Two VCs, No Filter: The Naked Truth about Elon Musk and Sam Altman

They certainly are an odd couple. Silicon Valley veterans Dave McClure and Aman Verjee have been friends and business partners for 25 years — first at PayPal, then at 500 Startups, and now at Practical Venture Capital. Yet they have quite different styles, personalities and, above all, politics. What they share, however, is an unvarnished take on the world — especially on the much mythologized Silicon Valley. In this refreshingly unfiltered conversation, they assess tech’s two most dominant titans: Sam Altman and Elon Musk. McClure describes Altman as someone he’d never want to face across a poker table — “there’s probably three layers of chess going on in his head.” Verjee breaks down the competitive psychology driving Musk as OpenAI’s valuation leapfrogs SpaceX. Plus Verjee makes sense of Google’s Gemini challenge to ChatGPT domination and McClure leaves us with one of his trademark blunt takes on Trump’s crypto conflicts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe