Newcomer Pod

This week, Eric shared the details of his vibe coding frenzy from the past few weeks, testing out Vercel and the buzziest coding assistant of moment, Lovable. We unpack the benefits and remaining headaches of these tools from a non-coder perspective. We then turn to the Studio Ghibli  memes of the week from OpenAI's new 4o image model integration and try to make sense of all the copyright risk...

We're opening in a celebratory mood this week with Wiz's big exit to Google, which if it holds will offer some much needed liquidity to venture firms and their LPs. It's a big win for several of Silicon Valley's heavy hitters, including Sequoia's Doug Leone, Index Ventures' Shardul Shah, and Greenoaks' Neil Mehta. IPOs are looking a little bit more uncertain, however. P...

We’re recording this episode on the ground from two different tech conferences, the flashy new HumanX summit in Las Vegas and the now-veteran status South By Southwest in Austin. We cover how the attendees diverge, with more consumer-tech making a showing at SXSW and the new guard of AI business leaders heading over to HumanX (with a few exceptions.) At both summits, though, coding assistants are...

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, Eric and Madeline dissect why VCs are mad about Trump’s plans for a strategic crypto reserve. Even the biggest boosters and loudest voices for deregulation around crypto have been caught off guard by the president’s push to add other altcoins to the promised Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, calling the move a blatant enrichment scheme for coin holders and friends...

Eric and Madeline break down the week that was in AI news in this episode of  The Newcomer Podcast,  from the unnecessary panic caused by reports of Microsoft cancelling leases for data centers to Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report. Despite tech companies moving full steam ahead on AI, including OpenAI’s launch of GPT 4.5 and Softbank’s $200 billion commitment to data centers, tech stocks dropped,...

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, Eric and Madeline give a sendoff to the Humane and its AI Pin. The company was acquired by HP for its AI talent, in a darkly poetic ending for former Apple engineers who left to build a smart hardware startup. They debate the merits of voice AI technology as an interface and if it’s really time to move away from screens.  They break down all of OpenAI’s alu...

Eric and Madeline unpack the biggest “deal that wasn’t” story of Elon Musk’s unsolicited offer to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion. WIth Sam Altman flat-out rejecting the offer on X, this feels less like an offer and more of a statement about Musk’s frustration with OpenAI’s continued conversion to a for-profit company that competes with him. Pressures have been mounting on engineers to look for...

In this episode of the Newcomer podcast, Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger dig into all of the chaos in Washington led by Elon Musk and his team of young staffers. They push back on the attacks from the right at the press that revealing information about public employees is anything close to "doxxing," and unpack a16z's virtue signaling by hiring new right-wing cause celebrity Dan...

In this episode,  Eric Newcomer  and  Madeline Renbarger  break down DeepSeek’s impact on western AI companies. Is it really the “AI Sputnik Moment” that investors have called it, or just a CCP bluff? They also delve into new AngelList data on venture returns — unsurprisingly, they’re not looking good post-2021. They also discuss voice AI startup ElevenLabs’ new funding round.

"In this episode of  The Newcomer Podcast ,  Eric Newcomer  and  Madeline Renbarger  unpack how tech elites are reacting to the early days of the Trump presidency. They discuss  Sam Altman  and  Masayoshi Son’s  new venture to build AI data centers dubbed “Project Stargate” and make the case for business leaders to abide by important ethical norms. They also break down fresh performance data...

In this jam-packed episode, Eric and Madeline break down Biden’s surprise crackdown on the “Tech Industrial Complex,” explore Trump’s tight ties with Silicon Valley oligarchs, and unpack the behind-the-scenes drama of a Canadian startup that ousted its visionary founder. They also spotlight a mega funding deal in AI-powered coding tools, rounding out a sweeping look at how politics, big tech, and...

Waymo’s milestone — surpassing Lyft’s ride numbers in San Francisco — takes center stage in our first podcast of the new year. Still, it’s not obvious that this translates into guaranteed scale across the country. We consider the operational headaches that come with scaling driverless fleets. One way forward for Waymo could be further collaborations with legacy rideshare giants like Uber. We also...

The ServiceTitan IPO has been an unexpected bright spot as 2024 comes to a close. On this year’s final episode of the Newcomer Podcast , we discuss what other startups might follow in ServiceTitan’s footsteps next year. Eric defends the controversial ratchet provision in its last funding round. And we dig into Alphabet’s big week. We focus on startups on this show, but this week was a good reminde...

After a brief hiatus, the Newcomer podcast is back! Madeline Renbarger has rejoined me as my co-host to help break down all of the news across venture capital and startups. This week, we’re kicking off with a massive $693 million chip deal and Google’s huge quantum computing breakthroughs, in news that feels like flashes of Silicon Valley returning to its “silicon” roots. Still, some of this tech...

I’ve been spending some of the afternoon chatting with OpenAI’s now fully released o1. So far, I don’t know that it feels like the super intelligent ChatGPT 5 that we’ve all fantasized about — but it’s smart and sophisticated. The new model helped me to game out potential stories and talk through problems. And of course it wrote me a poem and told me a couple dad jokes. It looks like the biggest i...

If you get some downtime over the Thanksgiving holiday, catch up on everything that happened at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit last week. We’ve got videos of all of the talks on stage on our YouTube channel and are sharing my conversation with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over our podcast feeds. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang Andreessen Horowitz partner Martin Casado Lessons from This Year's $14B in Gene...

Cerebral Valley is tomorrow! I’ve been listening to old interviews, brainstorming with Claude and ChatGPT, and talking to investors to prep for my conversations with Dario Amodei , Martin Casado , and Alexandr Wang . We’ll be sharing those conversations here in the newsletter. Expect video highlights on our social media feeds, a detailed rundown of the biggest moments in the newsletter Thursday, a...

This is probably my favorite episode of the year. We just updated our picks for our artificial intelligence startup fantasy draft. That means dropping startups whose star is fading and making new pickups. Last year, Max Child , James Wilsterman , and I drafted the most promising generative AI startups that had raised $100 million or more. In this latest episode, we make some hard choices: cutting...

We’re back with a couple episodes of the Cerebral Valley Podcast leading up to our summit on November 20 . I’m joined by my Cerebral Valley AI Summit co-hosts Max Child and James Wilsterman . On this episode, we started by talking about the thing on everyone’s minds — the election of Donald Trump and what it means for artificial intelligence. Then, at the 28 minute mark we debate whether Anthropic...

We’re in the home stretch. Silicon Valley’s political nightmare could hopefully soon be over. In the latest episode of the Newcomer podcast , we dig into all of the tech industry’s burning political takes. There was Josh Wolfe’s endorsement waffling. Jeff Bezos’ editorial intervention. And the general sense that everyone is losing their minds leading up to what should be Trump’s last run at the pr...

Newcomer turns four this week. On the podcast, Madeline talked with me about how it all began. When I made the decision to start Newcomer, the venture capital industry was in the beginnings of a record-breaking bull run. A lot has changed since then, for both venture and the media industry, but I’m excited about our growth at Newcomer and wanted to share a bit more about what’s next. Description E...

Description In this episode, Eric Newcomer is joined by guest host Jon McNeill , a seasoned executive with experience at Lyft and Tesla who is now leading DVx Ventures. They discuss the bear case for OpenAI. The OpenAI discussion then leads into a closer look at the contrast between founder and manager modes before concluding with a discussion on Tesla’s advancements, or lack thereof, in self-driv...

Description:  In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast , Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger discuss two major funding rounds, the ongoing downturn in VC funding, and the growing imbalance between public relations professionals and reporters. Eric and Madeline highlight Poolside’s $500M round and Impulse Space’s $150M raise, while pointing out that even the AI mega rounds cant hide the downturn in...

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, hosts Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger delve into the world of venture capital deals, starting with Ujet’s $76M Series D for its AI-powered call center software. Next up is the drama surrounding PearAI, whose growth-hacker tweet set the tech world buzzing. From there, they navigate through OpenAI’s own “Game of Thrones,” exploring internal power plays a...

Episode 1: AI + Robots, YC Preview, and Why the Cool Kids Keep Picking on Tech In this week’s episode of the Newcomer Podcast, hosts Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger discuss three top venture capital deals, including World Labs and delivery startup Flink. They also wade into Y Combinator’s upcoming Demo Day, highlighting trends in defense tech and the implications of AI’s power consumption. Th...