Uncapped with Jack Altman

Tony Xu is the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, the leading local commerce platform in the United States. Since co-founding DoorDash in 2013, Tony has built the company into a publicly traded business operating across 40 countries, spanning restaurants, grocery, convenience, retail, and advertising.

We discussed how Tony thinks about AI spend and what it means to be an "atoms company" in a world racing to consume tokens. Tony shared his framework for directing AI toward customer outcomes rather than pure exploration, and why DoorDash's physical world infrastructure becomes more valuable as AI agents mature. We also got into the 70-year consumer trend behind DoorDash's growth, how the company built the fastest $1B ads business in history while protecting the consumer experience, why every DoorDash employee still does deliveries to this day, and what Tony means when he says DoorDash is still only single digit percentages of its core market.

Timestamps

(0:00) Intro

(0:44) AI spend and token consumption

(2:59) Directing AI toward customer outcomes

(5:08) How DoorDash uses AI today

(8:18) Atoms vs. bits

(12:47) What LLMs can do for the DoorDash app

(17:09) Was the $35 burrito obvious in 2013?

(20:39) The 70-year food consumption trend

(22:20) Consumer trends beyond food

(26:41) Sequencing: seven years on restaurants before groceries

(29:37) Building the ads business

(33:13) 1% better every day

(34:23) Math and humanity

(38:37) Growth levers at scale

(41:09) Speed, drones, and autonomous delivery

(43:39) Why everyone at DoorDash still does deliveries

(44:16) What Tony is most excited about

(46:14) Keeping startup intensity at year 13

Links:

https://x.com/jaltma

https://x.com/t_xu

https://uncappedpod.com/

friends@uncappedpod.com

Sam Blond is the co-founder and CEO of Monaco, an AI-native revenue automation platform built to replace the CRM as the system of record for sales. Before Monaco, Sam was a Partner at Founders Fund and before that one of the most accomplished go-to-market executives in the tech industry, having served as VP of Sales at EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), VP of Sales at Zenefits, and Chief Revenue Officer at Brex.

We discussed Sam's entire sales journey from EchoSign through Zenefits, Brex, and Founders Fund, and what he learned at each stop. Sam shared his framework for creating a demand-rich environment and why most founders misdiagnose their revenue problems as conversion issues when they're really pipeline issues. We got into why Sam believes Salesforce faces a classic innovator's dilemma and why the next category leader in sales will be a platform architected with AI in mind from day one. We also covered Monaco's go-to-market playbook, how Sam thinks about pricing when you're selling labor disruption rather than software, and his two pieces of advice for founders who are just starting to sell.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(1:26) Sam's sales journey

(3:11) Echo Sign takeaways

(5:28) Building Zenefits GTM

(7:02) Parker's 0 to $10M thought exercise

(9:51) Creating a demand-rich environment

(14:20) People, brand, and revenue ops

(21:19) Why Sam went to Founders Fund

(28:00) Why Monaco, why now

(29:40) The Salesforce innovator's dilemma

(31:40) Why Monaco chose to be the system of record

(34:30) Disrupting labor

(41:10) Pricing in an AI-native business

(44:28) The Monaco GTM playbook

(50:06) The $60,000 plane experiment

(54:21) Creative campaigns vs. paid advertising

(1:00:06) What Monaco actually does

(1:03:13) Advice for founders just starting to sell

(1:07:58) Abundant pipeline and the right to say no

Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company building autonomous systems for the U.S. military and its allies. As of May 2026, Anduril is valued at $61 billion. Prior to co-founding Anduril, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on the intelligence and defense space.

Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and President of Varda Space Industries, a company manufacturing pharmaceuticals and advanced materials in microgravity that can't be made as effectively on Earth. Delian was a Thiel Fellow in 2013 after dropping out of MIT computer science. Prior to Founders Fund, he was Chief of Staff and then Principal at Khosla Ventures under Keith Rabois, and before that founded Nightingale, a healthcare startup backed by Y Combinator.

We discussed what makes Founders Fund's culture uniquely truth-seeking, from its 1% personal co-invest requirement to a structure with no partner meetings and no residual economics. Trae shared why he believes Series A boards are largely a waste of time, while Delian reflected on working alongside Keith Rabois and eventually striking out on his own. We also explored their concerns about today's market, how Founders Fund navigated the 2021 bubble by concentrating on its two strongest companies, and why macro timing rarely works in venture. The conversation closed on America's semiconductor challenge and why a Taiwan conflict may be more likely than many assume.

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Timestamps:  

(0:00) Intro

(0:54) What makes FF unique

(8:01) Lacking EQ can be an asset 

(12:10) Delian on working with Keith

(18:30) Why Trae hates board meetings

(24:13) Benchmark vs. Founders Fund

(26:31) Investing as the exhaust of operating

(28:52) Venture as a micro asset class

(30:42) The infamous 2021 offsite

(34:21)  Current market sentiment

(39:18) Can you beat the S&P?

(48:53) America's semiconductor blind spot

(51:56) Taiwan and the 90% probability

(57:58) Robotics, humanoids, and the China question

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Links:
https://x.com/traestephens
https://x.com/zebulgar
https://x.com/jaltma
https://x.com/EverettRandle

https://uncappedpod.com/
friends@uncappedpod.com

Mike Volpi is a General Partner at Hanabi Capital, with a background that spans senior operating roles and nearly two decades of investing. Mike currently sits on the boards of several innovative companies, including Scale AI, ClickHouse, Ferrari, and Confluent, where he is known as a thoughtful sounding board and a steady presence through the highs and lows of startup life.

Mike is a retired partner at Index Ventures, where he led investments in category-defining companies across AI, software, and infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at Cisco, including as Chief Strategy Officer and SVP/GM of Cisco’s routing business, giving him firsthand experience in building products and teams at scale.

We discussed what it takes to build a great venture firm in the AI era, why many of venture’s traditional rules are breaking down, and how AI is reshaping software, investing, and company building. We also explored the future of frontier AI labs, robotics, defense tech, and the mindset founders and investors need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:39) Building a venture firm for AI

(4:02) Designing Hanabi

(5:52) Why stage matters less

(9:38) Building a venture brand

(13:58) The role of board seats

(17:06) Attributes of enduring firms

(20:44) The future of AI labs

(23:14) Open-source and neolabs

(32:49) The compute race

(36:51) The future of software

(45:49) Investing in defense

(47:50) From operator to investor

(50:35) Thriving founders today

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Links:

https://x.com/mavolpi

https://www.hanabi.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

https://uncappedpod.com/

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friends@uncappedpod.com

Joe Lonsdale is the Founder and Managing Partner at 8VC, an early-stage venture capital firm managing over $6 billion in capital. In 2003, he founded Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR), a global software company known for its work supporting US and its allies’ defense and intelligence. Since then, he has founded over a dozen prominent companies, including Addepar, a wealth management platform helping investors manage over $7 trillion, and OpenGov, the leading cloud software provider for local governments which recently sold for $1.8 billion.

Joe was an early investor in Anduril, Oculus (acq. FB), Guardant Health (NASDAQ:GH), Oscar (NYSE:OSCR), Illumio, Wish (NASDAQ:WISH), JoyTunes, Blend (NYSE:BLND), Flexport, Joby Aviation (NYSE:JOBY), Orca Bio, Qualia, Synthego, RelateIQ (acq. CRM), Yugabyte, among many others.

We discussed what it takes to keep building after success, why AI is accelerating entire industries, and how it could reshape productivity, healthcare, defense, and the economy. Joe also shared his views on investing in hard problems, rebuilding trust in technology, and where America needs to adapt to win in the AI era.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:32) Why Joe keeps building

(3:53) AI being contrarian and right

(5:39) What Palantir got right

(6:53) Pulling forward innovation

(9:32) AI vs social media

(12:23) Making AI work for America

(18:03) Department of War debate

(21:16) Betting on defense

(26:51) Robotics, bio, and energy

(32:16) Investing in the AI era

(35:38) Peptides opportunity

(38:35) Texas vs California

(40:12) Political correctness

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Links:

https://x.com/JTLonsdale

https://x.com/jaltma

https://8vc.com/

https://uncappedpod.com/

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friends@uncappedpod.com