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Billions: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Guillaume Moubeche
After building my company to a $150M valuation in 4 years, I had one question left: How do you build a billion-dollar one?I’m Guillaume Moubeche, and I’m taking you inside the room with the world’s most iconic builders to find the answer.BILLIONS isn’t another startup podcast. It’s a deep dive into the power games, hidden deals, and mental models that built empires.Each episode reveals what usually gets cut out of the edit:• The real numbers behind secondary deals, valuations, and exits.• The liquidity games most VCs don’t want you to understand.• The psychological warfare of scaling to a billion.• The truths that break founders - and the ones that make them unstoppable.45 minutes of pure signal. No PR. No polish. No bullshit.
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- 1 weeks ago50 min
From 100 sales meetings a week to $600M ARR - Carles Reina [ElevenLabs]
Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Carles Reina, the first investor and fourth employee at ElevenLabs, to unpack the AI bubble, the rise of Chinese models, and Europe's fight to stay in the race.Carles helped build ElevenLabs' go-to-market engine on the road to over $600 million in annual recurring revenue. As the founder of Baobab Ventures, he also sees the other side of the boom: the funding rounds that may be getting ahead of reality.Before the scale came 80 to 100 sales meetings a week, a Google Sheets CRM, and months of testing who would actually pay. Then came a sales model most teams would question: quotas set at 20 times base salary, uncapped commissions, and average quota attainment of around 167%.But this conversation goes beyond the ElevenLabs growth story. We debate the commercial barriers Carles sees around Chinese AI models, why he believes Europe is not investing seriously enough in AI infrastructure, and what it takes to build a global company from day one.He also explains why extraordinary growth and an AI bubble can exist at the same time - and why he expects some aggressively valued startups to face a funding reality check within six to nine months of this conversation.In this masterclass, we break down:The 100-Meeting Week: How Carles tested his way from creator demand to a repeatable sales motion, then hired reps who started closing deals within weeks.The 20x Quota Rule: Why ElevenLabs set targets at 20 times base salary, rewarded overperformance with commission accelerators, and adjusted expectations when markets proved tougher.Permission to Fail: Why Carles encouraged experiments with company money - and only needed one idea out of 100 to unlock the next stage of growth.The AI Adoption Gap: Why strong Chinese models do not automatically translate into easy enterprise adoption, and why Europe needs more than technical talent to compete.The Operator-Investor Playbook: Why Carles kept Baobab small despite $23M in commitments, and why he wants to return capital to investors along the way.The Valuation Reality Check: How real AI demand can coexist with overheated funding rounds, and why a high valuation can become a liability at the next raiseGlobal from Day One: Why Carles challenges the one-market-at-a-time playbook, pushes founders to hire go-to-market talent early, and wants investors to do more than write checks.TIMELINE00:00 - Intro - from first investor to fourth employee at ElevenLabs03:25 - 80-100 sales meetings a week: finding what actually sells06:46 - Hiring "icebreakers" vs. scaling the sales team09:36 - Selling the future: from developers to enterprise12:25 - Building a sales team that experiments with AI17:05 - The 20x quota rule, uncapped commissions & 167% attainment21:46 - The incentive mistake that held back enterprise sales24:13 - Chinese AI models: great technology, harder enterprise adoption34:01 - Europe's AI infrastructure problem34:38 - Hugging Face, Nvidia & the European funding gap37:37 - Building Baobab Ventures: fundraising and early results43:37 - AI bubble or real growth? The next funding reality check47:53 - Three lessons for founders building globallySUBSCRIBE👇https://www.youtube.com/c/GuillaumeMoubeche?sub_confirmation=1 Join the lemlist family 🚀 https://community.lemlistfamily.com/join?invitation_token=9db20d2c4707b75ebb065462261c4665a3c35a59-aad63a7f-90a5-452e-a628-4ccbcbaa84caFollow mehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/-g-/https://twitter.com/GuillaumeMbhhttps://www.tiktok.com/@guillaumemoubechehttps://www.instagram.com/guillaume_moubeche/Learn how to book meetings with 30%+ of your prospects (for free): https://www.lemlistfamily.com/multichannel-masterclass?mtm_campaign=5008&mtm_source=organic&mtm_medium=youtube
- Jul 9, 202634 min
Why the "SaaS is dead" narrative is completely wrong - Aaron Levie [box]
Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Aaron Levie, the co-founder and CEO of Box, who has rapidly transitioned his enterprise platform from a pure SaaS model into a cutting-edge playground for autonomous AI agents.Aaron has a masterclass view of the data infrastructure that legacy tech giants wish they controlled. In this conversation, we pull back the curtain on the high-stakes battle for sovereign AI. We unpack the real fallout of the U.S. government's unprecedented export controls on Anthropic's frontier models, why data platforms like Snowflake are posting blockbuster quarters amidst the AI boom, and how specialized tools like Cursor show that the future of intelligence is multifaceted, not winner-take-all.If you want to understand where the real economic value of applied AI resides over the next decade, this is the blueprint.In this masterclass, we break down:The Export-Control Precedent: Inside the unprecedented restriction of Anthropic's frontier model from non-US users and why Aaron calls it a brand-new moment in AI regulation.The Safety-Rhetoric Boomerang: How AI safety messaging scared the government into a model-approval pipeline — and why some safety advocates may quietly prefer that outcome.China's $50B Scenario: Why Aaron believes China can simply throw $50B at compute to stay in the race and why France, Japan, the UK, and Germany may be forced to build their own sovereign models.The Multifaceted Intelligence Future: Why the AI market won't be "winner-take-all," and how Cursor's applied-layer harness (routing tasks across cheap and premium models) became the template.Building for Machine Users: How Box adapted its file system MCP server, CLI, Markdown editing, HTML compatibility so agents and people work off the same data.Why More Agents Make SaaS More Valuable: Why deploying 100x more agents than employees increases the value of the underlying CRM, ERP, and content systems instead of killing them.The CS-Grad Dislocation: A grounded look at the shifting job market away from Big Tech layoffs and into AI startups and industries like life sciences and manufacturing.TIMELINE : 00:00 – Turning Box from SaaS into an AI agent platform03:00 – Sovereign AI: why countries will build their own models05:51 – Can open and Chinese models catch up to the frontier?08:51 – The chip embargo debate and Jensen Huang's argument14:09 – AI safety, regulation, and government model approval18:29 – Why AI won't be winner-take-all (the Cursor case study)21:33 – How Box built a file system for AI agents27:17 – Is SaaS dead? Why agents make software more valuable30:48 – Will AI replace jobs? The truth about CS grads
- Jul 2, 202652 min
Why focus on only ONE product built a $1B super-brand (on just $6,000) - Pete Maldonado [Chomps]
Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Pete Maldonado, the visionary who took $6,000, one failed food venture behind him, and zero institutional backing and built a dominant food empire that's approaching $1 billion in revenue this year.Pete and his co-founder Rashid bet everything on a category the entire industry assumed was dead: the gas-station meat stick. For nearly ten years they bootstrapped taking less than $1M in primary capital prioritizing extreme operational focus and deleting complexity at every corner. They stayed so maniacally disciplined that they only ever scaled one product format : meat sticksusing just 12 core recipes to capture market share from corporate giants.But extreme efficiency comes with massive friction. Pete opens up about the devastating reality of underestimating their explosive demand curve, which cost them 9 figures in lost revenue last year alone, the inside story of surviving an overnight COVID collapse with Trader Joe's, and why he chose to step down as CEO to hand over the keys to his co-founder.In this masterclass, we break down:The $6,000 Side Hustle Genesis: How a personal trainer used early Shopify tools and a $99 Photoshop Elements subscription to design a world-class brand from his desk.The Rule of Deleting Complexity: Why going deep on a single SKU beats going wide, and how relentless simplicity early on became the reason they could scale at all.The 9-Figure Forecasting Nightmare: The brutal operational pain of undershooting cultural shifts and cutting massive amounts of purchase orders when demand outpaces supply.The Over-the-Register Museum Trap: How an unexpected plexiglass policy at Trader Joe's wiped out retail sales overnight during COVID—and the pivot that saved the team from layoffs.The Hidden Weight of Personal Guarantees: Moving past bank-debt structures that put family homes on the line to engineer a 100% secondary private equity deal with Stride Consumer Partners.Stepping Down at the Peak: Pete's candid psychological transition from active day-to-day CEO to hands-off Chairman to protect his family time and scale the company further.TIMELINE : 00:00 – Building Chomps on $6,000: a $6,000 food brand from nothing09:46 – Brand awareness vs. distribution: never hit a shelf before the customer knows you11:53 – Riding the diet tribes: CrossFit, Paleo, Whole30, Keto, and now GLP-119:13 – The 2016 Trader Joe's inbound: staying methodical and rejecting advisor pressure to over-expand28:05 – Forecasting demand and surviving COVID33:31 – The plexiglass "museum": surviving canceled COVID orders with zero layoffs37:17 – Personal guarantees & the 100% secondary raise: de-risking the families40:46 – Casting a wider net: breaking the bottom-of-funnel ROAS trap to unlock top-of-funnel scale46:15 – Stepping down: from CEO to ChairmanREFERENCESRashid Ali Noah Kagan Tim Ferriss Liz Carter The Million Dollar Weekend Nutrisystem Jenny CraigTrader Joe'sWhole FoodsSproutsThrive MarketJack Link'sSlim JimStride Consumer PartnersShopifyWordPressAmazon Whole30 Approved CrossFit Paleo Keto <
- Jun 25, 202647 min
The man who built a bank for people banks don't want - Jason Wilk [Dave]
On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Jason Wilk, four-time founder and CEO of Dave, the neobank built to take on the predatory overdraft fees that quietly bleed billions a year from the Americans who can least afford them.Jason's story is one of the wildest comebacks in fintech. After going public via SPAC in January 2022, Dave hit a $5 billion valuation, then the macro turned.Rates spiked, growth capital dried up, and within nine months the stock had collapsed 98%, dragging the company's market cap down to roughly $50 million, less than the cash sitting on its own balance sheet.Most teams would have panicked, slashed headcount, or sold cheap. Jason did the opposite: he froze hiring, refused layoffs, killed every non-core product, and put the entire company behind one number, unit economics. Today Dave is back to a nearly $4 billion market cap, with 2026 guidance of over $700M in revenue and over $300M in EBITDA, a ~$400M earnings swing in just a few years.In this masterclass, we break down:The $75 microloan bet : how Dave used cash-flow data instead of FICO to underwrite the smallest loan in the country, importing a model that worked in India and Africa but no one had cracked in the US.120 meetings for a Series A : why traditional VCs had never even heard of overdraft fees, and what it took to finally get the check.Surviving a 98% wipeout : the operational playbook Jason ran when growth capital ground to a halt and raising more was off the table.Making millionaires at the bottom : how a Performance Stock Unit structure turned the crash into the biggest wealth-creation event in the company's history."VC money is just very high-APR debt" : why Jason wishes he'd taken his $10M Series A as venture debt and kept the equity.Eating other people's margin : Dave's new credit card and multi-product roadmap, aimed at the $100B+ a year Americans pay in credit card APRs and late fees.TIMELINE :00:00 – Why he declared war on the $34 overdraft fee01:55 – The $75 microloan that ignores your credit score04:26 – 120 investor meetings to close the Series A09:48 – Going public via SPAC at a $5B valuation11:15 – How the stock crashed 98% in 9 months16:19 – Making employees millionaires at rock bottom19:38 – From burning $100M to $300M in EBITDA23:17 – Why VC money is worse than a loan shark27:00 – The new credit card attacking a $100B market43:29 – Running a $4B company with 300 peopleREFERENCES :Jason WilkSV Angel Ron ConwayPaul GrahamGoBuyside / « Gocleff » Dave PlaidAcorns BankSimple Norwest Venture Partners Tiger Global Y Combinator
- Jun 18, 202658 min
Why the world’s biggest tech companies may never IPO again - Peter Singlehurst [Baillie Gifford]
On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Peter Singlehurst, who built the private companies team from scratch at legendary investment firm Baillie Gifford, deploying billions into more than 100 of the most important private companies on the planet.Peter operates on a timeline that makes typical venture capitalists look shortsighted. From backing Tesla in 2013 at a $3B market cap to entering SpaceX at a $30B valuation, his strategy completely bypasses the short-term noise of quarterly earnings.In this masterclass, he breaks down why optimizing for the highest possible price at an IPO is a lethal mistake, the massive arbitrage hidden within the world's most misunderstood tech giant (ByteDance), and the raw post-mortem of their highest-profile mistake: Northvolt.We break down:The Philosophy Swerve: How a philosophy graduate skipped a PhD to build a multi-billion dollar growth engine and why Baillie Gifford deliberately hires people with no finance background.The Death of the IPO Monopoly: Why the world's most valuable hyper-growth companies no longer need public exchanges to unlock liquidity.Debt Kills, Dilution Doesn't: Peter's contrarian warning to scaling founders on why leverage is a ticking time bomb for pre-profitable businesses.The ByteDance Arbitrage: The inside story of buying shares at ~4x free cash flow while Western investors ran away.The Northvolt Post-Mortem: A transparent breakdown of their highest-profile mistake and how to spot a venture-stage asset masquerading as a growth-stage giant.Disrupting the 2-and-20 Norm: How Baillie Gifford structures an ultra-LP-friendly 1-and-10 fee model charged on invested capital, not committed capital.TIMELINE : 00:00 – "You get the shareholders you deserve": the long-term underwriting mindset00:53 – From philosophy to growth equity: why Baillie Gifford avoids finance backgrounds05:44 – Entry mechanics: Tesla's $3B public entry vs SpaceX's $30B private scale08:23 – The leverage trap: why a little dilution never killed a business, but debt does13:50 – Democratizing elite assets: how the Schiehallion Fund opens up Stripe, SpaceX & Databricks to everyday savers23:15 – Designing the ideal IPO: why chasing the highest possible price destroys public-market trust30:07 – The founder risk matrix: Bezos' 1997 shareholder letter & Musk's "bet the house" blueprint35:30 – The ByteDance arbitrage: buying shares at ~4x free cash flow52:47 – Flipping the venture fee model: the LP-friendly 1-and-10 on invested capital56:09 – The Northvolt post-mortem: growth equity risk vs venture equity riskREFERENCESElon Musk Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos’s letter to his shareholders in 1997Warren Buffett Larry AshbrookHendrick Borginon Baillie Gifford Tesla SpaceX ByteDance Amazon Alibaba Anduril Bending SpoonsAirbnbSpotify <a href="https://stripe.com/"
- Jun 12, 202658 min
Why high valuations are secretly killing tech unicorns — Martino Cadoni [Deepl]
On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with elite finance operator Martino Cadoni, current CFO of DeepL (one of Europe's leading AI companies) and the veteran strategist behind one of Central Europe's biggest banking IPOs.Martino cut his teeth in corporate America's legendary "CFO factory" the grueling General Electric leadership program, working relentless 996 schedules to solve high-stakes financial fires across the globe. From being flown to Budapest on a day's notice to re-evaluate multi-million dollar reserves in two weeks during a currency crisis, to managing capital and balance-sheet strategy as deputy CFO at HSBC, Martino knows exactly what it takes to build institutional readiness.In this masterclass, he pulls back the curtain on private vs. public markets, exposing the lethal structural mistakes tech unicorns make during down rounds and explaining exactly how legacy banking giants accidentally funded their own demise.In this masterclass, we break down:The GE CFO Factory: Inside the intense 996 operational rotation program that builds high-agency, first-principles problem solvers.The "Zombie Corn" Trap: Why raising capital at massive valuations with high preferred share thresholds completely paralyzes tech startups when the market turns.The Balance Sheet Obsession: Why optimizing accounts payable, invoice due dates, and basic payment timing yields instant cash flow wins that most tech companies completely step over.The AI Billing Paradigm Shift: Navigating the massive industry uncertainty around revenue models—from traditional per-seat subscriptions to usage and outcome-based billing.How Traditional Banking Lost: Why legacy financial institutions wasted billions on stock buybacks and short-term dividends instead of innovating, allowing Revolut and Nubank to ruthlessly strip away their market share.TIMELINE : 00:00 – Finance as an Accelerator: The core value-creation thesis + who Martino is (from a $749M banking IPO to DeepL).01:26 – The GE "CFO Factory": Rotations, the 996 schedule, the Budapest currency emergency, and the Toyota/agile principles behind high-agency finance.10:34 – The Balance Sheet Obsession: Why tech over-indexes on the P&L, and the easy cash wins in accounts payable, invoice timing, and FX.17:48 – Public Markets, SOX & the Cost of Capital: Building precise guidance, how interest-rate cycles dictate fintech lending, and Revolut's revenue diversification.27:49 – The "Zombie Corn" Trap: How high preferred-share thresholds freeze startups when the market turns and the common-share advantage.35:12 – Down Rounds & Cap Table Management: Pitching fresh investors a path to upside, and why a concentrated cap table lets you manage LPs one-on-one.41:26 – Why DeepL & the AI Billing Shift: Joining Europe's AI race, and the industry struggle to move from per-seat to usage and outcome-based pricing.50:13 – Defensibility & the Short-Term Trap: Avoiding FOMO, building embedded moats, and how legacy banks burned billions on buybacks while Revolut and Nubank ate their lunch.REFERENCESThierry PietonKazuma ShipchandlerJohn Elkann Jarek KutylowskiMatt Cohler Danny RimerGeneral Electric (GE) Converteam Moneta Money BankKlarna DeepL Revolut BenchmarkIndex VenturesIVPIconicB2VentureGICATomicoOntario Teachers' Pension Plan
- Jun 4, 202653 min
How a $75 sneaker bot became a $300M/Month financial engine - Steven Schwartz [Whop]
Is traditional international banking officially obsolete?On this episode of BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Steven Schwartz, co-founder of Whop, the internet marketplace that is quietly constructing a brand-new financial infrastructure for global creators.What started as a simple $75 sneaker bot sold in Facebook groups has exploded into a massive global network. Today, Whop is a powerhouse where nearly 40,000 people earn over $300 million every single month, and the platform processes nearly $1 million daily in physical product sales alone.Steven breaks down how they partnered with stablecoin giant Tether to unlock open financial networks for unbanked regions across the globe, why they are deliberately driving traditional credit card processing fees to zero, and why 70% of his entire corporate team consists of former founders.In this masterclass, we break down:The Facebook Group Bootstrapping: How Steven and his co-founder Cameron built an iOS app to flip Yeezys and turned a micro-win into an addiction.The Core Pivot: Moving from niche downloadable software keys to hosting full community ecosystems with integrated chat rooms and video courses.The Midtown Micro-Payments Project: The wild story of building laminated QR code profiles to route Apple Pay and Venmo donations directly to the homeless.Commoditizing the Gatekeepers: Why Whop refuses to profit off standard credit card processing and is actively racing payment margins to zero.The On-Chain Future: How stablecoin rails let an entrepreneur in Nigeria, Thailand, or anywhere without reliable banking infrastructure send and receive money across borders, building a real business without ever needing a legacy bank account.Hiring High Agency: Why Whop acquires companies first and foremost for talent, bringing in former founders who are high-agency, obsessive, and have already built zero-to-one products, rather than chasing headcount.TIMELINE 00:00 – The $75 Sneaker Bot: monitoring Nike's Twitter to auto-buy rare drops03:09 – The Pivot: from niche software keys to courses & private communities05:34 – Payments Philosophy: the homeless QR-code project & racing fees to zero08:34 – The Tether Bet: stablecoins & bypassing legacy banks for the unbanked19:32 – "Powered by Whop": the viral loop & the zero-fee ecosystem23:48 – Acquiring for Talent: why 70% of the team are former founders40:04 – From Alabama Construction to $180K/Month: real-world impact42:38 – "Eating Glass": the perseverance to deliver a global mission
- May 28, 202657 min
Very few growth moats will survive AI - Sandy Diao [Descript]
On this episode of BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Sandy Diao, an elite growth operator who has been remarkably right about major market trends long before the rest of the ecosystem.Sandy helped scale products to 200 million users by leading early growth efforts as employee number 30 at Pinterest. She then joined Descript as their first ghost hire, architecting an automated affiliate model that drove 25% of all new users completely self-service.Her thesis is a warning to every modern SaaS operator: the siloed channel specialist is obsolete. In a world flooded by AI-generated content, traditional acquisition paths are collapsing. The future belongs to full-stack, unified operators who realize that trust is the only channel that compounds.In this masterclass, we break down:The Pinterest Support Trench: How responding to raw customer tickets unlocked the insights to rewrite onboarding and drive massive user activation.Data-Inspired vs. Data-Driven: Why chasing exact precision can paralyze early growth, and why directional insights are the secret to building high-velocity engines.The Descript Affiliate Machine: How to structure automated, self-service loops that scale acquisition without expanding headcount.The Death of Growth Moats: Why traditional software channels are decaying and how to transition to a unified growth framework.Auditing Your Engine: Sandy's precise multi-step diagnostic process for troubleshooting an underperforming distribution strategy.TIMELINE : 00:00 – Why most growth moats won't survive the AI era01:03 – The Support Trench: How customer tickets rewrote Pinterest's onboarding10:00 – Overcoming Team Friction: How to align engineering with rapid growth experiments16:06 – From B2C to B2B: Spotting high-intent institutional signals in consumer data18:17 – Data-Inspired vs. Data-Driven: Why chasing absolute precision kills execution velocity25:09 – The Descript Affiliate Loop: Building a self-service machine that drove 25% of new users38:00 – Retention in the AI Era: Maintaining product durability when switching costs drop41:10 – The Growth Collapse: Why the siloed channel specialist is officially obsolete44:03 – The Growth Audit: Her foundational framework to diagnose an underperforming engine47:02 – Adaptive Moats & Unfair Advantages: Why the permanent distribution moat is deadREFERENCES : Ben Silbermann Evan Sharp Pinterest Descript IndiegogoThe ONE Smart Piano TeachShare Adobe Facebook/Meta Twitter (X) Coca-Cola Burt's BeesStripeGoogle AdsMeta Pixel (ex-Facebook Pixel)Claude ChatGPTGemini Power law outcomes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target=
About Billions
After building my company to a $150M valuation in 4 years, I had one question left: How do you build a billion-dollar one?I’m Guillaume Moubeche, and I’m taking you inside the room with the world’s most iconic builders to find the answer.BILLIONS isn’t another startup podcast. It’s a deep dive into the power games, hidden deals, and mental models that built empires.Each episode reveals what usually gets cut out of the edit:• The real numbers behind secondary deals, valuations, and exits.• The liquidity games most VCs don’t want you to understand.• The psychological warfare of scaling to a billion.• The truths that break founders - and the ones that make them unstoppable.45 minutes of pure signal. No PR. No polish. No bullshit.
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