Sourcery

Apollo bought Yahoo and AOL from Verizon in 2021 for about $5B. 5 years later, Yahoo has returned Apollo’s capital in one of the fastest returning deals in the firm’s history.

Jim Lanzone has been CEO of Yahoo since September 2021. Yahoo ranks among the top 5 internet companies in the US, reaching roughly 90% of the American online population and 700M users globally each month across Finance, Sports, Mail, News, and Search. Jim previously served as CEO of Tinder, CBS Interactive, where he launched CBS All Access (now Paramount+), and Ask Jeeves, and co-founded eTour. He sits on the board of Snap.

We go inside the Apollo acquisition, a structure of roughly $4.25B in cash, $750M in preferred interests, and a 10% stake retained by Verizon, and how Jim works with Reed Rayman, now Head of the AI Sector at Apollo and still Yahoo’s board chair. Jim walks through reorganizing Yahoo into GM-led brands, shutting down and selling a money-losing ad tech stack, and divesting EdgeCast, TechCrunch, and AOL, which went to Bending Spoons for a reported $1.4B to $1.5B. We also cover Yahoo Scout, the company’s first in-house search engine in 17 years, and why startups with less than one-tenth of 1% of Yahoo’s users carry higher valuations.

“It’s one of the fastest returning deals in the history of Apollo. We are playing with house money now for what the upside could be here.”

We cover:
 › Inside Apollo’s ~$5B acquisition and the deal structure
 › Working with Apollo’s Reed Rayman on a growth-led turnaround
 › Divesting AOL, EdgeCast, TechCrunch, and the ad tech stack
 › Yahoo Scout, AI search, and 30 years of search data
 › 700M monthly users and Yahoo’s valuation vs AI startups

Jim Lanzone: https://x.com/jlanzone 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/31JELwiXgMo

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  
• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   
• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure: 
Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

Guillermo Rauch, Founder and CEO of Vercel, joins Sourcery from the company's San Francisco headquarters to discuss how AI agents are transforming software development, infrastructure, and the economics of SaaS.
Vercel has reportedly reached $600M in annualized revenue, growing 148% YoY, with more than 485,000 paying teams and a $9.3B valuation. Its infrastructure powers applications for OpenAI, Meta, Stripe, Shopify, DoorDash, and more.
AI agents now account for 60% of Vercel deployments, up from just 3% at the beginning of 2026. Guillermo explains why coding is becoming dramatically cheaper, why companies may eventually generate software instead of buying it, and how the internet is shifting from human interfaces to agent-native infrastructure.
We cover open vs. closed AI models, autonomous agents, cybersecurity, the future of SaaS, exploding compute demand, and how the role of software engineers is changing.

Guillermo Rauch: https://x.com/rauchg
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/WuorvLfAFmA

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/  
• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   
• Mercor—The human intelligence behind frontier AI. Frontier labs and leading enterprises use Mercor to turn the knowledge of 5M+ experts into the data, evals and benchmarks that make AI better at real work. Visit: http://mercor.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure: 
Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.
 
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Guillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO at Vercel
(03:32) The simplest advice for going viral
(07:24) How Vercel became the index of AI
(14:34) Robots writing code for robots
(17:57) The web's next users aren't human
(21:15) Is ChatGPT reading your website right now?
(29:16) The end of SaaS and the rise of personal software
(34:07) AI agents are soldiers with no frontal lobe
(45:42) AI hackers and the coming cyber war
(52:10) 80% of tokens now go to open models 
(59:00) The biggest risk for frontier labs
(1:04:00) Can AI labs survive the public markets?
(1:06:28) Why AI has Silicon Valley working 7-7-7
(1:16:56) Your vibe-coded demo won't get you hired
(1:22:22) The hardest part of running a company is keeping it simple
(1:27:01) Why no company can run all its AI apps 24/7

Dr. Nworah Ayogu, MD, MBA, Partner at Thrive Capital, joins Sourcery to discuss how AI is transforming drug discovery, medicine, and the economics of healthcare.
A Harvard-trained physician, founding team member of Cityblock Health, former General Manager of Amazon Clinic and first Chief Medical Officer of Amazon Pharmacy, Nworah is now a partner at Thrive Capital. The investment firm has grown to over $65bn in AUM and its healthcare portfolio includes Neuralink, Nudge, Isomorphic Labs, OpenEvidence, OpenAI, Oscar Health, and Cadence.
We cover AI's potential to accelerate drug development, Isomorphic Labs and Demis Hassabis, Neuralink's brain-computer interfaces, OpenEvidence's rapid adoption among physicians, personalized medicine, and the emergence of 10X doctors and nurses.
We also explore some of Thrive’s breakout healthcare incubations, the next generation of trillion-dollar healthcare companies, and why AI's most important breakthroughs may happen in medicine rather than software.
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are the speaker's own as of the recording date and are subject to change. Thrive funds and their affiliates have investments in certain companies discussed in this episode. References to those companies are illustrative, do not represent all investments made by Thrive, and should not be viewed as recommendations or indications of future investment performance. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Dr. Nworah Ayogu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nworah
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/gYA2yyV6U5E

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: https://www.harvey.ai
• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure: 
Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.

Perplexity Founder & CEO Aravind Srinivas believes the next wave of American economic growth could come from smaller, AI-native businesses, not just the largest technology companies.
Perplexity, valued at ~$20B with more than $2B in reported funding and backing from NVIDIA, SoftBank, IVP, NEA, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and Elad Gil, has evolved from an AI answer engine into a platform for autonomous agents, research, and knowledge work.
I sat down with Aravind at Perplexity's new San Francisco headquarters to discuss the economics of AI, the future of entrepreneurship, and why agents could enable a generation of smaller, more profitable companies.
Aravind reveals that Perplexity's revenue is growing 5x year over year, enterprise adoption is accelerating, and one solopreneur is spending over $1M annually on Perplexity Computer while generating $3M in annual revenue.
We also explore Perplexity's bet on local AI, its work with NVIDIA and Apple, and why the company has no plans to build its own data centers despite the massive infrastructure buildout underway.

Aravind Srinivas: https://x.com/AravSrinivas 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/1C8_n9nnx5Y

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Harvey—The AI platform built for legal work, is helping the best firms and companies close deals faster. More than 200,000 lawyers, 80% of the Am Law 100, and over 20% of the Fortune 500 build with Harvey. Visit: http://harvey.ai/
• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure: 
Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc.  See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.
 
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder & CEO of Perplexity
(01:30) Why Perplexity's brand is built on curiosity 
(08:18) How to build a $1T company in America alone
(13:45) Is the American dream still alive?
(16:28) Stop blaming users for bad prompts
(22:55) How Perplexity quietly grew 5x
(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
(39:17) Why Perplexity is skipping the data center race 
(41:25) Stop asking AI to write code, ask it to think
(48:27) The Hugging Face incident & multi-agent threats
(53:31) Why Perplexity isn’t chasing a billion users

USV spent 20 years keeping its funds small on purpose. Its new $900M raise is the largest fund cycle in the firm’s history.
I sat down with USV General Partners Fred Wilson, Rebecca Kaden and Michael Mignano at the firm’s New York office to unpack why one of venture capital’s most disciplined early-stage firms is getting bigger now, and what they think the next era of AI will look like. Together with General Partner Nick Grossman, they’re leading USV into its next chapter.
USV was early to Twitter, Coinbase, Stripe, MongoDB, Twilio, Etsy, Duolingo and Abridge. More than 20 years after Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham laid out the firm’s original internet thesis, Fred believes AI today looks a lot like the internet in 2003. The infrastructure is here, but many of the defining applications have yet to be built.
We get into why AI is making products cheaper to build but breakout companies potentially more expensive to create, why ARR can hide weak retention, the growing importance of founder storytelling, personal AI agents, the “Rebel Alliance” around open AI infrastructure, and why energy may be one of the cleanest bets on AI.
At the center of USV’s new thesis is “obliterate, don’t automate.” Instead of making existing industries incrementally more efficient, AI could completely restructure them. Fred’s version is simple. Don’t hire a lawyer, use an AI lawyer. Don’t hire an accountant, use an AI accountant. Don’t hire a doctor, use an AI doctor.

Fred Wilson: https://x.com/fredwilson
Rebecca Kaden: https://x.com/rebeccakaden
Michael Mignano: https://x.com/mignano
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/sYH4fKKtSPw

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Zone—develops next-generation data center campuses, partnering with AI companies, site developers and technology leaders to bring compute online faster and at scale. Visit: https://zonefrontier.com   
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery  
Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc
Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.