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Inside Gusto's Founding Story | Co-Founder & CTO Eddie Kim

Jun 6, 2026 · 54:31

Eddie Kim, co-founder and CTO of Gusto, reveals how the company grew from a 2012 YC startup called ZenPayroll to $1B in annual revenue and 500,000 customers by cracking the small business market against investor skepticism. He credits the 15-year co-founder relationship with Josh Reeves and Tomer London to shared values and radical directness, arguing that packaging feedback undermines trust. Kim describes building Gusto Co-Founder, an AI agent that automates back-office tasks via chat, with a team of five in eight weeks using Claude Code, embodying how the distinction between engineer and designer disappears. He calls the blank canvas problem AI's main barrier to mainstream adoption and predicts solopreneurs will thrive as AI enables anyone to become a builder.

A16Z Partner: Why "Just Capital" Is Not Enough Anymore (The Firm of 2030) | David Haber

Jan 25, 2026 · 56:58

David Haber, a16z general partner, argues most venture investors run funds but few build firms, and explains how a16z operates as a firm with compounding competitive advantage. The firm reinvests fees into a 600-person platform giving founders distribution, credibility, and leverage. Haber shares his founder story: Bond Street raised $900M in debt, sold to Goldman Sachs, teaching him inside a 40,000-person organization. On AI, he says software becomes labor, expanding TAM beyond IT spend—portfolio company Salient's voice agents achieve 50% better collection rates. He also highlights a16z's decentralized model with no single CIO, where specialist partners run divisions, making the firm more resilient than traditional funds.