When Itai Ben-Zaken’s first startup failed in 2018, the former BCG consultant and Wharton MBA spent months trying to understand what he could have done differently during the five years he ran the company.
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Oct 30
Ex-Palantir execs launch Dream to build AI world models for construction; plus, Upwind raises $400M; and Mintive lands Cowboy Ventures, Coatue, angels Jeff Dean, Andrej Karpathy
-Trained on 100 million square feet of building permits, dream wants to disrupt Autodesk with AI. -The cloud security startup raised a Series C at a $3.8B valuation, instead of selling itself for the same price. -Mintive was founded by two engineers who have been working on AI fo ... Show More
11m 26s
Oct 27
Matiks raises $10M to expand its math and puzzle gaming platform; AI delivers ‘zero financial payoff’ to most companies, plus, Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs
Matiks has introduced a new platform for users to create games using AI. Also, "despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech." And Warhound, the brain child ... Show More
13m 17s
Sep 2020
#97 Secret Sauce or Snake Oil?
Today's founder had everything going for him: a huge market, loads of experience, and $70k in monthly revenue. But then, everything went wrong. Christopher Hussain's startup, RealKey, is supposed to make the complicated mortgage lending process simpler, but his pitch left our inv ... Show More
25m 55s
Aug 2020
#95 You Asked. Investors Answered. Now What?
In the spring, founders desperate for ideas about how to keep their companies afloat called in to get advice from our investors. Several months later, the economy is still far from recovering, so we called the founders back to see if the investors’ advice was working. Learn more ... Show More
32m 28s
Apr 2017
Recode Decode: Bijan Sabet, general partner, Spark Capital
Spark Capital General Partner Bijan Sabet talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about being a venture capitalist based on the East Coast, and how he became an early investor in companies like Twitter, Tumblr and Cruise. Sabet also discusses why he has become more politically vocal und ... Show More
55m 14s
May 2025
Undoing a $5 Billion Acquisition and Building a Durable Standalone Plaid (with Plaid CEO Zach Perret)
We sit down with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, to discuss the remarkable journey of Plaid and the broader fintech landscape over the past several years. Zach takes us blow-by-blow through journey of almost getting acquired by Visa, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic… ... Show More
59m 7s
Jan 2025
Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A Two Time Founder
<p>Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure. </p><p>After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC. </p><p>In 2020, he co-founded Zip, a procurement softwar ... Show More
24m 31s