Uncapped | Benchmark Breakfast

In his early twenties, Dwarkesh Patel has become one of the leading podcasters with nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers excited to consume his deeply-researched interviews. Dwarkesh has caught the attention of influential figures such as Jeff Bezos, Noah Smith, Nat Friedman, and Tyler Cohen, who have all praised his interviews – the latter describing him as “highly rated but still underrated.” In 2024, he was included in TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI alongside the likes of Ilya Sutskever, Andrew Yao, and Albert Gu. Dwarkesh’s interviews span far beyond AI, his North Star being his curiosity and preparation. 

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:23) Skepticism around the timing of AGI

(6:07) Confidence in AI researchers

(7:17) Future utility of superintelligence

(11:23) Impact of scaling digital minds

(15:41) Driven by increases in compute

(17:17) Is AI making us smarter?

(21:03) AI’s impact on biology

(23:54) Interests outside of AI

(26:18) Chronology of his interests

(31:10) His approach to learning

(33:43) New thinking on human evolution

(40:44) Learning and the media

(45:52) Podcasting success

(48:53) Best in class interview preparation

---

More on Dwarkesh:

https://www.dwarkesh.com/

https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp

More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Peter Fenton is the longest-serving full-time partner at Benchmark, a renowned venture firm known for its artisanal approach and deep alignment with founders. Over the last two decades, Peter led investments in Twitter, Yelp, Elastic, Docker, Zuora, and many others. He also achieved one of the rarest feats in venture history in 2014 when two of his investments, Hortonworks and New Relic, went public on the same day. More recent investments include Sierra, Ollama, ClickHouse, and Airtable. Peter is considered one of the most successful tech investors of our time and is an incredible person to learn from.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:23) Darwinism and Silicon Valley

(5:38) Silicon Valley vs everywhere else

(12:09) Highly adaptive ecosystems

(19:40) Who wins with AI

(26:22) Applying Darwinism to venture

(36:54) North Stars in venture

(42:22) Embracing things that don’t scale

(49:51) A young person’s game

(57:10) Sourcing methodologies

(1:07:50) Convincing founders to choose you

(1:10:56) Not a winner-take-all game

(1:13:35) Being a great board member

---

More on Benchmark and Peter:

https://www.benchmark.com/

https://x.com/peterfenton

More on Alt Capital and Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Christina Cacioppo is cofounder and CEO of Vanta, which is on a mission to secure the internet and protect consumer data. The trust management platform was valued at $2.5 billion in 2024 after a Series C investment led by Sequoia. Vanta went from $10M in annual recurring revenue in 2021 to $100M in 2024, while also giving us one of the best tech billboards of all time, “Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much.” Before founding Vanta in 2018, Christina was an investor at Union Square Ventures and helped bring Dropbox Paper to market as a product manager.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:25) Staying under the radar

(3:29) No referees in capitalism

(5:20) Shipping velocity

(6:43) Mindset on competition

(8:09) Structuring a GTM approach

(10:25) Fundraising strategies

(16:36) VCs being “helpful”

(21:57) Recruiting as you scale

(28:33) Adapting to the AI era

(32:09) What should be AI-ified

(38:18) Mental game of being a founder

---

More on Vanta and Christina:

https://www.vanta.com/

https://x.com/christinacaci

More on Alt Capital and Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Mamoon Hamid is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins. He has been an early investor in and served on the boards of some of the most innovative software companies of recent times including Slack, Figma, Rippling, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-founder and General Partner at Social Capital. He started his venture career in 2005 at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) where he eventually became Partner. Mamoon came to Silicon Valley in 1997 to join Xilinx, a Kleiner Perkins company, where he spent six years, initially as an engineer and later in product and marketing roles.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:29) The dot-com bubble

(7:12) Web 2.0 and cloud

(16:03) Early days of mobile

(17:51) AI’s $60 trillion opportunity

(21:48) Where to invest in AI

(28:39) The future of robotics

(32:35) Reigniting a storied firm

(41:36) Growing vs recruiting talent

(46:42) Win rate aspirations

(49:16) Investing in Box, Slack, and Figma

(54:36) Assessing founders

(57:14) Kleiner Perkins’ strategy

(1:00:52) Family and faith

---

More on Kleiner Perkins and Mamoon:

https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

https://x.com/mamoonha

More on Alt Capital and Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: [email protected]

Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor and technologist. In 2004, Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments that have included OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and many more.

After graduating college, Vinod co-founded Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers, which led to an IPO. He later went on to co-found Sun Microsystems in 1982, serving as its first chairman and CEO. After joining Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (KPCB), Vinod intubated the idea for Juniper Networks to take on Cisco System’s dominance of the router market, a company that would give KPCB a 2,500x return on its early investment.

Vinod is driven by the belief that technology is a positive force multiplier to accelerate societal reinvention in food, health, climate, energy transportation, education, housing finance, media, retail and entertainment for billions around the globe. His greatest passion lies in being a mentor to entrepreneurs who are building companies to tackle society’s largest challenges.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:26) Craziness of the current cycle

(5:54) Predictions of the future

(9:35) Role of humans with AI

(16:20) Potential AI dystopia

(23:18) Investing in OpenAI

(33:21) Robotics being next

(39:53) Incumbents not innovating

(42:29) Mindset around risk

(44:14) Bull case for energy

(50:22) New transportation

(54:18) Future of medicine

(1:03:00) A different type of enjoyment

(1:05:40) Approaches to venture

(1:12:13) Khosla’s operating principles

(1:16:17) Staying energized

---

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma

Email: [email protected]

It was a pleasure to sit down with Dan Feder, Senior Managing Director with the University of Michigan Investment Office who leads the endowment’s investments in venture capital and private equity.

Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Dan was the Managing Director of Private Markets at the Washington University Investment Management Company. Dan’s career in endowment management began at the Princeton University Investment Company where he led the development of Princeton’s global private equity and venture capital portfolio. Dan has also served as the Managing Director of Private Markets for the Sequoia Capital Heritage Fund (an endowment-style investment fund sponsored by Sequoia Capital) and as a Senior Investment Manager in the endowment services area at TIAA-CREF.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:40) Becoming an endowment manager

(2:59) Constructing an endowment’s portfolio

(9:10) Risk-based investing vs uncertainty

(13:07) Incentive structures in LP land

(16:28) Team construction

(22:26) Backing strategies that are at odds

(26:06) Why LPs invest in venture

(27:38) UMich framework to investing

(32:29) Picking individuals vs firms

(36:40) Big vs small funds

(40:48) How to pick fund managers

(45:41) Herd mentality in LP land

---

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma

Email: [email protected]

This was a fun one! Sam is my brother and the CEO of a small company in SF called OpenAI. I’m glad he was able to take time out of his busy schedule to give me a hard time and share his thoughts on the future of AI.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:48) AI discovering new science

(5:40) Humanoids are the future

(8:27) A world with superintelligence

(11:20) Medium-term predictions

(15:37) Potential OpenAI apparatus

(19:01) Supply chain implications

(21:51) Meta / Scale AI news

(29:04) Personal reflections

---

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma

Email: [email protected]

Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that manages $45 billion in assets under management. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar companies.

Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape, which later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He later served on the board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018.

Marc serves on the board of the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Applied Intuition, Carta, Coinbase, Dialpad, Flow, Golden, Honor, OpenGov, Samsara, Simple Things, and TipTop Labs. He is also on the board of Meta.

We covered:

A few highlights:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:27) Evolution of the venture playbook

(15:54) Small vs large funds

(29:10) Becoming a top tier firm

(35:33) Limiting factors to building big companies

(40:11) Investing in AI

(50:02) Developing investors

(59:06) AI going wrong

(1:09:20) Politics and Silicon Valley

(1:11:39) Tech and the media

(1:23:22) Preference falsification

(1:31:10) Career advice 

(1:34:07) Huberman “beef”

(1:38:21) Question from X

---

More on Marc:

https://x.com/pmarca

https://pmarca.substack.com/

https://a16z.simplecast.com/

More on Uncapped

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

https://x.com/jaltma

---

Email: [email protected]

Jordan Bramble is the CEO of Antares, a nuclear energy company that has raised over $50M to become America’s industrial base partner for special-purpose microreactors.

Antares focuses on high-value use cases in power-constrained environments that wouldn’t be possible without nuclear power. They are developing resilient fission-based power systems for critical assets for the Department of Defense on earth and in space. Unlike grid-scale reactors, these use cases primarily favor kilowatt-scale systems. This focus on non-commodity energy applications with smaller scale reactors will enable Antares to develop its first deployments on faster timelines with less research and development and capitalization risk. Antares also partners with commercial companies in extractive industries, edge computing, and space power, in turn bringing the benefits of commercial scale back to the DOD.

We covered:

A few highlights:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:22) History of nuclear

(6:50) Radical decline in development 

(10:51) Current appetite for funding

(20:53) Small modular reactors

(30:11) Selling to defense

(34:30) LA becoming a hard tech hub

(37:13) Fostering a culture in hard tech

(43:42) How to scale nuclear reactors

---

More on Antares:

https://antaresindustries.com/

https://x.com/jordanbramble

More on Uncapped:

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

https://x.com/jaltma

---

Email: [email protected]

This week I enjoyed riffing with David Tisch, Managing Partner of BoxGroup. 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. David is the Chairman of GoodDog, a marketplace to find pets online. He is the co-founder of TechStars NYC and serves on the board of Friends of Hudson River Park.

We covered:

---

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:27) Scaling a collaborative fund

(8:23) Stack ranking portfolios

(11:29) Investing at seed

(17:29) Hiring for taste

(22:30) The art of being collaborative

(29:03) VC help is overrated

(41:38) Why VCs pass on companies

(48:11) Building a brand in NYC

(55:02) North Stars in early-stage investing

---

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma

Email: [email protected]