In this episode of Second Acts, Krish is joined by Theory Ventures founder and General Partner, Tomasz Tunguz.
Tomasz talks about: the three infinite learning curves that originally drew him into venture, the tricky thing that is advising operators, writing lessons that have made him one of SaaS’s most prolific and admired public thinkers, why he has long believed in the compounding power of distribution, the current case for pursuing uneconomic growth, why pricing is continually in flux, Looker’s extreme PMF and second acts, three reasons why this is the best time in history to start a SaaS business, Umberto Eco, and more.
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Chapters:
(05:22) A walk along Embarcadero
(07:58) Venture’s three infinite learning curves
(09:05) “Advice is a tricky thing”
(11:53) Dalio, Munger, and effective board members
(13:58) Product limited/GTM limited?
(16:00) Situation, Complication, Question, Answer
(19:33) Several short sentences
(21:00) Writing as a way to think better about AI
(23:02) Krish’s fun, clarifying AI use case
(24:51) A distribution-first thesis
(29:38) How AI changes GTM
(32:08) The past and present of category creation
(34:30) The generalist-specialist pendulum
(36:00) “Pricing is a perennial”
(39:09) The inevitability of better AI margins
(41:52) Uneconomic growth as a valid bet
(46:44) Monte Carlo’s radical daily revenue model
(50:34) Never been a better time to start a SaaS business
(54:17) “PMF is grease”
(56:53) The year of Looker 500
(59:07) Why the growth bar keeps moving
(01:00:51) Umberto Eco and explaining China
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Referenced:
Tomasz Tunguz on raising Theory Ventures’ $450 million second fund
The Decade of Data with Tomasz Tunguz
Joel on Software
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Principles by Ray Dalio
Mike Volpi
Tomasz Tunguz on Venture Capital
Intercom
Des Traynor
McKinsey & Company
SCQA
The Second-Order Effects of AI
Several Short Sentences About Writing
Copyblogger
MongoDB
HashiCorp
Google
ChatGPT
Lovable
Cursor
5 Mistakes SaaS Startups Often Make with Pricing
Explore vs. Exploit in Agentic Coding
Barr Moses
How Monte Carlo's Daily Revenue Model Rewrote Their Strategy
The Market Size Mistake
Gainsight
Why There's Never Been a Better Time to Found a SaaS Startup
A Challenge to SaaS Orthodoxy
Extreme PMF : Sustaining Success with Scale
My Favorite Books of 2024
Chronicles of a Liquid Society
Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future
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Connect with Tomasz:
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Tomasz Tunguz
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Connect with Krish
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