Elad Gil
Founder, Gil Capital. On 12 shows, 147 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveauthorhost@eladgil ↗LinkedIn ↗eladgil.com ↗
Elad Gil is a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur who co-founded Mixer Labs and Color Health, and served as VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter. He is known for early-stage investments in companies like Stripe and Airbnb, as well as authoring the High Growth Handbook.
12shows
147appearances
521statements
89resolved
62supported
14contradicted
70%fully supported
287said about them ↓ Everything Elad Gil said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Gil: Half of private unicorns are not worth $1 billion
“I would posit that about half of the unicorns are not worth a billion dollars or more. In other words, 50% of the companies that are valued in the private markets as being worth more than a billion shouldn't be worth more than a billion.”
Gil: California is discussing an exit tax on departing residents by 2028
“And my sense is in 28, there's increasing talk about also trying to add a exit tax in California. So if you actually try and leave, they'll, they'll try and take a big chunk as sort of a penalty for that.”
Gil: Chinese Open-Source Subsidies Indirectly Subsidize US Enterprise AI Adopters
“At least for now, it looks like effectively the Chinese government is subsidizing at least a large subset of these models, and that subsidy or surplus is effectively just being passed on to US enterprises We're adopting these models. In other words, it's a way…”
Gil: Parker Conrad and Palmer Luckey were unfairly thrown under the bus
“Palmer Luckey is another one where I backed Andrew in the very first round, and he was controversial given what happened at Meta early on with him. I think in both cases, they basically got thrown under the bus in one form or another.”
Gil: State-level regulations like California's could curtail US AI progress
“And the dangerous part in AI was there's state level initiatives that have been very negative or could have been very negative for AI. I think Scott Wiener proposed one in California. I think there's others that have been proposed in other states that you coul…”
Gil: Many big tech companies could shrink by 70% and improve
“If you look at the big tech companies, for example, right now, many, not all of them, but many of them could probably shrink by 70% and be more effective, right?”
Gil: Closed-Source AI Labs Use Existential Risk Narratives for Regulatory Capture
“It's a very traditional form of regulatory capture. If you have a big pharma company, they work with the government to prevent other entrants into the industry. And this is exactly what it felt like is at least partially happening. In the AI world. Now that ma…”
Gil: AI Is Dramatically Under-Hyped Because Enterprise Adoption Has Barely Begun
“And so I think AI is dramatically under-hyped, because most enterprises have not done anything in it, and that's where all the money is, all the changes, all the impact is, all the jobs, everything, right?”
Gil: Employees should bring their professional selves to work, not their whole selves
“You actually should bring your professional self to work. You should bring the person who's going to be effective in a work environment and can work with all sorts of diverse people and be effective and doesn't bring all their morals and values and everything …”
Gil: Big tech operates like UBI for elite graduates doing little
“One argument I make sometimes is that big tech is effectively a big experiment in UBI, universal basic income, for people who went to good schools, right? You're literally just giving money to people for not doing very much.”
Gil: Big tech companies could cut headcounts close to 80%
“If you look at what Musk did at Twitter, Where they cut 80% or whatever it was. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do things that are pretty close to that at a lot of the big tech companies.”
Gil: The largest startup successes had solo or unequal founders
“If you look at the biggest successes in the startup world over time, they were either solo founders or very unequal founders. So that, and there's counter examples to that, of course, but that was Amazon, right? Jeff Bezos was the only founder. Microsoft, it w…”
Gil: Government, academia, and big tech have effectively functioned as UBI
“The degree to which we effectively had different forms of UBI or universal basic income in different sectors of the economy. Government is a clear example where there's enormous waste, fraud, grift, et cetera, happening. Parts of academia, if you just look at …”
Gil: AI is dramatically underhyped despite current massive investment levels
“AI is in my opinion, dramatically under hyped right now. And I think part of that is number one, we're seeing massive actual revenue and impact without that much adoption, right?”
Gil: LLMs will eventually advance to perform all human services
“You have these steps, and so it's this ladder that you're climbing, and eventually you're going to hit a point where it can do all of human services, right? And I don't know if that's GPT seven equivalent or eight or six or 10 or whatever, but we're going to g…”
Elad Gil argues mainstream use of artificial wombs would harm society
“There's advances in science where, you know, you can now grow I can't if they use lamb or what, you know, up to some, you know, number of weeks of gestation, right? In a literal kind of membrane that's fed in nutrients and stuff. And if you'd asked me 10 years…”
Gil: VCs Push Struggling Founders to Grind Because They Are Free Options
“Investors have a strong incentive for you to keep going because you're just an option once they put money in. And so if they get 50 cents on the dollar, they don't care, and they'd rather you just keep trying because you're just a free option. They already hav…”
Gil: Data Linking Social Media to Teen Mental Health Issues Is Weak
“I think I tend to look at data for these sorts of things. And I think the data on a lot of these topics is pretty weak.”
Gil: SARS leaked from laboratories four times in first two years
“Because SARS, they both snuffed out with the original form, but then it leaked four times in the first two years after it was cultured in a lab. It kept leaking from what eventually became the Wuhan Institute of Biology when they moved it from Beijing to Wuhan…”
Gil: AI poses no existential threat to humanity within ten years
“So you need physical form for the AI in order for it to truly be an existential threat. And that's why if I were to focus on an area, it'd probably be robotics or something like that, because that's where you suddenly give physical form to something. And if yo…”
Gil: Elon Musk's AI moratorium call was self-serving given his LLM startup
“Musk was asking for a six month moratorium on progress, which seems to me very self-serving if you're simultaneously starting an LLM company, you know.”
Gil: Market is the singular determinant of startup success, not team
“The singular determinant of startup success is the market. And it's not the strength of the team. And so I think a lot of people talk about how great teams will always figure it out. And I've seen great team after great team in a terrible market just die becau…”
Gil: A prominent Midas List investor tried clawing exit value at Mixer Labs
“The biggest issue we had there is we had a bad investor who, as we were exiting the company, basically tried to claw more value for themselves as part of our exit. And this is sort of a Midas list investor who's very well known now.”
The other half of the tape: Elad Gil's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 274 times in 111 episodes across the shows. 13 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 133Molly O'Shea 11Sarah Guo 10Saam Motamedi 9Dan Siroker 9Ankur Goyal 8Roger Dickey 7Avichal Garg 7
Statements about Elad Gil, by other people (13)
Stebbings: Recent top breakout VC firms are all single-person led
“When you look at, Bundly, the best performing managers, or the breakout managers the last few years, I think you put probably Thrive, Green Oaks, Founders Fund, and Eli Gill definitely up there. And all four of them are one person led.”
Tech is in the second act of cloud and mobile, not waiting
“Where I disagree with Elad is I think we're already in a very important second act of the paradigm shifts around cloud and mobile, and so I disagree that we're waiting for anything.”
Lonsdale: Kushner and Gil automated Qatar building permits to just two hours
“My friend, Jared Kushner, who's obviously, you know, been involved in these administrations, he worked with Qatar, with Elad, and they built something where the permits only take, ah, 120 minutes there. So if you want a permit to build something, it'll get bac…”
Stebbings: Investors should automatically follow deal recommendations from Elad Gil
“Elad sent me and he was like, dude, this is amazing. This is amazing. Every time Elad sent me something and said, it's amazing. Just fucking do it. Do not think you're smarter is my takeaway there.”
O'Driscoll: Elad Gil raised a $3 billion solo venture capital fund
“He's been good enough to be able to raise a three billion dollar solo fund.”
Casado: Elad Gil Is Perhaps The Best In Venture At Founder-Market Fit
“Elad is very, very focused on the founder. I think the one thing I would say, Is he's very good with founder market fit, maybe the best in the industry.”
Garg: Elad Gil seeded Electric Capital with $1M and raised first $10M
“He was the catalyst. He was the person who came to us and said, you guys are really good at this, and there's a real market opportunity here for a thing that's not a traditional VC firm, and that's not a hedge fund, that's built differently, and you guys have …”
Elad Gil and Scott Belsky drive strong Series A signaling
“Investors like a lot Gil, Scott Belsky, the entire collective of hashtag angels, angels who are both helpful, but I think most importantly, they've established this track record in the ecosystem where they have the ears of series A investors.”
Arbesman: Frontier tech is too broad to be treated as a single category
“While there might be certain similarities, I think frontier tech overall, and it's really this, it's very broad and diffuse space, and so in many ways I'm almost hesitant to group it all under kind of that umbrella term. And because the knowledge you need to d…”
Weinberg reveals OpenAI, Sarah Guo, and Elad Gil as Harvey's first investors
“So our first investor was OpenAI and then our first two angel investors were Sarah Guo and Elad Gil.”
Srinivas initially pitched seed investor Elad Gil on smart glasses, not search
“I was like, adoshes enough to go and pitch to the first seed investor of ours, Elad Gill, that like, hey, like you know, I want to disrupt Google but I kind of want to do it from pixels from a glass”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 218
Sourcery 18
Latent Space 9
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 7
Mixergy 7
My First Million 6
No Priors 6
American Optimist 21 more shows
2026 27 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- The Five Year Desert to Product Market Fit & a $5.3BN Valuation with Shiv Rao, Founder @ Abridge · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Dylan Field on the “Permanent Underclass of Zero Taste” · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- How Applied Intuition Reached $15B (Without Spending $1B) · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Dino Mavrookas: America Needs to Build Ships Again
- Anthropic's $30T Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service & Robotics are Overinflated
- The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 64 mentions in 21 episodes 3 per episode
- Why Apple Needs a Management Overhaul & Why Google is Catching Up with Hyperscalers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z GP, Martin Casado: Anthropic vs OpenAI & Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- #2288 She had people do AI’s work
- Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Base Power Raises $1B led by Addition, with Trust Ventures, Lightspeed, a16z, Altimeter, Elad Gil · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Inside General Catalyst’s $1.5B AI Roll-Up Machine · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
- 13 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 32 mentions in 7 episodes 5 per episode
- Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Dan Siroker: Second-Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College |E1153 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Production AI Engineering starts with Evals
- You Have 70 Days to Win the Year
- Torsten Reil, Helsing Founder: Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | E1237 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- No Priors Ep. 60 | With Playground AI Founder Suhail Doshi
- Keith Rabois on Rejoining Khosla Ventures | E1102 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- Sarah Guo: On Her New $101M Fund; How AI Impacts Inequality; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1007 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- No Priors Ep. 28 | With Khan Academy’s Creator Sal Khan (Japanese Version)
-
Competing in a Crowd of Incumbents with Mercury's Immad Akhund - Nikhil Basu Trivedi: Why 99% of AI Investments Will Go Bust | E1057 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- No Priors Ep. 7 | With Stanford Professor Dr. Percy Liang
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 14 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Why Crypto is Software Eating Money, Why Crypto Firms Will Outcompete Traditional Venture Firms, How To Price Tokens and When To Have Them, DAOs: How Are They Structured and What Makes One Successful with Avichal Garg, Co-Founder @ Electric Capital
- Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Brex's Henrique Dubugras on Advice from Evan Spiegel and Eric Schmidt on CEOship, The Biggest Hiring Mistakes When Scaling, What Everyone Gets Wrong with Product Messaging and When is the Right Time to Launch Secondary Products
- How the Renaissance Sparked an Entrepreneurial Explosion with Jeannette zu Fürstenberg · Joe Lonsdale
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- How Venture Capitalists Make Money with Brianne Kimmel | My First Million #206
- 20VC: Why "Founder Insight" is Overrated, Why Big and Bold Product Visions Can Be Dangerous & Why Getting To Product Market Fit by Accident Can Lead to Danger with Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ ProductBoard
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 9 mentions in 8 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Anduril Founder, Palmer Luckey: "I Am Here To Build a $50Bn Company", How Palmer Evaluates His Relationship To Money Pre & Post Oculus' $2.3Bn Exit & Why The US DOD Needs To Be More Like China in It's Approach
- 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th
- 20VC: Sahil Lavingia on Rolling Funds and Their Impact on The Future of Venture, How To Evaluate Market, Team and Product, The Value of Party Rounds & The Pros and Cons of Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed
- 20VC: 8VC's Joe Lonsdale on How To Foster Contrarian Thinking Within Venture Partnerships, Why The Best VCs Are Company Builders & Why It Is Not Possible To Build Multi-Billion Dollar Companies and Have Worklife Balance
- 20VC: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen on The Future of Business and Personal Travel & Layoffs; How To Do Them The Right Way & Maintain Company Culture and Morale
- 20VC: Notion's Fundraise with Index: The Most Anticipated Deal in The Valley: How It Came To Be | The Future of Remote Work |How Notion Approach The Balance of Growth and Profitability
- 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
- 20VC: Moxxie Ventures' Katie Stanton on What It Takes To Raise A First Time Fund As A Solo GP, The Entrance of Multi-Stage Funds Into Seed Rounds and The Inverse Relationship of Those That Fund Diverse Managers and Those That Say They Do
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 53 mentions in 28 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Brex Founder Henrique Dubugras on Why Being Mission Driven Is Not The Only Way To Build A Massive Business, Why You Should Not Associate Fundraising with The Cash Needs of Your Business & Why You Don't Have To Follow Startup Theory When It Comes To
- 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s
- 20VC: Why You Must Have A Customer Acquisition Strategy From Day 1, How To Test and Validate Ideas At Speed & Why You Should Speak To Investors Before Starting Work On Your Idea with Kulveer Taggar, Founder @ CEO @ Zeus Living
- 20VC: Y Combinator's New President, Geoff Ralston on The Single Most Important Perspective An Investor Can Provide A Founder, The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside Paul Graham & Why You Will Lose As An Investor If You "Profile Invest"
- 20VC: Softbank Managing Partner, Jeff Housenbold on How Softbank Approach Portfolio Construction, Their Optimal Investment Decision-Making Process and What Excites Softbank Most In Opportunities Today
- 20VC: How To Build True Human Relationships with VC Pre-Investment, Why Valuation Is Not The Only Term and When To Take Lower Offers & How To Approach Mental Health As A Founder with Jon Dishotsky, Founder & CEO @ Starcity
- 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on The Strategy Behind The New $600m "Back To The Future" Fund, The Truth To Price Sensitivity at Series A & Why Venture Team Building Is Like Basketball Team Building
- 20VC: Clearbanc's Michele Romanow on Why 40% of VC $ Raised Today Goes To Google and Facebook, How To Create A Financing Mechanism For The Repeatable Parts Of Your Business & Why We Need To Stop Celebrating Fundraises
- 20 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 32 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: The 2 Core Areas Value Will Accrue In Crypto, Why Crypto Will Drive The Re-Centralisation of Talent Back Into Silicon Valley & Why Regulation Is The Opposite of What We Should Be Concerned By in Crypto with Avichal Managing Partner @ Electric Capita
- 20VC: General Catalyst's Hemant Taneja on Why We Are In A Golden Age For VC, Why Pro-Rata Is A Lazy Posture and Why He Does Not Focus On Price
- 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- Andy Bromberg - Startup Investor School Day 4 · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Why Warm Intros Are Mostly Dumb, Why Ownership is Built On First Check and 4 Crucial Elements To Make Cold Inbound Attractive with Leo Polovets, General Partner @ Susa Ventures
- 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
- 20VC: Scalar Capital's Linda Xjie on Who Will Win The Smart Contract War, The Future of Exchanges: Centralised or Decentralised & The Pros and Cons of Differing Privacy Coins
- 20VC: Phil Libin on Why The Concept of A Silicon Valley Style Startup Is Made To Benefit VCs, Why The Very Structure of Companies Is Outdated and Inefficient & What It Means To Build The Netflix of Product
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2018 →
2017 26 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
- 20VC: Nuzzel's Jonathan Abrams on Why The Top VCs Do Not Have A PlayBook For Startup Success, Why Most Boards Are Not Successful & Why He Is Bored Of Hearing "I Fell Into VC"
- 20VC: Biggest Takeaways From Working With Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, Why You Should Put Off Hiring For As Long As Possible & Why Seed Stage Investing Is All About Optimising The Top Of The Funnel with Harj Taggar, Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte
- 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc
- 20VC: Why You Should Build Your Investor Team Like A Sports Team & How To Leverage The Abilities Of Your Investors Effectively with Ted Blosser, Founder & CEO @ WorkRamp
- 20VC: Benchmark's Peter Fenton on How To Differentiate Between Good & Great VCs, Why Ownership Is A Bigger Determinant Of Returns Than Valuation & What Makes A Truly Exceptional Board Member
- 20VC: Preparing For The Next Big Trend, Why Conversational Will Be The Next Big Thing & How Entrepreneurs Should View Market Size with Sarah Guo @ Greylock Partners
- 20VC: What Is Core To The Best Investor - Founder Relationships, The Biggest Risk For Founders In The Early Days & Why EQ Is The Most Important Trait For Managers with Jack Altman, Founder & CEO @ Lattice
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Elad's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
CHEEKY PINTLEDGER