David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
The best operators have a relentless focus on leverage, finding ways to multiply their impact rather than just working harder. But here's what I see happening in finance teams everywhere. Brilliant people getting buried in expense management busy work. If you think about it, you become a finance leader because you love strategic work, modeling scenarios, optimizing capital allocation, finding the insights that actually move the business forward. But instead, you're chasing receipts and categorizing transactions. It's the opposite of leverage. This is exactly why I'm so bullish on what the team at Ramp has built. Kareem and Eric understood that every minute spent on manual expense management is a minute stolen from high-leverage work, so they automated all of it. Automatic categorization, receipt matching, spending controls that actually work. I love the network effect that this creates. When finance teams at companies like Shopify and Stripe automate the mundane stuff, they free up cycles to think bigger, to ask bigger questions, spot patterns others miss, and make the kind of strategic bets that separate great companies from good ones. The math is simple. Get your time back, focus on what matters. Check out ramp.com/invest and see what happens when you eliminate the busy work. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. To me, Ridgeline isn't just a software provider, it's a true partner in innovation. They're redefining what's possible in asset management technology, helping firms scale faster, operate smarter, and stay ahead of the curve. I want to share a real world example of how they're making a difference. Let me introduce you to Brian.
Brian, please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role.

**Brian Strang** (1:25)
My name is Brian Strang, I'm the Technical Operations Lead, and I work at Congress Asset Management.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:30)
How would you describe your experience working with Ridgeline?

**Brian Strang** (1:33)
Ridgeline is a technology partner, not a software vendor, and the people really care. I get sales calls all the time and I ignore them. Ridgeline sold me very quickly. We went from $7 billion to $23 billion, and the goal is $50 billion. Ridgeline was the clear frontrunner to help us scale.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:49)
In your view, what most distinguishes Ridgeline?

**Brian Strang** (1:52)
They reimagined how this industry should work. It was obvious that they were operating on another level.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:59)
It's worth reaching out to Ridgeline to see what the unlock can be for your firm. Visit ridgelineapps.com to schedule a demo. One of the hardest parts of investing is seeing what's shifting before everyone else does. AlphaSense is helping investors do exactly that. You may already know AlphaSense as the market intelligence platform trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds, providing access to over 500 million premium sources from company filings and broker research to news, trade journals, and over 200,000 expert transfer calls. What you might not know is that they've recently launched something game-changing, AI-powered channel checks. Channel checks give you a real-time, expert-driven perspective on public companies, weeks before they show in earnings or consensus revisions. AlphaSense uses an AI interviewer to run thousands of expert calls with real human experts every month, asking consistent questions across experts so the signals are clean, comparable, and useful. You get live updates as interviews come in, full transcript access, and coverage across every major sector. Instantly compare insights across experts and analyze quarter-over-quarter trends in sentiment and key performance indicators. For investors trying to stay ahead of the fast-moving markets, it's already table stakes.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:33)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUMVC.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:02)
My guest today is David George. David is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he leads the firm's growth investing business. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril, and OpenAI, and is now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like Cursor, Harvey, and Abridge. This conversation is a detailed look at how David built and runs the A16z growth practice. He shares how he recruits and builds a Yankees-level culture, how his team makes investment decisions without traditional committees, and how they work with founders years before investing to win the most competitive deals. Much of our conversation centers on AI and how his team is investing across the stack, from foundational models to applications. David draws parallels to past platform shifts from SaaS to mobile, and explains why he believes this period will produce some of the largest companies ever built. David also outlines the models that guide his approach, why markets often misprice consistent growth, what makes pull businesses so powerful, and why most great tech markets end up winner-take-all. David reflects on what he's learned from studying exceptional founders, and why he's drawn to a particular type, the technical terminator. Please enjoy My Conversation with David George. I think early stage investors can often give you an interesting opinion about what the distant future looks like. Probably great growth stage investors like you can give a really interesting view on what the near to medium term future looks like. The companies that you've backed are the who's who of leaders across different technology sectors. If you had to think three to five years out, what are some of the most interesting ways you think the future will be different than the present based on your experience with the companies that you've backed?