Summation with Auren Hoffman

Hosted by Auren Hoffman

Technology Entrepreneurship

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Episodes

272

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government. Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious. Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).

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60 recent

July 7, 20261 hr 0 min

Striveworks CEO Jim Rebesco on drone swarms, AI for warfighters, and the end of air superiority

Jim Rebesco is the co-founder and CEO of Striveworks, an AI ops company deployed across the US Army, Navy, and combatant commands. In April, Striveworks announced a $70M enterprise agreement with the Pentagon, giving nearly a million defense personnel access to its platform. Jim was previously a partner at Virtu Financial, a pioneering high-frequency trading firm.In this episode of Summation, Jim and Auren discuss:why the real question in AI warfare is who pushes the buttonthe case that autonomy favors big nation states, not insurgentswhy it costs $200,000 to procure anything in the Pentagonwhat high-frequency trading and war have in commonYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jim Rebesco on LinkedIn

June 30, 20261 hr 10 min

Short-seller Carson Block: a fugitive CEO, Libyan spies, and $50B fraud

Carson Block is the founder of Muddy Waters Research, one of the defining activist short-selling firms of the last decade and a half. Since 2010, Muddy Waters has published forensic research exposing accounting fraud at publicly traded companies across China, Europe, and the US and has been right enough times that 11 companies have been delisted as a result.In this episode of Summation, Carson and Auren discuss:why outright fraud is only 20-25% of Muddy Waters' focusthe Wirecard sagawhy high-trust countries like Germany are a paradise for criminalshow the thing that killed Enron is still completely legalYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Carson Block on LinkedIn and on X @muddywatersre

June 23, 202649 min

Facet CEO Anders Jones on the biggest heist in finance, how advisors really sell permission, and the great boomer wealth transfer

Anders Jones is the CEO and co-founder of Facet, a fintech company built to bring high-quality, flat-fee financial advice to an underserved market: the mass affluent. Facet has raised over $250M and manages more than $7B. Anders has seen the real finances of tens of thousands of households.In this episode of Summation, Anders and Auren discuss:why the percentage-of-assets fee is the greatest heist in financethe retention data showing people stick 3x longer when you help them act, not just advisethe horizontal wealth transfer to spouses that nobody is planning forwhy most companies should never raise venture capitalYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Anders Jones on LinkedIn

June 16, 20261 hr 3 min

Charles Duhigg on the writing AI can't touch, what GLP-1s really do to your brain, and the serendipity tax

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better, and Supercommunicators. His work focuses on the science of habits, productivity, decision-making, and human connection.In this episode of Summation, Charles and Auren discuss:why producing the words is only 10% of an author's job, and the 90% AI can't dowhat GLP-1s actually do to the brain the serendipity tax: why you pay for five dead-end dinners to get the one that changes your lifethe three skills that separate supercommunicators from everyone elseYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Charles Duhigg on X at @cduhigg

June 9, 202646 min

SignalFire CEO Chris Farmer on why venture funds now last 20 years and the hiring boom behind the layoffs

Chris Farmer is the founder and CEO of SignalFire, an early stage venture firm managing over $3 billion. In this episode of Summation, Chris and Auren discuss:why the time to return 1x has stretched to 9+ years and funds are lasting 20 yearsthe engineering hiring boom hiding behind the layoff headlinesthe five functions of a VC firm and the one place data helps the leastwhy almost all conventional career advice is now badYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Chris Farmer on X at @chriswfarmer

June 2, 202639 min

GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent

This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the GTMnow podcast ---------------------------------------------------Auren Hoffman (Flex Capital) joins the GTMnow podcast to share some of the most contrarian takes in tech today, from why AI moats are gone, to why your next VC meeting will be with a bot, to why AI is secretly going to trigger a baby boom.In this episode:Why Auren runs 500+ AI agents to source deals, and what that means for founders raising capitalThe "agent-to-agent" meeting prediction: by end of 2026, first VC conversations will be fully automatedWhy every software moat has been "blown up" and what Salesforce, LinkedIn & DocuSign need to do to surviveThe OpenAI x The Hustle acquisition breakdown: why it's the smartest (and cheapest) distribution play in AIWhy missing a great deal is 10x more painful than making a bad one, Auren's honest VC mistake frameworkThe baby boom thesis: why AI, IVF, self-driving cars & cheaper energy could reverse the fertility declineWhy companies won't sign yearly SaaS contracts anymore, and what that means for every B2B founderAuren Hoffman is the founder of NQB8, Flex Capital, SafeGraph, and LiveRamp. He's an early backer of Replit, Perplexity, Rippling, Vercel, Coinbase, Chime, and AppLovin.Max’s socials: https://x.com/hackitmaxhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/Auren’s socials:https://x.com/aurenhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/https://auren.substack.com/GTMnow: https://gtmnow.com

May 26, 202650 min

Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn

Jake Stauch is the co-founder and CEO of Serval, the AI-native enterprise service management platform. Serval was founded in 2024 and has already raised over $125M across rounds led by Redpoint and Sequoia at a $1B+ valuation. Before Serval, Jake spent five years on the product team at Verkada and earlier founded NeuroPlus, a brain-sensing hardware company that made video games for kids with ADHD.In this episode of Summation, Jake and Auren discuss:Why Anthropic has added more ARR in the past few months than ServiceNow has in the past 20 yearsThe "forward deployed engineer" hire and why he recruits future founders instead of solutions engineersWhy talent density is the only remaining moat in the age of AIThe Silicon Valley collusion around not poaching each other's employeesYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jake Stauch on X at @jakeserval

May 19, 20261 hr 0 min

Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource

Dmitry Shevelenko is Chief Business Officer at Perplexity. He previously co-founded Tortoise, a robotics and commerce automation startup and held business development roles at Uber, LinkedIn, and Meta. He also serves on the board of Lazard. In this episode of Summation, Dmitry and Auren discuss:Why CEOs and executives are Perplexity Computer’s biggest power users and what that says about who wins the AI eraScaling Perplexity past $500M ARR with only 34% headcount growthThe $34.5B Chrome bid and the TikTok bid before itWhy AI's biggest constraint right now is adoption and not capabilityYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitry Shevelenko on X at @dmitry140

May 12, 20261 hr 2 min

Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office

Ben Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, an alternative asset management platform that gives individual investors access to private real estate, private credit, and venture capital. In March 2026, he listed the Fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker VCX, one of the first publicly traded venture capital funds. VCX gives retail investors direct exposure to private companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and SpaceX. The fund manages over $650 million and has over 100,000 individual investors. Ben is a returning Summation guest.In this episode of Summation, Ben and Auren discuss:Why VCX traded up 700% on day one while Bill Ackman's fund traded down the next weekWhy ETFs fall apart for private markets and closed-end funds are the right structureHow AI will reshape real estate by 2031 and which markets get hit hardestThe hidden truth that SoHo, Wynwood, and Miami Beach were all built by the same personYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ben Miller on X at @benmillerise

May 5, 20261 hr 5 min

Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war

Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition.In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss:Why blackmail almost never works in espionage and ideology still doesWho is actually dying for PutinWhy China is the biggest winner of the Ukraine warHow technological surveillance transformed CIA tradecraft You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ralph Goff on Linkedin