2025-09-11 20:12:14
“I support your work because I want to understand the secret sauce that keeps the American economy dynamic and innovative. I believe you are the go to source!” — Keith, a paying member
Friends,
In 1973, a ten-year-old Taiwanese boy arrived at the Oneida Baptist Institute in eastern Kentucky. His parents, a chemical engineer and a schoolteacher, had sold most of their possessions to pay for what they believed to be an elite boarding school—a little Andover in Clay County. In fact, Oneida was a reform school dedicated to righting the paths of Kentucky’s wayward youths. The boy’s roommate, a seventeen-year-old illiterate, spent their first night together showing off the knife scars he’d accumulated.
The boy was small in size, spoke little English, and, save for his older brother, was the only Asian student at the school. Combined with an intelligence that seemed unhindered by the changes around him, such qualities made him a natural target for bullies. However, something in his personality would not allow him to become a victim of attacks. He fought back ferociously, unfazed by his small stature. He built muscle, too – in exchange for teaching his older roommate how to read, he was taught how to bench press. By the end of his first year at Oneida, the boy had not only adapted but flourished, becoming a leader among his classmates.
In miniature, this tells you almost everything one might wish to know about Jen-Hsun (Anglicized to “Jensen” during his time at Oneida) Huang. From his earliest days, the Nvidia CEO has exhibited a talent for entering foreign circumstances, often as an unfancied figure, and emerging as the victor. He does so not by dazzling with grandiosity or casting the longest shadow, but by allying intelligence, resilience, courage, and a ferocity prone to spill into fury.
It is this combination that allowed a first-time founder to outmaneuver two hundred direct competitors, outwit giants like Intel, and build what is now the most valuable company on the planet. At the time of writing, Nvidia boasts a market cap of more than $4.15 trillion, a cool $400 billion over Microsoft.
Nvidia is not simply a market-topping juggernaut, but the purveyor of the most existentially important technology on the planet. It is not fair to say that Nvidia is responsible for the modern artificial intelligence renaissance, but it would not have happened without it. The company’s chips are perhaps the essential ingredient in AI’s frothy cocktail – powerful and irreplaceable.
Though many have tried (and some continue to do so), no one has mounted a serious challenge to Huang’s empire, allowing it to clip more than 90% gross margins on its newest products and giving it a functional monopoly. The characters in Frank Herbert’s Dune know that “He who controls spice controls the universe.” While Nvidia’s GPUs may not be quite as multi-purpose as the mind-altering propellant at the heart of Herbert’s series, Huang’s company holds a similar sway in the tech industry. Even Silicon Valley’s grand dukes like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman must genuflect before Huang, knowing, as they do, that much of their fate relies on steady access to his offerings. Competition will increase, and there is no doubt that AI is inflated beyond sense, but for now, at least, Huang stands alone.
As one might expect of such an outlier, Huang runs his business uncommonly. Though certain principles rhyme with those of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he orients himself differently, running with an army of direct reports, ignoring customers (in certain phases), and shunning farsighted planning. He simultaneously mentors and “tortures” his employees, keeping standards high with constant feedback and fits of unbridled rage, yet manages to retain talent extraordinarily well.
This piece is part of The Generalist’s ongoing series of managerial “playbooks.” We have previously delved into Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Our aim with this series is to reveal the real strategies great founders use to build their businesses. These are often uncomfortable and in direct conflict with traditional managerial advice. However, if you believe progress depends on innovation, as we do, then understanding these principles, foibles included, is not only interesting but essential.
We spent two months researching this playbook. Among a multitude of sources, some were especially valuable. In particular, I like The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt, The Nvidia Way by Tae Kim, and the Nvidia series by Acquired. I’d recommend all three for those looking for further resources.
Understand the “essence” of your industry
“Torture” employees into greatness
Pick “zero-billion-dollar” markets
Ignore your customers
Ship the whole cow
Move at the “speed of light”
The best plan is no plan
Minimize information mutilation
To unlock the full playbook and learn the techniques of one of the most fascinating founders of our era, join our premium newsletter for just $22/month. Join thousands of other intelligent investors, founders, and operators today.
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In 1998, Jensen Huang pulled Nvidia’s head of marketing, Michael Hara, into his office. He had a question.
“Mike, I don’t get it. If you look at the PC graphics industry, why is it that one company can never hold a lead more than two years?”
By that point, Nvidia had made it through its first couple of crises and lived to tell the tale. Freed from immediate existential threat, Huang had become obsessed with this question. Why did advantages disappear so quickly? Why was it seemingly impossible to build a durable lead?
The answer lay in understanding what Huang calls the “essence” of his industry: Moore’s Law. In his presentation at Stanford, Huang gave his distillation of Moore’s Law (emphasis ours): “It’s not so much a physical law as it is a law of competition, a law of challenging engineers. It’s almost a law of setting pace,” he said. “Moore’s Law gives you twice the performance every year or two. Understanding the fundamental ingredient of our business improves by a factor of two every year and simultaneously reduces in cost by a factor of two every year: the question is what makes a survivable business?”
The answer was speed. Historically, chip makers needed 18 months to take a new product from inception to launch. Given the industry’s rate of progress, that meant each of these chips were woefully out of date by the time they hit the shelves. When a competitor launched its offering six months later, it would not just be marginally better, but exponentially so. That made it functionally impossible for a single manufacturer to build and keep a lead.
Nvidia would do things differently. Rather than sticking to the 18-month schedule it had followed thus far, the company would ship a new chip every six months. That way, Nvidia would always be a couple of cycles ahead of the competition. Even if a competitor happened to release a superior product between cycles, customers would know that Nvidia had another product on its way soon, reducing the incentive to switch. “The competition will always be shooting behind the duck,” Huang said.
Doing so required Nvidia to retain the frantic mindset that had helped it endure its early crises. It also required a reorg. Huang segmented a once-unified design team into three sub-teams. While one team designed a new chip architecture, the other two focused on creating even quicker successors to be released down the line. Ultimately, it was an inspired change that allowed Nvidia to break free of the chasing pack.
It’s become an accepted rule of business that good managers praise in public and criticize in private. Jensen Huang disagrees. Whether he’s commending an employee on a job well done or eviscerating a misstep, he does so in full view of others.
2025-09-09 20:03:55
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Sara Walker is a theoretical physicist who studies the origins of life and the author of Life as No One Knows It. As AI prompts us to rethink what consciousness, intelligence, and life really mean, Sara’s work offers a provocative framework for understanding these questions. In this conversation, Sara shares how she developed assembly theory—a revolutionary approach suggesting that complex objects like DNA molecules (and even microphones) are evidence of life’s processes.
We explore:
Why Sara believes we need entirely new laws of physics to understand life
How assembly theory quantifies the transition from non-life to life with a measurable threshold
Why complex objects like DNA and microphones are evidence of evolutionary processes
How our perception of objects as “physical” or “abstract” depends on their temporal scale
Why traditional definitions of life fail as scientific frameworks
How assembly theory could revolutionize our search for extraterrestrial life
The surprising connection between urban atmospheres and biosignatures
Why Sara sees fundamental differences between computation and physical construction
How assembly theory views AI systems and large language models
The creative parallels between theoretical physics and conceptual art
(00:00) Intro
(03:32) Sara’s background and approach to studying the origins of life
(08:21) Sara’s journey to theoretical physics
(11:40) How the “origin of life” field has evolved since she began her research
(17:35) Introduction to assembly theory and its core principles
(23:11) How assembly theory differs from traditional definitions of life
(25:53) The historical parallels between assembly theory and Newtonian physics
(31:45) Life vs. alive
(34:33) How dabbling across disciplines led to Sara’s focus and partnership with Lee Cronin
(40:43) The connection between theoretical physics and art
(42:32) The probabilistic nature of assembly theory’s threshold
(45:05) The time–size continuum
(48:06) New threads that have emerged after Life as No One Knows It
(50:27) Why assembly theory may be our best tool for finding life beyond Earth
(54:04) The second feature of assembly theory: the copy number
(55:39) The challenges of detecting life on exoplanets versus in our solar system
(01:00:50) How recent AI developments have impacted Sara’s thinking about life
(1:05:48) Whether large language models qualify as “life”
(1:13:05) Final meditations
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraimariwalker
Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence: https://www.amazon.com/Life-No-One-Knows-Emergence/dp/0593191897
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World: https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359
Lee Cronin on X: https://x.com/leecronin
Judea Pearl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl
Paul Davies on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-davies-33634114/
Michael Lachmann on X: https://x.com/mikha_ehl
Benjamin Bratton’s website: https://bratton.info/
Are We Alone In The Universe? Sara Seager on Exoplanets, Venus, and the Hunt for Alien Life (Astrophysicist and Planetary Scientist at MIT): https://www.generalist.com/p/are-we-alone-in-the-universe-sara-seager
Enceladus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus
Definitions of Life by Carl Sagan: http://www.aim.univ-paris7.fr/enseig/exobiologie_PDF/Biblio/Sagan%20Definitions%20of%20life.pdf
Life ≠ alive: https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-schrodingers-cat-say-about-3d-printers-on-mars
Little black dress: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/83616
Dragonfly: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dragonfly/
Universal Turing machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine
Von Neumann universal constructor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor
I’d love it if you’d subscribe and share the show. Your support makes all the difference as we try to bring more curious minds into the conversation.
Production and marketing by penname.co. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
2025-08-19 20:03:35
Eli Dourado is Head of Strategic Investments at Astera Institute, a foundation funding transformative science and technology across energy, aerospace, AI, and other frontier sectors. Before joining Astera, he worked as a "regulatory hacker" at Boom Supersonic, where he helped navigate complex aviation regulations to make supersonic flight viable again.
In our conversation, we explore:
How Eli's refusal to be pigeonholed led to a career reviving forgotten technologies
How lifting the 1973 ban on supersonic flight could reshape aviation, after decades of stagnation and regression
Why airships need to be massive to be economical, and how they could transform global logistics
The untapped potential of geothermal energy and why drilling economics are the key bottleneck
Why titanium could be the next material to undergo a manufacturing revolution
How reading regulatory fine print can unlock trillion-dollar industries
Why AI might not automatically solve our productivity problems
The relationship between technological stagnation and potential civilizational collapse
The fascinating possibility of harvesting antimatter in space
(00:00) Intro and Eli's background
(04:11) Eli’s work at Astera Institute
(07:53) The frontier sectors Astera is betting on
(08:57) Eli’s path from academia to tech investing
(13:06) How Eli became involved with supersonic flight
(15:42) Why the airline industry entered “the great regression”
(18:38) The origins of the overland supersonic flight ban
(20:37) Working as a "regulatory hacker" at Boom Supersonic
(27:30) The current state of supersonic flight technology
(30:40) Eli’s cargo airship research
(37:20) What sparked Eli’s interest in airships
(40:23) Why airships fell out of favor as a way to travel
(42:53) How Jim Coutre found a path to profitable airships
(47:00) The pros, cons, and profit potential of airship travel
(50:08) A case for geothermal energy
(55:37) Understanding the “idiot index” and scaling titanium production
(58:36) Thoughts on AI and avoiding complacency
(01:02:00) The risks fueling a potential societal collapse
(01:06:10) Final meditations
Newsletter: https://www.elidourado.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elidourado/
Elon Musk: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281
The Collapse of Complex Societies: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X
Finite and Infinite Games: https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713
Jed McCaleb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-mccaleb-4052a4/
Cate Hall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cate-hall-9a81a35/
Ian McKay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-mckay-850332100/
Jim Coutre on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-coutre-b224b812/
Robert Metcalfe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe
Jamie Beard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geothermal-jamie-beard/
Astera Institute: https://astera.org/
Mercatus Center: https://www.mercatus.org/
Make America Boom Again: https://www.mercatus.org/research/research-papers/make-america-boom-again
Concorde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
Airbus: https://www.airbus.com
Boeing: https://www.boeing.com/
Hermeus: https://www.hermeus.com/
Astro Mechanica: https://www.astromecha.co/
Cargo airships could be big: https://www.elidourado.com/p/cargo-airships
The Center for Growth and Opportunity: https://www.thecgo.org/
Hindenburg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg
Graf Zeppelin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
Metcalfe’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
The state of next-generation geothermal energy: https://www.elidourado.com/p/geothermal
Fervo Energy: https://fervoenergy.com/
Value from Elon Musk’s ‘Idiot Index’?: https://therrinstitute.com/value-from-elon-musks-idiot-index
A beginner’s guide to sociopolitical collapse: https://www.elidourado.com/p/collapse
Antimatter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter
I’d love it if you’d subscribe and share the show. Your support makes all the difference as we try to bring more curious minds into the conversation.
Production and marketing by penname.co. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
2025-08-14 21:09:56
"The Best Venture Firm You've Never Heard Of is the best piece of writing I've ever read online, and I read a lot of stuff. Personally recommend it to all my friends." — Kaan, a paying member
Friends,
If you were the CEO of a buzzy company in the late 2010s, there was a good chance you would get a call from the lieutenants of Softbank’s Masayoshi Son. If you passed the first screening, you might find yourself invited to Tokyo for an in-person summit. It is a matter of startup lore that halfway through an immaculate sushi dinner, an entrepreneur might receive something close to an ultimatum from the Softbank impresario: accept our gargantuan offer or we’ll fund your competitor. Only those in attendance will know how closely the rumor hews to reality, but it makes for a compelling scene.
Whether Ryan Petersen enjoyed the high-brow mafioso stylings of Masayoshi Son is unknown. Flexport has not really had the kind of close startup competitors that facilitate such a dynamic. What is certain though is that his company was the recipient of one of Son’s gifts, his singular form of gavage-capitalism.
Unlike others, Flexport survived to tell the tale. And, in Ryan Petersen, it has the kind of forthright founder willing to review the episode bluntly. With that in mind, I was excited to cover Flexport’s $1 billion raise from Softbank in this edition of “Letters to a Young Founder.” What changed after a raise that large? How did it impact the decisions Ryan made? Taken together, was it worth it?
Beyond that particular round, Ryan and I discuss fundraising more broadly, his hiring lessons, and M&A exploits. That final subject gave us a chance to discuss some recent news: late last month, Flexport announced it was selling Convoy, the trucking startup it had purchased less than two years earlier.
To access the full correspondence, join our premium newsletter, Generalist+. For $22 per month or $220 per year, you’ll get full access to my conversation with Ryan and unlock our library of case studies, tactical guides, and interviews. Get an MBA’s worth of insight for the price of a business lunch.
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Subject: 100 year storm
From: Mario Gabriele
To: Ryan Petersen
Date: Wednesday July 30 2025 at 11:24 AM BST
Hi Ryan,
I was surprised and intrigued by the metaphors you used in your (excellent) last letter.
You repeatedly connected ideas from physics and biology to business building, referencing the equation for kinetic energy, cosmic radiation, and evolution. Not only did I find it illuminating, but it made me curious to ask a meta-question: Do you frequently find yourself borrowing from science when thinking through managerial problems? Where do you get your best ideas from? Are there any other frameworks from these fields that you rely upon?
Your letter also nicely set up some of the topics I’d love to delve into today. You briefly referenced how you’d been too slow to hire people with deep domain experience, preferring more classic technical Silicon Valley types. I’d love to discover what other talent lessons you’ve picked up over the years. What makes for an exceptional hire? What about a disastrous one? What unusual signals do you look for that other executives might miss? I know that Bezos liked to give candidates brain teasers as tests of basic cognitive ability – do you rely on any similar heuristics? How have you changed your practices as Flexport has grown?
I’d be particularly keen to hear any thoughts you might have on recruiting senior executives. I find that many promising startup founders succeed in nabbing their first 10, 20, or 50 employees but discover they need a new playbook to recruit the elite VPs that tend to arrive after this phase. Even gifted founders have a relatively low success rate with these hires, as far as I’ve heard – about a 50% hit rate seems common. (This suggests that many are batting much lower.) Given how expensive these more senior hires are – both in terms of time and capital – getting them right is all the more important. Are there any hard-earned lessons you’ve learned from over a decade of hiring?
This may be a bit ambitious for a single letter, but the other topic I’d love to discuss is capital. As part of my research into Founders Fund, you shared that several of Flexport’s raises had been challenging. What made them so hard? Were there any raises that stand out in particular in this respect?
On the other hand, you’ve also succeeded in raising nearly $3 billion in venture and debt capital, including a $1 billion Series D from Softbank in 2019.
I’ve seen many startup CEOs face the following challenge: Their startup is growing so quickly that shortly after raising one round, they receive interest to preempt the next one. Though their company does not need money, there’s a natural temptation to bring in more capital at a higher valuation. Founders are smart enough to recognize that their business may be being overvalued, and that, in theory, that could create problems down the line, but many seem to feel it’s worth the risk. They know intellectually that having too much money can cause a startup to lack discipline, but they always seem confident that it will not happen to them.
For the latter half of the 2010s, Softbank was the temptress-in-chief, convincing many promising startups to take on board much more capital than they required at lofty valuations. To put it mildly, that seems to have been a damaging strategy for both the investor and its portfolio companies. High profile bets like Wag and WeWork flamed out, while firms like Rappi and Oyo had to restructure themselves and rewire their cultures. Not all of Softbank’s investments struggled, of course, but with the benefit of hindsight, it mostly looks like a failed experiment.
What was it like from the inside? Were you able to maintain discipline after raising so much capital? In the past, you’ve noted that you raised capital to protect Flexport against “100 year storms.” Did Softbank’s warchest give you a different sense of security or resilience as an organization?
On the subject of warchests, I’d be interested to hear how you think about M&A as a CEO. You’ve made a number of acquisitions, including some quite high-profile ones. As I’m sure you know much better than I, reportedly 70-90% of acquisitions fail. Now that you’ve worked through a few of them, have you discovered any good rules of thumb?
I’d be particularly keen to hear about Convoy. You acquired that business in the wake of its collapse in late 2023…and announced you were selling to DAT Freight & Analytics just a couple of days ago! It’s not often you see an asset go full circle in this way. I’d love to hear why that was the right decision for both companies.
Best,
Mario
Subject: 100 year storm
From: Ryan Petersen
To: Mario Gabriele
Date: Sunday August 10 2025 at 3:52 PM PST
Hi Mario,
Arrogance, complacency, and bureaucracy are the three things that kill companies. At a very fundamental level, these are the anti-values that we’re looking to avoid when we’re hiring. You have to learn how to detect these in people because otherwise, you’ll end up with a dysfunctional culture.
Half the challenge of hiring strong senior execs is avoiding those three traits – arrogance, in particular. If someone’s successful, they usually know a lot about something. But they have to have the humility to realize that they’re coming into a new business and approach it with a beginner’s mind. Most executives can’t do that well. Complacency is also common. Execs might have worked hard in the past but now they don’t want to put in the work. They like their beach house and don’t want to make the effort of coming into the office. We test for these things.
We’re looking for what I call “insecure overachievers,” which is a BCG framework, I think. These are people who are ready to grind, have a chip on their shoulder and want to prove it to the world. We obviously want very, very smart people and we test for that, too. Our industry is especially tricky because there’s a ton of complexity that can’t be deduced from first principles. Global logistics doesn’t operate by the laws of physics – it’s the product of lots of prior art that’s been built up over decades. It’s a bit like law in that respect.
You need a lot of experience to understand the nuances of how it works. An 18 year old couldn’t have started Flexport – not because they’re not smart enough, but because they wouldn’t have had the time to learn it all. I started Flexport when I was quite young, it took me a long time to grasp, and I’m still learning every day.
The other side of this is that people who do have a lot of experience can appear deceptively smart. They’ve spent twenty years in the industry, so they understand how things work, but they might not actually be that sharp. I call this “chaffeur knowledge,” which is a Charlie Munger framework.
2025-08-12 20:03:25
Hemant Taneja is the CEO and Managing Partner of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that has evolved into what he describes as a "strategic conglomerate with venture capital at its core." Under his leadership, GC has expanded beyond traditional investing to become an organization focused on transforming entire industries from healthcare to call centers to insurance.
In this conversation, Hemant unpacks General Catalyst's unusual structure and ambitious mission. He shares why his firm acquired the hospital system Summa Health in Ohio, why AI roll-ups will create some of the most valuable IPOs in the coming decade, and how servant leadership principles have reshaped his approach to building organizations.
We explore:
How General Catalyst evolved from a traditional VC firm into a multi-business "strategic conglomerate"
Why Hemant believes the next decade requires completely rethinking what excellence means in company building
How GC's healthcare transformation company (HATCo) is working to reinvent the American healthcare system
Why GC made the unprecedented move to acquire Summa Health, a hospital system in Ohio
How servant leadership principles learned from Ken Chenault transformed Hemant's approach to building organizations
Why AI is accelerating transformation across industries faster than anyone predicted
How General Catalyst built its global seed practice through unusual acquisitions of La Famiglia, Venture Highway, and Wayfinder
Why Hemant believes AI roll-ups of labor arbitrage businesses will become some of the most valuable IPOs in the next decade
The changing profile of successful founders in an era of rapid technological change
How General Catalyst thinks about balancing profit and purpose across its portfolio
(00:00) Intro
(02:16) General Catalyst’s ambition to help shape the future
(04:23) How General Catalyst challenges founders to think bigger
(06:05) GC's structure as a strategic conglomerate
(10:44) Balancing profit and purpose in venture investing
(12:19) The unusual role of CEO in a venture firm
(15:11) How Hemant approaches decision-making in operations vs. investing
(16:43) Lessons from Ken Chenault and the case for servant leadership at GC
(20:55) What Hemant has learned from Amazon, McKinsey, and Nvidia’s cultures
(23:37) The Berkshire Hathaway model—and how GC’s strategy differs
(25:19) Why Hemant felt GC needed a fundamental rethink
(28:33) What has changed since Hemant wrote his book on AI in 2018
(31:07) Why great founders have shifted from hackers to iterative builders
(32:55) The origin of HATCo and GC’s push into healthcare transformation
(39:32) Why HATCo acquired Summa Health
(43:48) What HATCo is planning next
(46:30) Hemant’s thoughts on policy and responsible AI self-governance
(48:49) Europe’s AI lag, the cloud wave it missed, and the case for sovereign infrastructure
(52:38) Why companies move to the US
(54:22) How to transform traditional industries with AI
(56:37) Rollout vs. buyout, and why starting small makes more sense now
(58:56) How rapid model progress unlocks new opportunities to reinvent businesses
(1:01:10) What companies need to be good partners in the creation portfolio incubator
(1:05:13) Why General Catalyst made rare acquisitions based on deep conviction in people
(1:11:34) Final meditations
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemanttaneja
Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future: https://www.amazon.com/Unscaled-Generation-Upstarts-Creating-Economy/dp/1610398122/
UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance: https://www.amazon.com/UnHealthcare-Manifesto-Assurance-Hemant-Taneja/dp/1716996511
The Transformation Principles: How to Create Enduring Change: https://www.amazon.com/Transformation-Principles-Create-Enduring-Change/dp/1637747357
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World: https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Geography-Explain-Everything-Politics/dp/1501121472
Ken Chenault on X: https://x.com/chenaultken
Elon Musk on X: https://x.com/elonmusk
Andy Jassy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-jassy-8b1615/
Sriram Krishnan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramkrishnan01/
Marc Bhargava on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-bhargava-55030311
Jeannette zu Fürstenberg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannette-zu-f%C3%BCrstenberg-a4227a17a/?originalSubdomain=de
Yuri Sagalov on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yurisagalov/
Neeraj Arora on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neerajarora/
General Catalyst: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/
The Future of Health: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/the-future-of-health
Unveiling GC Wealth: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/unveiling-gc-wealth
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/
Berkshire Hathaway: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
Stripe: https://stripe.com/
Snap: https://www.snap.com/
Gusto: https://gusto.com/
Livongo: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/companies/livongo-health
Moore’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Metcalfe’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
The Evolution of AI Agents: Navigating the “Fog of AI” in Rapidly Changing Foundations | Stanislas Polu and Harrison Chase: https://www.generalist.com/p/the-evolution-of-ai-agents
Our Acquisition of Summa Health: https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/our-acquisition-of-summa-health
Responsible Innovation Labs: https://www.rilabs.org/
Hemant’s responsible AI commitments post on X: https://x.com/htaneja/status/1724454074249273477
Mistral: https://mistral.ai
Legora: https://legora.com/
Helsing: https://helsing.ai/
Long Lake: https://llmh.com/
Kayak: https://www.kayak.com/
Demandware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demandware
Circle: https://www.circle.com/
Altos: https://www.altoslabs.com/
Ro: https://ro.co/
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2025-08-07 21:58:46
“I really enjoy the thoughtfulness you put into your writing. There is so much noise in the tech world and I never regret opening your work.” — Lia, a paying member
Friends,
I am extremely excited to announce the 2025 edition of The Future 50, a database of the world’s highest potential startups valued at or under $200 million at the time of nomination. It’s the product of a five-month process involving over 200 elite venture practitioners, access to confidential information, and detailed independent research. Last year's Future 50 was our most popular launch, with several companies already raising at significantly higher valuations.
We created The Future 50 with a simple goal: to introduce readers of The Generalist to the most promising startups before they’re well-known.
Why do that?
We know that hearing about a breakout company early can serve as a real inflection point—for investors looking for their next big win, operators searching for a worthy place to apply their talents, and founders seeking inspiration.
To do that, we have obsessively worked on creating our version of an early detection system for great companies. It’s driven by investor nominations, careful research, exclusive data, and our editorial process.
Given the depth and exclusivity of this reporting, The Future 50 is available only to subscribers of our premium newsletter, Generalist+. For $22 per month or $220 per year, you’ll get total access to our database of breakout startups, accompanied by our detailed rationale and exclusive traction information. If you work in tech, venture capital, or traditional investing, this product alone should more than justify a year’s subscription.
By joining as a member and unlocking the full Future 50, here’s what you can expect:
Detailed company profiles with clear explanations of what each does and why it matters
Exclusive traction data, including customer wins, revenue signals, and growth metrics
Three-point rationales explaining exactly why each company made the cut
A searchable database to filter by geography, sector, or team size
Join us now to unlock the full database and learn about 50 of the world’s highest-potential startups.
Though there is incredible variety among the awardees, a few key themes came to the fore. Pay attention to AI’s impact on traditional businesses, the unslakeable thirst for data, creative governance models, and much more.
As was the case last year, we discovered great companies worldwide. While America remains the undoubted epicenter of high-growth startups, we found exceptional teams operating in 12 different countries. We have awardees building incredible AI businesses in Brazil, high-performance drone systems in India, and elegant product software in Australia.
As you might expect, AI was everywhere from healthcare to defense to biotech to crypto to fashion. There’s no doubt that talented entrepreneurs are finding effective, original ways to leverage the technology to create net-new experiences, revitalize traditional industries, and unlock thorny problems.
Nearly 75% of awardees operate B2B, while 18% are B2C. Despite that, the Future 50 includes intriguing new consumer experiences that might change how we shop, spend, and connect with AI companions.
Though there were some outliers, most awardees operate with fewer than 50 full-time employees. While this is not entirely unusual given how young many of the startups are, it’s still striking to see how much traction companies can achieve with lean teams.
On the other end of the spectrum, a few startups have built large operations but still have valuations under our threshold. That’s an indication of the differing labor costs around the world and how strong unit economics can allow a company to fund its own growth.
This is just the start! There is much more to discover in the full piece and database.
There are an infinite number of ways you might try to create a list like this one. You could collate it based on perceived status, hard metrics, personal opinion, or the opinion of ceremonial judges. We took a different approach, with a few key characteristics:
Create a valuation threshold. We started by setting a valuation threshold of $200 million, post-money, at the time of nomination. (Naturally, some companies have raised in the five months since.) It is hard enough to compare a biotech firm to a social media app – it only becomes more so when one is a seed company and the other a Series D scale-up. The $200 million threshold prioritizes companies with real traction and strong products in market, but that still have plenty of room to run.
Focus on nominator quality, not quantity. We chose an outbound approach, believing it allowed us to create the highest quality list. We contacted over 200 of the world’s best-regarded investors and asked them to nominate companies with the highest potential. We started with those we know and consider exceptional pickers. In turn, we asked them to nominate other investors they consider impressive. We only considered nominations from partner-level investors and a few select angels with exceptional taste. Overall, investors from nearly every Tier 1 fund participated.
Push to the edges. We believe many of the most impactful companies will be built outside the United States. We proactively sought elite venture investors from Latin America, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and Asia to ensure global coverage. As you’ll discover, the list includes many stellar organizations from beyond Silicon Valley.
Force stack ranking to avoid over-nominating. As noted, we asked every investor to nominate the two companies they considered particularly high-potential, with an explanation for each. (Some investors ended up sharing a few more, which we considered.) Ultimately, our goal was not to solicit as many nominations as possible but to encourage nominators to make difficult choices, selecting those they consider the very best of the best. As a note, I did not nominate any companies myself to avoid a conflict of interest.
Study each company. After receiving an extremely strong cadre of nominations, I personally reviewed each one. This involved reading the investors’ rationales and studying the company directly via its website and associated press. We used this to filter the list down to a group of finalists.
Request exclusive, confirmatory information. We contacted the finalists directly and asked them to share data confirming their valuation at the time of the nomination, cumulative capital raised, and revenue run rate. We also asked them to outline their primary sources of differentiation and highlight other traction they consider notable. Companies have allowed some of this data to be shared publicly for the first time; the rest remains confidential but was invaluable in our assessments.
Make final judgments. We used the information gleaned from companies to choose our final 50. This relied on me personally reviewing all additional data supplied by the companies. In making our choice, we factored in metrics but also recognized that great companies have different commercial maturation rates.
Provide detailed descriptions and clear rationales. One of our frustrations with lists is that they are often light on detail. For each awardee of the Future 50, you will find a strong synopsis of the business and why it matters. You will also find a bullet-pointed rationale explaining its inclusion: what we liked about it and why.
No process is perfect, and there are certainly trade-offs to any approach. However, this process has enabled us to create something unique: a global, detailed, actionable list of potentially legendary companies, many of which I had never heard of before.
Join today to access the full database. As with last year's cohort, we expect these valuations won't stay under $200M for long.
Brex is proud to sponsor The Generalist’s Future 50—a list of bold companies building what’s next. At Brex, we believe founders should be focused on creating the future, not drowning in spreadsheets and clunky finance tools. That’s why we built a finance platform that’s simple, scalable, and fast.
With Brex, founders get everything they need to maximize runway and grow their businesses—corporate cards, startup-friendly rewards, banking, and high-yield treasury with same-hour liquidity—all in one place. Over 30,000 companies, including 1 in 3 U.S. venture-backed startups, trust Brex to help them spend smarter and move faster. Ready to join them?
Meet 50 of the world’s highest-potential startups. Nominated by investors, selected by The Generalist.