The Peel with Turner Novak

Hosted by Turner Novak

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Oct 2026

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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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October 26, 2026Episode 1661 hr 12 min

Inside the Anthropic Bet That Made Menlo a Top AI Firm | Matt Murphy

Matt Murphy is a partner at Menlo Ventures and led Anthropic's Series D. Before Menlo, Matt sat in Google's board meetings at Kleiner Perkins from the first check to the IPO, and then backed Anthropic before it had a product or revenue. We talk about the similarities between early Google and Anthropic, bending all the rules to invest at a $4B pre-revenue valuation, raising a $500M+ SPV at an $18B valuation without being allowed to show LP's a single financial (and the 30 to 45 days he thought they might not pull it off), the three LP's who each made over $1B on the bet, the Anthology Fund check that became OpenRouter and four other unicorns, Menlo's barbell portfolio strategy, avoiding the messy middle of early growth rounds, and why most of the 70+ neolabs won't make it. Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode. Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Timestamps: (0:00) How to read Anthropic's S-1 (1:21) Do AI companies actually make money? (2:23) Google didn't want ads. Anthropic didn't plan on enterprise. (4:51) Bending the rules to back Anthropic pre-revenue, pre-launch (9:50) You can't be a leading AI firm without a top model company (12:00) Leading the Series D at $18B six months later (14:22) Why the best researchers chose Dario (15:25) Menlo's first-ever SPV, nearly the size of the fund (16:44) The LP meeting that sparked a $500M SPV (19:18) Raising at $18B without showing financials (20:04) Three LP's made $1B+ each (24:23) Why Matt joined Menlo in 2015 (26:00) Rebuilding Menlo over the past decade (32:49) Venture as a team sport (35:45) How to keep a challenger mentality (38:15) Why VC firms decay (41:31) The Anthology Fund: OpenRouter, Wispr, Goodfire (42:27) Ownership vs. backing the best (46:10) Why this isn't 1999 (48:06) Frontier vs. open weight models (51:29) The barbell portfolio strategy (53:54) Avoiding the messy middle between early and growth (55:07) How to spot a category leader (57:18) Fortune 5000 AI adoption: "almost none" (59:06) Menlo is in 10 of 70+ neolabs: Skild, Chai, Axiom (1:02:13) Where $1B AI startup raises actually go (1:04:18) Phase 1 vs. Phase 2 of AI (1:06:26) What the AI IPOs mean for venture (1:09:11) What Matt does differently after 25 years (1:10:52) The Alex Smith lesson Referenced: Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ Menlo's Anthology Fund: https://menlovc.com/anthology-fund/ Menlo's Modern AI Stack: https://menlovc.com/perspective/the-modern-ai-stack-design-principles-for-the-future-of-enterprise-ai-architectures/ Follow Matt Twitter: https://x.com/mmurph LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-murphy-0415543/ 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/

October 23, 2026Episode 1651 hr 34 min

Oren Zeev's $2.7B Solo GP Playbook

Oren Zeev runs one of the most successful venture firms in the world. The catch: he has no partners, no associates, holds no investment committee, writes no memos, and has no office. He's a solo GP managing $2.7 billion across 11 funds, an early backer of Audible, Houzz, Chegg, Tipalti, and Navan, where a relationship that started with a $50k check became a stake worth more than a billion dollars. We get into why most partners add negative value, the days his calendar is empty enough to surf on a Tuesday, why he's never shown an LP a single slide in 11 funds, why diversification is a lie, his fund that had only five companies, how Navan went from a $90M run rate to zero in a month (and survived), the cross-fund investing everyone tells him not to do, the DPI stand that cost him LP's, the Yozma Program that built Israel's startup economy, and the 30-minute meeting that turned into his first fund. Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode. Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Timestamps: (0:00) Running $2.7B with no team or partners (1:58) How one person can beat a team (4:43) Omission beats commission: why committees miss (7:13) What really fills a partnership's day (9:23) The returns business, not the production business (10:58) A week in his nearly empty calendar (16:49) The mistakes new solo GP's make (19:34) Eleven funds, zero slides (22:09) No thesis (24:28) Why diversification doesn't work (27:14) The fund with only five companies (30:44) TripActions insight: everyone hates their travel software (34:59) Paying employees to spend less (37:34) COVID: $90M run rate to zero (39:24) How Navan survived (41:34) A $100M round with no way to price it 44:29) Keeping the team: the real test of leadership (46:04) What Oren looks for in founders (50:39) Cross-fund investing, and "trust me, bro" (53:59) Always his own biggest LP (55:14) The DPI stand that cost him LP's (58:54) Decart, and the Anthropic deal (1:03:54) Inside the 30-year rise of Israel's tech ecosystem (1:07:19) The Yozma program that built an industry (1:11:59) Why Israelis build now instead of selling early (1:14:39) Moving to the Valley in the 2002 nuclear winter (1:17:19) Audible, and why the first home run matters (1:19:29) Leaving Apax, and going solo (1:22:04) Peter Thiel and a fund raised in 30 minutes (1:24:24) The second fund: 48 hours, still no deck (1:25:49) ICON: helping Israeli founders crack the Valley (1:30:29) The leader he admires most: Anwar Sadat Referenced: Zeev Ventures: https://www.zeevventures.com/ Navan: https://navan.com/ Mercury Interactive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive ICON: https://www.iconsv.org/ Yozma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yozma Follow Oren Twitter: https://x.com/orenzeev LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ozeev 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/

October 15, 2026Episode 1641 hr 14 min

Why Stripe’s 1st Employee Bought a Bank | Darragh Buckley, Increase

Darragh Buckley was the first employee at Stripe. He’s since started Increase, the banking infrastructure that moves over $500 billion a year. And he just bought a bank. We talk about how to buy a bank, why putting an API on a bank is like "strapping a jet engine to a go-kart", operating with high-empowerment, the overnight sprint that turned on Stripe’s first dollar of revenue, why Patrick and John Collison would run across the office, and why you want your banker to be bored. Thanks to this episode’s sponsors: Monaco: The revenue engine for startups. https://monaco.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit at 0% APR. https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Clerk: Everything you need for authentication. https://clerk.com Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot. https://numeral.com Timestamps: (0:00) Stripe's 1st employee bought a bank (1:38) Fixing the stone in his shoe building Stripe (7:59) Banking looks like 2010 payments (11:11) Merging two layers into one, just like Stripe (14:52) Why he finally bought the bank (16:26) How do you actually buy a bank? (20:20) The first bank that got away (22:04) Why banks can’t chase new fads (25:26) Compliance as code, from day one (29:46) Talking straight to the Federal Reserve (32:19) The Fed migration that nobody noticed (33:50) The missing last mile of banking (35:44) Getting customers to switch (38:23) The challenger sales model (40:33) What customers use Increase for (41:48) How Ramp's bill pay works (42:37) $500B a year with 33 people (45:31) Hiring for a high-empowerment culture (47:08) Growing up with the Collisons (50:27) 150 test cases in one night (54:23) What really made early Stripe work (57:07) Why Patrick and John sprinted everywhere (1:00:00) “You're not in payments, you're in fraud” (1:02:31) Where AI hits a wall on fraud (1:05:08) Giving payment cards to AI agents (1:09:27) Use boring technology widely (1:11:37) You want your banker to be bored Referenced: Increase: https://increase.com Careers at Increase: https://increase.com/articles/how-we-work Stripe: https://stripe.com Links: NBA Player Harrison Barnes Buying a Bank: https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nba-player-harrison-barnes-invests-155500816.html Acquire or Be Acquired Conference: https://www.bankdirector.com/event/acquire-or-be-acquired-2026/ Choose Boring Technology Essay: https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology Previous episode with Ron Gabrisko @ Databricks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYOO0DfeXu4 Previous episode with Will Gaybrick @ Stripe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM1_NADNSgI Patrick Collison's "Fast": https://patrickcollison.com/fastAuthorize.net: https://www.authorize.net Follow Darragh X: https://x.com/darraghbuckley LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darragh-increase/ 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/

October 8, 2026Episode 1631 hr 38 min

Why a Chemist Left $7B to Bet on Physical AI Before Everyone Else | Bilal Zuberi, Red Glass Ventures

Bilal Zuberi spent 18 years investing hard tech, most of it as a GP at Lux ($7B AUM), before starting @RedGlassVC in 2025 to bet on AI that touches the physical world. Bilal was making defense tech investments 15 years ago, and he led the Series A in Applied Intuition, now a $15 billion company. We hung out for a few hours and he shared everything he's learned investing in hardware, why hardware is still hard, why the deployment layer is the most attractive area of physical AI, taking a 90% pay cut to start Red Glass, "AUM as a moat", how to become a billionaire off management fees, and why consensus investing is mostly a circle jerk. Thanks to this episode's sponsors: Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Timestamps: (0:00) Leaving $7B to bet on physical AI (0:51) What most people get wrong in physical AI (4:17) Why a startup has to become a business (11:31) Hardware is still hard, so what changed? (15:40) How government went from SBIR mills to real customer (17:48) Robotics goes from hard-coded to probabilistic (23:34) Where value accrues: full stack, then wedges (25:24) How Applied Intuition became a $15B company (28:03) The deployment layer is the real prize (32:22) OpenAI and Anthropic hint what will happen in physical AI (36:14) Why customers have all the downside (37:56) The best founders paint a picture and execute (40:53) Why it's called Red Glass (founders chew glass) (42:17) Every founder hates fundraising, even Travis (44:29) Red Glass's four core values (50:49) Why founders really take your call (the $250k effect) (53:28) What Bilal looks for in a founder (58:44) Why technical founders underrate fundraising (1:00:26) The Tiger Global era (1:04:02) From $10B to $100B, the goalposts moved (1:06:21) Is this a bubble? Portfolio construction (1:08:55) Building a firm that outlasts him (1:12:13) From Nobel-lab chemist to Zero-to-One investor (1:13:45) Are small funds just outsourced associates? (1:16:35) When AUM becomes the moat (1:18:34) How big funds choke off SPV money (1:21:24) The risk of VCs backing competitors (1:23:31) Why fund economics push everyone bigger (1:26:20) Consensus investing is a circle jerk (1:29:51) You can be a billionaire on fees alone (1:33:09) Equal carry and the right to win (1:35:55) Why good ethics in VC matter Check out Red Glass VC: https://www.redglass.vc/ Follow Bilal Twitter: https://x.com/bznotes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bzuberi 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/

October 1, 2026Episode 1621 hr 40 min

From Nearly Bankrupt to $5B+ Revenue, with Ring Founder Jamie Siminoff

Jamie Siminoff built the first WiFi video doorbell in his garage, got rejected on Shark Tank, and nearly went bankrupt "at least four times" while growing Ring into one of the largest consumer hardware businesses in the world. We talk about the $1.15B sale to Amazon, coming back to lead Ring after leaving post-exit, and what he learned having a fresh set of eyes on the business. We also get into the near death stories, like Christmas the company almost died from $1M of bricked doorbells, the $175k "F you, wire it" fight for the Ring.com domain, betting millions on TV ads when the board said no, landing Shaq as an early investor and celebrity endorser, the real backstage story of three dead demo units on Shark Tank, and why Jamie thinks AI can zero out crime in neighborhoods. Thanks to this episode's sponsors: Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Amplitude: AI analytics https://amplitude.com Timestamps: (0:00) Leaving Amazon, coming back with fresh eyes (7:49) Deleting every useless meeting (10:21) Zero-based time budgeting (15:31) Bubble, or the golden age of AI? (19:50) $480M to several billion in revenue (23:48) Lessons on obsession from MrBeast (30:17) The AI vision for Ring (34:05) The $10k feature he can't ship yet (38:50) Building apps on top of Ring (40:03) Building in his garage, the Kickstarter ban (44:45) The pre-sale, and the fear of getting copied (47:59) How he talked his way onto Shark Tank (49:24) Three dead units backstage (54:04) Threatening Shopify's CEO before air (55:23) The Christmas Ring almost died (58:59) The midnight fix that saved the company (1:01:22) Raising from True Ventures, the "ass hat" email (1:05:04) Hiring gritty “new to business” people (1:07:15) Missionaries, not mercenaries (1:10:13) Building an authentic brand people trust (1:12:49) Buying Ring.com with the last $175k of cash (1:18:11) “We were always on the verge of bankruptcy” (1:19:12) Betting $1M on TV ads when the board said no (1:22:43) Why TV ads actually work (1:25:26) Richard Branson, and doubling mid-raise (1:28:46) Closing Shaq, how to do authentic celebrity endorsements (1:33:27) Selling to Amazon for $1.15 billion (1:35:16) Being paranoid to lose people's money (1:36:38) Mentors, and never meeting your heroes Referenced: Ring: https://ring.com Dyson: https://www.dyson.com True Ventures: https://www.trueventures.com Om Malik: https://om.co Adam D'Augelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdaugelli/ Saar Gur: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saargur/ Eoghan McCabe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoghanmccabe/ Sky Dayton: https://www.skydayton.com/ Tobi Lütke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiaslutke/ Follow Jamie Twitter: https://x.com/JamieSiminoff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiesiminoff/ 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/

September 24, 2026Episode 1611 hr 25 min

How Gusto Built a $9.5B Company with Co-founder Tomer London

Tomer London is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto. We go deep on how Gusto builds product, from obsessing over customers to shipping Gusto Cofounder with AI in eight weeks. We also get into what AI is doing to small businesses, surviving COVID, the manual world of payroll before software, what his dad's 40-year clothing store taught him, starting Gusto out of YC, and how Gusto thinks about making acquisitions now that it’s crossed $1B ARR. Thanks to this episode's sponsors: Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://amplitude.com Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Timestamps: (0:00) Obsessing over small businesses (10:09) Building Gusto Cofounder in 8 weeks (13:57) What AI is actually doing to small businesses (19:52) COVID and "the end of small business" (27:42) Why running a small business is so hard (32:21) SVB and why payroll can't be late (36:29) How GTM changes after 500,000 customers (39:27) Running payroll manually before Gusto (46:19) Why payroll and compliance are so hard (49:14) What his dad's clothing store taught him (54:00) Are we regulating small business out of existence? (58:04) Starting as ZenPayroll in 2012 (1:05:02) Getting the first customers (1:07:28) Minimum Lovable Product vs MVP (1:11:28) How AI changed the way Gusto builds (1:15:58) Gusto's M&A playbook (1:22:52) Shimon Peres and "no room for small dreams" Referenced Gusto: https://gusto.com Guideline: https://www.guideline.com Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com Sam Blond on The Peel: https://www.thespl.it/p/the-ai-native-gtm-playbook-sam-blond No Room for Small Dreams, by Shimon Peres: https://www.amazon.com/No-Room-Small-Dreams-Imagination/dp/1538412209 Follow Tomer Twitter: https://x.com/tomerlondon LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomerlondon 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/

September 17, 2026Episode 1601 hr 36 min

Building a Venture Firm Like a Product | Jeff Morris Jr, Chapter One

Jeff Morris Jr is the founder and Managing Partner of Chapter One. Previously, he was employee 50 at Tinder and started Chapter One from his desk before quitting to go full-time on investing. We talk about running a venture firm more like a product team, running 50 experiments every fund cycle, why Sequoia doing $60 million Seeds has killed round labels, why the best firms only pick right 4-7% percent of the time, running the world's smallest accelerator, branding a venture firm, when to pivot, the time he delivered Valentine's flowers himself in Kansas, why none of his Fund 1 winners were in the Bay Area, and why he never announced his $64m Fund 3. Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Monaco for supporting this episode. Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://amplitude.com Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com Timestamps: (0:00) Publishing IC notes every week (3:48) Do round names matter anymore? (8:20) Putting a big check into Erebor's $2B round (11:40) Why deep tech went from instant pass to preferred in 3 years (15:32) When deep tech companies should raise debt (19:03) Should this company raise $1M or $100M? (23:25) You have two days to say yes (25:58) Sourcing software he built at Tinder (28:05) Their crypto book hit 22x, then the market turned (30:58) Paradigm, SendCutSend, and re-founding a firm (33:35) If you're going to pivot, re-found the company (37:21) Flex's wedge was too illegible to fund (40:13) When should you actually pivot? (42:47) Zaarly, the Uber for everything (45:17) Moving to Kansas City with a bag of clothes (47:25) Delivering flowers door-to-door (51:31) Raising a $64M Fund 3 and not announcing it (56:33) Joining Tinder as employee 50 (57:35) The push notification that took down Tinder (1:00:59) Why you shouldn’t start a dating app (1:04:18) Consumer got too predictable (1:09:00) Why consumer AI economics look worse than enterprise (1:13:02) Launching Chapter One from his Tinder desk (1:15:08) 50 experiments per fund cycle (1:16:11) Product Club, the world's smallest accelerator (1:19:05) Evolving portfolio construction between funds (1:21:25) Why picking rates have fallen (1:24:41) Smaller funds can invest in illegible categories (1:27:27) Zero Fund 1 returners were in the Bay Area (1:29:16) Don't compete with Sequoia at Seed (1:32:01) His grandfather built Mervyn's Referenced Chapter One: https://chapterone.com Erebor: https://erebor.bank Flex: https://flex.one SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com Paradigm: https://www.paradigm.xyz Supabase: https://supabase.com Poke: https://poke.com Floodgate: https://www.floodgate.com SV Angel: https://svangel.com Union Square Ventures: https://www.usv.com Zaarly: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zaarly Mervyn's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn's Mervin Morris obituary: https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2021/09/10/mervin-morris-founder-of-mervyns-stores-atherton-resident-dies-at-101/ People Mentioned Jamesin Seidel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesin-seidel-5325b147/ Palmer Luckey: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey Mike Maples Jr: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maples/ Scott Belsky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbelsky/ Josh Elman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshe/ David Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlee10/ Max Mullen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxmullen/ Follow Jeff Twitter: https://x.com/jmj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmorrisjr 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/

September 10, 2026Episode 1591 hr 42 min

How Databricks Went $1M to $7B+ ARR in 10 Years | Ron Gabrisko, CRO

Ron Gabrisko might have the best sales seat in software. He joined Databricks as CRO at less than $1M in revenue, and built it into a $7B+ ARR business over the next decade. Almost no one has built a revenue engine this big this fast, so he's the right person to walk through how you actually do it, from the first 40 reps to selling AI into the enterprise today. We talk through Databricks' early decisions, like killing seat-based pricing as usage took off, using a16z to land the first big logos, the four C's every enterprise now weighs on AI, how Ben Horowitz recruited him to seven PhDs who were giving away their software for free, why he only hires sellers who can demo the product themselves, and how he runs his entire sales org on his own product, Databricks' Genie. Thank you to this episode’s sponsors! Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) From under $1M to $7B+ in revenue (1:07) Seven founders and three big bets (2:49) Why going cloud-only was contrarian (5:14) Monetizing open source: "what will they pay for?" (11:40) What Databricks actually is (14:17) Genie, the AI he runs the business on (19:20) It's the data context, not the model (21:36) The early AI bet, before LLM's (26:32) Why enterprise AI beats consumer AI (30:00) Automating his own sales org (32:18) How Ben Horowitz pitched him (33:48) Why seven co-founders is an advantage (35:54) Teaching the CEO sales: org charts and MEDDIC (42:08) Biggest sales mistakes and four growth stages (45:14) Why technical products need technical sellers (47:21) The seller profile: technical, gritty, no short stints (50:45) Back-channeling references that don't BS you (53:32) Hiring 40 reps and why PLG didn't convert (58:07) How a16z opened enterprise doors (1:05:47) Why he gives POC's away for free (1:08:50) Raising prices to match value (1:11:34) Why he killed seat-based pricing (1:14:37) Build for enterprise requirements early (1:16:46) Consumption selling and the six-month planning cycle (1:19:54) Expanding internationally without breaking it (1:23:38) The four C's of enterprise AI (1:26:54) Why messy data blocks AI adoption (1:29:07) Forward deployed engineers: what makes them win (1:31:56) When does Databricks go public? (1:33:36) LL Cool J, Michael Jordan, and never losing a game Referenced Databricks: https://www.databricks.com Careers at Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/company/careers Apache Spark: https://spark.apache.org MosaicML: https://www.mosaicml.com Relentless Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1797121782?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Follow Ron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-gabrisko-4a21a 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/

September 3, 20261 hr 38 min

How Athletes Get Into the Top VC Funds | Ryan Nece, Next Legacy

Ryan Nece runs Next Legacy, a $4 billion fund of funds that connects athletes and philanthropists with the top venture capital firms in the world. Ryan is the only player in NFL history to win a Super Bowl as a rookie and go 0-16 in his final season. His dad, Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott, started one of the first athlete-backed venture funds with Joe Montana in the late '90s. Ryan rebuilt that playbook a generation later, so almost nobody is better positioned to explain the similarities between pro athletes and the top founders / investors, how athletes actually break into Silicon Valley, the biggest mistakes they usually make, . Thanks to this episodes sponsors! Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) How a football family broke into Silicon Valley (4:33) A Super Bowl rookie year with four Hall of Famers (8:09) What separates the top 0.1% of athletes? (12:18) The mistake of having "a guy" (18:41) Vetting who to trust (20:18) The dumbest investments athletes make (22:45) How athletes can help founders (29:44) VC Power Law is just like sports (34:24) How to break in without connections (38:05) Building Next Legacy to $4B AUM (40:44) Why they give away all the profits (43:20) Early firm building mistakes (48:19) Learning to pitch institutional LP's (53:03) The emerging-manager barbell (55:45) “Your starting five tells me who you are” (57:47) The other AI: Authentic Interaction (59:55) Getting LP attention with the rule of three (1:03:40) Working the whisper network (1:06:03) Pick the kid who gets picked last (1:12:26) The Lions 0-16 season (1:14:43) The “Next Play” mindset (1:19:28) Mental toughness (1:21:32) What it’s like commentating an NFL game (1:27:14) Getting cussed out by Warren Sapp (1:31:13) His favorite athlete: Jerry Rice (1:35:15) Abe Lincoln and his grandfather's restaurants Referenced Next Legacy: https://www.nextlegacy.com/ Give and Take: https://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986 Three Feet From from Gold: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Feet-Gold-Obstacles-Opportunities/dp/1402784791 Team of Rivals: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/0743270754 Follow Ryan Twitter: https://x.com/ryannece LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-nece-abb07b8 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/

August 27, 2026Episode 1571 hr 46 min

Leaving Sequoia to Bet on Ohio: Why America is the Best Emerging Market | Chris Olsen, Drive Capital

Chris is the Co-Founder and CEO of Drive Capital. Prior to Drive, Chris was a Partner at Sequoia Capital where he helped launch the firm’s first growth fund. Chris left Sequoia in 2012 to start Drive in Ohio on a single bet: the best companies in America are getting built outside Silicon Valley (and almost nobody's funding them). Thirteen years later, Drive has handed back over $1 billion to its investors in a market where most funds can't return a dollar. We talk chasing $2B outcomes instead of $50B, when his lead investor pulled out the day he moved from SF to Columbus, why only 100 of 3,500 firms can raise right now, the welders quitting to drive DoorDash, and why America is the best emerging market on earth. Thanks to this episodes sponsors! Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) America is the best emerging market (8:13) Why this couldn't have happened pre-2006 (10:48) Top lessons from 10 years at Sequoia (14:17) Why the "meeting factory" model fails (21:42) Searching for vacuums (24:51) Sequoia passed on a company 10 miles too far (29:37) Greece's GDP equals Detroit's (34:34) The biggest tech companies aren't in SF (40:28) 223 meetings to raise Fund 1 (44:27) Turning one fund into a product catalog (48:47) The day his biggest LP pulled out (52:08) Fundraising is a persistence game (57:36) Returning $500M in a single week (59:56) Only 12 companies hit $50B in 20 years (1:01:29) Why Drive owns 30%, not 10% (1:05:03) Returns over logos, the carry math (1:10:00) Mindset of VC's outside SF (1:15:54) How AI unlocks boring, giant markets (1:19:22) Investing in catalysts, not sectors or geo (1:25:35) 3,500 firms raised, 100 survived (1:31:33) OpenAI won't eat every other company (1:37:46) Compete with yesterday's version of yourself (1:40:19) Small changes, compounding results Referenced Drive Capital: http://drivecapital.com/ Follow Chris Twitter: https://x.com/ChrisOlsenCMH LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cholsen 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/