The Peel with Turner Novak

Ivan Burazin is the Co-founder and CEO of Daytona, the cloud for AI agents.

Daytona is fresh off hitting a $100M revenue run rate, up from $1M four quarters ago, and just announced a $60M round at a $1B valuation two weeks ago.

We talk about why every company will get hacked by AI agents in the next 12 months, why the next bottleneck is CPUs and not GPUs, growing 51% per month after all their early customers died, the Series A that didn't happen, selling with no salespeople + 1,500 Slack Connect channels, and why your first act has to be a home run.

Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode.

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Timestamps:
(0:00) Everyone will get hacked in the next 12 months
(3:29) Agents find 10-year-old bugs daily
(5:28) Daytona raises $60M at a $1B valuation
(6:08) Every agent will need a computer
(10:14) Agents use CPUs the way you use a calculator
(13:16) Is a CPU shortage coming?
(17:01) Why a new cloud provider can win today
(19:55) Almost all of Daytona's first customers died
(22:17) Growing 51% per month since launch
(27:11) How to spot an opening in a crowded market
(29:36) Competing on price commoditizes you
(31:30) Why does everyone pay up for AWS?
(33:26) Without attention and scale, product doesn't matter
(38:12) Get attention from what you're best at
(41:34) Drink-ups as early GTM
(47:07) Why name it Daytona?
(49:11) The original product: dev environments for humans
(51:31) Agents need infra like Stripe, not AWS
(54:00) When 50 customers ask for the same feature in days
(57:35) No roadmap beyond six weeks
(1:00:18) Growing 25x this year from tilts, not pivots
(1:03:20) Every enterprise agent will need Windows
(1:11:04) Croatian high school had no cliques or bullies
(1:13:29) AI agent security is already solved
(1:19:29) The Croatia price and perception discount
(1:20:39) The Series A that didn't happen
(1:23:11) Nobody believed agents need computers
(1:25:43) Same pitch deck, new numbers
(1:28:12) Moving the family to San Francisco
(1:30:00) AI deployment has barely started
(1:31:31) Daytona is in every lab's bring-your-own-sandbox
(1:33:29) You don't learn much from failure
(1:37:03) For an API company, the docs are the product
(1:38:37) No salespeople, 1,500 Slack Connect channels
(1:41:25) Write cold emails as short as a tweet
(1:47:44) Get on the plane to SF
(1:49:13) Borrow playbooks from musicians and athletes
(1:52:16) Mario Kart and Soulcalibur

Referenced
Daytona: https://www.daytona.io/
Careers at Daytona: https://www.daytona.io/careers
$1M to $100M run rate in 4 quarters: https://www.daytona.io/dotfiles/1m-to-100m-run-rate-in-4-quarters

Follow Ivan
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ivanburazin
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanburazin/

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/

Aydin Senkut started Felicis 20 years ago with $4 million of his own money.

After hearing "we don't back people like you" from every LP, he's now an early backer of iconic companies like Shopify, Canva, Adyen, Notion, and Supabase and investing out of a $900 million fund 10.

We talk about why success is the downfall of a good investor, the 7 cold emails before he met Tobi, the endowment LP who grilled him like the CIA, why he hired a CFO at fund 3, if raising a 250x bigger fund causes you to lose your edge, Larry Page's 10x rule, and paying 700x revenue for Supabase.

Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode.

Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com

Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com

Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com

Timestamps:
(0:00) Why success is the downfall of a good investor
(2:04) Catching waves from YouTube to AI, chips, and defense
(4:47) Is AI a bubble? How to tell what's real
(6:17) Silicon Graphics: the company with no second act
(7:33) Why AI infrastructure spend isn't hype
(12:00) 7 emails, no reply: how he met Tobi at Shopify
(15:30) On adding value: "Just ask the founder"
(17:30) The founder pledge: vote with the founders
(18:26) Fund 1 was $4M of his own money
(21:01) Find LP's preconditioned to believe in you
(22:07) Venture is a people business
(23:05) Raising Fund 2: the endowment’s "CIA interview"
(26:48) Why outsiders bet on outsiders
(28:23) Turner's rejected podcast audition
(30:46) LP pushback on Fund 2 and Fund 3
(32:56) Why he hired a CFO at Fund 3
(35:04) Feedback founders can't argue with
(37:21) Founders forget the clock is ticking
(40:43) Backing founders through the first bad quarter
(42:34) Does a 250x bigger fund lose its edge?
(45:53) a16z, OpenRouter, Cursor, and big fund returns
(47:30) Why deep tech needs huge rounds
(50:57) Trillion dollar markets, billion dollar contracts
(53:36) Why SpaceX and Anduril alumni will crush it
(56:34) From a $50k first exit to "off by three orders of magnitude"
(58:17) The software mindset in hard tech
(59:38) Google's duct-taped servers
(1:00:56) Scanning every book in the world
(1:02:37) Larry Page's 10x rule
(1:04:54) Outsider founders: Shopify and Adyen
(1:07:17) Why Silicon Valley VC's miss companies outside the Bay Area
(1:08:16) Generalist vs. specialist: 55 unicorns, no subject experts
(1:12:17) Category winners sit between sectors
(1:14:59) Don't obsess over entry price
(1:17:24) Paid 700x revenue for Supabase, it grew 1000x
(1:18:33) Notion, Canva, and the one-button product
(1:20:27) The "OpenAI is about to collapse" crowd
(1:21:41) Inspiration from Benjamin Franklin
(1:23:47) Funding the twinkle in a founder's eye

Follow Aydin:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aydins/
Twitter: https://x.com/asenkut

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/

Matt Murphy is a partner at Menlo Ventures and led Anthropic's Series D.

Before Menlo, Matt sat in Google's board meetings at Kleiner Perkins from the first check to the IPO, and then backed Anthropic before it had a product or revenue.

We talk about the similarities between early Google and Anthropic, bending all the rules to invest at a $4B pre-revenue valuation, raising a $500M+ SPV at an $18B valuation without being allowed to show LP's a single financial (and the 30 to 45 days he thought they might not pull it off), the three LP's who each made over $1B on the bet, the Anthology Fund check that became OpenRouter and four other unicorns, Menlo's barbell portfolio strategy, avoiding the messy middle of early growth rounds, and why most of the 70+ neolabs won't make it.

Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode.

Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com

Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com

Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com

Timestamps:
(0:00) How to read Anthropic's S-1
(1:21) Do AI companies actually make money?
(2:23) Google didn't want ads. Anthropic didn't plan on enterprise.
(4:51) Bending the rules to back Anthropic pre-revenue, pre-launch
(9:50) You can't be a leading AI firm without a top model company
(12:00) Leading the Series D at $18B six months later
(14:22) Why the best researchers chose Dario
(15:25) Menlo's first-ever SPV, nearly the size of the fund
(16:44) The LP meeting that sparked a $500M SPV
(19:18) Raising at $18B without showing financials
(20:04) Three LP's made $1B+ each
(24:23) Why Matt joined Menlo in 2015
(26:00) Rebuilding Menlo over the past decade
(32:49) Venture as a team sport
(35:45) How to keep a challenger mentality
(38:15) Why VC firms decay
(41:31) The Anthology Fund: OpenRouter, Wispr, Goodfire
(42:27) Ownership vs. backing the best
(46:10) Why this isn't 1999
(48:06) Frontier vs. open weight models
(51:29) The barbell portfolio strategy
(53:54) Avoiding the messy middle between early and growth
(55:07) How to spot a category leader
(57:18) Fortune 5000 AI adoption: "almost none"
(59:06) Menlo is in 10 of 70+ neolabs: Skild, Chai, Axiom
(1:02:13) Where $1B AI startup raises actually go
(1:04:18) Phase 1 vs. Phase 2 of AI
(1:06:26) What the AI IPOs mean for venture
(1:09:11) What Matt does differently after 25 years
(1:10:52) The Alex Smith lesson

Referenced:
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Menlo's Anthology Fund: https://menlovc.com/anthology-fund/
Menlo's Modern AI Stack: https://menlovc.com/perspective/the-modern-ai-stack-design-principles-for-the-future-of-enterprise-ai-architectures/

Follow Matt
Twitter: https://x.com/mmurph
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-murphy-0415543/

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/

Oren Zeev runs one of the most successful venture firms in the world. The catch: he has no partners, no associates, holds no investment committee, writes no memos, and has no office.

He's a solo GP managing $2.7 billion across 11 funds, an early backer of Audible, Houzz, Chegg, Tipalti, and Navan, where a relationship that started with a $50k check became a stake worth more than a billion dollars.

We get into why most partners add negative value, the days his calendar is empty enough to surf on a Tuesday, why he's never shown an LP a single slide in 11 funds, why diversification is a lie, his fund that had only five companies, how Navan went from a $90M run rate to zero in a month (and survived), the cross-fund investing everyone tells him not to do, the DPI stand that cost him LP's, the Yozma Program that built Israel's startup economy, and the 30-minute meeting that turned into his first fund.

Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode.

Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://monaco.com

Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Clerk: Everything you need for authentication https://clerk.com

Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://numeral.com

Timestamps:
(0:00) Running $2.7B with no team or partners
(1:58) How one person can beat a team
(4:43) Omission beats commission: why committees miss
(7:13) What really fills a partnership's day
(9:23) The returns business, not the production business
(10:58) A week in his nearly empty calendar
(16:49) The mistakes new solo GP's make
(19:34) Eleven funds, zero slides
(22:09) No thesis
(24:28) Why diversification doesn't work
(27:14) The fund with only five companies
(30:44) TripActions insight: everyone hates their travel software
(34:59) Paying employees to spend less
(37:34) COVID: $90M run rate to zero
(39:24) How Navan survived
(41:34) A $100M round with no way to price it
44:29) Keeping the team: the real test of leadership
(46:04) What Oren looks for in founders
(50:39) Cross-fund investing, and "trust me, bro"
(53:59) Always his own biggest LP
(55:14) The DPI stand that cost him LP's
(58:54) Decart, and the Anthropic deal
(1:03:54) Inside the 30-year rise of Israel's tech ecosystem
(1:07:19) The Yozma program that built an industry
(1:11:59) Why Israelis build now instead of selling early
(1:14:39) Moving to the Valley in the 2002 nuclear winter
(1:17:19) Audible, and why the first home run matters
(1:19:29) Leaving Apax, and going solo
(1:22:04) Peter Thiel and a fund raised in 30 minutes
(1:24:24) The second fund: 48 hours, still no deck
(1:25:49) ICON: helping Israeli founders crack the Valley
(1:30:29) The leader he admires most: Anwar Sadat

Referenced:
Zeev Ventures: https://www.zeevventures.com/
Navan: https://navan.com/
Mercury Interactive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive
ICON: https://www.iconsv.org/
Yozma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yozma

Follow Oren
Twitter: https://x.com/orenzeev
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ozeev

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/

Darragh Buckley was the first employee at Stripe. He’s since started Increase, the banking infrastructure that moves over $500 billion a year. And he just bought a bank.

We talk about how to buy a bank, why putting an API on a bank is like "strapping a jet engine to a go-kart", operating with high-empowerment, the overnight sprint that turned on Stripe’s first dollar of revenue, why Patrick and John Collison would run across the office, and why you want your banker to be bored.

Thanks to this episode’s sponsors:
Monaco: The revenue engine for startups. https://monaco.com
Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit at 0% APR. https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital
Clerk: Everything you need for authentication. https://clerk.com
Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot. https://numeral.com

Timestamps:
(0:00) Stripe's 1st employee bought a bank
(1:38) Fixing the stone in his shoe building Stripe
(7:59) Banking looks like 2010 payments
(11:11) Merging two layers into one, just like Stripe
(14:52) Why he finally bought the bank
(16:26) How do you actually buy a bank?
(20:20) The first bank that got away
(22:04) Why banks can’t chase new fads
(25:26) Compliance as code, from day one
(29:46) Talking straight to the Federal Reserve
(32:19) The Fed migration that nobody noticed
(33:50) The missing last mile of banking
(35:44) Getting customers to switch
(38:23) The challenger sales model
(40:33) What customers use Increase for
(41:48) How Ramp's bill pay works
(42:37) $500B a year with 33 people
(45:31) Hiring for a high-empowerment culture
(47:08) Growing up with the Collisons
(50:27) 150 test cases in one night
(54:23) What really made early Stripe work
(57:07) Why Patrick and John sprinted everywhere
(1:00:00) “You're not in payments, you're in fraud”
(1:02:31) Where AI hits a wall on fraud
(1:05:08) Giving payment cards to AI agents
(1:09:27) Use boring technology widely
(1:11:37) You want your banker to be bored

Referenced:
Increase: https://increase.com
Careers at Increase: https://increase.com/articles/how-we-work
Stripe: https://stripe.com

Links:
NBA Player Harrison Barnes Buying a Bank: https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nba-player-harrison-barnes-invests-155500816.html
Acquire or Be Acquired Conference: https://www.bankdirector.com/event/acquire-or-be-acquired-2026/
Choose Boring Technology Essay: https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
Previous episode with Ron Gabrisko @ Databricks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYOO0DfeXu4
Previous episode with Will Gaybrick @ Stripe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM1_NADNSgI
Patrick Collison's "Fast": https://patrickcollison.com/fastAuthorize.net: https://www.authorize.net

Follow Darragh
X: https://x.com/darraghbuckley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darragh-increase/

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/