Uncapped | Benchmark Breakfast

Thomas Laffont is the co-founder of Coatue, one of the world’s largest technology investment platforms active in both the public and private markets. Thomas leads the firm’s private investment platforms across early-stage and growth, and oversees their software investments across private and public markets. Coatue has partnered with some of the most enduring and impactful companies of the last two decades, including Applied Intuition, Canva, Databricks, Figma and Rippling. Thomas began his career at the Creative Arts Agency, where he represented artists in film and television.

A few highlights:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:25) Making sense of the current cycle

(5:31) Investing from inception through IPO

(10:36) Depreciation of the system of record

(14:04) Value beyond databases

(18:46) Winning strategies in venture

(23:43) Operating at early-stage

(28:56) Navigating investing conflicts

(34:29) Wide aperture lens of investing

(36:45) Star quality being a reality

(40:30) Firm strategy and decision making

(48:25) Everything that’s great about golf

(54:34) Working with family

(57:20) Advice to young professionals

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More on Thomas:

https://www.coatue.com/

https://x.com/thomas_coatue

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Roelof Botha joined Sequoia in 2003 and serves as the managing partner and steward. Roelof led early investments in YouTube, Instagram, Natera, and MongoDB among others. He currently sits on the board of Natera, Unity, Block (fka Square), MongoDB, Ethos, Pendulum, Airtime, and Flow Engineering. Roelof also co-led Sequoia’s backing of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022. Prior to Sequoia, Roelof was the CFO of PayPal and led the company’s IPO at the age of 28, and later through its acquisition by eBay.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:52) Becoming the steward

(5:16) Keeping healthy paranoia

(9:26) Drivers of joy as a leader

(11:17) Current venture playing field

(13:38) Venture is not an asset class

(18:50) Advice to new managers

(19:47) Decision making at Sequoia

(30:11) Investing across stages

(37:12) Component of cost

(46:57) Conflicting investments

(50:48) The next trillion dollar markets

(59:30) Team building

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More on Roelof:

https://x.com/roelofbotha

https://www.sequoiacap.com/people/roelof-botha/

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

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This episode is presented for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. The discussion herein similarly does not constitute a solicitation with respect to any Sequoia fund or an offer of investment advisory services. Investments identified herein are discussed solely for illustrative purposes and there is no guarantee that current or future investments of Sequoia will be similar in quality or kind.

Vince Hankes is a Partner at Thrive Capital where he’s worked on investments in OpenAI, SpaceX, Databricks, and Stripe among others. Vince invests across all stages and currently sits on the board of Airtable, Benchling, Console, Isomorphic, Lattice and Rogo. Prior to joining Thrive, Vince was an investor at Tiger Global.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:50) The evolution of Thrive

(4:22) Instagram, Github, and Stripe

(7:57) Qualitative, then quantitative

(9:39) Writing massive checks

(16:48) Winning strategies in venture

(25:58) Buying Carvana at the bottom

(32:50) Managing conflicts

(36:13) AI’s impact on the market

(42:25) East meets West Coast investors

(45:19) Vertical specific workspaces

(49:53) Scale and timing of robotics

(51:31) OpenAI vs everything else

(55:59) What matters most for Thrive

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More on Vince:

https://x.com/vhankes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-hankes/

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

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This episode is presented for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. The discussion herein similarly does not constitute a solicitation with respect to any Thrive fund or an offer of investment advisory services. Investments identified herein are discussed solely for illustrative purposes and there is no guarantee that current or future investments of Thrive will be similar in quality or kind.

Ali Rowghani is the founder of First Harmonic, a go-to-market program purpose-built for seed stage founders.

Ali has had a long, distinguished career in tech. He worked with Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull at Pixar for nine years holding various roles including CFO and SVP of Strategic Planning, took Twitter from $0 in revenue through IPO as the CFO and COO, and most recently was the founding Managing Director of Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund where he led investments in DoorDash, Stripe, Coinbase, Zapier, among many others. Ali has also invested as an early angel in several breakout AI companies, including Mercor, Decagon, and Cursor. He’s seen the arc from inception to IPO many times and recognizes what separates winning startups from the pack.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:53) Pixar’s miracle factory

(6:28) Working with Steve Jobs

(13:23) Ed Catmull and John Lasseter

(16:28) Crazy years at Twitter

(18:30) Getting monetization right

(19:56) Learnings in hindsight

(22:37) Elon Musk observations

(24:03) Beginning of YC’s growth fund

(29:31) Between pre and post traction

(33:23) The second job of a CEO

(34:35) First Harmonic

(35:31) Beliefs in venture

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More on Ali:

https://www.firstharmonic.com/

https://x.com/ROWGHANI

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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Link to Ali’s referenced blog post:

https://www.ycombinator.com/library/3k-the-second-job-of-a-startup-ceo

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Lulu Cheng Meservey is the leading voice in the new age of PR and comms and is the founder of Rostra, an advisory firm helping founders go direct.

Lulu has been a trusted voice for founders like Palmer Luckey at Anduril, Eric Glyman at Ramp, and Brian Armstrong at Coinbase. She previously ran corporate affairs and communications for Activision Blizzard and was the head of comms for Substack.

Lulu writes an acclaimed newsletter called Flack, where she proposes her new playbook for communications and shares tactical advice for how to help win over the people who matter, without wasting time or inducing cringe.

A few memorable moments:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:50) Comms having a moment

(3:43) Breaking through the noise

(6:30) What makes a great story

(9:58) Creating story arcs

(17:29) Flow and stock

(20:29) All press is good press

(23:25) Leaning into authenticity

(28:10) Word choice

(35:09) Impact on recruiting

(42:48) The business of comms

(45:48) Comms predictions

(48:18) Tech & media relationship

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More on Lulu:

https://x.com/lulumeservey

https://www.getflack.com/

https://rostra.co/

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Balaji Srinivasan is an angel investor, tech founder, and WSJ bestselling author of The Network State. He is currently the founder of The Network School, a frontier community for techno-optimists.

Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he is an early investor in many successful tech companies, including Anduril, Perplexity, OpenSea, Alchemy, StarkWare, Dapper Labs, Benchling, and Polymarket to name a few. Balaji also led the launch of USDC as Coinbase CTO, and was an early investor in many important crypto protocols including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana among others.

In this conversation, we discuss the evolving political landscape, emphasizing the disruptions caused by technology and the internet. Balaji outlines the four factions in the current political climate: the internet, Blue America, Red America, and China. We also explore the implications of tariffs, the rise of AI, and the future of network states.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:19) The Network School

(1:24) Mapping the political landscape

(3:38) Tech and the media

(6:19) China and the trade war

(11:32) Tariffs and economic strategy

(24:30) Global economic shifts

(27:41) Rise of the global anti-woke coalition

(31:11) Unholy alliances that might form

(37:18) Class warfare instead of race warfare

(41:21) The answer may not be in America

(46:56) The Network State

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More on Balaji:

https://x.com/balajis

https://ns.com/

https://thenetworkstate.com/

More on Jack:

https://x.com/jaltma

https://www.altcap.com/

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Martin Casado is a general partner at a16z, where he leads the firm’s $1.25 billion infrastructure practice. Martin has led investments in Cursor, dbt Labs, and Fivetran to name a few. Prior to joining a16z in 2016, he was the co-founder and CTO of Nicira, which was acquired by VMware for $1.26B. While at VMware, Martin was the SVP and GM of network and security, which he scaled to a $600 million run-rate business. Martin started his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he worked on large-scale simulations for the Department of Defense before moving over to work with the intelligence community on networking and cybersecurity.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:27) Importance of media for VC

(3:50) Evolution of a16z

(7:00) Specialization

(10:32) Value of distribution

(13:16) Staying power in infra

(19:49) The conflicts dynamic

(26:32) State of play in AI

(30:48) The future of coding

(34:58) Significance of open source

(39:48) Marc Andreessen’s leadership

(44:02) The only sin in VC

(48:37) Scaling a lot of board seats

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More on Martin:

https://a16z.com/author/martin-casado/

https://x.com/martin_casado

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Greg Rosen is a Partner at BoxGroup. Greg was the first hire at BoxGroup outside of the founders, David Tisch and Adam Rothenberg. After moving to the West Coast to work with Benchmark and Bedrock, Greg rejoined BoxGroup and currently invests out of their San Francisco office. An engineer by training, Greg built iOS games in high school before dropping out of college at 19 to join Jim Pallotta's venture fund in New York City.

BoxGroup is an NYC-based seed stage venture capital firm that has invested in over 500 seed-stage startups over the last 15 years, including Plaid, Ro, Ramp, Clay, Scopely, Warp, Cursor, PillPack, Amplitude, Flatiron Health, Stripe, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Flexport, Classpass, Vine, GroupMe, Airtable and more.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:47) The collaborative venture model

(5:47) Adverse selection vs coverage

(11:59) How to see a ton of companies

(14:44) Getting to founders early

(21:10) Helping teammates get to a yes

(23:25) Why there aren’t more BoxGroups

(27:57) What’s learnable about picking

(31:46) Calendar auditing

(34:39) Focusing on where you’re outlier

(37:25) Depth vs breadth of network

(41:03) The future of code

(44:00) Brain computers

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More on Greg:

https://www.boxgroup.com/

https://x.com/grosen

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency company that provides exchange, brokerage, and custody services to 100M+ verified users in over 100 countries. Founded in 2012, Coinbase went public in 2021 on the NASDAQ under the ticker COIN and as of August 2025 has a market cap of $83 billion. Brian is also the co-founder of New Limit, a longevity biotech company on a mission to significantly extend human lifespan that recently raised a $130M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and angels including John and Patrick Collison, Elad Gil, and Joshua Kushner, among others.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:26) Becoming the everything chain

(4:20) Story behind the GENIUS Act

(5:33) Working with regulators

(10:45) The future of crypto and the government

(17:10) When to jump to the hot new thing

(23:03) Choosing what frontiers to prioritize

(29:59) Brain-computer interface tech

(34:48) Inside the mind of a contrarian

(43:52) Creating a sustainable lifestyle

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More on Brian:

https://www.coinbase.com/

https://www.newlimit.com/

https://x.com/brian_armstrong

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Guillermo Rauch is the founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 which is one of the most popular AI app building tools that’s helping power the online presence of companies like Porsche, Under Armour and Nintendo. In May 2024, Vercel completed a $250M Series E at a $3.25B valuation and was recently named to the Forbes Cloud 100. Originally from Argentina, Guillermo became a self-taught developer at the age of ten, and has been a passionate contributor to the open-source community ever since. He is the mind behind foundational JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Socket.io, and has built tools that power some of the internet’s most innovative products, including Midjourney, Grok, and Notion.

We covered:

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:28) Prequel to Vercel

(4:32) Vercel’s early insights

(8:13) State of affairs for codegen

(17:18) Codegen evolution

(19:37) Perceived vs realized productivity

(27:53) Fault attribution

(31:56) Internet being a house of cards

(35:33) When codegen will be exceptional

(40:18) What kids should be learning

(47:42) Chasing the dragon vs listening to customers

(50:46) The next internet

(51:58) Reverse engineering success

(55:50) Making it work as a dad and CEO

(58:14) Taste in building product

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More on Guillermo:

https://vercel.com/

https://x.com/rauchg

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]