Technology

Uncapped with Jack Altman

Conversations with people I admire about things I’m genuinely interested in.

Latest Episodes:

Uncapped #28 | Roelof Botha from Sequoia Oct 15, 2025

Show notes

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:

Paranoia that drives success
Venture not being an asset class
Full contact conversations
Cost being the secret to Silicon Valley
The next trillion dollar markets

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

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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.

Uncapped #27 | Vince Hankes from Thrive Capital Oct 08, 2025

Show notes

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:

Non-consensus investing
Writing billion dollar checks
Buying Carvana at the bottom
The value of compounding
What matters most to Thrive

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

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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.

Uncapped #26 | Ali Rowghani Oct 01, 2025

Show notes

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:

Pixar’s golden age
Exceptional leadership
Working with Steve Jobs
Twitter going from $0 to $2B
Operating beliefs in venture

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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 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: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #25 | Lulu Cheng Meservey Sep 24, 2025

Show notes

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:

Aura is code for good communicator
People like to have assumptions for the level of celebration you deserve
The correct version of this company has him in it
Words that mean the same thing aren’t perceived the same way
Comms is the last thing to be uniquely human

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #24 | Balaji Srinivasan Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

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 Jack:

https://x.com/jaltma

https://www.altcap.com/

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #23 | Martin Casado from a16z Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

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:

What necessitates specialization
The conflicts dynamic
Infra vs app companies
Importance of open source
The only sin in VC

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #22 | Greg Rosen from BoxGroup Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

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:

Being collaborative at scale
Avoiding adverse selection
Getting to a yes instead of no
Venture calendar audits
Running the right strategy

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #21 | Brian Armstrong from Coinbase Aug 13, 2025

Show notes

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:

Working with the government
When to jump to the hot new thing
Choosing what frontiers to prioritize
The inner game of being contrarian

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

---

https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #20 | Guillermo Rauch from Vercel Aug 06, 2025

Show notes

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:

Vercel’s early insights
State of affairs for codegen
Implications of AI for developers
Skills of the future
Product building taste

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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 Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Uncapped #19 | Dwarkesh Patel Jul 30, 2025

Show notes

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:

Digital minds leading huge companies
AI making us smarter vs rotting our brain
His approach to learning as his job
Best in class interview preparation

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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

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More on Jack:

https://www.altcap.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

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https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod

Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

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