My conversation with @dougleone, partner at @sequoia.
0:00 How to Dominate for Decades
3:17 Turning Fear Into a Tailwind
5:40 Immigrant Drive, Hard Work & the Beach Club
12:19 Simplifying Life & Choosing Discomfort
14:37 The Homeless Sequoia Partner With No Plan B
16:49 Stepping Down, Coming Back & Starting Over
20:04 Why AI Is Different From Every Previous Technology Shift
22:13 Doug's Three Investment Heuristics
23:52 The Cost of Selling Great Companies Too Early
25:39 Helping Founders Turn Products Into Businesses
28:28 David Vélez, Nubank & the Psychology of Founder Support
32:25 Why Founders Must Remain the Soul of the Company
36:13 Torturing Yourself Into Greatness
39:57 Don Valentine, Succession & the Sequoia School of Hard Knocks
44:28 Staying Grounded & Developing a Sniffer for People
47:46 Hypercompetitive With a Heart of Gold
50:13 Fred Luddy, Israeli Founders & Radical Directness
52:28 Trust Is the Accelerant of Business
59:57 Starting From Zero & Hunting for the Next Great Founder
1:05:59 Architect Your Board Like Your Product
1:10:24 Truth, Disagreement & the Art of Difficult Feedback
1:13:43 Humanity, Introversion & the Value of Relationships
1:18:18 What Doug Learned From Michael Moritz
Includes paid partnerships.
Introducing Starbase, Louisiana – a high-cadence launch site that will enable Starship to open a pathway to the stars for humanity.
Thank you to @LAGovJeffLandry and the great people of Louisiana for all of their support as we work together on this audacious project → https://t.co/zGKVOGSxfW
We posted our second quarter 2026 financial and operational results → https://t.co/YCRzq6gSV3
Q2 highlights:
- Demonstrated the power of extreme vertical integration, delivering revenue growth of 92% year-over-year across Space, Connectivity, and AI
- Completed two successful Starship V3 flight tests in the past 90 days, advancing towards full and rapid reusability
- Closed multiple industry-leading Cloud Services Agreements resulting in $14.1 billion of contracted sales
- Announced agreement to acquire Cursor for $60 billion to accelerate the AI enterprise opportunity
- Released our most powerful AI model yet with Grok 4.5 in July
- Delivered 66% revenue and 79% income from operations growth year-over-year for the Connectivity segment, driven by a doubling of Starlink Subscribers and continued momentum in Enterprise & Government
- Awarded over $6 billion in multi-year U.S. government contracts for Starshield
As compared to the same quarter last year:
- Revenues of $7.8 billion, up 92% from $4.1 billion
- Net loss of $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from net loss of $1.0 billion
- Adjusted EBITDA of $3.5 billion, up 191% from $1.2 billion
Thank you to the SpaceX team, and all our customers and investors for a great quarter!
Set is ready @ElonMusk
We built it 25min from downtown Austin and can shoot anytime in the next 7 days on 1h notice.
Humanity is on the verge of becoming a multi-planet species and spacefaring civilization.
My goal with this interview is to help people viscerally feel what that future is going to look like and get everyone excited to help build it.