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Données mises à jour le 04/07/2026
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How a Hillbilly in Nevada Bootstrapped a $140M ARR Manufacturing Company | Jim Belosic, SendCutSend
Saison 1 · Épisode 139
jeudi 30 avril 2026 • Durée 01:32:17
Jim Belosic is the Co-founder and CEO of SendCutSend, a sheet metal manufacturing business he bootstrapped to a $140 million revenue run rate in eight years.
We talk building a manufacturing business in the US, creative ways he financed the company early on, using speed and trust to compete with overseas competitors, lessons from restaurants, and why you can’t run a factory from a spreadsheet.
Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode
Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com
Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com
Timestamps:
(0:16) Automating sheet metal manufacturing
(5:59) Zero to $140 million ARR in 8 years
(7:58) Acquiring a $750k laser with $0
(13:38) Automating factories is like baking cookies
(15:17) Being legible to capital
(17:31) Unlocking custom, low order manufacturing with software
(20:00) Building more factories instead of selling the software
(24:50) Run your company like a lemonade stand
(28:30) Raising an angel round in 2021 as a safety net
(33:21) SendCutSend’s unique bottoms-up GTM
(38:24) Fun coupons
(40:12) Building a moat with speed and trust
45:55) How US factories can beat China
(47:40) Gaslight product launches
(52:05) Lessons from non-manufacturing businesses
(55:19) You can’t run a factory from a spreadsheet
(58:10) Using data in manufacturing
(59:50) Lessons from Factorio
(1:03:17) Unlocking a negative cash conversion cycle
(1:06:14) You need to resist automating everything
(1:13:51) Surviving COVID with six weeks of cash
(1:15:47) Solving the US skilled labor shortage
(1:26:17) Teaching kids about manufacturing
Referenced
SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com/
Careers at SendCutSend: https://sendcutsend.com/careers
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
The $5B Venture Growth Buyout Playbook | Alex Israel, Metropolis
Saison 1 · Épisode 139
vendredi 24 avril 2026 • Durée 01:29:58
Alex Israel is the Co-founder and CEO of Metropolis.He unpacks the unique strategy they used as a tech startup to rollup parking lots and become the largest parking operator in the world.Thank you to Will Quist, Yoni Rechtman, Adam Bain, and Jamie Siminoff for their help brainstorming topics for the conversation.Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episodeNumeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.comFlex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFzAmplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.comTimestamps:(1:10) Helping 50m Americans park(4:00) Building “Buy Now” for the physical world(9:02) Real-world checkout technology that works(16:07) Why parking never institutionalized as an asset class(18:34) Using tech to make parking assets more valuable(21:53) Parking lots as autonomous robotics hubs(29:07) Going to film school, working at MTV(30:55) Starting his first parking data company(33:47) Culture of pranking each other(36:27) A Fortune 500 CEO convinced him to start a 2nd parking company(42:55) Realizing they couldn’t sell to real estate operators(46:09) Acquiring a company 10x their size to jumpstart GTM(50:20) How to do a successful AI growth buyout(54:48) Revenue growth must be driven by technology(1:00:33) Why companies should do growth buyouts(1:03:55) Being legible to capital(1:09:16) You need creativity to take risks(1:13:30) AI is the first ever disruption to skilled labor(1:19:14) CEO challenges growing zero to 23,000 employees(1:24:31) Alex’ personal AI stackReferencedMetropolis: https://www.metropolis.io/Careers at Metropolis: https://www.metropolis.io/careersRoy Amara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_AmaraFollow AlexTwitter: https://x.com/Alex__IsraelLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-israelFollow TurnerTwitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovakLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovakSubscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
How Agentic AI is Reshaping Science, Education, and the Economy | Karthik Duraisamy at the University of Michigan
Saison 1 · Épisode 138
vendredi 17 avril 2026 • Durée 01:48:30
Karthik Duraisamy is a professor at the University of Michigan.
He is co-leading U of M's newly created Institute of Agentic Computing, the first of its kind. The institute will serve researchers and developers building agentic AI infrastructure to advance scientific discovery, engineering, and the knowledge economy. It will also be a central node for managing developers and maintainers of the OpenClaw platform.
Karthik's research spans a broad spectrum of computational science and engineering, including new modeling approaches for complex physical systems, numerical methods, algorithms and uncertainty quantification.
This is the first conversation Karthik’s had going deep on the institute. We talk about using AI to advance scientific research, two new discoveries announced yesterday, how universities work, how AI is impacting students and education, and his advice for young people.
Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode
Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.com/
Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com
Timestamps:
(0:25) The Institute for Agentic Computing
(4:27) OpenClaw Foundation and Lobster Compute Company
How US Healthcare Actually Works, the WWII Tax Loophole that Broke it Forever, and How AI Can Fix it | Nikhil Krishnan, Out of Pocket
Saison 1 · Épisode 137
jeudi 9 avril 2026 • Durée 01:45:04
Nikhil Krishnan is the Founder of Out of Pocket, a media company that makes understanding healthcare more entertaining and accessible.
We spend 100 minutes talking about how the US healthcare system actually works, how World War II changed it forever, all the ways AI is seeing real adoption across the industry, and most common bad startup ideas in healthcare.
Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode
Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance [https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.com/)
Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask [https://www.amplitude.com](https://www.amplitude.com/)
Timestamps:
(1:23) How the US healthcare system works
(4:26) Why US healthcare is different from the rest of the world
(12:01) Why healthcare costs keep going up
(15:58) Core problem: is healthcare a marketplace or not?
(21:04) How money flows + Two-way price negotiation
(27:34) Why payments are seeing early AI adoption
(30:08) How AI could change healthcare delivery
(35:40) Doctor’s are trapped on a productivity hamster wheel
(39:28) How incentives shape healthcare delivery
Sophia Amoruso on Bootstrapping Nasty Gal to $120M Revenue, Turning Down $400M, Declaring Bankruptcy, Public Failure, Starting Trust Fund to Back Other Founders
Saison 1 · Épisode 136
jeudi 2 avril 2026 • Durée 01:31:38
Sophia Amoruso is the Founder of Nasty Gal and Trust Fund, an early stage venture capital firm.
We talk through her journey of starting Nasty Gal as an Ebay store in 2006 to sell vintage clothing, bootstrapping it to $28 million in revenue, raising $50 million, scaling it to $120 million and a massive team, turning down a $400 million acquisition offer, and ultimately declaring bankruptcy.
She takes us inside what it was like to fail so publicly, what she’d do differently next time around, lessons from building the brand, and why she started her VC firm Trust Fund to back the next generation of founders building consequential companies.
Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode
Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com
Flex: Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000 https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com
Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge Gateway https://www.merge.dev/gateway
Timestamps:
(0:59) Selling vintage on Ebay while working at an art school
(04:31) Lessons in marketing and perceived value
(12:38) Knowing when to make your first hire
Footwork’s Secret Sauce | Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Saison 1 · Épisode 135
jeudi 26 mars 2026 • Durée 01:32:16
Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith are the Co-founders of Footwork where they invest up to $15 million in Seed and Series A rounds. This is the first time they've ever sat down to record a conversation together on video.
We talk about starting the firm in 2020, their secret sauce for working with founders, lessons investing in Canva’s Seed round, scaling Stitch Fix from $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital, why AI will enable a new wave of entrepreneurship, and how public company boards are discussing AI today.
Thank you to Tony Staehelin, Andrew Riesen, and Hunter Walk for helping brainstorming topics for the conversation.
Thank you to Flex for supporting this episode.
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:24) Starting Footwork from a tweet in 2021
(3:11) Difference between startup and public company boards
(4:52) 20-40% of board meetings are now about AI
(7:48) How Footwork’s investing in AI today
(10:37) AI will enable millions of new entrepreneurs
(15:04) 37 questions to ask when starting a VC firm
(31:59) Investors should talk to and help employees
(37:05) Building an equal-carry partnership
Inside Hanover Park: Building an AI-Native Service Business, Growing to $15B in Assets
Saison 1 · Épisode 134
mercredi 18 mars 2026 • Durée 01:11:41
Chris Hladczuk is the Co-founder and CEO of Hanover Park, the AI-native fund administrator, vertically integrating fund administration, portfolio management, and LP experience for finance and investment teams.
Chris is the 2nd ever returning guest of the show, and is fresh off announcing Hanover’s $27m Series A. We go inside the round, their explosive growth, why they built their own general ledger from scratch, and how that enabled them to build incredible AI products for investment firms that touch over $100 trillion in assets.
Thanks to Sahil Bloom, and Chad + Pratyush at Susa for help brainstorming topics for this conversation.
Thank you to Numeral and Flex for supporting this episode.
Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: https://www.numeral.com
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:37) Financial infrastructure for investment firms
(1:35) Hanover Park’s $27m Series A
(5:30) AI-enabled services businesses
(9:07) Productizing the service layer
(11:30) Helping CFO’s and investors use AI
(13:46) Building a general ledger from scratch
(18:03) Compete against companies with IT departments
(19:55) Hiring in an unsexy industry
(21:30) Live in constant paranoia of your customers
Inside Canada’s Fastest Growing AI Company | Spellbook, Scott Stevenson
Saison 1 · Épisode 133
jeudi 12 mars 2026 • Durée 01:35:41
Scott Stevenson is the Co-founder and CEO of Spellbook.
Spellbook is an AI copilot for contract review and drafting, essentially “Cursor for lawyers.” They have 4,000 customers in 80 countries, and to my knowledge is the fastest growing AI company in Canada, and the largest company in the world built on a Microsoft Word plugin.
Scott has been building in legal AI longer than almost anyone. We talk about why legal software was essentially untouched before LLM’s, why the market is so hot right now, if it’s sustainable, and how Spellbook navigates product differentiation compared to horizontal AI products like ChatGPT.
We talk about why fine-tuning your own models was one of the biggest mistakes early AI companies made, how to build a network effect as a vertical AI product, and Spellbook’s philosophy of “Don’t sharpen your axe when the chainsaw is coming out tomorrow”.
Spellbook spent a few years finding PMF before really taking off in 2022, and Scott shares their playbook for launching over 100 product experiments in three years, how to know when to lean in, and what it’s been like scaling Spellbook post-PMF.
Thank you to Numeral and Flex for supporting this episode.
Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: https://www.numeral.com
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:30) Spellbook: “Cursor for Contracts”
Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta on the Past, Present, & Future of Software
Saison 1 · Épisode 132
mercredi 4 mars 2026 • Durée 01:29:33
Chetan Puttagunta is a General Partner at Benchmark.
We talk about investing in Manus, the AI company that went from zero to $100M ARR in eight months and was recently acquired by Meta.
We also talk through the full history of application software, from mainframes to client-server, to the internet to cloud, why each wave reduced the barrier to entry and created an explosion in the number of new software, why legacy SaaS companies are making the same mistake on-prem vendors made at the dawn of the cloud, why software companies should be making big AI acquisitions, and how public market investors are begging private AI companies to go public.
We also talk about what Benchmark actually looks for in founders, how they make decisions, and why his last two investments were consumer AI and crypto.
Thanks to Sam Ross and Everett Randle for helping brainstorm topics for this conversation.
Thanks you to Numeral and Flex for supporting this episode.
Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: https://www.numeral.com
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:08) Inside the $2.5B Manus acquisition
(6:24) Manus' three main use cases
(11:08) Taking heat on Twitter
(15:10) Starting to tweet about software in 2018
Inside Serval: Building the System of Intelligence for IT | Jake Stauch
Saison 1 · Épisode 131
vendredi 27 février 2026 • Durée 01:25:20
Jake Stauch is the Co-founder and CEO of Serval. Serval automates IT with AI.
We talk taking on incumbents with an AI-native product, why IT departments haven’t had much automation historically, the 12+ month journey of landing their first customer, and how teams can increase talent density as they scale.
Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: [https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.xn--com-xw0a/)
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:14) AI-native employee support
(5:15) How an early work trial almost ended the entire company
(9:05) Why IT hasn’t had much automation
(13:09) Vibe coding for IT professionals
(15:31) Competing against publicly traded incumbents
(23:32) Having less than three months of runway for seven years building his first hardware consumer health startup
(33:15) Lessons from five years at Verkada
(39:11) The single question that led birthed the idea for Serval
(44:19) Navigating 12+ months of zero revenue
(52:05) Knowing when not to pivot
(55:15) Finally landing the first three customers
(58:07) Getting pre-empted for a Series A
(1:01:04) Getting a Series B term sheet the next day
(8:19) How Universities actually work
(12:33) ClawCon in Ann Arbor
(15:24) Two scientific discoveries made with ScienceClaw
(20:06) How AI is speeding up scientific discovery
(25:42) Supporting AI and OpenClaw development
(29:55) Why universities function like VC funds
(34:29) How Universities get money from the government
(40:55) Why some academics believe AI is a fad
(46:17) Biggest bottlenecks in AI today
(49:26) How AI will change the world
(53:10) Karthik's Code Red advice for students
(59:19) Separating learning and doing
(1:03:10) Ways COVID and AI impacted college students
(1:14:53) How the role of universities is changing
(1:23:21) Why college classes suffered from grade inflation
(1:26:05) How AI is actually impacting the job market
(1:32:49) Karthik’s advice for students
(1:39:16) Winning two NCAA basketball national championships
(1:43:04) Almost dying in the Grand Teton National Park
Referenced
More on Karthik: https://aero.engin.umich.edu/people/duraisamy-karthik/
Institute for Agentic Computing: https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-launches-institute-for-agentic-computing/
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
(1:05:54) How to structure design partnerships that convert
(1:08:48) Building a mirror instead of system of record
(1:13:49) Make the implementation part of the product
(1:15:24) How to increase talent density as you scale
(1:21:32) Why every new hire should help you recruit
Referenced
Try Serval: https://www.serval.com/
Careers at Serval: https://www.serval.com/careers
Episode with Filip @ Verkada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXI3GdicIHw
Follow Jake
Twitter: https://x.com/jakeserval
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestauch
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
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