The Delphi Podcast

Paavan Gami is the founder and managing partner of Raas Partners, a concentrated, long-term Indian public equities fund. Before Raas he spent five years at Greenoaks, working across venture and public markets.

José sits down with Paavan for another episode of the Emerging Managers series on The Delphi Podcast. Paavan explains how Greenoaks works as one investing system rather than a federation of partners, and tells the Carvana story from the inside: selling near the top, buying back after a 90% fall, and holding through another 75% drawdown.

Then India: why its best tech companies go public at a few billion dollars while they still look like Series C businesses, why the index is a poor passive instrument, and how AI changes the bull and bear case. Paavan walks through the two businesses Raas owns, Eternal (Zomato and Blinkit) and Meesho, an Indian data center supply chain bet, how he uses AI agents in his process, and the biggest risk to his own fund.

00:00 Intro
01:59 The Road to Greenoaks
05:37 Inside Greenoaks
08:15 The Carvana Story
18:02 Why Leave for India
21:18 Betting on the Category Leader
23:45 Does AI Break the India Story?
33:26 Imagine Sam Walton Today
35:21 Is the Window Closing?
39:33 IPOs at $350 Million
42:10 What Makes an Exceptional Founder
45:08 India's FANGs
48:21 Blinkit and Quick Commerce
53:21 Meesho and Value Commerce
57:28 The India Data Center Bet
1:00:43 AI in the Investment Process
1:09:04 The Biggest Risk
1:10:32 What Success Looks Like

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Follow or get in touch in the comments...
José: https://x.com/ZeMariaMacedo
Paavan: https://x.com/hiro_sugimoto_
Delphi: https://x.com/delphi_digital
Delphi Digital: https://delphidigital.io/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio

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🔥WATCH ON YOUTUBE:
Most VCs Are Afraid to Be Wrong | Rohan Pujara: https://youtu.be/RL_r5TL3kNg

Why the Future of Venture Is Hard Tech, Drones & Physical AI | Ian Rountree: https://youtu.be/pAIrREY_Umk

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DISCLOSURE
José Maria Macedo is an LP in Raas Partners. Nothing in this episode is investment advice; Paavan discusses positions Raas holds.

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DISCLAIMER
The Delphi Podcast (the “Podcast”) is produced by DELPHI MEDIA, LLC (“Delphi Media”). This content is solely for educational and informational purposes and is not, and should not be construed as, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Delphi Media is not a financial, tax, or legal advisor. You are expressly advised to consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions. Also, the views expressed by Podcast are solely those of hosts and guests do not necessarily reflect those of Delphi Media.

Delphi Media is a member of the DELPHI DIGITAL family, a group of distinct companies sharing the same brand and vision. Delphi Ventures operates as an independent venture capital firm that seeks to invest in world-changing founders.

Alex Wilson is co-founder and co-CEO of Cyclops, which builds stablecoin rails for payments companies. Before that he co-founded The Giving Block, which lets nonprofits accept crypto, and sold it to Shift4 in 2022.

Alex tells Tommy how he went from flipping domain names and selling neighbours' gear on eBay in high school to building The Giving Block nights and weekends, launching into a bear market, quitting his job at the start of COVID, and selling to Shift4 a year after raising. He talks about the $50 million Pineapple Fund donation, beating Coinbase by going narrow, and what he learned working under Jared Isaacman.

Then Cyclops: why payments companies were stitching together ten crypto providers, why Shift4 became a customer and an investor, Blue Origin tickets paid in stablecoins, why payments companies win and banks lose, agent-ready checkouts, and why he thinks most of the world's 200 currencies won't survive the dollar.

00:00 Intro
04:39 The Door-to-Door eBay Hustle
15:59 The $50M Anonymous Donation
17:41 Beating Coinbase by Going Narrow
19:55 Sold to Shift4 a Year Later
25:23 From Shift4 to NASA
27:31 Lessons From Jared
29:33 Hiring to Scare People Away
31:08 Why Start Cyclops
36:22 A Ticket to Space in Stablecoins
37:54 Who Stablecoins Cut Out
40:15 Agents Need New Checkouts
43:04 200 Currencies Down to 25
46:12 Seed to Series A in a Year
49:38 Swinging for a $10B Exit

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Follow or get in touch in the comments...
Tommy: https://x.com/Shaughnessy119
Alex: https://x.com/AlexWilsonTGB
Cyclops: https://cyclops.io
Delphi: https://x.com/delphi_digital
Delphi Digital: https://delphi.link/delphipod

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🔥WATCH:
How to Steal Satoshi's Bitcoin: https://youtu.be/WM1psGJomXg

Coinbase Insider: Why Bitcoin & Crypto Are Ready to Move MUCH Higher: https://youtu.be/1xedtRsbw6E

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DISCLAIMER
The Delphi Podcast (the “Podcast”) is produced by DELPHI MEDIA, LLC (“Delphi Media”). This content is solely for educational and informational purposes and is not, and should not be construed as, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Delphi Media is not a financial, tax, or legal advisor. You are expressly advised to consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions. Also, the views expressed by Podcast are solely those of hosts and guests do not necessarily reflect those of Delphi Media.

Delphi Media is a member of the DELPHI DIGITAL family, a group of distinct companies sharing the same brand and vision. Delphi Ventures operates as an independent venture capital firm that seeks to invest in world-changing founders.

Tarun Chitra is the founder of Gauntlet and managing partner at Robot Ventures, which just led Nous Research's $90 million round. He joins Tommy on The Delphi Podcast to explain why he backed Nous and Hermes Agent after months of diligence on OpenRouter data and GitHub forks.

Tarun traces how crypto's first run at AI went wrong, from GPU networks to token-launched agents, and why the crypto people who dropped the token have done well. He breaks down why OpenClaw is the worst developer experience he's used, why Hermes is closer to Ubuntu than to Android, and how robotics makers built on Hermes without Nous knowing.

The conversation closes on his market structure thesis: AI inference looks like crypto, OpenRouter looks like a DEX, some providers game cache pricing, and the money will flow to the harnesses on top and the inference providers underneath. Hermes, in his words, is like investing in Phantom or FOMO.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
06:34 Robot Leads Nous's $90M Round
09:37 Crypto AI Was Meme Coins With More Steps
14:40 Why Nous Stood Out Early
28:14 Hermes vs OpenClaw
35:39 The End of AI Lock-In
46:33 The Ubuntu of AI
56:17 Microsoft and Nvidia Join the Round
59:42 OpenRouter Is a DEX for AI
1:07:02 All the Money Goes to the Top

💡 Want to stay updated with the latest in crypto & AI? Hit subscribe and the notification bell! 🔔

🧠 Follow the Alpha

Tommy: https://x.com/Shaughnessy119
Tarun: https://x.com/tarunchitra

🔗 Connect with Delphi

🌐 Portal: https://delphi.link/delphipod
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/delphi_digital
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delphi-digital

🎧 Listen on

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/62PR1RigLG2YN5Pelq6UY9?si=18ac7ccf36ab4753
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-delphi-podcast/id1438148082
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q

🔥WATCH:

$100M+ Crypto Investor: How to Prepare for Next Bull Market: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQErgSvjnc&list=PLNBYLyvyGrM8

The Worst Is Behind Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJX1U6EeIM4

Disclaimer
The Delphi Podcast is produced by DELPHI MEDIA, LLC. This content is solely for educational and informational purposes and is not, and should not be construed as, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Delphi Media is not a financial, tax, or legal advisor. You are expressly advised to consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions. Also, the views expressed by Podcast are solely those of hosts and guests do not necessarily reflect those of Delphi Media.

Delphi Media is a member of the DELPHI DIGITAL family, a group of distinct companies sharing the same brand and vision. Delphi Ventures operates as an independent venture capital firm that seeks to invest in world-changing founders.

From a pandemic side project to delivering exabytes of web data to frontier AI labs, Andrej Radonjic has built a data business most people have never heard of. The co-founder and CEO of Wynd Labs, the team behind Grass, joins Yan on The Delphi Podcast in Miami for a conversation about why the open internet is closing its doors to AI, what labs actually pay for when they buy data, and how millions of people sharing spare bandwidth became one of the ways AI reads the web.

Andrej shares how an arbitrage bot he built during his PhD pulled him into web scraping, why Grass was built on consent, and what it took to scale to exabytes, including a co-founder who flew to Ashburn and assembled servers overnight. He also explains how robots are learning from web video, why he compares AI data to defense tech, and how the new Contents API turns any public web page into a single API call.

The conversation closes with the ownerless Grass Foundation behind the recent revenue attestation, what a moat really is, and his vision for Grass to become the way AI accesses the world's information.

00:00 Intro
00:43 From Nuclear Physics to Web Scraping
03:38 The Pandemic Signal Everyone Missed
07:31 The Smart TV Proxy Scandal
09:10 Why the Internet Is Blocking AI
11:56 Training Data vs Live Data
16:05 Mapping the Entire Internet
18:03 Delivering Exabytes to AI Labs
21:48 What AI Labs Really Pay For
24:43 How Robots Learn From Web Video
33:02 When Labs Change Direction
35:57 One API Call for Any Website
41:58 AI Flipped Search Upside Down
47:03 Can the Network Keep Up?
49:52 The Defense Tech of AI Data
52:58 Why Data Is the Alpha
57:08 Why AI Labs Won't Buy Slop
59:17 The Metric That Matters Most
01:02:35 The $100 Billion Data Market
01:05:07 Who Actually Owns Grass
01:08:18 What a Real Moat Looks Like
01:13:16 What Happens Next

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Follow or get in touch in the comments...
Yan: https://x.com/YanLiberman
Andrej: https://x.com/0xdrej
Wynd Labs: https://x.com/wyndLabs_ai
Delphi Digital: https://twitter.com/delphi_digital
Portal: https://delphi.link/delphipod
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delphi-digital
Podcast: https://thedelphipodcast.buzzsprout.com

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🔥WATCH:
AI is Coming For Bitcoin With Quantum: https://youtu.be/-Unv3d-OXjw

Crypto's $150 Trillion Opportunity: https://youtu.be/jbmersfBF1g

Billionaire's Warning: The Ai Bubble is About to Pop. Prepare Now: https://youtu.be/JnKaeBXyHng

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DISCLOSURE
Delphi Ventures is an investor in Grass and holds a Grass token.

DISCLAIMER
The Delphi Podcast is produced by DELPHI MEDIA, LLC. This content is solely for educational and informational purposes and is not, and should not be construed as, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Delphi Media is not a financial, tax, or legal advisor. You are expressly advised to consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions. Also, the views expressed by Podcast are solely those of hosts and guests do not necessarily reflect those of Delphi Media.

Delphi Media is a member of the DELPHI DIGITAL family, a group of distinct companies sharing the same brand and vision. Delphi Ventures operates as an independent venture capital firm that seeks to invest in world-changing founders.

From building TechCrunch to backing Uber and Airbnb, Michael Arrington has had a front-row seat to some of technology’s biggest shifts. He joins Tommy on The Delphi Podcast for a candid conversation about the unstoppable AI race, the psychology of exceptional founders, and why he believes Bitcoin is the hard money the world needs.
Michael shares how he broke the news of Google buying YouTube, what working with Steve Jobs taught him, and how his relationships with founders translated into early investments in generational companies. He also opens up about burnout, leaving TechCrunch, reinventing himself through crypto, and staying convinced through brutal market cycles.
The conversation closes with his advice for entrepreneurs: face your fears, play to your strengths, and build a team that complements your weaknesses.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro & the Fourth Turning
07:00 AI, China & the race to AGI
17:00 Founder psychology & investment red flags
29:00 Building TechCrunch & lessons from Steve Jobs
44:00 Selling TechCrunch & backing Uber and Airbnb
53:00 Moving into crypto & navigating market cycles
60:00 Bitcoin, AI & an uncertain future
01:09:00 Advice for founders: play to your strengths

Tommy: https://x.com/Shaughnessy119
Michael: https://x.com/arrington

🔗 Connect with Delphi

🌐 Portal: https://delphi.link/delphipod
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/delphi_digital
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delphi-digital

Watch on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/YgyjaD8mgbs

DISCLAIMER
This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host and members at Delphi Ventures may personally own tokens or art that are mentioned on the podcast. Our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle, and/or the end of the episode. These sponsorships are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to use any product, service or token.