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© 2026 Summation with Auren Hoffman
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Summation: non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government.
Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious.
Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).
258 Episodes
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Adrian Aoun helped found Torch, a health data platform that was acquired by OpenAI earlier this year. He's also the co-founder of Seneca, which raised $60 million to build autonomous drones for wildfire suppression. Adrian previously founded Forward Health. He previously led special projects for Larry Page at Google, where he founded Sidewalk Labs and helped build Google's AI division. In this episode of Summation, Adrian and Auren discuss: Why curing all cancer adds only ~3 years of life but...
Tod Sacerdoti is the CEO and co-founder of Pipedream, which recently sold to Workday. Tod is also a general partner at Flex Capital, where he's invested in over 400 companies including Chime, Vercel, Replit, CodeRabbit, Mercury, and many others. He previously founded BrightRoll, a programmatic video advertising platform that sold to Yahoo for $640 million in 2014. In this episode of Summation, Tod and Auren discuss: Why seed investing has the highest annualized returns of any venture as...
Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR), the neighborhood social network with over 105 million users across 350,000 communities worldwide. After stepping down as CEO in 2018, he returned to lead the company in 2024. In this episode of Summation, Nirav and Auren discuss: Why success kills innovationThe death of physical communityWhy Nextdoor had to change their stock tickerInsider vs Outsider entrepreneursYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Nirav Tolia on X at ...
Lieutenant General Mike Fenzel recently retired as a three-star Army General. He most recently served as the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, navigating one of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes. His career is defined by high-stakes leadership, ranging from the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, where he was stationed in the bunker alongside Vice President Dick Cheney, to multiple deployments to Afghanistan, to commandi...
Martin Shkreli is the co-founder of DL Software, the parent company of Godel Terminal, a Bloomberg competitor for financial data. He previously founded the biotech companies Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals and the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management. In this episode of Summation, Martin and Auren discuss: The structural reasons fintech is less competitive than other industriesHow drug discovery actually works (and doing it from prison)Why AI labs are now out-recruiting hedge fundsWh...
World of DaaS is now Summation with Auren Hoffman. While we’re proud of our roots in the data world, our conversations have evolved. Summation better reflects our obsession with finding the non-obvious ideas that shape our world. What’s changing? Just the name. You’ll still get the same insights from the world’s most influential founders, investors, and thinkers. If you’re already a subscriber, you’re all set. If you’re new here, welcome. Hit subscribe and join us! Our first episode as ...
Jonathan Siddharth is the founder and CEO of Turing, a $2.2 billion AI company that provides coding and reasoning data to train frontier models for OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and more. Turing’s mission is to accelerate superintelligence to drive economic growth. In this episode of World of DaaS, Jonathan and Auren discuss: How Turing creates expert data for frontier modelsWhy SaaS is dying in the age of AI agentsDisrupting the $30 trillion market for digital knowledge workBuilding a stag...
Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is the co-founder and CEO of Chapter, an AI-powered Medicare navigation platform valued at $1.5 billion that helps seniors navigate coverage and enrollment. In this episode of World of DaaS, Cobi and Auren discuss: Why medicare fraud costs over $100 billion annuallyHow 24,000 medicare plans create impossible choices for seniorsWhy government tech keeps failing with Accenture contractsProvider network data accuracy and AI solutionsYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren...
Hans Swildens is a partner and Head of Industry Ventures at Goldman Sachs. Industry Ventures is one of the pioneers in the secondary market for venture capital, managing several billion in assets across LP stakes, direct secondaries, and primary fund investments. In October of 2025, Goldman Sachs announced they were acquiring Industry Ventures in a deal worth over $900 million dollars. In this episode of World of DaaS, Hans and Auren discuss: The evolution of secondaries from distressed...
Glenn Hubbard is Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. He served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury. He has served on the boards of BlackRock, ADP, MetLife, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In this episode of World of DaaS, Glenn and Auren discuss: Why consumer sentiment contradicts economic ...
Omar Tawakol is the CEO and founder of Rembrand, an AI-powered virtual product placement company. He founded BlueKai, a data management platform acquired by Oracle for $400M+ in 2014, and Voicera, an AI meeting assistant acquired by Cisco in 2019. He currently serves on the board of The Trade Desk and as a General Partner at super{set}. In this episode of World of DaaS, Omar and Auren discuss: Why virtual billboards work better than 3D product placementHow AI eliminates two-year product place...
This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the We the Builders podcast. We The Builders: https://twitter.com/WeThe_Builders Host Suffiyan Malik: https://twitter.com/suffiyanmalikk Substack: https://wethebuilders.us --------------------------------------------------- This week I sat down with Auren Hoffman founder, builder, prolific investor, and one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley. Today’s episode features Auren Hoffman founder of LiveRamp ($RAMP), Flex Capita...
Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves, a freight media company, and SONAR, a supply chain data platform. He’s also the founder of Firecrown, which owns more than 50 publications across aviation, marine, and supply chain sectors, and he recently released his first book, Moving the World: How the Supply Chain’s Evolution Affects Us All. In this episode of World of DaaS, Craig and Auren discuss: How FreightWaves predicted the 2022 freight recessionWhy pricing data businesses ...
Tanay Kothari is the co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice-first AI assistant that recently raised $56 million in Series A funding. In this episode of World of DaaS, Tanay and Auren discuss: Why Apple and Google's dictation tools failWhat AI-first devices will actually look likePivoting from hardware to softwareVoice replacing nearly three-quarters of keyboard usage Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and ...
Microsoft is investing $17.5 billion to turn India into a global AI powerhouse — from training 20 million workers to building new data infrastructure. We break down what this means for the future of AI talent, innovation, and digital sovereignty. Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.
Vinicius Vacanti is the co-founder and CEO of YipitData, an alternative data intelligence platform that analyzes billions of consumer data points daily for institutional investors and corporations. The company reached unicorn status with a $475 million Series E from Carlyle Group in 2021. In this episode of World of DaaS, Vin and Auren discuss: Why hedge funds dominate data usage versus corporationsHow AI is transforming data processing costsThe durability of data businesses over 120 yearsWhy...
This week’s World of DaaS LM Brief: MIT’s new research reveals how large language models can be fooled by their own grammar. By prioritizing sentence structure over sense, these systems risk producing confident but misleading outputs—and even ignoring built-in safety rules. Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.
Patrick McGee is the author of Apple in China, which was named one of the most notable books of the year by the New York Times and the Washington Post. The book is a deeply reported investigation into how Apple and China built each other over 25 years—and what that means for technology, supply chains, and geopolitics. Patrick has been a reporter with the Financial Times since 2013. In this episode of World of DaaS, Patrick and Auren discuss: Why Foxconn bet everything on Apple when others wal...
Dave Morin is co-founder and managing partner of Offline Ventures, a venture fund and studio backed by Apple as anchor investor. He was an early employee at Facebook, then founded the mobile social network Path. In this episode of World of DaaS, Dave and Auren discuss: Why Meta's AI ads work while Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify fail at recommendationsHow Offline runs its venture fund/studio hybridParasocial relationships and the loneliness crisisDepression as the #1 disease by 2030 and breakthr...
This week’s World of DaaS LM Brief highlights a Forbes piece on enterprise AI infrastructure, where the author examines why data pipelines, not the models themselves, are becoming the real bottleneck. Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.
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