Aydin Senkut on the generalist advantage: catching every wave from Canva to agentic AI
Key points
Key takeaways from a Suffiyan Malik interview with Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner of Felicis (November 2026):
- The generalist advantage: Felicis deliberately chases every major wave — consumer (Canva, Notion), e-commerce (Shopify), finance (Adyen, Credit Karma), then AI (Runway) and agentic AI — rather than specialising in one thesis.
- Portfolio construction: Around 50 companies per fund is the sweet spot: going from 20 to 50 companies cuts catastrophic-fund risk from ~11% to ~1% while barely denting power-law upside; check-size tiering keeps relationships manageable.
- Engineering serendipity: Senkut relies on relentless reading and quiet thinking time to discover non-consensus people and ideas — the equivalent of finding music no one else listens to — rather than only asking the smartest people he knows.
- Relationships beat scale: He asks each founder "what is the single most important thing we can do for you?" and commits to doing that; Felicis pledges in writing never to vote shares against founders.
- The misses: He still has Brian Chesky's 2008 email offering Airbnb at a $2.5M valuation, and he notes even Google and Facebook struggled to process payments in Brazil before Adyen — his habit is documenting decisions, including sins of omission.
- From Google to venture: Five years of Google sales in 40 countries taught him to understand people — the core skill of venture; after doubting himself, he started Felicis in 2006.
