David George

GP, Head Growth Fund @a16z | 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 | “The key is not the will to win...everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”-Bob Knight

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

I had a great time chatting with @patrick_oshag on @InvestLikeBest. I've known Patrick since college, and this is the first time we've talked markets and investing at this much depth.

The fundamentals of company building haven’t changed: people, products, and markets matter.

But obviously, private markets have evolved substantially over my career: there are now ~6x more private unicorns than public companies with a $1b+ market cap. And at the end of 2010, just 2 public technology companies were among the top 10 in market cap; today it’s 8 of 10.

AI (alongside software eating everything more generally) is clearly driving a lot of this. But it’s instructive to look at everything from the steam engine, to the early days of Facebook and Google user monetization, to real-time success stories like Databricks, Anduril, OpenAI and Waymo, to get a clear picture of where the opportunities lie.

It was a pleasure to go deep on all this and more!

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

.@DavidGeorge83 leads @a16z Growth, which has backed some of the most successful technology companies including Stripe, SpaceX, Waymo, Databricks, Figma, OpenAI, and Cursor.

This conversation is a detailed look at how David built and runs the growth business. He shares how they win the most competitive deals, the principles behind its culture, and the framework he uses to evaluate companies.

We discuss how a16z is investing across the AI stack -- from model providers to applications -- and why this platform shift creates a real window for startups to displace incumbents.

Throughout the episode, David shares the models that guide his investing: why markets misprice consistent growth, what makes "pull" businesses so powerful, and why he likes to back a certain kind of founder he calls the "technical terminator."

It’s fun to talk with students of the game, and David is certainly one of them. He's spent his career studying great companies, markets, and founders, and you can feel that depth in how clearly he connects patterns across cycles.

Enjoy!

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
6:54 Enterprise AI
10:23 Lessons from Waymo
16:17 Technical Terminators
22:34 The "Glengarry Glen Ross" Rule
31:23 Winning Competitive Deals
42:24 The "Yankees" Mindset
46:13 Decision Making
51:12 Model Busters
53:42 Push vs. Pull Markets
1:10:23 How Startups Beat Incumbents
1:13:38 The Kindest Thing

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@daveclark85 🫡🫡

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@Alex_Danco @MosesSternstein 🙌

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@PeterL4e 🙌

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@vhmth @andrew__reed Awesome. And you did it. ❤️❤️

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@HarryStebbings @ShivdevRao @AbridgeHQ ✊🏻❤️

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@anduriltech is building the arsenal that keeps the United States and its allies out of the fight by preparing for it. 🇺🇸🫡

[Anduril Industries @anduriltech]

https://t.co/7cv1qTPt1v

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@VizierPrime Agree that transition architecture is needed!

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

https://t.co/QXVYrAv6H4

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@kevinweil 💪♥️

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@kirbyman01 @a16z I learned a ton about consumer working with you. We are going to miss you, and hope to be working together for many years!

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@davidu 🫡

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@aarthir ✊✊

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@gabepereyra "Systems that can operate over entire client matters like a team of associates" 💪🏻

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

@buccocapital Over the course of a few years, 10%+ won't be enough if we're right about what's coming. I think it's a reasonable 12-18 mo target though. Agree w @buccocapital that every modern, good company should target path 1 in the near term.

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

https://t.co/quEUSl9tYC

[Sarah Wang @sarahdingwang]

Very few founders have built and scaled a vertically integrated hardware company in the modern era. @RJScaringe is one of them.

At Mind, he’s building the robotics partner @Rivian wanted but couldn’t find.

We believe robotics is just starting to enter its compounding phase. The teams that integrate intelligence, hardware, and deployment into a coherent industrial platform will define the next generation of enduring companies.

Real world deployment is not the final step; it forces clarity in every step, from research to reliability.

Mind is setting out to build that platform. We are incredibly excited to partner with RJ and the entire Mind team.

@DavidGeorge83 @RaghuRaghuram @jamiedsully @espricewright @JacobZietek @appenz

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

Congratulations @wiz_io and @assaf_rappaport! 💪🏻🙏🏻

[Sarah Wang @sarahdingwang]

.@assaf_rappaport, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik are in a league of their own. The way they care for their customers, team, and investors is unparalleled.

(and I still think they’re underrated)

It’s no surprise this team built a platform people genuinely love, even in one of the most skeptical industries in tech. One CISO told us they’d quit if Wiz were removed.

Generational run. And it’s just the beginning as they join @GoogleCloud to combine powerful environmental context, frontier AI research, and multi-cloud DNA to secure AI end to end.

Congrats on this exciting new era. @a16z is honored to have been a part of the last one.

@justin_kahl @zanelackey

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

1.6% of global GDP and counting 💪🏻 @stripe

[Alex Immerman @aleximm]

Happy @Stripe annual letter day!

Stripe is definitely increasing the GDP of the internet:

- In 2025, Stripe businesses generated $1.9T volume, equivalent to ~1.6% of global GDP

- Stripe powers 5m+ businesses, including “all of the top AI companies, many of the largest blue-chip companies (90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average), most of the biggest tech companies (80% of the Nasdaq 100), and a significant fraction of freshly minted startups (25% of all Delaware corporations are now created with Stripe Atlas).”

- The 2025 new customer cohort is by far the “highest performing and fastest moving” Stripe has ever seen, growing around 50% faster than the 2024 cohort. The number of companies reaching $10 million ARR within 3 months of launch was double the 2024 count.

- In 2025, 20% of Atlas startups charged their first customer within 30 days, up from 8% in 2020.

- Businesses that accepted Stripe Capital offers grew 27 percentage points faster over the following year than comparable businesses.

What started as “if you are a startup and you charge customers, you build on Stripe” has increasingly become “if you’re any company of consequence and you charge customers, you build on Stripe.”

And now with this next wave, “if you are an AI company and charge customers, you build on Stripe.”

We @a16z are thrilled to have been their partners since 2010 and even more excited to deepen our partnership in today’s announced tender.

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

Excited to be leading Kavak’s Series F!

In 2017, CEO @carlosjgarciao sent an email to his executive team with the subject line “Let’s hire robots!!!” envisioning a future where Kavak would accomplish 1000x more with automation than humans could do alone.

That’s how canny their team is. Building a profitable used-car marketplace in a developing market is very hard, and Kavak essentially had to build 10 companies in one to make up for missing infrastructure. Today they operate profitably across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the GCC region.

They’ve now rebuilt the company to answer every problem with an AI-first approach. Atoms (vehicle sales) + bits (AI agents) = Kavak is well positioned to be one of the big beneficiaries of the AI revolution.

Proud to be partnering with Kavak in our first large, late-stage investment in the region. @santiago__rdz @GEVS94 @a16z

[a16z @a16z]

There are hard problems, then there’s building a profitable used-car marketplace in a developing market. But the Kavak team has the rare trait of running towards hard problems, and we’re excited to lead their Series F as they continue enabling fair, transparent, and secure auto ownership for millions of people across Latin America and beyond.

When Carlos and the team set out to transform the used-vehicle market in the region, much of the necessary infrastructure just didn’t exist.

So Kavak built it all, essentially starting 10+ companies in one. Ten years later, Kavak now operates profitably across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the GCC region.

That brings us to why we’re making our first large, late-stage investment in the region now. The depth of AI adoption across the company is unlike anything else we’ve seen, and they have rearchitected themselves to be AI-native.

Combining atoms (vehicle sales) with bits (AI agents), Kavak is well positioned to be one of the big beneficiaries of the AI revolution.

By @DavidGeorge83, @santiago__rdz, and @GEVS94

@carlosjgarciao

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

ARR per FTE is a measure we're looking at more and more for AI companies. The very best AI companies are seeing $500k+ ARR/FTE, a bump from what we historically saw for SaaS businesses, as immense demand for AI products drives efficiency. @a16z

[a16z @a16z]

Product cycles run 10-15 years—and AI's cycle is still just beginning.

In this conversation with a16z's David George and Jen Kha on the state of markets, they cover:

- Why December 2024 was the inflection point for coding
- Why "there are no dark GPUs"
- How AI revenue is growing faster than 100% year-over-year
- Why OpenAI and Anthropic added nearly half the revenue of the entire public software industry in one year

...and more.

00:00 Introduction
02:25 2025 revenue data: 693% growth and why unicorns are real
04:25 Why AI companies outgrow SaaS while spending less
07:15 Adapt or die: Coding tools, org design, and electricity vs. blood
13:09 ARR per employee and what's behind the efficiency numbers
21:42 What Fortune 500 CEOs say vs. what's actually happening
28:24 CapEx, debt, and the AI infrastructure buildout
41:11 Private markets, power laws, and where value is concentrating

@DavidGeorge83 @jkhamehl