Episode summary
Aydin Senkut: Chasing Demand, Not Hype, at Felicis
Capital Allocators with Ted Seides
· · 1 hr 1 min · Hosts: Ted Seides · Guests: Aydin Senkut
Summary
Aydin Senkut says Felicis has stayed a generalist, early-stage firm for 20 years, but the center of gravity has moved from consumer internet and SaaS toward AI infrastructure, web security, global resilience, and capital-intensive areas like robotics and energy. His core investing rule is to chase demand before revenue shows up, look for businesses that can plausibly compound 100x or more, and prefer infrastructure or foundational layers that can compound even when the application layer gets crowded.
He argues that hype often outruns fundamentals, especially in venture markets flush with capital, so Felicis tries to underwrite the real growth formula rather than the narrative. He cites Superbase as an example of a company whose business grew steadily while valuation lagged for years, and says the firm prefers durable IP, strong margins, and multiple ways to play a theme rather than a single obvious bet. In robotics, for example, he sees a huge market in replacing low-skill labor and in supplying the parts, data, and infrastructure behind the robots.
Senkut also emphasizes founder trust and portfolio discipline. Felicis benchmarks companies against the rest of the portfolio, pledges never to vote against founders, and often works on strategy, instrumentation, and exit planning early. On exits, he says the firm has to engineer outcomes deliberately, because today’s market rewards only a narrow set of companies with very fast scale.
Key takeaways
- Aydin Senkut says Felicis still makes 91% of its investments at seed and Series A despite managing a fund close to $1 billion.
- He says the firm looks for demand that can justify at least 100x revenue growth before it is obvious to others.
- Senkut argues that infrastructure-layer winners like Shopify, Adyen, Credit Karma, and Superbase can outperform application-layer bets because they capture durable demand.
- He says robotics and physical AI are attractive because even a tiny share of the low-skill labor market could support billions in revenue.
- He says Felicis uses founder surveys, a no-vote-against pledge, and pre-check platform work to build trust and improve decision quality.
Notable quotes
“we like to find companies where we can plausibly call out at least 100x revenue growth from the point we invest in or more”
“So we try to really pay attention to where the demand is coming from and we base our decisions on the real business performance of the companies”
“the abundance of capital has kind of become a tax almost because at the end when you have that much capital chasing fewer companies, it's inevitable that ownership is going to decline, valuation is going to increase”
“we're never going to vote against you so you might as well tell us everything about the company or everything that's going on”
How the episode opens
Ian, thanks so much for joining me. — Ted, thanks for having me.
So, it's been a few years since you came on and more importantly 20 years since you started Felicus. And I thought it'd be fun to start with just this open-ended question of as you look at the landscape and how you're investing today, what's changed and evolved over these 20 years since you started? One of the things that I think especially most important for Felicis, we are a firm with a growth mindset and our most important top cultural value is learning and adapting rapidly.
So we have kind of built change into the DNA of the firm and one of the reasons we did that we're generalist investors and I wanted to do that because at the end there are a lot of exciting companies that come up in technology and a lot of it happens because of disruption and the disruption happens really fast and I always wanted us to have the option of being able to choose the markets where feel the biggest growth is happening where we feel the biggest future potential is. So we have always used that generalist strategy and we put it to great use and you know started in consumer internet right when I left Google then shifted to e-commerce and fintech with Shopify and credit karma and plaid and then later on to SAS some great SAS companies and most recently a lot of AI infrastructure companies web security uh global resilience and beyond that's what changed what has not changed is we've always been early stage focused even today with a larger fund close to a billion dollars. 91% of our investments are seed in series A.
And then the last aspect of it, every venture firm I think needs a core differentiation and one of the reasons why founders choose us is because we have conviction and we've been able to show that conviction more rapidly than other firms and then we have always demonstrated that we earned the founders trust.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- demand vs hype
- venture valuation lag
- ai and software moats
- infrastructure-layer investing
- international startup sourcing
Companies and tickers mentioned
- SHOP
- Felicis
- Juniper Square
- Shopify
- Canva
- Tines
Watch the episode
Watch “Aydin Senkut: Chasing Demand, Not Hype, at Felicis” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Capital Allocators with Ted Seides, this episode and its artwork belong to Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
