The Peel with Turner Novak

Today’s guest is Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder of WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, and founder of Automattic. Our conversation explores the 2000’s internet, the early days of Automattic, and the decisions and philosophies that set them up for success 20 years later. We talk open source software, why Matt’s such a big proponent of it, how Automattic built its business...

Grant Lee is the Co-founder & CEO of Gamma, building instant PowerPoints, presentations, and websites with AI. As someone who’s made a lot of decks, its refreshing how Gamma thinks about slides starting with the words and narrative, using AI to build the design around the story. Gamma has put up impressive metrics, growing from zero to $50 million in ARR and 50 million users with only 30 emplo...

Ryan Sachtjen is the Co-founder and CEO of Threeflow, building software for employee benefits brokers and insurance carriers. We start with a deep dive into the nearly $2 trillion dollar employee benefits market, including the structural issues that actually give the smallest companies the most leverage. We also talk about insurance more broadly, AI opportunities in insurance, lessons from kicksta...

Samir Kaji is the Co-founder and CEO of Allocate. This conversation is a deep dive into the private markets, the evolution of venture capital as an asset class, and how there are now 10x more private investment firms than public companies. We also unpack why 90% of venture funds simply can’t raise capital right now, advice for anyone raising a fund today, how to stand out as an emerging manager, w...

Anamitra Banerji is the Co-founder of Afore Capital, an SF-based VC firm that specializes in investing in pre-seed stage companies. Our conversation gets into the evolution of Pre-Seed as a category, why Pre-Seed is more than option checks, what Afore looks for when backing founders before they even have a product, how to skip your Seed and go straight to a Series A, and how to run a fundraise pro...

Eric Vishria is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. Our conversation goes inside the new class of startups going zero to $100 million ARR in 12 months, the ways AI is changing company building, and how Eric and Benchmark make new investments. We get into the risk rewards of Series As today, how Benchmark competes to work with founders, and and why the best storytellers win. We also talk about...

Sanjit Biswas is the Co-founder and CEO of Samsara, the fleet management and safety platform. At the time of publication, Samsara is a public company worth over $26 billion, and we unpack how exactly they went from zero to run rating at over $1.5 billion in revenue in ten years. We get into using AI to impact the physical world, how Samsara uses AI internally, and how their products prevent over 2...

Michael Kim is the Founder of Cendana Capital, a fund of funds that makes anchor investments in very early stage VC funds. We talk characteristics of the best investors, how Cendana does diligence on fund managers, portfolio construction best practices, Michael’s “60x rule”, and why high ownership to fund size is the main driver of returns. We also get in to how VCs are using AI, the competition b...

Mike Vichich is the Co-founder and CEO of Pursuit, which helps companies generate more revenue from the public sector. We talk about how AI is changing Helmer’s 7 Powers, how it’s impacting the government, if DOGE is actually working, building a startup in the Midwest, and how to disagree with your team. We also get into Mike’s prior company Wisely, and how they went from $11 in the bank account a...

Sam Ross is the Co-founder and CEO of Numeral. This conversation is a master class on all things growth at the zero to one stage. We talk early growth lessons from Airbnb, and stories from being one of the largest, earliest Facebook advertisers. We get into working backwards from pockets of strong demand to find business ideas, how to establish early social proof around your product, why you shoul...

Spenser Skates is the Co-founder and CEO of Amplitude. Our conversation gets into the importance of data in product design and company building, how Amplitude is thinking about AI, and the future of user responsive software. We also get into the early days of building Amplitude, when to go multi-product, how to construct your board as a startup, hiring executives at various company stages, lessons...

Dan Lorenc is the Co-founder and CEO of Chainguard, the safe source for open source. The internet runs on free, open source software. But as its risen in popularity, its become the latest attack point targeted by hackers and nation states. This conversation with Dan gets into the history of open source software, cloud computing, Linux, the software supply chain, how AI will impact it, and what the...

Colin Sidoti is the Co-founder and CEO of Clerk, the best way to build authentication and user management. I loved this conversation, because Colin is currently in the arena building Clerk. It has not been easy, and he takes us inside some of the harder moments of the past six years. We hit on three main themes: authentication; lessons raising multiple hard Seed extensions in the early days, inclu...

Filip Kaliszan is the Founder & CEO of Verkada, the physical security company. Verkada started in 2016 by building the best camera for physical security teams, and has since evolved into a full suite of security products for buildings. Filip takes us inside Verkada’s rapid growth to almost a billion in annual revenue, over 2,000 employees, and raising capital from investors like Sequoia, Merit...

Ofek Lavian is the Co-founder and CEO of Forage, the mission driven payments company. This is a special episode, because I’m an investor in Forage, and Ofek shares everything he’s learned building the company. We go deep on food stamps, also known as EBT or SNAP, the government program that provides over $200 billion dollars per year in benefits that help 42 million low income Americans buy food....

Ed Lando is the Co-founder of Pareto, where he’s been an early investor in over 25 unicorns, started and incubated over 10 companies, and was recently named the most active angel investor in the world according to Crunchbase. We get into how Ed first got started angel investing, how he built up deal flow, why he’s historically kept a low profile, and why he hasn’t raised outside capital. We also t...

Tommy Nicholas is the Co-founder and CEO of Alloy, the identity and fraud prevention platform trusted by over 700 financial service companies. Our conversation explores the early days of fintech, why more consumer financial protections actually lead to more fraud, and gets into the weeds of various tactics he’s learned building a technical platform company like Alloy. We talk about embracing that...

Mike Murchison is the Co-founder and CEO of Ada, the AI-powered customer service automation platform. Ada’s product and scale puts Mike at the forefront at how AI is changing software and labor markets, and this conversation felt like both a glimpse into the future, and a look into the past, at a story of pure grit and determination, working seven customer service jobs at once. We talk about why m...

Cam Doody is the Co-founder and General Partner of Brickyard, the venture capital firm moving founders to Chattanooga, Tennessee to lock-in with no distractions until they find product market fit. Brickyard is one of the most unique venture firms you’ll ever come across, and we get into how it how it was inspired by a 16x fund based in Chattanooga, why Cam and his co-founders started it during ZIR...

Eric Simons is the Co-founder and CEO of StackBlitz, best known for its breakout product Bolt, letting anyone build full stack apps from text, in the browser. Bolt launched in October of 2024, quickly growing from zero to a $20 million revenue run rate in two months, making it one of the fastest growing products ever. But Eric will be the first to tell you it wasn’t an overnight success - the prod...

Rick Zullo is the Founder of Equal Ventures. Our conversation gets into Equal’s unique approach to venture capital, thinking more like public market and private equity investors, and why they also think traction is overrated at Seed. We talk through Equal’s thesis-driven model, employing a team of product owners, only investing in only 3 to 5 themes at once, and Rick’s admiration of Charlie Munger...

Villi Iltchev is the founder of Category Ventures, where he invests early in enterprise software startups. And he’s done it longer than almost anyone, building Salesforce’s corporate venture arm and investing early in companies like Airtable, Zapier, GitLab, Remote, Hubspot, Gusto, and Box. Fresh off raising his $160m Fund 1, we get into the opportunity he saw to start Category, and how San Franci...

Rahul Sidhu is the co-founder of SPIDRTech and Aerodome, two companies in the public safety space. He’s sold both of them, and our conversation unpacks all the lessons he learned, what he did differently with his second company Aerodome, and why he sold only 17 months after starting it. If you tuned into last week’s episode, Paul told us to never talk to the cops. Rahul gives us the other side of...

Paul Klein is the Founder and CEO of Browserbase, building infrastructure for AI browsers. Our conversation gets into the future of software and AI agents, why authentication is a huge problem in AI, how the best infrastructure companies become product companies, and the memo he wrote that convinced him to start Browserbase despite not wanting to build another company. A year ago, Paul was a relat...

You’re probably familiar with Baiju Bhatt’s work as the co-founder of Robinhood. But he’s also obsessed with space, and recently started Aetherflux, a space solar power company. We get into the physics of using lasers to beam solar power to the Earth, Aetherflux’s early roadmap, and how he went from zero to one going from building software to physical products. We also talk through the early days...