Billions

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with the man who had the hardest sales job in Silicon Valley history: Zack Kass.
Before ChatGPT was a household name, it was just a research lab.
Zack was Head of Go-To-Market. He joined when OpenAI was around a hundred people doing two million in revenue.
His job? Sell human-level intelligence to Fortune 500 executives who didn't even know what a token was.
He built the playbook for Microsoft. For Coca-Cola. He turned a nonprofit lab into an eighty billion dollar superpower.
Then he walked away.
Zack, thanks a lot for being here!
TIMELINE

00:00:00 - 00:06:34 : Joining OpenAI as the first sales person
00:06:34 - 00:09:47 : The early GPT-3 wrapper ecosystem
00:09:47 - 00:11:03 : Strategy behind ChatGPT's development
00:11:03 - 00:16:45 : The chat interface decision and market response
00:16:45 - 00:21:04 : ChatGPT's explosive growth and company atmosphere
00:21:04 - 00:26:45 : Lessons from viral growth and Microsoft partnership
00:26:45 - 00:30:21 : Scaling challenges and the "bigger boat" moment
00:30:21 - 00:33:44 : Personal burnout and health crisis
00:33:44 - 00:37:29 : AI as humanity's last invention
00:37:29 - 00:45:21 : Technology, inequality, and policy failures
00:45:21 - 00:48:35 : Global AI competition and geopolitics
00:48:35 - 00:50:18 : AI's potential to solve major problems
00:50:18 - 00:54:33 : The next renaissance and education transformation

REFERENCES

- Sam Altman
- Brad Lightcap
- Lukas Biewald
- Chris Van Pelt 
- John Maynard Keynes
- Elon Musk
- Jeff Bezos
- Koch brothers
- "The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential" by Zach Cass
- "Attention Is All You Need" 
- Figure Eight
- Lilt
- Weights & Biases 
- Scale AI 
- Jasper 
- Harvey 
- Bain & Company
- Waymo
- Prenuvo
- DeepSeek
- OpenAI
- RLHF
- CRISPR 
- Jevons paradox
- Jaws

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Antoine Le Nel the guy who spent 7 years scaling Candy Crush into one of the most addictive products ever created... then walked away to go kill traditional banking.
At King, he helped turn a mobile game into a machine that prints billions. When Activision bought them for $5.9 billion, he could've stayed forever.
Instead, he joined Revolut in 2021 — right as most fintech were collapsing. Three years later? $75 billion valuation. $4 billion in revenue. 65 million customers.
His secret? Ignoring everything Silicon Valley preaches about growth.
Antoine, thanks for being here!

TIMELINE :
00:00:00 - 00:01:07 : Scaling Candy Crush to a $5.9 billion exit
00:01:07 - 00:03:38 : How to avoid the "one-hit wonder" trap in gaming
00:03:38 - 00:06:54 : The Facebook hack that reached 70% of global users for free
00:06:54 - 00:10:35 : Activision's acquisition and the reality of pre-ipo stock options
00:10:35 - 00:16:59 : Why Revolut prioritizes unit economics over venture capital hype
00:16:59 - 00:21:00 : Decoding the exponential LTV curve that defies banking logic
00:21:00 - 00:30:13 : Charging for the card: A masterclass in buying user engagement
00:30:13 - 00:46:01 : Killing the middleman: Revolut's secret to autonomous, lean teams
00:46:01 - 00:54:08 : From ROI to F1: Building a generational brand with Audi
00:54:08 - 01:00:53 : The uncomfortable truth about brand value and engineering mindsets
REFERENCES:- ⁠Mark Zuckerberg⁠ 
- Nik Storonsky
- Patrick Collison
- King Digital Entertainment 
- Activision Blizzard 
- Stripe 
- Booking.com 
- Primavera Sound 
- Como football team
- Audi F1
- Drive to Survive
- Revolut Business

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Ross Andrew Paquette, the CEO who broke every Silicon Valley rule: he bought OUT his investors before buidling a 1.7 billion dollar empire. He founded Maropost in 2011, and by 2016, it ranked #7 on the PROFIT 500 as one of Canada's fastest-growing companies.Ross, thanks a lot for being here!

TIMELINE :
00:00:00 - 00:01:12 : From lifestyle business to a $1.7 billion empire
00:01:12 - 00:03:32 : The 75% ebitda secret and why growth at all costs is a trap
00:03:32 - 00:05:37 : Founder mode and signing clients every single day
00:05:37 - 00:08:18 : Why "experienced" executives fail and the return to young and hungry teams
00:08:18 - 00:12:14 : The $37 million wire transfer to buy out investors
00:12:14 - 00:16:18 : Why advisory boards beat professional investor boards every time
00:16:18 - 00:26:48 : The contrarian ipo strategy for australia and canada
00:26:48 - 00:33:08 : Why you should never take vc money if you want to keep your drive
00:33:08 - 00:51:56 : The brutal reality of m&a and culture integration
00:51:56 - 01:00:48 : Two metrics that actually matter: revenue and profit

REFERENCES :
- Adam Robinson 
- Larry Ellison 
- Patrick Campbell 
- Elephant & Highland Europe 
- Summit, Insight, TA 
- Shopify Plus
- Atlassian 
- Oracle 
- Attentive & Klaviyo .
- Groq 
- Neto & Retail Express - Australian companies acquired by Maropost 
- Findify - Swedish search/merchandising company acquired by Maropost
- ProfitWell & Baremetrics
- Stripe

Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Cornelius Schmahl — a college dropout who keeps finding his way into billion-dollar outcomes.At 23, Uber sent him to markets nobody wanted. South Africa. Uganda. Ghana. No playbook. Figure it out or fail.By 27, he was running Uber Russia. One problem: Yandex was winning.He helped engineer a 3.7 billion dollar merger — then walked away from operating entirely. Started writing angel checks. Lime. Liquid Death. BillionToOne.Climeworks. Four bets. Four unicorns.What does this guy see that everybody else misses?Cornelius thanks a lot for being on BILLIONS.TIMELINE :
00:00:00 - 00:03:58: From college dropout to Uber's unwanted markets
00:03:58 - 00:09:02: The brutal reality of launching Uber in hostile territories
00:09:02 - 00:16:06: Engineering violent price cuts and discovering the utilization game
00:16:06 - 00:25:47: The Russia war - infiltrating Yandex and burning millions strategically
00:25:47 - 00:32:35: The $3.7 billion merger and why timing beat fundamentals
00:32:35 - 00:44:26: Angel investing reality check - why unicorns on paper don't pay bills
00:44:26 - 00:52:28: The three-step framework that creates billion-dollar companies
00:52:28 - 00:58:52: From billionaire dreams to therapy - the consciousness shift
00:58:52 - 01:01:48: Marc Benioff email scandal and building leverage through controversy

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Noah Kagan — the guy who got fired from Facebook before it was worth a trillion… and turned that loss into the biggest comeback story in online business.
He went from losing a fortune on paper to building AppSumo, a $100 million-a-year bootstrapped empire - all without raising a single dollar of VC money.
Noah, thanks a lot for being here!

TIMELINE
00:00:00 - 00:02:10 : The trillion-dollar miss at Facebook
00:02:10 - 00:06:43 : Leadership lessons from Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar rejection
00:06:43 - 00:12:13 : The lifetime deal dilemma destroying software value
00:12:13 - 00:19:40 : Why most entrepreneurs never take action
00:19:40 - 00:26:49 : Building discipline through small daily choices
00:26:49 - 00:33:10 : The scary reality of AppSumo's uncertain future
00:33:10 - 00:42:09 : Community quality crisis in the AI era
00:42:09 - 00:48:58 : Testing new models before it's too late
00:48:58 - 00:57:07 : Hiring secrets for bootstrap businesses
00:57:07 - 01:04:29 : Finding contentment beyond the billion-dollar dream

REFERENCES
- Mark Zuckerberg 
- Peter Thiel 
- Marc Andreessen
- Sean Parker
- Dustin Moskovitz
- Soleio 
- Bill Gates 
- Steve Jobs 
- Moody
- Christine Rogers
- Jesse Mecham – 
- Ayman Al-Abdullah
- Reid Hoffman
- Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan
- AppSumo  
- TidyCal  
- Airbnb   
- Asana  
- Lemlist   
- Reclaim
- Bolt
- Hostinger
- Emergent
- Pika  
- YNAB
- Vercel
- Tabby  
- YC