For Episode 100, we have a special conversation with Elad Gil, one of Silicon Valley's great thinkers, builders, and investors. Elad has been involved with many of the leading technology companies of the past 20 years — and likely the next 20 years. Learn how he's backed dozens of unicorns, why he thinks AI is underhyped, and where he sees investment opportunities amid this new wave of disruption. An early leader at Google, Elad helped build the initial mobile team, before founding MixerLabs, which was acquired by Twitter in 2009. Elad stayed on as VP of Corporate Strategy and became a key "fixer" during Twitter's hypergrowth phase. Later, he co-founded Color Health, a genetic testing company specializing in cancer detection. Over the past decade, he's backed nearly 40 unicorns, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Figma, Instacart, and Stripe. He's also invested in Harvey, Mistral, Perplexity, Pika, and other leading AI startups. In this episode, Elad takes us behind the scenes of the early days of Google and Twitter, and how Silicon Valley culture has evolved. He explains his three categories of exceptional founders and how he positioned himself to become one of the top angel investors. We also dive deep into AI, from the trajectory of LLMs to frameworks for investing in the AI value stack. Finally, we discuss AI's impact on education and the most exciting possibilities for the decade ahead. 00:00 Episode intro 01:16 Building Google’s mobile team 06:01 Early days at Twitter 11:37 Building Color Health 15:57 How he’s backed dozens of unicorns 21:52 How small clusters of talent change the world 25:20 Where are the young people in government? 27:25 Where are the young startup founders? 30:17 Why AI is underhyped 36:40 Will LLMs get exponentially better? 39:10 Investing in the AI value stack 41:33 AI and the future of education This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.joelonsdale.com
