Molly O’Shea
@MollySOShea • 77,526 subscribers
Investing & Tech →Newsletter/Podcast @Sourceryy | BIG Fan @brexhq @harvey @mercor @public @deel @getvcx
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NEW: I sat down w/ Perplexity Founder & CEO Aravind Srinivas (Aravind Srinivas) on why AI-native SMBs could drive the next American millionaire economic boom. Perplexity, valued at ~$20B with ~$2B in reported funding, $750M in annualized revenue as of August, seeing 5x YoY revenue growth as it expands from search into autonomous agents. One example Aravind shared is a single-person company generating $3M in annual revenue while spending over $1M a year on Perplexity Computer. His thesis is that AI could fundamentally change the economics of building a business. Smaller teams, less capital, higher productivity, & entirely new business models. At the infrastructure layer, Aravind sees a shift toward local & hybrid inference, with AI agents operating across personal devices and the cloud. As context windows expand and workloads become more personalized, local compute becomes increasingly cost-competitive, while offering greater privacy, control & data sovereignty. We cover: › Why SMBs could become a major driver of US GDP growth › The shift from AI models to agents & recursive economics › Why Perplexity is betting on your Mac instead of building data centers › NVIDIA, Apple Silicon, local inference & sovereign AI › Why writing code is no longer the bottleneck, but problem-solving is 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder & CEO of Perplexity (01:30) Why Perplexity's brand is built on curiosity (04:47) Every great invention starts with one question (08:18) How to build a $1T company in America alone (12:36) The next big companies will be tiny (13:45) Is the American dream still alive? (16:28) Stop blaming users for bad prompts (22:55) How Perplexity quietly grew 5x (26:51) The solopreneur spending $1M a year on Perplexity (28:28) "We don't have competitors, we have contributors" (29:20) The data center is coming to your laptop (34:32) Orchestrating up with NVIDIA, down with Apple (36:11) What happens when your AI agent knows everything (39:17) Why Perplexity is skipping the data center race (41:25) Stop asking AI to write code, ask it to think (45:47) Perplexity’s answer to AI security (48:27) The Hugging Face incident & multi-agent threats (50:45) Turning everyone into a scientist (53:31) Why Perplexity isn’t chasing a billion users
Molly O’Shea1,856,361 views • 11 days ago
Ken Griffin of Citadel questions the economics of the AI infrastructure boom: ›What happens when GPU supply exceeds demand & pricing goes into free fall? ›Are today's semiconductor margins sustainable? Are investors overestimating the useful life of GPUs? “Look, I think this market is actually experiencing people doing research. For the couple of years, if you were on the thematic program of we're gonna spend hundreds of billions or a trillion dollars in data centers, we're gonna build compute at a scale never seen before, which companies in that story are choke points in supply chains that will have abnormally high margins? And who will be the big winners in this transformation? Will it be the Microsofts & AWSs who will be the gatekeepers to the foundational models? Like, who's going to earn the economic rents? But in some sense, like, 'I'm just gonna buy them all. I'm gonna buy the hyperscalers, I'm gonna buy the chip, I'm gonna buy businesses that make things I've never even heard of 5 years ago in Korea and Taiwan & in Japan.' And now we're reaching a point where people are becoming more discerning. We do realize that we are seeing extremely high margins in DRAM & MLCCs in areas where there are real supply constraints, but people are now starting to look out 2 years, 3 years. How long is this going to last? And in particular, I don't wanna be doom & gloom, but GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run. The incremental seat on an airline that's not full, if you can sell that ticket for $20, you're making money in that seat. And that's one of the reasons that the airline industry is such a nightmare, is because the moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into free fall. We saw this actually with the telecom build-out back in 2000. We built more fiber than we had demand for, & the price of telecommunications just went straight down. If we reach a point where the provisioning of GPUs exceeds demand for GPUs, marginal pricing will actually go into free fall. And that really upends all the investment assumptions that people are working with today. That's issue number one. And issue number 2 is: I think people are taking a step back & saying, 'What is the useful life of a GPU?' Right here, right now, there's people that are earning extraordinary pricing on GPUs that are 5 or 6 years old. And so there's a growing set of concerns that I can't give the same capitalization rate or the same revenue models to year 7, 8, 9 of a chip in the future that maybe I was using 12 months ago. So I think we're really grappling with just how far will this demand carry us in the marketplace.”
Molly O’Shea182,389 views • 2 days ago
NEW: Inside Thrive Capital w/ Partner Dr. Nworah Ayogu Investing in Neuralink, OpenAI, Isomorphic Labs, OpenEvidence, Oscar Health & the next trillion-dollar healthcare companies. Thrive Capital manages $65B+ in AUM, having raised $10B+ for Thrive X earlier this year. Healthcare has been part of the firm's DNA since inception, with Josh Kushner incubating Oscar Health alongside Thrive itself. The firm has incubated ~10 healthcare companies, the majority valued at over $1B, including Oscar Health, Cedar, Rightway & Cadence. I sat down with Nworah (Nworah Ayogu), a Harvard-trained, board-certified physician & neuroscientist, former Amazon Clinic GM & Amazon Pharmacy's first Chief Medical Officer, to break down AI's next frontier in medicine. We cover: ›› Isomorphic Labs: Demis Hassabis, AI-designed drugs & the race to compress drug development from 10 years to 4 ›› Neuralink: $9B last funding valuation, brain implants, surgical robotics & restoring independence to patients with paralysis ›› OpenEvidence: $15B valuation, ~$300M annualized revenue & adoption by more than 65% of US physicians. Why AI could create 10X doctors ›› OpenAI: Why healthcare could become AI's most important use case, from clinical reasoning to personalized medicine Thrive's thesis: Building companies that are world-class in both technology & medicine, with investments spanning Chai Discovery, Formation Bio, Nudge, Fortell, Nourish & more “Because as a nation, I think we need a 10X nurse a lot more than we need a 10X engineer.” 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Dr. Nworah Ayogu, Partner at Thrive Capital (01:52) The next AI trade is hiding in biotech (03:48) How AI designs a new drug (08:37) 9 out of 10 drugs fail, can AI flip that? (11:33) How Thrive got into Isomorphic Labs (14:14) Giving paralyzed veterans their hands back (20:39) Neuralink is more interesting than SpaceX (23:21) The hearing aid that broke the rating scale (30:18) The doctor who built Amazon Health (33:21) Why AGI makes healthcare the biggest bet (35:25) One cancer drug outearns every AI lab combined (37:55) How Lilly became healthcare's first $1T company (40:04) How Thrive helped OpenAI break into healthcare (44:13) OpenEvidence: 2/3 of US doctors in 3 years (46:16) Healthcare is 6x bigger than defense (48:15) $40T spent, zero gain in life expectancy (51:43) A custom gene therapy built for one baby (55:47) Saving Medicare $2.5M a week (1:04:13) Oscar's comeback from down 95% to up`1 100% (1:06:19) Why OpenAI is now a giant healthcare provider
Molly O’Shea409,349 views • 9 days ago
Antifund's Jake Paul says the US needs a new Constitution "The 2nd Amendment was made so that if the government was doing ridiculous things to us and controlling us in harmful ways, that the citizens could upthrow them." "As weapons systems get more advanced, a pistol or a shotgun is not going to be able to upthrow the government if we the people decide that the US government is taking advantage of us. We maybe need to be able to bear more advanced weapons systems as citizens." "Drones, EMPs, RPGs, potential anti-helicopter.. I don't know what it is, but if the government can just come in with autonomous robots and take us all out, and we are now powerless, essentially the 2nd Amendment is just a hobby now for people to go and shoot guns."
Molly O’Shea2,019,433 views • 1 month ago
ICYMI: 10 of The Wildest Hot Takes From the All-In Summit 2026 The The All-In Podcast returned to LA this year w/ its biggest lineup yet: Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Gwynne Shotwell, Jared Isaacman, Brad Gerstner, Bill Gurley, Dina Powell McCormick, Jake Paul, Nick Shirley, Blake Scholl, Martin Shkreli & more, alongside hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, @jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David david friedberg. Over 3 days, the most influential names across technology, AI, investing, energy, space, media & politics came together for conversations about where the world is heading.. (Spoiler Alert: not extinction) I was on the ground asking 10 founders, CEOs, investors & creators one question: What’s your hottest take right now? 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00 — Brad Gerstner, Altimeter: AI Safety 02:28 — Naveen Rao, CEO of Unconventional AI: AI Doom, Energy Efficiency & the SaaSpocalypse 09:00 — Jonathan Neman, CEO of Sweetgreen: AI vs. Processed Food 13:14 — Toby Rice, CEO of EQT: AI, Natural Gas & America’s Energy Demand 20:49 — Wen Sang, COO of Genspark: Why AI Should Speed Up, Not Slow Down 25:10 — Geoff Woo, Anti Fund: Free Will, Consciousness & the Singularity 33:24 — Nick Shirley: California High-Speed Rail & Government Spending 36:35 — Jake Paul, Anti Fund: Updating the Constitution 38:47 — Kent Draper, CCO of IREN: AI Infrastructure & Compute Demand 42:37 — Michael Brandt, CEO of Ketone-IQ: The Human Body as the Next Technology Platform
Molly O’Shea1,283,544 views • 26 days ago
NEW: In 2021, Apollo acquired a massive internet business for ~$5B. Just 5 years later, it's become *one of the fastest-returning deals in the firm's history.* 700M monthly users. Billions in revenue. And an enormous distribution advantage that would be nearly impossible to replicate today. Apollo's Reed Rayman recruited Jim Lanzone (Jim Lanzone) to lead the turnaround. The company? Yahoo. I sat down with CEO Jim Lanzone, one of the internet industry's most accomplished turnaround executives, to go inside Apollo Global Management's PE M&A playbook for Yahoo, the economics of the acquisition, & why this may be one of the most underrated assets in tech. The numbers: › ~$5B acquisition › 700M monthly users, including 100M+ each across Yahoo Finance & Sports › 75% direct traffic, with ~75% of daily users logged in › Hundreds of millions in annual ad-tech losses addressed through restructuring › Major divestitures including AOL, TechCrunch & Edgecast › One of Apollo's fastest-returning deals, with Jim saying they're now "playing with house money" › Newer search companies valued at 6X Yahoo despite having a fraction of its users, revenue & profitability But the most interesting part of this deal is the operator. Before Yahoo, Jim helped drive a 50X stock increase at Ask Jeeves, grew CBS Interactive from 70M to 220M users, and led Tinder. And unlike the traditional PE playbook of aggressive cost extraction, PE micromanagement, Apollo backed an experienced product executive to restructure the business, rebuild its leadership, & reinvest in growth. Now Yahoo is moving from turnaround to comeback, with an entirely rebuilt product ecosystem, its own AI search engine through Yahoo Scout, and a potential path back to the public markets. We get into what it's really like operating under Apollo, the leadership decisions behind the turnaround, the value of internet distribution at scale, and why some startups with less than 0.1% of Yahoo's users command higher valuations. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo (01:33) How Apollo bought Yahoo for $4.8B (04:16) Taking over a company in the middle of COVID (07:22) Is private equity really the villain? (12:42) The mistake that handed Google the internet (16:09) Where Yahoo's 700M monthly users come from (17:07) Why Yahoo sold AOL & TechCrunch (21:21) "You can't skip levels of the video game" (27:58) Why people still trust Yahoo in the AI era (30:26) How Yahoo Scout competes with ChatGPT & Perplexity (33:48) Saying no to the AI gold rush? (37:31) From turnaround to comeback (39:42) One of the fastest paybacks in Apollo history (42:50) The biggest mistake companies make at scale (44:21) Silicon Valley startups are now worth more than Yahoo with 0.1% of its users (46:25) Why Yahoo is ready for the next crash (48:57) Barry Diller, Tinder & the tweet that predicted Yahoo (54:36) Is Yahoo finally back?
Molly O’Shea113,137 views • 4 days ago
NEW: Stripe Co-Founder John Collison (John Collison) says AI agents will completely rewire internet commerce. Stripe processed $1.9T in 2025, up 34%. Now the company is rebuilding for an internet where AI agents, not humans, increasingly transact. “Instinct is real, Muse is real. All these things are real.” “Computer use is the ultimate backwards compatibility layer for the real world.” I sat down with John at Browserbase Navigate to talk agentic commerce, computer use, cybersecurity, how Stripe is rebuilding for AI & why Stripe considers 2026 the beginning of the “singularity epoch.” John sees AI already showing up in new company creation. Stripe is seeing its highest rate of new firm creation in recent memory, while its 2026 Atlas cohort is tracking at 5x the revenue of the 2025 class. We also cover Stripe’s recent acquisitions: › Bridge + Privy, bringing crypto-native infrastructure & talent › Metronome, usage-based billing for the AI era › OpenRouter, routing across multiple AI models as inference spend & model competition explodes Browserbase is building the infrastructure for this shift, giving AI agents cloud browsers to navigate the existing web & take actions across it. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Stripe’s $1.9T & Rebuilding for AI (00:31) Why Agents Will Replace Web Forms (02:20) How AI Rewires Commerce & Product Discovery (04:40) More Cyberattacks? (06:49) Why Stripe Says the Singularity Started in 2026 (09:29) Stripe Is Rebuilding Its APIs for AI Agents (11:38) Why Stripe Bought Bridge, Privy, Metronome & OpenRouter (15:12) When Stripe Builds vs. Buys (16:55) How AI Is Changing Stripe Internally (20:39) How John Keeps Up With AI (23:28) The Coming 'Good Bot' vs. 'Bad Bot' Problem (24:53) 17 Years of Lessons Building Stripe
Molly O’Shea520,470 views • 18 days ago
FYI: Aravind Srinivas (Aravind Srinivas) says there’s a 1-person company spending **~$1M/year** on Perplexity “There’s 1 solopreneur, literally a one-person company, spending upwards of a million dollars a year on our product.” “He’s making $3 million a year by automating newsletters for others.”
Molly O’Shea177,514 views • 11 days ago
BREAKING: Bending Spoons 🥄 is Eating Silicon Valley FULL INTERVIEW CEO Luca Ferrari (Luca Ferrari) $BSP is quickly becoming tech’s buyer of choice. They look at 100s of companies a year & buy 5-10. Airtable, AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, Tractive, & now Miro under agreement. Why? Bending Spoons spent a decade building 50+ proprietary tools in-house. Every company they acquire gets rebuilt on top of them.. & it's working. Spoon Stats: › 500M+ monthly active users › 9M+ paying customers › ~$100M/year in est. savings from internal technology › 800K job applications (~286 hires in 2025) › 50+ acquisitions › 50+ proprietary internal tools › 3,000+ experiments last year › 95% of code written by AI › 2–3X more productive, according to Luca Part II of our Bending Spoons series, from Milan HQ Check out Part I: HQ Tour with Luca + Sit down interviews w/ Co-Founders Francesco & Matteo, + GM of AOL Valentina 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder & CEO, Bending Spoons (00:45) The deal that broke the Internet (03:41) Why Silicon Valley overspends on Hype (07:35) Half a billion monthly active users (16:17) What makes a company worth buying (20:07) Inside the platform powering every product (32:16) Debunking the Private Equity comparison (38:23) $4 Million in revenue, per employee (43:44) The secret to zero churn (47:40) The one value that defines Bending Spoons (51:52) The AI tool every Spooner uses (57:58) Going Independent from the AI labs (59:02) Have we actually reached AGI? (1:08:05) The AI question nobody's asking (1:12:54) Luca's next big bet
Molly O’Shea546,050 views • 1 month ago
Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch (Guillermo Rauch) says AI model companies have “zero loyalty” & parts of the AI boom look like the worst parts of the crypto boom: “There's all kinds of crazy things going on with AI, including people inventing token volumes. There's a lot of free promos. There's a lot of fake ZDR.” “If I was one of these companies, I would ask, ‘What percentage of my users are here just because I gave them free subsidies on a plan?’”
Molly O’Shea69,519 views • 5 days ago
BREAKING: David david friedberg on America vs Socialism FULL INTERVIEW Exposing the underlying problems no one wants to talk about. How the bottom 50% got left behind. "I don't blame Americans for finding themselves in the situation that they're in. I blame the bad policy that brought us to this moment." "Americans should feel good about America. We just have to fix the policies." "This can't just be a CCP psyop. It's coming from a place of hurt, of turmoil, of fundamental struggle." "I'm saying everyone is right, but we need to be honest about what has happened to get us here & what the right path is to get us out of it." We cover: › Real wealth data: $183T total US net worth, $8T held by billionaires, $4T by the bottom 50% › The 1982 Social Security mistake that cost the bottom 50% an extra $37 trillion (vs bankrupt !!!) › Why capital gains & labor taxes should reverse › Wealth tax as asset seizure › Invest America for Children, a 401(k) from birth, & flipping Social Security into equities › Joe Lonsdale: paying taxes that actually work 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) David Friedberg, CEO at Ohalo Genetics & Co-Host at All-In (01:11) Is California functionally bankrupt? (02:28) The real reason Americans can't afford anything anymore (12:13) Why a wealth tax is really government theft (21:22) Why blaming billionaires is a political strategy, not a solution (25:33) How Socialism grows like a virus (30:40) Inside Trump Accounts: a 401(k) for every American (34:22) Why rational arguments can't compete with viral outrage (40:56) Jeff Bezos's radical fix for the wealth gap (45:47) 5 years till Social Security is bankrupt (46:35) Is AI actually coming for your job? (50:29) The K-shaped economy (55:39) Five things America needs to fix to survive (59:21) David's research process (1:02:54) "It's about making Americans feel good again"
Molly O’Shea1,443,751 views • 3 months ago
BREAKING: a16z Launches The Horowitz Andreessen Academy with $42M in Funding Yes, a school. The Academy is an unaccredited, residential alternative to a 4-year degree in San Francisco, led by Founder & CEO Gagan Biyani (Gagan Biyani 🏛) (Udemy, Maven). Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸) & Erik Torenberg (Erik Torenberg) are on the board. Investors include Adam D'Angelo, Tobi Lütke, Tony Xu, Fidji Simo & Shyam Sankar. Applications open today for a Founding Class of roughly 50 students, starting Fall 2027. 1 year, no tuition, admitted on proof of work. Anthropic, Anduril, Coinbase, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit & Stripe are Founding Partners, with 30+ hiring partners behind them. We cover: › The $42M raise and the runway behind it › Portfolios, interviews and IQ testing in admissions › 75% to 80% project time and weekly pod check-ins › Tuition, partnerships and equity as the 3 revenue lines › Why the Academy is telling fundable 17-year-olds to wait "The big difference between going to the academy and going to college is we are not gonna prioritize your grades. We're gonna prioritize proof of work." 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Gagan Biyani, Founder & CEO of Horowitz Andreessen Academy (01:01) Why this Academy is different from college (04:44) Started his first company at age 13 (08:30) Building a school for Silicon Valley (11:55) Raising $40M for a School (14:06) "You Did What?" - Proof of work over grades (19:08) Should young builders really start companies? (22:37) Why this is different from YC and fellowships (27:35) The Academy is for young builders (31:33) Why schools need to embrace AI (37:18) How AI is changing education (44:17) What an AI-native curriculum looks like (48:51) Why high-agency students struggle in college (53:12) Why the best builders zigzag (1:02:19) Why you should apply even if you don't get in (1:04:36) Building a supportive environment for young builders (1:08:54) What the Academy program looks like (1:10:44) Why the Academy is in San Francisco (1:11:19) The people who shaped Gagan (1:14:41) Favorite book!
Molly O’Shea426,768 views • 1 month ago
BREAKING: Inside Rocket Lab ( $RKLB ) w/ Sir Peter Beck FULL INTERVIEW (Part I) We sat down with Peter Beck Founder & CEO of Rocket Lab after another record quarter, $234M in revenue & $2.36B in backlog "The lawyers hate me saying it, but global domination is definitely part of the plan." "I didn't want to build a space company that just lives for the lifetime that I'm running it. It needed to be multi-generational." We go deeper into Iridium, Neutron, the $397M Space Force contract to build + launch "Flatellites," & how 81% of revenue last quarter was outside of launch. Covering: › Why the fix for a 9-month lead time was buying the supplier › The $8B Iridium acquisition & why he was surprised nobody saw it coming › Why the Neutron question should be about the 10th rocket, not the 1st › The 24-hour turnaround constraint that produced Hungry Hippo › Flatellites, building satellites for volume rather than one at a time Plus: building a launch industry in New Zealand from zero suppliers & no regulation, staying out of broadband to play in L-band, going public before SpaceX, GHOST & the launch site that ships in a container, & why the Archimedes engines are painted black. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Sir Peter Beck, Founder & CEO at Rocket Lab (00:59) Rocket Lab's biggest quarter (02:53) The competitive edge in Space (04:10) Rocket Lab's Acquisition Strategy (05:04) Reason behind the Iridium Deal (06:13) Competing with Blue Origin & SpaceX (09:56) Rocket Lab's Global Domination (11:19) Building a Launch Monopoly in New Zealand (12:33) Is this why Peter got Knighted? (16:42) Beating SpaceX to the Public Markets (20:05) Why Neutron is still facing delays (24:24) The reality of running a Rocket Company (27:38) Rocket Lab's latest contract wins (29:04) How defense became a prime mover for Rocket Lab (30:39) Ghost: Rocket Lab's portable launch pad (31:30) Has he seen Aliens? (33:18) What's next for Rocket Lab? (34:30) Where does Peter draw his inspiration? (36:12) Why he's never read a Business book (37:31) Why their Engine is painted black
Molly O’Shea870,619 views • 2 months ago
![BREAKING: Inside Bending Spoons $BSP Milan, Italy Bending Spoons has completed 50+ acquisitions & never sold a single one Buying up some of tech's most recognizable companies, including AOL, Airtable, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, Tractive & Brightcove, with Miro now under agreement. I went to Italy to sit down w/ 4 leaders behind one of tech’s most aggressive acquisition machines: › Luca Ferrari (Luca Ferrari), Co-Founder & CEO › Francesco Patarnello (Francesco Patarnello), Co-Founder & Head of M&A › Matteo Danieli, Co-Founder & VP Product › Valentina Jerusalmi, GM of AOL The thesis: acquire great products, centralize the capabilities underneath them, & unlock value at a scale that would be difficult for each company to build independently. We cover: › 1,000 potential acquisition targets & 5–10 deals per year › How Bending Spoons’ centralized platform creates value across acquisitions › “Startup mode,” talent density & cutting headcount after acquisitions › Why even founder roles & the CEO job are up for grabs › Rebuilding AOL & what happens after Bending Spoons takes over Head of M&A Francesco Patarnello on what they look for: “We want to see our platform be able to unlock a lot of value if applied to that business. That can mean different things. Sometimes it's ability to attract talent, process data & get insights, [or] attract new users.” Stats: › 50+ acquisitions completed, & never sold a material business › 500M+ monthly active users, 9M+ paying customers › $2.64B of enterprise value across Airtable & Miro in 5 weeks › $1.5B for AOL, $1.38B for Vimeo, $500M for Eventbrite › Under 1% voluntary churn, with equity that carries no vesting This is Part I of a II-Part Series Full Sit-down Interview w/ CEO Luca Ferrari coming next.. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Bending Spoons Co-Founders Luca Ferrari, Francesco, Matteo & GM of AOL Valentina (01:11) The two traits that matter most (03:16) The Biggest lesson from every acquisition (Airtable, AOL, Miro...) (05:37) Why the CEO didn't ring the Nasdaq bell (07:37) The Acquisition that got away (15:21) What makes a company worth buying (18:27) Why Founders choose Bending Spoons (21:30) Why Employees can cash out early (28:44) Choosing to step aside as CPO (40:10) What "Startup mode" actually means (49:31) Why most product ideas fail (51:25) The emotional story behind the IPO speech (57:39) Betting on Bending Spoons early on (1:01:00) The Mindset behind the rapid growth (1:05:22) What actually happens during an acquisition (1:09:44) Why they never ship without testing (1:16:17) What's coming next for AOL](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2099495482775289908/amplify_video_thumb/2099474924255723520/img/kA1PtArC-0mOpk8d.jpg)
BREAKING: Inside Bending Spoons $BSP Milan, Italy Bending Spoons has completed 50+ acquisitions & never sold a single one Buying up some of tech's most recognizable companies, including AOL, Airtable, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, Tractive & Brightcove, with Miro now under agreement. I went to Italy to sit down w/ 4 leaders behind one of tech’s most aggressive acquisition machines: › Luca Ferrari (Luca Ferrari), Co-Founder & CEO › Francesco Patarnello (Francesco Patarnello), Co-Founder & Head of M&A › Matteo Danieli, Co-Founder & VP Product › Valentina Jerusalmi, GM of AOL The thesis: acquire great products, centralize the capabilities underneath them, & unlock value at a scale that would be difficult for each company to build independently. We cover: › 1,000 potential acquisition targets & 5–10 deals per year › How Bending Spoons’ centralized platform creates value across acquisitions › “Startup mode,” talent density & cutting headcount after acquisitions › Why even founder roles & the CEO job are up for grabs › Rebuilding AOL & what happens after Bending Spoons takes over Head of M&A Francesco Patarnello on what they look for: “We want to see our platform be able to unlock a lot of value if applied to that business. That can mean different things. Sometimes it's ability to attract talent, process data & get insights, [or] attract new users.” Stats: › 50+ acquisitions completed, & never sold a material business › 500M+ monthly active users, 9M+ paying customers › $2.64B of enterprise value across Airtable & Miro in 5 weeks › $1.5B for AOL, $1.38B for Vimeo, $500M for Eventbrite › Under 1% voluntary churn, with equity that carries no vesting This is Part I of a II-Part Series Full Sit-down Interview w/ CEO Luca Ferrari coming next.. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Bending Spoons Co-Founders Luca Ferrari, Francesco, Matteo & GM of AOL Valentina (01:11) The two traits that matter most (03:16) The Biggest lesson from every acquisition (Airtable, AOL, Miro...) (05:37) Why the CEO didn't ring the Nasdaq bell (07:37) The Acquisition that got away (15:21) What makes a company worth buying (18:27) Why Founders choose Bending Spoons (21:30) Why Employees can cash out early (28:44) Choosing to step aside as CPO (40:10) What "Startup mode" actually means (49:31) Why most product ideas fail (51:25) The emotional story behind the IPO speech (57:39) Betting on Bending Spoons early on (1:01:00) The Mindset behind the rapid growth (1:05:22) What actually happens during an acquisition (1:09:44) Why they never ship without testing (1:16:17) What's coming next for AOL
Molly O’Shea449,584 views • 1 month ago
BREAKING: Base Power Raises $1 Billion Series D, Hitting $13 Billion Valuation & Launching "Base Core" First-of-its-Kind Home Battery Built in the USA $2.5B+ in total funding to date Co-Founder Justin Lopas (Justin Lopas) gives us a Factory 1 tour in Austin, Texas Founded in 2023, by Justin & Zach Dell (Zach Dell). Base Power designs, manufactures, & installs home batteries that back up the house & support the grid Just 10 months after their Series C, this round was led by Micky Malka's Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, & JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group, with participation from Altimeter, D1 Capital Partners, Sands Capital, Coatue, Layer Global, & Energy Impact Partners Base’s major existing investors are re-investing, including Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures, CapitalG, & more "It is so critical to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially for critical infrastructure." "It's a vertical integration thesis. We can cut down cost. We can reduce lead time. We can change the hardware much more quickly." We Cover: › Base Core, 40 kWh with a 20 kW inverter, roughly 3X a conventional home battery › Whole home backup, installed in under an hour › Fleet past 500 MWh, over 100 installs a day › 200+ MW of utility partnerships with El Paso Electric, Austin Energy, & CoServ › Factory 1 built in 6 months, targeting 4,000 units a week by year end › 100% US and Mexico supply chain › Batteries installed around data centers to offset interconnection load 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Justin Lopas, Co-Founder & COO, Base Power (01:06) Base Power raises $1B Series D (02:26) Meet Base Core (05:42) Demo: Whole-home backup in action (07:06) How Base Power's business model works (08:55) Inside Base Power's Factory (11:28) Why Base Core is 3x larger than other home batteries (12:05) Inside the manufacturing line (13:23) Can humanoid robots build batteries? (14:13) Why Base Power manufactures its own batteries (15:47) Inside the robotic assembly line (18:09) How lithium-ion batteries work (21:40) Scaling production to 4,000 units a week (22:33) Installing 100+ systems a day (23:03) COO or Electrician? (23:53) From oil rigs to Base Power
Molly O’Shea961,737 views • 2 months ago
BREAKING: Inside Palantir with Alex Karp Exclusive interview in Palantir’s office. We cover: - $PLTR record earnings - ~$500B market cap milestone - New Biography: The Philosopher in the Valley - The rise of AIP & its impact on global enterprise - Morality, value creation, & helping Americans win - Dyslexia, artistry, & Karp’s leadership philosophy - The Legacy of Rosita - Cupcakes Special thank you to @elianoayounes for the strategic vibes & the Palantir team for helping put this together! Highlights: (00:00) Inside Palantir w/ Alex Karp (02:16) Building w/o hierarchy, the anti-playbook culture (05:00) Artistry & conviction in product creation (06:45) Ignoring consensus & betting on vision (08:45) Helping Americans win - soldiers, workers, investors (11:00) Moral conviction & the foundation of Palantir (13:00) Meritocracy, realism, & Western values (15:41) The Eisenhower Award & moral leadership (19:45) Dyslexia, intuition, & leading through instinct (22:38) Value creation vs. hype in the AI boom (26:19) Launching AIP - Palantir’s turning point (28:30) AIP as the operating system for the AI era (33:15) Rosita - family (39:55) Cupcake
Molly O’Shea4,645,117 views • 11 months ago
BREAKING: David david friedberg says "California is functionally bankrupt" "People don't realize how screwed California is, & I worry that if California falls, so does the union. "$250 billion to $1 trillion short." "This is because for California to get rescued would be a big cost to red states, & I think it creates in the years ahead a lot of tension." "California's functional bankruptcy is a major risk to the country. & I think we need to figure out what we can change to fix it." How we got here: "California has a public pension system, & that public pension system retirees have paid into it & they get some benefits out, & the amount that they're owed back out is somewhere between $250 billion - $1 trillion dollars more than has been paid in. $250 billion to $1 trillion short. If it was the federal government, it would be like, okay, we'll just print more money. California doesn't have the ability to print money, so California has to pay this out, and you can't restructure retirement benefits. There is a Supreme Court case in California that said that once an employee has been offered retirement benefits, even if they're currently an employee, you can never restructure their retirement benefits. It has to stay forever, and the state cannot declare bankruptcy. There's no way for the state to functionally declare bankruptcy. There's no law to allow it. No state has ever declared bankruptcy, and the retirement benefits sit senior to the bonds in California. So you have to pay out the retirement benefits before you pay out all the bond holders that have loaned California the money that they use to run all their programs and services." Hill & Valley Forum 2026 (The Hill & Valley Forum)
Molly O’Shea2,675,027 views • 7 months ago
NEW: Brad Gerstner (Brad Gerstner), Founder of Invest America, on scaling Trump Accounts w/ Michael Dell (Michael Dell 🇺🇸): “We forecast that within the next 10 years, we will have $4 trillion in Trump Accounts.” “This is $4 trillion of wealth transfer to kids who would've otherwise had zero, who feel like they're totally out of the game.” Stats: › 70M U.S. kids under 18 is the goal › $6.25B committed by Michael & Susan Dell to fund $250 investment account deposits for 25 million U.S. children aged 10 & under › Up to $100M personally pledged by Brad for children in Indiana › $4T in Trump Accounts within 10 years, Brad forecasts › $1,000 federal seed for eligible newborns 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Putting $150 Into a Trump Account (02:53) How Trump Accounts Work (03:08) Building Invest America (03:25) Scaling From 9M to 70M Accounts (03:43) Brad Gerstner & Michael Dell’s Contributions (04:01) Forecasting $4T in Trump Accounts (05:06) From Idea to Federal Law (05:25) The “IPO” & Scaling to 70M Accounts (06:31) Teaching 750K Kids Financial Literacy (07:12) The Power of Compounding (07:51) The Pushback on Trump Accounts (08:07) Bipartisan Support (08:47) Taking the Idea to President Trump (09:21) “The Giving Pledge 2.0” (10:22) Brad’s AI Safety Take (10:40) Elon, Dario & Jensen on AI Risk (11:14) A New Consensus on AI Safety (11:31) China & AI Peer Review (11:48) Finding the “Commonsensical Middle Way”
Molly O’Shea354,177 views • 1 month ago