BILLIONS

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Carles Reina, the first investor and fourth employee at ElevenLabs, to unpack the AI bubble, the rise of Chinese models, and Europe's fight to stay in the race.

Carles helped build ElevenLabs' go-to-market engine on the road to over $600 million in annual recurring revenue. As the founder of Baobab Ventures, he also sees the other side of the boom: the funding rounds that may be getting ahead of reality.

Before the scale came 80 to 100 sales meetings a week, a Google Sheets CRM, and months of...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Aaron Levie, the co-founder and CEO of Box, who has rapidly transitioned his enterprise platform from a pure SaaS model into a cutting-edge playground for autonomous AI agents.

Aaron has a masterclass view of the data infrastructure that legacy tech giants wish they controlled. In this conversation, we pull back the curtain on the high-stakes battle for sovereign AI.

We unpack the real fallout of the U.S. government's unprecedented export controls on Anthropic's frontier models, why data platforms like Snowflake are posting blockbuster quarters amidst the AI...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Pete Maldonado, the visionary who took $6,000, one failed food venture behind him, and zero institutional backing and built a dominant food empire that's approaching $1 billion in revenue this year.

Pete and his co-founder Rashid bet everything on a category the entire industry assumed was dead: the gas-station meat stick.

For nearly ten years they bootstrapped taking less than $1M in primary capital prioritizing extreme operational focus and deleting complexity at every corner.

They stayed so maniacally disciplined that they only ever scaled one product format : meat...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Jason Wilk, four-time founder and CEO of Dave, the neobank built to take on the predatory overdraft fees that quietly bleed billions a year from the Americans who can least afford them.

Jason's story is one of the wildest comebacks in fintech. After going public via SPAC in January 2022, Dave hit a $5 billion valuation, then the macro turned.

Rates spiked, growth capital dried up, and within nine months the stock had collapsed 98%, dragging the company's market cap down to roughly $50 million, less than the cash sitting...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Peter Singlehurst, who built the private companies team from scratch at legendary investment firm Baillie Gifford, deploying billions into more than 100 of the most important private companies on the planet.

Peter operates on a timeline that makes typical venture capitalists look shortsighted. From backing Tesla in 2013 at a $3B market cap to entering SpaceX at a $30B valuation, his strategy completely bypasses the short-term noise of quarterly earnings.

In this masterclass, he breaks down why optimizing for the highest possible price at an IPO is a...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with elite finance operator Martino Cadoni, current CFO of DeepL (one of Europe's leading AI companies) and the veteran strategist behind one of Central Europe's biggest banking IPOs.

Martino cut his teeth in corporate America's legendary "CFO factory" the grueling General Electric leadership program, working relentless 996 schedules to solve high-stakes financial fires across the globe.

From being flown to Budapest on a day's notice to re-evaluate multi-million dollar reserves in two weeks during a currency crisis, to managing capital and balance-sheet strategy as deputy CFO at HSBC...

Is traditional international banking officially obsolete?

On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Steven Schwartz, co-founder of Whop, the internet marketplace that is quietly constructing a brand-new financial infrastructure for global creators.What started as a simple $75 sneaker bot sold in Facebook groups has exploded into a massive global network.

Today, Whop is a powerhouse where nearly 40,000 people earn over $300 million every single month, and the platform processes nearly $1 million daily in physical product sales alone.

Steven breaks down how they partnered with stablecoin giant Tether to unlock open financial networks...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Sandy Diao, an elite growth operator who has been remarkably right about major market trends long before the rest of the ecosystem.

Sandy helped scale products to 200 million users by leading early growth efforts as employee number 30 at Pinterest. She then joined Descript as their first ghost hire, architecting an automated affiliate model that drove 25% of all new users completely self-service.

Her thesis is a warning to every modern SaaS operator: the siloed channel specialist is obsolete. In a world flooded by AI-generated content, traditional ac...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Alan Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Fuse Energy—a tech-driven energy company that has completely shattered the UK market.

Alan was employee #3 and Chief Revenue Officer at Revolut. Instead of coasting on fintech success, he and his co-founder Charles took that hyper-growth playbook and weaponized it against traditional utility giants like British Gas and Octopus.

In just three years, Fuse has exploded from £2M to £400M in annual revenue, achieving a £5 billion valuation.

If you want to know how a lean tech team can buy a...

Is the traditional "per-seat" SaaS model officially obsolete?

In 2016, Ron Gabrisko joined a startup with less than $1M in ARR. It was a company of 50 engineers and a product beloved by developers who had never even spoken to a sales rep. Ten years later, Databricks is a $134B giant doing $5.4B in ARR and they are still growing at a staggering 65% year-over-year.

No CRO in history has built a revenue engine this fast, from this early a starting point. Ron didn't do it by following the standard Silicon Valley playbook; he did it by pioneering...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Reggie Marable, the Chief Revenue Officer at Sierra.

Reggie’s path wasn't a straight line. He went from being a professional linebacker in the CFL to working in a Sprint call center, and eventually rose to become the Head of Sales for Slack North America. After years at Salesforce, he walked away to join Sierra as employee #23.

Founded by Bret Taylor (former Salesforce Co-CEO) and Clay Bavor, Sierra has reached a $10B valuation and is on a path to $100M ARR in just seven quarters.

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Larry Aschebrook, the guy who invented a market that Wall Street didn't think existed.

Larry started personally buying shares in Twitter and Uber on the side and he realized: there are thousands of employees sitting on life-changing paper gains, with zero liquidity, waiting for companies that might never IPO.

So in 2011, he quit his safe university job and launched G Squared, a fund to solve that problem. Nobody took him seriously. The secondary market was "taboo." Companies thought selling shares meant you were failing.Today, he manages $5 billion. <...

Is the traditional SaaS model officially dead ? On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Matthew Fitzpatrick, the man Fortune 500 CEOs called when they didn’t know what to do with AI.

Matthew walked away from one of the most prestigious roles in tech, leading 1 000 engineers at McKinsey’s QuantumBlack Labs to lead Invisible Technologies.

Invisible is the "invisible" engine behind the AI revolution.

They don't just build software; they provide the RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) and the data that trains the models the entire world is building on.

W...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Ben Cera, the man who helped Travis Kalanick (Uber Founder) build CloudKitchens, and who is now building the "God Mode" for startups: Polsia.

Polsia is an AI that builds and runs companies autonomously. No employees, no meetings, just 24/7 execution. Ben is currently at a $6M annual run rate with a 30% week-on-week growth and he plans to hit $100M ARR in just 3 months. If you want to understand how AI agents are replacing the traditional SaaS model and how "Product-Market Fit" has become a search problem, this is yo...

On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with a legendary architect of the SaaS world: Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear.

Jason has "cracked the code" twice, using two diametrically opposite strategies:

- The Pure Bootstrap: He built Smart Bear to millions in profit with zero outside funding, eventually leading to a unicorn valuation.

- The VC War Machine: He raised $250 million from Silver Lake for WP Engine, scaling it to $400M in revenue and 200,000 customers by 2024.

This is a masterclass in capital efficiency. Whether you ar...

Lazar Jovanovic is the world's first official "Vibe Coding Engineer." Working at Lovable (the AI startup that hit $100M ARR in just 8 months) Lazar is proving that the future of software engineering isn't about syntax; it's about taste and intent.In this episode, we dive into how Lazar ships production-grade apps for a $6.6B unicorn without writing a single line of manual code. We discuss the "SaaS-pocalypse," why ignorance is a superpower in the AI era, and how you can transition from a traditional role to a Vibe Coder.TIMELINE : 00:00 - Meet the world's first "vibe coding" engineer01:06...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom.

In 2023, his company was stuck at 10% growth. Customer service teams were shrinking. The old model was dying.

So he did something radical: he launched an AI agent priced at $0.99 per resolved conversation. Not per seat. Per outcome.

The result? Growth doubled to 25%. $343M in revenue.

And a complete reinvention of a $1.3B company in 18 months.

TIMELINE :

00:00:00 - 00:01:02 : Des Traynor - Intercom

00:01:02 - 00:05:22 : The $1.3 billion bet on AI : moving 15 days after...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom.In 2023, his company was stuck at 10% growth. Customer service teams were shrinking. The old model was dying.So he did something radical: he launched an AI agent priced at $0.99 per resolved conversation. Not per seat. Per outcome.The result? Growth doubled to 25%. $343M in revenue. And a complete reinvention of a $1.3B company in 18 months.TIMELINE :

00:00:00 - 00:01:02 : Des Traynor - Intercom

00:01:02 - 00:05:22 : The $1.3 billion bet on AI : moving 15 days after ChatGPT launched

00:05:22 - 00:09:08 : Why building AI is not building SaaS

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Wilfried Juncker.

He's the Managing Director for Odoo's Americas a Belgian software unicorn that just hit a €8 billion valuation.

Under Wilfried's watch, Odoo's Americas operation exploded from 35 people in 2016 to over 950 in America only.

In this episode, we're digging into how Wilfried built Odoo's American war machine, what it takes to conquer a new market from scratch, and how he's fighting high SMB churn while scaling at breakneck speed.

While SAP and Oracle charge millions for ERP, Odoo's open-source model is democratizing enterprise software an...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Anish Acharya.

He sold his first company to Google. His second to Credit Karma — then stayed and helped scale their U.S. Card business to nearly a billion dollars in annual revenue.

In 2019, Andreessen Horowitz made him a General Partner. Since then, he's led the Series A in Deel, which just hit a $17.3 billion valuation in October 2025.

Most VCs have never operated anything. Anish built, scaled, sold, and then learned how to pick.

Anish, thanks a lot for being here !

...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with the man who had the hardest sales job in Silicon Valley history: Zack Kass.

Before ChatGPT was a household name, it was just a research lab.

Zack was Head of Go-To-Market. He joined when OpenAI was around a hundred people doing two million in revenue.

His job? Sell human-level intelligence to Fortune 500 executives who didn't even know what a token was.

He built the playbook for Microsoft. For Coca-Cola. He turned a nonprofit lab into an eighty billion dollar superpower.

Then he...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Antoine Le Nel the guy who spent 7 years scaling Candy Crush into one of the most addictive products ever created... then walked away to go kill traditional banking.

At King, he helped turn a mobile game into a machine that prints billions. When Activision bought them for $5.9 billion, he could've stayed forever.

Instead, he joined Revolut in 2021 — right as most fintech were collapsing. Three years later? $75 billion valuation. $4 billion in revenue. 65 million customers.

His secret? Ignoring everything Silicon Valley preaches about growth.

Antoine, thanks fo...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Ross Andrew Paquette, the CEO who broke every Silicon Valley rule: he bought OUT his investors before buidling a 1.7 billion dollar empire. He founded Maropost in 2011, and by 2016, it ranked #7 on the PROFIT 500 as one of Canada's fastest-growing companies.Ross, thanks a lot for being here!

TIMELINE :

00:00:00 - 00:01:12 : From lifestyle business to a $1.7 billion empire

00:01:12 - 00:03:32 : The 75% ebitda secret and why growth at all costs is a trap

00:03:32 - 00:05:37 : Founder mode and signing clients every single day

00:05:37 - 00:08:18 : Why "...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Cornelius Schmahl — a college dropout who keeps finding his way into billion-dollar outcomes.

At 23, Uber sent him to markets nobody wanted. South Africa. Uganda. Ghana. No playbook. Figure it out or fail.

By 27, he was running Uber Russia. One problem: Yandex was winning.He helped engineer a 3.7 billion dollar merger — then walked away from operating entirely. Started writing angel checks. Lime. Liquid Death. BillionToOne.Climeworks. Four bets. Four unicorns.

What does this guy see that everybody else misses?

Cornelius thanks a lot for being on B...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Noah Kagan — the guy who got fired from Facebook before it was worth a trillion… and turned that loss into the biggest comeback story in online business.

He went from losing a fortune on paper to building AppSumo, a $100 million-a-year bootstrapped empire - all without raising a single dollar of VC money.

Noah, thanks a lot for being here!

TIMELINE

00:00:00 - 00:02:10 : The trillion-dollar miss at Facebook

00:02:10 - 00:06:43 : Leadership lessons from Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar rejection

00:06:43 - 00:12:13 : The lifeti...

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Stan Massueras - the guy who's scaled companies to billion-dollar valuations not once, but multiple times.

He was one of Facebook's first European sales hires in 2008, then helped Twitter expand across the continent and after that, he spent six years scaling Intercom to unicorn status.

Now he's doing it all over again at ElevenLabs, the voice AI company that went from zero to $6B+ in under three years.

In this episode, we'll dig into what it actually looks like to scale sales, how selling AI is...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Arthur Waller, one of the sharpest French founders of his generation.

He sold his first company to Booking.com in his twenties — and instead of retiring, he came back to build Pennylane, a fintech that turned accountants from enemies into growth partners and became one of europe fastest-growing unicorn.

In this episode, we will discuss how six co-founders actually share power, what founders get wrong about fundraising terms and dilution, and what Arthur thinks about secondaries, freedom, and building a company that lasts twenty years.

If y...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with one of Europe’s youngest General Partners — Jonathan Userovici from Headline, a global venture firm that spots the next billion-dollar companies before anyone else.

Jonathan’s already backed some of Europe’s fastest-growing unicorns and he’s quietly redefining what it means to invest with both data and instinct.

In this episode, I want to talk about the behind-the-scenes of fundraising, how he spots future billion-dollar founders, and where the biggest opportunities in AI are.

And of course, we’ll talk...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Harry Stebbings — the guy who turned a microphone in his bedroom into a $400 million venture fund.

He started The Twenty Minute VC as a teenager, and it became the place where the smartest founders of unicorns, and the world’s best investors all lined up to talk.

In this episode, Harry opens up about the deals he missed, the unicorns he caught early like Linktree and Tripledot, and how he turned content into capital.

If you’ve ever won...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Harry Stebbings — the guy who turned a microphone in his bedroom into a $400 million venture fund.

He started The Twenty Minute VC as a teenager, and it became the place where the smartest founders of unicorns, and the world’s best investors all lined up to talk.

In this episode, Harry opens up about the deals he missed, the unicorns he caught early like Linktree and Tripledot, and how he turned content into capital.

If you’ve ever won...

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Nicolas Dessaigne — the engineer who bet everything on one idea, built Algolia into a multi-billion-dollar global search platform… and then did something almost no founder ever does:

he walked away.

Nicolas went from obsessing over one company for a decade… to shaping hundreds of startups every year as a General Partner at Y Combinator, the most influential accelerator on the planet.

In this episode, we will talk about why he left Algolia, how founders...

Most marketers dream of having Gong’s billion dollar brand. But few realize that behind every courageous campaign, there’s an even more courageous marketer. In today’s episode of BILLIONS I have the pleasure to interview Udi Ledegor, chief evangelist and former CMO at Gong.

I’ve known Udi for a few years now, and not only I’ve always been super impressed by how Gong’s brand is so unique but also by how great of a piano player Udi is!

Udi thanks a lot for joining me today!

Timeline :

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