David Senra
Scicomm Media
13 episodes
How to Win Deals & Grow a $250B Business | Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks
8 Nov · 1 h 2 min · Being added
a16z's First Employee on the History of a16z, Venture Capital & Fixing the Government | Scott Kupor
4 Nov · 58 min
- Scott Kupor, a 16.5-year a16z veteran who became OPM director, recounts joining Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz as their first employee in 2008 with no job description.
- Kupor says a16z copied CAA's team-based agency model to replace John Doerr's one-to-one venture relationships with a team of operating professionals.
High School Dropout to Multi-Billionaire: The Relentless Drive of Rafael Vivas
1 Nov · 1 h 7 min
- Rafael Vivas left school for online advertising after seeing how much money performance media buying paid, convinced it offered far more upside than school.
- AppLovin struggled to raise money despite being profitable, and Adam Foroughi's technology focus let it monetize at roughly double the rate of rivals.
From a $27,500 Charter Company to a $4 Billion Private Jet Giant | Kenn Ricci, Flexjet
28 Oct · 1 h 11 min
- Kenn Ricci says he shares wealth with his three children while alive because parents should show trust, not wait to give it away after death.
- Ricci built Flexjet from a used-aircraft fractional program copied from NetJets, buying it back from Raytheon in 2008 and from Bombardier in 2014 for $180m.
Competition, Intensity & Building a $115 Billion Global Bank | Nik Storonsky, Revolut
25 Oct · 1 h 7 min
- Nik Storonsky says Revolut aims to be the number one bank in at least 100 countries, live in about 38 today, where most markets have fragmented banks.
- Storonsky says Revolut's UK banking licence took almost five years after regulators grew more risk averse, and he argues American fintechs like Chime and Cash App erred by never seeking bank licences.
Managing $525 Billion by Rethinking Wealth Management | Kurt MacAlpine, Corient
18 Oct · 1 h 20 min
- Kurt MacAlpine says Corient is the first true professional services partnership applied to wealth management, with one compensation plan, one P&L, no chargebacks and a fee-only fiduciary standard.
- Corient manages about $525bn across 15 jurisdictions after launching around April 2020 and passing $500bn six years later, funded partly by CI Financial buybacks at $12 to $13 a share.
Creating Muse: The Fastest-Growing AI Product Since ChatGPT | Alexandr Wang, Meta
11 Oct · 1 h 12 min
- Alexandr Wang says Muse's prototype came together in a week or two, and the team demoed it to Meta's board before launch seven months later.
- Wang argues OpenClaw faded because its magic moments were unreliable, so Muse's real task was turning the prototype into a dependable consumer product.
How Mark Zuckerberg, Palmer Luckey, Josh Kushner & Scott Wu Think | Jeremy Stern
4 Oct · 1 h 8 min
- Jeremy Stern reported his Mark Zuckerberg profile over five or six months, interviewing Zuckerberg and almost 40 other people, and says it became a portrait of a possible last-of-his-generation founder.
- Stern and David Senra agree Zuckerberg's competitive drive is underestimated, with a former AI researcher at a rival lab saying Zuckerberg simply does not stop.
Bringing AI to the Real Economy | Alexander Taubman
30 Sept · 1 h 2 min
- Long Lake Management is buying American Express Global Business Travel for $6.3bn to take it private and bring AI into travel.
- Long Lake's Nexus platform shares 70 to 80 percent of its infrastructure across verticals, while the hard 20 to 30 percent is embedding it into each business's workflows.
Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg
27 Sept · 1 h 30 min
- Ronnie Fieg, Kith's founder, argues that passion formed early in life is the most important element of any entrepreneur's success.
- Fieg says Kith does not wholesale or license its products, so it controls presentation and can keep stores growing at the same pace as web sales.
Building One of the Fastest Growing CPG Companies in History | Peter Rahal of David Protein, Medici Brands & RXBAR
20 Sept · 1 h 21 min
- Peter Rahal says David is two years old, run-rating over $400m and due to do $300m this year.
- Rahal acquired Epogee, whose EPG modified triglyceride mimics fat without calories, after securing supply first.
Luca Ferrari on Building Bending Spoons: Extreme Ownership, Talent Science & Relentless Simplification
13 Sept · 2 h 1 min
- Luca Ferrari says Bending Spoons aims to build the best company ever, while admitting the odds are slim, and it has bought over 50 businesses to hold forever.
- Ferrari argues talent matters more than experience, and Bending Spoons centralizes hiring for its portfolio with a talent team of about 50 people and no manager bonuses.
Mati Staniszewski on ElevenLabs, Voice AI & Building the Communication Layer for AI
9 Sept · 1 h 11 min
- Mati Staniszewski says ElevenLabs started in 2022 after a dubbing problem he saw still unsolved in 2021, when films were dubbed in Polish with a single flat narrator.
- ElevenLabs combines frontier audio research with a product platform, and Staniszewski says it passed on lip dubbing and avatar work because video models were not good enough.
Lessons From Backing The Best Founders In Fintech | Micky Malka
2 Aug · 1 h 16 min
- Micky Malka's 'token factory' thesis: every company needs machine-readable tokens of information, money, and knowledge, with frontier labs as the first token factories.
- He argues AI-driven finance winners will be founder-led companies like Stripe, Robinhood, Nubank, and Revolut, not startups.