20VC: Why Salesforce, SAP and Concur Will Die | Scaling 3x and Raising at a $9.2BN Valuation in COVID | How OpenAI is Changing the Travel Industry Forever | Never Before Revealed Margins on Travel and Expense Management with Ariel Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO

Ariel Cohen is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Navan (formerly TripActions), the #1 travel management super-app used by over 8,000 companies. Ariel has raised over $2BN for Navan from some of the best including a16z, Zeev Ventures, Lightspeed, Greenoaks, and Elad Gil. Prior to TripActions, Ariel co-founded streamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform that was successfully acquired by Jive Software, where Ariel had previously served in a senior position following his time at Hewlett-Packard. In Today's Episode with Ariel Cohen We Discuss: 1.) Why Education is Outdated and Wisdom to People Entering the Working World: • Why did Ariel not really attend many classes when he was a student? • What would be his biggest advice to young people leaving school today? Where would he focus? • Why does Ariel believe that traditional education is more outdated now than ever before? 2.) Why SAP and Salesforce Will Die: • Why does Ariel believe that SAP and Salesforce have not innovated for a decade? • Why does Ariel believe that Slack is a disaster inside of Salesforce? • What are the single biggest advantages that startups have over these large incumbents? • What can startups do to retain innovation and speed as they scale into becoming an incumbent? • Why are the best founders willing to kill their own projects? 3.) Growing a Business 3x and Raising at a $9.2BN Valuation in COVID: • How did Ariel grow the business 3x with all travel being banned? • What were the tactics to blitz scaling during COVID? • How did Ariel approach his investors for a new round in the middle of COVID? How did he get such a high price in the midst of a global pandemic? • What is the bull case for how Navan can be a $40BN company? 4.) Margins Matter: Gaining Leverage Through Additional Margin: • With Navan's 80% margin, they have 30% higher margins than other competitors, how do they have such high margins? • With the additional 30%, how does Ariel plan to scale Navan's reach and use the margin to do so? • How does OpenAI play a role in helping Navan increase its margin even further?