Venture Stories

Amjad Masad (@amasad), founder and CEO of Replit, and Yohei Nakajima (@yoheinakajima), Managing Partner at Untapped Capital, joined Village Global partner Ben Casnocha for a live masterclass with Village Global founders.Takeaways:AI agents are rapidly evolving, with coding and deep research agents showing the most traction today. But general-purpose assistants are still brittle — trip-planning and high-context tasks remain hard.Replit Agent shows how quickly full-stack applications can be built today, sometimes in under an hour — even by non-technical users. What matters most isn't a CS degree, it's traits like curiosity, grit, and systems thinking.Many AI startups are too quick to claim “moats” when most don't really have one. True defensibility requires deep domain insight, unique data, and the right founder traits.The rise of vertical AI agents is compelling — specialists outperform general agents for now. A real AGI will change everything, and it's so disruptive it's not even worth planning around.The best investors still look for timeless traits: hard-charging, resourceful founders, attacking stagnant industries. AI changes a lot — but not what makes a great early-stage team.Tools like Replit are making vibe coding (yes, even for non-coders) a superpower. From executive dashboards to lightweight Crunchbase clones, agents are already creating real enterprise value.Don't over-engineer AI use cases. Start with internal tools or things you've always wanted to build. The best projects often come from personal curiosity and side projects.Resources mentioned:Replit – The coding platform behind Replit Agent, enabling fast full-stack app creation with AIVCpedia by Yohei Nakajima – A startup intelligence platform vibe-coded with Replit AgentTweet: $150k → $400 NetSuite extension – Real-world example of arbitrage using ReplitTED Talk on Grit by Angela Duckworth – Referenced by Amjad as a key trait for AI builders“Perfectionism” blog post by Amjad Masad – Why it holds builders back and how to overcome itSeven Powers by Hamilton Helmer – The strategy book Amjad calls the best resource on real moatsNEO – A fully autonomous ML engineerLayers – An autonomous AI marketing agent that lives in your IDEBasis – A vertical AI agent for accounting firmsNDEA – A new lab (founded by François Chollet & Mike Knoop) exploring AGI with program synthesisThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at Village Global, welcomes Kristen Ostro, founder and CEO of Strut Consulting, to discuss the foundational elements that set venture capital firms up for long-term success. Kristen shares how her career began under the mentorship of Dick Kramlich at NEA, where she was trained in the core values and operational excellence that have shaped her approach to supporting dozens of VC firms across Silicon Valley. Drawing on this experience, Kristen explains why establishing a clear mission, vision, and values (MVV) framework is essential for firm alignment, decision-making, and building a resilient culture.Kristen outlines the common pitfalls firms face when they skip the MVV exercise, such as misalignment, wasted resources, and cultural drift, and offers actionable advice for integrating MVV into hiring, branding, and succession planning. She emphasizes that it's never too late for a firm to revisit and refine its core principles, and shares practical tips for making the process collaborative and authentic.Listeners will gain valuable insights on how to differentiate their firm in a competitive market, attract top talent, and create a legacy that stands the test of time. Kristen's reflections, inspired by her early training with one of venture capital's founding fathers, offer a roadmap for building a values-driven organization that can thrive for decades.VC Mastermind is a private podcast for VC Managing Partners. Designed for senior decision-makers at VC firms managing $50 million to $5 billion of institutional capital, VC Mastermind delivers premium insights, peer exchange, and operational best practices across all stages of a firm's life cycle. It was founded by Jacob Mullins (@jacob on X / twitter) – a 20-year veteran of the Silicon Valley startup tech and venture capital industry based in San Francisco.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at Village Global, sits down with Ezra Roizen, General Manager of Advsr and author of "The Magic Box Paradigm," to demystify the world of startup mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on Jacob's private podcast, VC Mastermind, which we are cross-posting on the Village Global podcast. Drawing on decades of experience as both an entrepreneur and investment banker, Ezra shares his unique framework for maximizing M&A outcomes, emphasizing that successful startup exits are driven not by a traditional sales process, but by building strategic relationships and unlocking future value for acquirers.Ezra introduces the "Magic Box Paradigm," a visual and practical approach that helps founders and investors focus on the unique value their company can unlock for specific buyers—what he calls the "purple boxes." He explains why M&A is fundamentally different from fundraising, how to avoid the pitfalls of a sales-driven mindset, and why starting early with strategic relationship-building is key. The conversation covers actionable advice for VCs and board members on how to guide their portfolio companies, the importance of thought leadership, and how to navigate both strategic and private equity exits.Listeners will come away with a fresh perspective on startup M&A, including when to bring in advisors, how to structure deals creatively, and why conventional wisdom—like relying on competitive bidding or rushing to term sheets—often falls short. Whether you're a founder, investor, or board member, this episode offers a masterclass in preparing for and executing high-impact M&A outcomes.VC Mastermind is a private podcast for VC Managing Partners. Designed for senior decision-makers at VC firms managing $50 million to $5 billion of institutional capital, VC Mastermind delivers premium insights, peer exchange, and operational best practices across all stages of a firm's life cycle. It was founded by Jacob Mullins (@jacob on X / twitter) – a 20-year veteran of the Silicon Valley startup tech and venture capital industry based in San Francisco.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Abhay Parasnis is founder and CEO of Typeface, is former CTO/CPO at Adobe, and sits on the board of Dropbox and Schneider Electric. He joined Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, for a live masterclass for Village Global founders.Takeaways:If you can break into the top tier of the enterprise market, it's hard to dislodge you.Big platforms like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are eager to prove their tech's power. If you position your startup as a prime showcase for their platform, you become a strategic asset.When selling to enterprise, understand the company's macro strategy in the market, but also know what the on-the-ground person needs to close deals.With the rise of agents and agentic automation, even the workflow layer isn't safe. As these systems gain richer context, they'll redefine automation in SaaS. Just like today's platform vs. app debate, tomorrow's battle will be legacy workflows vs. agents.Success in AI isn't just about top-tier products—it's about being a consultative partner to help them with change management.There's a common fear about embracing a custom data training strategy — it's expensive, complex, and feels like the domain of big players. But starting narrow and accumulating distinct data early is key. It drives real AI differentiation and builds critical internal muscle in engineering and product.Value-based pricing means customers are less price-sensitive because it ties directly to their top-line business, unlike commodity pricing, which faces constant cost pressure. Instead of charging per word, image, or seat—models that AI disrupts—pricing should align with outcomes, ensuring long-term sustainability.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Aaron Harris was a partner at YC for 7.5 years where he funded Deel, OpenSea, Scale AI, Rappi, Lattice, and others. He also built YC's Series A program where he worked with founders on over 200 Series As and Bs that raised in excess of $3B in capital. He joined Sam Kirschner, VP at Village Global, to give Village Global founders helpful tips on fundraising.Takeaways:Investors bet on stories, not just data. Your job? Tell a story of massive economic opportunity — not just how you fit into the future, but how you create it.Hype lowers the barrier to turn attention into excitement.Fundraising isn't the trophy, even though it's celebrated as such. But if you optimize for raising money, you get great at burning money and miss the real point: building something that lasts through the hype cycles.Think about raising money with terminal value in mind, not just the value of this current round.Raising an A: you'll need to raise about 20% of your company. Series B: 15-20%. Seeds are all over the place. More competition in a round means less dilution; less competition means more dilution. Hype helps reduce dilution.Be aware of dilution on SAFEs so that you don't all of a sudden start arguing about a point of dilution here or there on a given round.AI companies have been getting faster investor movement. The hottest deals land term sheets in 48 hours. Next tier? 1-2 weeks. Beyond that, a 2-6 week grind with unpredictable timing. After 6 weeks, rounds can stretch to 3-4 months where persistence is what leads to success.Understand the market and how investors think by having casual, no-pitch-deck coffee chats. The real signal? Not a follow-up meeting — that's just a VC's job. Look for action: are they willing to spend political capital for you? That's true interest.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Kathy Copic is founder of Fieldwork Partners, where she works closely with early stage companies on scoping technical projects, getting early ML models into production, and helping them hire. She was interviewed by Lindsay Pettingill, Investment Partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders. Takeaways:Maintain at least three interview touchpoints to thoroughly evaluate candidates — rushing the process means missing vital signals about how well candidates understand your business and culture.Write job descriptions that focus on company mission and concrete first-90-day projects rather than generic skill requirements — this attracts candidates who are genuinely excited about your specific opportunity.Look beyond prestigious company names and degrees — strong candidates often demonstrate their passion through side projects, nonprofits, or other entrepreneurial pursuits.Foster interactive interviews where you're comfortable interrupting candidates — their response to dynamic discussion reveals more about their communication style and fit than scripted questions.Structure work trials carefully to benefit both parties — the best candidates are evaluating your team and work environment just as much as you're evaluating them.When competing with large tech companies, emphasize the concrete impact individuals can have in your startup rather than trying to match compensation packages.Build diverse teams by implementing clear interview rubrics, providing guidance on legal considerations, and equipping interviewers with specific talking points about why diversity matters to your company.For references, consider asking peers rather than managers when candidates are currently employed, but use references extensively to validate your assessments.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Eynat Guez, founder and CEO of Papaya Global, was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders.Takeaways:Show up to key meetings as the founder or executive team — don't just send the sales team. It signals to the client that you're personally invested and committed to making the deal a success.Avoid being overly optimistic about where prospects stand. Serious signals include active texting, detailed questions about implementation, security questionnaires, and the involvement of additional stakeholders.Be strategic about progressing meetings: PowerPoint to articulate vision, Excel for financials, and Word for legal details.Build strong relationships with junior VCs as well as partners — they can provide introductions, market intelligence, and future opportunities as they advance in their careers.Building relationships with clients shouldn't stop after the deal closes. Ongoing check-ins help position your company as a long-term partner, not just a vendor.Leaders should periodically dive deep into 2-3 departments or processes each quarter to challenge assumptions and drive innovation.Engage with junior employees or frontline staff for fresh perspectives — their insights are often more candid than those of seasoned executives.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Auren Hoffman, CEO of SafeGraph and GP of Flex Capital, interviewed Ben Casnocha, Village Global co-founder and partner, on Auren's World of DaaS podcast. They are longtime friends and had a wide-ranging discussion on career strategy, evaluating founders, serendipity, wealth, and much more. We've cross-posted that conversation here.Highlights:The relevance of what you know vs. who you know has been a debate in the career strategy space for decades. Ben believes that the “what you know” is often dependent on the “who you know” because with the advent of the internet, public information is accessible to all but the insights that live in the heads of the smartest people are not shared widely and require a personal relationship with someone to be able to access that information.Talent spotting is about finding value in the unexpected and recognizing the strengths in those who may not fit the typical mold. Sometimes people who have clear and obvious flaws in one area are overlooked by people who can't see the brilliance beyond that particular flaw.Certain seasons of life are good for maximizing for serendipity and taking random coffee meetings. The key is to know what season of life you are in and whether it's better in the long-term at that moment to be maximizing for serendipity or not. The pendulum will swing back around at some point.There's a certain level of wealth where your wealth actually starts to detract from your level of happiness. Sometimes people are better served by aiming for a lower level of wealth in order to maximize for happiness.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Howie Liu, founder and CEO of Airtable, was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha live in downtown San Francisco in front of an audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm.Highlights:- Embracing discomfort is part of the founder's journey. Learning to tolerate and even appreciate this discomfort is important. - Making decisions when you feel "almost ready" rather than waiting for perfect readiness is often necessary.- It's crucial to understand the underlying problems customers are trying to solve, not just their feature requests. Founders should resist the temptation to become "feature checklist machines" and instead focus on core problems.- There's growing fatigue around AI hype in enterprises. Successful AI implementation requires focusing on specific, valuable use cases rather than broad promises.- Airtable spent 2.5 years building their initial product, focusing on creating a platform rather than just a simple collaboration tool. They balanced building a horizontal platform with targeted use case marketing to appeal to different users.- It's crucial to understand the context and biases of advice-givers, no matter how successful they are. Having strong conviction in your vision, while being open to feedback, is essential for success.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs.Takeaways:- Any modern cloud-native app is a nexus of services that all work together to create a coherent interface for the user. For example, Auth0 handles login, Stripe handles billing, React is used for the interface, among many more services all working in concert. Vercel helps ensure that the user has an amazing experience no matter what services are all working together on the back end.- Guillermo tells the story of open source Unix winning out over proprietary versions of Linux, even though the proprietary versions had an early lead. He suggests that over the long term, open source will win, more often than not, and that the same story will likely play out when it comes to AI models, with open source models winning out in the end.- When it comes to investing, Guillermo loves to bet on someone who has been obsessed with a topic for years and years. He recounts the story of the Auth0 team who had written books and given talks and spent years of their lives just on logging in and logging out. He also says that he prefers a leadership team that lives and breathes a company's problem space. He says that he's allergic to the idea of a professional leadership team swooping in at a certain stage.- Rauch was born and raised in Argentina. He says that he has a sense of urgency and that tomorrow is not promised that stems from his childhood experience growing up in Argentina. He tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg keeping the Sun Microsystems logo on the back of the Facebook sign at their headquarters when they moved in to cultivate a sense that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.- Guillermo believes in giving his team leads radical ownership of their products. He provides the leads with frameworks that explain clear principles for how they build products at Vercel but beyond that he gives the leads a long leash and a sense of ownership over the product.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Michael Balaoing, founder of Candlelion, joins Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha on this episode to discuss:- The importance of the acronym WTF (what's the feeling?) when you're giving a presentation.- The four roles that you take on as a speaker: captain, pilot, guide, and game show host.- The five questions to ask when seeking feedback on a presentation.- How to keep the audience engaged throughout a talk, not just during the Q&A at the end.- How to bake stories into your presentations and remix your talks for different audiences.- The keys to virtual communication.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Brad Feld (@bfeld), VC at Foundry Group and co-author with Dave Jilk of The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha to discuss:- Common misconceptions about Nietzsche and why being misunderstood makes him an especially interesting philosopher. - What Nietzsche can teach entrepreneurs deciding whether to pivot or persevere. Brad says that founders should view their entrepreneurial journey not in terms of a single company, but as the next 30-50 years of their life.- Why Brad hates the term “passion” and says it's overused in entrepreneurial circles.- Why to focus more on whether someone's words and actions line up rather than the strength of their beliefs.- The lessons that Brad has for making decisions among groups today given Nietzsche's aphorism that “insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Thejo Kote (@thejo) talks to Village partner Ben Casnocha. Thejo is a two-time founder and CEO. His current company, Airbase, is a spend management platform serving companies with 100 and 5,000 employees like Coda, 15Five, Front, Marqueta, CaptivateIQ, Abnormal, and more. Airbase has raised over $200 million, has tens of millions in ARR, and is consistently ranked as a top spend management company by G2.Highlights:- Rather than jumping into building Airbase, he built high-fidelity mockups and went back to prospective customers and asked if they'd buy it to “pre-sell” it.- In B2B, build for a specific, recognizable buyer. You want to sell to a specific role within the org who will be your champion. Ideally this is someone who also has influence within the org.- Select the kinds of customers who aren't likely to switch in the early days. Team with early customers who actually want to be partners and are motivated by the relationship. Flatter them by asking: “are there any other innovative, forward-thinking leaders you know who I should also talk to?”- 6-8 months later after proving value and showing they could be a good partner, he said “hey, I want to get your feedback on our pricing model. Is this fair for the next set of customers?” 100% of the customers converted when he asked if they were willing to opt in to the pricing structure with a significant discount for their initial partnership.- When hiring salespeople, Thejo focuses more on personality traits rather than prior experience selling to the same segment. Also, if candidates are drawn to the liquid comp at a large, public company, they're likely going to have a hard time transitioning to a startup. Find people who have been comfortable taking risks.- Airbase is fully remote and Thejo doesn't think in terms of onshore vs. offshore within the company because that instantly creates a class system. Anyone anywhere in the world is part of their single, remote team, which has the internet as its headquarters. Each member of the team is “equitably inconvenienced” in his words.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Michelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020. They discussed: - The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company. - Her advice on fundraising after raising more than $300M for Cloudflare, including why you should keep the rest of the VC partnership in mind, and how to show rather than tell in your pitch. - How they found the best talent, including why their blog brought them plenty of inbound interest, and why searching far and wide around the globe for engineers helped them build their team quickly. - Why they don't use recruiters at Cloudflare. - How to turn a weakness into a strength. - How to process feedback and when it makes sense to ignore it. - Stories of extreme frugality in the early days of the company, including building their own Ikea desks. - How an emotional response by customers helped them know they had product-market fit. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.  Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

We're excited to launch a new EIR program for data science founders in partnership with Rackhouse Ventures, founded by Kevin Novak. Learn more about the program: https://www.villageglobal.vc/rackhouse-village-global-eir-programKevin Novak (@novakkm), an early Uber employee, was instrumental in developing their data science program and was the creator of surge pricing.Highlights:- Kevin, originally a nuclear physicist, applied his analytical skills to develop Uber's first surge pricing model in three weeks—a task that would typically take six months in academia.- He says that founders shouldn't wait until they have plenty of data to make decisions — instead, start with first principles thinking while also building a virtuous data cycle by ensuring you are collecting data that will inform future decisions.- He comments that AI might be “overhyped on average” at the moment. The first breakthrough product is essentially an API, which has led to incumbents responding more quickly and more aggressively. Kevin argues that if you are founding a generative AI company, you are effectively making the claim that incumbents won't be able to respond and implement an LLM themselves.- Kevin cautions founders not to fall in love with any one idea too early. It's better to hedge your bets and experiment with one or two. Through trial and error, you can eventually decide on one idea that has the potential to be a strong business. - For the Village Global-Rackhouse EIR program, we're looking for founders with deep passion for founding a company. We don't require you to have your idea and team established. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

This encore episode is a recording of a special masterclass roundtable session for our founders with John Donahoe. John is CEO of Nike and was previously CEO of ServiceNow and eBay. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and Ben Silbermann at Pinterest. We're honored to have him among our small group of world-class executives and collaborators whose time and expertise help power our network of founders at Village Global. He shared advice on when to hire ahead, invest in and train, or replace personnel on your team and gave insight into his most common piece of advice on professional growth when advising CEOs. Quotes From This Episode "When you talk about priorities at an aspirational level, they overlap a lot. People start realizing we're more similar than we're dissimilar." "Adversity never feels fun. I don't seek adversity. But I'm no longer scared of adversity. When it emerges, instead of trying to run from it, I now accept that it is a reality and I say, 'well, at least I'm going to learn and grow.'" "My experience has been that around any issue that involves change, you have roughly 20-25% of people who want to be part of it, no matter what the topic is, you have 25-30% of people who want to fight it, and you have the 50% of people in the middle saying 'which side is going to win?'" "[When someone is let go] The fear is humiliation usually. That's almost a bigger fear than actually leaving the company." "We're never as good or as bad as labels make us out to be." "I would say in general, for every 10 hours of business development conversations, 8 of them are a waste." "I do gratitude practice driving into work every morning. It's proven in brain science that your brain becomes more negative over time. But it's also been proven in brain science that you can counteract that." "The older I get, the more I've made friends with uncertainty. I don't avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty is as present to me today as it was before but I'm a little more comfortable with it today." Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Chris Lunt is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience building web services and data platforms. He is in his seventh year as the CTO for the NIH's All of Us Research Program. He joined the NIH from GetInsured, where he worked to improve health insurance shopping and enrollment systems. Previously Chris ran VC-backed internet startups, with one IPO.Highlights:- Chris is hopeful about Silicon Valley going back to its roots to create sociological change by uniting people and being thoughtful about what the world should look like. Over the last couple decades it has become more venal.- Chris believes in the power of investing public money to create opportunities. He says that Silicon Valley is largely the story of a public private partnership and that it's hard to do certain fundamental research in a purely market-based economy.- Chris says that the initiatives around Web3 weren't grounded in a realistic understanding of human nature and the result was not a good outcome.- Healthcare is one of the most conservative industries but a way to drag it into the future is for the government to mandate change. Health records are currently built for billing purposes rather than for improving health. It's also not all that long ago that hospitals were using paper records until the Affordable Care Act required that they digitize.- There is a moment coming soon where there is an opportunity to completely reimagine healthcare delivery. A generalist will be able to help a person navigate between various providers and specialists instead of the current fragmented approach.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Michael Hochberg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hochberg/) is a physicist and a founder of four successful startup companies in semiconductors and telecommunications, including Luxtera, acquired by Cisco in 2019, and Elenion, acquired by Nokia in 2020. He won the highest awards for young scientists in Singapore (NRF Fellowship) and the United States (PECASE), is an author on over 60 patents, and has been involved in the creation of over 30 companies in biotech and applications of silicon photonics. Highlights: - In college Michael would tie together clusters of Dell machines to replicate the performance of supercomputers. - The core of building a successful company in Michael's view is hiring the best people. The best can solve really hard problems but hiring mediocre people results in even trivial problems being unsolvable. - Silicon photonics chips are replacing things that could previously only be done in silicon. Data centres and telecom systems are now dominated by silicon photonics. - There's a fundamental difference between co-founders and early employees but that line can often be blurred, often at the peril of the founding team. - Michael says that founders don't do enough diligence on their co-founders. Companies often last longer than most marriages so it's important to throughly reference check your co-founders, ask specific and tactical open-ended questions of them, and see them deliver tangible results before you start a company together. - It's important to be aligned on what success means to you and your co-founders. Two people may have very different definitions of what “a lot of money” means — that could be enough money to buy a house for one person and $100M for another. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Matt Pellini, Managing Director at Hamilton Lane, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights:- Matt says the secondaries market has grown over 5x from 15 years ago to now.- Selling in the secondary market used to be a sign of distress but is no longer. There are many different reasons for doing so and it's mostly a sign of a manager being more active in the overall management of the fund.- Secondaries, in contrast to other asset classes in the private markets, are typically lower risk, shorter duration, and are more IRR-focused.- It's key for LPs to understand the motivations behind a GP's intentions to engage in secondaries transactions. There are very good reasons for doing so but transparency is key.- AI is in vogue but technology is only as good as the data that it's using. The most sophisticated data analysis is not going to give a firm much of an edge if it's using incorrect data or publicly available data.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Christopher Ailman (@CJAtheCIO), Chief Investment Officer at CalSTRS, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights: - CalSTRS, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, was created in 1913 and is actually older than Social Security. It has over 400 members who are over 100 years old who are still receiving their pension.- Chris says no bear market is alike and that the key is to have the discipline during that time period to actually start buying.- Chris says the key to success as an investor is in being intentional about the culture you create. When Chris is evaluating a portfolio manager he likes to and sit on the floor with the employees and see what the vibe is like.- A lot of investors take a lot of econ and business classes but should take more psychology classes to deal with the human side of things (vs. the numbers side). He says that selecting portfolio managers is much more difficult than picking stocks.- Chris says that the energy transition will dwarf all trends over the next fifteen years. He says that by 2035 parts of the earth will start to become uninhabitable and there will be mass migrations to other areas.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

This encore episode is a recording of a special event where Mark Pincus (@markpinc) was interviewed by Ben Casnocha in San Francisco in front of a live audience of portfolio founders, friends of the firm, and LPs.Mark is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Zynga, and is an angel investor in Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and other companies. He talked about about raising venture capital, his philosophy of product management, the early days at Zynga, and much more. He also took time at the event to meet with Village Global founders to give them his advice on growing their companies. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

This encore episode is a recording of a special event where Bill Gates was interviewed in San Francisco by Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite. It originally took place in 2018 in front of a live audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm. We are honored to count Bill Gates among our luminary LPs whose financial capital and engagement power the next wave of Village Global founders. They covered: - Gates's entrepreneurial journey starting Microsoft, including the most important turning points in the early years of the company. - His thinking on work-life balance for founders and what he would do differently if he was starting again. - What he's learned from the next generation of founders. - His perspective on the current tech landscape. - His views on philanthropy, global development, education, and much more. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Jerry originally joined us on the podcast in 2019. He is co-founder of Yahoo! and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. He was interviewed in front of a live audience in San Francisco by Village Global co-founder and partner, Ben Casnocha.Jerry told stories from the early days of Yahoo! and explained his lessons learned from the experience. He also talked about what American entrepreneurs can learn from China and his thoughts on early stage investing. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Paul Budnitz, founder of Superplastic, and Jennifer van Dijk, CEO of Superplastic, join Christina Des Vaux, head of marketing and platform at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways: Superplastic is a creatively-led company that has managed to maintain its unique identity and artistic integrity while nevertheless running a thriving business.The team comes up with ideas for characters but the characters grow and change as the audience gives them their own identities.They've learned a lot from the people who make games and are willing to iterate and make changes quickly.They shy away from initiatives that would make money fairly easily but don't grab the attention of the creative team.Paul says there is always a solution to everything and their job is to keep looking for it, whether that's a creative solution or a business solution.They've created their own tech stack that enables them to create animations in hours that used to take weeks.Paul and Jennifer say that the edge is the new center of culture. The characters they've created are weird, but likeable.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Graham Duncan (@GrahamDuncanNYC) is a longtime investor and author of a legendary essay on reference checking: https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/ He was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) during a special masterclass for Village Global founders and friends of the firm. Takeaways:- Be aware of how your own mindset and mood affects your analysis of a candidate as well as how it impacts how the candidate shows up in the interview. For example, you might be anxious and stressed yourself and that makes the candidate nervous — you may end up experiencing them as nervous, but in fact you are the one that has created that dynamic in the interview.- Ask the candidate: “If you were hiring someone to fill this role, what criteria would you use?” When someone is particularly good, they are skilled at capturing the essence of what makes someone good at it. This also lets you see how they respond without initial priming and framing.- The ideal reference check call should take longer than you might think (e.g. 45+ mins). You sometimes need to wear them down over a long period of time before they open up about their real concerns.- If you aren't aware of or can't imagine the downside of working with this person, you haven't done enough reference checking.- Ask: “How strong is your endorsement of Jane on a scale of 1-10? (If they answer 7, say actually sorry 7s are not allowed, 6 or 8? If the answer is an 8, ‘What is in that two points?')” - When someone comes from a prestigious company, we often fail to control for the weight that the reputation of the company carries when we form our impression of them.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of five books, including most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. He joined Olga Serhiyevich, head of investor relations, for this conversation. Takeaways: - Sebastian wrote a book about hedge funds prior to The Power Law and he contrasts VCs and hedge fund managers by saying that VCs are much more extraverted. VCs and others around the startup world are eager and willing to make introductions and actually follow through where others say they will make an intro and don't follow through. - Venture is a fun and exciting business to be in because you're dealing with bold visions of the future, highly talented and optimistic founders, and you get to see the progress and outcome of each startup that is trying to do something novel and ambitious. - Sebastian says that bubbles are inevitable in venture capital because of the nature of the business. He says there's no “off switch” or equivalent of shorting a company. There are also so many connections among venture capitalists that no one is willing to say anything negative about anyone else's investments. - He predicts a significant expansion of startup funding outside of Silicon Valley post-pandemic. Being able to deals over Zoom significantly expands the scope of where a VC can invest. - He is bullish on Europe especially because it has a consumer market that is even bigger than the US and the entrepreneurial mentality is growing among prospective startup founders in Europe. - Sebastian says that AI is the biggest development on earth since humans first developed the capacity for abstract thought. Some compare it to the printing press and he says it will be way bigger than that.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Julio Vasconcellos (@JulioV), managing partner at Atlantico, and Ana Martins (@martinsg_ana), partner at Atlantico, join Anne Dwane (@adwane), co-founder and partner at Village Global, to discuss Atlantico's 2023 report on digital transformation in Latin America. Takeaways:- If Latin America was its own country it would be #3 in the world in terms of population and GDP.- Brazil and Mexico combined make up over half of the population of all of Latin America.- In the US about 60% of public market capitalization is made up of technology companies but in Latin America that proportion is only 1.8%.- Latin America is about 10-15 years behind where China is, which is itself about 5-7 years behind where the US is. There is a ton of catch-up that will happen over the next couple decades and that presents a huge opportunity.- Latin America has some deep scars from hyper-inflation decades ago. They were some of the first countires to quickly raise rates in order to tame the inflation that we've been seeing globally in the last few years. That has paid off with some countries in LatAm starting to lower rates already.Check out the full report here: https://www.atlantico.vc/latin-america-digital-transformation-report-2023Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Gurdane Bhutani and Zeshan Muhammedi are co-founders and GPs at MBX, a VC firm investing in early-stage bio/healthtech companies tackling major public health threats. Prior to that they co-founded healthcare and life-science venture capital firm FundRx, where they championed the firm's build-out of its community-driven investment infrastructure, modeled on the scientific peer-review process. Takeaways: - Pharma companies have realized that it makes sense to develop drugs that will have a population-level health benefit rather than developing drugs for small numbers of people that cost exorbitant amounts. - Noise pollution is actually a big public health issue that is linked to various diseases. Companies are working on making society less noisy using things like concrete that is quieter when cars drive over it. - Gurdane and Zeshan have learned from working together for a long time how to engage in productive disagreement well by acknowledging what their respective strengths and weaknesses are and weighing the strength of one person's enthusiasm against the strength of the other person's skepticism. - Genomics has been a huge story in medicine in the last several decades but hasn't lived up to its promise because we've been missing an understanding of how environmental triggers drive diseases that our genes prime us for. - In the future, given changes at the FDA and EPA, drugs and chemical products will be tested on “organoids on a chip” or high-throughput systems that can give us higher fidelity data than actual tests on living animals. - Studies are often powered to look for benefits of a drug rather than find rare long tail side effects. It often takes years and years for the downsides of a treatment to become apparent.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Lee Hnetinka, founder and CEO of Future and Darkstore, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global, on this episode. Lee and his companies are building innovative solutions in retail and e-commerce and have worked with world's most admired brands like Nike, Adidas and Disney where they enabled same-day and 1-hour delivery for customers nationwide. They've also worked with tech companies like Snapchat, Shopify and Stripe to enable next generation payments and loyalty program solutions. Takeaways: - Lee says cities will look completely different in a few decades. Retail has been the backbone of cities for a very long time but as more and more commerces goes online, physical stores will transform into more of a place to go to have an experience. - In the old days loyalty programs used stamps to provide a potential discount on a future purchase but now provide the customer with more convenience and a better experience. - Loyalty programs have been transforming into tiered programs where a customer can pay for status. Lee predicts that every single loyalty program will turn into a tiered program with multiple paid options in the future. For example, there may be multiple levels of Amazon Prime in the same way that there are multiple tiers at American Express. - Dark stores were pioneered in the UK and leveraged existing stores that had excess space to carry products from many different retailers in one place. Lee partnered with companies like Office Depot, Mattress Firm, and Iron Mountain to make Darkstore a reality. Fun fact: 90% of the population of the US lives within 5 miles of an Office Depot, and on average only three people a day walk in to a mattress store. - FastAF, the consumer-facing brand at Darkstore, provided high-end versions of the products that someone would typically find in a convenience store. A lot of the core value was the curation that went into which products to carry. - One of the keys to success for a business like Darkstore is to consider unit economics on a per-building basis and to make sure that there is enough population in any one place to support a physical location. - Running two companies has made Lee better at both of them as compared to running only one. He says that many insights are transferrable between them. Also, when making decisions, Lee asks whether a decision is reversible or not and spends most of his time on the irreversible decisions and errs towards moving quickly on the reversible ones. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Cameron Dawson, Chief Investment Officer at NewEdge Wealth, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Prior to joining NewEdge Wealth, Cameron was the Chief Market Strategist at Fieldpoint Private Securities and a Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America. Takeaways: Cameron says that wealth management firms can provide the next chapter of growth for VC. There's a notion that clients at wealth management firms are less sophisticated but in fact managing their assets is often much more complex than managing money for an institution. At wealth management firms, each client is very different and each one is managing their own money rather than that of other individuals, which adds a new dynamic. The law of large numbers is a drag on funds. As they get larger the alpha that they used to be able to get decays into beta when they become less nimble. Being a jack of all trades is key to succeeding as a CIO. The last 16 months have been a whirlwind but have also provided a huge amount of learning and have helped Cameron expand an already large skillset. Cameron doesn't expect interest rates to fall anytime in the next six months or so. She says a recession is still a possibility but they usually take you by surprise and people have been expecting one for a long time and it still hasn't materialized. Cameron has done a number of media appearances and says that the key to public speaking is practicing over and over again. She says that she works on distilling concepts down into simple explanations and practices them out loud in the mirror all the time. Both Olga and Cameron love ballet and Cameron explains why she loves it and how practicing ballet has helped her career. She says that there is a powerful artistry, history, and beauty to it and that the gruelling training regime prepared her well for other pursuits in her life. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Prescott Watson (@prescottwatson) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Prescott is co-founder of Port Power, a software platform that aims to de-risk commercial fleets' adoption of electric vehicles by ensuring their charging infrastructure functions flexibly and reliably. Takeaways: - With gas or diesel-powered vehicles, drivers take the car to the energy source (the gas station). With electric vehicles, that paradigm doesn't work for fleets of commercial vehicles that need to be charged up overnight. This means that a fleet operator needs to build charging infrastructure to charge 30, 50, perhaps 100 vehicles simultaneously. - Building the charging infrastructure requires huge efforts by multiple players and right now the grid can only support a small fraction of the power that is required. Full support all of the charging that needs to happen is many years away. - Prescott says there are real “sticks” coming for fleet operators. As early as 2026, there will be restrictions on the ability of fleet operators to buy diesel vehicles. - Moving to electric vehicles requires a huge effort on the part of the government as well as private operators who build and co-fund the infrastructure required. Prescott says that there has been a significant brain drain from government. It needs to attract many more talented people in order to solve these challenges. - Access to electricity will play a key role in commercial development and real estate in the future. This provides a significant opportunity for capital allocators. Links mentioned in this episode: Abundance Agenda: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/scarcity-crisis-college-housing-health-care/621221/ Green Police Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Mark Cuban (@mcuban) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways:- In the US healthcare system the interests of patients, providers, and payers are not aligned. This drives many of the problems in the system today and is part of what inspired Mark to get involved in trying to disrupt the system.- Mark started Cost Plus Drugs to try to address some of the pricing issues with prescription drugs in the US. The company's pricing is completely transparent and shows their costs along with the exact fees they charge. He says that they do zero marketing and their growth comes from earned media and referrals from their existing patient base.- Mark advises founders not to try to optimize the current healthcare system but rather to work outside of the system to bring about real change. Working within the system can bring change around the edges but commits you to working inside a system that is already broken in the hopes that an incumbent player might buy you.- Every pitch deck that Mark sees now has an AI angle to it. He's gone deep on the field over the last several years and says that when a person digs into many of these pitches the companies are using off-the-shelf large language models and have little defensibility.- Precision medicine is one of the most exciting and scary emerging technologies. Mark says that in the next 50-100 years we will be able to compile all the variables that drive how our bodies and minds work and AI will be able to create a precise simulation of our bodies and how to treat them to improve our health.- One of Mark's favourite sayings is that “life is half random.” The conditions around a person are continually changing and contribute greatly to a person's success.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Eric Woo (@ericjwoo), co-founder and CEO of Revere, and Spencer Tyson (@SpencerGTyson), Head of Investment Ratings at Revere, join Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Revere has pioneered the world's first rating system for venture capital funds.Takeaways:- Venture has changed a lot over the last couple decades and continues to evolve quickly. In the last decade emerging managers has become its own sub-category, and venture as an asset class has bifurcated into specialist and generalist investors.- Revere has found through their extensive data analysis that funds that are diverse outperform, funds with a female GP outperform, solo GPs outperform, and career operators outperform those with a fund management background.- Fund benchmarking requires more scrutiny. The same data can be presented in very different ways depending on the use case. For this reason, Revere uses a standardized rating system to equip allocators with the tools to evaluate funds.- At the median, first funds do reasonably well, second funds do worse than the first, but third funds shoot up in terms of performance.- Revere looks at data, process, and repeatability when they are evaluating managers. They consider sourcing, qualifying deals, winning deals, value add, as well as whether firms stick to their stated portfolio construction.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Jon Korngold joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Jon is the Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) and Co-Head of Technology Investing at Blackstone. Prior to joining Blackstone, Jon was Head of General Atlantic's Global Financial Services and Healthcare sectors.Takeaways:- The vast reach of Blackstone, as one of the biggest asset managers in the world, allows them to apply their huge base of operational infrastructure to “make the winning company, not just find the winning company.”- Entrepreneurs have accepted that we are not going back to 2021 valuations. There will be many casualties on the road ahead. Jon worries that VCs are doing certain complex deals to protect their marks and that there will be a number of zombie portfolios coming out in the next few years.- The correction has a silver lining: lots of tech transformation comes out of a downturn. This is a healthy thing, like a brush fire in a forest. Also, startups have more and more talent available to them as the cost of leaving an existing job has never been lower.- When Jon meets founders he pays attention to how often they let the people around them speak. Great founders are humble and surround themselves with people who challenge their thinking.- Jon recommends that people spend time working and living abroad if they can. He says that his time spent overseas has informed his thinking on markets and given him a competitive advantage at work.- The sign of a good board member is that they never show up to a board meeting and learn something they didn't already know. They sit on a low number of boards, are actively keeping up to date on the company, and are deeply involved with the company. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Marc Iserlis is a film/TV producer and documentary filmmaker joins Village Global's Head of Investor Relations Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi). Marc is currently building tokenized film financing at Republic, an alternative fundraising platform.Takeaways:- Marc's ambition is at Republic is to allow individuals to join in the success of film production through an equity "fan raise" that allows fans of a particular project to invest directly in its production and share in the project's success.- The rise of streaming platforms and recent changes in how films are financed has resulted in commoditization.- China and India's film industries are rising stars but the US is still the global leader in big films.- Telling a good story is perhaps the hardest thing in the world to do. - An audience appreciates subtlety in storytelling. Writers know the right things to withhold from an audience to make it satisfying.- Stage is an actor's medium, film is a director's medium, and TV is a writer's medium.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com.This episode of the Village Global podcast shares a few select segments from the Startup of You podcast relevant to founders, investors, and anyone working in tech.They discuss:- Hustle, and investor Chris Sacca's creative way of getting his foot in the door when he was first starting out in his career.- Name dropping. Your network is a key part of your career. If you have a powerful person in your network you might be eager to let others know that, but they talk about how to let others know about your network thoughtfully and with tact.- Navigating status. Like it or not, status matters. We talk about how status dynamics play out in the workplace and how you can skillfully navigate them.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com. This episode of the Village Global podcast shares a few select segments from the Startup of You podcast relevant to founders, investors, and anyone working in tech. They discuss: - How the founders of Airbnb were relentlessly resourceful and hustled to overcome hundreds of rejections when they first conceived of the business that today is worth tens of billions of dollars. - Reference checking — why it's important and how to do it well. - Risk — why we're evolutionarily wired to overestimate the risks involved in a given decision, why it's important to take smart risks, and a few frameworks for thinking more rationally about them. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Louise Story (@louisestory) most recently was the Chief News Strategist and Chief Product & Technology Officer at The Wall Street Journal. Louise also spent more than a decade at the New York Times. She joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode to discuss:Her unique role at the Wall Street Journal and some of the products that she built, including AI/ML models to alert reporters when stocks were moving in certain ways that let them get ahead of emerging stories, as well as an early version of ChatGPT that let a user ask a question about what a political candidate thought on a given issue which pulled an answer from transcripts of their interviews and speeches.The shift to following people rather than news outlets.The importance of a strong legal department at a news outlet that protects journalists and stands up for freedom of the press.Her forthcoming book on the black-white wealth gap and the fact that at the median, black individuals in America have 12 cents in wealth for every one dollar that a white person has.Why telling stories through people is the best way to keep an audience's attention.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

David Boehmer (@DavBoehmer) speaks to Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi) about the talent intermediation industry, the evolution of business models in the sector, and creating a talent marketplace at Banff.Takeaways:- Chance often has a significant impact on a person's career but David says that a life's impact is too important to be left to chance.- David likes to think of a career as a river. You can be swept downstream by momentum and wake up 20-30 years later without realizing that there might have been a different river that could have been better suited to you.- It's important to manage your career proactively, the same way that you save for retirement before you need the money.- You should give the people around you explicit permission to give you direct feedback.- Sometimes his clients convince themselves that they want a job because they are in demand for it but they should instead think hard about what they really want and not just take a job because they are wanted.- Some people say that if you put your head down and work hard you will get discovered by the right types of people. David says “throw that out.” Your LinkedIn profile, your reputation, and your network matter immensely.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Rohit Krishnan (@krishnanrohit), venture capitalist and author of the blog Strange Loop Cannon, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways:- Many of the people at the top of their fields today say they would never get hired if they were just starting out today. Today's selection process at elite institutions has become more stringent but has dropped the interesting variance that exists at the top of the pyramid. Plenty of people have gamified the selection process. If you're hiring, you want to find the interesting misfits.- Higher ed used to be fantastic but now it is groaning under its scale. There should be more of a focus on job training rather than general liberal education.- Billionaires should be more eccentric and experimental. There aren't enough idiosyncratic billionaires in the world. - It's easier than ever for information to get from one place to another with the rise of the internet but it also means that it's easier than ever for ways to use that information to make money to get from one place to another. This has resulted in the barbell distribution of outcomes that we see these days.- Clustering has important benefits. There's something about bouncing ideas off of other people and egging them on in person that is special, despite the connectivity that the internet has brought.- Hierarchies make it easy to get things done in general, but hard to get any one thing done. - There are many more areas where we are not polarized than where we are polarized these days. Changing someone's mind is a function of time and encouragement and repeated explanations, rather than forcefully convincing someone you are right and they are wrong.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Lorin Gu, founding partner of Recharge Capital, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global to discuss:- Why Recharge structures its investing thematically, rather than by asset class.- The three themes that they believe have multi-decade headwinds behind them: semiconductors, women's health, and fintech/crypto.- What Lorin learned from working with David Swensen, including the importance of the qualitative measurement of the people running the fund alongside any quantitative analysis of fund strategy.- How asking fund managers about their motivations and how they make decisions can determine the outcome of an investment.- The current wave of technonationalism around the globe.- Lorin's media diet and his interest in art.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Alex Chalunkal is Chief Investment Officer at a family office where he manages a $1B+ portfolio focused on impact, venture, and climate tech investing. He was interviewed by Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Takeaways: - Alex says that the consensus is that there will be a mild recession in 2023. - He says that the energy transition, health, and climate are key sectors he is focusing on. - Technology is an important tool to help improve the labor shortage in the US because tech creates more productive workers who can get more done with less. - Structured equity can be an important tool for companies with stable revenue and cash flow. There are many covenants that are often added to a debt product so it's not necessarily the right tool for a company that has lots of potential volatility in revenue, product, or pricing. - Alex is excited about climate tech investing. He says that in the US we have the raw materials but not necessarily the policies in place to combat climate change so investing in areas that are aligned with policy is key. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer), president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global for a conversation about global geopolitical trends and their impact on technology. Takeaways:- Ian has been in the room with world leaders as they make decisions about how to prepare for potential wars. He says that it's easy to criticize their decisions afterwards but having been there has given him an appreciation for just how difficult it is to make those decisions under constraints and how little ideology plays into those decisions.- The US is no longer willing to act as global policeman, architect of global trade, or cheerleader for values the way it has in the past. No other country is wiling or able to fill that void, which leads us to a “GZERO” world where there is no clear leadership.- Tech companies like Microsoft and Starlink acting as sovereigns in Ukraine helped the country stay independent and likely kept Zelensky in power.- Ian says that the US and China are not in a Cold War and are not headed for a Cold War. He says that the leadership of both countries isn't interested in a Cold War from a political perspective and that there is too much interdependence between the two nations for tensions to be ratcheted up.- Ian says that AI and algorithms have become deeply political without us realizing it. Tech companies have been A/B testing not for what makes for a better society but for what leads to more addiction. He says this is the most disturbing and destabilizing trend in tech today.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says.- The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission.- There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving other companies in space) and beyond earth (“science fiction”-type activities like colonization, mining, and exploration).- The International Space Station cost $100B to build.- SpaceX built the Falcon 9 at 1/10th the cost that NASA estimated.- In the 1960s there were only two space programs but now there are 80+ and they are all trying to get an economic return on investment.- Mo's contrarian take is that launch is actually underhyped. Very few companies have a launch vehicle that has made it to orbit with a significant payload capacity.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ari Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn't know if the other was safe because the cell network weren't working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as consumers.- Ari and Andrea suggest that startups refrain from complaining or dwelling on how tough the procurement system is to navigate in the US government. They say “pass the test, don't fight the test.”- Andrea says that much of innovation is personality driven — finding the right people who will run through walls when everyone else gives up.- There is plenty that they would change about the government procurement system. If one agency has found a tech useful, other agencies should be able to also use that tech without going through all the paperwork and bureaucracy over again.- The fact that US doesn't manufacture much at home and would be stranded if a major war started tomorrow is of concern to them.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Joe Connor (@josephjconnor), founder of Odyssey (@WithOdyssey_), joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- ACT test scores are at the lowest level in 30 years. 42% of students met none of the college readiness benchmarks.- District schools are not providing what parents need so children are leaving them in large numbers.- Parents have realized that they would be better off unbundling education so that children receive different parts of their education in different places, not just at a single district school.- Odyssey is fundamentally changing how education is funded in the US.- The US has 132,000 K-12 schools. For context, there are 13,000 McDonald's locations. Teachers are the second largest occupation category in America after retail clerks.- Parents have been able to successfully push for programs like Odyssey's by contacting their state senator or congressperson.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years. - Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in launch companies, basically no venture money has gone into satellite bus manufacturing.- Satellite buses are currently designed from the ground up and assembled by hand in small volumes.- Apex (apexspace.com) is working on building scalable and reliable satellite buses.- The founders fundamentally believe that humans will be a multi-planetary species and that in the future all these spacecraft that will be carrying people around the solar system will not be made by hand. - Despite the economic downturn, there has never been a better time to be a founder. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program.- If you're a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract.- It has been very difficult for software companies to get a program of record contract because that has not been the typical model of defense in the past.- The nature of war is shifting away from large platforms and big garrison-style bases.- There have been 20-30 “SBIR mills” that have taken $3.5B combined in phase 1 and 2 contracts. Ben would put hard caps on the amounts that companies can get from the program and the types of companies that can apply to the SBIR program.- Commercial technology has outpaced the defense industry by far.- It's very difficult for small companies to even fill out the forms required for the SBIR program. Making it more friendly for newcomers would make a big difference to the program.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Deep Nishar (@deepnishar), Managing Director at General Catalyst and formerly of LinkedIn and Google, joins Anne Dwane on this episode. Takeaways:- The best product hires have the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat. - When you're interviewing people for product roles at startups, don't ask people what they would do but rather what they have done in the past. You want people who have a sense of adventure and can work without a lot of structure.- The first fifty hires at a company completely define the company culture.- Tech debt is a fact of life. Don't worry about it until you get to MVP.- When you're a founder, consider whether you want a poet or a librarian as a product leader. A poet will take on product strategy as well as execution, while a librarian will take product direction from you and implement it.- Truly world-class product leaders can build not just a product, but a product operating system — the product that builds more products. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Christian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks. - Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower cost, and easier to replace.- People in the government are, in 2022, trying to figure out what the military is going to need in 2032. This eliminates incentives for disruption and surprise. The military gets what it wanted, even if what it wanted doesn't solve the problem.- It would be ideal to bring capitalism into the procurement process so that there are new incentives and real competition.- China has been using a systematic, methodical strategy since the 1990s with the aim of displacing the US.- There has never been a competitor to the US with the scale that China has in more than a century.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- Since the moon landing, we have entered a period of stagnation. Confidence and optimism have declined and culture has entered a repetitive spiral where patterns from the 60s/70s have been repeating themselves.- Government has become less effective and more gridlocked over time.- The world's richest societies are dealing with a population problem. They are not reproducing themselves, which has led to aging societies that are “stable but stuck” because they are resistant to change.- The internet has been more of a conduit to cultural repetition than people think — old music is often most popular music on streaming services.- The traditional story of science has been that it triumphed over religion but science emerged from an extremely religious society and it would be no surprise to Ross if as religion decays scientific progress might as well.- Ross says that we need a renaissance to get ourselves out of the age of decadence — a reaching back into the past while synthesizing all the advancements that have come about in the meantime.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup