Summation with Auren Hoffman

Amit Bendov is a serial founder who’s scaled three unicorn software companies to massive exits. He’s currently the co-founder and CEO of Gong, an AI sales intelligence platform.  Auren and Amit discuss the best practices for B2B sales, based on data Gong has collected from over a billion sales conversations. Amit breaks down how winning strategies have changed in the challenging macro environment....

Eric Frank is the founder and CEO of LightBox, a GIS real estate data company. He’s also the creator of ADR.com and former president of the Investment & Advisory division at Thomson Reuters.  Eric brings his perspective from financial services to analyze data adoption in the commercial real estate space. He outlines some non-obvious effects of COVID on the market and breaks down where real est...

Bryan Mistele is the founder and CEO of INRIX, a leading provider of traffic data and analytics.  Auren and Bryan discuss how vehicle technology is changing and when we can expect to see mass adoption of driverless cars in the US and around the world. Bryan breaks down which industries he expects will go autonomous first and how self-driving will affect total vehicle sales.  Auren and Bryan also d...

Sarah Bond is Corporate Vice President of Xbox’s Game Creator Experience & Ecosystem at Microsoft.  Auren and Sarah discuss the future of gaming across platforms and where Sarah expects to see the most growth in the next few years. They break down the democratization of game development and what the growth of the creator economy could mean for the industry.  Sarah also shares insights on how M...

Richard Barlow is the CEO of Wejo, a publicly traded company that collects and analyzes connected vehicle data. Wejo gathers billions of data points a day from cars all over the world.   Richard and Auren discuss the state of global connected vehicle data— what data points are out there right now, how many cars on the road are equipped with connected tech, and what new sensors could do in the futu...

Dimitri Dadiomov is the co-founder and CEO of Modern Treasury, a payment operations software company valued at over $2 billion.  Auren and Dimitri discuss the future of crypto payments, innovation (or lack thereof) in the massive B2B payments space, and what Dimitri expects to change as more instant payment services come on line in the next few years.  They also dive into culture and break down ho...

Richard Hanania is a foreign policy expert and author. He’s the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas’s Salem Center.  Richard and Auren discuss which players have the most sway over American foreign policy and how they’ve affected the US’s global strategic positioning. Richard breaks down the failure of expert opinion...

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, which manages over $800 million in digital assets. He’s also the founder of the SALT Conferences, and he briefly served as the White House Communications Director.  Anthony and Auren break down the 2022 crypto crash in depth and discuss the major factors that led to the crash. Anthony shares his perspective on potential c...

Keith Rabois is the CEO of Openstore and a general partner at Founders Fund. He’s had an amazing career as a founder and senior operator at some of the most innovative companies of the last 20 years, including Paypal, Square, Opendoor, and LinkedIn. Auren and Keith take a deep dive into spotting talent— one of Keith’s strengths— and discuss how he’s managed to hire so many incredible people over t...

Packy McCormick is the founder and writer of Not Boring, a Web3 and startup newsletter. He’s also an investor at Not Boring Capital. Packy and Auren dive into the tech landscape on a generational scale and talk about the loss of tech optimism and what’s limiting technological progress today. They discuss how to evaluate early-stage companies as investments and Packy shares his insight on what he l...

Grover Norquist is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform and one of the most influential conservative activists in Washington.  Grover and Auren discuss the historical balance of power between the two parties and what partisan realignment has meant for the country. They also talk about the future of the filibuster in the Senate and the structural shifts that have occurred in taxati...

Michael Brown recently finished his term as director of the Defense Innovation Unit, a DoD organization focused on accelerating the adoption of commercial technology by the military. Auren and Michael go in depth on defense spending and discuss how to reform the budget process. Michael outlines the challenges of buying commercial technology for the military and offers some advice for startups look...

Congressman Jim Himes (D-CT 4th) serves as the chair of the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. Jim and Auren discuss Jim’s recent white paper on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that explored the potential for a US CBDC and how it should be structured. They also talk about what regulation could mean for th...

Jason Gardner is the founder and CEO of Marqeta, an open-API card issuing platform used by companies like Square, Doordash, and Uber.  Jason is one of the most knowledgeable people in the complex world of payments. He gives an in depth breakdown of how the global payments system actually works and shares his outlook on disruptors like crypto and mobile wallets. Jason and Auren also talk about the...

Tim Urban is the creator of Wait But Why, a blog with over half a million monthly subscribers. He writes about productivity, science, politics and the future.  Tim and Auren discuss some of Tim’s biggest ideas around technology, including cryonics, life extension, and artificial superintelligence. They break down Tim’s framework for understanding political polarization and Tim shares his unique pe...

RJ Pittman is the CEO of Matterport, a $1.2 billion market cap spatial data and 3D capture company.  RJ and Auren discuss the mechanics of bringing real estate, an “offline” asset class, into the 21st century. RJ talks about the company’s decision to launch a smartphone capture app and adopt a freemium model. He also shares some insight on entering an organization as a non-founder CEO.  World of D...

Mark Penn is the CEO of Stagwell and a longtime pollster and strategic advisor. He’s a former senior executive at Microsoft and has advised politicians including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Mark and Auren discuss Mark’s books Microtrends and Microtrends Squared , in which Mark identified minor demographic trends and predicted their outsized impact on society and the economy. Mark gets into the me...

Christopher Ahlberg is the founder and CEO of Recorded Future, a cyberintelligence firm that sold for $780 million in 2019. He formerly co-founded the business intelligence software company Spotfire.  Christopher and Auren discuss the global cybercrime landscape, from emerging threats and ransomware gangs to international conflicts and the geopolitics of taking down hackers. They dive into how the...

Terry Kawaja is the founder and CEO of Luma Partners, a media and technology investment bank. Terry has advised on over $300 billion in transactions, including some of the biggest deals in media, tech and advertising.  Auren and Terry discuss the changes in the markets over the last few months and what they expect from the M&A landscape in the near term. Terry shares his thoughts on the long-t...

Sheila Heen is the Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project and the bestselling author of Difficult Conversations . She’s an internationally recognized negotiation coach and trainer.  Sheila and Auren discuss how to approach your toughest conversations, including best practices for opening a negotiation, defusing conversations that feel adversarial and giving and receiving better feedbac...

Cindy Cohn is the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the largest digital rights organization in the world.  In this wide ranging conversation, Cindy and Auren touch on a number of topics across the tech space, including privacy on the Blockchain, interoperability and the politics around regulating big tech. They discuss the unintended consequences of privacy protections and...

Neal Katyal is a professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University, a partner at Hogan Lovells law firm, and the former Acting Solicitor General. He has argued 45 cases before the Supreme Court.    Neal and Auren look back on the Supreme Court’s most recent term and Neal brings some historical context to the court’s major decisions. They discuss the court’s new balance of power and Neal...

David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestsellers “Range” and “The Sports Gene”.   Auren and David discuss David’s latest book Range and his counterintuitive ideas about specialization and why generalists are so powerful. They talk about why the 10,000 hours rule is overrated, how specialists get so many major predictions wrong, and how to think about talent and interest in your own ca...

Rob Buxton is a partner at AGC Partners where he specializes in the DaaS and SaaS capital markets.  Rob has completed over 300 financings and M&A transactions in his career.  Rob and Auren dive into the recent trends in the data-as-a-service (DaaS) sector.  They break down the insights from Rob’s recent DaaS sector report and dig into what makes the great data companies great and the broader D...

Gary Marcus is the Author of Reboot AI and professor at NYU.  Gary and Auren discuss the advancements in and shortcomings of artificial intelligence. They dive into how for AI to be really good, it needs to be built towards human intelligence and gain “Common Sense”, which it lacks today.  World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph. For more episodes, visit safegraph.com/podcasts. You can find A...