The Peel with Turner Novak

Sheel Mohnot is the Co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, an early stage fintech focused fund leading rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage companies. Our conversation weaves through Sheel’s two decades of building and investing in fintech, starting BTV, and why they started a fintech-focused accelerator, The Mint. Fun facts on Sheel, he was a contestant on the Zoom Bachelor during COVID lockdowns,...

Chris Hulls is the co-founder and CEO of Life360, the social network for families. At the time of recording, its the 15th largest app in the US, with over $330 million in annual revenue, and valued at over $3 billion in the public markets. We go inside the two decade journey building Life360, competing against Sam Altman and Woz, almost getting cancelled on TikTok, and going public twice - first i...

Joseph Nelson is the Co-founder and CEO of Roboflow, making the world programmable by building computer vision tools for developers and enterprises. We talk about how computer vision creates a new paradigm to program the world, and how visual AI is the missing piece of AGI. Joseph also shares multiple live product examples, how computer vision unlocks new data sources, lessons from Stripe and Pala...

Austin Rief is the Co-founder & CEO of Morning Brew, building the Wall Street Journal for the next generation. They started the company in 2017, and grew it to 6 million subscribers and $70 million in revenue in six years. We talk through the journey starting Morning Brew with Co-founder Alex Lieberman while students at the University of Michigan, and Austin's playbook for starting a new media...

Niels Hoven is the founder of Mentava, building software to accelerate kids’ education, starting with teaching two year old’s to read. We talk about how public education isn’t designed for ambitious kids, the power of hater marketing, product design from zero to one, how too much data leads to Frankenstein products, Seed stage fundraising advice, parenting hacks, why AI won’t have a big impact on...

Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and two-time CEO of Nextdoor. He started the company in 2011, stepped down as CEO in 2018, watched the company go public in 2021, and re-joined as CEO the summer of 2024. He also founded Epinions which IPO’d in 2004, and before that was an early employee at Yahoo. We go inside the decision to re-join the company after he thought he’d never come back, and how Nextdoor’...

Nakul Mandan is the founder of Audacious Ventures. Prior to Audacious, he was a partner at Lightspeed, joining from Battery, which he joined in ‘09 in the middle of the financial crisis while living in India. This conversation explores his journey immigrating to Silicon Valley and building an early stage venture firm from the ground up. We get into why most VCs aren’t helpful with recruiting at th...

Jenny Fleiss is the Co-founder of Rent the Runway, and more recently started Roll Rider with her three kids. We get into the early insights that led to Rent the Runway, building the company with no fashion or tech background, fundraising advice, what she’s thinking about the future of AI and commerce, and the latest company she’s building with her kids, Roll Rider. For full show notes, visit:  htt...

Daryna Kulya is the Co-founder of OpenPhone, the world’s best business phone This episode is a masterclass on startup marketing, chronicling the first six years of OpenPhone, how they acquired their first customers, and inside all the different channels they used to scale the business to over 100k customers, including FB Groups, Reddit, SEO, and cold outbound. We also get into why founder-led cont...

Lisa Rapuano outperformed the market 15 years in a row in the 90’s and 2000’s. We go deep on how she did it, including early investments in AOL, Dell, and owning 24% of Amazon in 2002. She shares what she learned from Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, what makes a good investor, plus her experience as a startup CFO and how it influenced how she thinks about investing. For full show notes, visit:  https...

Gokul Rajaram is an early stage technology investor. As a product leader, operator and board member, he’s helped build seven generational technology companies, including Alphabet, Block, Coinbase, DoorDash, Meta, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk. We talk about lessons learned from Zuck, Sergey Brin, and Jack Dorsey, when big acquisitions can go well, how to define your ICP, why you should always size...

Guy Podjarny is the founder of Blaze, Snyk, and now Tessl. He’s spent decades building at the center of developers and security. His newest company Tessl is reimagining software development, helping shape a new paradigm he calls AI Native Development. We talk through his four quadrant framework for building and investing in AI, plus go into the early days of Blaze and Snyk. He shares lessons on ma...

Chris Hladczuk is the Co-founder and CEO of Hanover, where he’s building 1-click migration and 1-minute time to value fund administration for the $8 trillion in private market assets. Chris takes us through his story of building an audience online at nights while working at Goldman, breaking into tech and going from an IC to Chief Revenue Officer at a Series A startup in nine months. This episode...

Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza are the Co-founders of Pathlight Ventures, and were early employees at five unicorns, Plaid, Ramp, Alloy, Robinhood, and Stytch. They share tactical advice for early stage startup employees, lessons getting Plaid and Ramp their first customers, and deciding to build Pathlight together. Timestamps (00:00) Intro (02:30) Growing up in basements (05:15) Charley’s journey to f...

Building an enterprise-ready SaaS app? WorkOS has got you covered with easy-to-integrate APIs for SAML, SCIM, and more. Start now at https://bit.ly/WorkOS-Turpentine-Network . He’s had six near death experiences, and we talk about how those influenced him throughout life. We also talk about some of his early businesses, including one that had the FBI at his house when he was a kid, and lessons dri...

Bobby DeSimone is the Founder and CEO of Pomerium, the best way to authenticate, authorize, monitor, and secure user access to any application without a VPN. Bobby explains why access control is so important, how it led to the biggest corporate hack ever, how its related to the day CrowdStrike took down the global economy, and how AI will change security. Pomerium has a unique open source approach...

Tyler Denk is the Co-founder and CEO of beehiiv, the newsletter platform built for growth. We go inside beehiiv’s early days, including joining MorningBrew as the second employee, lessons scaling to 3.5 million subscribers, the $75 million sale to Business Insider, and why I didn’t invest in beehiiv despite being an early customer. Tyler takes us inside the playbook that grew to $1.5m...

Michelle Valentine is the Co-founder and CEO of Anrok, the sales tax platform for software companies. We talked trends in software consolidation, lessons working with Anrok’s first customers, advice on fundraising, scaling a sales team, and early tricks for founders to avoid future tax-related headaches. Timestamps (00:00) Intro (02:19) The trend of software consolidation (03:00) Why billings and...

Building an enterprise-ready SaaS app? WorkOS has got you covered with easy-to-integrate APIs for SAML, SCIM, and more. Start now at https://bit.ly/WorkOS-Turpentine-Network. Aaron Rubin is the Founder and CEO of ShipHero, a warehouse management system for brands and 3PL providers. We talk through Aaron’s journey building ShipHero, starting with what is now the largest Jiu Jitsu apparel brand in t...

Logan Bartlett is a Managing Director at Redpoint. If you like startups and you listen to podcasts, you’re probably familiar with his podcast, the Logan Bartlett Show. We talk about how it first got started, plus all his tricks for growing the podcast, including his canonical episodes in 2022 that helped pop the web3 bubble. We also talk market cycles and bubbles, and what Logan’s seeing in the da...

Ryan Denehy is the founder and CEO of Electric, software that helps businesses manage their IT and IT support. We talk through his first two startups from founding to exit, the early days of getting Electric off the ground, and Ryan’s frameworks for fundraising, recruiting, and sales. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:05) Building an ad network for extreme sports websites (11:07) Why a better pipeline...

Get first-party targeting with Brave's private ad platform: cookieless and future proof ad formats for all your business needs. Performance meets privacy. Head to https://brave.com/ads/ and mention “Turpentine” when signing up for a 25% discount on your first campaign. Warp: Don’t let payroll and compliance hold your startup back: visit https://joinwarp.com/peel to get started and receive a $1,000...

Warp: Don’t let payroll and compliance hold your startup back: visit https://www.joinwarp.com/peel to get started and receive a $1,000 gift card when you first run payroll. Get first-party targeting with Brave's private ad platform: cookieless and future proof ad formats for all your business needs. Performance meets privacy. Head to brave.com/brave-ads/ and mention “Turpentine” when signing u...

Warp: Don’t let payroll and compliance hold your startup back: visit https://joinwarp.com/peel to get started and receive a $1,000 gift card when you first run payroll. Get first-party targeting with Brave's private ad platform: cookieless and future proof ad formats for all your business needs. Performance meets privacy. Head to https://brave.com/ads/ and mention “Turpentine” when signing up...

Get Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Warp: Don’t let payroll and compliance hold your startup back: visit https://joinwarp.com/peel to get started and receive a $1,000 gift card when you first run payroll. Melissa Cash is the Co-founder and CEO of Pok Pok, a montessori-inspired collection of digital toys that spark creativity and learning through open-ended play. Prio...