Newcomer Pod

We're welcoming special guest Tom Dotan of Dead Cat fame to the show this week — just in time for the tariff market meltdown. To Silicon Valley's Trump supporters, we hate to say we told you so, but it's hard to imagine how these tariffs on our biggest trading partners will benefit tech and artificial intelligence development in the US.

In the second half of the show, Eric interviews Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen on how to make sense of what President Trump's tariff policies mean for his customers around the world. 

OpenAI has done it again. The AI giant closed $40 billion in fresh funding (kind of) led by Softbank, We debate the bull and bear case for OpenAI's $300 billion valuation. Eric sticks to his guns from his previous bear case, but Madeline is more optimistic about OpenAI's consumer revenue.

We also go over the latest in the Deel/Rippling corporate espionage saga and dig into Eric's reporting on the Deel spy's confession. Plus, Elon Musk is reportedly stepping back from his hands on role in Washington in the coming weeks.

In the second half of this week's episode, Eric interviews Clay CEO and cofounder Kareem Amin, who topped the Enterprise Tech 30 list on mid-stage startups.

Time stamps
00:00 — Announcing Cerebral Valley London
03:26 — Is OpenAI worth $300 billion?
11:00 — The Deel Spy Confession
16:09 — Elon Pulls Back in DC
22:40 — Clay's Kareem Amin Talks Marketing Agents

This week, Eric shared the details of his vibe coding frenzy from the past few weeks, testing out Vercel and the buzziest coding assistant of moment, Lovable. We unpack the benefits and remaining headaches of these tools from a non-coder perspective. We then turn to the Studio Ghibli  memes of the week from OpenAI's new 4o image model integration and try to make sense of all the copyright risks and benefits this new tool could lead us to.

Later in the show, we break down the story on 11x's potentially fabricated customers and subsequent backlash from some of Silicon Valley's most powerful VCs. And as Waymo fans, we're excited about their expansion in to Washington DC.

Produced by Christopher Gates

We're opening in a celebratory mood this week with Wiz's big exit to Google, which if it holds will offer some much needed liquidity to venture firms and their LPs. It's a big win for several of Silicon Valley's heavy hitters, including Sequoia's Doug Leone, Index Ventures' Shardul Shah, and Greenoaks' Neil Mehta. IPOs are looking a little bit more uncertain, however. Plus, Deel's allleged corporate espionage at Rippling has all the makings of a great HR tech spy thriller. Next up, we touch on the new liberal "abundance" agenda, which has more than a few similarities to Marc Andreessen's "Time to Build" manifesto. In the second half of our show, Eric sits down with Browserbase CEO Paul Klein to discuss their tools for running headless browsers and their rapid growth over the past year.

Produced by ⁠Christopher Gates⁠

We’re recording this episode on the ground from two different tech conferences, the flashy new HumanX summit in Las Vegas and the now-veteran status South By Southwest in Austin. We cover how the attendees diverge, with more consumer-tech making a showing at SXSW and the new guard of AI business leaders heading over to HumanX (with a few exceptions.) At both summits, though, coding assistants are far and beyond the breakout use case of generative AI applications.

We also briefly touch on the threat to free speech in America under the Trump administration following the arrest of the Columbia student protestor Mahmoud Khalil. Next up, we talk about Anthropic’s major revenue growth and how Claude itself is one of the strongest coding assistants on the market, notching it up in the model maker race. We close with, yes — another coding assistant — Anysphere, the makers of Cursor, and its rumored funding round at a $10 billion valuation.
Produced by ⁠Christopher Gates⁠

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, Eric and Madeline dissect why VCs are mad about Trump’s plans for a strategic crypto reserve. Even the biggest boosters and loudest voices for deregulation around crypto have been caught off guard by the president’s push to add other altcoins to the promised Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, calling the move a blatant enrichment scheme for coin holders and friends of the President. 

Next, they take a closer look at the thawing of the IPO market. They unpack CoreWeave’s S-1 and examine why the biggest generative AI IPO of the year so far has a lot at stake with big tech customers. They then discuss Anthropic’s latest funding round, its whopping $61.5 billion valuation, and the deeper issue of when we should truly declare AGI’s arrival. 

Produced by Christopher Gates

Eric and Madeline break down the week that was in AI news in this episode of The Newcomer Podcast, from the unnecessary panic caused by reports of Microsoft cancelling leases for data centers to Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report. Despite tech companies moving full steam ahead on AI, including OpenAI’s launch of GPT 4.5 and Softbank’s $200 billion commitment to data centers, tech stocks dropped, which our hosts blame on the natural slower tech adoption curve and overall market uncertainty from President Trump’s chaotic policy changes.

Later in the episode, Eric unpacks Jeff Bezos’ increasing control over the Washington Post’s opinion section and tech CEOs pre-empting so-called “hit pieces” on X. The two then shout out UK-based developer tool Lovable’s $15 funding million extension and rapid growth. They close the episode with a call for readers to submit their burning questions and commentary for next week’s Newcomer reader mailbag. You can submit your own question by filling out this Google form.

In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, Eric and Madeline give a sendoff to the Humane and its AI Pin. The company was acquired by HP for its AI talent, in a darkly poetic ending for former Apple engineers who left to build a smart hardware startup. They debate the merits of voice AI technology as an interface and if it’s really time to move away from screens. 

They break down all of OpenAI’s alumni startups, starting with Mira Murati’s newly announced Thinking Machine Labs. Other former founders of OpenAI like Ilya Suskever and Elon Musk are in talks to raise billions for their respective AI startups. They close with a breakdown of Saronic and Together AI’s latest funding rounds.

00:19 - Humane’s Semi-Soft Landing to HP

13:43 - Mira Murati Unveils Thinking Machines Lab and we have questions

17:02 -  The new SV flex - Small teams

19:02 - Grok’s big cluster and Elon jumps the shark

24:14 - Saronic and Together AI Raise Big Series C Rounds

Eric and Madeline unpack the biggest “deal that wasn’t” story of Elon Musk’s unsolicited offer to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion. WIth Sam Altman flat-out rejecting the offer on X, this feels less like an offer and more of a statement about Musk’s frustration with OpenAI’s continued conversion to a for-profit company that competes with him. Pressures have been mounting on engineers to look for greener pastures, though, if Thrive Capital’s Joshua Kushner’s urging speech for talent to stay put is any indication. 

Then, they turn to Eric’s reporting on Lightspeed Venture Partners’ new fundraising documents, where the megafirm showed stronger returns on earlier funds ahead of its next big capital raise. They also unpack the AI Action Summit’s 180-degree swing from an AI safety forum to a conference dominated by CEOs and accelerationist world leaders. They close with a breakdown with a who’s who on the cap table of legal-tech Harvey’s latest Series D, and Mercury’s rumored new Sequoia-backed fundraise.

Produced by Christopher Gates

Music by Suno

In this episode of the Newcomer podcast, Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbarger dig into all of the chaos in Washington led by Elon Musk and his team of young staffers. They push back on the attacks from the right at the press that revealing information about public employees is anything close to "doxxing," and unpack a16z's virtue signaling by hiring new right-wing cause celebrity Daniel Penny to its investing team. Later on, Eric breaks down the General Catalyst's a pitch to investors shapeshifting into a "company." They close with even more meme discourse, this time over Marc Andreessen's reading of the "heatmap" social study.

Chapters00:00 DOGE’s Young Staffers03:28 Is Naming Government Staffers “Doxxing”06:20 Daniel Penny’s Hiring at A16z is Virtue Signaling09:16 Debating Marc Andreessen on the Heatmap12:22 Meta’s AR Bets Not In Line With Venture Capital21:03 Unpacking General Catalyst’s Pitch to Investors