1:44:05) Founder background doesn’t predict success (1:48:27) Startups with one pivot are most successful (1:50:24) Premature scaling kills 70% of startups (1:54:47) Does mega fund model work for origination investing? (1:56:15) Value of Twitter and writing online Referenced Research Papers Venture Predation: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4437360 Process Alpha: https://angelspan.com/process-alpha-how-to-construct-and-manage-optimized-venture-portfolios-joe-milam-journal-of-portfolio-management-august-2022/ The Sunk Cost Fallacy in VC: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119924000518 Predictably Bad Investments in VC: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4135861 Premature Scaling: https://innovationfootprints.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/startup-genome-report-extra-on-premature-scaling.pdf Referenced Books The Otherland Tetrology: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43762-otherland Permutation City: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=lf7FuUR9se&rank=1 Necromancer: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6088007-neuromancer?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_29 Other Referenced Items QSBS changes: https://www.dwt.com/blogs/startup-law-blog/2025/07/qsbs-big-beautiful-bill-tax-code-upgrades Mega funds and the great re-risking: https://nextview.vc/blog/megafunds-and-the-great-re-risking/ Rex Woodbury’s post on hot companies: https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/the-taxi-cab-theory-of-venture-capital The VC Performance Paradox: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/performance-paradox-venture-capital-dan-gray-2fqre Prior episodes mentioned Dan Feder: https://youtu.be/_Ou6D9PLSBI Michael Dempsey: https://youtu.be/UzSbG6DL8CM Solugen: https://youtu.be/ofkNiB2nI3Q Follow Dan Twitter: https://x.com/credistick Blog: https://credistick.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/

    2 小時 6 分鐘
  8. Rethinking Asset Allocation, The Past Present and Future of Venture Capital | Dan Feder, University of Michigan

    9月18日

    Rethinking Asset Allocation, The Past Present and Future of Venture Capital | Dan Feder, University of Michigan

    Dan Feder is a Senior Managing Director of Investments at the University of Michigan’s $18 billion endowment. Our two hour conversation talks through the past, present, and future of all things venture capital, and investing more broadly. Dan lays out the case for why most institutional investors should change how they approach asset allocation, why risk and uncertainty are not the same, the importance of relevance and independent thinking, advice for fund managers raising from institutional LP’s, the trend of VC’s rolling up services businesses, and what he learned from beating Lance Armstrong in a race. Thanks to Chris Douvos @ Ahoy Capital and Adam Kurkiewicz at WashU for their brainstorming topics for Dan! 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: (5:50) Beating Lance Armstrong in a race (8:05) “The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare” (10:39) Why investors need to re-think asset allocation (22:31) Difference between risk and uncertainty (29:26) How endowments work (33:12) Endowment portfolio construction (40:47) From law, to industrial buyouts, to venture (49:13) Narrowing scope to increase returns (54:54) Why career planning as an LP is hard (58:24) VC in the 00’s (1:08:18) Venture vs Adventure Capital (1:15:16) VC’s rolling up legacy industries (1:20:17) Importance of relevance (1:26:25) Traits of the top investors (1:28:25) Importance of trust in institutional LP fundraising (1:32:54) Venture is the most competitive ass class (1:35:37) Why venture firms do not persist over time (1:38:27) How venture will change going forward (1:43:37) The Newman Cycle Referenced Risk Uncertainty and Profit by Frank Knight: https://www.amazon.com/Risk-Uncertainty-Profit-Frank-Knight/dp/1614276390 Follow Dan Twitter: https://x.com/federdan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfeder 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 小時 52 分鐘
顯示全部 (117)

4.6
（滿分 5 顆星）
11 則評分

簡介

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.

資訊

  • 創作者
    Turner Novak
  • 活躍年代
    2023年 - 2025年
  • 集數
    117
  • 年齡分級
    兒少不宜
  • 版權
    © Turner Novak
  • 節目網站
    The Peel with Turner Novak

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