Felicis founder Aydin Senkut: why moats are dead and alive

Summation with Auren Hoffman

Summation with Auren Hoffman
Felicis founder Aydin Senkut: why moats are dead and alive
Sep 08, 2026

Aydin Senkut is the founder and managing partner of Felicis, the venture firm he started in 2006, with over $4B under management and early bets on Shopify, Notion, Canva, and Adyen. He was Google's first product manager and has been on the Forbes Midas list of top investors for 13 years running.

In this episode of Summation, Aydin and Auren discuss:

  • Why the best platform companies came from Ottawa, Sydney, and Amsterdam and not Silicon Valley
  • How capital became a commodity and people are the only real moat left
  • Why the trait he bets on is the willingness to reset your priors
  • How defense went from an optional purchase to a matter of survival

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Aydin Senkut on X at @asenkut


Episode Artwork Felicis founder Aydin Senkut: why moats are dead and alive 1:00:23 Episode Artwork Nir Eyal on belief, motivation, and the end of suffering 1:07:26 Episode Artwork SecureAuth CEO Geoff Mattson on the coming fraudpocalypse and the death of the password 45:46 Episode Artwork Fmr. Senator Cory Gardner: why the AI race is won on boring infrastructure and how China wins by making America hate AI 53:33 Episode Artwork CodeRabbit CEO Harjot Gill on software's new bottleneck and zero to $50m ARR in 2 years 55:22 Episode Artwork Moritz Baier-Lentz on why the future of AI runs on video games 1:05:01 Episode Artwork OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji: measuring the greatest technology of our time 56:31 Episode Artwork Anthropic’s Felix Rieseberg: why AI wins a Nobel before a Pulitzer 1:06:33 Episode Artwork Fifth Wall CEO Brendan Wallace: the data center land grab and the most stable asset on earth you still can't buy 53:10 Episode Artwork Striveworks CEO Jim Rebesco on drone swarms, AI for warfighters, and the end of air superiority 1:00:04 Episode Artwork Short-seller Carson Block: a fugitive CEO, Libyan spies, and $50B fraud 1:10:47 Episode Artwork Facet CEO Anders Jones on the biggest heist in finance, how advisors really sell permission, and the great boomer wealth transfer 49:36 Episode Artwork Charles Duhigg on the writing AI can't touch, what GLP-1s really do to your brain, and the serendipity tax 1:03:42 Episode Artwork SignalFire CEO Chris Farmer on why venture funds now last 20 years and the hiring boom behind the layoffs 46:03 Episode Artwork GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent 39:59 Episode Artwork Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn 50:10 Episode Artwork Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource 1:00:06 Episode Artwork Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office 1:02:03 Episode Artwork Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war 1:05:23 Episode Artwork Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office​ 57:44 Episode Artwork Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on why trades are AI-proof, the trillion-dollar home services market, and why software stopped being a capital asset 58:53 Episode Artwork Eric Ries on why "bad governance" outperforms, the case against shareholder primacy, and AI's Chernobyl moment 58:46 Episode Artwork Fmr. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on NATO, nuclear energy, and how to disagree without blood 1:01:18 Episode Artwork Fmr Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on chips, China, and lessons from Andy Grove 58:10 Episode Artwork Vlad Tenev and Tudor Achim on mathematical superintelligence, why math is harder than code for LLMs, and the end of buggy software 48:54