BILLIONS

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. He turned a $150M Spotify bet into $1 billion. He made $800M on Coursera. And the market he built is now worth $140 billion a year.Larry, welcome to BILLIONS.TIMELINE : 00:00 : The psychology of the secondary market pioneer. 01:13 : Quitting a decade-long career for a "ghost" market. 03:23 : The Hustle: Cold-calling alumni for early Twitter and Uber shares. 05:41 : The $150 million Spotify bet and the $9M personal risk with zero collateral. 11:19 : Data Arbitrage: How Larry knew record labels were secretly buying Spotify. 15:43 : Scaling G Squared: From a $35 million pool to $7 billion AUM. 20:05 : Why DPI (Cash Back) is the only metric that matters, and why paper gains are a lie. 25:09 : The Scars: Learning from the "quick commerce" collapse and other losses. 37:09 : The Future: OpenAI, SpaceX, and the evolution of private liquidity. 53:12 : Advice for Founders: Why you must hire "grinders," not just pedigree.REFERENCES : Daniel Ek Spencer McLeodMitchell GreenJim SimonsElon Musk Spotify Twitter Uber Palantir Coursera Anthropic OpenAI SpaceX Stripe Wiz Toast NetflixApple Music Instacart Postmates Meituan Alibaba Turo GetaroundKlarna Revolut Databricks 23andMe Gorillas Pagaya⁠

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. With $100M raised at a $2B+ valuation, Matthew is proving that the future isn't in selling tools, but in selling outcomes.In this masterclass, we break down:The McKinsey Exit: Why a top AI leader "jumped ship" for a $2B startup.The Death of SaaS: Why "Outcome-based pricing" is replacing the subscription model.The Enterprise Gap: Why 90% of companies are failing to get AI into production.The Scaling Laws: The truth about data bottlenecks and the future of AI training.Process as Code: How Invisible integrates human intelligence with AI to solve "impossible" problems.TIMELINE : 00:00 The data bottleneck: Why Enterprise AI is currently "stuck"01:01 Why McKinsey’s AI chief left to lead a $2B unicorn02:33 The "Four Platforms": How Invisible actually works05:58 SaaS vs. Outcomes: The pricing model of the future09:19 Why the "AI Bubble" reality check is coming15:12 The "Capability Gap" holding back the Fortune 50022:15 RLHF & Data: Building the workforce behind the major models31:42 "Process is Code": The new architecture for billion-dollar companies41:10 Matthew’s advice for founders: Don't just build a "wrapper"48:20 The future of the "Invisible" empireREFERENCES :Mary MeekerElon Musk Étude MIT SloanÉtude NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research)Article BloombergMcKinsey & Company Quantum Black Invisible Technologies SwissGear Y CombinatorWeCP (We Create Problems)Databricks SnowflakeJevons paradox Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)Chain-of-thought reasoning Revolut

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 your masterclass.In this episode, we break down:The CloudKitchens Era: Lessons learned from building a global giant with Travis Kalanick.The Autonomous Blueprint: How Pulsia builds companies from scratch without human intervention.$100M ARR in 90 Days: The aggressive growth strategy behind the AI revolution.The "SaaS-pocalypse": Why the software you use today is about to be replaced by agents.The "Taste" Economy: Why humans are moving from "builders" to "orchestrators."TIMELINE : 00:00 "Click a button, get a company": The vision for Polsia01:12 Building with Travis Kalanick: The CloudKitchens masterclass04:45 The $100M ARR Plan: How to scale an AI company in 90 days09:30 Why Product-Market Fit is just a "Search Problem"15:10 The SaaS-pocalypse: Replacing legacy software with AI agents22:40 How Polsia finds demand and builds products autonomously31:15 The Meta Ads Strategy: Scaling from $10/day to millions38:50 Why "Taste" is the only human skill left in the AI era45:10 Influencer-led distribution: The new "Billion-dollar" funnel53:05 Ben’s advice for founders: Stop building for others, build for yourselfREFERENCESTravis Kalanick (X/Twitter) Rick Rubin CloudKitchensFuture FoodsPolsiaChatGPT ClaudeSora 2 Uber Meta Ads ShopifyStripeUniversal PaperclipsWikipedia / Craigslist / Amazon HubSpot DoorDash

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 are a solo-founder or a venture-backed CEO, Jason’s framework for building "enduring companies" is the raw truth you won't hear in most boardrooms.TIMELINE : 00:00 - Why AI products almost never work01:20 - Switching from Bootstrapping to $250M VC rounds04:51 - The SaaS-pocalypse: The truth behind HubSpot & legacy decline09:30 - Solving legacy problems with AI-powered search16:17 - Experts vs. Muggles: The three categories of AI products21:55 - Why evergreen insights beat AI hype26:06 - The Power Move: Firing yourself as CEO to save the company34:01 - The "301 Redirect" strategy for management transitions40:48 - Hidden multipliers and the labor of love44:02 - The Raw Truth: Post-exit depression and infinite optionality58:25 - Redefining identity: Leveraging accumulated wisdomREFERENCES :

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 - Why "not knowing how to code" is your new superpower04:43 - Is software maintenance dead in the age of AI?09:15 - The Lovable story: hitting $100M ARR in 8 months15:42 - The end of bootstrapping? Vibe coding vs. the old way24:16 - SaaS-pocalypse: the future of software interfaces29:47 - Beyond code: the only metrics that matter for AI products37:01 - Will enterprises ever adopt AI-generated code?44:35 - The "Aladdin & Genie" trick for mastering AI prompts56:05 - How to become a vibe coder (no permission required)REFERENCES : Warren MasonKurt Cobain Pieter Levels.Marc LouVictor Wembanyama Elena VernaJony IveLovable Claude OpenAIShopify Stripe TechCrunch Salesforce HubSpot 28 Days of LovableShe BuildsAladdin and the Genie