BIG IDEAS BY NEW ECONOMIES

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.
Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner at venture firm Felicis, joins the podcast at a pivotal moment in tech to unpack what’s happening across venture, whether LPs are concerned, and how to win as a firm in the current environment.
You might not know this about Aydin, but he was actually one of the first employees at Google, working directly alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with a key lesson: “Why the clearest signal from Larry Page wasn’t what he said yes to but the 80% of the time he said no.”
About FelicisFelicis is a venture capital firm that backs iconic founders starting at Seed, with early bets on Notion, Canva, Shopify, Adyen, n8n, Supabase, and Mercor. Over 20 years, Felicis-backed companies have driven more than $300 billion in market value, and Aydin has appeared on the Forbes Midas List for 13 consecutive years.
Watch Now - Investing In 50 Unicorns
Throughout this episode, we also cover the origin of Felicis’s 1% founders pledge, a co-CEO’s idea borrowed from tennis mental coaching that now covers health therapy and coaching for 100+ founders with no strings attached; why Felicis is obsessed with “global resilience” and the four markets (space, defense, manufacturing, energy) big enough that 1% share still returns a fund; and the stat from Felicis’s own data showing the top 1% of exits have doubled in value every five years while the bottom 90% have stagnated.
As venture faces its own AI challenges, we asked directly whether AI is coming for the junior analysts and associates learning the trade underneath Aydin. We learn why he thinks trust, not analysis, is the one thing AI can’t replicate, and why founders keep telling him they picked Felicis for the person across the table, not the term sheet, and much more.
Available everywhere you listen to podcasts: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇
Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Aydin Senkut(2:21) The State of Venture Today(3:49) About Felicis Ventures(6:35) Google's First Early Employees(8:09) Lessons from Larry and Sergey(10:11) Building Google from Nothing(13:10) Great Investors: Operators or Founders?(15:57) 13x on the Forbes Midas List(17:28) What Makes Felicis Successful(20:11) Navigating Crucible Bets(22:16) Characteristics of Unicorn Companies(25:22) Coaching Founders to Stay Disciplined(28:30) Longevity and Stewardship(32:56) The 1% Founders Pledge(40:21) Founders' Hardest Challenges Today(43:07) Building an Enduring Fund(46:52) From Meeting to Term Sheet(49:02) Inside Felicis(51:32) Are LPs Concerned About Venture?(57:28) AI and the Future of Young Venture Talent(1:00:29) The Opportunity for Emerging Managers(1:03:39) How Aydin Spends Time Outside Venture
Lessons from this episode with Aydin
1. Being ruthlessly focus: “Cut nine things off your list” The core operating principle: it feels productive to work on 10 things, but real focus means having the courage to kill nine of them and go all-in on one.
2. “Your weakness can be your strength” Aydin wasn’t an engineer, never worked at a big tech company, and built a philosophy around not needing technical depth, just needing to understand what makes a company succeed.
3. Authenticity, trust, and doing the homework: “The personality of the investor really matters” Three concrete, teachable behaviors for building trust fast: no hidden layers, a track record of not going against people, and showing up with a prepared, original point of view.
4. Market-sizing lesson for founders and investors: “Chase markets where 1% share still wins” The math behind why Felicis is focused on “global resilience”: pick markets big enough that even a small share of them clears the bar for a great outcome.
5. Where does AI leave young talent in venture? Why he believes relationships, not analysis, are becoming the scarce resource in venture, and the “orchestra conductor” framing for how humans and AI should actually divide labor.
Previous episodes include
See all previous episodes here 👉
If you enjoyed this episode, support our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.


Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.
Our latest podcast guest is one incredible founder: Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo, who shares how he started and scaled the social network into one of the most popular sites of its time before selling it to AOL for $850 million in 2008, how he reinvented himself after Bebo, and what he’s building now that Bebo is closed for good after 21 years.
Watch now - Bebo Co-Founder: How to Build an $850 Million Social Network
During the episode, we learn about Michael’s first entrepreneurial attempt, Ringo.com (another social network), which landed 400,000 members in three months on a $6,000 database server; how Bebo grew to a million users in nine days before going quiet for six months, until a basic quiz feature cracked engagement; and how The Battery, a members’ club in San Francisco, became his next act after the acquisition.
We also explore an interesting question: what happens to a founder’s sense of identity when the company he and his wife, Xochi, spent years building is no longer theirs to run? Michael also shared that, although he’s technical at heart, he hasn’t written a line of code since January, building his latest venture almost entirely with AI, a glimpse of what building without a team could look like for the next generation of founders.
Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇
Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Michael Birch(2:58) The Founding Story of Bebo(8:55) Why Bebo Went Viral(11:19) Bebo's First 12 Months(21:40) How Much Has Social Actually Changed?(23:58) Selling to AOL for $850M(29:50) Reinventing Your Identity Post-Acquisition(31:12) Starting The Battery(38:47) Technology or Hospitality?(39:54) Michael's Take on AI's Future(45:00) Is IRL Being Affected by AI?(47:55) Michael's Latest Venture: Bluebell(1:02:08) Building With Your Spouse
Our notes from this episode with Michael
1. Virality gets people in, engagement keeps them.
Bebo stalled after launch despite a working social graph. A single “how well do you know me” quiz, which required non-members to create an account to see their results, fixed that and pushed growth to hundreds of thousands of users a day.
2. ‘‘We killed virality on purpose outside English-speaking markets.’’
Bebo blocked non-English IP addresses from viral features so it wouldn’t blow up in markets he couldn’t support, staying deliberately focused on the UK, US, and other English-language countries.
3. A password scraper added 40 million users a year.
Michael built a tool that logged into people’s Hotmail and Yahoo using their own passwords, pulled their address books, and mass-invited every contact. One overnight run alone added 100,000 members.
4. The $850M sale.
Although a life changing amount of money to retire on, Michael never actually met anyone from AOL until the sale was officially closed.
5. The day the sale closed, he was unemployed.
Michael and his wife were the only two people at the company not offered a job when AOL took over, despite three and a half years of building it together.
6. He thinks the technical moat he’s built his career on is gone by next year.
He hasn’t written a line of code since January 1st, building his new app Bluebell entirely by directing AI, and expects deep technical understanding to stop mattering for shipping real products within the year.
Links
Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsyth
Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/mickbirch
Sign-up to Michael’s Newsletter - The Long Way Back to Friends:
Sign-up to Bluebell - Michael’s latest venture: https://bluebell.social
About BluebellBluebell is the social and messaging app Michael and Xochi Birch built as Bebo’s successor. It fuses DMs, group chats, and a feed into shared spaces called “pods,” with no public timeline, no follower count, and no feed of strangers to perform for.
Previous episodes include
See all previous episodes here 👉
If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.



Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.
Will GPUs become a new asset class? Our latest podcast guest may have some answers.
Stephen Balaban, co-founder and CTO of Lambda, joins us to explain why a $40,000 monthly AWS bill was the best thing that ever happened to the company in its early days, why he recently handed over the CEO title after fourteen years at the helm, and what is really going on in the GPU market, and whether we should be concerned or excited about the opportunity.
About LambdaLambda, branded “The Superintelligence Cloud,” is an AI infrastructure company founded in 2012 that builds and operates gigawatt-scale AI factories and GPU supercomputers for training and inference, serving AI researchers, enterprises, and hyperscalers.
Watch now - Stephen Balaban, co-founder at Lambda
During our latest episode, we also learn how Lambda pivoted from a facial-recognition startup, to a data-collection hardware product called Lambda Hat, to an AI consulting shop nobody would fund, to the largest generator of Deep Dream images on the internet, before finally landing on an opportunity that very few saw coming: GPU cloud businesses.
We also explore an interesting trend and opportunity: could GPUs become a new institutional asset class? We also discuss the lessons Lambda learned from partnering with one of the world’s most talked-about companies: Nvidia.
Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇
Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Stephen Balaban(2:13) The State of GPUs(4:40) 2026: Is This the Breakthrough Year?(6:27) Starting Lambda in 2012(11:14) Spotting the GPU Opportunity(16:42) How Stephen Stays Focused(18:47) Starting a Company with Your Brother(21:44) Stepping Down as CEO(27:52) How to Find a New CEO(29:34) Not Raising from Traditional VCs(31:30) Where Does the GPU Opportunity Go Next?(34:35) GPUs Becoming an Asset Class(36:15) What Keeps Stephen Up at Night(39:33) How Many AI Models Will There Be?(41:15) Partnering with Jensen Huang(46:21) How Technology Has Changed
Our notes from this conversation
1. Pivoting isn’t a failure mode for Lambda, it’s the operating model.Since 2012 the company has run through roughly half a dozen pivots: facial recognition software, an AR data-collection hardware product called Lambda Hat, a failed “Accenture for AI” consulting play no VC would fund, and Dreamscope, an app that became the largest generator of Deep Dream images on the internet before the fad died. Stephen’s rule: try something, if it works keep doing it, if it doesn’t move on.
2. An expensive AWS bill accidentally invented the company’s real business.At the peak of the Deep Dream craze, Lambda was paying $40,000 a month to Amazon, nearly enough to sink it. An early investor pushed the team to build their own servers instead. The $60,000 CapEx bet to build workstations wiped out that $40,000 monthly OpEx completely. Workstation sales went from $35,000 in March to $140,000 in May, on the way to $3 million in revenue that first year. The GPU cloud business was the byproduct of a cash crunch, not the plan.
3. GPUs are becoming an asset class, not a depreciating expense.Short sellers have argued GPUs carry a three-year usable life. Lambda’s counterevidence: V100s launched in 2017 are still nearly fully sold out in its cloud today, generating cash flow almost a decade later. Balaban’s comparison is insurance companies parking their float in power plants and toll roads, stable infrastructure that institutional and eventually retail capital moves toward as a category matures.
4. Starting a company with your brother for moral support.As a solo founder, your mood on any given day is the company’s mood that day. A co-founder averages two signals instead of riding one. Stephen credits this as much as anything for surviving Lambda’s early years, run out of a small Chinatown apartment with his brother and co-founder, Michael.
5. The requirement to study computer science to build software is gone.The clearest signal: anyone can now ship real tools built with Claude, people he describes as "meant to be programmers" who majored in something else. The real gate was never a CS credential, it was structured thinking, and that gate is now open to anyone.
Links
Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsythFollow Stephen on X: https://x.com/stephenbalabanVisit Lambda: https://lambda.ai
Previous episodes include
See all previous episodes here 👉
If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.



Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.
Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why he renamed a 16-year-old company mid-flight instead of just adding a new label on top, why he built his own board by ranking every past boss he’s ever had instead of chasing famous names, and why the real threat to a legacy SaaS category isn’t a faster competitor but the coordination problem AI agents are about to make bigger, not smaller.
About Superhuman
Superhuman is an AI-native productivity suite built from products including, Grammarly, Superhuman Mail (formerly called Superhuman), Superhuman Docs (formerly Coda), and Superhuman Go, serving over 40 million people and 50,000 organizations worldwide.
During this episode, we also hear the four myths of bundling Shishir learned after his time running YouTube’s failed paid products, why marginal churn contribution, not usage, is the real basis for how bundlers split revenue, and how that same framework now governs how he prices and packages Superhuman’s four products. We get into why he treats a rebrand as a “do no harm” exercise for the existing brand first, the DACI-based ritual (Driver, Approver, Contributor, and Informed) his company uses to kill ad hoc meetings entirely, and why he thinks the SaaS apocalypse thesis has the coordination math backwards.
We close on his “Jeopardy style” critique of most board meetings, why he’d rather ask a departing CEO to shadow him for a week than assume he already knows what’s unique about how he runs his own, and how a decade of hitting inbox zero taught him that the goal was never to answer faster, it was to never touch the same email twice.
Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇
Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Shishir Mehrotra(1:50) The Naming Process for Superhuman(9:45) How Rahul (the original founder of Superhuman) and Shishir Met(11:28) Launching and Building Coda in 2014(14:42) Lessons from Reid Hoffman(17:51) Picking the Right Investors as Partners(19:49) What Is Bad Capital?(21:42) The Art of Bundling Products(31:38) The SaaS Apocalypse(37:50) What’s Missing from Superhuman’s Bundle(42:40) Getting to Inbox Zero(50:15) A Week with Shishir(54:50) How to Build a Board(1:00:30) Dream Board Member
Our notes from this conversation
1. Bundles aren’t priced by usage, they’re priced by churn risk.
ESPN and History Channel got nearly identical viewing hours on cable, yet ESPN was paid ~20x more. Shishir’s term for the real driver: marginal churn contribution, how many subscribers would cancel if you pulled that one product. That’s what bundlers were actually pricing, even without a name for it.
2. Renaming a 16-year-old company isn’t mechanical, it’s telling 1,500 people their login just changed.
Google’s rebrand to Alphabet was additive; almost nothing changed for employees. Superhuman was different, a name change, not an addition, so every login and website had to move. Decision to roll out: ~4 months.
3. Pick a board member the way you’d pick a boss.
Shishir and his co-founder listed every past boss they’d ever had, 12–15 people, and ranked by who got the best work out of them, not who they liked most.
4. AI agents don’t kill SaaS demand, they multiply the coordination problem.
You don’t need a CRM because you have 10 humans selling; you need it to coordinate them. Swap in 100 virtual sellers and that coordination problem gets harder. His take on usage-based pricing: it’s less philosophy, more workaround, nobody knows how to price a “virtual seat” yet.
5. Inbox zero isn’t about answering fast. It’s about never touching an email twice.
Auto-labels sort mail into ~10 “piles”: inbox, recruiting, customers, media, each handled at a different cadence. Borrowing from Intercom’s Des Traynor: your inbox is what others think you should work on, your to-do list is what you think you should work on, your calendar is what you actually work on. The job is making those three match.
6. The best bundles minimize super-fan overlap, not maximize it.
Most founders assume a bundle should serve one audience deeply. Shishir’s thoughts: you want each product pulling in a different audience, Superhuman Mail skews sales/recruiting, Grammarly skews writers and students, so the bundle expands reach instead of just deepening engagement with the same crowd.
7. Casual fans, not super fans, are where bundles create value.
A la carte pricing only captures people who both want a product enough to pay full price and have the energy to go find it, super fans. Bundling unlocks everyone else: people who wouldn’t have sought the product out alone but will use it once it’s already there.
8. Good investors act like long-term teammates. Bad ones act like bankers.
Shishir’s litmus test: how does an investor behave when a company has to make a short-term-costly, long-term-right call? Reference-check by talking to people who worked with them for years, not just a call or two, the pattern only shows up under real pressure.
Links
Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsythFollow Shishir on X: https://x.com/shishirmehrotraDiscover Superhuman: https://superhuman.com

Partners for today’s episode:
Harmonic: Your go-to startup database: https://harmonic.ai
Hostinger: A go-to tool for builders: https://hostinger.com/neweconomiesUse code NEWECONOMIES for 10% off.
Previous episodes include
See all previous episodes here 👉
If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.


Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.
Saul Klein, co-founder and Managing Partner of Phoenix Court, joins the podcast to make the case that the UK is quietly the third biggest innovation economy in the world after the US and China, why capital has become a commodity, and what real venture value-add looks like when every fund says “we have money.”
Saul also walks through building LoveFilm as a scrappy answer to Netflix, joining Skype during its 400,000-users-a-day growth spurt, and how he things about venture stewardship.
About Phoenix CourtPhoenix Court is the London-based home of LocalGlobe, Latitude, and Solar, backing entrepreneurs building global businesses from pre-seed through scale-up. Founded in 2015 by Saul and Robin Klein, the firm has helped back over 700 companies that have grown from seed to $100 million-plus in revenue, and LocalGlobe ranks as EMEA’s number one seed fund.
Watch Now: Saul Klein — Co-founder at Phoenix Court
Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇

Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Saul Klein(2:21) Starting LoveFilm(8:48) LoveFilm's Route to Market(11:10) Building Skype(17:30) Skype's Early Network Effects(19:29) Is Europe Still a Great Place to Build?(24:10) Which Are the Best Regions to Start?(31:10) Hardest Challenges in Scaling in Europe(35:26) How Should Founders Select Investors?(43:47) VC Stewardship & Shared Ownership(52:36) What Would Saul Build Tomorrow?
Our notes from this conversation
* Capital is a commodity. Access to a contract is not.
With 20,000 VCs in the world, “we have money” isn’t a value proposition, it’s the line every fund uses. Saul’s actual differentiator: nondilutive revenue, a real purchase order or contract, then access to the right talent, then capital formation most founders don’t know exists. His analogy: 20,000 barber shops all shouting “I cut hair” until someone breaks the pattern.
* Netflix’s real innovation wasn’t DVDs by mail. It was demand data.
LoveFilm’s (the company Saul founded) edge wasn’t logistics, it was the queue: people ranked 20-50 titles, giving the business live demand data that became leverage with studios. The company hit $100M+ revenue growing 30-40% a year, largely by powering DVD rental for Tesco, ITV, Odeon and MSN.
* Skype grew 400,000 users a day, and Saul couldn’t spend a marketing budget.
Product-driven virality was adding users faster than paid acquisition could. In 12-18 months the team went from ~20-30 people to 500, and Skype’s revenue went from zero to $200 million.
* Blindly chasing the US as market #2 is what Saul calls a catastrophic error.
Most investors are “sheep,” and following them west assumes the US is one easy market, it’s actually fifty fragmented jurisdictions and usually the toughest “red ocean” to enter second. Zoopla, a strong #2 to Rightmove in a market worth hundreds of millions, is his proof a well-chosen home market often beats the US by default.
* Phoenix Court’s & venture stewardship.
Structured as a company, not an LLP, since year one, a rarity among ~20,000 global funds - Phoenix Court has always shared profit and carry with every employee, not just partners.
Links
Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsyth Follow Saul on X: https://x.com/cape Phoenix Court: https://www.phoenixcourt.vc
Our partner for today’s episode is Harmonic - the go-to startup database: https://harmonic.ai
Previous episodes include
See all previous episodes here 👉
If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.


Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe