Delian Asparouhov (@zebulgar) and @EverettRandle debated where durable power and margins show up in 2025. Software now carries real inference costs and fiercer competition and investors are funding negative gross-margin companies in AI. Delian’s contrast in this clip is that companies that start off “ugly” but evolve into defensible positions can outperform software that looks “pretty” early on but are expensive to scale. “Rippling… has an initial very high gross margin but still has to spend a lot on sales and marketing to bring in net-new customers.” “Hadrian… was deeply negative gross margin to start, but now has super limited S&M because there are only 10–15 customers that matter and once you deliver, they proactively throw revenue at you.” “In the mid-2010s a lot of investors swore off negative-GM businesses… but Uber and DoorDash invested through the pain, built local networks, and now have attractive financial profiles.” “Today money’s piling into AI apps and models where some unit economics look like ‘selling a buck for 90 cents.’”

We chatted with @EverettRandle and @zebulgar during their debate about changes in the SaaS landscape: "The biggest variable that's changed from the 2010s SaaS era to today is competitive intensity. In the 2010s, you could pick a niche and face only two or three competitors, but now it's much more crowded and competitive." "The SaaS investors back then would say that we don't need a bunch of cash burn and it's an unhealthy indicator because they're not competing with anyone." "And by the way, there's probably 10x more capital than there was 15 years ago to go into these companies. Every single category now has become like mini rideshare, where there's a big pot of gold at the end, and we need to be the ones to get first to scale."

I’m going to make @zebulgar walk through how $10 of depreciation flows through the 3 financial statements on live TV, tune in

The final showdown coming to you live at 11a Me vs @EverettRandle Which investor is right? The one backing AI shit-cos or the one backing the re-industrilization of the United States

Former Founders Fund colleagues turned bitter venture rivals. @zebulgar and @everettrandle have bet their careers on wildly different industries. Today they will join TBPN together at 11am pacific to debate gross margins, AI, hard tech, accounting rules and more.

this is what it looks like when you're going deep into backup memory

.@zebulgar on the AI startup economy: "Software's eating the world? It's ironic. Margins aren't what they seem. SaaS companies have high sales and marketing spend." "The publicly reported revenues of AI labs has now surpassed the entire publicly traded SaaS industry." "The free cash flow ends up with Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, and energy companies. The application layer captures none of the margins. It’s the hardware giants that win." "I find it fascinating that some AI companies have worse gross margins than a space factory company."

From a recent group call I was on: "Having kids at 30 in tech, is basically the equivalent of a teen pregnancy" SAD!

it's the greatest country on earth it can't guarantee you happiness but it does guarantee you the pursuit america!!

MAKE SPACE GREAT AGAIN 🇺🇸🚀 @POTUS has signed an Executive Order to streamline regulations and foster a competitive commercial space industry, ensuring the United States maintains its leading role in the commercial use of space.