BILLIONS
Guillaume Moubeche
20 episodes
7 startups, 4 sales, 2 IPOs: the $8B founder playbook - David Steinberg [Zeta]
3 Nov · 36 min
- David Steinberg moved 400 engineers off profit for three years to rebuild Zeta Global around data and AI, buying BoomTrain and DISQUS.
- Zeta Global, now worth around $8bn, has more than 800 branded clients and four straight years of 30% top-line, 50% EBITDA and 75% free cash flow growth.
How Ramp still grows like a startup at a $44B valuation? George Bonaci [Ramp]
27 Oct · 46 min
- George Bonaci says Ramp still runs like a startup at $44bn because velocity matters in every function, even if it duplicates roles.
- Bonaci argues AI agents will increasingly make buying decisions, so marketers must learn to target agents and optimize for answer engines.
He co-founded a $25B company. Then built a $7.2B one - Arvind Jain [Glean]
20 Oct · 38 min
- Arvind Jain co-founded Rubrik and now leads Glean, which crossed $300m in ARR and was last valued at $7.2bn.
- Jain says open source models already handle 80-90% of enterprise AI tasks and will keep closing the gap with frontier models.
How do you go from 25 customers to $110M ARR and a $500M deal? - Daniel Chait [Greenhouse]
13 Oct · 39 min
- Daniel Chait says AI has so far made hiring worse, not better.
- Greenhouse's fix is Voice AI, an automated interviewer given to every applicant, rated four out of five stars by 90% of candidates.
140M visits lost, 10x conversion gains: HubSpot’s AI growth playbook - Kieran Flanagan [HubSpot]
6 Oct · 40 min
- HubSpot lost 140m organic visits in a year after Google's 2024 algorithm changes and still grew revenue and demand.
- Its first AI win came from auto prospecting emails built from top sellers' language, delivering 10x conversion gains after six months.
How to redesign an $800M-a-year software giant for the AI era - Dan Rogers [Asana]
29 Sept · 38 min
- Asana CEO Dan Rogers says AI products drive 25% of net new ARR, with most large-customer deals AI-attached.
- Asana launched Agentic Work Management, letting AI teammates pick up tasks and write results back into Asana.
From 100 sales meetings a week to $600M ARR - Carles Reina [ElevenLabs]
15 Sept · 50 min
- Carles Reina, ElevenLabs' first investor and fourth employee, ran outbound sales himself, holding 80 to 100 meetings a week on a basic Google Sheets CRM.
- ElevenLabs set quotas at 20 times base salary, the so-called 20x rule, and averages about 167% quota attainment each quarter.
Why the "SaaS is dead" narrative is completely wrong - Aaron Levie [box]
9 Jul · 34 min
- Levie calls the US ban on non-US citizens using Anthropic's frontier model a new precedent that would gut Anthropic's API business.
- He predicts Germany, France, Japan and the UK may build their own models as countries learn models can be pulled at any time.
Why focus on only ONE product built a $1B super-brand (on just $6,000) - Pete Maldonado [Chomps]
2 Jul · 53 min
- Chomps sells 2m meat sticks a day, has stayed profitable for nearly a decade on $6,000, and cofounders still own the majority.
- Trader Joe's COVID purchase-order cancellations forced founders who personally guaranteed Chomps's debt into a 100% secondary from Stride Consumer Partners.
The man who built a bank for people banks don't want - Jason Wilk [Dave]
25 Jun · 47 min
- Dave fell from $5bn to $50m in nine months after Tiger Global sold its unlocked SPAC stake.
- Jason Wilk kept Dave burning to the user threshold for profitability with fewer than 300 employees, and now guides 2026 revenue above $700m and EBITDA above $300m.
Why the world’s biggest tech companies may never IPO again - Peter Singlehurst [Baillie Gifford]
18 Jun · 58 min
- Singlehurst argues public markets lost their liquidity monopoly and the biggest tech companies may never need to IPO.
- Singlehurst calls ByteDance way too cheap after buying at four times free cash flow, 50 times larger than Meta at IPO.
Why high valuations are secretly killing tech unicorns — Martino Cadoni [Deepl]
12 Jun · 58 min
- DeepL CFO Martino Cadoni warns high-valuation preference share thresholds turned many companies into zombies unable to raise near their last round.
- Cadoni argues finance should be an accelerator and that tech firms neglect balance sheet wins like FX hedging and payment authorization rates.
How a $75 sneaker bot became a $300M/Month financial engine - Steven Schwartz [Whop]
4 Jun · 54 min
- Steven Schwartz says Tether agrees to invest in Whop, which he calls the world's biggest stablecoin company.
- Whop started as a $75 sneaker bot and now has nearly 40,000 people earning a collective $300m a month.
Very few growth moats will survive AI - Sandy Diao [Descript]
28 May · 57 min
- Sandy Diao argues few growth moats survive AI as distribution shifts to generative engine optimization and algorithmic video.
- Descript reverts its reverse-trial pricing after exposure-group conversion halves or worse, as businesses like it and creators do not.
From Revolut employee #3 to building a £5B energy giant - Alan Chang [Fuse Energy]
22 May · 58 min
- Fuse Energy co-founder Alan Chang says he and Charles chose energy because it is the one major problem that would not get solved without them, since fintech is largely solved.
- Alan Chang says Fuse has cut its cost per kilowatt hour by roughly 15 percent since launch and argues Europe can be at least three times cheaper than it is now, blaming mostly inefficiency.
The fastest revenue engine in SaaS history: $5.4B run rate in 10 Years - Ron Gabrisko [Databricks]
15 May · 52 min
- Databricks reaches a $5.4B run rate ten years after Ron Gabrisko joined at under $1M ARR, growing 65% at a $134B valuation.
- Databricks pairs a technical sales team with consumption-based pricing on an open source core, earning engineer trust by solving problems.
$100M ARR in 7 quarters: inside the $10B AI machine - Reggie Marable [Sierra]
7 May · 48 min
- Sierra hits $100M ARR in seven quarters, at a $10B valuation.
- Sierra charges only when its AI agent autonomously resolves a case, with no implementation fees and no charge for human handoffs.
Creating a $140B market: The secondary market masterclass - Larry Aschebrook [G Squared]
30 Apr · 56 min
- Larry Aschebrook's G Squared manages $5bn in a secondary market now worth $140bn a year.
- G Squared turns a $150m Spotify block into $1bn, with Aschebrook personally covering a $9m shortfall.
McKinsey's AI leader moved to head a $2B AI workforce - Matthew Fitzpatrick [Invisible]
28 Apr · 49 min
- Matthew Fitzpatrick left McKinsey to become CEO of Invisible Technologies, which raised $100m at a $2bn valuation eight months later.
- Invisible trains frontier models through reinforcement learning and sells modular enterprise AI across 10 sectors.
$0 to $100M ARR in 3 months: The AI plan to run every company - Ben Cera [CloudKitchens & Polsia]
16 Apr · 58 min
- Polsia, Ben Cera's AI that builds and runs companies, hits roughly $6m run rate growing about 30% week over week.
- Cera had Polsia email hundreds of investors claiming a $10m raise at a $1bn valuation on a $500,000 run rate.