Auren Hoffman 📚

2005: how did I function without the Internet? 2015: how did I function without the smart phone? 2025: how did I function without the LLM? 2035: ??

World of DaaS podcast is now “Summation” with auren hoffman the pod started as a data show but the best episodes were always about other stuff -- geopolitics, talent, venture, longevity. we’re abo...

spent the weekend in DC hacking away with some insanely talented founders. what an amazing time to be building!

the last ten years was about VCs looking more like PE. the next 10 years in about PE looking more like VC: and embracing the power law

fueled by pizza and creatine, we are hacking claude bots on a snowy friday night in DC

presenting my new ad campaign for salesforce (can you come up with something better??)

i love SpaceX (and am a small shareholder). iconic company. but don't understand why it would want to go public. if you're a CEO of SpaceX (or Stripe, Databricks, etc) and you can generate liqui...

the death of SaaS companies might be too exaggerated. and the death for AI 1.0 companies might be the real story. my partner Tod said something REALLY profound that I can't shake ... the companies...

San Francisco is STILL the center of the world. when I left 4 years ago, i thought innovation would be more distributed. i was wrong. SF is where the super ambitious 24-year-olds are still moving...

got this question for a super founder that is considering joining a venture capital firm: "Is VC becoming a monopoly? (a16z) It seems that returns are going to be 20/80" my answer: venture capital...

five links for February 2026 just went live. some highlights: Norway Shrugged -- Norway's 1% wealth tax on unrealized gains drove out 100 of their top 400 taxpayers in just two years. half that gro...

it used to be that VCs only focused on what to buy ... now a big part of the job is what to sell manufacturing liquidity is now a full-time job at large VC firms. Some firms have dedicated partner...

awesome founder just reached out to me about the M&A market. they run $20M+ ARR company growing over 50% YoY with good margins and best-of-class NDR but still burning and have less than 2 years of...

if your company has an “innovation” department you have already failed “head of innovation” is a title for late career people who would be tough to fire but don’t have much to offer anywhere else ...

new World of DaaS pod with Chapter CEO Cobi B. on why medicare was more broken than you think (and hopefully is not getting better): * 24,000 plans across the country * $100B+ annual fraud * lifeti...

software stocks down 30%+!! the real question isn't "will AI kill software" but "which software companies adapt vs die." AI will damage fat lazy incumbents (agree) while helping innovative ones. p...

there are only 60 publicly traded DaaS companies in the world and almost all of them were started over 40 years ago

the venture exit landscape completely flipped in 25 years. in 2000, 90% of exits were IPOs and M&A. today it's 70% secondaries, 25% PE buyouts, and only 5% IPOs.

fascinating podcast with Hans Swildens about the VC secondary market on World of DaaS pod when he started in 2000, it was a few hundred million dollars a year of distressed corporate VC portfolios...

the tradition continues. year three of gathering superstars to predict the future and bet on it. this year's twist: we invited AI to play. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini each placed their own bets. ...