New @ThePeelPod with @asenkut Aydin started @felicis 20 years ago with $4M of his own money after every LP told him "we don't back people like you." Today, Felicis is investing out of its $900M Fund 10. We talked through the journey of building Felicis to $4B of AUM, why success is the most dangerous moment for an investor, how to keep your edge raising bigger funds, why a generalist approach is best for catching new technology waves, and the 10x rule he learned from Larry Page. Full episode here + links below. Timestamps: 0:00 Why success is the downfall of a good investor 2:04 Catching waves from YouTube to AI, chips, and defense 4:47 Is AI a bubble? How to tell what's real 6:17 Silicon Graphics: the company with no second act 7:33 Why AI infrastructure spend isn't hype 12:00 7 emails, no reply: how he met Tobi at Shopify 15:30 On adding value: "Just ask the founder" 17:30 The founder pledge: vote with the founders 18:26 Fund 1 was $4M of his own money 21:01 Find LP's preconditioned to believe in you 22:07 Venture is a people business 23:05 Raising Fund 2: the endowment’s "CIA interview" 26:48 Why outsiders bet on outsiders 28:23 Turner's rejected podcast audition 30:46 LP pushback on Fund 2 and Fund 3 32:56 Why he hired a CFO at Fund 3 35:04 Feedback founders can't argue with 37:21 Founders forget the clock is ticking 40:43 Backing founders through the first bad quarter 42:34 Does a 250x bigger fund lose its edge? 45:53 a16z, OpenRouter, Cursor, and big fund returns 47:30 Why deep tech needs huge rounds 50:57 Trillion dollar markets, billion dollar contracts 53:36 Why SpaceX and Anduril alumni will crush it 56:34 From a $50k first exit to "off by three orders of magnitude" 58:17 The software mindset in hard tech 59:38 Google's duct-taped servers 1:00:56 Scanning every book in the world 1:02:37 Larry Page's 10x rule 1:04:54 Outsider founders: Shopify and Adyen 1:07:17 Why Silicon Valley VC's miss companies outside the Bay Area 1:08:16 Generalist vs. specialist: 55 unicorns, no subject experts 1:12:17 Category winners sit between sectors 1:14:59 Don't obsess over entry price 1:17:24 Paid 700x revenue for Supabase, it grew 1000x 1:18:33 Notion, Canva, and the one-button product 1:20:27 The "OpenAI is about to collapse" crowd 1:21:41 Inspiration from Benjamin Franklin 1:23:47 Funding the twinkle in a founder's eye