Podcasts about Something Ventured

Send us a text In this fascinating episode of Being an Engineer, our host Aaron Moncur sits down with Greg Mark, a visionary entrepreneur who revolutionized 3D printing with Markforged and is now transforming design workflows with his AI company, Backflip. Greg shares insights into his entrepreneurial journey, technological innovations, and the power of persistence.Main Topics:The origin story of Markforged and carbon fiber 3D printingInnovative design principles in manufacturingBackflip's AI-driven approach to converting 3D scans to CAD modelsEntrepreneurship, product development, and market strategyThe importance of reliability and focusing on core product featuresAbout the guest: Greg Mark is a trailblazer in engineering and entrepreneurship, renowned for pioneering innovations that push the boundaries of technology. Currently serving as the Founder and CEO of Backflip, Greg is transforming how we create beautiful, functional objects using AI in a world that is inherently 3D. His latest venture follows a series of impactful contributions to engineering and manufacturing, most notably as the founder of Markforged. There, he invented carbon fiber and mixed metal 3D printing, a technology now deployed globally, including on the International Space Station and by major players like BMW and Tesla.An MIT-trained engineer with both bachelor's and master's degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, Greg's journey started with bold ventures such as Aeromotions, a company that brought high-performance aerodynamics to the fastest cars on the track. His leadership at Genasun redefined off-grid solar power with advanced electronics, and as an advisor to startups like Genesis Therapeutics and Rotor Technologies, Greg continues to mentor innovators tackling the toughest challenges in industries from drug discovery to remote flight.Links:Greg Mark - LInkedInMarkforged WebsiteBackflip.ai Website 

Oliver, Jamie and Emily continue with Owl House! A truly terrifying detention!

It is not a stretch to call Elad Gil one of Silicon Valley's best investors.  In a world where one big hit can make a venture capitalists' career, Elad has invested in…Well, here's a partial list Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Deel, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Notion, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Retool, Rippling, Samsara, Square, Stripe, TripActions, Wish. It seems almost impossible.  But there it is.  Elad's career includes working at Google, founding a company acquired by Twitter, and founding Color Genomics (you probably heard about them during the COVID response). He is also author of the book High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups from 10 to 10,000 People. In this wide-ranging discussion, Elad shares his thoughts on everything from building companies to crypto, AI, and more.   Elad's home page:      https://eladgil.com/ Elad on Twitter:          https://twitter.com/eladgil Something Ventured: https://somethingventured.us/   

O empreendedor serial e cofundador da Questum, Rafael Assunção, é um mestre na arte de avaliar startups no momento mágico do desinvestimento, seja via M&A ou IPO.  Nesse episódio ele conta o que é necessário para uma startup prosperar e chegar ao momento de liquidez. Tem muito insight bom para compartilhar. Dá o play aí para conferir.Links do episódioA série “SOS Restaurante”, no Discovery+A série “Pepsi, Where's My Jet?” na NetflixA série “Que Marravilha! Chato pra comer”, na GNTO livro “How I almost blew it”, de Sidharth RaoO documentário “Something Ventured”, de Dayna Goldfine e Dan Geller – online no Vimeo_____FALE CONOSCOEmail: news@theshift.info_____ASSINE A THE SHIFTwww.theshift.info

Toda startup precisa lidar com 88 aspectos jurídicos ao longo do ciclo de vida. Palavra do advogado, empreendedor, investidor e advisor João Falcão. Seu livro, “Startup Law” mapeou cada um deles e o momento em que devem ser tratados pelas empresas, para evitar problemas futuros ao pivotarem, serem investidas, ou encerradas. Dá o play! Você precisa ouvir o que ele tem a dizer.Links do episódioO livro “Startup Law: Direito e Economia do Conhecimento”, de João Falcão, e a mandala citada neste episódio.O documentário “Something Ventured”, em DVD ou no Amazon PrimeA exposição sobre o professor Georges F. Doriot na Harvard Business SchoolA série “Silicon Valley”, no HBO MaxO livro “O que é Creative Commons?”, de Sérgio Branco e Walter Britto_____FALE CONOSCOEmail: news@theshift.info_____ASSINE A THE SHIFTwww.theshift.info

Michelle Tandler is an entrepreneur – she founded  “Growth Path”, a provider of audio courses for professional development.  Her goal is to teach soft skills and management at scale.  She previously worked at tech firms Thumbtack and Yammer, as well as the venture capital firm Trinity. In this episode we discuss her entrepreneurial journey, in which she gives us a pretty candid look at the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur. Michelle has also become a (fairly popular) voice of reason concerning the state of affairs in San Francisco.  She regularly poses thoughtful questions about various policies while generally shedding light on the byzantine corners of San Francisco politics.  Here, she shares her thoughts on a range of issues, providing thoughtful solutions, and frank explanations of various head-spinning policies. Substack https://substack.com/profile/1329960-michelle-tandler Twitter https://twitter.com/michelletandler Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/

GC13, Soren, and David discuss Something Ventured, Someone Framed from The Owl House. Look, no one's happy that it's an episode based off of one character lying to another, but it's times like this where's it's best to Be Like Bump: that guy doesn't care about much of anything, does he? And that's what we love … Continue reading

Auren Hoffman is one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley.  In a place where the currency of the land is connections – Auren is near the top of the heap. Auren is a Founder and CEO -- He founded SafeGraph in 2016, and previously founded LiveRamp, which is now public (NYSE: RAMP) – a leading data platform. Auren is also an investor – he has invested in more than 120 active technology companies. Auren went to UC Berkeley a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley. But perhaps most importantly – Auren shares his wisdom:  Often in napkin sketches, shared on Twitter.  In this podcast we discuss Auren's journey, his wisdom and his view from his unique perch in Silicon Valley. Auren on Twitter https://twitter.com/auren Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/ 

In Silicon Valley enormous wealth and huge need sit side by side.  The gap is bridged in large part by an important organization – Silicon Valley Community Foundation (“SVCF”).  SVCF manages more than $10 billion.  In this episode Nicole Taylor, SVCF's CEO, tells us where the money comes from, where it goes, and the practical issues of giving to support Black Lives Matter. Since taking the helm at SVCF, Nicole has led the organization to renew its focus on the many challenges facing residents of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties – two of the largest counties in Silicon Valley. In April 2020, Nicole was invited by San José Mayor Sam Liccardo to be among the five co-chairs of the Silicon Valley Recovery Roundtable. This group was formed to  address how Silicon Valley will adapt and thrive in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early months of pandemic response, SVCF raised over $50 million for funds to meet the needs of individuals, families, nonprofit organizations, small businesses and education systems across 10 counties in the Bay Area.   Before joining SVCF, Nicole served as vice president of the ASU Foundation, and as dean of Students at Arizona State University. Prior to her time at ASU, Nicole was the associate vice provost of student affairs.  She has also served as dean of community engagement and diversity at Stanford University. In this episode we discuss what SVCF does, how the increase in Bay Area wealth has impacted it.  We also discuss the practical giving aspects related to solving problems highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement. SVCF https://www.siliconvalleycf.org/ Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/

Avi Loeb is author of the book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”.  It's a story you can hardly believe, once you hear it.  But here it is -- the story of the day in 2017 when telescopes around the world started tracking an object in our solar system.  It was moving in such a way that scientists around the world came to the same, startling conclusion:  It was an extraterrestrial spaceship.  Avi Loeb is a professor of the Harvard Astronomy Department.  He is also a member of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (which is a collaboration of Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.  Professor Loeb received a PhD in plasma physics at age 24 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1986) and was subsequently a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1988-1993), where he started to work in theoretical astrophysics. In 1993 he moved to Harvard University where he was tenured three years later.  He is now the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science and former chair of the department. He also holds a visiting professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science and a Sackler Senior Professorship by special appointment in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University. Loeb has authored nearly 700 research articles and 4 books. Avi Loeb:  https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb Something Ventured:  https://somethingventured.us/

Ryan and his dad are one of only two father/son NFL players to both win Superbowl rings.  Today Ryan a venture capitalist at the firm he founded,  Next Play Capital.  His many co-investments include Hippo, ByteDance (TikTok), Flexport, Hims, Impossible Foods, Peloton, (IPO), and Rubrik among others. We’ve covered a lot of paths to becoming a VC on Something Ventured, but none has run through the NFL! In this episode we discuss the football roots of the name “Next Play”, and why there were historically so few Black people in venture capital, among many other topics.  We finish with an amazing thought from Ryan on how someone might be supportive of diversity in Silicon Valley – one of the most thoughtful and poignant I’ve heard. Next Play Capital https://www.nextplaycapital.com/ Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: May 31, 2021Silicon CowboysWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Steve Tuck, Tom Lyon, Dan Cross, and others. The recording is here.(Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Silicon Cowboys documentary Open by Rod Canion Portable before Compaq, Silent 700 Osborne Effect PBS Silicon Valley documentary IBM's role in Compaq history 80's Ads: John Cleese, Charlie Chaplin Compaq and iPhone? Decline and Acquisition Something Ventured documentary PRs welcome! [@1:25](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=85) Bryan: Have you listened to the Reply All episode “Is the Facebook Microphone On?”The truth is actually scarier, Facebook doesn't need the mic to be on … to read your mind.Silicon Cowboys[@2:46](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=166) The 2016 documentary “Silicon Cowboys” follows the rise of the Compaq computer company. (IMDb) (Watch the trailer ~3mins)I was trying to watch “Halt and Catch Fire” with my kid … and there's a lot of spontaneous sex breaking out…Fastest to one billion in revenue… fastest to Fortune 500… a meteoric riseOpen by Canion[@7:05](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=425) The 2013 book “Open” by Rod Canion (cofounder and CEO of Compaq): “How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing.”[@10:02](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=602) Steve: Ben Rosen was the venture capitalist who wrote the first check to Compaq, really got them off the ground. On the board for 20 years.Their timing was right. The way they did the company was right. And they executed really really well.To go from zero to 50 thousand units, of almost anything, in the time span they did, is incredible.[@14:40](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=880) Tom: The thing that really put them on the map was having the portable when nobody else did. And being 100% compatible.Those portables were barely luggable, they were huge!Back in a time when there was no network. Being able to pick up your computer and take it to a place, was your network.[@16:47](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1007) Steve: A big catalyst for their success was the channel. People were able to pick it up and go, they didn't need special training.[@19:25](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1165) Dad used to bring home the luggable so I could play Space Invaders, and he would work on spreadsheets.Portable before Compaq[@20:49](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1249) There were portable solutions before Compaq, but for timesharing.You had the T.I. Silent 700, in the 70's, you could tote that home and plug it into the modem.Osborne Effect[@22:41](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1361) Tom: They killed their company with the famous Osborne EffectBryan and Steve (clearly excited): What was the Osborne Effect!? Tom: Pre-announcing the next machine.Telling customers: man, if you love the Osborne 1, just wait till the Osborne 2… So they did Bryan: Something I found surprising about the history of Compaq was the different organizational approach that they had.Early on, before even thinking about what to go do, they were talking about the kind of company they wanted to build.PBS Silicon Valley[@26:14](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1574) The 2013 PBS documentary “Silicon Valley” tells the story of Fairchild Semiconductor. (Watch chapter one ~17mins)[@28:14](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1694) We ask people, when they apply to Oxide, when they've been most unhappy in their careers. And it all boils down to people not feeling listened to, not having agency.IBM's role[@29:41](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=1781) How much of Compaq's success is just pure mis-execution from IBM? IBM inadvertently creates this pseudo open architecture, and makes exactly the wrong move in trying to reproprietarize it with the PS/2 and Micro Channel architecture; which is an absolute disaster.In many ways the story of Compaq is as much the story of the failed PS/2.It was such a mis-execution to do this analysis on the market and say: we need to grab our existing customers and lock them in, before they slip through our fingers, and in doing so, just hasten their departure. And Compaq was in the right spot to pick up the pieces.MCA (Micro Channel architecture), ISA, EISA[@33:22](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2002) We were ripping out a bunch of ISA and EISA drivers..I am a sacrificial sheep, I can't possibly go. You are a sacrificial lamb.The machines themselves are anemic, if you want any functionality you go to a third party.. There were magazines filled with advice on which sound-generating card you should buy.IBM PC XT – Hercules graphics card[@37:00](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2220) Driver for Token Ring.PCI – SBus – VME – VLB – AGP[@40:20](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2420) Speaking of Intel, a big part of the Compaq story is what happens with the 386.IBM clearly thought Intel would never give some clone manufacturer the first rights to the 386.They went from fast follower to innovator.OS/2 supported both 16 bit (for the 286) and 32 bit.[@42:07](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2527) One of the headwinds working against IBM was that all the software companies wanted to see more competition in hardware vendors; they wanted to see the clones become real companies.Certainly Microsoft aided the rise of Compaq, no question. Compaq turned Microsoft into a real believer.80's Ads[@43:11](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=2591) I loved the 80's ads.John Cleese: Compaq Portable vs a Fish ~2minsCleese: I suppose the fish could give you a mega-bite! (laughs hysterically)Cleese: The Compaq Portable 2 however can run all IBM's most popular software, 30% faster than IBM can! (dryly) HA HA HABryan: Absolutely no joke, I knew Charlie Chaplin first through the IBM PC ads. I didn't even know they were making a reference!IBM Charlie Chaplin ads compilation ~9mins. (Aside: these are new to me. For me it painted the computers as accessible/approachable, something anyone could do; even a clumsy Mr. Bean character)You guys need to stop mocking the Chaplin ads. They were marketing gold and as a 5 year old watching bunny rabbit ear TV seeing those ads in the middle of Scooby Doo, I was begging my parents for an IBM PC Adam: My parents got a free Mac Plus when they opened a bank account! I know it's crazy anachronistic.Adam: In '86 we had a Commodore 64 and then upgraded to a Mac Plus. Bryan: That's a big upgrade! Adam: It was incredible.MacPaint – ImageWriter II – Dot matrix printing – The Print ShopWith the banner program, you could print “Happy Birthday”, and probably other messages, but it never came up..Compaq and iPhone?[@50:59](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=3059) Book and documentary ask: What if Compaq had made the iPhone?I think it cheapens the whole thing. No one should feel an obligation to claim their role in history by connecting themselves to the iPhone. The iPhone is not the pinnacle of human history.Just take your wins, and there are many of them. But, the time that they were dominant, that's the story.Decline and Acquisition[@53:24](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=3204) The movie ends when Canion is fired, by Rosen, which is pretty amazing.To be fair, DEC killed DEC.Tandem ComputersI feel like the later history of Compaq is this sugar high of sales continuing to spike, but then ultimately it's the ruin of the company. The company ceased to be an innovator.Compaq is acquired by Hewlett-PackardCompaq systems, at this point, were very expensive. And this was part of the controversy of Rod getting run out, was not wanting to go down market.[@59:51](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=3591) Speaking of HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) and Compaq, they just relocated their headquarters to Huston.I feel like HP hasn't been a Silicon Valley company in a long long time.This was like the animals walking upright, where Compaq became a lot like IBM in a lot of their sales tactics.Something Ventured[@1:02:41](https://youtu.be/faY7kWHQuNE?t=3761) The 2011 documentary “Something Ventured” investigates the emergence of American venture capitalism. (Watch the trailer ~2mins) (Watch the documentary ~85mins)Tandem ComputersA 7 million dollar iceberg sitting in the datacenter, this Tandem. They were so reliant on it, they had another shrink wrapped just sitting on the datacenter floor, in the event that the first one ever went out.Jimmy Treybig is a super interesting character. Very iconoclastic engineer.I didn't realize that Tandem made KP. If it weren't for Tandem, Kleiner Perkins wouldn't have risen as a VC firm. They went all-in on Tandem, and Tandem had an outsized result.Our next Twitter space will be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time. Join us; we always love to hear from new speakers!

Ali Tamaseb pulls the curtain back on the myths about billion-dollar startups – and he does it with data.  That’s not surprising for a guy who is a partner at DCVC, the multi-billion dollar venture firm focused on deep tech. Ali is a scientist turned engineer who works on a broad spectrum of areas ranging from computational health/bio to cybersecurity. More specifically, Ali identifies early-stage highly technical and defensible startups in diagnostics tools, neuro-technology, precision medicine, synthetic bio and bio-logic, disruptive healthcare models, financial technologies, alternative data, next-generation computing, cryptography and blockchain. “Super Founders” analyzes 65 factors to determine what differentiates billion-dollar companies.  Interviewees in the book include: Arie Belldegrun - Co-founder, Allogene, Kite Pharma: Founded Two Billion-Dollar Startups While a University Professor Nat Turner - Co-founder, Flatiron Health: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup With No Industry Experience Max Mullen - Co-founder, Instacart: Founded a Massively Successful Business in The Second Try Neha Narkhede - Co-founder, Confluent: Built a Billion-Dollar Startup Initially Originated at a Large Tech Company Tony Fadell - Co-founder, Nest – Inventor of the iPod: Built Highly Differentiated Products That Generated Billion Dollar Outcomes Rachel Carlson - Co-founder, Guild Education: Built a Billion-Dollar Startup Outside Traditional Tech Hubs Max Levchin - Co-founder, PayPal and Affirm: Did Both Market Creation and Market Expansion Mario Schlosser - Co-founder, Oscar Health: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup With Perfect Market Timing Eric Yuan - Founder, Zoom: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup That Won Against Fierce Competitors Tom Preston-Werner - Co-founder, GitHub: Bootstrapped a 7.5 Billion-Dollar Company For Over Four Years Michelle Zatlyn - Co-founder, Cloudflare: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup In the Depth of the Financial Recession Elad Gil - Angel Investor: Invested in Over 20 Unicorns Including Coinbase, Stripe, Gusto, Square, Wish Keith Rabois - General Partner, Founders Fund: Invested in YouTube, LinkedIn, Palantir, Yelp, Lyft Alfred Lin - Partner, Sequoia Capital: Invested in iconic companies like Airbnb, Houzz, DoorDash, Zipline Peter Thiel - Co-founder Palantir, PayPal: Invested in Facebook, SpaceX, Stripe, Spotify, Asana, TransferWise DCVC:  www.dcvc.com Something Ventured:  www.somethingventured.com

David Bohnett founded GeoCities in the 1990s, well before the internet attained its current ubiquity.  GeoCities became publicly traded on NASDAQ and was acquired by Yahoo! Inc. in 1999. In a 2007 article, the Wall Street Journal described it as a Facebook prototype and noted, “Back then, entries were known as home pages, not profiles. But the basic, expressive elements of today’s Facebook and competitor MySpace … were all right there.” David found himself wealthy with the ability to do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. He became a philanthropist and social activist. In addition to serving as Chair of the David Bohnett Foundation, he is the Chairman of the Executive Committee on the Board of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Vice Chairman of the Board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Trustee of the Brookings Institution, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the University of Southern California (USC). Since 1999, the David Bohnett Foundation has focused on several funding areas: The Fund for Los Angeles, supporting a broad spectrum of arts, educational and civic programs including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LACMA and CicLAvia; LGBTQ-related causes; graduate school leadership programs at the University of Michigan, UCLA, NYU and Harvard; voting rights and registration initiatives; supporting research and public policies to reduce the toll of firearm violence; and animal research and rights. Grants totaling over $115 million to date have supported the work of a wide range of organizations including the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, The Wildlife Alliance, the ACLU Foundation, Equality California, and the David Bohnett Gay & Lesbian Leadership Fellows program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The David Bohnett CyberCenters are another major undertaking — currently at over 60 LGBTQ centers nationwide, they offer business, educational, research, and recreational opportunities to the local gay and lesbian community via access to the Internet.   David Bohnett Foundation.  http://www.bohnettfoundation.org/   Something Ventured  https://somethingventured.us/ 

Kara Nortman is a Managing Partner of venture firm Upfront. Upfront famously hosts the “Upfront Summit” – a hard-to-describe, but massive confab of celebrities, entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders held in Los Angeles. Kara is a founding member of All Raise – you’ve heard about All Raise a number of times on Something Ventured. She’s also an owner – along with Natalie Portman and Serena Williams – of LA’s women’s soccer team Angel City Football Club (“Angel City FC”). As co-Managing partner of Upfront, she is one of the first women promoted to a leadership role at a major venture capital firm. EPISODE QUOTES: On Being Asked to Join Natalie Portman and Serena Williams as Co-owner of Angel City FC Soccer Team “It is probably the craziest story of my life and one that I have a great amount of gratitude for. I think it's made me realize that butterfly effects do happen. But you can't force them. When you get the pocket of energy in from a butterfly flapping, you have to follow it. And that’s what happened with the soccer team.” On Choosing People You Want to Work with for the Long Term “You should pick people you want to look at in your cap table and you want to see show up on your cell phone late at night and you enjoy spending time with and whose bar mitzvahs and weddings you might want to go to.” On Being a Great Board Member “One of my venture capital mentors said to me at one point in time, ‘You have three daughters. You are going to learn more from raising your daughters around how to be a good board member than you are going to learn from any board.’ And I think about that a lot. It's role modeling, right? Treating people the way you want to be treated.” Twitter: https://twitter.com/karanortman  Upfront: https://upfront.com/  Something Ventured:  https://somethingventured.us/ 

In their new book “WORKING BACKWARDS: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon” (St. Martin’s Press, February 9, 2021.) Bill Carr and Colin Bryar share Amazon’s secrets.   They had a front row seat for most of Amazon's history, and they are sharing what they learned in their new book. Not only is Amazon one of the most valuable companies in the world, it has succeeded across a stunning array of categories from web services to movies.  So it’s hyperbolic, but possible to make the case that this is the most important business book….ever. “Like being in the room with Jeff Bezos” Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time.   The authors you’ll spend some time with on this episode:   Bill Carr joined Amazon in 1999 and spent more than 15 years with the company. As Vice President of Digital Media, Bill launched and managed the company's global digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive In Residence with Maveron, LLC, an early-stage, consumer-only venture capital firm. Bill later served as the Chief Operating Officer of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S. Today Bill is co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon.     Colin Bryar joined Amazon in 1998 — four years after its founding —  and spent the next 12 years as part of Amazon's senior leadership team as Amazon grew from a domestic (US-only) seller of books to a global, multi-dimensional powerhouse and innovator. Colin served as a Vice President at Amazon, and for two of his years was "Chief of Staff" to Jeff Bezos, AKA "Jeff's shadow", during which he spent each day attending meetings, traveling with, and discussing business and life with Jeff. After Amazon, he and his family relocated to Singapore for two years where Colin served as Chief Operating Officer of e-commerce company RedMart, which was subsequently sold to Alibaba. Colin is co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon. Working Backwards https://workingbackwards.com/ Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/

Amy Nauiokas is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anthemis, a leading digital financial services investment firm.  Anthemis manages nearly $1 billion.  Amy is also Founder and Chair of Archer Gray, a media production and content company. Straightforward for a venture capitalist, right?  Except maybe for the TV/Movie company she also runs.  But wait – she’s also a liberal arts major who joined the Peace Corps out of college.  In this episode we discuss how she made her way from the Peace Corps to leading one of the biggest fintech venture capital firms. We also talk about the early 80s women in finance who she views as pioneers truly worth paying homage to, and whose issues she contrasts to those faced by women in today’s finance/venture world. EPISODE QUOTES On the Diversity of Anthemis and Its Investments “We brought together people of very eclectic, different and diverse backgrounds to form this platform. And now we're 50 people around the world and we're working out of three physical offices and probably about 10 virtual offices. And we're north of 50 percent female. Sixty five percent of the decision-makers at the firm are women. We have, I think, about 40 percent people of color and and 12 percent LGBTQ. Twenty five percent of our portfolio is led by women. Twenty percent of our portfolio is led by someone who is Black or a person of color.” On Sand Hill Road  “We’re realizing it's a lot of the same people with the same backgrounds, with the same capital base sitting in the same office on Sand Hill Road, which isn't even in San Francisco, it’s in the Valley. Entrepreneurs elsewhere don’t realize these guys aren't leaving their desks, let alone going to Oakland to meet a company or going to San Francisco to meet a company.”   On How to Support Women and People of Color “Shut up, listen and make some space. I honestly think that's the main thing. Imagine that anybody who isn't you is thinking about it all the time. Every single part of every single day, I think about my identity and what it means to my existence. I think we have a responsibility as allies to any community to take the time to be quiet and to listen and see what we might be able to learn in that very quiet moment when we let other voices be heard.” Anthemis Group: https://www.anthemis.com/ Something Ventured:  https://somethingventured.us/

Vern Howard’s story is remarkable.  Vern was a math prodigy who left high school early, when he tested into Virginia Commonwealth University to study Computer Science and Math.  He paid his way through school by teaching math and serving as a janitor on campus. He went on to sell men’s suits, which taught him the art of selling.  After joining Capital One – whose signing bonus he used to rebuild an Alpha Romeo – he built Capital One’s first mobile banking application.  He also built out the Application Security Team at Capital One before, naturally, becoming a securities trader. Hang on, we’re not done yet.  He became an entrepreneur.  He sent a book to Steve Case’s partner at Revolution and….well, listen to find out what happens! Episode Quotes On Getting Started as an Entrepreneur “So two people I met accelerated everything. Ted Leonsis kind of introduced me to this network of people. Mike Lincoln over at Cooley was like, “Yeah, everyone is raving about you. You didn't go to an Ivy League school, you're not from this background. But you’re just  going into all these office and people are saying: Who's this kid? Vern, right.” So they got me started and did our legal work for free, util we got funded.” On Why Employers are So Focused on “Top Colleges” “So I think it's a two pronged problem. One is, these are businesses, right? So there's budget, and once you start talking about like numbers and budgets you start looking at ROI. And every recruiter says, OK, great. If we spend one hundred thousand dollars to go to thirty one schools this season, what's the ROI now? If we go to Stanford or we go to Michigan, we kind of know what we get there,  because some of our current engineers went to school there. So we know their level of output is XYZ, as far as coding goes. But if we take a risk and go with something we've haven't done before, like going to Sweetbriar College, which is an all-women's college in Virginia, (the founder of TaskRabbit went there). We may want to take a risk, by going there. We might spend fifty thousand dollars and have no ROI to show. So the best play, much like VC culture, is we go to Stanford, we get 3 students --great. But what happens is the competition, right? If your brand isn't as big as you think it is as a company, your recruiting line is nonexistent. Everyone went over to the Robinhood line.” On Black Founders Being “Over-Mentored” One thing I see amongst the Black founder community is a ton of mentors. And I think Black founders are over-mentored and under-funded. I don't know who coined that term, but a ton of people DO want to mentor. That's funny. I have people fill my inbox from the top VC's in the nation and just say, hey, Vern, let me be your mentor. And, you know, I'm always greatly appreciative, I like the advice.  But I’d also like to get funded” Hallo:  https://www.hallothere.com/ Something Ventured:    https://somethingventured.us/  

Stacey Bishop is a partner at Scale Venture Partners where she invests in “business applications driving the Intelligent Connected World”. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of companies like Abstract, Airspace, Demandbase, Extole, Lever, and Textio. Stacey is a founding member of All Raise – an organization frequently mentioned on Something Ventured. She is also an advisor to The University Growth Fund Stacey got her MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from The University of Michigan. In this episode we discuss her path to becoming a partner at a prominent Silicon Valley firm, and the role All Raise played in accelerating her career. Notable quotes from this episode:   On the Early Days of “All Raise” “Before All Raise, women in venture, we just put our heads down, did our job -- just focused on trying to get ahead and do the right thing. And I think the most eye-opening thing – when All Raise started, it changed the dynamic. It suddenly brought all the women together. And even though we had all been kind of working side by side, we weren't really -- there were so few of us but there was little getting together. Now there's this whole network. And so I think it's changed the industry.”   On Hedge Funds Moving Into Venture Capital “Hedge funds have certainly been there later stage. Mostly because private companies are going public much later. So in order for them to get the returns they need, they started coming into the private markets. So they had been showing up at the late stage. But now we're seeing them much earlier. That’s probably been the biggest change and that's been over the last several years.”   On Valuation Trends of Tech Companies “We just had (another) billion dollar exit: Most people haven't even heard of the company. But, if you had a five or six billion-dollar exit, everybody would have known about it. Snowflake went public last week…it was under the radar, but Snowflake was the biggest venture exit of all time.”   On The Future of Meetings “In meetings ‘before’, somebody had to get in the car and drive to go see you and take all that time. So out of respect, you don't want to not spend the time with them. So you spend a full hour or more. Even if it’s just an introductory meeting you feel this obligation. I don’t know how much in-person meetings will drop, but there will be a whole subset of meetings that can be done remotely.”   Stacey on Twitter https://twitter.com/StaceyCurry   Scale Venture Partners on Twitter https://twitter.com/ScaleVP   Scale Venture Partners https://www.scalevp.com   Something Ventured Podcast       https://somethingventured.us

Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis.  AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016. Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move.  He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.   On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State “There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”   On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs” ‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models:  premium, ad-supported, data-supported.” On Why He Started Collective “There are ‘businesses of one”:  Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.” Hooman Radfar on Twitter  https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar Collective https://www.collective.com Something Ventured Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis.  AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016. Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move.  He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.   On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State “There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”   On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs”   ‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models:  premium, ad-supported, data-supported.” On Why He Started Collective “There are ‘businesses of one':  Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.” Hooman Radfar on Twitter  https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar Collective https://www.collective.com Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis.  AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016. Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move.  He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.   On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State “There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”   On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs”   ‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models:  premium, ad-supported, data-supported.” On Why He Started Collective “There are ‘businesses of one”:  Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.” Hooman Radfar on Twitter  https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar Collective https://www.collective.com Something Ventured  https://somethingventured.us  

We will be taking a look at Disney's The Owl House and discussing our thoughts after watching each episode!Check out the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP2W1iFO_jcyq_Uu49BmUHPalzbYv-_Vl

Jaclyn Hester has just become a Partner at Foundry Group.  So first, “Congratulations, Jaclyn”. Jaclyn joined Foundry Group – the Boulder-based tech company and venture fund investor -- after a few years at big law firms.  As a lawyer, she worked on everything from startup formation and financing to large M&A processes. During graduate school at CU Boulder, she caught the entrepreneurship bug and immersed herself in the local startup community, serving as the Executive Director of Startup Colorado. She has also built a startup with her husband, Anders.   Their family’s bootstrapped tour and activity software company was successfully acquired in 2018 by Booking.com. She becomes a partner Foundry just as it raises its first Foundry Group Next (“FG Next”) fund.  Episode Quotes: On Her Path from Lawyer to Entrepreneur “I always had a feeling that there was something more interesting about the businesses themselves than about the legal aspect. I think for me, it felt like being the attorney was just a way to be connected to the business. And I enjoyed going to law school. It was an incredible education.  But I must have known that I liked the businesses, maybe, better.“   On the Purpose of the FG Next Fund “It is important to remember that the pools of capital at the institutional level -- so the pension funds, the endowments -- these are multi billions of dollars.  Venture capital is just a teeny tiny thumbnail inside of their private asset or private equity asset class, which itself is one a bunch of other asset classes that they invest in. And so it's probably among the riskiest highest reward of the things that they invest in. But it's a really small piece. So if you think about, a 10, 20, 30 billion dollar pool of capital spending time on making 1 to 10 million dollar investments in a venture capital fund -- just doesn't make sense.”   On COVID-19’s Impact on Companies “We’ve always believed that you can build great, great companies anywhere and that the talent is not concentrated in the Bay Area. That trend is accelerating with more openness to remote work. Not having to have everyone in the same place means that people are thinking about talent differently.”   Foundry Group https://foundrygroup.com   Jaclyn on Twitter @jfreester   Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us

There are only so many iconic social networks in the world – and Nextdoor is one of them.  While perhaps not as fast-growing as Facebook or even LinkedIn, Nextdoor has steadily become the hub for neighborhoods around the world. Sarah Leary founded Nextdoor, along with Nirav Tolia, Prakash Janakiraman, and David Wiesen. In this episode, Sarah tells the story of getting Nextdoor off the ground.  She talks about the painstaking work they did to figure out how to build a healthy community around a neighborhood, before they were ready to scale. We talk about the impact COVID-19 had on Nextdoor communities, and how and why she decided to become a venture capitalist at Unusual Ventures. Notable Episode Quotes On Starting Her Career at Microsoft “I joined Microsoft at really a golden time:  The early 90s.  I was on the product team that launched the first version of Microsoft Office, and that was an all-star team. It was a time when Microsoft was just taking off and went from being this software company that some people had heard of to a household name. I was fortunate enough to, for example, be on stage where we launched Office ninety five with Bill Gates and Jay Leno.  We were writing the script as we went along and that was an amazing learning curve.” On the “Pivot” from Fanbase to Nextdoor “If you don't get the seeds of a community right in the beginning, it becomes very difficult to fix it. And after about six months, we actually offered to give the money back to Bill Gurley, who was the lead investor in Fanbase. He said, ‘That's the easy way out. I'll give you three months to work on some new ideas. It doesn't have to be directly related to Fanbase. But why don't you guys take another crack at it?’ That was hard. It was very hard to step back and say.  ‘This isn't working and confess to each other that we didn't think it was going to be the next ESPN’, but I'm so glad that we did.”   On the Earliest Days of Nextdoor “The idea of Nextdoor changed pretty dramatically in those early stages before we ever wrote a line of code. And thankfully, it's probably saved us from years of going down the wrong path and frankly, probably losing faith in what it was that we were trying to. The prototype was actually launched in the Bay Area and with one neighborhood in Menlo Park, and it worked. People wanted to talk to their neighbors, but we were very cautious and said, OK, that's not enough. Let's try some other ones. In Seattle, Washington, we had one in upstate rural New York. We had one outside of Washington, D.C., and one in Tennessee. And we just started to see how people were using the platform. And that gave us the confidence after we did about five of those to say, ‘OK, this is the winning idea and we're going to double down on it’.”   Unusual Ventures:  https://www.unusual.vc Something Ventured:  www.somethingventured.us  

Trae Vassallo is co-founder and partner at Defy, a venture capital firm she built with Neil Sequeira.  She was previously a general partner at Kleiner Perkins. Trae made her way to Silicon Valley from…rural Minnesota.  As a girl, Trae fell in love with coding – on an Apple II.  She went, sight unseen, to Stanford University, where she studied mechanical and electrical engineering.  After a stint at design firm IDEO, she co-founded and led product at Good Technologies. In this episode we discuss Trae’s path to Kleiner Perkins, and her experiences being one of relatively few female venture capital partners in Silicon Valley. She contrasts the treatment of women in Silicon Valley before, and after, Ellen Pao’s lawsuit (Check out Episode 101).  We discuss why she struck out on her own rather than staying at Kleiner, and how she and her partner came together to form Defy. Finally, Trae discusses a health scare that led to her discovery of integrative medicine and lifelong quest for healthy living. EPISODE QUOTES On Her Early Experience with Computers “It was like third or fourth grade where I have vivid recollections of seeing Oregon Trail (a video game), playing that game, and then learning how to build simple graphics programs. And that really was a spark for me:  That, you can logically build a sequence of steps and then have it go execute. And that kind of problem solving to me was incredibly exciting. And so that was the spark that made me realize I'm a problem solver, I'm a creative.” On Palm Pilot and Women Leaders “I was fortunate to get on the engineering team that worked on the Palm V. And through that, I got to work with Donna Dubinsky (Palm’s CEO) and Jeff Hawkins (Palm’s Founder). And this was when they were justgetting started and they had this runaway kind of success. That was my first exposure to a startup into what it meant to be an entrepreneur and frankly, a female CEO, a woman CEO who is just amazing at her job. And so I thought, OK, I love this engineering thing, but I want to do what she's doing.”   On Integrative Medicine “When I left Kleiner, one of my top goals was” I'm going to get my health back.  I want to feel better than ever. I started reading up and looking at less conventional options, because I literally had been to Mayo and Cedars and Stanford and UCSF and nothing. Nothing, nothing. And I finally found this whole world of integrative medicine, which I'm now a huge fan of. The thesis behind it is really about root cause analysis instead of giving you a drug to alleviate the symptom of that issue.  Rathere, we're going to figure out why you have that issue to begin with and get to the root cause and solve that problem so we don't have to cover up your symptom.” Defy:  https://defy.vc Something Ventured: https://somethingventured.us

William Davidow is a Silicon Valley pioneer, former Intel VP, and renowned venture capitalist.  He is author of the new book, with tech journalist Michael Malone, THE AUTONOMOUS REVOLUTION: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines (Berrett-Koehler, February 18, 2020).  It’s a provocative look at how to safeguard humanity from our autonomous future and how to harness its benefits. According to Davidow and Malone, for the third time in the history of humanity civilization is undergoing phase change.  The first was the Agricultural Revolution, the second the Industrial Revolution, and we are now in the midst of the Autonomous Revolution. Some ideas discussed: How to adapt society to our new era and transform our relationship with intelligent machines the authors propose in the new book Creating tiered personal information “safety deposit boxes” over which users would have complete control to protect internet privacy; Imposing a tax on sending emails, time spent on social networks, and gaming; Programs that automatically block phone use while we’re driving; Regulation that puts limits on Artificial Intelligence; Proactive investment in the infrastructure of the future to offset inevitable job loss.   More on William Davidow:  William Davidow is a Silicon Valley pioneer who ran the microprocessor division at Intel at the dawn of the chip revolution and was later senior vice president of marketing and sales. Prior to Intel Corp., Bill worked in various managerial positions at Hewlett Packard and General Electric. He cofounded Mohr Davidow Ventures, one of the Valley's premier venture capital firms, in 1985. Bill serves on the boards of California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy. He is the author of three books and the coauthor of two, including The Virtual Corporation, which sold more than 100,000 copies.   Episode Exerpts: On the Evolution of Technology Innovation “When I was at Intel, you know, we used to get up and feel like we were putting on our Superman shirts and going out and changing the world. And what we were doing was automating existing processes: In other words, we made a stoplight run better or we made a typewriter into a word processor. But if you looked at it, there was still a factory or there was still a stoplight. We didn't change the structure of things. And what is different today is that our technologies are changing the social and economic structure of things.” The Problem of Virtual Worlds like Facebook “We have real problem that people are choosing to live in a virtual world. It turns out that you evolved in a physical world, YOU controlled the physical world. A tree was not created to be firewood. You managed the world and made the tree firewood.   The physical world had no purpose and you were running the physical world. But when you go to a virtual world, a virtual world DOES have a purpose. And the purpose of the virtual world is to control your behavior. you you're down to two senses, both of which are impaired. “ On the Accelerating Pace of Job Destruction “We keep finding new work for people to do, so we keep creating opportunities, I think today the challenge is that we may not be able to create the opportunities fast enough. I mean, these technologies have such broad impact. Netflix put Blockbuster Video out of business, when Blockbuster Video had nine thousand stores and 60,000 employees. And Netflix, I think, had one thousand employees. And those are the kinds of things will continue to happen. It’s going to turn everything upside down. I believe in a free market, but free markets have their flaws. They do not allocate wealth based on social contribution, they allocate wealth based on your ability to make money. In the future we may be living in a society where we're going to have to find ways to compensate people based on their social contribution as opposed to whether they're just a great high speed trader. “ Kent Lindstrom (host):          https://kentlindstrom.com William Davidow:                  https://www.davidow.com Something Ventured:           https://somethingventured.us

Rob Chesnut is an advisor to Airbnb, where he was previously Chief Ethics Officer and general counsel.  His recently released book is Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead An Ethical Revolution. Rob started his career as a federal prosecutor, but decided he could do more good in the world by working for companies like eBay and Chegg. Eventually joining Airbnb, he helped Brian Chesky navigate issues such as racial discrimination by Airbnb hosts.  He also helped Airbnb create a culture of “Intentional Integrity”. In this episode we discuss Rob’s journey to and through Silicon Valley, and his experience creating ethical cultures those companies.  We also discuss what happened to Airbnb when the COVID crisis hit. Hear what Brian Chesky said as Airbnb was faced with lawsuits over discrimination by its hosts Rob Chesnut Episode Excerpts On leaving the role of federal prosecutor to work for tech companies: “After a while, it's a real negative. It has a negative aspect to it.  You're putting young people in jail for long periods of time, and you feel like you're not contributing in a positive, proactive way to society.”  “On the Future of Travel” “I don't think that the pandemic is going to push people to stay in their homes forever. I think that people are going to travel. But what I think we're going to see is that there's a maybe a different type of travel. One thing that there's a trend, I think, that may come out of the pandemic, which is really going to help Airbnb and that is ‘work anywhere’. So if you can work and do your job from literally anywhere that has Internet access, that suddenly frees you to go places and do things 52 weeks a year that you might otherwise have only been able to do three weeks a year.”   On Intentional Integrity “I think that integrity is a word that people are often uncomfortable talking about because it gets to people's morals, their purpose, maybe even their religion. And so leaders are uncomfortable talking about it and what they do is outsource it to lawyers and it becomes compliance. There's a difference, though, between compliance and integrity. So the point of the title is we have to get over the discomfort, we have to have the conversation. And if we want integrity to be part of our company, we can't just assume that it's going to happen, that we're just going to hire good people and that it's going to happen. We have to make an intentional effort to weave it into our culture. And so the point of that title, is a call for getting through that discomfort and taking affirmative steps to make it part of what you do in business.”   Intentional Integrity www.intentionalintegrity.com   Rob Chesnut https://www.linkedin.com/in/robchesnut/   Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us  

Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm that manages more than $2 billion.  She is particularly interested in entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies enabling human and environmental health, access, and productivity. While her immediate background before joining Lux sounds familiar – she was a partner at GV (previously “Google Ventures”) – her path before that is a bit more unusual.  As a journalist, Deena once hosted the pilot episode of a bilingual Arabic-English TV news series modeled after 60 Minutes.  Deena was also a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010. She is the first-generation daughter of immigrants from Iraq and speaks fluent Arabic and French. In this episode, we discuss a range of topics, from her experiences as an Arab-American to her path from Washington to Silicon Valley.  We also discuss the impact COVID is having on the venture business, and families like hers.  Also covered:  The unique craziness of online parenting groups. EPISODE EXERPTS On Education “Education, is an area I’m passionate about, where I've made investments like that in a company called Mos. Mos is using artificial intelligence to make the process of searching for financial aid easier. Clearly, there were already platforms for you to search for scholarships. However, they've made that much more sophisticated, and the process is so much easier now. And this was meaningful for me personally because that was a process I went through. I paid for college by myself, patching together all these scholarships. And now that is something that is changing the lives of students on a daily basis.” On Women in Venture Capital “ In terms of women in venture, I think we've obviously we've come a long way, particularly in the last three years. I joined the venture world maybe three months before that moment, if you want to call it that, where everybody realized this was an actual problem.  It was in the summer, I think, of 2017 when a lot of this came to light. I think we still have a very long way to go. Some of the solutions may have potentially created additional problems around tokenism, for example, around cliques around  certain folks or groups taking up all the oxygen in the room, et cetera. But that being said, I've seen some really great progress.” On Software “When it comes to software specifically, the democratizing piece of it is what gets me really excited. I get really excited about technology that streamlines analog industries -- that allows people to do things more quickly -- whether that means grassroots organizing or whether it means accounting.” On the Impact of the 9/11 Attacks “Being in high school, a teenager, during 9/11 -- being a Muslim and Iraqi American, that was a really pivotal moment for me. It was the first time where I felt like these two parts of my identity that really always felt like they were fluid and just part of who I am -- all of a sudden it seems like they weren’t to some people.  That really was troubling for me.” Deena on Twitter       https://twitter.com/deenashakir Lux Capital                             https://luxcapital.com Something Ventured           https://somethingventured.us

Fast.co has raised over $20 million from firms like Kleiner, Index and Stripe.  It bills itself as the world’s fastest checkout – one click, no passwords.  A fascinating but typical story, such as it is, in Silicon Valley.  But then there’s this: Domm didn’t go to Stanford.  He isn’t even from the US. He’s from Australia, where his first business was…a towing company.  A more than $50 million business. His co-founder is a woman.  He met her on Twitter. So in this episode – find out how Domm made his way from Australia to Silicon Valley, and how he used his status as a Twitter power user to build his business.  Also learn what it’s like when your rocket ship startup is hit by a global pandemic. Fast  https://www.fast.co Something Ventured  https://somethingventured.us

“As an entrepreneur, tech CEO and venture capitalist who is also a woman of color, I am well aware of the challenges most entrepreneurs face when it comes to raising capital.”  So Promise Phelon summarizes with typical grace what she has learned in an amazing career.  Her book, “The Way of the Growth Warrior” – well you can’t get it yet.  You can pre-order it in the link below.  In the meantime, you can hear her story in this episode. Promise Phelon started that career at BEA Systems, where she became Head of Product Marketing.  While a Black woman running marketing at BEA in the 1990s might be its own story, it was just her beginning... The Growth Warrior https://thegrowthwarrior.com Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us

Monique Woodard is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.  She is one of the very rare Black, female General partners in venture capital.  Previously on Something Ventured we explored Monique’s unique path to becoming a venture capitalist, and what she invests in. As events drove the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement to accelerate worldwide, Monique was gracious enough to come back and share her thoughts. She discusses what she believes is the state of the BLM movement in general, and Silicon Valley’s dismal record on supporting Black investors and entrepreneurs in particular. She offers pure, unvarnished advice about what Silicon Valley can do – actually do – to begin fixing its problem. www.monique.vc www.somethingventured.us 

Raj Kapoor contracted Covid in mid-March.  He and his family are recovered and well. But Raj is taking aim at shortening the path to a post-Covid world.  He partnered with Clara Health to create www.worldwithoutcovid.org.  The site let’s people register to help researchers worldwide accelerate their race to find better testing, treatments, and vaccines. Raj has been a venture capitalist (Mayfield) and a entrepreneur (SnapFish).  He is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Lyft.  In this episode we discuss Raj’s journey from contracting to recovering from Covid.  We also discuss the path to finding a treatment, and the why’s and how’s of California’s lockdown.  We also discuss (Caifornia Governor) Gavin Newsom’s “6 Criteria for lifting quarantine”, and the current state of the US Presidential race. We turn to Lyft, and the future of transportation (the original topic of this episode):   How Lyft is faring during the Covid crisis, how will change cities, and how Lyft affect climate change. Finally, we briefly discuss the effect Covid might ultimately have on the music industry. World Without Covid:  www.worldwithoutcovid.org Clara Health:  www.clarahealth.com Lyft:  www.lyft.com Something Ventured:  www.somethingventured.us  

What does it take to demo a cloud software? It's not easy! Also, lamb considered and memories of barcampESM. Our first re-boot of the IT Management and Cloud Podcast, renamed the Lords of Computing Podcast. Your friends, @cote (http://www.twitter.com/cote) and @botchagalupe (http://www.twitter.com/botchagalupe). Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LordsOfComputing (http://feeds.feedburner.com/LordsOfComputing) Show-notes and Links Lamb and DevOpsDays Mama Mia. Memories, barcampESM - the first IT Management and Cloud podcast episode (http://redmonk.com/cote/2008/01/11/it-management-podcast-001-barcampesm-monitoring-the-cloud-2008-predictions-and-more/). The need for Disaster Kitchen Apps - getting to better demos for cloud infrastructure The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs - always have an enemy! The Anti-corruption layer pattern (http://allegrotech.io/working-with-legacy-architecture.html) for integrating with old IT. Netflix documentary of VCs, Something Ventured (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Ventured) - Ben Thompson essay on venture capital and tech companies (http://stratechery.com/2015/1999/). Our plans for the Lords of Computing Podcast. Libsyn downloads as of 20160912: 633.

In episode 2 of 2 with Preet Anand, we discuss Blue Light, the startup focused on public safety, of which Preet is CEO and Founder.  Topics include -- the process (and game) of fundraising.  Also discussed is the uniqueness of a startup in the public safety space, as well as the ups and downs of being an entrepreeur in Silicon Valley.   -- In the Something Ventured podcast Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online...and beyond.

Bluelight founder and CEO Preet Anand discusses the ups and downs of his startup in this first of 2 episodes.  In "Something Ventured" fashion the first episode covers -- yes -- housing in Silicon Valley.  Also discussed are Preet's experiences at Zynga, and observations of life in the Bay Area.   -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley Veteran Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online...and beyond.

Internet exec and  San Francisco State professor Neil Cohen talks marketing.  Often misunderstood in Silicon Valley, the marketing role is a key one for almost any successful company of any size.  Also in this episode -- Neil and Kent poke fun at some Silicon  Valley marketing fails -- and those billboards on the 101. -- In the Something Ventured podcast Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online....and beyond.  

Neil Cohen is a marketing executive and advisor with experience ranging from Sega and Hilton to numerous successful startups.  He is a board member of SF State UCORP and a Mentor to StartupMexico.  In this podcast, Neil and Kent discuss the booming entrepreneurial scene in Mexico City, and contrast it to Silicon Valley -- In the Something Ventured podcast Silicon Valley veteran Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

On October 30, 2014, Tim Cook -- Apple's CEO -- came out as gay.  He never denied it, but now said  " I haven't acknowledged it publicly, until now". Tim Cook and other gay Silicon Valley executives were discussed in an earlier podcast with executive Vincent Robinson.  Here, we replay that episode. Happy holidays.  Kent Lindstrom.... @kentlind -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people changing the way we view the world online and beyond.  

Jim Egbert, the Silicon Valley executive for a major financial firm, returns to talk to Kent about the first 25 episodes of Something Ventured.  Silicon Valley topics covered range from Burning Man to the structure of the internet.  Part 2 of 2.   In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

Jim Egbert talks to Kent about the first 25 episodes of "Something Ventured". Issues in Silicon Valley discussed included -- being a gay CEO, sexism, librarians (yep, librarians), racism, hipsters and more. In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

Peter Shanley has worked at large technology companies like Yahoo and Hewlett Packard -- but started in San Francisco running a housing project in San Francisco's most economically challened neighborhood -- the Tenderloin.  In the first part of our conversation with Peter, he talks aobut what drives the housing crunch in San Francisco, and various issues around San Francisos's difficult social problems.   In the Something Ventured podcast Slicon Vallen insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines, as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online...and beyond.

Kent Lindstrom sits down with Tim Rosenblatt -- who has been coding for 20 years, on the web since 1996.  They discuss various tech issues, including the physical structure of the Internet, and why Silicon Valley is the "Capital City".  Also discussed are the Commodore 64, why Netscape failed, and the concept of "code debt".   -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Kent Lindstrom (@kentlind) explores the reality behidn the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

Linda Kelly is Editor-in-Chief of the website Astrology.com.  She is also the author of the book "Deadheads:  Stories from Fellow Arists, Friends and Followers of the Grateful Dead".  She came to that book project, after meeting Jerry Garcia while working for Spin magazine. Her journey to becoming an author is discussed, as well as the relationship the Grateful Dead have to the Bay area.     Also discussed -- the popularity of Astrology.com, and how they've carried one of newspapers' most popular features onto the Internet. -- The Something Ventured podcast is released each Tuesday at 9am PST.  In it, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines, as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

Mike Stutz is a Hollywood director, writer, filmmaker, producer ("showrunner").  In this "Hollywood edition" of Something Ventured, Mike sits down with Kent to discuss how reality TV has evolved.  Also discussed are what is real in reality TV, and what is not.  Comparisons are made to Silicon Valley content companies, and Kent and Mike discuss how society's behavior is impacted by reality TV, consumer websites, video games and...even porn websites. Part 2 of 2 -- Something Ventured is released every Tuesday at 9am PST   In Something Ventured, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines, as he sits down with the people who are changing the way we view the world online....and beyond.  

Mike Stutz is a Hollywood director, writer, filmmaker, producer ("showrunner").  In this "Hollywood edition" of Something Ventured, Mike sits down with Kent to discuss how reality TV has evolved.  Also discussed are what is real in reality TV, and what is not.  Comparisons are made to Silicon Valley content companies, and Kent and Mike discuss how society's behavior is impacted by reality TV, consumer websites, video games and...even porn websites. Part 1 of 2 -- Something Ventured is released every Tuesday at 9am PST   In Something Ventured, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines, as he sits down with the people who are changing the way we view the world online....and beyond.  

The second of two parts, Rachel Fairbanks discusses sexism issues women face in Silicon Valley.  Discussed are the recent issues involving Github, Sendgrid, Tinder, and several other companies.  The themes of the movie Frozen are explained for people who don't have young daughters.  Finally, advice on how to help reduce sexism is given   In the "Something Ventured" podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online....and beyond.

Cindy Aden was Amazon's first librarian, head of the Washington Library Assocation, and is an executive at the world's largest library co-op.   Discussed are -- historical aspects of libraries, the library at Alexandria -- and libraries before the age of the internet.  Also discussed are how libraries have evolved alongside the internet, what drives people to become librarians  and why librarians and libraries still matter even in the age of Google and Amazon.   In the Something Ventured podcast, Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the people who are shaping the world onine....and beyond.

In the 11th Something Ventured episode, Silicon Valley meets Hollywood, and they may not be getting along.  Mike Stutz (Hollywood producer, director, writer and actor) discusses the future of produced television in the age of Youtube.  He contrasts cable television economics with web portal/Youtube economics.  The different worldviews of TV and Internet people are discussed.  Mike also explains his journey to becoming a Hollywood producer/writer/director, and his place in the Hollywood hierarchy.  Warning:  Contains mild name dropping.

In this "Freaky Friday" episode, regular host Kent Lindstrom is interviewed by guest Eric Hall.  Obviously, the subject matter is fascinating.  Discussed are how Kent ended up in Silicon Valley, and why the "Something Ventured" podcast.   In the "Something Ventured" podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the seasoned veterans and up-and-comers who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

Vincent Robinson shares his journey from Erie Pennsylvania, through Goldman Sachs and Stanford to Silicon Valley, where he now runs his own company.  Topics include how some African-Americans view startup risk, the power of Goldman Sachs, and the similarities between Silicon Valley and Washington DC.  Also discussed are changes in San Francisco since the 1990s, and why New York continues to obsess about San Francisco.  Also whether Oakland is the next Brooklyn or the next Portland. -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the headlines, as he sits down with the seasoned veterans and up-and-comers who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond.

In the first episode, Kent Lindstrom talks about the inspiration behind Something Ventured, and welcomes listeners to explore the people and ideas of Silicon Valley.