Term Sheet
Term Sheet is a podcast from Fortune Magazine that covers the latest news and insights on private equity, venture capital, and startups. Host Allie Garfinkle adapts her Term Sheet newsletter into audio and video format, featuring conversations with industry leaders and a roundup of the biggest funding news each week.
Episodes
This Autonomous Weapons CEO on the Biggest Misconception About AI | Term Sheet
Can the U.S. replenish weapons stockpiles fast enough for modern conflicts? Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle sits down with Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf to discuss weapons production, the challenges of scaling manufacturing, and the testing needed to make complex systems reliable in the field. They also explore AI’s role in defense, lethal autonomous weapons, and why Schimpf says human commanders must remai
This Billion-Dollar Soda Brand Founder Explains Why Fortune 500s Can’t Win Gen Z
Soda is one of the hardest categories to break into, where a few legacy giants dominate shelf space. Yet Poppi, the prebiotic soda company, turned a Texas farmers' market side hustle into a $1.95 billion sale to PepsiCo. On Term Sheet, Fortune's Allie Garfinkle sits down with co-founder Allison Ellsworth to unpack how she cracked the Gen Z code, how she turned three-day TikTok trends into lasting
The Investor Who Bet on SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic Before You Could | Term Sheet
A hidden market for shares of the world's hottest private companies has quietly grown to an estimated $112 billion, and most of it happens off the books. As SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic edge toward going public, the investors who poured billions into pre-IPO shares may not actually know what they own. Larry Aschebrook founded G Squared in 2011, when trading secondaries made you a "bottom feeder"
Inside Wonder's Plan to Automate Restaurants: From Robotic Kitchens to Drone Delivery | Term Sheet
An automated assembly line inside a Wonder kitchen can churn out 500 customized burrito bowls with zero order errors. This is a system CEO Marc Lore views as merely the baseline for his $9 billion food-tech enterprise. Fresh off acquiring Sweetgreen’s robotic kitchen technology, Wonder told Fortune's Allie Garfinkle it might go public early next year. Listen to Term Sheet to find out more.
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This Mentalist Says He’s Training ChatGPT to Hypnotize People | Term Sheet
Mentalist Max Major has spent decades hypnotizing people. Now, he says he's training a ChatGPT voice model to do it too. As people turn to AI for advice, therapy, companionship, and everyday decisions, a bigger question is emerging: Could AI become persuasive enough to shape human behavior? If AI can reliably influence our decisions, the implications stretch far beyond chatbots, affecting advertis
The $11.5B Startup 100 Investors Turned Down | Term Sheet
Live shopping in China is a massive, multi-billion-dollar market, but for years, American platforms have struggled to crack the format. But in 2019, Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head started a live shopping marketplace for Funko Pops that not many investors believed in. Fast forward to today, Whatnot has transformed into a $11.5B valuation company, hitting 1 billion orders this year, overseeing tran
How This Multi-Millionaire Investor Spots Billion-Dollar Ideas | Term Sheet
Over 3,000 venture capital firms are operating in the U.S. today. Lux Capital's co-founder Josh Wolfe thinks more than half of them won't survive the decade. He has spent 25 years making calls nobody else would make, backing Anduril before defense tech was a category and surgical robotics before it had a market. Now, fresh off a $1.5 billion fundraise, he's warning that the AI boom is headed for a
Investment Bankers Built A $2B AI To Replace Themselves | Term Sheet
Gabe Stengel studied computer science at Princeton and started his career as an investment banking analyst at Lazard. Then he did something a lot of bankers think about but never do: he quit at 23 to build the AI that would automate his old job. After 30 VC passes and two grueling years, his company Rogo just raised $160 million at a $2 billion valuation, and 35,000 bankers at firms like JPMorgan,
This Creator Investor On The Truth About The AI Gold Rush | Term Sheet
Claire Zau spent six years in venture capital and became the youngest investor to make partner at GSV. Then she did something very few other VCs were doing: she started posting social media videos about AI to inform the general public. A year, 337,000 followers and 1.6 million likes later, Lightspeed Venture Partners hired her in a role that's never existed in venture before: New Media and Investo
From a Palo Alto Closet to $1 Billion Revenue: How Gusto Cracked Small Business Software | Term Sheet
Approximately nine out of every ten net new jobs in America come from small businesses, yet they shoulder over $81 billion a year in federal paperwork. As more Americans launch their own businesses, the back office is buckling under the weight.In this episode, Josh Reeves, cofounder and CEO of Gusto, a payroll, benefits, and HR platform for small businesses, breaks down the contrarian bet that bui
How to Raise a CEO: The "Godmother of Silicon Valley" Esther Wojcicki
What is the secret to raising world-class leaders? In this episode, Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle sits down with Esther Wojcicki, the legendary educator and "Godmother of Silicon Valley." As the mother of three high-achieving daughters—including the former CEO of YouTube and the founder of 23andMe—Esther shares her leadership and parenting philosophy that works as well in the boardroom as it does in t
The Startup Fighting to Save the American Farm with Modern Finance
American agriculture is the backbone of the U.S. economy, yet the average farmer earns only 5 cents of every dollar spent on food. With an almost 50% spike in bankruptcies of U.S. farms and margins thinner than ever due to falling revenues and rising production costs, the agricultural economy is facing an inflection point.
In this episode, Mackenzie Burnett, CEO & Co-Founder of Ambrook–a modern f
How Winston Weinberg built his $11 billion AI Company | Term Sheet
Harvey co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg has a method for leading his legal AI company, now valued at $11 billion after just three and a half years: psychological discipline. On this episode of Term Sheet, Weinberg tells Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle how he tracks his daily to-do list against his goals six months out, what he looks for in new hires, and how he avoids the pitfalls of being trapped by
Why revenue is an outdated metric | Term Sheet
“Give everything you have to the people around you.” That’s Redpoint partner Meera Clark’s advice for aspiring venture capitalists looking to break into the increasingly competitive industry.In this episode of Term Sheet, Clark defines what “greatness” looks like in founders and explains why revenue is an outdated metric.
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Chemistry cofounder: “more talented founders than ever” are moving into health care | Term Sheet
Chemistry cofounder Kristina Shen says the market may be nearing a “reckoning” point. So why is she still optimistic going into 2026?In this episode of Term Sheet, Shen discusses why she decided to co-found her own VC firm, her excitement around health care, and why her team is focused on bringing the human element into venture capital. Allie also talks about the recent SpaceX and xAI merger and h
Exelon CEO on if our utilities can handle the AI boom | Term Sheet
As resource-hungry data centers continue to sprout around the country, many are wondering whether our current utility network has the capability to handle such large-scale demands. Exelon CEO Calvin Butler says yes. Exelon is one of the nation’s largest public utility companies. It serves around 11 million customers, ranging from individual apartment owners to massive corporations. Butler joins Te
OpenAI Researcher turned VC on what we’re missing on the AI bubble | Term Sheet
The artificial intelligence PhD to VC pipeline may seem relatively obvious now but Jenny Xiao, cofounder of Leonis Capital, forged this path well before the AI boom ever started. She left a PhD program at Columbia to join OpenAI as a researcher and, one week after the debut of ChatGPT, she left to cofound Leonis Capital, a “research-driven” VC firm. Having seen the world of artificial intelligence
“Healthcare isn't working for anybody,” says Cityblock Health’s Dr. Toyin Ajayi | Term Sheet
On day 36 of the U.S. government shutdown – fueled in part by clashes over the Affordable Care Act and the country’s healthcare system – Allie talks to someone working to disrupt and fix that system: Cityblock Health cofounder and CEO Dr. Toyin Ajayi. A former physician for at-risk patients, Ajayi saw how the system can sometimes work against patients, driving burnout and increasing costs. She cof
Vet care for the 21st century with Modern Animal’s Steven Eidelman
On this week’s Term Sheet, Allie talks with Steven Eidelman, founder and CEO of Modern Animal, a tech-forward veterinary clinic with 28 locations across Texas and California. Last month Modern Animal raised $46 million in Series D funding after making 85% year-over-year growth in 2024. Eidelman founded Modern Animal after selling his first start-up, Whistle, for $119 million in 2016. Allie and St
“Success disasters,” data privacy, and unlocking growth with Oura CEO Tom Hale
Oura has been making headlines for months, most recently with its massive $900 million funding round, valuing the wearables giant at $11 billion. And before that, for expanding its partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, causing social media controversy. In September, while at Brainstorm Tech, Allie sat down with Oura CEO Tom Hale to talk about the company’s growth, data privacy, the bigg
"Bubbles have almost always preceded some important technological shift”: OpenAI's COO
OpenAI has had a huge week. Fresh off launching the AI video generation and social app Sora 2, they closed a multibillion dollar partnership with AMD that sent the company’s stock soaring. This was quickly followed by the release of new features, like agent-building and ChatGPT app integration, meant to supercharge OpenAI’s hold on the culture.
Allie sat down with OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap at the
The Sociology of Startup Success with VC Powerhouse Hans Tung
Hans Tung first became a VC in his 20s and has gone on to invest in some of the most successful companies of our time––household names like Airbnb, Slack, Coinbase, and Peloton, among others. He was an early backer of Musical.ly, the app that became TikTok. Hans cofounded the firm GGV Capital, which then split into the Singapore-based operation, Granite Asia, and the U.S.-based Notable Capital, wh
The “Egoless” Company Culture that Powers Supabase with CEO Paul Copplestone
Paul Copplestone is the CEO and Co-founder of Supabase, the open source Postgres development platform designed for web and mobile apps to scale quickly. The company knows a thing or two about growing fast – only 5 years old, this April they raised $200 million in Series D funding round and were valued at $2 billion. Paul stopped by Term Sheet to talk about how he builds a remote and egoless compan
Inside Phia's $8 Million Seed Round
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni met as roommates at Stanford. Now, they’re the cofounders of Phia, an AI-powered shopping agent that just raised an $8 million seed round led by Kleiner Perkins and has participation from household names like Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, and Sheryl Sandberg. For this episode of Term Sheet, Allie spoke with Phoebe, Sophia, and Annie Case, a partner at Kleiner Perkins,
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski on the IPO, Loving Walmart, and Embracing AI
Sebastian Siemiatkowski has achieved something few founders ever do: he’s brought a private company to the public market. Now, if you want, you can own a piece of Klarna. But still, to Sebastian, the day he visited Walmart Founder Sam Walton’s grave in Arkansas will always be more exciting than ringing the NYSE bell. On this episode of Term Sheet, Sebastian talks about how being from a Polish immi
The Brave New World of AI Cyber Crime with Evan Reiser from Abnormal AI
This week Allie sits down with Evan Reiser, CEO and Founder of Abnormal AI. Evan and Allie talk about Evan’s journey from a “cyber outsider” to a cybersecurity firm founder, how AI tools supercharge both cyber crime and cybersecurity, and why he’s totally “AI-pilled” when it comes to imagining the future. Plus: Allie gives her honest take on whether we are in an artificial intelligence bubble and
Vibe Coding, Tech Jobs, & Democratizing the Web with Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch | Fortune Term Sheet
This week, Allie sits down with Guillermo Rauch, Founder and CEO of Vercel and the “P.T. Barnum of Vibe Coding”. They dive into how vibe coding is playing a role in democratizing the internet, how AI will change the future of entry level tech jobs, and Guillermo’s approach to investing. Also in this episode: the IPO boom, and the state of startup hiring.
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Nvidia + AMD’s Deal & Unfiltered Chat with OG VC, Canvas Prime’s Rebecca Lynn | Fortune Term Sheet
This week, Allie speaks with Rebecca Lynn, Managing Director at Canvas Prime and trailblazing venture capitalist. Together they discuss Rebecca’s roots in the Midwest, her path to Silicon Valley and what she’s learned as an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Also in this episode: the unusual deal between Nvidia and the US Government, and the new class of AI billionaires.
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OpenAI Raises More Capital, Joby Aviation’s Air Taxi Play & The Power of Community in Tech
This week, Allie interviews Taylor Otwell, Founder and CEO of Laravel. Together they discuss Laravel's rise as an Arkansas-based tech company, Taylor's early decisions as a founder, and the passionate Laravel community. Also in this episode: Figma's succesful IPO, OpenAI's latest funding round and the deal of week: Joby Aviation.
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Figma IPO: What Investors Need to Know, and Understanding Defense Tech
Welcome to the Term Sheet podcast! In this new series, Allie Garfinkle adapts her newsletter in audio and video format, diving deeper into the latest news and insights on private equity, venture capital and startups. This weekly show will expand on the elements that made the newsletter an essential subscription for investors, with industry leaders guests and a roundup of the biggest funding news.
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