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How YC's Garry Tan Evaluates Startups | Episode 3 of the Investor + Operator Podcast
President and CEO of YCombinator Garry Tan sits down with Tyler & Sterling and recounts his time as an early hire at Palantir, starting his company Posterous and becoming an investor of dozens of well-known startups. The companies Garry has worked with are worth a combined $226 billion. Garry gives valuable advice
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Leading a $1B Revenue Startup AND $1.8B VC Firm – A convo w/ Arjun Sethi (Tribe Capital + Kraken)
Hands-down, Arjun is the most interesting man in venture capital. He thinks differently than everyone else, and as a result, his VC Firm, Tribe Capital, and his startup, Kraken, are completely unique. In this episode, he shares how he got started, and the exact tools he used to get where he is today... Check out Tribe
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Keith Rabois, Founders Fund | The IO Podcast - Episode 2
If there was a Mount Rushmore of Investors, Keith Rabois would definitely be on it. Over his decades long career as both an investor and operator, Keith has had a hand in Silicon Valley unicorns like Square, Paypal, Airbnb and Youtube. In fact, he's aiming to be the 'Michael Jordan' of the investment world. Now, as a c
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How To Build A World-Class Revenue Org with Mark Cranney, Former a16z Partner | IO Podcast Ep. 5
How did this small town farm kid go on to lead the revenue orgs for Silicon Valley's biggest companies? Mark Cranney credits his success to the lessons he learned growing up: work hard and run things efficiently. Mark shares the playbook he's used to build billions in pipeline through his career as an executive, sales
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Leading a16z's Growth Fund: David George On Investing Now and In the Future | Ep 13, IO Podcast
In this episode, Tyler Hogge & Sterling Snow sit down with David George, General Partner at a16z, where he leads the growth investing practice. Since joining in 2019, David has been at the forefront of investments in companies like Coinbase, Databricks, Figma, Robinhood and Instacart. Prior to a16z, David was at Ge
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The Formula for Outlier Success with Dr. Gurner, a World's Best Executive Coach | IO Pod Ep 15
How do you become the best of the best—the top performer in your field? Dr. Julie Gurner, an acclaimed executive coach and once likened to Billions’ Wendy Rhoades by The Wall Street Journal, shares her insights on what it takes to excel at the highest level. In this episode, Dr. Gurner joins hosts Sterling Snow and Tyl
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Andy Rachleff from VC to Entrepreneur
The IO podcast with Sterling and Tyler features Andy Rachleff, the founder of Benchmark Capital and unicorn startup Wealthfront, and explores the intersection between investing and operating. Ratcliffe believes that finding product-market fit and being ambidextrous in finding new opportunities while optimizing existing
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Henry Ward, CEO of Carta | How This Second Time Founder Built A $7.4 Billion Company | Episode 4
This isn't Henry Ward's first shot at entrepreneurship. In fact, the first company he founded failed. But Henry says the things he learned were pivotal for starting Carta, a multi-billion dollar company that's a darling of the venture world. CEO of Co-founder Henry Ward sits down with Tyler & Sterling and recounts
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He Started A Business That Sold For $2.5 Billion. Here's What He Learned | Blake Murray, Divvy CEO | I/O Pod Episode 11
When Blake Murray came up with the idea of Divvy, it was because he had a problem: he couldn’t get real-time data on the financial health of his business. So in 2016, Blake set out to find a solution and realized there was none. Blake spent the next several years building what would become one of the fastest-growing st
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How Benchmark Capital finds EXCEPTIONAL startups in the age of AI — A convo w/ Eric Vishria
With so many AI startups these days, how do you identify which will be home-runs and which will be flops? In this episode of the I/O Podcast, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Eric Vishria, a General Partner at the legendary Benchmark Capital, who uncovers their exact process for finding and funding some of the world's
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Going All In On OpenAI, Rippling and Others | Bedrock Capital's Geoff Lewis On How How He Makes Investments | Ep. 6, IO Pod
Geoff Lewis is a titan in the VC world as both the lead investor and founder of Bedrock Capital, the firm backing some of the world best-known tech companies. Geoff joins Tyler and Sterling on the podcast to share his insights on venture capital and what it takes to consistently make money for LPs. Geoff discusses the
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How Great Founders SELL Before They BUILD — An Exceptional Startup Chat w/ The Founder of Wander
How do you get paying customers...before you've even built your product? Time to find out! In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Tyler sits down with John Andrew Entwistle, Founder and CEO of Wander, the platform that's transforming the vacation-rental space. Tyler and John Andrew discuss waitlist tactics, how to so
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Here's Why Shopify Will Be A 100 Year Company | Kaz Nejatian, Shopify COO & Former YC Founder | Episode 12
How far would you travel for a good conversation? For hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow it was a no brainer to fly 2000 miles to talk with Kaz Nejatian, the COO of Shopify in their Toronto HQ. Kaz is a fascinating mind in tech and an unconventional thinker shaping the the product culture of Shopify. He shares his sto
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Building Lattice & Alt Capital: Jack Altman On Investing & Operating
"Joining a company as early as possible, right after achieving product-market fit, offers the greatest career advantage." – Jack Altman Jack Altman epitomizes the true "Investor-Operator." As the co-founder and former CEO of the multi-billion-dollar startup Lattice, and now a full-time investor with his $150 million ve
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Emergency Episode of the I/O - Building Utah with Redo CEO Sterling Snow
Current Investor and Divvy's Former CRO Sterling Snow is jumping back into an operating role, this time as CEO of Redo, a fast growing customer experience platform. Sterling shares how Redo's founder Taylor Brown approached him to take on the job and how together they're building a company everyone in Utah can root for
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Lessons From Building Utah's Next $10B Company — A convo w/ Adam Edmunds, CEO of Entrata
If you haven't heard of Entrata yet, then you need to listen to this episode. Entrata is a sleeping giant of a company that has quietly been growing in the background...and is on track to be the biggest company to ever come out of Utah. In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with their friend Adam Edmunds, CEO of
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NEA's Scott Sandell May Have The Most IPOs Of All Time. Here's How He Did It | Ep. 10 I/O Podcast
Scott Sandell, Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at NEA is truly one of the great venture capitalists of our generation. With nearly three decades at NEA he leads the field with a track record of dozens of successful investments including unicorns like Salesforce, Plaid, Workday, Robinhood, Cloudflare and
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From whiteboard idea to $7 BILLION…How Flock Safety catches 20% of US crime — w/ Garrett Langley
How on earth do startup founders with zero experience in the security industry sell millions of dollars in contracts to police stations around the US? In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety, breaks down step-by-step 1) How they did it, 2) What process gave them the ide
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How Mercury's CEO Immad Akhund Changed the Startup Banking Experience And Got Into Investing || Ep. 8 IO Pod
Immad Akhund had the idea for Mercury years before they started. In fact, he'd launched 3 other startups and been through YCombinator twice before even starting initial validation on what would become the beloved neobank of startups everywhere. And opinions were mixed. Immad himself recognized the need for a simpler an
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From TrialPay, Affirm and a16z | Alex Rampell on Investing & Entrepreneurship | Ep. 7 IO Podcast
Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Alex Rampell may be the most true version of an investor-operator. Alex's first entrepreneurial endeavor started as a child when he built and sold shareware out of his parent's house. Eventually he added more businesses to his portfolio before launching the payment platform TrialPay
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Kapital: The Future of Latin-American Banking With Mexico’s Best Startup
If you need some motivation as an entrepreneur, then this is the podcast episode for you. In today's video Tyler and Sterling sit down with Rene Saul, the CEO and co-founder of Kapital, the $1.3 billion-dollar startup from Mexico City that is transforming the Latin-American banking space forever. Rene breaks down how t
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His Company Went Public At $1.8 BILLION...And His Next Idea Is Even Bigger
In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Brandon Rodman (founder of Weave and now Previ) breaks down how he’s quietly building a Costco for the modern workforce — one that’s already grown from 300K to 1.5M users in 3 months, all without charging employers a dime. He shares hard-earned lessons from going 0 to IPO with W
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The Kings of Fintech | How NerdWallet's Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot Are Funding The Next Generation | Ep. 9
There may be no better pair of fintech investors than Better Tomorrow Ventures Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot. After successful exits in the industry
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David Haber of a16z: Building a Firm vs Fund + What a16z is focused on in 2026
In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with David Haber from a16z. David shares many important insights and tactics for both investors and operators, as well as his groundbreaking idea on the concept of "Firm over Fund". He also explains how he got started with a16z, what their focus is in 2026, as well as his in
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Building the Sales Machine with Pete Kazanjy, Author of Founding Sales | IO Podcast
In this episode, Pete Kazanjy—author of Founding Sales and a veteran sales leader—joins hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow to share a crash course in founder-led sales, explaining why early-stage founders must take charge of selling before hiring sales reps. He breaks down the key mindset shifts for technical founders
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How The BEST Founders Go From Seed To Series A - a convo w/ Brett Berson of First Round
What are the questions founders and VC firms should be asking when raising a Series A? How will AI impact things? What are the common pitfalls for Seed-stage startups? In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Brett Berson of First Round Capital to answer all these questions and more.
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$500M Founder: Avoid These Critical Mistakes When Competing With Incumbents - A convo w/ Daniel Simon, Coast CEO
Are you a small startup trying to compete with the big dogs? Well then this episode is for you. Tyler and Sterling sit down with Daniel Simon, co-founder of Bread (sold for $500M) who is now working on his next big startup: Coast, a fuel card and payment platform for companies that manage large fleets of vehicles. Dani
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The Simple Tricks Founders Need To Build WINNING Teams — An IO Interview With Nakul Mandan
In this episode of the IO Podcast, Nakul Mandan (founder of Audacious Ventures) shares his tips and tricks for recruiting top talent, the most critical assets for successful companies. He also shares his story of how he became a top investor and what every startup founder needs to know to successfully raise capital.
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Ex Navy SEAL: When To Quit Vs Persevere In Business + How I Started A Successful Venture Firm!
A question every startup founder has is, "When do I know when to keep going or throw in the towel?" Today, Tyler and Sterling sit down with ex Navy Seal and Olympian, Larsen Jensen, to talk about just that. Larsen is the founder of Harpoon Ventures, an investment firm focused on building companies that assist the armed
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Why The Second Decade Is The Best For Startups — A convo w/ Spenser Skates, CEO Amplitude Analytics
In today's episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Spenser Skates, Founder and CEO of Amplitude Analytics, the digital Analytics platform that helps thousand of businesses find ways to grow and improve. Spenser shares how he got his first investors, how to have the best relationships with VCs, his mindset around prod
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Zero To $1 BILLION In Payments In Just One Year: How To Crush Product-Market-Fit w/ Joshua Silver
Usually small startups fail when trying to take on big companies. Rainforest, however, is a different story. In the payments space dominated by Stripe and PayPal, founder Joshua Silver saw a gap no one was paying attention to. The result? Over $1 Billion in transactions in their first year! In this convo, Joshua explai
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The Best Podcast For Early Stage Founders - Season 2 of the I/O Podcast & the Exceptional Startups List
How do early-stage founders break through and build exceptional companies? In this upcoming season of the I/O Podcast, hosts Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge unveil a new approach—combining insights from the Exceptional Startups List with tactical advice from founders actively scaling their businesses. This season, we’re
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