5 Year Frontier

The future of coding. We cover multiplying engineering output, vibe coding bottlenecks, agents as reviewer, AI roll-ups, and the future of developing software. Merrill Lutsky is co-founder and CEO of Graphite, bringing AI-acceleration and automation to code review. Founded in 2020 out of New York, Graphite has become a key part of the developer ecosystem — as more code is generated with AI, they enable developers to scale the evaluation, testing, and review process before it is released. A growing bottleneck that has become incredibly important. The startup has raised over $70M from leading VC’s such Accel, A16Z, Menlo as well as a receiving a strategic investment from model provider Anthropic. Last year Graphite grew its revenue 20X and is trusted by over 45,000 developers at top engineering organizations such as Shopify and Figma. His second startup, Merrill has helped develop and manage software products for high output engineering companies such as Square, Oscar Insurance, and SelfMade. He holds a degree in Applies Math and Economics from Harvard. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of carbon conversion. We cover the global energy race, turning CO2 into biofuels, propelling interplanetary travel, modular military refueling stations, and the future of clean energy. Guiding us will be Greg Constantine CEO of AIRCO, one of the most ambitious startups reimagining the role of carbon in our economy and climate future. Headquartered in New York, AIRCO has developed a proprietary technology that captures carbon dioxide and converts it into high-value products, including sustainable aviation fuel, rocket fuel, and even consumer-grade ethanol. Rather than burying carbon underground, AIRCO turns it into something useful—fueling commercial flights, defense operations, and potentially even Mars missions. To date, AIRCO has raised over $100 million from a roster of strategic investors including Carbon Direct Capital, Patriot Capital, Toyota, JetBlue, and has secured large contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA—including recent work on developing rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere. Greg Constantine brings a rare blend of operating and investing experience—previously holding senior roles at Diageo and serving as a venture partner at LocalGlobe, where he backed early-stage deep tech and climate companies. Now, he’s at the helm of one of the most frontier-pushing climate startups in the world, blending advanced chemistry, automation, and strategic focus to rewire how we think about carbon. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of selling. We cover AI-copilots for sales, forecasting engines for CROs, real-time procurement layers, and the future of revenue intelligence. Guiding us will be Andy Byrne CEO of Clari, the #1 Enterprise Revenue Platform trusted by over 1,500 companies managing more than $4 trillion in revenue. From pipeline to close, renewal to expansion, Clari brings end-to-end visibility, control, and predictability to every revenue-critical function in the enterprise. The company has raised $520 million in funding from top-tier investors including Blackstone, Silver Lake, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures. Recognized as a 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ winner and growing at 227% over three years, Clari is leading a movement to modernize how businesses run their revenue process — transforming it from siloed and reactive to unified, intelligent, and data-driven. Andy is a defining voice in the future of revenue operations. A serial entrepreneur and two-time CEO, Clari marks the fourth company he’s helped build with backing from Sequoia Capital — a rare feat that speaks to his track record and long-term vision. Known for being thoughtful, resilient, and a true builder, Byrne has helped scale Clari into a global platform used by the world’s most sophisticated sales and finance teams. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of AI employees. We cover training and managing an AI workforce, instant agentic collaboration, new AI economics, the death of SaaS, AI lifting up the developing world and the future of agents. Surojit Chatterjee is CEO of Ema — short for Enterprise Machine Assistant. Ema is on a mission to reimagine how work gets done in large organizations by building “universal AI employees.” These aren’t just standalone chatbots — they’re sophisticated, mesh-like networks of specialized agents that can autonomously execute workflows across departments like HR, customer support, sales, and compliance. What sets Ema apart is its no-code, fully agentic platform — allowing non-technical users to configure, onboard, and manage AI employees using only natural language instructions. With over 150 pre-built agents and a proprietary ensemble model called EmaFusion that orchestrates over 100 large language models, the company is pushing the edge of what’s possible in enterprise AI. Ema last raised a $50M Series A led by Accel and has become a rapid riser in the AI landscape. Surojit has one of the best product resumes in tech. He was most recently Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, helping scale one of the most important companies in the crypto economy. Before that, he led product teams at Google for nearly a decade, overseeing products across Mobile Ads, Shopping, and Search, and earlier served as Chief Product Officer at Flipkart, where he helped build India’s leading e-commerce platform. In addition to building Ema, Surojit is also an active angel investor, backing startups like Udemy and Palantir. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from SUNY Buffalo, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aman Singh is Co-founder and CTO of Contextual AI, a company helping enterprises deploy AI and agents with accuracy, control, and safety. Founded by the team that pioneered Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Contextual is building next-generation AI that is deeply specialized to each business — answering with the context of your organization, not just the internet. With customers like Qualcomm and over $100 million raised from Greycroft, Lightspeed, Bain Capital Ventures, and Nvidia, Contextual is fast becoming one of the most important startups in enterprise AI. Aman leads the company’s technology development and brings a deep background in research engineering. He previously worked at Hugging Face, a leading force in open-source AI, and at Meta’s FAIR lab, where he contributed to the development of RAG and cutting-edge multimodal models. He holds a master’s in computer science from NYU, where he focused on the intersection of language and vision. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of autonomous driving and robotics. We cover simulating physical environments, helping car makers leapfrog Tesla, real world AI models, the economics of self driving cars, autonomous mines, and the future of autonomy. Vlad Voroninski is CEO and co-founder of Helm.ai. An early pioneer in training AI for autonomous cars, robotics, and aviation, Vlad has been instrumental in shifting the industry toward advanced simulation and synthetic data—a radical alternative to the traditional reliance on large-scale, manually labeled training sets. Helm.ai has raised over $100M from top investors, including Freeman Group and Goodyear Ventures, and its AI software powers major automakers like Honda and Volkswagen, helping them build next-generation self-driving systems. Vlad Voroninski, Helm’s co-founder and CEO is a UC Berkeley PhD, former MIT instructor, and author of 20+ research papers on machine learning. He has been at the forefront of unsupervised learning—an approach he believes will define the future of AI. Before founding Helm, Vlad was Chief Scientist at Sift Security, a machine learning cybersecurity startup that was later acquired by Netskope in 2018. After that, he set out to build Helm.ai, rethinking how AI can be trained for autonomous systems. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the US healthcare system. In it we cover the mission for radical transparency, challenging entrenched insurance providers, personalized healthcare, and AI’s empowerment of patient choice. Cobi Gantz is CEO of Chapter, a company revolutionizing how Americans navigate the complexities of Medicare and optimize their healthcare coverage. Founded in 2020, Chapter has rapidly become a leader in providing personalized, technology-driven Medicare guidance, aiming to simplify decision-making for seniors across the nation. They have taken on the enormous task of bringing greater transparency to the complex and multi-layered US healthcare system for the benefit of consumers. The company has raised over $100M in funding from investors such as XYZ Venture Capital, Susa and Marverick. Before founding Chapter, Cobi spent 6 years at Palantir, a $230B big data, analytics, and AI company embedded into the public and government sector. Cobi holds degrees from University Pennsylvania, an Economics degree from Wharton, and Masters in Public Policy from Cambridge. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of data infrastructure. We cover the explosion in compute demand, the petabytes of untapped enterprise data, energy-efficient GPUs, DeepSeek, the $500B Stargate project, and how AI is transforming data processing. Craig Dunham is CEO of Voltron Data, a company at the forefront of accelerating data processing for AI, analytics, and enterprise-scale workloads. Voltron provides the infrastructure necessary to handle enormous amounts of data — transforming bottlenecks into breakthroughs. By championing open-source frameworks like Apache Arrow, Voltron is building the connective tissue that allows businesses to process data at orders-of-magnitude speed and efficiency, reshaping industries from finance to healthcare to national security — partnering with the likes of Snowflake and Meta. Voltron have established themselves as a key part of the AI infrastructure stack and have raised a total of $110M from the likes of Coatue, LightSpeed, Google Ventures and BlackRock. With a deep background in scaling data infrastructure businesses, Craig is Voltron’s CEO. Before Voltron Data, Craig was the CEO of Lumar, a leading SaaS technical SEO platform. Prior to that, he held significant roles including General Manager at Guild Education and Seismic, where he led the integration of Seismic’s acquisition of The Savo Group and drove go-to-market strategies in the financial services sector. Craig began his career in investment banking with Citi and Lehman Brothers before transitioning into technology. He holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of AI infrastructure. We cover Open Source supremacy, DeepSeek disruption, building small expert models, and staying ahead of the blazing pace of AI innovation. Lin Qiao is the CEO and co-founder of Fireworks AI, a company pioneering scalable AI infrastructure to help businesses build, customize, and deploy AI models and applications with speed and efficiency. Fireworks provides seamless access to over 100 AI models, including those from OpenAI, DeepSeek, and other leading providers, making enterprise AI adoption faster and more flexible. Founded in 2022, Fireworks AI has already gained high-profile customers such as DoorDash, Verizon, and Upwork. Backed by Sequoia, the company has raised $77 million to date and is currently valued at $550 million. Lin brings a wealth of experience in AI infrastructure and engineering leadership. She has held key technical roles at IBM and LinkedIn, but is best known for her tenure at Meta, where she led a team of 300+ world-class engineers in AI frameworks and platforms. She played a pivotal role in scaling PyTorch, deploying it across Facebook’s global data centers and billions of devices, cementing it as one of the most widely used open-source AI frameworks today. Lin holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Computer Science from Fudan University in China. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of material science. In it we talk about discovering new materials with AI, carbon neutral compute, data centers in space, and the convergence of biology and materials. Jonathan Godwin CEO of Orbital Materials, a material sciences company that leverages AI to discovery and design of advanced materials, particularly for clean energy, carbon capture, and data center applications. Founded in 2022 out of London, Orbital have raised over $20M in funding from the likes of Radical Ventures, Nvidia, and Toyota. They have already developed the world fastest and most accurate AI model for simulating advanced materials, including their own proprietary foundation model. The startup has also entered a multi-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop new data center decarbonization and efficiency technologies. Jonathan’s impressive background includes a tenure as a senior researcher at Google DeepMind, where he honed his expertise in artificial intelligence. He holds advanced degrees in physics and computational sciences, with a degree from University College London. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of online advertising. In it we cover co-pilot for marketers, brand ecosystems, disrupting ad agencies and a privacy first internet. Mike True is CEO of Prescient AI, a marketing technology company advancing the use of predictive AI models to maximize paid advertising efficiency and return on spend. Their technology works counter to how $700B in online ad spend is done today, by not relying on tracking users via cookies and instead building a platform to help marketers succeed when a privacy-first internet arises and cookies go away. With the most precise solution in the market Prescient can forecast future campaign performance across multiple channels three months out with a 90% level of accuracy. Calling over 100 iconic eCommerce brands as their customers Prescient has raised $20M from VC firms such as Headline, Blumberg, as well as the first check from us here at focal. CEO Mike True has been helping brands take advantage of AI and analytics solutions throughout his career prior to starting Prescient, working at IBM, Oracle, and App Annie. Mike has become a great friend and a founder held in high-regard as reshaping the online advertising industry. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of industrial robotics. In it we cover turning the physical world into data, robots that climb, fly, swim, AI's ability to predict failures, and America's $5T aging infrastructure problem. Troy Demmer is Co-founder of Gecko Robotics, who use a fleet of advanced robots and AI software to help government and heavy industry maintain and manage their critical infrastructure. From navy vessels to power plants to dams, Gecko collects data on and delivers insights across over 500,000 of the worlds most important and critical infrastructure. It has developed a digital layer of intelligence over the built world to improve performance, prevent breakage and failures, and increasingly predict how an asset will behave in the future. The company has raised over $220M from top investors including Founders Fund and US Innovative Technology Fund. Gecko's co-founder and Chief Product Officer is Troy Demmer. A graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, Troy was previously in the healthcare industry working at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center before launching his first startup 360Showings, which 3D rendered homes for the real estate market. Along with his work at Gecko Troy also runs his own venture firm, First Order Fund, which invests in early stage startups building moats using data. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of biology. In it we cover machines controlling cells, manipulating biology with light, algorithms for drug development, and how biotech is becoming a low cost and mass production industry. Deniz Kent is CEO of Prolific Machines. Prolific is the first biotech company to harness light as a more efficient way to produce lab grown food, life saving drugs, and novel biosolutions. Offering a full stack tool kit from bioreactor to AI-software, Prolific's groundbreaking technology provides dynamic control over virtually any cell function in any cell type. Until now, biomanufacturing has been limited to indirect cell control via expensive, inefficient, and imprecise tools like chemicals. Prolific's platform enables direct control using light to produce new and superior biolsolutions faster, cheaper, and at greater scale. Based in Silicon Valley, the four year old company has raised $87 million in venture capital from the likes of Mayfield, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, In-Q-Tel and Fonterra. Prolific's co-founder and CEO is Dr Deniz Kent, an expert in biological systems who earned his PhD in the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King's College London. During his studies he co-discovered a new human liver stem cell, worked on cures for Asthma at GlaxoSmithKline and develop research in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of cybersecurity. In it we cover cybercriminal organizations, network effects of security, data as our biggest weapon, crypto's gift to bad actors and the threat of cyberwarfare. Nick Schneider is CEO of Arctic Wolf, one of the leading companies safeguarding the enterprise from cybersecurity threats. With a global presence and over 2,000 employees protecting more than 3,000 customers, they are a force in security operations. With an eye on going public, Arctic Wolf has been valued at over $4B calling KKR and Viking Global amongst its deep pocketed investors. Leading the company is Nick Schneider, a veteran in the security industry, Nick has developed expertise in creating best-of-breed technology platforms and sales organizations, which have been the driving force behind Arctic Wolf's explosive growth. Prior to Arctic Wolf, Nick led organizations at Dell and Code42. Of key interest to me is how Nick is deeply involved in being at the frontier of artificial intelligence's influence on cybersecurity — in particulate the dual role of AI, as both an enabler and inhibitor of cybercrime, which epitomizes the modern cybersecurity conundrum. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of biomanufacturing. In it we cover the emerging $4T bioeconomy, nature's ability to manufacture products, AI's acceleration of scientific discovery, China's quest for biological supremacy, and rethinking sustainability. Edward Shenderovich is CEO of Synonym, prior he was both an investor and entrepreneur, founding commercial real estate company Knotel where he raised over $400M and managed 200 locations across 4 continents. As an investor he founded Kite Ventures as well as Essential Capital, which include Delivery Hero and Fyber as their investments, both reaching IPO. Uniquely, Edward is also an accomplished Poet, having published multiple books in his native Russian. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the industrial economy. In it we cover Generative Engineering, digital twins, AI for the physical world, data that dwarfs the internet, Saudi Aramco the tech giant, and the digital future of heavy industry. Greg Fallon is CEO of Geminus, a company at the forefront of simulating and automating industrial operations through cutting-edge AI technology. Geminus is revolutionizing how industries operate by bringing unprecedented speed and scalability to AI model deployment, with successful implementations in energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, and semiconductors. With heavyweight investors and partners like SLB and LAM Research backing them, Geminus is a key player in the digital industrial landscape. As a proud early investor in Geminus almost six years ago, alongside our friends at The Hive, I've had the privilege of watching this company innovate the industrial complex. Greg, who holds a Master's in Science from the University of Virginia, has a wealth of experience, having held senior executive roles in product and commercialization at both Autodesk and ANSYS—two of the most influential companies in industrial software. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of home building. In it we cover putting construction in the cloud, home buying simulations, AI co-pilots for builders, onsite computer vision, advances in material science, and the future of new homes. Marc Minor is the CEO of Higharc, a software platform that helps new home builders get to market with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Higharc's mission is to modernize the $100 trillion U.S. residential real estate market and make home ownership more affordable. The platform has been used to design over 4,000 homes and has raised more than $80 million from top built-world investors such as Fifth Wall, Spark Capital, Lux, and a host of strategic partners, including Home Depot. Marc spent his career in the 3D printing and fabrication space, leading the marketing departments at Carbon and Desktop Metal before founding Higharc in 2018. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of human potential and performance. In it we cover the quest to be superhuman, making biological enhancement mainstream, cyborg athletes, human longevity, and endeavoring to build the biggest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen. Aron D'Souza is the Co-founder and President of the Enhanced Games. This new model of the Olympic Games places performance-enhancing drugs and genetic modifiers front and center. The Games strive to showcase humanity's unbounded potential by embracing scientific innovations and breakthroughs. In an era of accelerating technological and scientific change, they believe the world needs a sporting event that embraces the future, particularly advances in medical science. By doing so, they promise to give us all a glimpse of what the future of human performance could look like. Set to debut in 2025, the Games have the deep-pocketed support of some of the most successful and polarizing technologists and investors, including PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, the futurist and former CTO of Coinbase, as well as an upcoming documentary series by Ridley Scott. Prior to the Enhanced Games, Aron founded Sargon, a technology infrastructure company for the pensions and superannuation industry across the Asia-Pacific region. Now owned by Vista Equity, Sargon has 200 employees and nine offices. Aron, the author of three books, studied law at both Melbourne University and Oxford. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of coding. We will discuss the competitive AI landscape, NVIDIA and the hyperscalers, specialized versus generalized models, synthetic data, software that writes itself, and the future of software development. Jason Warner is co-founder and CEO of Poolside. Poolside is an AI startup challenging OpenAI and Anthropic by creating its own models to build the most capable AI for software development. Although less than two years old and launching this summer, Poolside has already raised over $500M from leading investors such as Redpoint, Bain, and DST. Jason was previously the CTO at GitHub, the world's largest developer platform, both before and after Microsoft's $7.5B acquisition, where he helped develop Co-pilot. Prior to that, he was the Head of Engineering at Heroku and a senior technical leader at numerous other companies. In addition to leading top software development teams, Jason served as a General Partner at Redpoint Ventures, who have invested in companies like Snowflake, Stripe, Hashicorp, and Netflix. He also sits on the Operator Board at Bridgewater Associates, helping them innovate at the technology frontier. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the brain. In it we cover digital therapies, psychedelics, co-evolving with AI, technologies impact on society, and re-inventing how clinical trials are run. Guiding us will be Dr Adam Gazzaley, a Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and the Founder & Executive Director of Neuroscape, a neuroscience center engaged in technology creation and scientific research of novel brain assessment and optimization approaches. Adam is also co-founder of Akili, a company developing therapeutic video games, that brought the first FDA approved game to market. He is also a founder of JAZZ Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with close to $1B AUM investing in experiential technology to improve human performance. He has been a scientific advisor for dozens of companies including Apple, General Electric and PepsiCo. Adam has filed multiple patents and authored over 180 scientific articles. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of intellectual property. In it we cover programmable IP, the new economy of ideas, convergence of fan and creator, tackling LLM data attribution, blockchain's gift to AI, and the future of human creativity. Jason Zhao is co-founder of Story Protocol, who are building a programmable intellectual property infrastructure for the internet. Built on the blockchain, Story provides a neutral source to track IP origins, enable remixing of IP with multiple stakeholders receiving attribution, and delivers an economic framework for everyone to participate in revenue that is created. Born out of South Korea, a global cultural innovator, the startup has raised over $50M from the likes of A16Z Crypto, Endeavor, and Samsung to become the leading contender to reimagine how intellectual property is managed for our modern age. Prior to founding Story Jason was at Google's Deepmind focusing on putting novel AI research into production. He is an investment Scout at Sequoia, a computer science graduate from Stanford and can be seen lecturing about his passion in philosophy at Oxford University. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of genetic engineering. In it we cover de-extinction, growing the Woolly Mammoth, human longevity, AI-led drug discovery, and the future of biotech. Ben Lamm is CEO of Colossal Biosciences, a Texas based biotech company on a mission to safeguard our worlds biodiversity and re-wild our planet. As part of that they are endeavoring to bring back extinct species such as the Woolly Mammoth, the Dodo, and the Tasmanian Tiger by as as early as 2028. Colossal has raised $225M to date and is a truly revolutionary organization pushing the frontier of genetic engineering with some of the leading minds in the field. The innovations developed from their research has impacts beyond animal conservation and advances our ability to fight diseases, uncover new drugs, protect our climate, reproduce successfully, and extend human lifespan. Ben comes from a software background and successfully built and sold three companies prior to Colossal. He brings to the world of science the energy and unique thinking of a software entrepreneur at a time when AI and computational biology is really propelling the field in leaps and bounds. Ben is prolific in the world of scientific innovation, sitting on the board of the Planetary Society, The Explorers Club, as well as owning the award winning science publication Nautilus. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of space operations. In it we discuss how software is making launches safer, AI co-pilots for complex workflows, predictive simulations, El Segundo and new deep tech hubs, and upcoming interstellar missions. Laura Crabtree is CEO of Epsilon3, a software platform to manage and orchestrate engineering, testing and operations for the space industry and other complex industries. Backed by frontier investors Lux Capital and Village Global, Epsilon serves NASA, Virgin Galactic and United States Space Force. Their software is embedded throughout the organization and seeks to drive operational excellence amongst the complex chaos. Laura spent a decade within SpaceX as Senior Mission Operations Engineer as well as 5 years at Northrop Grumman as a Systems Controller, providing us a unique perspective of the two generations of space companies. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of manufacturing and robotics. In it we cover advanced factory automation, humanoid robots, how digital twins simulate and optimize manufacturing lines, AI-led product and parts design, nanotechnology, and the next generation of physical technology founders and startups. Lior Susan, a pioneering force in digital transformation for physical industries who wears the hat of a CEO and investor simultaneously to extreme success. A serial entrepreneur, Lior is CEO of Bright Machines, delivering advanced robotics and automation for manufacturing. Funded to the tune of $300M Bright Machines operates out of the US, Mexico, and Israel. Its key funder is the VC firm Eclipse that Lior also co-founded and works as a General Partner. A firm that become one of the first specialists in physical industry transformation and since grown to manage over $3B and partnered with 90 companies. Lior sits on both sides of the table and offers a uniquely deep perspective on how our world is being reshaped. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of 3D printing. In it we cover mass customization at scale, computer-led design, creating the un-makable, printing body parts and food, rethinking global trade, and the future of product design and production. Philip DeSimone, co-founder of Carbon. Headquartered in California and serving customers in 17 countries from Adidas to Ford, Carbon is a 3D printing technology company helping businesses develop better products and bring them to market in less time. Carbon is a vertically integrated organization developing 3D printer hardware, advancing material science inputs, and designing the software to make it all work seamlessly. With over 300 patents filed, Carbon has raised $680M from the likes of Sequoia, Temasek, Adidas, BMW, and Google. Coming up to 12 years since co-founding Carbon, Phil leads Carbon's go-to-market strategy and manages their most strategic partnerships and customers. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of air travel. In it we cover arrival of flying cars to our cities as soon as next year, what they will look like, the reorganizing of the industrial complex to scale them en mass and how our concept of cities and daily lives will evolve as a result. Adam Goldstein is founder and CEO of Archer Aviation, a publicly listed company advancing sustainable air mobility. Archer builds electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft as part of its quest to develop new urban air mobility networks. Yes we're talking about flying cars. A future that Archer sees arriving as soon as 2025. Partnering with industry giants like United airlines and NASA, Archer is bringing its first aircraft, called Midnight, to ferry commuters over crowded highways and allow airlines to more efficiently feed their large hubs with passengers from the outer suburbs. Before Archer, Goldstein co-founded and led Vettery, a recruiting software company, which was sold to The Adecco Group for over $100 million. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of gaming. In it we cover games coming to life with AI powered characters and perpetually evolving worlds. We discuss how it reshapes gameplay, the economics of gaming, and extends out into the rest of our world in places such as media, education, commerce and health. At its core it shines a light into how humans and AI could interact and co-evolve. Kylan Gibbs is Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Inworld, the leading AI engine for games. Inworld is on a mission to bring games to life with Ai-powered characters and worlds that evolve with each action. Founded in 2021, the company is the most well funded AI gaming startup with over $120M raised from the likes of Lightspeed and Kleiner Perkins. Calling Disney, Warner Brothers, Niantic, and Xbox amongst its numerous customers. Kylan is responsible for Inworlds product vision and draws on his experience developing novel Ai at both Google's DeepMind and Bain & Company. He can also be found guest lecturing at Stanford University. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of sports and the fan experience. In it we cover disrupting the economics around sport, the rise of fan owned leagues, teams, and athletes, winning Kentucky Derby as a startup, the 21st Century sports agency, and the future of media and entertainment.    Brian Doxtator is the CEO of Commonwealth, an LA based startup challenging the economic model of horse racing, golf, and sports more broadly. Commonwealth enables its 20,000+ members to buy shares in horses and athletes, competing head on with wealthy sports owners for winnings while unlocking a new level of fan engagement and experience through ownership. Commonwealth has taken horse racing by storm: in 2022 their horse Country Grammer was the world's highest earner, in 2023 Mage won for them the Kentucky Derby. The company continues to expand into other sports and has the backing of renowned investors such as Roger Ehrenberg and athletes like Larry Fitzgerald. Brian has spent his career in technology startups, notably growing mobile-marketing company PlayHaven from $0 to $45M in revenue before its acquisition.   Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of Ai's ability to see and make sense of our world. In it we cover topics including predictive security systems making our lives safer, breakthrough advances in large vision models, counteracting big brother and bias, and the future of multi-sensory AI. Shikhar Shrestha is co-founder and CEO of Ambient Ai, the silicon valley startup that rocketed out of stealth in 2022 with over $50M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, adding a further $20M in 2023, and who boasts a list of fortune 500 as customers. Ambient equips security cameras with computer vision technology that enables them to see and understand the world around them. Shikhar spans a technical career from DARPA to Apple and Google, earning a Masters in Mechatronics, Robotics and Smart Imaging Systems from Stanford University. A true expect in computer vision technology i'm excited to learn from him where this transformative technology is taking us. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of biosecurity and securing our environments from virus and disease. In it we cover the power of light to disinfect and protect our indoor spaces, advances in sensor technologies and data to pick up future pandemics, risk modeling for real estate operators and the insurance industry, all the way to biosecurity at our borders and protecting humans as they travel through outer space. Ben Boyer is co-founder of R-Zero Systems, who builds autonomous systems that disinfect indoor environments using UV light. Founded in response to COVID RZero has become a leader leveraging light, sensors, and data to keep our environments safe from disease — deploying their technology in hospitals, schools, offices and with the government. This year they raised over $100M from the likes of Qualcomm, Mayo Clinic and Upfront Ventures. In addition to Rzero, Ben is co-founder of Tenaya Capital, a growth stage venture firm with over $1.5B AUM backing technology companies such as Lyft, Kayak and PlanGrid amongst others. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the construction industry, more specifically how money flows within construction. In it we cover topics such financial automation from the CFO office right down to the job site, the move from a backwards looking workflow to a real-time and predictive one, as well as the industry tailwinds accelerating overall technology adoption of a $15T segment of the global economy. Bassem Hamdy is founder and CEO of Briq, a next generation financial platform to make construction projects more profitable. Briq, a 150 person tech company out of Santa Barbara, commands a significant share of US construction firms as its customers and now has expanded internationally. The industry uses Briq to gain visibility over the flow of money on a project in order to make better planning decisions and predict profits more confidently. Bassem is a rare breed, he's been in construction software for over two decades, before it was cool and before there was even an industry around it. First seeing the introduction of resource planning software at CMIC (which now handles over $100B in construction revenue each year) to then being EVP of Enterprise Strategy at Procore (a now public company) helping construction transition to the cloud. Today we get to talk about what the next evolution is. He's also one of the very few that can speak construction as authentically as he speaks technology. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of vertical software seen through the lens of the fitness and wellness industry. In it we cover the evolution of software to ecosystems, predicting customer behavior, the rise of embedded finance, and the global appetite for fitness. Fritz Lanman is CEO of Mindbody, the leading software platform serving fitness and wellness studios in over 150 countries. An incredible success case for vertical software that has grown to serve 60,000 businesses representing more than 20M consumers. Supporting them with a comprehensive suite of tools from scheduling to marketing. Mindbody went public on the NASDAQ in 2015 and was taken private by Vista Equity in 2019. Fritz came to Mindbody via the acquisition of Classpass where he was first an investor then CEO, and still serves as CEO today. Starting his career at Microsoft Fritz is a 3x entrepreneur, passionate about advanced software and data, and has an enviable angle investment track record that includes Pinterest, Square, Wish and Flexport. Subscribe for new podcasts. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of sustainable cities and real estate. In it we cover topics including the most impactful projects of the Empire State's $300M retrofit, new innovations in sustainability for buildings old and new, the importance of economic incentives and the incoming regulation putting pressure on the real estate industry globally. Anthony Malkin is CEO of Empire State Reality Trust, Inc (NYSE:ESRT), a leading real estate investment trust which owns and operates office and retail properties throughout New York — most notable being the Empire State Building coined ‘The Worlds Most Famous Building'. Tony has transformed the 100 year old Empire State building into a shining example of energy efficiency and modernization, open sourcing their work to the world and advancing the cause of green buildings in partnership with others such as the Clinton Climate Initiative. Tony has led the development of standards for building energy efficiency and, amongst his many positions, is a member of the Board of Governors of the Real Estate Board of New York and member of Partnership for NYC's Innovation. Tony is an intellectually forward and bold thinker, deep in innovation through personal investments in VC and the technology industry. A man of action, mission-driven by our green city future yet equipped with the business mind to make it economically viable and practical to achieve. Sign up for new podcasts. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the mental and cognitive health. Unpacking the groundbreaking innovation of using just our voice to identify and address cognitive issues. We cover the cost and scalability benefits of this approach, how it could identify complex conditions such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons, the role of Apple and Google, as well as the hurdles to mass adoption. Grace Chang is founder and CEO of Kintsugi. A Berkeley based technology company on a mission to scale access to mental healthcare by pioneering voice biomarker technology. With just 20 seconds of free form speech Kintsugi can pick up on depression and anxiety with over 80% clinical accuracy — and it works across multiple languages. Named by Forbes as Top 50 Ai Company, it has received almost $30M in funding from the National Science Foundation and tier 1 VCs including Insight Partners. Grace is an engineer and product developer by background, having worked as a technology leader at multiple startups that leveraged data in novel ways —including at security firm UnifyID, which would authenticate a users identity by monitoring their behavior. Sign up for new podcasts. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of money and finance. We cover topics including AI's role in hyper personalized finance, new products as a result of increased access to user data through Open Banking, what die hard developers are building during the crypto winter, and the intersection of gaming and economics.Fred Schebesta, founder and Chairman of Finder, a comparison website helping consumers find the right financial products for them, from credit cards to home loads to health insurance. Started in Australia, Finder has expanded to the US, UK and beyond 10M users. Evolving to offer consumers a centralized place to manage all their finances. All this was achieved by Fred and his team without raising any outside capital, running a profitable business from day one. That was until Finders $30M 'seed' round at half a billion dollar valuation more than a dozen years later! Fred is a prolific builder of technology, living at the far flung corners of the internet, and leading Finders innovation efforts. He has founded and invested in multiple projects in and around the financial world from exchanges to crypto to gaming. A best selling Amazon author and original thinker.Subscribe for more episodes and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of the $600B customer service industry. We cover topics such as Ai's role in multiplying human output in the workplace, the evolution to predictive and hyper personalized service, as well as running a $B startup in the Ai boom. Gustavo Sapoznik is Founder and CEO of ASAPP, a NY Based technology company he started in 2014 to use software and Ai to dramatically improve the customer service experience. ASAPP calls JetBlue, Dish and Sprint amongst its many customers. I'm really excited to have Gustavo on the show today as he's built up one of the most sophisticated technical organizations and talent pools in the Ai industry. ASAPP was last valued at $1.6B and has raised hundreds of millions of VC capital from the likes of Emergence, Fidelity, March, and industry giants John Chambers and John Doerr. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vc See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of drones and the autonomous logistics. We cover topics including teleporting life saving medicine, installing buildings with drone portals, challenging the centralized power of eCommerce platforms and what our world will look like when drone delivery goes mainstream. Keller Rinaudo Cliffton is co-founder and CEO of Zipline, a drone company that operates the world's largest automated on-demand delivery service. A global leader, they are active in seven countries including the US, Japan and across Africa, where it has had huge humanitarian impact. Zipline has completed 10x the number of autonomous miles of the rest of the industry combined! Almost every minute Zipline makes a delivery ranging from vaccines (over 13M delivered), blood, and increasingly common goods. With over 1,000 employees Zipline is backed by leading investors including Sequoia, A16Z and Google. Keller is a software engineer, Harvard grad and professional rock climber. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vc  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of food, healthy eating and automated restaurants. We cover topics including robotic food production, building a restaurant OS, drone delivery and scaling both the passion and health benefits around eating healthy. Jonny Neman is co-founder and CEO of Sweetgreen, a delicious and much loved chain of salad restaurants. He and his buddies started Sweetgreen in college and have grown it to over 200 locations, generating half a billion in annual revenue and taking it public on the NYSE in 2021. Sweetgreen has built a reputation of being ahead of the technology adoption curve, developing much of it in house and before the rest of the industry, all while staying authentic to its mission of scaling healthy eating and earning a loyal customer following. Sign up (insert link) for new podcasts. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Launching a brand new podcast series! Fast forward 5 years to view the future of an industry through the eyes of its most innovative entrepreneurs and CEOs. Subscribe to receive the first episodes just around the corner!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.