Monday’s episode – David Cahn, Partner @ Sequoia Capital

My 6 takeaways

1. The Best Trade of 2025

   The best trade of 2025 was the AI‑power trade. People bet that power would be a constraint in AI. We are moving from dollars to gigawatts.

2. Who Are the Winners and Who Are the Losers in AI

   Winners: Consumers of compute – over‑producing compute lowers prices, boosting margins.

   Losers: Producers of compute – compute becomes a commodity asset.

3. Are the $BN Pay Packages for AI Talent Justified?

   They signal the desperation companies feel to eke out progress. In tech, increasing the probability of making a trillion dollars by 1 % can justify spending billions, even though we are biased to over‑estimate that contribution.

4. Does Gross Margin Matter in a World of AI?

   Gross margin is a directional indicator of how much product you’ve built on top of foundational models, but it isn’t absolutely critical. Many businesses start with low margins and become very healthy over time. If you have a real, scalable product that delivers a lot of value, margins will rise as compute costs fall.

5. The Rise of the $0‑$100M Club and Whether “Triple, Triple, Double, Double” Is Dead

   The best AI companies are scaling from $0 to $100 M in revenue extremely quickly. Demand for AI is huge, and companies that hit product‑market fit are growing faster than before. The old “triple, triple, double, double” metric is outdated.

6. What Makes a Great Defence Company Is to Be a National Champion

   A great defence company fundamentally understands its customer (the government) and can drive a nationwide transformation. A few concentrated winners will emerge in each country, with venture‑funded R&D firms eventually consolidating into national champions.

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Thursday’s episode – Rory O’Driscoll (GP @ Scale) & Jason Lemkin (Founder @ SaaStr)

My 5 takeaways

1. A16z Is the “Red Army” of the VC Industry

   “Quantity has a quality on its own.” When you want to take Berlin, get 2 million people who are ready to die and march forward.

2. Analysis on Mercor

   Positive: The market is exploding and Mercor is riding the wave.

   Negatives: Margins are thin and there is massive customer concentration. This is a bet that the AI‑CapEx train will run for another 3‑4 years.

3. Three Ways to Do Venture Today

   • Picking

   • Spraying

   • Optioning

   You can spray if you’re only doing options. If spraying is the only way you make money, the probability of being wrong is too high.

4. The Advantage Multi‑Stage Funds Have From a Different Cost of Capital

   Multi‑stage funds now have enormous capital and can treat early A & B checks as options—a luxury smaller funds don’t have.

5. IRR Is Not King; This Metric Is Way More Important

   The goal is to maximize multiple while keeping IRR above a target (e.g., 25 %). Hold winners until IRR nears the floor, then exit and distribute.

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Friday’s episode – Tim Ferriss (Author, Podcaster & Investor)

“Let us know what your big takeaways from this week’s shows were in the comments below!”

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