Explore every episode of the podcast Summation with Auren Hoffman

Daniel Chait is the co-founder and CEO of Greenhouse, the hiring platform behind thousands of companies. Before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab49, a technology consultancy for Wall Street. He's also the author of Talent Makers.

In this episode of Summation, Daniel and Auren discuss:

• The AI doom loop
• Why "tell me about a time when" beats "what are your weaknesses," 
• Why HR quality depends on the CEO, and what Netflix got right
• Why "never quit" is bad founder advice

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Daniel Chait on Linkedin

Noah Glass is the founder and CEO of Olo, the digital commerce platform behind ordering, payments, and loyalty for many of America's biggest restaurant brands. He started Olo in 2005 with ordering by text message, before the iPhone existed, took it public in 2021, and took it private with Thoma Bravo last year in a roughly $2 billion deal.

In this episode of Summation, Noah and Auren discuss:

• The $65 million sale that collapsed the night before he told his team
• How Five Guys strong-armed point-of-sale companies into opening up to Olo
• Why 75% of restaurant meals are eaten outside the restaurant, and only 10% are delivery
• The right to be known, and why you favorite the salad but reorder the milkshake

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Noah Glass on X at @nhglass

Bobby Samuels is the co-founder and CEO of Protege, a platform that licenses real-world data from industries like healthcare and media to companies building AI. Protege has raised $65 million from Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, and Flex Capital. Before Protege, Bobby led partnerships at LiveRamp and ran Privacy Hub at Datavant.

In this episode of Summation, Bobby and Auren discuss:

• The auction for Spirit Airlines' emails, and what a model learns from a failed airline
• Why synthetic data has been "18 months away" for six years
• Why every data pitch deck with "hedge funds" on the customer slide is wrong
• The genome as the most valuable dataset nobody has unlocked
• Why the smartest buyers are the easiest ones to sell to

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Bobby Samuels on Linkedin

Roy Schwartz co-founded Axios, the news company known for smart brevity, and helped grow it to a $525 million sale to Cox Enterprises. He's now co-founder and CEO of Axios HQ, an AI-powered internal communications platform spun out of Axios. He co-wrote Smart Brevity, and his new book is Simplify. Before Axios, he was chief revenue officer of Politico.

In this episode of Summation, Roy and Auren discuss:

• Meeting bankruptcy: wiping every recurring meeting off the calendar twice a year
• AI as a complexity machine and the slop it's adding to every email and deck
• The end of well-rounded, and why AI eats anyone who is average
• Building Axios for influencers instead of casual readers, plus 200 events a year

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Roy Schwartz on LinkedIn

David Kirtley is the co-founder and CEO of Helion Energy, the fusion company. Helion has raised more than $1.5 billion at a $15.5 billion valuation, and Sam Altman is its biggest investor and former chairman. Before fusion, David worked on rocket and space propulsion.

In this episode of Summation, David and Auren discuss:

• Skipping the steam turbine and pulling electricity straight out of a star
• How a Best Buy network card helped make fusion possible
• Regulating a 150 million degree machine like a hospital proton beam
• One cent power, and what happens when AI stops being limited by electricity

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and David Kirtley on X at @Dkirtley

Alex Rampell is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s $2.7 billion Apps practice and has driven much of the firm's fintech investing, including Plaid, Mercury, and Opendoor. Before a16z, Alex co-founded multiple companies including Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM), FraudEliminator (acquired by McAfee in 2006), Point, TrialPay (acquired by Visa in 2015), TXN (acquired by Envestnet in 2019), and Yub (acquired by Coupons.com in 2013).

In this episode of Summation, Alex and Auren discuss:

• Why Visa is the purest network effect business in the world and why it's still a duopoly
• The reverse Robin Hood hidden inside every rewards credit card
• The "hostages, not customers" test for which software companies survive AI
• What was once payroll becoming payments and the businesses it unlocks

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Alex Rampell on X at @arampell

Chris Hulls is the co-founder and executive chairman of Life360 ($LIF), the family safety and location-sharing app now worth over $5 billion. He was CEO for 17 years before stepping back last year. Before Life360, he served in the Air Force in Afghanistan.

In this episode of Summation, Chris and Auren discuss:

• Why he took Life360 public in Australia and why he'd never run a public company again
• Why "you want to sound smart, but not interesting" is the secret rule of corporate speak
• Why nobody actually cares about privacy, and what finally scares him about AI
• Why the work of keeping a home never ends, no matter how rich you get

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Chris Hulls on X at @chrishulls

Aydin Senkut is the founder and managing partner of Felicis, the venture firm he started in 2006, with over $4B under management and early bets on Shopify, Notion, Canva, and Adyen. He was Google's first product manager and has been on the Forbes Midas list of top investors for 13 years running.

In this episode of Summation, Aydin and Auren discuss:

• Why the best platform companies came from Ottawa, Sydney, and Amsterdam and not Silicon Valley
• How capital became a commodity and people are the only real moat left
• Why the trait he bets on is the willingness to reset your priors
• How defense went from an optional purchase to a matter of survival

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Aydin Senkut on X at @asenkut

Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked, which became Silicon Valley's playbook for building habit-forming products, Indistractable, on taking your attention back, and the new book Beyond Belief. He taught at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and is one of the sharpest thinkers on what to do with technology.

In this episode of Summation, Nir and Auren discuss:

• Why to-do lists set you up to feel like a failure and what to do instead
• Why 90% of the time you check your phone, it's an uncomfortable emotion, not a notification
• Why beliefs are tools, not truths, and how swapping one can end your suffering
• Why this is the safest generation of kids in history and still gets a moral panic

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Nir Eyal on X at @nireyal

Geoff Mattson is the CEO of SecureAuth, an identity security company that has raised over $200M and protects more than 50 million identities for enterprises. Before SecureAuth he was CEO of Xage Security. His work now centers on how you prove an AI agent is who it says it is.

In this episode of Summation, Geoff and Auren discuss:

• Why an AI agent is like an Uber driver who might randomly turn into a psycho killer
• The deepfake fraudpocalypse, and the simplest thing that defends against it
• Why your agent impersonates you instead of working for you and how to fix it
• Why the password is finally, actually dying

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Geoff on Linkedin

Cory Gardner is a former U.S. Senator and Congressman from Colorado and was one of the Senate's leading Taiwan and China experts, chairing the Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and authoring the Taipei Act. He is now president and CEO of NCTA, the Internet & Television Association, whose members built the nation's largest broadband platform.

In this episode of Summation, Cory and Auren discuss:

• Why the AI race gets won on spectrum, fiber, and memory chips
• The bottleneck raising the price of your iPhone, PlayStation, and router
• Why an open society is vulnerable to a campaign to turn Americans against AI
• What a China expert thinks about our dependence on chips made off China's coast

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Cory Gardner on X at @CoryGardner

Harjot Gill is the co-founder and CEO of CodeRabbit, the AI code review company that became the most installed AI app on GitHub and GitLab. Over about two years, CodeRabbit went from zero to over $50M in ARR and a $1B+ valuation. It is his third startup.

In this episode of Summation, Harjot and Auren discuss:

• Why the bottleneck in software just moved from writing code to reviewing it
• Why mature companies now adopt AI first
• Why you should never let a coding agent review its own work
• The playbook that took CodeRabbit from zero to $50M+ in two years

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Harjot Gill on X at @harjotsgill

Moritz Baier-Lentz is one of the foremost investors in gaming, AI, and frontier technologies—including companies like OpenAI, SpaceX, Palantir, Etched, Decart, and Recursive. He founded Goldman Sachs's global gaming practice and was previously a partner, IC member, and head of gaming at Lightspeed. Moritz is part of the founding team of General Intuition, an AI research lab training agents on video game data, which has raised a $133M Seed round and a $320M Series A. He is also a senior advisor to OpenAI, McKinsey & Co., and TPG Capital.

In this episode of Summation, Moritz and Auren discuss:

• Why video games are the best data set for the next phase of AI
• The idea that humans only truly learn during play
• Why Germany's fear of risk is cultural
• Getting into Stanford with an essay about Diablo II

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Moritz Baier-Lentz on LinkedIn or his website.

Ronnie Chatterji is the Chief Economist at OpenAI, where he leads research on how AI reshapes growth, jobs, and the economy. He is also an economics professor at Duke. He was previously the White House CHIPS coordinator implementing the $52B CHIPS Act, and before that the chief economist at the US Department of Commerce.

In this episode of Summation, Ronnie and Auren discuss:

• The three things people actually do with ChatGPT
• The 10x jump in people handing their work to AI 
• Why the next big leap in AI is adoption and not capability
• The case that AI could cause a population boom 

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ronnie Chatterji on X at @RonnieChatterji

Felix Rieseberg leads engineering for Claude Cowork and Claude Code Desktop at Anthropic. Before that he led desktop and web infrastructure at Notion and built software at Stripe, Slack, and Microsoft. 

In this episode of Summation, Felix and Auren discuss:

• The next AI step function: going from solving a problem to owning a responsibility
• Why AI will win many Nobel prizes before it wins a single Pulitzer
• Bringing AI into the physical world, from a $30 coffee-machine display to a Wi-Fi garage opener
• Why "here's what your team can learn from the Navy SEALs" is bad management advice

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Felix Rieseberg on X at @felixrieseberg

Brendan Wallace is the Founder, CEO & CIO of Fifth Wall, the largest investment firm focused on technology for the built environment, with ~$3B in capital, the firm is driving the growth of nearly 170 companies, backing category-defining PropTech leaders such as Opendoor, Procore, Blend, Hippo, and Bilt Rewards. It's supported by ~115 of the world's largest real estate owner-operators including CBRE, Hilton, Hines, Marriott, Public Storage, Related, and Starwood. Before Fifth Wall, Brendan was at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, and he co-founded Identified (sold to Workday) and Cabify.

 In this episode of Summation, Brendan and Auren discuss:

• How remote work protected mediocrity for years
• The data center land grab: powered land, 2037 grid connections, and bring-your-own-solar
• How land is the most stable asset on earth and there's still no way to buy an index of it
• Why "capital-intensive businesses are bad for venture" is no longer true

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Brendan Wallace on X at @BrendanFWallace

Jim Rebesco is the co-founder and CEO of Striveworks, an AI ops company deployed across the US Army, Navy, and combatant commands. In April, Striveworks announced a $70M enterprise agreement with the Pentagon, giving nearly a million defense personnel access to its platform. Jim was previously a partner at Virtu Financial, a pioneering high-frequency trading firm.

In this episode of Summation, Jim and Auren discuss:

• why the real question in AI warfare is who pushes the button
• the case that autonomy favors big nation states, not insurgents
• why it costs $200,000 to procure anything in the Pentagon
• what high-frequency trading and war have in common

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jim Rebesco on LinkedIn

Carson Block is the founder of Muddy Waters Research, one of the defining activist short-selling firms of the last decade and a half. Since 2010, Muddy Waters has published forensic research exposing accounting fraud at publicly traded companies across China, Europe, and the US and has been right enough times that 11 companies have been delisted as a result.

In this episode of Summation, Carson and Auren discuss:

• why outright fraud is only 20-25% of Muddy Waters'  focus
• the Wirecard saga
• why high-trust countries like Germany are a paradise for criminals
• how the thing that killed Enron is still completely legal

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Carson Block on LinkedIn and on X @muddywatersre

Anders Jones is the CEO and co-founder of Facet, a fintech company built to bring high-quality, flat-fee financial advice to an underserved market: the mass affluent. Facet has raised over $250M and manages more than $7B. Anders has seen the real finances of tens of thousands of households.

In this episode of Summation, Anders and Auren discuss:

• why the percentage-of-assets fee is the greatest heist in finance
• the retention data showing people stick 3x longer when you help them act, not just advise
• the horizontal wealth transfer to spouses that nobody is planning for
• why most companies should never raise venture capital

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Anders Jones on LinkedIn 

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better, and Supercommunicators. His work focuses on the science of habits, productivity, decision-making, and human connection.

In this episode of Summation, Charles and Auren discuss:

• why producing the words is only 10% of an author's job, and the 90% AI can't do
• what GLP-1s actually do to the brain 
• the serendipity tax: why you pay for five dead-end dinners to get the one that changes your life
• the three skills that separate supercommunicators from everyone else

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Charles Duhigg on X at @cduhigg

Chris Farmer is the founder and CEO of SignalFire, an early stage venture firm managing over $3 billion. 

In this episode of Summation, Chris and Auren discuss:

• why the time to return 1x has stretched to 9+ years and funds are lasting 20 years
• the engineering hiring boom hiding behind the layoff headlines
• the five functions of a VC firm and the one place data helps the least
• why almost all conventional career advice is now bad

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Chris Farmer on X at @chriswfarmer

This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the GTMnow podcast 

---------------------------------------------------

Auren Hoffman (Flex Capital) joins the GTMnow podcast to share some of the most contrarian takes in tech today, from why AI moats are gone, to why your next VC meeting will be with a bot, to why AI is secretly going to trigger a baby boom.

In this episode:

• Why Auren runs 500+ AI agents to source deals, and what that means for founders raising capital
• The "agent-to-agent" meeting prediction: by end of 2026, first VC conversations will be fully automated
• Why every software moat has been "blown up" and what Salesforce, LinkedIn & DocuSign need to do to survive
• The OpenAI x The Hustle acquisition breakdown: why it's the smartest (and cheapest) distribution play in AI
• Why missing a great deal is 10x more painful than making a bad one, Auren's honest VC mistake framework
• The baby boom thesis: why AI, IVF, self-driving cars & cheaper energy could reverse the fertility decline
• Why companies won't sign yearly SaaS contracts anymore, and what that means for every B2B founder

Auren Hoffman is the founder of NQB8, Flex Capital, SafeGraph, and LiveRamp. He's an early backer of Replit, Perplexity, Rippling, Vercel, Coinbase, Chime, and AppLovin.

Max’s socials: 

https://x.com/hackitmax

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/

Auren’s socials:

https://x.com/auren

https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/

https://auren.substack.com/

GTMnow: https://gtmnow.com

Jake Stauch is the co-founder and CEO of Serval, the AI-native enterprise service management platform. Serval was founded in 2024 and has already raised over $125M across rounds led by Redpoint and Sequoia at a $1B+ valuation. Before Serval, Jake spent five years on the product team at Verkada and earlier founded NeuroPlus, a brain-sensing hardware company that made video games for kids with ADHD.

In this episode of Summation, Jake and Auren discuss:

• Why Anthropic has added more ARR in the past few months than ServiceNow has in the past 20 years
• The "forward deployed engineer" hire and why he recruits future founders instead of solutions engineers
• Why talent density is the only remaining moat in the age of AI
• The Silicon Valley collusion around not poaching each other's employees

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jake Stauch on X at @jakeserval

Dmitry Shevelenko is Chief Business Officer at Perplexity. He previously co-founded Tortoise, a robotics and commerce automation startup and held business development roles at Uber, LinkedIn, and Meta. He also serves on the board of Lazard. 

In this episode of Summation, Dmitry and Auren discuss:

• Why CEOs and executives are Perplexity Computer’s biggest power users and what that says about who wins the AI era
• Scaling Perplexity past $500M ARR with only 34% headcount growth
• The $34.5B Chrome bid and the TikTok bid before it
• Why AI's biggest constraint right now is adoption and not capability

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitry Shevelenko on X at @dmitry140

Ben Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, an alternative asset management platform that gives individual investors access to private real estate, private credit, and venture capital. In March 2026, he listed the Fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker VCX, one of the first publicly traded venture capital funds. VCX gives retail investors direct exposure to private companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and SpaceX. The fund manages over $650 million and has over 100,000 individual investors. Ben is a returning Summation guest.

In this episode of Summation, Ben and Auren discuss:

• Why VCX traded up 700% on day one while Bill Ackman's fund traded down the next week
• Why ETFs fall apart for private markets and closed-end funds are the right structure
• How AI will reshape real estate by 2031 and which markets get hit hardest
• The hidden truth that SoHo, Wynwood, and Miami Beach were all built by the same person

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ben Miller on X at @benmillerise

Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition.

In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss:

• Why blackmail almost never works in espionage and ideology still does
• Who is actually dying for Putin
• Why China is the biggest winner of the Ukraine war
• How technological surveillance transformed CIA tradecraft 

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ralph Goff on Linkedin

Glenn Youngkin was the 74th Governor of Virginia. Before politics, he spent nearly 25 years at The Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, where he rose to co-CEO. During his four-year term, Virginia generated $10B in surplus revenue, delivered $9B in tax relief, attracted $156B in capital investment, and became one of the first states in the country to mandate cell-phone-free classrooms.

In this episode of Summation, Glenn and Auren discuss:

• Why every Virginia state agency got OKRs and how it transformed a 110,000-person government
• Why decommissioning baseload power was one of the dumbest decisions ever made 
• How Loudoun County gets more than 25% of its tax base from data centers
• How a startup used AI to cut more Virginia regulations in 7 months than 3 years of manual work

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Glenn Youngkin on X at @GlennYoungkin

Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, the home services marketplace he started in 2008. Thumbtack connects homeowners to 300,000+ local service professionals, with nearly 100M projects started on the platform. 

In this episode of Summation, Marco and Auren discuss:

• Why home services is bigger than groceries but barely any is booked online
• How AI collapsed Thumbtack's product pod sizes
• Why Silicon Valley underrates leadership and overrates management 
• The single trait to screen every executive hire for

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Marco Zappacosta on X at @mlz

Eric Ries created the Lean Startup methodology and authored the bestselling book of the same name, which has sold over a million copies. He's also the founder and executive chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the co-founder of Answer AI (an AI R&D lab), and the author of the upcoming book Incorruptible, releasing May 26th.

In this episode of Summation, Eric and Auren discuss:

• why "bad governance" companies have outperformed "good governance" since 2008
• financial gravity - the invisible force that bends companies away from their mission
• the foundation-controlled blueprint behind Novo Nordisk, IKEA, and Zeiss
• why vibe coding is headed for its Chernobyl moment

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Eric Ries on X at @ericries

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg became Germany's youngest Minister of Defense in history, and previously served as Minister of Economics and Technology. He is the chairman and founder of Spitzberg Partners, an investment and advisory firm, a bestselling author, and co-founder of Open Minds Media, where he produces films and podcasts. He co-hosts one of Germany's most popular podcasts.

In this episode of Summation, KT and Auren discuss:

• Why Germany's defense spending hovered at 1% of GDP for decades and what finally forced a change
• The nuclear exit decision that was driven by a single state election and backfired spectacularly
• How Rheinmetall surpassed Volkswagen in market cap and what it signals about Europe's industrial reorientation
• Why Germany's total stock market cap is less than a single US company like Nvidia

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on Linkedin. 

Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel and longtime Silicon Valley leader.  He joins Auren to unpack the forces reshaping technology, geopolitics and leadership.

After more than 30 years at Intel (including serving as its first CTO) and nearly a decade as CEO of VMware, Pat now sits at the intersection of deep tech and purpose-driven innovation as executive chair and head of technology at Gloo and general partner at Playground Global.

In this episode of Summation, Pat and Auren discuss:

• Why the US now imports more from Taiwan than from China -- and what that means for national security
• The case for a U.S. sovereign wealth fund to counter China’s tech investments in semiconductors, energy, and rare earth minerals
• What happened when Intel gave $70B back to shareholders instead of building fabs, and why tech companies need technologist CEOs
• Andy Grove's 35-year mentoring relationship with Pat, starting with a cold call that changed his career

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Pat Gelsinger on X at @PGelsinger

Vlad Tenev (Robinhood co-founder/CEO) and Tudor Achim (former helm.ai CTO) are the founders of Harmonic, an AI lab pioneering the path toward mathematical superintelligence. Together, they developed Aristotle, a model that eliminates hallucinations by reasoning in Lean code rather than natural language. By shifting from probabilistic guesses to formal logic, Aristotle produces 100% verified mathematical outputs. The model recently demonstrated its breakthrough capabilities by achieving gold-medal performance at the International Math Olympiad. 

In this episode of Summation, Vlad, Tudor, and Auren discuss:

• Why AI models struggled at math for so long 
• How Aristotle helped 10x the total corpus of formally verified Erdos problems in just a few months 
• Why formal verification will make all software dramatically safer
• How the first Millennium Prize problem will be solved by 2027-2028

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren, Vlad Tenev on X at @vladtenev, and Tudor Achim on X at @tachim

John Allen is a retired four-star Marine Corps general who commanded 150,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan and built a 65-nation coalition as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition Against ISIS. After retiring from the military, he led the Brookings Institution as its president. He co-invented the term "hyperwar," holds five AI patents, and co-authored Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. He currently serves as a strategic advisor to Microsoft.

In this episode of Summation, John and Auren discuss:

• Why Ukraine's battlefield is accelerating the autonomous weapons timeline faster than any defense department predicted
• The single assumption that doomed Afghanistan and why 2,500 troops could have changed everything
• What nobody is asking about the US operation in Iran 
• How China's one-child military could be the most underappreciated deterrent against a Taiwan invasion

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and John R. Allen on LinkedIn

Adrian Aoun helped found Torch, a health data platform that was acquired by OpenAI earlier this year. He's also the co-founder of Seneca, which raised $60 million to build autonomous drones for wildfire suppression. Adrian previously founded Forward Health. He previously led special projects for Larry Page at Google, where he founded Sidewalk Labs and helped build Google's AI division.

In this episode of Summation, Adrian and Auren discuss:

• Why curing all cancer adds only ~3 years of life but internet access for a billion people is massively more impactful
• How AI is turning healthcare from a service into a product -- and why the AMA is the new taxi medallion lobby
• The expert investor paradox: why deep expertise makes you a worse angel investor
• Why GLP-1s are the closest thing to a miracle drug in our lifetime

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Adrian Aoun on X at @adrianaoun

Tod Sacerdoti is the CEO and co-founder of Pipedream, which recently sold to Workday. Tod is also a general partner at Flex Capital, where he's invested in over 400 companies including Chime, Vercel, Replit, CodeRabbit, Mercury, and many others. He previously founded BrightRoll, a programmatic video advertising platform that sold to Yahoo for $640 million in 2014. 

In this episode of Summation, Tod and Auren discuss:

• Why seed investing has the highest annualized returns of any venture asset class
• First-gen AI companies being the most vulnerable to AI disruption
• QSBS and why it's the most important tax benefit nobody talks about
• The founder code and what happens when people break it

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Tod Sacerdoti on X at @tod

Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR), the neighborhood social network with over 105 million users across 350,000 communities worldwide. After stepping down as CEO in 2018, he returned to lead the company in 2024.

In this episode of Summation, Nirav and Auren discuss:

• Why success kills innovation
• The death of physical community
• Why Nextdoor had to change their stock ticker
• Insider vs Outsider entrepreneurs

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Nirav Tolia on X at @niravtolia.

Lieutenant General Mike Fenzel recently retired as a three-star Army General. He most recently served as the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, navigating one of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes. His career is defined by high-stakes leadership, ranging from the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, where he was stationed in the bunker alongside Vice President Dick Cheney, to multiple deployments to Afghanistan, to commanding an airborne brigade of 5,500 paratroopers. Beyond the battlefield, Fenzel is a scholar of strategic decision-making. His book, No Miracles, analyzes the internal Soviet failures during their occupation of Afghanistan.

In this episode of Summation, Mike and Auren discuss:

• Why the Soviets took four years to exit Afghanistan
• Lessons from leading security cooperation in Jerusalem
• Israel's dominance in security tech
• Why US foreign policy experts keep failing

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Mike Fenzel on LinkedIn.

Martin Shkreli is the co-founder of DL Software, the parent company of Godel Terminal, a Bloomberg competitor for financial data. He previously founded the biotech companies Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals and the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management. 

In this episode of Summation, Martin and Auren discuss:

• The structural reasons fintech is less competitive than other industries
• How drug discovery actually works (and doing it from prison)
• Why AI labs are now out-recruiting hedge funds
• What Martin learned from being "the most hated man in America"

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Martin Shkreli on X at @MartinShkreli

World of DaaS is now Summation with Auren Hoffman. While we’re proud of our roots in the data world, our conversations have evolved. Summation better reflects our obsession with finding the non-obvious ideas that shape our world.

What’s changing? Just the name. You’ll still get the same insights from the world’s most influential founders, investors, and thinkers. 

If you’re already a subscriber, you’re all set. If you’re new here, welcome. Hit subscribe and join us! Our first episode as Summation drops this Wednesday.

Thanks for the support, and welcome to the next chapter. 

Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).

Jonathan Siddharth is the founder and CEO of Turing, a $2.2 billion AI company that provides coding and reasoning data to train frontier models for OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and more. Turing’s mission is to accelerate superintelligence to drive economic growth.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Jonathan and Auren discuss:

• How Turing creates expert data for frontier models
• Why SaaS is dying in the age of AI agents
• Disrupting the $30 trillion market for digital knowledge work
• Building a stage five company culture

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jonathan Siddharth on X at @jonsidd.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is the co-founder and CEO of Chapter, an AI-powered Medicare navigation platform valued at $1.5 billion that helps seniors navigate coverage and enrollment.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Cobi and Auren discuss:

• Why medicare fraud costs over $100 billion annually
• How 24,000 medicare plans create impossible choices for seniors
• Why government tech keeps failing with Accenture contracts
• Provider network data accuracy and AI solutions

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz on X at @CobiBGantz.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Hans Swildens is a partner and Head of Industry Ventures at Goldman Sachs. Industry Ventures is one of the pioneers in the secondary market for venture capital, managing several billion in assets across LP stakes, direct secondaries, and primary fund investments. In October of 2025, Goldman Sachs announced they were acquiring Industry Ventures in a deal worth over $900 million dollars. 

In this episode of World of DaaS, Hans and Auren discuss:

• The evolution of secondaries from distressed deals to 70% of VC exits 
• Why Goldman Sachs paid almost $1 billion to acquire Industry Ventures 
• How Industry Ventures uses data from 700+ fund LP positions as a competitive edge 
• The future of venture fund structures and permanent capital vehicles

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Hans Swildens on X at @hansswildens.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Glenn Hubbard is Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. He served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury. He has served on the boards of BlackRock, ADP, MetLife, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Glenn and Auren discuss:

• Why consumer sentiment contradicts economic indicators
• The Fed's impossible dilemma on rate cuts
• Smarter tariff policy and growth
• Why most MBA programs are ROI negative

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Glenn Hubbard on LinkedIn.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Omar Tawakol is the CEO and founder of Rembrand, an AI-powered virtual product placement company. He founded BlueKai, a data management platform acquired by Oracle for $400M+ in 2014, and Voicera, an AI meeting assistant acquired by Cisco in 2019. He currently serves on the board of The Trade Desk and as a General Partner at super{set}.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Omar and Auren discuss:

• Why virtual billboards work better than 3D product placement
• How AI eliminates two-year product placement negotiations
• Why virtual placement grew 10x faster internationally than in the US
• The mistakes repeat founders make at scale

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Omar Tawakol on X at @otawakol.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the We the Builders podcast.

We The Builders: https://twitter.com/WeThe_Builders
Host Suffiyan Malik: https://twitter.com/suffiyanmalikk

Substack: https://wethebuilders.us

---------------------------------------------------

This week I sat down with Auren Hoffman founder, builder, prolific investor, and one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley.

Today’s episode features Auren Hoffman founder of LiveRamp ($RAMP), Flex Capital, Dialog, Safegraph and NQB8. This is one of the most interesting conversations I have had on the show so far and probably the best.

He grew LiveRamp to a $300m exit, has invested in 180+ companies through Flex Capital, a seed stage fund, is chair of Safegraph ($370m data company backed by Sapphire Ventures, Peter Thiel, Ridge Ventures) and is host of World of DaaS, a podcast and community for data nerds.

Auren is thinking of and validating new ideas on almost a weekly cadence. He continues to start new companies through NQB8 which includes a few successful spin outs. He also has a great blog post on it if you are interested in exploring different type of spinouts and how you should think about them as a startup.

-------------------------------

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and We The Builders on X at WeThe_Builders. 

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves, a freight media company, and SONAR, a supply chain data platform. He’s also the founder of Firecrown, which owns more than 50 publications across aviation, marine, and supply chain sectors, and he recently released his first book, Moving the World: How the Supply Chain’s Evolution Affects Us All. 

In this episode of World of DaaS, Craig and Auren discuss:

• How FreightWaves predicted the 2022 freight recession
• Why pricing data businesses trade at 30x EBIT
• Building negative CAC through media acquisitions
• The four-year industry experience rule for freight startups

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Craig Fuller on X at @FreightAlley.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Tanay Kothari is the co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice-first AI assistant that recently raised $56 million in Series A funding.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Tanay and Auren discuss:

• Why Apple and Google's dictation tools fail
• What AI-first devices will actually look like
• Pivoting from hardware to software
• Voice replacing nearly three-quarters of keyboard usage

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Tanay Kothari on X at @tankots.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Microsoft is investing $17.5 billion to turn India into a global AI powerhouse — from training 20 million workers to building new data infrastructure. We break down what this means for the future of AI talent, innovation, and digital sovereignty. 

Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.

Vinicius Vacanti is the co-founder and CEO of YipitData, an alternative data intelligence platform that analyzes billions of consumer data points daily for institutional investors and corporations. The company reached unicorn status with a $475 million Series E from Carlyle Group in 2021.

In this episode of World of DaaS, Vin and Auren discuss:

• Why hedge funds dominate data usage versus corporations
• How AI is transforming data processing costs
• The durability of data businesses over 120 years
• Why "hire great people and get out of the way" is bad advice

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Vinicius Vacanti on X at @vacanti.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

This week’s World of DaaS LM Brief: MIT’s new research reveals how large language models can be fooled by their own grammar. By prioritizing sentence structure over sense, these systems risk producing confident but misleading outputs—and even ignoring built-in safety rules. 

Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.