Venture Capital · Cap table bombs: raising at 12x vs 2.5x puts gun to founder's head; first VC dollar starts the exit clock — Stripe, Palantir found liquidity without IPO

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Kleiner Perkins

The Startup Advice AI Founders Need Right Now | Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith

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Cap table bombs: raising at 12x vs 2.5x puts gun to founder's head; first VC dollar starts the exit clock — Stripe, Palantir found liquidity without IPO

2026-06-15 · 11 company · 5 thematic

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ryan smith

Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2002, bootstrapped to $36M revenue, raised Series A from Sequoia/Accel in 2012, took company public in 2018, sold to SAP for $8B in 2019, spun out and re-IPOed in 2021, then took private again with Silver Lake. Now runs $1B Halo Fund investing at intersection of sports, entertainment, and AI applications. Owns Utah Jazz NBA team.

jubin

Jubin is a partner at Kleiner Perkins and host of the Grip podcast. He invests in early-stage technology companies and has personal investments in AI legal tech (Filevine, competitor to Harvey).

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