Author: Zhou Ya
In 2025, when AI reshapes the industrial structure and global venture capital gold declines, the entrepreneurship and investment sectors are experiencing a contradiction: the speed of technological innovation is accelerating, while capital patience is decreasing - founders are facing higher growth expectations and shorter proof periods, while investors are looking for certain returns in unprecedented uncertainty. It was at this moment that we noticed Aydin Senkut's latest video content, and his insights seemed particularly precious.
As a veteran of the Internet bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, and the impact of the epidemic, Aydin Senkut is a buff. He is the founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures. The early-stage venture capital firm invested in less than 14 years has spawned 45 unicorn companies with valuations of more than US$1 billion, achieving 100 successful exits, including 17 IPOs. Prior to Felicis, Senkut was Google's first product manager, participated in the launch of Gmail and witnessed the birth of Google's advertising system, which made him one of the most insightful investors in the venture capital space.
He invests in well-known companies including listed Shopify, as well as private companies such as Canva in Australia, Notion in the United States, Runway focusing on AI, and Anduril Labs focusing on defense and AI, which are precisely those who have established moats in their respective fields and can maintain resilience during the economic downturn.
The experience Aydin Senkut has accumulated at Google, especially the "10X Principle" proposed by Larry Page, deeply shaped his later investment philosophy - truly great companies are not only "ride the wind", but can "create wind", so we need to look for startups that can be 10 times stronger than existing solutions in terms of functionality, price or speed.
This article covers Aydin's investment strategy, insights into market choices, his evaluation criteria for founder traits, and how to identify truly promising entrepreneurial projects. At the same time, he also shared the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make, how to build an effective company culture, the art of telling good entrepreneurial stories, and the deeper value that technology should bring to mankind.
[Experience 1] Treat all difficulties as "rocket fuel"
Aydin opened with a personal experience, revealing his core thinking style of facing difficulties—“In my life, six or seven times, I was in very difficult situations, and my choices made me who I am today.” He pointed out that when people encounter setbacks, there are two ways to choose: accept setbacks and react after that, and the latter is what really matters.
"The most important thing is to reject those restrictive beliefs!" Aydin reviewed several key nodes in his life, and every time someone tried to limit him to a certain framework:
"At every critical moment of my life, there are always people trying to put me in a box that I don't want. For example, they say, 'You will stay in Turkey fore...
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