Scaling the ‘Cursor for Slides’ to $50M ARR: Gamma founder Jon Noronha
Before ChatGPT made AI mainstream, John Noronha was building Gamma with a simple insight: everyone hates making slides but needs visual communication for high-stakes ideas. His background at Optimizely proved crucial as Gamma became a testing laboratory for AI models, running hundreds of experiments to discover that Claude excels at creative taste, Gemini wins on cost efficiency, and reasoning models actually hurt creativity. John explains how solving their own blank page problem inadvertently solved it for millions of users, turning a near-failing startup into a cash flow positive platform with 250 million presentations created. He discusses competing with PowerPoint's 500 million users while expanding beyond slides into documents, websites and visual storytelling.
Hosted by Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital
--------
30:05
--------
30:05
Delphi’s Dara Ladjevardian: How AI Digital Minds Can Scale Human Connection
Dara Ladjevardian, founder and CEO of Delphi, is creating digital minds that allow people to scale their thoughts and availability without replacing human connection. Inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s theory of mind as a hierarchy of pattern recognizers, Dara built an adaptive temporal knowledge graph that captures how people think and reason. From helping CEOs train new hires to enabling coaches to monetize their expertise 24/7, Delphi represents a new form of conversational media. Dara explains why authentic human representation matters, how digital minds actually increase desire for real human connection, and why he believes 2026 will be the tipping point for adoption for digital minds.
Hosted by Sonya Huang and Jess Lee, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in this episode:
How to Create a Mind: 2012 book by Ray Kurzweil that inspired Dara
The Memoirs of Akbar Ladjevardian: 2008 book about Dara’s grandfather, an Iranian industrialist, that led him to create his first “digital mind”
Build: 2022 book by Tony Fadell that refers to itself as “a mentor in a box”; another inspiration for Dara
The 2 Sigma Problem: 1984 paper by Benjamin Bloom about how students that receive one-on-one tutoring perform two standard deviations better than students educated in a classroom environment
--------
39:05
--------
39:05
Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch: Building the Generative Web with AI
Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch has spent years obsessing over reducing the friction between having an idea and getting it online. Now with AI, he's achieving something even more ambitious: making software creation accessible to anyone with a keyboard. Guillermo explains how v0 has grown to 3 million users by focusing on reliability and quality, why ChatGPT has become their fastest-growing customer acquisition channel, and how AI is enabling “virtual coworkers” across design, development, and marketing. He shares his contrarian view that the future belongs to ephemeral, generated-on-demand applications rather than traditional installed software, and why he believes we're on the cusp of the biggest transformation to the web in its history.
Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital
--------
1:00:59
--------
1:00:59
OpenAI’s IMO Team on Why Models Are Finally Solving Elite-Level Math
In just two months, a scrappy three-person team at OpenAI sprinted to fulfill what the entire AI field has been chasing for years—gold-level performance on the International Mathematical Olympiad problems. Alex Wei, Sheryl Hsu and Noam Brown discuss their unique approach using general-purpose reinforcement learning techniques on hard-to-verify tasks rather than formal verification tools. The model showed surprising self-awareness by admitting it couldn’t solve problem six, and revealed the humbling gap between solving competition problems and genuine mathematical research breakthroughs.
Hosted by Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital
--------
30:10
--------
30:10
OpenAI Just Released ChatGPT Agent, Its Most Powerful Agent Yet
Isa Fulford, Casey Chu, and Edward Sun from OpenAI's ChatGPT agent team reveal how they combined Deep Research and Operator into a single, powerful AI agent that can perform complex, multi-step tasks lasting up to an hour. By giving the model access to a virtual computer with text browsing, visual browsing, terminal access, and API integrations—all with shared state—they've created what may be the first truly embodied AI assistant. The team discusses their reinforcement learning approach, safety mitigations for real-world actions, and how small teams can build transformative AI products through close research-applied collaboration.
Hosted by Sonya Huang and Lauren Reeder, Sequoia Capital
Join us as we train our neural nets on the theme of the century: AI. Sonya Huang, Pat Grady and more Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to ask critical questions and develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies—and their implications for technology, business and society.
The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
USA