81 mins #33 Apr 21, 26 The economics and trends of the restaurant industry, with Tony Xu of DoorDash Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of DoorDash, joins John for a pint to discuss how they won a crowded market by obsessing over retention and the reality of fighting fraud in the physical world. They cover the harsh economics of the restaurant industry, why DoorDash succeeded where Google failed, and the harrowing story of spending 40% of their remaining cash on refunds to save the company’s reputation. Tony introduces Dot, their new autonomous delivery robot, and explains why true autonomy requires solving for the “last two feet” of delivery. Finally, he shares lessons from the early days, including why customer obsession sometimes means baking cookies.Timestamps(00:00:25) Why did DoorDash win?(00:10:50) China(00:17:10) Restaurant trends(00:27:59) Loyalty(00:30:40) Stripe Issuing(00:44:09) Delivery modalities(00:51:11) Fraud(00:58:32) New products(01:13:26) Dot
60 mins #32 Apr 14, 26 The world of voice AI, with Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, the research company making audio accessible across languages and voices. He sits down with John to discuss the "voice Turing Test" and why AI has conquered text but still struggles with conversational speech. They discuss the future of human-computer interaction, including why we still can't get our phones to read a PDF properly and the massive potential for voice agents in everything from farming to healthcare. Mati also opens up about ElevenLabs’ rapid ascent to an $11 billion valuation and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how Ukraine is using their tech for digital government services.Timestamps(00:00:27) How audio models work(00:08:52) ElevenLabs business model(00:17:50) The conversational Turing Test(00:21:01) Link by Stripe(00:26:02) Cascaded vs speech-to-speech(00:31:53) Universal translation(00:51:41) Designing an AI-native org
69 mins #31 Apr 07, 26 The history and future of AI at Google, with Sundar Pichai Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google and Alphabet. He sits down with John and Elad Gil to discuss Google’s resurgence in the AI race, managing a massive $180 billion CapEx budget, and why 2026 is the year of the supply crunch. They cover the constraints of memory and power, why he believes the US economy will grow significantly due to AI, and the internal cultural shift back to "Googley" optimism. Sundar also shares details on long-term bets like data centers in space, why he wishes he had funded Waymo even faster, and the small thing inside Google that still ignites his passion for building.Timestamps(00:00:18) The history of Google and AI(00:05:17) Speed and Search(00:12:12) Google’s AI comeback(00:27:03) Stripe network intelligence(00:27:53) Bottlenecks(00:41:25) Capital allocation(01:00:44) How Google works
57 mins #30 Mar 31, 26 Compliance at scale and why TAM is a distraction with Christina Cacioppo of Vanta Christina Cacioppo, founder and CEO of Vanta, joins the pub to discuss building the future of agentic trust. She explains why compliance has a “vitamin vs painkiller” dynamic, the drama behind their famous 101-billboard campaign, and why she believes "market sizing is bullshit." They cover the tension between vibe coding and rigorous security, how Vanta is using agents to generate UI, and why the best founders are relentless truth-seekers.Timestamps(00:00:17) Vanta(00:12:30) How compliance works(00:15:06) Breaches(00:23:52) Stripe Tax(00:24:43) AI and compliance(00:44:50) Go-to-market(00:47:22) Lessons from USV
62 mins #29 Mar 24, 26 The 20-year journey to fully autonomous cars with Dmitri Dolgov of Waymo Waymo is now doing nearly 500,000 rides a week across 10 cities. Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov came to the pub to discuss how they moved from scientific research to massive global scaling. He gives a masterclass on the sensor stack (and why you still need Lidar), how they use "Simulation" and "Critic" models to train the AI, and why he believes cars that require human supervision will never naturally evolve into robotaxis. They also cover the new custom-built vehicle that feels like a living room, the economics of ride-hailing in rural Alaska, and the "Russian math nerd" diaspora that seems to run the UK tech scene.Timestamps(00:00:22) Russia(00:02:51) Waymo architecture(00:09:59) Why now?(00:19:46) Driving nuance(00:29:37) Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite(00:30:17) Hardware(00:40:20) Emergent behavior(00:46:36) Scaling(00:57:56) GoogleArticle:EMMA: End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving – Waymo Research: https://waymo.com/research/emma/