Gokul Rajaram - Lessons from Investing in 700 Companies - [Invest Like the Best, EP.456]

Introduction

PatrickMy guest today is Gokul Rajaram. Gokul is one of the most prolific product builders of the last 20 years. He’s built the core ads and product businesses at Google, Facebook, Square, and DoorDash, working at each company during its most formative scaling periods. Alongside his operating career, Gokul has invested in more than 700 companies, giving him an unusually broad view into how products are built and scaled. This conversation is about how product building is changing with AI, and what remains durable when software becomes increasingly cheap to create but hard to defend. We discuss the one thing Gokul believes is truly future-proof in AI, why companies like Zendesk and Slack are more exposed than Salesforce and NetSuite, and the few sources of defensibility.

We also talk about everything Gokul has learned from helping build the most important ads businesses, including the only three ways an ads business can make money, how those constraints shape product decisions, and what consumer behavior change threatens every major platform. Gokul shares lessons from working with Larry and Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Tony Xu, and what he learned from watching each of them build generational companies. Please enjoy my great conversation with Gokul Rajaram.