Turner Novak 🍌🧢
@TurnerNovak • 209,810 subscribers
investing @BananaCap_ podcasting @ThePeelPod (sign-up for emails below)
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New The Peel with Sam Blond This is his first podcast since starting Monaco, and our 2-hour conversation walks through everything sales, marketing, and GTM in a AI-native world. Thanks to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode! Watch here + links below. Timestamps: 0:00 Scaling Brex to $12B 1:14 How AI speeds up prospecting and TAM building 5:19 Using AI to get more leverage 9:15 Incubating Monaco at Founders Fund 12:56 Innovator’s dilemma in AI 15:57 AI companies should build full platforms, not wedge products 23:30 Revenue is just a math equation 27:18 Two ways AI increases conversion rates 36:56 AI will never replace spending time with customers 39:46 Don’t measure the impact of brand marketing 49:03 Your marketing must be different (and hard) 58:39 Customer discovery calls and working with design partners 1:03:03 The zero to 100 launch 1:11:00 Monaco’s launch playbook 1:19:00 Send gifts that are unique and social 1:22:17 Naming your company 1:28:04 Founders should send early outbound 1:32:38 How multi-channel augments AI outbound 1:39:42 Using intent signals and outreach timing to increase conversions 1:43:28 Two common ways founders mess up when scaling revenue 1:50:22 Monaco’s Forward Deployed AE's
Turner Novak 🍌🧢804,441 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
This video has a million views on TikTok. Feels like we’re at a cultural tipping point pushing back on the dating apps (it’s been brewing years). They’re historically hard businesses to make work, but I think the next big player in the space will be started soon.
Turner Novak 🍌🧢1,464,457 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
First time I’m seeing this view of one of the most insane comebacks in sports history. 2022 Kentucky Derby. Going into the last turn, Rich Strike was in 18th place (out of 20). He had 80-1 odds, the 2nd lowest of any winner in history. He wasn’t even supposed to race that day. Another horse was scratched last minute, and his owner got him registered 30 seconds before the deadline. Proceeded to pull off one of the greatest moments in sports history.
Turner Novak 🍌🧢1,427,737 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
![Ring is one of the most underrated consumer hardware products of all time. New The Peel with JamieSiminoff on going from an invention in his garage to a $5B+ revenue run rate inside of Amazon. We talk through building a consumer hardware business from scratch to a 100M+ install base, almost going bankrupt four times, why founders should always go all-in on the next thing, why he came back to lead Ring inside of Amazon, and how AI can make neighborhoods safer. 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 "well over 10x more" 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[dot]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, and 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](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2105712477489262828/amplify_video_thumb/2105701990408081408/img/tjpxcyF2SyzlRMf3.jpg)
Ring is one of the most underrated consumer hardware products of all time. New The Peel with JamieSiminoff on going from an invention in his garage to a $5B+ revenue run rate inside of Amazon. We talk through building a consumer hardware business from scratch to a 100M+ install base, almost going bankrupt four times, why founders should always go all-in on the next thing, why he came back to lead Ring inside of Amazon, and how AI can make neighborhoods safer. 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 "well over 10x more" 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[dot]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, and 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
Turner Novak 🍌🧢50,550 Aufrufe • vor 21 Tagen
New The Peel with Bilal Zuberi // Red Glass Ventures! Bilal's spent 18 years investing hard tech, most of it as a GP at Lux ($7B AUM), before starting Redglass.vc 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. Full episode here + links below 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
Turner Novak 🍌🧢30,026 Aufrufe • vor 14 Tagen
New The Peel with Ron Gabrisko, CRO of Databricks Ron joined Databricks at less than $1M in revenue and helped build it to a $7B+ run-rate over the next decade. We go inside the 13-year journey from a small startup founded by seven PhDs to a $190B company. We hit on all their biggest decisions, the mistakes, what they got right, and what he wishes he knew earlier. Ron's the rare CRO who's scaled a business from early startup to near-public company, runs his team on the product he sells, and has lots of advice around early sales motions and building and scaling a sales team. Full episode here + links below. 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
Turner Novak 🍌🧢78,788 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
"User-based pricing is a thing of the past." How Databricks found out the hard way: "When we started selling Databricks, we were doing $15k, $18k deals annual deals. New rule became: no deals less than my monthly Uber bill. We were adding tons of value. But because we're usage-based, a lot of the use cases weren't driving a lot of usage. So we started asking, how do we capture some of that value? Your proper pricing model is price equals value. If your price is over the value, no one buys. If it's under, you're leaving money on the table. So early days we added a platform fee. Then user fees, all these things to push our price points up to match the value. And one thing that wasn't intuitive: once we started charging for users, people started restricting who could use the product. Which drives down usage. So I said, okay, let's get rid of user pricing. All the users are free. And all of a sudden usage took off. Because now everybody can use it, everybody can get value out of it. Data's growing. Queries are growing. The number of people asking queries is growing. The number of agents asking queries is growing. All of it is tied to usage now. I think user-based pricing is a thing of the past, honestly."
Turner Novak 🍌🧢59,945 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
New The Peel with Shensi Ding Most founders get one founding story. Shensi thinks Merge has three. Shensi and Gil Feig started Merge in 2020, watched their first customers die, then rebuilt themselves twice for the AI era. Not many founders talk this honestly about tearing up their company. A lot of lessons for others trying to do the same. We get into why integrations turned out to be so important in AI, the playbook behind their night-shift 5-11pm AI transformation, almost hiring a foreign spy, why founders with an EA are moving too slow, the Embarrassment Framework, vibe coding a dinner bot that 10x'd their customer events, and why 6% of Merge employees get married. Full episode here + links below! Timestamps: 0:00 Something broke every year since 2020 2:22 How Merge went all-in on AI on nights and weekends 5:40 New launches got faster 8:32 Building connective infrastructure for AI 10:51 The dinner where Merge started 13:11 Six months of research before a line of code 19:00 Almost hiring a foreign spy 20:48 Merge’s 6% marriage rate 22:50 Hiring enthusiastic, nice, smart people 28:02 Early stage founders don’t need an EA 31:27 Shortcuts are a mentality 33:01 The AI tool that 10x'd their customer dinners 38:33 Marketing became an engineering function 40:51 Starting with SMB and climbing the logo ladder 42:07 How the product went cross-category 44:16 Launching Agent Handler and a new pricing model 46:47 Every product should be multi-model 49:58 Why most MCP servers don’t work 53:31 Startups should go all-in on enterprise 57:00 The hardest things are most defensible 1:00:26 Say "psycho shit" to be memorable 1:05:47 The Embarrassment Framework 1:10:23 Frank Slootman and being okay with being disliked 1:12:48 Giving feedback got scarier at 100 people 1:14:01 What only the CEO can do 1:19:44 The best marketing is not doing what everyone else does
Turner Novak 🍌🧢68,942 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
From Charles Hudson on why it's potentially more dangerous to sit out of a bubble than to participate: "That's my lesson from 2021. Because it’s not as if the people who were sober and restrained during 2021 have gotten a lot of credit from their LPs for having not participated in the circus. So I’m like, is that really what modern venture capital is about today? If there’s a speculative frenzy, the rational thing to do, if your goal is to remain a venture capitalist, might be to participate in the frenzy. Even if you have deep skepticism about the final outcome. You need to remain relevant. You need to remain in business and be able to raise capital. And to do that, your firm has to be relevant. And feel like you get the message. And if that's true, that leads you in a really different set of directions than it would if you’re just like, “Hey, the people who go crazy and lose a bunch of money on bad things will be punished. And the punishment will be you will not raise another fund.” I don’t really think it works that way."
Turner Novak 🍌🧢101,093 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
.Bilal Zuberi // Red Glass Ventures on why consensus investing is mostly a circle jerk: "At Lux, every year for a number of years, we'd each write down the top five companies in our portfolio we thought would be the biggest fund returners. Everyone wrote their five. We'd aggregate, and come up with a consolidated list. And we did it again next year. And the year after that. What we learned is that most of the companies were different every year. It's the flavor of the year. Somebody has a nice financing at a big price and you're like, whoa, this company's hot. Two years later it hasn't grown much, and it's coming down. The same thing is happening at the industry level now. Every month, every week, what are the companies everybody's excited about? And everybody just runs into them. The idea is, is this company at least worth the $500m of liq pref today? If my downside is relatively protected, let me play for the upside. The founders on the other hand is now raising at $25 billion with significant liq pref they need to clear. This starts to become a problem. The biggest issue today is you're seeing consensus where nothing has happened in the business. They've registered a trademark maybe, and boom, the valuation jumps. Why? Because three other top investors have invested. And founders are now figuring out how to game this. How do we structure our shares to get our equity out at a high price in a year? Should I do founder preferred shares? Do I need to include ability to do secondary sales in the incorporation docs in case the board blocks me? We're creating incentives for people to be distracted by all this bullshit."
Turner Novak 🍌🧢15,689 Aufrufe • vor 14 Tagen