Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Anish Acharya.
He sold his first company to Google. His second to Credit Karma — then stayed and helped scale their U.S. Card business to nearly a billion dollars in annual revenue.
In 2019, Andreessen Horowitz made him a General Partner. Since then, he's led the Series A in Deel, which just hit a $17.3 billion valuation in October 2025.
Most VCs have never operated anything. Anish built, scaled, sold, and then learned how to pick.
Anish, thanks a lot for being here !
TIMELINE :
00:00:00 - 00:02:30 : Anish Acharya’s entrepreneurial journey
00:02:30 - 00:06:28 : Why 2008 and today are the most exciting times for founders
00:06:28 - 00:11:38 : The AI model competition and Google's comeback
00:11:38 - 00:14:50 : Why the "LLM wrapper" fear is no longer relevant
00:14:50 - 00:20:07 : Multi-model approach and the future of AI applications
00:20:07 - 00:24:01 : Learning from Credit Karma and the importance of winning
00:24:01 - 00:29:14 : Why paternalism kills products and going with human nature
00:29:14 - 00:35:28 : AI's human impact and why it's different from social media
00:35:28 - 00:42:45 : The future of coding, jobs, and why SaaS isn't dead
00:42:45 - 00:55:21 : Investing in Deel, AI companionship, and what it costs to win
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