Uncapped with Jack Altman

• Uncapped #8 | Josh Kopelman from First Round Capital

  It was a pleasure to sit down this week with Josh Kopelman, one of the original architects of seed stage investing who continues to re-invent what it means to operate within venture. Josh co-founded First Round Capital, which has invested at the earliest stages in companies like Square, Uber, and Roblox. Some of Josh’s more recent investments include Notion, Pomelo Care, Loyal, and Perpay. Since First Round’s inception in 2004, Josh has invested in 500+ startups and has frequently made the Forbes “Midas List” which ranks the top 100 tech investors. Josh has been a founder three times (four if you include founding First Round). In 1992, while in college, he co-founded Infonautics Corporation – and took it public on NASDAQ in 1996. Josh co-founded Half.com in 1999 and led it to become one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in 2000, where Josh remained for three years. In late 2003, Josh helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later. We covered: His “Venture Arrogance Score” The role of relevance in venture Making money in disequilibrium Overlooking margin superiority Decision-making as a product Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:25) Current landscape (4:39) Venture Arrogance Score (10:49) Comparing fund models (14:24) The role of relevance in venture (21:03) Small funds vs large funds (26:36) Making money in disequilibrium (33:57) Overlooking margin superiority (43:17) First Round’s strategy (49:02) Operating like a company (56:49) Future of First Round Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #7 | Garry Tan from Y Combinator

  This week I sat down with Garry Tan, President & CEO of Y Combinator. YC has funded 5,000+ startups including Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, Rippling, and Reddit, among others that have totaled $600B in combined valuation. Garry is a designer, engineer, and investor in early stage startups. Previously Founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that was earliest in Coinbase and Instacart. Before that, Garry was a partner at Y Combinator where he invested in and directly worked with over 700 companies at the earliest stage. He previously co-founded Posterous and helped build it to a world-class website used by millions (acquired by Twitter). Garry is a builder at heart. We covered: Running YC like a founder Advice for founders Picking winners What changes because of AI YC being the “YC of hard tech” Public service Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:25) Running YC like a founder (6:25) Focusing on growth and prosperity (12:40) Incredible pick rate (14:34) Role of the Group Partner (19:21) Lean vs fat startups (20:53) Archetypes of special founders (25:18) Rule changes because of AI (33:00) YC being the “YC of hard tech” (37:40) Community and political involvement Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #6 | Elad Gil

  It’s always a pleasure to jam with Elad Gil, a serial entrepreneur and a startup investor. As an early leader at Google, Elad helped build the initial mobile team, before founding MixerLabs, which was acquired by Twitter. Later, he co-founded Color Health, a genetic testing company specializing in cancer detection. Over the past decade, he's backed nearly 40+ companies valued north of $1B each, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Figma, Instacart, and Stripe. He's also invested in Harvey, Mistral, Perplexity, Pika, and other leading AI startups. Elad is also author of the High Growth Handbook and is excited to be working on his next book focused on how to scale during the zero to one phase of a startup’s journey.  We covered: Optimizing for market need and optionality Recipes for long career arcs Getting more leverage on time Investing outside of AI Value in getting the theme right Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:50) Shamelessness mindset (4:16) Optimizing for market need (5:55) Cultivating optionality (8:29) Characteristics of people with long career arcs (9:54) What to optimize for early in a career (22:20) Different phases of your life (25:20) Aspiring to do things that are useful (26:33) Pivot points in careers (31:16) Becoming great investors (33:28) Getting more leverage on time (36:57) Investing outside of AI (40:58) Getting the theme right means more (47:01) Elad’s new book Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #5 | Sarah Guo from Conviction

  I was pumped to chat this week with Sarah Guo. Sarah is a startup investor and the founder of Conviction, an investment firm purpose-built to serve intelligent software, or "Software 3.0" companies. Some of her investments include Harvey, Mistral AI, Sierra, Cognition, HeyGen, and Cartesia, among others. Prior to 2022, she spent nearly a decade incubating and investing as a General Partner at Greylock Partners. Sarah co-hosts a podcast with Elad Gil called No Priors where they discuss the AI revolution. We covered:  Compounding qualities of enduring firms Brand building in the current market Taking risk by having an opinion Learnings from her time at Greylock AI discourse compared to previous cycles Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:11) What a VC firm is at its core (2:27) Compounding qualities of enduring firms (6:44) Intentionality behind building Conviction’s brand (13:01) Correlation or causation between brands and returns (16:33) Shape of the current VC market (27:15) Learnings from experience at Greylock (32:06) Market vs founder driven (33:55) AI conversation shifting from inputs to outputs (36:28) More billion dollar companies than ever before (42:44) Agency being the last human resource (44:40) Important skills for kids to learn Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #4 | Adam Guild from Owner

  Adam Guild is the CEO of Owner, a business he started when he was only 17. It now has tens of millions of revenue, hundreds of employees, and thousands of customers. I’ve had the pleasure of working on his board for a few years now, and he is one of the most impressive people I’ve ever gotten to know. Working with him was a big part of what made me realize I want to do venture for the rest of my career. He tracks his nutrition, exercise, time, and sleep to an extreme degree so he can show up to work every day as strong as possible. He goes to extreme lengths to recruit the best talent. He is equal parts hungry to learn from everyone around him, but courageous in making his own unconventional decisions. I think he’s one of the most under-known founders right now, but I think that will soon change.  Hope you enjoy watching this. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:07) Inside the mind of a young founder (6:36) Boldly purchasing Owner’s domain (9:34) Listening to others vs being instinctual (14:12) Decision making as a CEO (16:43) Fostering a culture while scaling (18:34) High impact interview questions (21:29) Recruiting the best talent (29:50) Never missing an investor update (34:16) Getting canceled on Twitter (42:41) Startups are the Olympics of business Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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