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© 2026 Summation with Auren Hoffman
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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).
266 Episodes
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Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition. In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss: Why black...
Glenn Youngkin was the 74th Governor of Virginia. Before politics, he spent nearly 25 years at The Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, where he rose to co-CEO. During his four-year term, Virginia generated $10B in surplus revenue, delivered $9B in tax relief, attracted $156B in capital investment, and became one of the first states in the country to mandate cell-phone-free classrooms. In this episode of Summation, Glenn and Auren discuss: Why every Virginia st...
Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, the home services marketplace he started in 2008. Thumbtack connects homeowners to 300,000+ local service professionals, with nearly 100M projects started on the platform. In this episode of Summation, Marco and Auren discuss: Why home services is bigger than groceries but barely any is booked onlineHow AI collapsed Thumbtack's product pod sizesWhy Silicon Valley underrates leadership and overrates management The single trait...
Eric Ries created the Lean Startup methodology and authored the bestselling book of the same name, which has sold over a million copies. He's also the founder and executive chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the co-founder of Answer AI (an AI R&D lab), and the author of the upcoming book Incorruptible, releasing May 26th. In this episode of Summation, Eric and Auren discuss: why "bad governance" companies have outperformed "good governance" since 2008financial gravity - the invisib...
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg became Germany's youngest Minister of Defense in history, and previously served as Minister of Economics and Technology. He is the chairman and founder of Spitzberg Partners, an investment and advisory firm, a bestselling author, and co-founder of Open Minds Media, where he produces films and podcasts. He co-hosts one of Germany's most popular podcasts. In this episode of Summation, KT and Auren discuss: Why Germany's defense spending hovered at 1% of GDP for decade...
Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel and longtime Silicon Valley leader. He joins Auren to unpack the forces reshaping technology, geopolitics and leadership. After more than 30 years at Intel (including serving as its first CTO) and nearly a decade as CEO of VMware, Pat now sits at the intersection of deep tech and purpose-driven innovation as executive chair and head of technology at Gloo and general partner at Playground Global. In this episode of Summation, Pat and Auren discuss...
Vlad Tenev (Robinhood co-founder/CEO) and Tudor Achim (former helm.ai CTO) are the founders of Harmonic, an AI lab pioneering the path toward mathematical superintelligence. Together, they developed Aristotle, a model that eliminates hallucinations by reasoning in Lean code rather than natural language. By shifting from probabilistic guesses to formal logic, Aristotle produces 100% verified mathematical outputs. The model recently demonstrated its breakthrough capabilities by achieving gold-m...
John Allen is a retired four-star Marine Corps general who commanded 150,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan and built a 65-nation coalition as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition Against ISIS. After retiring from the military, he led the Brookings Institution as its president. He co-invented the term "hyperwar," holds five AI patents, and co-authored Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. He currently serves as a strategic advisor to Microsoft. In...
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...
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