Uncapped with Jack Altman

• Uncapped #19 | Dwarkesh Patel

  In his early twenties, Dwarkesh Patel has become one of the leading podcasters with nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers excited to consume his deeply-researched interviews. Dwarkesh has caught the attention of influential figures such as Jeff Bezos, Noah Smith, Nat Friedman, and Tyler Cohen, who have all praised his interviews – the latter describing him as “highly rated but still underrated.” In 2024, he was included in TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI alongside the likes of Ilya Sutskever, Andrew Yao, and Albert Gu. Dwarkesh’s interviews span far beyond AI, his North Star being his curiosity and preparation.  We covered: Digital minds leading huge companies AI making us smarter vs rotting our brain His approach to learning as his job Best in class interview preparation  --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:23) Skepticism around the timing of AGI (6:07) Confidence in AI researchers (7:17) Future utility of superintelligence (11:23) Impact of scaling digital minds (15:41) Driven by increases in compute (17:17) Is AI making us smarter? (21:03) AI’s impact on biology (23:54) Interests outside of AI (26:18) Chronology of his interests (31:10) His approach to learning (33:43) New thinking on human evolution (40:44) Learning and the media (45:52) Podcasting success (48:53) Best in class interview preparation --- More on Dwarkesh: https://www.dwarkesh.com/ https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp More on Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma --- https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #18 | Peter Fenton from Benchmark

  Peter Fenton is the longest-serving full-time partner at Benchmark, a renowned venture firm known for its artisanal approach and deep alignment with founders. Over the last two decades, Peter led investments in Twitter, Yelp, Elastic, Docker, Zuora, and many others. He also achieved one of the rarest feats in venture history in 2014 when two of his investments, Hortonworks and New Relic, went public on the same day. More recent investments include Sierra, Ollama, ClickHouse, and Airtable. Peter is considered one of the most successful tech investors of our time and is an incredible person to learn from. We covered: Darwinism and Silicon Valley Who wins as a result of AI Embracing things that don’t scale Sourcing and winning motions Being a great board member --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:23) Darwinism and Silicon Valley (5:38) Silicon Valley vs everywhere else (12:09) Highly adaptive ecosystems (19:40) Who wins with AI (26:22) Applying Darwinism to venture (36:54) North Stars in venture (42:22) Embracing things that don’t scale (49:51) A young person’s game (57:10) Sourcing methodologies (1:07:50) Convincing founders to choose you (1:10:56) Not a winner-take-all game (1:13:35) Being a great board member --- More on Benchmark and Peter: https://www.benchmark.com/ https://x.com/peterfenton More on Alt Capital and Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma --- https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #17 | Christina Cacioppo from Vanta

  Christina Cacioppo is cofounder and CEO of Vanta, which is on a mission to secure the internet and protect consumer data. The trust management platform was valued at $2.5 billion in 2024 after a Series C investment led by Sequoia. Vanta went from $10M in annual recurring revenue in 2021 to $100M in 2024, while also giving us one of the best tech billboards of all time, “Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much.” Before founding Vanta in 2018, Christina was an investor at Union Square Ventures and helped bring Dropbox Paper to market as a product manager. We covered: Operating in a competitive market Fundraising frameworks Recruiting as you scale What should be AI-ified internally The inner game of being a founder --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:25) Staying under the radar (3:29) No referees in capitalism (5:20) Shipping velocity (6:43) Mindset on competition (8:09) Structuring a GTM approach (10:25) Fundraising strategies (16:36) VCs being “helpful” (21:57) Recruiting as you scale (28:33) Adapting to the AI era (32:09) What should be AI-ified (38:18) Mental game of being a founder --- More on Vanta and Christina: https://www.vanta.com/ https://x.com/christinacaci More on Alt Capital and Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma --- https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #16 | Mamoon Hamid from Kleiner Perkins

  Mamoon Hamid is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins. He has been an early investor in and served on the boards of some of the most innovative software companies of recent times including Slack, Figma, Rippling, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-founder and General Partner at Social Capital. He started his venture career in 2005 at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) where he eventually became Partner. Mamoon came to Silicon Valley in 1997 to join Xilinx, a Kleiner Perkins company, where he spent six years, initially as an engineer and later in product and marketing roles. We covered: Comparing innovation cycles AI’s $60 trillion opportunity The future of robotics Reigniting a storied firm Investing in Box, Slack, and Figma --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:29) The dot-com bubble (7:12) Web 2.0 and cloud (16:03) Early days of mobile (17:51) AI’s $60 trillion opportunity (21:48) Where to invest in AI (28:39) The future of robotics (32:35) Reigniting a storied firm (41:36) Growing vs recruiting talent (46:42) Win rate aspirations (49:16) Investing in Box, Slack, and Figma (54:36) Assessing founders (57:14) Kleiner Perkins’ strategy (1:00:52) Family and faith --- More on Kleiner Perkins and Mamoon: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/ https://x.com/mamoonha More on Alt Capital and Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma --- https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: [email protected]

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• Uncapped #15 | Vinod Khosla from Khosla Ventures

  Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor and technologist. In 2004, Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments that have included OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and many more. After graduating college, Vinod co-founded Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers, which led to an IPO. He later went on to co-found Sun Microsystems in 1982, serving as its first chairman and CEO. After joining Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (KPCB), Vinod intubated the idea for Juniper Networks to take on Cisco System’s dominance of the router market, a company that would give KPCB a 2,500x return on its early investment. Vinod is driven by the belief that technology is a positive force multiplier to accelerate societal reinvention in food, health, climate, energy transportation, education, housing finance, media, retail and entertainment for billions around the globe. His greatest passion lies in being a mentor to entrepreneurs who are building companies to tackle society’s largest challenges. We covered: Uncanny ability to predict the future AI generating a new era of abundance Future of energy, transportation and medicine Increasing the consequence of success Khosla’s approach to venture Instigating change --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:26) Craziness of the current cycle (5:54) Predictions of the future (9:35) Role of humans with AI (16:20) Potential AI dystopia (23:18) Investing in OpenAI (33:21) Robotics being next (39:53) Incumbents not innovating (42:29) Mindset around risk (44:14) Bull case for energy (50:22) New transportation (54:18) Future of medicine (1:03:00) A different type of enjoyment (1:05:40) Approaches to venture (1:12:13) Khosla’s operating principles (1:16:17) Staying energized --- Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: [email protected]

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