Mamoon Hamid is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins. He has been an early investor in and served on the boards of some of the most innovative software companies of recent times including Slack, Figma, Rippling, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-founder and General Partner at Social Capital. He started his venture career in 2…

Ivan Zhao joins Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit to break down how the company’s minimalist design became a strategic edge in a world overwhelmed by bloated software. He shares why the AI agent still hasn’t arrived, and how Notion’s modular approach might be the closest thing to making it real. Guest: Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion Mentioned in t…

In his early twenties, Dwarkesh Patel has become one of the leading podcasters with nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers excited to consume his deeply-researched interviews. Dwarkesh has caught the attention of influential figures such as Jeff Bezos, Noah Smith, Nat Friedman, and Tyler Cohen, who have all praised his interviews – the latter describ…

How did Tripadvisor become every traveler’s starting point? Steve Kaufer joins Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit to break down how Tripadvisor became the internet’s trusted travel companion, built on over a billion reviews and decades of trust. He also shares why early personalization fell short and how AI is finally doing what travel agents once did by un…

Peter Fenton is the longest-serving full-time partner at Benchmark, a renowned venture firm known for its artisanal approach and deep alignment with founders. Over the last two decades, Peter led investments in Twitter, Yelp, Elastic, Docker, Zuora, and many others. He also achieved one of the rarest feats in venture history in 2014 when two of his…

Guests: Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO of Handshake; and Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins. Handshake set out to democratize career opportunity. In the process, it unlocked something more: a high-trust expert network built on verified talent and earned trust. This week on Grit, Garrett Lord shares how what began as a platform for student j…

Christina Cacioppo is cofounder and CEO of Vanta, which is on a mission to secure the internet and protect consumer data. The trust management platform was valued at $2.5 billion in 2024 after a Series C investment led by Sequoia. Vanta went from $10M in annual recurring revenue in 2021 to $100M in 2024, while also giving us one of the best tech bi…

Zach Perret saw a fintech explosion coming—and built the rails before it arrived. On this week’s Grit, the Plaid co-founder and CEO retraces his path from building tools for developers to linking the world’s largest banks, and how a failed $5.3B acquisition by Visa became a launchpad. He unpacks the pressure of operating in a tightly regulated indu…

Six leaders from across tech — from SaaS and semis to law and logistics — come together for our 250th episode milestone in this very special AI recap, where we unpack how new advances are transforming the way industries function, and how work gets done. Featuring: • Bret Taylor (Sierra Co-founder) • Winston Weinberg (Harvey Co-founder and CEO) • Ma…

Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor and technologist. In 2004, Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments that have included OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and many more. After graduating college, Vinod co-founded Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design syst…

Daragh Murphy is giving brands their own credit-card platform—no legacy bank required. On this week’s Grit, the Imprint co-founder and CEO traces the leap from being a junior lawyer to closing nine-figure card deals. He breaks down the hidden economics of credit-card loyalty, the discipline of treating capital “like the last dollar,” and how AI wil…

It was a pleasure to sit down with Dan Feder, Senior Managing Director with the University of Michigan Investment Office who leads the endowment’s investments in venture capital and private equity. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Dan was the Managing Director of Private Markets at the Washington University Investment Management Company…

Bill Staples has spent 30 years redefining how the world writes, ships, and secures code. On this week’s Grit, the GitLab CEO shares what it takes to lead a public, all-remote DevSecOps company trusted by more than half of the Fortune 100. He breaks down the discipline of managing energy instead of hours, why weekly operating cadences beat quarterl…

This was a fun one! Sam is my brother and the CEO of a small company in SF called OpenAI. I’m glad he was able to take time out of his busy schedule to give me a hard time and share his thoughts on the future of AI. We covered: AI discovering new science The risk of superintelligence What’s after reasoning Humans needing humans The latest with Open…

What does it take to build the logistics backbone for the next generation of commerce? Sean Henry, founder and CEO of Stord, joins Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman and Grit host Joubin Mirzadegan to talk about scaling a national fulfillment network that now moves 50 million packages a year and reaches 15% of U.S. households. They explore how St…

Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that manages $45 billion in assets under management. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar compa…

Eric Yuan turned a simple belief into Zoom, the platform that kept the world moving through a once-in-a-century shutdown and redefined modern work. On this episode of Grit, the Zoom CEO shares why velocity beats size, how a family-first ethos powered his leadership during COVID, and why the coming wave of AI dwarfs the original internet boom. He de…

Over the past two decades, Bret Taylor has quietly helped shape the arc of Silicon Valley. From co-creating Google Maps to steering Facebook, Salesforce, and OpenAI, he’s been behind some of the most consequential products in tech. Now, with his new company Sierra, he’s starting from zero—again. In this conversation, Bret opens up about how founder…

Jordan Bramble is the CEO of Antares, a nuclear energy company that has raised over $50M to become America’s industrial base partner for special-purpose microreactors. Antares focuses on high-value use cases in power-constrained environments that wouldn’t be possible without nuclear power. They are developing resilient fission-based power systems f…

Chris Urmson has spent the last 20 years pushing the limits of autonomous driving—first at Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Grand Challenge team, then as co-founder of Google’s self-driving car project, now Waymo. On this week’s episode, the Aurora CEO retraces that journey—from building robot cars in the desert to leading a public company pioneering driver…

This week I enjoyed riffing with David Tisch, Managing Partner of BoxGroup. BoxGroup is an NYC-based seed stage venture capital firm that has invested in over 500 seed-stage startups over the last 15 years, including Plaid, Ro, Ramp, Clay, Scopely, Warp, Cursor, PillPack, Amplitude, Flatiron Health, Stripe, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Flexport, C…

John Chambers led Cisco through the rise of the internet—transforming it into the world’s most valuable company at its peak. On this week’s Grit, the former Cisco CEO unpacks how he scaled the business from $70M to $50B+, pioneered M&A as a growth strategy with 180 acquisitions, and built what many called the best sales force in tech. Now leading h…

I had a blast sitting down with Qasar Younis, Co-Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a company that’s on a mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of safe and intelligent machines. The company builds software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomous systems to market. Last valued at $6B, Applied Intuition has raised a total …

Matt Murphy transformed Marvell from a broad-based chip supplier into a $100B data infrastructure leader—powering the rise of AI, cloud, 5G, and custom silicon. On this week’s Grit, the Marvell CEO shares how he refocused the company’s strategy, led major acquisitions like Inphi ($10B) and Cavium ($6B), and positioned Marvell at the center of the n…

From a 350-square-foot home in South India to leading HubSpot, a $30B CRM powerhouse, Yamini Rangan’s journey is nothing short of remarkable. In this episode, Yamini shares how she’s guiding HubSpot through a post-pandemic shift toward product-led growth, the hard-won lessons behind building go-to-market alignment, and why human-centric leadership …

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 inclu…

David Rubenstein helped pioneer modern private equity—building The Carlyle Group into a $400B global investment firm from a modest D.C. office and a relentless fundraising streak. But beyond PE, his legacy spans presidential libraries, historic American artifacts, and a lifelong obsession with civic contribution. In this episode, David shares how h…

Amplitude helped define the modern analytics stack, powering digital products with deep behavioral insights. But in a world shifting toward agentic interfaces and vertically integrated AI, even a category leader has to evolve. In this episode, CEO Spenser Skates shares how he’s rethinking AI within the constraints of a 13-year-old codebase, why ana…

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, a…

Flexport was a breakout success—reimagining global trade with tech at its core. But when the freight market cooled and efficiency overtook service, things started to unravel. Founder Ryan Petersen stepped aside, handing the CEO role to former Amazon exec Dave Clark. Months later, he was back at the helm. In this episode, Ryan explains what went wro…

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…

Guest: Pedro Franceschi Pedro Franceschi is the co-founder and CEO of Brex, a fintech company reshaping how businesses manage their finances. Originally from Brazil, Pedro went from teenage hacker to leading one of the most well-known names in modern financial technology—building a platform trusted by startups and enterprises alike. In this episode…

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 inc…

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…

By Kleiner Perkins

This week I sat down with Aaron Levie, Co-Founder and CEO of Box. Aaron came up with the idea behind the cloud computing company as a 19 year old college student and has led the company since its inception in 2005. Today, Box does over $1B in revenue with a market cap of $4.4B, and has raised over $560 million from the likes of DFJ, Andreesen Horow…

Guest: Zac Bookman, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenGov Thirteen years after co-founding the government transparency startup OpenGov, Zac Bookman is still finding ways to surprise people. In 2024, Cox Enterprises bought the company for $1.8 billion — but as far as Zac is concerned, “we’re just getting started.” “ I left the vast majority of my net worth …

This week I enjoyed speaking quickly with Keith Rabois, a Managing Director at Khosla Ventures and the CEO of OpenStore. At Khosla, Keith led the first institutional investments in DoorDash, Affirm, and Faire, invested early in Stripe, and co-founded Opendoor. While a General Partner at Founders Fund, he led investments in Ramp, Trade Republic, and…

Guest: Ben Chestnut, Former CEO and Co-Founder of Mailchimp If you find yourself selling your startup, then Mailchimp co-founder Ben Chestnut has some important advice for you: Get a dog. When Intuit bought Mailchimp in 2021 for $12 billion, the company asked Ben if he wanted to stay on as CEO, but he chose to “walk off into the sunset” and let the…

This week I spoke with Shaun Maguire, a Partner at Sequoia Capital. He led their investments into SpaceX, The Boring Co, and X among others. Prior to Sequoia Shaun co-founded a cybersecurity company which was acquired for $1B and worked at DARPA. I could have happily spoken with Shaun for four hours. --- We covered: (0:00) Speaking his mind in publ…

Guest: Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic “Passion and drive trumps knowledge and experience,” says Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. Long before he was running Boom — which earlier this year successfully tested the world’s first privately-developed supersonic jet — he was enabling “the world’s most obnoxious spam cannon” at Groupon, or…

Guest: George Kurian, CEO of NetApp For almost 10 years, George Kurian has been CEO of the data infrastructure firm NetApp, overseeing its pivot to cloud services. After he took the job — a surprise promotion dropped on him just days before it was announced — he had to learn on the job how the job could be. “ There are a lot more stakeholders that …

Guests: Winston Weinberg, CEO & co-founder of Harvey; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins “If you think about pretty much any job out there in the world, we will have some sort of [AI] copilot,” says Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman. “The question is, who are the right folks to build it, and what’s their vision?” For Harvey CEO & co-fo…

Guest: Miki Kuusi, head of international at Doordash + CEO & co-founder of Wolt + co-founder of Slush tech conference Before Miki Kuusi launched the Finnish delivery startup Wolt, which DoorDash acquired in 2022, he wasn’t just another startup entrepreneur. From 2011 to 2015, Miki was the CEO of the hugely influential European tech conference Slush…

Guest: Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision Blizzard; and Bing Gordon, Advisor at Kleiner Perkins In 2020, when President Trump signed the executive order that would ban TikTok in the U.S., Bobby Kotick called his old friend Steven Mnuchin. The former Secretary of the Treasury told him that, if TikTok’s U.S. operations were to be sold to an Ameri…

Guest: Nick Kokonas, co-founder of the Alinea Group and former CEO of Tock As of October 1, 2024, Nick Kokonas is no longer an owner of the Alinea restaurant group, which he co-founded and ran for almost 20 years. When he bought a vineyard in Napa Valley prior to the exit, one of his sons remarked, “He's given up. Time to go out to pasture.” Nick a…

Guest: Rick Smith, CEO & Founder of Axon (formerly TASER) Being a founder-CEO is a “unique superpower,” says Axon’s Rick Smith: People like him get a longer leash from the board to try things that outside CEOs might not. “My job is to push risk into the organization,” Rick says. “If there's a project with a 50 percent chance of success, a 50 percen…

Guest: Emilie Choi, president & COO of Coinbase After the collapse of FTX in 2022, “the whole industry was tarnished,” recalls Coinbase COO Emilie Choi. “Politicians came out criticizing crypto, saying it was a fraud.” But unlike FTX, Coinbase was a public company in the U.S. So when the SEC served it a Wells notice, announcing its intent to charge…

Guest: Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice As the CEO of a growing company, Lattice’s Sarah Franklin has learned that one of her most important contributions is taking a leap of faith. “You have to have the courage to be the first one to do it,” she says,” and to show that it can be done, and to pave the way so that then your team feels trust.” Sarah ca…

Guest: David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO & co-owner of 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails 37signals CTO David Heinemeier Hansson has organized his life around his passions: Writing, racing sports cars, and coding. “ Why aren't we all doing that?” he wonders. “Why aren't we all trying to optimize our life in such a way that much of it is enjoyable?”…