Deel

The Sales Machine Behind $17.3B Deel

Sep 29, 2026 · 12:49

Shuo Wang, co-founder and CRO of payroll platform Deel, tells Molly O'Shea that the company grew from $100M to $1B in ARR in 3 years and has surpassed $1.5B in revenue at a $17.3B valuation. She credits going global from day one — Deel runs its own entities, compliance and payroll teams in 160 countries — and argues founders simply aren't selling enough. The MIT-trained robotics engineer applies systems thinking to sales: understand what clients want, then incentivize a remote sales team across 120 countries, unified by an annual 1,500-person kickoff. She describes complementing CEO co-founder Alex Bouaziz, cites James Dyson and Jeff Bezos as inspirations, touts a Snoop Dogg campaign paying $10,000 a month for ice cream testers, and says AI hasn't yet grabbed Europe like San Francisco.

Bridgit Mendler Gives Us the First Tour of Northwood's New HQ + Factory

Aug 31, 2026 · 46:17

Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and CEO of Northwood Space, gives Molly O'Shea a tour of the new 185,000 sqft Torrance factory and argues the neglected ground segment is the space economy's biggest bottleneck. Northwood has raised over $136M since 2022, including a $100M Series B led by Washington Harbour and Andreessen Horowitz, and holds a $49.8M Space Force contract for the Satellite Control Network. The factory will 5x capacity, add 400 jobs, and support hundreds of antennas a year; she explains why ground tech hasn't changed since the 1990s and how Northwood brings Portal/Prism production, machining, PCB assembly, and anechoic testing in-house. She also covers site licensing, colocation, supply-chain choices, national-security concerns, and mission ops moving into the former movie theater.

Nikesh Arora: $300B, 40 Acquisitions, Still Paranoid

Aug 17, 2026 · 59:10

Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, argues the AI cybersecurity boom is only beginning, with AI attacks compressing vulnerability-to-exploit time from 55 days to minutes. He details Palo Alto’s new 4-hour patch capability, explains why he signed Jensen Huang’s open-source AI letter, predicts the entire software industry will be rewritten in 10 years, and breaks down the playbook behind 40+ acquisitions in eight years, including the $28 billion CyberArk deal. He also describes hiring AI-native talent through hackathons, defends LinkedIn as a scouting tool, and shares lessons from Larry Page at Google and Masayoshi Son at SoftBank—including doubling down on winners. He expects market gyrations ahead but insists AI demand, and security’s role, is unstoppable.

Inside AppLovin’s $100B Ad Engine

Aug 14, 2026 · 1:26:38

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi and CTO Giovanni Ge explain how AppLovin rebuilt its ad engine with Axon 2 after a 92% post-IPO stock drop, driving recovery from $5.5B to a $100B+ company. Ge details replacing tree-based models with neural embeddings so predictions became more accurate and GPU-cheaper, and says Axon 2's success came from deciding what not to build. Foroughi describes keeping engineering at ~100 people, using AI to elevate rather than replace engineers, expanding from mobile gaming into e-commerce via a napkin-designed data pipeline, and moving ads into connected TV and open web. They discuss why AI-generated ads need human guardrails, why taste matters more than building speed, and the path to a trillion-dollar valuation requiring $30B+ annual cash flow, plus buybacks during the downturn.