Episode Details

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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.

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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

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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 Crucib