The First Investor Behind $60B Cursor & $22B Kalshi
Today I walk with Ali Partovi, founder and CEO of Neo and host of a new podcast Confession. Ali co-founded LinkExchange, which Microsoft bought for $265M, co-founded Code.org with his twin brother Hadi, and wrote the first check into Cursor, and now he runs Neo, the firm that backed Kalshi when every top VC passed. He gets into the night he wanted to tell Universal Music Group to f*** off, and the $12M he borrowed against his own account to keep Kalshi open before the 2024 election.We get into:
- Why he wanted to tell Universal Music Group to f*** off over a Bono video, and the half measure he still regrets
- How Sequoia's Mike Moritz judged hires in ten minutes while three co-founders spent an hour each and had no opinion
- Betting on Alfred Lin as LinkExchange's CFO when Ali thought the idea was idiotic, years before Alfred became co-head of Sequoia
- Wiring Kalshi $12M of borrowed money when no bank would lend $100M two weeks before the 2024 election
- Why Elon Musk stays the face of SpaceX, and why founders shouldn't fight being the face of their company
so much more!
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Trailer
(00:55) Ali Partovi, Founder & CEO, Neo
(01:09) Rock climbing as exposure therapy for fear
(06:47) Bono, U2 and the Universal Music threat
(16:00) Selling iLike for $25M after a 10x bigger first exit
(17:44) Nobody cares about your failure as much as you do
(22:51) Why Elon Musk stays the face of SpaceX
(28:50) From MIT daycare to the Iranian revolution
(37:00) The Commodore 64 stuck in Iranian customs
(47:59) Mike Moritz and his 10-minute hiring verdicts
(54:19) Betting on Alfred Lin before Sequoia
(58:05) Spotting Paul Graham and Robert Morris at Viaweb
(1:03:35) Flying campus to campus to start Neo
(1:13:00) The Cursor founders who named their team "the winning team"
(1:17:46) Kalshi's 40 law firm rejections
(1:23:25) Wiring $12M to Kalshi before the 2024 election
(1:33:58) 40 Neo scholars inside OpenAI
(1:41:46) Why Neo is named after The Matrix
Follow Ali
Confession: https://link.mgln.ai/4TnDcL
X: https://x.com/apartovi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apartovi
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