38: Elad Gil, Legendary Investor & Operator

Elad Gil really needs no introduction - he’s been integral in some of the most interesting and iconic companies in the valley. After fulfilling a PhD at MIT and a brief stint at McKinsey and Company, Elad went on to join Google and Twitter through their hypergrowth years; he joined Twitter when there were 90 employees and two and a half years later, he had helped the company scale to 1,500+. Elad is the founder and former CEO of Color Genomics and has invested in 20+ companies valued today at over $1B, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Checkr, Gusto, Instacart, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe and Wish.

This episode was a ton of fun - I talked to Elad about his perspective on industry towns, why there aren’t many founders that come from Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple , his genomics research, how he evaluates companies and what are the most counterintuitive principles he taken away from investing in over 20 unicorns.