“And running a startup is guerrilla warfare. I will cheat and find whatever way I can to win, you know, very ruthlessly.”
Tech Brew Ride Home · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · August 2026
The conversation had turned to investors, and David Bennahum had just described founders showboating for their boards and building a culture of misinformation around themselves. Nadeau answers by reframing what he actually wants from money, which is not the cash but the doors it opens. Then he says plainly what he will do with the advantage once he has it, and what he wants from the people he hires.
Transcript
Best case scenario, like the bad money is just quiet. Like the worst case. They're actually a distraction and pull you off the rails.
…very good storytellers, one way or the other. And that means you can tell a nice story, whether it's to your board or to whatever other meeting you're doing. And I think it's really a blind spot. And one of the things I learned over the years is stop doing that because it doesn't help in the end.
And for me, it comes back to like, you know, on that, but unfair advantages. Like back to buying, like, it's not just money. It's what doors do you unlock to do you risk this more that you can't get anywhere else? And running a startup is guerrilla warfare. I will cheat and find whatever way I can to win, you know, very ruthlessly. And who am I bringing on my team who are willing to get in the mud with me and fight this fight? Like, that's what we're looking for is we surround ourselves with the smart people.
I've kept you way longer than I promised. Let me end with three. Two of them are going to be a little poking at things, two questions poking at things. And then one specifically for David. But so the first poke is we've sort of danced around this idea that, well, why can't a general purpose model…
going to take the qualitative answer and then I think you can do the quantitative. So here's the qualitative, Ryan. The moat here is trust. Like you can't point to something like Anthropic and say, oh, there's no way they could like technically, technically approach what we're doing. Of course they…
And I could try, but