Podcasts about VC

What if a self-taught coder and waiter became one of the most active healthcare venture capitalists in the country - and could teach you everything about reinventing yourself, embracing the incubation period, and finding massive opportunity in the chaos everyone else is running from? Join Nick Lamagna on The A Game Podcast: Real Estate Investing For Entrepreneurs for one of the most raw, real, and inspiring conversations we've had - Marcus Whitney, co-founder and CEO of Jumpstart Health Investors, 3x IBJJF Masters World Champion, soccer team co-owner, podcast host, hip hop head, and creative rebel who went from broke waiter in Nashville to venture capitalist disrupting the entire healthcare industry. This isn't just a business episode - it's a masterclass on identity, reinvention, critical thinking, and what it really means to build a life worth living on your own terms, whether you're in the grind, on the mat, or in the middle of figuring out what the next chapter looks like. Whether you're an entrepreneur trying to raise capital, a Jiu Jitsu competitor questioning your next move, a real estate investor looking for your edge, or just someone trying to figure out who they are when the title gets stripped away - this conversation will change the way you think about failure, freedom, and what it actually means to bring your A Game. Marcus went from dropping out of college and showing up to a restaurant in uniform asking for a job on the spot, to building, scaling, and selling multiple companies and running one of the most active early-stage healthcare VC firms in the US. Now he's opening up about the lessons, the losses, and the season of life nobody talks about - the incubation period. While most people only talk about the climb, Marcus breaks down the real game: ✅ Why standing still is the riskiest move you can make in today's economy - and what entrepreneurship as "full contact economics" really means ✅ How to separate your identity from your achievements so failure never has the power to break you ✅ The difference between the Hustler and the Hacker - and why you need both to create outsized performance in business and in life ✅ What waiting tables taught him about people skills that no MBA program ever could ✅ Why the incubation period isn't failure - it's the most important season of growth most people never give themselves permission to experience ✅ How surrounding yourself with the right people (and cutting back on the wrong ones) is the single biggest lever you can pull for your future ✅ Why hope is the most underrated weapon an entrepreneur has - and how to use it to survive the seasons when nothing seems to be working ✅ What Jiu Jitsu, venture capital, and going back to white belt in Mexico City all have in common + more Connect with Marcus: www.marcuswhitney.com Marcus Whitney on Instagram Marcus Whitney on Facebook Marcus Whitney on YouTube Marcus Whitney on LinkedIn Marcus Whitney on Twitter   Connect with Jumpstart Foundry: www.jsf.co Jumpstart Foundry on Instagram Jumpstart Foundry on Facebook Jumpstart Foundry on YouTube Jumpstart Foundry on LinkedIn Jumpstart Foundry on TikTok Jumpstart Foundry on Twitter   Connect with Jumpstart Health Ecosystem: Jumpstart Nova Jumpstart Health Investors Jumpstart Capital Jumpstart Insight   Connect with Nashville Soccer Club: www.nashvillesc.com Nashville Soccer Club on Instagram Nashville Soccer Club on Facebook Nashville Soccer Club on YouTube Nashville Soccer Club on LinkedIn Nashville Soccer Club on TikTok Nashville Soccer Club on Twitter --- Connect with Nick Lamagna www.nicknicknick.com Text Nick (516)540-5733 Connect on ALL Social Media and Podcast Platforms Here FREE Checklist on how to bring more value to your buyers

Is building data centers in space actually feasible? It may be, thanks to Ariel Ekblaw. The scientist, VC investor and co-founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute has devoted her life to democratizing space and ensuring that humans will one day be a spacefaring species. Ariel sits down with Oz to discuss self-assembling space architecture, how science-fiction influences her inventions, and why she doesn’t think billionaires investing in space is a bad thing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people at times. He has 2 cats, and likes to spend time outdoors. In fact, in 3 weeks time from this recording, he will traveling to Switzerland to do the Via Ferrata. To add to all of this, he has started to write children's books and hopes to publish them someday.Vitalii Sydorenko currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. He is into sports, loves to hit the gym and regularly tracks his calories. Last year he started playing tennis and finds that he can't stop. He enjoy hiking, which is great in Lisbon. And in the past, he spent many years building startups, exiting, and also in venture capitalYou may have noticed that Volodymyr and Vitalii have the same last name... that is because they are brothers. As kids growing up, they did a lot of boxing together, as well as cling to classic films like Back to the Future.Fourteen years ago, Volodymyr got interesting in building solutions, and realized he could only get so far by himself... so he decided to build a team to deliver these solutions. Two years ago, Vitalii and Volodymyr started to consider all the of the shifts in the SDLC, and what that meant for the current business. Vitalii decided to bring his prior startup and VC experience and join the team.This is the creation story of Gearheart.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://gearheart.io/https://codestory.co/podcast/e6-jon-darbyshire-smartsuite/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearheart/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalii-sydorenko-%F0%9F%92%AA%F0%9F%87%BA%F0%9F%87%A6-24b4ba35/Our Sponsors:* Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.* Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

为什么磕 cp 比谈恋爱更快乐？为什么追星让人上头欲罢不能？为什么说这种现象，正展现出我们这个时代「爱」这种最私人的感情也正在发生结构性变化？ 在社交媒体、流量算法与情感商品化的层层作用下，「爱」这个原本属于私人领域的情感，正在被一步步地公共化、量化，乃至商品化 —— 从磕 CP 到情感专制，从乙女游戏到 AI 恋人，爱的形式与爱的能力似乎都在被重新定义。 这一期节目，我们邀请到复旦大学社会学系副教授沈奕斐，聊聊「爱」在这个数字时代正在经历怎样的结构性变化，「情感自主性」为什么对今天的年轻人这么重要，以及在 AI 已经开始参与进我们情感生活的当下，我们还要如何去实践爱。 本期人物 沈奕斐，复旦大学社会学系副教授 徐涛，声动活泼联合创始人 主要话题 [01:17] 数字时代，技术让我们换了种方式「追」星 [08:29] 从想象力出发：磕 CP 为什么让人如此上头 [20:53] 为什么说「打榜」也是一种理性决策的结果？ [30:59] 数字时代，我们的爱和情绪如何被量化 [40:25] 被爱、去爱与承诺，爱也可以被拆分吗 [54:01] 从情感专制到理性判断：饭圈中的情感复杂性 [01:05:05] 数智时代：当情感商品成为爱的途径，我们如何平衡技术与幸福？ 延伸解读 沈奕斐：《不止追星：数字时代爱的变革 》 丹尼尔·卡尼曼：《思考，快与慢》 古斯塔夫·勒庞：《乌合之众：大众心理研究》 《怪兽电力公司》（2001） 《她》（2013） 给声东击西投稿 「声东击西」一直在寻找来自不同社会和群体的真实声音。我们曾经采访过为特朗普竞选生产 MAGA 帽子的中国制造商、记录过七位在美国大选中经历起伏的华人个体，也讲述了委内瑞拉青年的故事。 如果你也有一些特别的经历、观察或想法，不论是亲身体验的故事，还是你在某个行业、社区中的所见所闻，都欢迎你向我们投稿。 你的声音可能出现在未来的节目当中，我们非常期待你的分享！ 投稿入口 加入我们 声动活泼团队目前正在招聘内容监制、商业运营经理、商业发展经理和实习生，如果你也对播客行业的内容制作和商务运营感兴趣，欢迎投递！ 到详情点击招聘入口：加入声动活泼（在招职位速览） 幕后制作 监制：可宣 后期：赛德 运营：George 设计：饭团 实习生：怡然 商务合作 声动活泼商业化小队，点击链接可直达商务会客厅，也可发送邮件至 business@shengfm.cn 联系我们。 关于声动活泼 「用声音碰撞世界」，声动活泼致力于为人们提供源源不断的思考养料。 我们还有这些播客：声东击西、What's Next｜科技早知道、商业WHY酱、跳进兔子洞&跳进兔子洞第三季、吃喝玩乐了不起、不止金钱、泡腾 VC、反潮流俱乐部 欢迎在即刻、微博等社交媒体上与我们互动，搜索声动活泼即可找到我们。 也欢迎你写邮件和我们联系，邮箱地址是：ting@sheng.fm 获取更多和声动活泼有关的讯息，你也可以扫码添加声小音，在节目之外和我们保持联系！

过去两年，AI 眼镜、AI 耳机、AI 指环——各种智能终端层出不穷。但其实离我们最近、使用时间最长的是我们的手机，它是天然的 AI 载体的延伸。随着大模型能力提升和端侧芯片算力突破，手机产品其实正在经历一场深度重构。 就在刚刚结束的世界移动通信大会上，vivo 全球首次展示了即将发布的 X Fold6 折叠屏手机，搭载了和联发科技共同研发的天玑 9500 超能版芯片。所以我请来了这个产品背后的两位关键人物 -- vivo X 系列产品部总经理和联发科技无线通信事业部副总经理。他们从两年前就开始联合研发天机 9500 这颗芯片，一起定义了从底层芯片到终端应用的每一个环节。那我们一起聊了聊折叠屏用户的需求在哪里？芯片厂和手机厂怎么样用两年时间一起去预判 AI 的进化趋势，还有他们如何思考端侧 AI 未来演化的方向。 本期人物 Yaxian，「科技早知道」主播 韩伯啸，vivo X 系列产品部总经理 陈一强，联发科技无线通信事业部副总经理 时间轴 [02:16] 手机厂商和芯片厂商如何共同定义一个产品？ [06:45] 折叠屏的更新进化史 [10:23] 端侧 AI 的机会：云端越蓬勃，端侧需求越大 [14:13] 两三年的芯片周期如何适配日新月异的需求迭代？ [22:33] 联合研发中的 battle：影像功能与 AI 之间的权衡 [25:01] 硬件、软件、模型、应用，端侧需求间如何适配？ [36:43] 端侧核心价值在于「实时感知」，物理世界与虚拟世界的信息融合云端无法替代 [40:55] 在未来端侧 AI 会有新的形态吗？ vivo X Fold6 折叠屏手机 独家原子工作台，最强多任务体验 AI 识别交互意图，一句话开启 AI 跨窗拖放，无缝协作，一拖即用 如果你也喜欢，欢迎点击链接查看详情 幕后制作 监制：Yaxian 后期：迪卡 运营：George 设计：饭团 商业合作 声动活泼商业化小队，点击链接直达声动商务会客厅，也可发送邮件至 business@shengfm.cn 联系我们。 加入声动活泼 声动活泼正在招聘全职商务运营经理、早咖啡内容实习生和社群实习生，如果你也对播客行业的内容制作感兴趣，欢迎[点击招聘入口](https://eg76rdcl6g.feishu.cn/docx/XO6bd12aGoI4j0xmAMoc4vS7nBh?from=from_copylink) 幕后制作 监制：可宣 后期：赛德 运营：George 设计：饭团 实习生：怡然 商务合作 声动活泼商业化小队，点击链接可直达商务会客厅，也可发送邮件至 business@shengfm.cn 联系我们。 关于声动活泼 「用声音碰撞世界」，声动活泼致力于为人们提供源源不断的思考养料。 我们还有这些播客：声东击西、What's Next｜科技早知道、商业WHY酱、跳进兔子洞&跳进兔子洞第三季、吃喝玩乐了不起、不止金钱、泡腾 VC、反潮流俱乐部 欢迎在即刻、微博等社交媒体上与我们互动，搜索声动活泼即可找到我们。 也欢迎你写邮件和我们联系，邮箱地址是：ting@sheng.fm 获取更多和声动活泼有关的讯息，你也可以扫码添加声小音，在节目之外和我们保持联系！ Special Guests: 陈一强 and 韩伯啸.

Matt Arsenault, VP of Corporate Development & Strategic Alliances at Jamf Venture-backed companies are priced at their future state, not their current revenue. When growth stalls and another fundraising round stops making sense, the gap between VC valuation and what a strategic buyer will pay becomes the hardest conversation in any deal process. Matt Arsenault, VP of Corporate Development & Strategic Alliances at Jamf, has run this play across hundreds of targets. His work starts before the deal does, with the founder relationship, the cap table, and a clear-eyed conversation about risk tolerance that most corp dev teams never have.  What You'll Learn Why a $25M offer today can beat a $125M VC exit three years out How AI is shrinking the moat of wrapper-product startups and changing target screening The seven stakeholder groups in any acquisition and why most founders miss them How liquidation preferences and cap table structure change the math behind any offer Why VC relationships matter as much as founder relationships before a deal starts How to structure deals for underwater targets without losing the team What entrepreneurs should know about VC terms before taking their first check If you're working a deal where the founder's VC valuation is the first thing they said and the last thing they'll let go of, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, gives you the guidance to close the gap without overpaying. ____________________ This episode of M&A Science is presented by DealRoom. DealRoom just launched the only MCP server built for Buyer-Led M&A™ — so your AI and your deal data finally work together. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot directly to DealRoom and let your AI read your pipeline, analyze due diligence documents, and automatically write findings back.  See for yourself: dealroom.net/mcp ____________________ Episode Chapters [00:01:14] Introduction and Kison's overview [00:03:32] Matt Arsenault's background and path into M&A [00:05:17] How VCs actually value companies: the two major components [00:06:52] Where VC and strategic buyer valuations diverge, and why [00:09:29] The current market for VC-backed acquisition targets [00:10:39] Rule of 40, profitable growth, and what AI is changing [00:25:01] The liquidation preference math: $25M today vs. $125M later [00:31:38] Cap table dynamics, voting power, and co-founder alignment [00:33:10] How to have the valuation conversation with a founder [00:35:35] How to structure deals when a company is underwater [00:36:45] Stakeholder management: severance, retention, and employee equity [00:44:03] Structural tools for bridging valuation gaps [00:49:21] What entrepreneurs should know before taking their first VC check [00:51:03] Due diligence war stories: what a code scan revealed

What if the most common point of failure in your digital customer experience: the 'no results found' page, could become your greatest opportunity for conversion and discovery?Agility requires not just adopting new technologies, but fundamentally rethinking core customer interactions, like search, that have remained static for far too long. It demands a shift from rigid rules to responsive, intelligent systems that learn from and adapt to customer intent in real time.Today, we're going to talk about the evolution of on-site search. For years, it's been a functional, yet often frustrating, utility for customers. But with advancements in AI, it's transforming from a simple keyword-matching tool into a conversational discovery engine that can anticipate intent and drive a more intelligent customer experience.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Nitin Mangtani, GM and EVP of Agentforce Commerce at Salesforce.About Nitin MangtaniAbout Nitin MangtaniI am EVP & GM at Salesforce leading the Commerce Cloud and Retail Cloud team. Joined Salesforce executive team with the acquisition of PredictSpring in Sep 2024.I was Founder & CEO at PredictSpring, a leader in the Modern POS space. I led the company as CEO from the founding in my garage to raising $32M from top tier VC's. Acquired amazing customers and delivered high value to global brands from Crate & Barrel, CB2, Under Armour, Janie & Jack, Bouclair, SuitSupply, Orvis, Steve Madden, Deciem (Estee Lauder), LoveSac and others. Maintained highest capital efficiency and delivered top quartile returns to employee's and investors. Salesforce acquired PredictSpring in Sep 2024.Prior to founding PredictSpring, I was a Group Product Manager at Google. During my 7 years at Google, I led strategic initiatives including Google Shopping and scaling the product to hundreds of thousands of merchants in 40 countries. I also Co-led the Google Adwords - Offer Extensions team and Founded Google Apps Search product.Nitin Mangtani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/Nitin Mangtani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/---------- Resources ----------Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.comThe Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fDon't miss We Make Future - the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people at times. He has 2 cats, and likes to spend time outdoors. In fact, in 3 weeks time from this recording, he will traveling to Switzerland to do the Via Ferrata. To add to all of this, he has started to write children's books and hopes to publish them someday.Vitalii Sydorenko currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. He is into sports, loves to hit the gym and regularly tracks his calories. Last year he started playing tennis and finds that he can't stop. He enjoy hiking, which is great in Lisbon. And in the past, he spent many years building startups, exiting, and also in venture capitalYou may have noticed that Volodymyr and Vitalii have the same last name... that is because they are brothers. As kids growing up, they did a lot of boxing together, as well as cling to classic films like Back to the Future.Fourteen years ago, Volodymyr got interesting in building solutions, and realized he could only get so far by himself... so he decided to build a team to deliver these solutions. Two years ago, Vitalii and Volodymyr started to consider all the of the shifts in the SDLC, and what that meant for the current business. Vitalii decided to bring his prior startup and VC experience and join the team.This is the creation story of Gearhart.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://gearheart.io/https://beyondthewow.iohttps://codestory.co/podcast/e6-jon-darbyshire-smartsuite/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearheart/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalii-sydorenko-%F0%9F%92%AA%F0%9F%87%BA%F0%9F%87%A6-24b4ba35/Our Sponsors:* Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.* Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode, we sit down with Justin Welsh, entrepreneur, writer, and founder of a $15 million one-person business. After helping build two billion-dollar companies and raising more than $300 million in venture capital, Justin chose a different path; one focused on freedom, leverage, and ownership. We discuss the power of writing, the future of entrepreneurship in the age of AI, why many founders are building the wrong businesses, and how to create wealth without sacrificing your time, health, and relationships. If you want to build a business that supports your life instead of consuming it, this episode is for you.This episode is supported by Sydecar, HEX, Wispr Flow, Granola, Beehiiv, KalshiSydecar: http://Sydecar.io/partner/trailblazersbeehiiv: https://www.beehiiv.com/splash?utm_campaign=trailblazers-2026-Partnership&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=trailblazers&utm_term=podcast-2&stripe_campaign_code=TRAILBLAZERS30 (or use code “trailblazers30” for 30% OFF)*beehiiv has a major announcement coming July 16 - can't say more, but you won't want to miss it. RSVP here: https://www.beehiiv.com/summer-release-2026Granola: http://granola.ai/trailblazers*Granola is the official notetaker of Trailblazers. Check out the episode show notes here: https://notes.granola.ai/t/5998b389-aaa5-4d9c-bc58-a7ff3230378c-009c2hmaKalshi: http://Kalshi.com/r/trailblazersWispr Flow: https://ref.wisprflow.ai/trailblazersHEX: http://hex.ai/trailblazers

Climate philanthropy does far more than fund advocacy and conservation—it bridges critical funding gaps for breakthrough technologies that traditional, financially driven investors often overlook. In this special episode, we continue our ongoing Climate Philanthropy series in partnership with the Skyline Foundation to explore how non-profit support accelerates the climate tech pipeline.Shereen D'Souza (Climate Solutions Portfolio Lead at Skyline Foundation) sits down with two powerhouse CEOs from her grantee portfolio, Deepa Lounsbury of LabStart and Andrew Chang of New Energy Nexus, to discuss what it really takes to move climate innovation from a university lab to global deployment.Why This Episode MattersBringing a "hard tech" climate startup from initial lab concept to commercial scale takes an average of 10 years, and every single step of that journey faces a unique "valley of death." Because scaled deployment looks drastically different depending on the geography, supporting entrepreneurs requires a highly specialized ecosystem.This conversation highlights how philanthropy strategically funds distinct, critical phases of the lab-to-market pipeline to scale viable climate solutions faster.On today's episode, we cover:0:58 – Why climate philanthropy & Skyline partnership3:35 – LabStart vs. New Energy Nexus focus4:09 – Guest intros: Deepa (LabStart) & Andrew (New Energy Nexus)4:46 – Deepa's background in climate, VC, and CalSEED6:20 – What LabStart does & “deep climate tech” focus8:02 – Andrew's overview of New Energy Nexus global model9:43 – Programs: bootcamps, grants, CalSEED, and global south focus11:16 – What it looks like to be a New Energy Nexus entrepreneur11:54 – Philippines rooftop solar opportunity: Solar Innovation Program12:48 – Pakistan rooftop solar boom and Climate Innovation Pakistan13:40 – CalSEED structure and impact in California13:58 – What it looks like to be a LabStart entrepreneur14:55 – LabStart Discover and Launch phases15:54 – Why philanthropy is needed in climate tech innovation18:36 – Philanthropy in the global south and hyperlocal impact22:10 – LabStart success story: architect-turned-3D housing founder24:32 – Additional LabStart founders and outcomes25:25 – How much philanthropic capital is needed27:17 – IEA investment gap and catalytic examples from Indonesia29:43 – Why fund new technologies vs. only deployment32:06 – How country pathways shape New Energy Nexus engagement33:02 – California deployment example: ThermoShade33:58 – Indonesia fishermen & electric motorboats case: Volto Sea34:51 – Pakistan PakPlug EV charging app35:22 – What else the ecosystem needs: Andrew on subnational governments37:34 – What else the ecosystem needs: Deepa on IP & ecosystem gaps41:02 – Five-year vision & asks: Deepa and LabStart43:49 – Five-year vision & asks: Andrew and New Energy Nexus47:26 – Closing thanks from ShereenResources MentionedInvested in Climate: Climate Philanthropy seriesSkyline FoundationLabStartNew Energy NexusProject DrawdownJamil WyneCalSEED Solar Innovation ProgramClimate Innovation Pakistan CalTestBedAusTestbedThermoShade Swap Energy Xuraya Volto SeaPakPlug Schmidt Family Foundation Boundless EarthAtlassian Foundation California Energy Commission (CEC) New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)Mubadala Investment Company (Abu Dhabi) Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)International Energy Agency (IEA)Elemental ImpactActivate Renewables FirstConnect with usShereen D'SouzaDeepa LounsburyAndrew ChangJason RissmanKeep up with Invested In ClimateSign up for our NewsletterSubscribe for our Other Future NewsletterLinkedInInstagramIf you like what you hear, subscribe and rate to support the show! Have feedback or ideas for future episodes, events, or partnerships? Get in touch!

The Walt Disney Company is the most successful enterprise ever created for monetizing human nostalgia. Today it's the king of global entertainment, holding the intellectual property rights to the childhood memories of billions of people (including, likely, all of you) and is a reliable, predictable profitable business. But it didn't start that way.During Walt's era, Disney operated like an unhinged moonshot factory, blowing its finances on one seemingly crazy project after another, like the very first feature-length animated film or a theme park inspired by Walt's fascination with model trains (spoiler: Disneyland). Walt's relentless ambition to bet the company over and over again not only created some of the most monumental artistic achievements of the 20th century (Snow White, Fantasia, Disney Imagineering), but also resulted in the accidental invention of the modern “flywheel” business model. In this episode, we tell the story of the ultimate marriage of art, commerce, and engineering — The Walt Disney Company: Walt's Era.Sponsors:Many thanks to our fantastic Spring '26 Season partners:J.P. MorganWeAreDevelopers eventVercelServiceNowStatsigLinks:Sign up for email updates, get our takeaways and research photos from each episode, and vote on future topics!The Acquired Disney Companion PDFOur Disney column in WSJThe original 1958 WSJ “Flywheel” article"Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal GablerThe Animated Man by Michael BarrierWalt Disney: An American Original by Bob ThomasBuilding a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empires by Bob ThomasThe Disney Version: The Reedy Creek Improvement District in the Contemporary Florida Story by Richard SchickelPBS American Experience: Walt DisneyDisneyland HandcraftedWalt's 1966 EPCOT pitch videoWorldly Partners' Multi-Decade Disney StudyThe Walt Disney Family MuseumAll episode sourcesCarve Outs:Brooks Vanguard sneakersDefunctland YouTube ChannelAnimagraffs YouTube ChannelVolvo EX30The San Francisco SymphonyMore Acquired:Get email updates and vote on future episodes!Join the SlackCheck out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!00:00 Start01:09 Intro06:03 Walt's Early Life & Artistic Calling (1901-1919)12:37 From Commercial Art to Laugh-o-grams (1919-1923)23:04 Hollywood, The Alice Comedies & Oswald's Loss (1923-1928)43:31 Mickey Mouse & The Synchronized Sound Breakthrough (1928)01:01:53 The IP Flywheel & Mickey Merch Explosion (1929-1933)01:09:57 Analysis: The Disney IP Flywheel Unpacked01:59:02 Snow White & The Folly That Defined Animation (1937)01:41:08 The Burbank Studio & Pre-War Struggles (1937-1941)02:04:20 The Animators' Strike & Walt's Disillusionment (1941)02:15:44 World War II & The Accidental Disney Vault (1941-1945)02:24:27 Post-War Slump to Cinderella's Comeback (1945-1950)02:33:46 Walt's Obsession: Model Trains to Disneyland (1950-1952)02:38:44 Financing Disneyland: ABC, SRI & Davy Crockett (1953-1955)03:17:00 Disneyland's Grand Opening & The Evolving Flywheel (1955-1958)03:39:04 The Florida Project: Walt's Vision for EPCOT City (1958-1966)03:54:20 Walt's Untimely Death & Roy's Legacy (1966-1971)04:00:06 A Parks Company & Creative Decline (1971-1984)04:09:44 Analysis: Why No Other Disney Flywheels?04:17:15 The Seven Powers of Disney04:20:30 Quintessence: Art, Commerce & Timeless IP04:23:47 Carve-Outs + Outro‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Brian Samson knows a harsh truth about the current American economy: if you run a service business right now, the math is brutal. Labor is incredibly expensive, turnover is high, and finding reliable operators can feel like a full-time job.But Brian has a cheat code. After years of running talent acquisition for hyper-growth, VC-funded tech startups in Silicon Valley, Brian took his high-level recruiting playbook and applied it to a local locksmith and cleaning company in Hawaii. The result? He completely revolutionized his hiring process by tapping into the nearshore talent pool in Latin America. Today, Brian runs Plug Tech—a nearshore staffing agency pushing $8M in ARR—and he is pulling back the curtain on how small business owners can leverage global talent to generate massive ROI.If you are struggling to scale because you are drowning in admin work, scheduling, or operations, this episode will completely rewrite how you think about building your team.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The VA vs. EA Paradigm Shift: Why you should stop hiring Virtual Assistants to do simple "tasks" and start hiring nearshore Executive Assistants who anticipate problems and drive strategy.Latin America vs. Asia: The cultural and operational differences between offshoring to places like the Philippines (process-driven) versus nearshoring to LatAm (spontaneous and creative problem-solvers).The Price-to-Value Arbitrage: Why paying a top-tier nearshore employee $1,500/month or an AI engineer is actually a massive bargain that can generate seven figures of value for your company.The $100 Interview Test: Brian's foolproof, paid-test framework to filter out bad hires, test real-world skills, and guarantee you're bringing on an "A-Player."Tags: Hiring, Entrepreneurship, Business scaling, Service & ConsultingResources:Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcastFollow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify Connect with Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson

Brett Hurt got the Lamborghini. He got the exits, the valuations, everything a tech titan is supposed to want. And then he felt nothing. That emptiness became the most important moment of his career — and the catalyst for his new book, Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All. Brett is the co-founder of data.world (acquired by ServiceNow), Bazaarvoice (unicorn IPO), and Coremetrics (acquired by IBM). He has invested in 151 startups, backed 52 VC funds including SpaceX, and was named Austin's Best CEO. In this conversation with host Park Howell, Brett makes the case that the most urgent upgrade of the AI age is not technological — it's personal. We explore why love, not fear, is the only leadership strategy built for what's coming, why nuclear weapons are a greater existential threat than artificial intelligence, and how psychedelic therapy and Vedantic philosophy transformed the way Brett thinks about building companies, raising consciousness, and saving humanity from itself. If you've ever wondered what you're actually building your work for, this episode is your answer. Find Brett at loveconquersfear.org and on the Love Conquers Fear podcast, published every Tuesday.

Headed into ⏱ overtime here with these Surface Noise: BONUS TRAX! Inspired by a recent video editorial courtesy of VCP's own Americana Sam, the panel digs into the subsequent discussions in the Vinyl Community to ask a thought-provoking question: is there ever a "right time" to step away from creating content on YouTube? Sure, talking records is fun, but at what point does it feel like a bore? A chore? Or make you a whore to the algorithm? You might be surprised by some of the takes expressed. Do you think the "VC" has officially "jumped the shark"? Thankfully the Bong Man, "Al Pacino" joins at the very end of the show to keep this from getting too heavy a deep dive.

Defense Tech ist eines der am stärksten wachsenden Segmente überhaupt – seit Kriegsbeginn in der Ukraine stiegen die europäischen Investments von rund 300 Millionen auf über 5 Milliarden Euro. Doch wer hier gründet oder investiert, betritt ein Minenfeld aus Exportkontrolle, Sanktionsrecht und Strafbarkeit. Caroline Raspé (Partnerin für Regulatory Compliance) und Frederik Gärtner (Partner für VC & M&A) von der Kanzlei YPOG ordnen ein, was den Hype wirklich trägt – und worauf es ankommt, sobald aus einer Idee ein reguliertes Produkt wird. Wir sprechen darüber, warum die vier Produktklassen (zivil, Dual-Use, Rüstungsgut, Kriegswaffe) über alles entscheiden, weshalb Investoren-Klauseln plötzlich kreativ werden, wann ausländische Investoren ab 10 % das Closing blockieren – und warum eine falsche Zolldeklaration schnell vor der Staatsanwaltschaft landet. Du erfährst... ...wie Start-ups im Defense Tech Bereich von staatlichen Aufträgen profitieren. ...welche regulatorischen Hürden bei der Gründung eines Defense Tech Unternehmens bestehen. ...wie Investoren trotz strikter Vorgaben in Defense Tech investieren können. __________________________ ||||| PERSONEN |||||

Private companies are staying private longer, and that changes who gets liquidity, when, and why.Founders, employees, and early investors can wait a decade or more for an IPO or acquisition. Meanwhile, venture funds face growing pressure to return capital, and many of Europe's best companies struggle to access the growth capital needed to scale.In this conversation, Christian Soschner speaks with Alberto Chalon, Co-Founder of Giano Capital, about the rise of single-asset secondary investments and why they have become an important part of the European innovation ecosystem.Topics include:• What secondary transactions are and why they matter• Why many companies now stay private far longer than before• How founders, employees, and early investors can access liquidity before an exit• The differences between venture capital, private equity, and late-stage secondary investing• Europe's challenge with risk capital, fragmentation, and scaling companies• Lessons from investments such as Revolut, GetYourGuide, and Deliveroo• The role of resilience, sport, and long-term thinking in business and investingAlberto also shares his personal journey from entrepreneurship and building businesses with his brother to launching Giano Capital and creating a new asset class focused on late-stage technology investments.5 OUTSTANDING QUOTES / LESSONS1. "Failure in America is part of the learning process. In Europe, failure is a disaster."Lesson: Europe's challenge may be cultural as much as financial.2. "The due diligence is the beginning of the journey, not the end."Lesson: Great investors keep working after the deal closes.3. "Everything has to be already tested before we invest."Lesson: Giano seeks to eliminate execution risk before investing.4. "The loneliness of the entrepreneur is real. I lived that."Lesson: The best investors bring empathy, not only capital.5. "You need to reach the top, and then you have the descent."Lesson: Investing and endurance sports both reward patience and resilience.TIMESTAMPS(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:00) Why secondaries suddenly matter(00:07:19) Why IPOs are no longer enough(00:12:44) Where Giano fits between VC and PE(00:17:06) Why private information changes returns(00:21:41) How Giano helps founders beyond capital(00:26:19) Not pre IPO but three years earlier(00:31:23) Europe must think beyond countries(00:37:56) Alberto Chalon on loss and entrepreneurship(00:42:12) From search engines to professional investing(00:46:21) How fashion arbitrage shaped his investing(00:53:47) Building a privacy search engine in Europe(01:00:51) Ruthless focus without forcing others(01:07:38) What late-stage governance requires(01:11:50) Why Giano chose late-stage secondaries(01:15:32) Inside Giano Capital's deal funnel(01:19:07) Why community matters in secondaries(01:24:29) GetYourGuide and Revolut as examples(01:27:29) How long a secondary deal takes(01:29:11) Cycling as leadership training(01:36:23) Giano Capital's ten-year ambitionSend us Fan Mail Join Christian Soschner for expert coaching. 50% Off - With 35+ years in deep tech, startups/scaleups, and public companies, Christian offers power video sessions. Elevate strategy, execution, and leadership. Book Now.Support the showJoin the Podcast Newsletter: Link

Can you build a robot the same way you vibe code software? Not even close.In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Nick sit down with Guy German, CEO of Okibo, to unpack why programming motion control got 10x easier but building robots still requires years of field testing. Guy breaks down the three requirements for general-purpose construction robots: physical capability (reach, payload, battery life), tool flexibility (spray guns, rollers, power tools, dust collectors), and intelligence (real-time perception, work plan generation). Humanoids fail all three for construction. Chinese robots require pre-fitted BIM data that doesn't exist in reality. Okibo deploys on messy job sites with no prep, no perfect drawings, just LiDAR and situational awareness.The conversation moves from why construction has the highest suicide rate (cognitive overload plus physical toll) to why workers retire with permanent damage after 30 years (carpal syndrome, can't bend arms from overhead work). Guy shares a story: a veteran worked with Okibo robots for one week during a pilot. When it ended, he begged to keep the robot. His health improved that much. The insight? This isn't about productivity. It's about safety and empathy to the worker. Then they tackle why VCs forgot the venture part of venture capital. If you're showing a hardware prototype and the VC asks about traction, leave the meeting. They've disqualified themselves.Key questions answered:Can you vibe code a robot the same way you vibe code software?What are the three requirements for general-purpose construction robots?Why do humanoids fail all three requirements for construction work?How is the Chinese construction robotics approach different from Okibo's?Why does construction have the highest suicide rate of any industry?What happens to workers' bodies after 30 years of overhead drywall work?Why did a veteran beg to keep the Okibo robot after a one-week pilot?What's Okibo's data advantage from deploying across 3M square feet?Why is skilled labor shortage real (and getting worse)?What should you do if a VC asks for traction on a hardware prototype?Why is the capital stack the biggest impediment to construction robotics?Is physical AI the biggest technology wave of our lifetime?If you're building hardware and getting asked about traction, wondering whether robots can work without perfect BIM models, or trying to understand why safety and worker empathy matter more than productivity metrics, this episode will show you why the physical world is messier than code, and why that's exactly where the opportunity lives.Listen now.

How Angels Are Different From VCs Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Both angels and venture capitalists invest in early-stage companies. Here are the key differences between the two: Angels invest their own money while VCs invest other people's money. This makes the angel investor more risk-averse, while the VC often takes bigger risks. Most angels hold down a day job while most VCs are full-time in that role. Angels don't get paid to invest while VCs charge a management fee on the funds they deploy. Angels typically invest small amounts on their own unless they gather into groups and make a joint investment. VCs employ larger sums of money because they collected funds from many Limited Partners during their own fundraise. Most VCs lead the round if there isn't one, while most angel investors join party rounds rather than lead the deal, as it takes a great amount of time. Angel groups can bring some of the angel investors closer to some of the benefits of the venture capitalist. In pitching angels and VCs, keep these points in mind. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

This week on Maury… In this episode, Mark and Dan discuss The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #30, which is legacy issue #994. This issue was written by Joe Kelly. The cover features artwork by Mark Bagley and Dean White. The interiors feature artwork from guest artist Pete Woods, and, of course, letters by VC's Joe Caramagna. This issue was first released on June 3rd, 2026. Rick Coste edited this episode. Alex Galucki edited the video version of this podcast. Our artwork is handcrafted by artists Ron Frenz, Nick Cagnetti, and the late Sal Buscema. Our theme songs were produced by Ryland Bojack, Tony Thaxton, and Spider-Maj. Our animated introduction to the show is by Josh Sutton of Panels to Pixels. Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOPCnjzQZNViyEnoOuckaVQ We would also love to see you join our Amazing Spider-Slack community board. If you'd like to join in on our amazing conversations, click this link to get started: https://join.slack.com/t/amazingspider/shared_invite/zt-42tsfhs2-yBaH6KkRmOWiW_8gCf9SmQ This week's Patreon podcasts include a review of Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #31, our discussion of the two Spider-Man / Superman comics, and two episodes of the Whatever a Spider Can Diaries, which documents Dan’s process of writing a book about Spider-Man. If you'd like to follow along with our reviews as they are released, please check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/superiorspidertalk Read our B-Title reviews, collecting memories, and more in the Amazing Spider-Talk Substack! http://www.amazingspider.substack.com You can email questions to our show at amazingspidertalk@gmail.com or by clicking here. You can also BUY MARK'S BOOK, 100 Things Spider-Man Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. The post The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #30 / LGY #994 – REVIEW appeared first on Amazing Spider-Talk.

Intern to Founder | Justin Collins | Breaking Into CyberEpisode SummaryIn this episode, Justin Collins shares his unique journey from a PhD student in Computer Science to becoming a key figure in the application security space. Justin explains how a funding shortage led him to a life-changing internship at AT&T Interactive, where he combined his passion for compiler theory with cybersecurity to create the open-source tool Brakeman. We dive into how he balanced a full-time job while co-founding a startup and the importance of preparation when breaking into a new field.Key Takeaways- Preparation as a Differentiator: Justin secured his first security role simply by researching the specific topics (SQL injection and XSS) the interviewers mentioned beforehand—a step many other candidates neglected.- Applying Niche Skills to Security: Rather than starting from scratch, Justin leveraged his deep knowledge of programming languages and compilers to build a static analysis tool, proving that specialized non-security backgrounds are highly valuable.- The Power of Open Source: Developing and open-sourcing Brakeman during an internship served as a massive career catalyst, eventually leading to a business acquisition.- The "Side-Hustle" Startup Model: Justin highlights that successful startups don't always require VC funding or fancy offices; his company was built while the founders maintained their "real" jobs.- Negotiating Flexibility: Early in his career, Justin successfully negotiated a part-time security role, which allowed him to support his family while simultaneously building his own business.Resources Mentioned- Brakeman: The open-source static analysis security tool for Ruby on Rails created by Justin.- OWASP: Cited as a critical resource for learning about web vulnerabilities like SQL injection and XSS.- Ruby on Rails: The programming framework that served as the foundation for Justin's early work.- Black Duck (formerly Synopsys): The company that eventually acquired Justin's startup.About the GuestJustin Collins is a cybersecurity expert and the creator of Brakeman, a widely used static analysis tool for Ruby on Rails. With an extensive background in Computer Science and programming languages, Justin transitioned from academia to entrepreneurship, co-founding a boutique security firm that was later acquired by Synopsys. He is a specialist in application security and program analysis.Sponsored by CPF Coaching LLC - http://cpf-coaching.comCheck out our books:

Hiten Sonpal is the CEO of RISE Robotics and a robotics industry veteran with over 20 years of experience. He helped generate $2B in revenue and ship 9M units at iRobot, and now leads the company behind the Beltdraulic system, a patented fluid-free alternative to traditional hydraulics that operates at 75% efficiency versus hydraulics' 25%. In this episode, Hiten covers the technology, the commercialization strategy, the defense contracts, and the crowdfunding playbook that made RISE Robotics the #1 Regulation Crowdfunding campaign of 2025 according to KingsCrowd. What We Cover: - How robots deployed at Ground Zero on 9/11 shaped Hiten's entire career - Why hydraulic systems are 75% inefficient and what that costs operators every day - How Beltdraulic enables drive-by-wire control and fully autonomous heavy machinery - Predictive maintenance: how RISE monitors belt health in real time to eliminate unplanned downtime - The MVP framework: desirability, feasibility, and viability for deep tech products - Why mid-market customers beat enterprise for early-stage startups - The Tesla stepping stone strategy: start niche, expand to adjacent markets - RISE's first commercial customer in oil and gas and the Air Force $3M contract extension - How RiISE raised $5M from over 2,500 investors and was named the #1 Reg CF campaign of 2025 by KingsCrowd - The three-channel marketing approach: retargeting, new investor acquisition, and earned media - Why crowdfunding investors are also becoming product customers - What founders need to know before launching a Reg CF campaign Connect with Hiten Sonpal: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiten-sonpal/ RISE Robotics: https://www.riserobotics.com/ Invest: https://invest.riserobotics.com/ Subscribe to Test. Optimize. Scale. for weekly conversations on growth marketing, business strategy, and what is actually working right now. CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Intro 1:30 - How Hiten got into robotics as a kid in India 4:00 - 9/11 and the robots deployed at Ground Zero 7:00 - iRobot: $2B in revenue and 9M units shipped 9:00 - Why robotics companies fail to make it from research to commercialization 11:00 - The MVP framework: desirability, feasibility, and viability 15:00 - Why mid-market beats enterprise for deep tech startups 18:00 - The hydraulics problem: 25% efficiency and unpredictable failures 22:00 - How Beltdraulic works and why it enables machine autonomy 25:30 - Fluid-free: predictive maintenance and the end of unplanned downtime 28:00 - Rise's first commercial customer in oil and gas 31:00 - Scaling strategy: the Tesla stepping stone approach 34:00 - The Air Force $3M contract extension for munitions handling 36:30 - Why Rise chose Reg CF over traditional VC 40:00 - Testing the waters: $800K in interest in Q4 2024 42:00 - The $5M raise: what worked and what surprised them 45:00 - The three marketing channels behind the campaign 49:00 - 20x ROAS and how they think about spend efficiency 52:00 - What founders should do before launching a crowdfunding campaign 55:00 - Where to find Rise Robotics and how to invest

Crypto markets may be slowing down, but billions of dollars are still flowing into private crypto companies, AI infrastructure and prediction markets. In this episode, we discuss why major crypto firms are delaying IPOs, how private market investors are gaining exposure to companies like Kraken, Ripple and Consensys, and why institutional adoption of crypto continues to grow despite market uncertainty. We also discuss the growing intersection between crypto and AI, the future of prediction markets, and why traditional financial institutions are increasingly entering the digital asset space. In this episode, we discuss: - Why crypto companies like Consensys and Ledger are delaying IPOs - How firms like Kraken and Ripple may shape the next wave of public crypto companies - Why crypto VC firms continue to raise billions of dollars - The growing role of AI in crypto platforms and infrastructure - Why prediction markets may become a major sector in crypto - Institutional adoption of Bitcoin, Ethereum and digital assets - The future of tokenization and crypto financial infrastructure - Why traditional finance firms are increasingly entering crypto This episode is sponsored by Hypernative, the proactive onchain security platform for enterprises and institutions.  Hypernative predicts and neutralizes threats before they materialize, powered by the most battle-tested machine learning engine in digital assets. From real-time monitoring and transaction security to compliance screening and automated response, Hypernative gives institutions the confidence to operate onchain without disruption. Already trusted to protect over $100 billion in digital assets across 70+ blockchains. Learn more at hypernative.io.  

Demi Marchese started with $800, no investors, and no fashion background—just a clothing rack in the back of her car and 30 sororities to pitch in 30 days. She made $40,000 in her first month dressing girls for Coachella out of her living room, turned $800 into $40K, and never took a dollar from investors. Ten years later, 12th Tribe does close to $50 million a year with $250 million in lifetime revenue—fully founder-owned, profitable, and competing head-to-head with VC-backed brands like Fashion Nova and Revolve that have raised over $100 million. In this interview, Demi breaks down the contrarian playbook she calls "living in the group chat," the mass micro-influencer strategy that turned free product into serious revenue, and what it actually looks like to build a fashion brand from the ground up with no money, no partner, and no safety net. What you'll learn in this interview: • How she made $40K in 30 days dressing girls for Coachella out of her car and living room • Why vintage thrifting at 90–95% margins funded her first $1–2 million—and when it became impossible to scale • The "living in the group chat" strategy: how she anticipates what customers want before they know they want it • Why founder-led content has consistently outperformed every other ad format at 12th Tribe • The mass micro-influencer playbook: how to reverse-engineer gifting volume from revenue goals and posting rate • How she balances one big six-figure creator launch per month with mass micro gifting—and what actually converts • Why she's leaning offline as everyone else leans into AI—and the Tribe Table dinner series building real community • What a warehouse crisis during peak season taught her about crisis communication and customer retention • The imposter syndrome of being a 24-year-old solo founder running eight figures—and what finally made it go away • Why she competes on soul, storytelling, and founder personality—not ad spend—against brands with 100x her funding If you're building a DTC fashion or lifestyle brand, trying to grow profitably without outside capital, or looking for the real story behind what founder-led marketing actually looks like at scale, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about community, content, and what it means to build a brand with genuine soul. SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://your.omnisend.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS? Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/operators⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → Already have a store? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH DEMI MARCHESE Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/demimarchese/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/demimarchese/ Website → https://www.12thtribe.com/ FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/podcast⁠

Welcome back to RECESS — our bi-weekly look at what we're learning, trends we're seeing in the health and fitness space, and how we're building more play into real life.The fitness industry is facing its biggest shake-up yet, and it's coming from a syringe. In this episode of RECESS, we cover a lot of ground: from Caroline's high school graduation and a wild weekend of sports (Knicks championship! Water polo! World Cup!) to the questions keeping health and fitness professionals up at night.The centerpiece of this episode is a candid conversation about GLP-1, GLP-2, and the newly trialed GLP-3 drug Retatrutide — and what near-30% body weight loss results mean for the future of personal training, nutrition coaching, and the entire weight loss industry. Is weight loss about to become a purely medical intervention? And if so, what does that mean for coaches, trainers, and wellness brands like ours?We also take on a viral debate about AI-generated fitness influencers crowding out real coaches on social media, break down the data on whether women should skip college in the age of AI (spoiler: the numbers say no), and share our take on Backrooms, the buzzy horror film directed by a local kid who built the concept as a high schooler. If you've ever felt the existential dread of liminal spaces, this one's for you.What You'll Learn in This EpisodeWhy Caroline Starrett's observation that "muscles are the new skinny" might be the most important trend call in fitness right nowHow GLP-3 drug Retatrutide achieved nearly 30% average body weight loss in Phase 3 trials, and what that means compared to Ozempic and ZepBoundWhat happens to the fitness industry if weight loss becomes a purely pharmaceutical interventionThe hidden dangers of GLP-1 drugs: muscle and bone mass loss, weight regain after stopping, and the return of extreme thinness cultureWhy AI-generated fitness influencers are getting millions of views while real coaches struggle for reach, and what to do about itThe data behind college ROI for women: why the gender pay gap and VC funding stats make a compelling case for staying in schoolWhy the most successful female founders (Rent the Runway, Stitch Fix, 23andMe, Tory Burch) share one thing in commonA local director's Backrooms, worth seeing even if you hate horrorKey Highlights: (00:00) Welcome back to RECESS; Caroline's high school graduation and becoming (almost) empty nesters; the "open nest" philosophy(01:50) A massive weekend of sports: Knicks championship, Stanley Cup, World Cup, water polo tournaments, and shoutouts to Cal athletes competing in European club championships(05:35) The viral Canadian coach's Instagram post: AI-generated fitness influencers vs. real coaches, the algorithm problem, and a defense of making content that's actually fun(07:45) Why real coaches deserve your engagement: the difference between AI-driven content and educators who've spent years building free resources(11:17) College ROI debate: a prominent female entrepreneur suggests skipping college; Juliet and Kelly push back with data — 65–75% higher lifetime earnings for college grads, and the gender pay gap closes with education(16:00) Female founders and elite credentials: why the women who actually break through in VC-backed startups almost universally have top-tier degrees; notable examples and one cautionary tale(18:00) Caroline's insight: "muscles are the new skinny" — when anyone can change their body composition with a GLP drug, muscle becomes the differentiator(19:29) Breaking down the GLP-3 trial results for Retatrutide: 70+ lbs average loss, nearly 30% body weight reduction, and how it compares to GLP-1 and GLP-2 drugs(20:40) How GLP drugs are splitting the fitness industry: some coaches relieved, some threatened, and the legacy weight loss brands already pivoting(22:45) The dark side: muscle and bone mass loss, Hollywood's return to extreme thinness, and what happens when people stop taking the drugs without changing their habits(27:00) The message that still matters: muscle is your longevity organ; building a body for adventure; why GLP drugs and strength training aren't mutually exclusive(27:29) Backrooms the movie: local Marin School of the Arts alum director Kane Parsons, and why this creepy-beautiful film is worth your time even if you're not a horror fan(29:10) Wrap-up and thanks for listening

What risk are you underestimating right now? On this Think Business episode with Dan Eyman, CEO and Managing Director of MELD Valuation, we dive deep into how to think smarter about risk, data, and gut instinct. Dan's firm specializes in independent, audit-ready valuations for venture-backed startups and VC firms. What stood out most from our conversation:

In this episode, the panel dissects Illinois' sweeping new tax on digital assets—crypto, stablecoins, prediction markets, and tokenized stocks—that could gut CME Bitcoin futures liquidity, hammer market makers, and spark dormant-commerce-clause lawsuits. They analyze Hyperliquid's surge, the Spacex perp's unlock volatility, and how perps trading 3-10x spot volume amplify moves; the Spacex IPO's capital drain (only 4% float, massive August–December unlocks); altcoin pops like Uniswap and Zcash amid rock-bottom Bitcoin volatility and AI-coin bids; privacy coins versus rising wealth taxes; Fed rate-path risks; tokenized-asset disconnects; SBF's “VC lottery” luck; casino lobbying against sports prediction markets; and why a quiet, hated-rally summer market may reward smart positioning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today GP and SP talk to James Gettinger, founding partner of Gutter Capital - one of the top preforming VC funds in the world.Why is James on our podcast you might ask? Well, before venture capital, James was one of the most profitable Daily Fantasy Sports players of all time. He pioneered contest simulations and was a first mover in many strategies that now are common amongst the best players. That ability to make the plays conventional wisdom says are stupid not only made him millions in DFS - but give him a big edge in a similar game in VC.It was great to have James on - as he proves that the people that succeed in our industry can go out and crush other industries.0:00 Intro/ Poker14:30 Transition to DFS52:00 Going from DFS to VCApply to Elbow Grease: https://elbowgrease.cc/Gutter Capital: https://www.gutter.cc/Welcome to The Risk Takers Podcast, hosted by professional sports bettor John Shilling (GoldenPants13) and SportsProjections. This podcast is the best betting education available - PERIOD. And it's free - please share and subscribe if you like it.Follow SportsProjections on Twitter: https://x.com/Sports__ProjFollow GP on Twitter: https://x.com/goldenpants013

Last 4 days before regular tickets sell out at AI Engineer World's Fair - this is the single biggest gathering of AI Engineers, Founders, Leaders, and Researchers in the world. Attendees get >$5000 worth of sponsor credits and talk tracks are looking FANTASTIC. Join us!The AI scaling debate always focuses on the question of “how do we get more GPUs?” but the better question may be: how do we make the most of ones we already have.The fact that a frontier lab like xAI could be running at sub-10% MFU (Model FLOPs Utilization) is just a hint at what the real problem may be.For context, older frontier-scale training runs were already much higher than 10%. GPT-3 was around 21% MFU. Gopher was around 32%. Megatron-Turing NLG was around 30%. PaLM reached around 46%. And our guest Anjney says best-in-class MFU today is closer to 60–70%.It's not necessarily that xAI is uniquely incompetent (it's clear they have talented folks) but rather the priorities may be flipped in the GPU arms race.While GPU access is a bottleneck, simply increasing CapEx won't automatically translate to better models as frontier AI is increasingly a systems problem: scheduling, utilization, networking, kernels, frameworks, data pipelines, parallelism, cluster reliability, and the thousand small decisions that determine whether your theoretical FLOPs become real training progress.From building Discord's developer platform and backing frontier AI companies like Anthropic, Mistral, Black Forest Labs, and Periodic Labs to now building AMP's independent compute grid, Anjney Midha has spent years close to the real bottlenecks of AI scaling. In this episode, Anjney joins swyx at Periodic Labs to unpack why the AI race is not just about buying more GPUs, why 95% utilization would have been considered an outage at Google, and why the next era of AI infrastructure has to be more aligned, more efficient, and more responsible.We go deep on AMP's vision for a compute grid that makes FLOPs flow like megawatts, the difference between full-stack AI labs and horizontal pooling, why AI data centers need community buy-in, and how compute markets could evolve into something closer to an independent system operator. Anjney also explains why DeepMind's unpublished research points to a market failure, why end-of-life prediction remains one of the most important AI applications he has thought about for fourteen years, and why “output maxing” may become a new discipline for frontier systems.We also discuss Anthropic's culture, why “luck favors the prepared mind” in coding models, how Claude cracked coding, why too much capital too early can make AI labs fragile, what Periodic Labs is trying to do with science and superconductors, why great researchers can become great CEOs, and why Silicon Valley is both deeply missionary and deeply mercenary.We discuss:* Why 95% utilization was considered an outage at Google* Why AI infrastructure waste compounds at frontier-lab scale* Why “move fast and break things” does not work for AI data centers* How data center backlash, power grids, and community incentives shape AI scaling* AMP's vision for making FLOPs flow like megawatts* Why compute needs an independent system operator* How interruptible demand and dynamic prioritization worked inside Google* Why DeepMind research hoarding creates negative externalities* AMP's 1.2GW base-load ambition and the need for 6GW of spike capacity* Why end-of-life prediction could become one of AI's most important healthcare applications* Frontier Systems, output maxing, and full-stack alignment* Why APIs and abstraction layers become lossy as organizations scale* Superconductors, standards, and the dream of lossless systems* SF Compute, open protocols, and the future of compute marketplaces* Why non-NVIDIA chips can still benefit from NVIDIA's reference architecture* Trust boundaries and why chip startups need visibility into future model architectures* Why VCs often underestimate researchers as CEOs* Scientists as star athletes of the mind* Why great CEOs need to be confrontational up and down the stack* Why leading the frontier matters more than “winning”* How Anthropic cracked coding* Why culture is fragile, not a permanent moat* Why hardship was a feature, not a bug, for Anthropic* Why Anthropic's P0 was coding from day one* Periodic Labs, physics as the constraint, and technical reality* Silicon Valley mercenaries, missionary teams, and what happens after a breakthroughAnjney Midha* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjney* X: https://x.com/AnjneyMidhaAMP PBC* Website: https://amppublic.com/* X: https://x.com/amppublicTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:09 Why AI Compute Is Being Wasted00:03:17 Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center Backlash00:06:07 AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like Megawatts00:12:41 Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research Hoarding00:14:42 Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life Prediction00:24:08 Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and Alignment00:27:38 Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA Chips00:32:57 Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOs00:38:17 AI Coachella and First-Principles Thinking00:42:43 Leading vs Winning in Frontier AI00:45:54 How Anthropic Cracked Coding00:48:25 Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P000:54:03 Periodic Labs, Physics, and Silicon Valley Mercenaries00:56:26 Rishi Valley, Singapore, and Money as a Measure00:58:47 Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Anjney Midha, AMP, and Compute WasteSwyx [00:00:00]: We're in Periodic Labs with Anjney Midha, CEO, founder of AMP. Welcome.Compute Utilization: Node Allocation, MFU, and AlignmentAnjney [00:00:09]: Thanks for having me. At Google, there are two types of utilization usually, right? That you're measuring in these clusters. One is node allocation, and then the other's MFU. Node utilization is usually like what percentage of cards in the data center are just, used, and that, if it's not at, 95%-Swyx [00:00:29]: There is no excuseAnjney [00:00:29]: There's no excuse, right? I think 95% at Google, which is where my co-founder, Seb, came from, he built the Borg, PBorg/GQM scheduler at Google, and there I think 95% was considered an outage, so 96% node utilization is, should be standard. And most single-tenant clusters are not running at that. So that's one. And then MFU should be, I would say the best in class today is somewhere between 60 and 70%. I think this is a leadership question, right? Fundamentally it's an alignment question, which is are the people who are funding the cluster and then deploying the cluster actually aligned? And sometimes theoretically they are, but in practice the number of people in the chain, the supply chain between, the capital and all the way to whoever's managing the cluster and then whoever's measuring what the output is, are just so many, degrees of separation away that, the, The Have you ever heard the radian metaphor, which is at the beginning of an arc, if you have two arcs that are two lines that are just off by a few degrees, that-Swyx [00:01:33]: It spreads outAnjney [00:01:34]: It spreads out, right? Or at scale. And I think what's happening is a lot of cluster implementations and infrastructure, a lot of frontier labs and other teams, that's what's happening, is they're, they initialize the plan, which is kind of like North Star with a team that wants to do good, but then they're, required to scale so fast instead of iteratively that the wastage just compounds really fast at scale. And so I think we know the answer, which is just do iterative bring ups. If you spend time with people who've been in the semiconductor industry or the DSN industry for a long time, this is not new, and I don't think AI should be an excuse. Sure. Something What is new? Okay. We have a lot of new capabilities, but that doesn't mean just abandon common sense. Common sense should always be in fashion. ? AI scaling doesn't change the in fact, if anything, AI scaling should be putting a premium on the value of common sense and infrastructure because the margin of error now is so much lower and the costs of wastage are so much higher. And the cost of wastage, by the way, is not just economic. I'm, obviously I'm, I'm an investor, or I'm an investor by background. Over the last few years now we're running an AI infrastructure business called, AMP. And I think that it's okay to say this time is different on the capabilities front. We are genuinely getting capabilities at, of the, of a kind we haven't had before. That doesn't give you an excuse to say this time is different for everything, especially infrastructure. So look, I love the hacker mindset and the hustler mindset. Now, that's great for the startup mindset, but you remember this moment where Zuck went from saying, “Move fast, break things” to, move-Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center BacklashSwyx [00:03:10]: Fast and stable infrastructureAnjney [00:03:11]: Move fast with stable infrastructure. I think now we need to move fast with, responsible infrastructure. People are going to ask where the impact is. There was a really In our class yesterday, Scott Nolan, who's the founder of General Matter, came by at Stanford to speak about energy bottlenecks. And he had a phenomenal idea. He said, “if you look at the marginal unit economics of compute per hour,” he goes, “let's call it, $4 an hour. If you're having to bring up a new data center in a new community, why not just say we're going to charge 4.50 an hour, and that marginal impact or that marginal increase, we just literally take that and give it to the local community as cash?” I can tell you as a customer of that compute, I would love that. I'd be happy to pay an additional 50 cents per hour at scale.Swyx [00:03:57]: Wow. Yeah.Anjney [00:03:58]: Because if that means the public benefit is so clear to the communities that the data centers are coming up in, I'm going to feel like that compute is much more reliable. Up to 20% of all data centers this year in the US, my understanding is are at risk.Swyx [00:04:13]: Of community backlash?Anjney [00:04:14]: Correct. Of not getting the community support they need to get brought up.Swyx [00:04:19]: Wow. That's a huge number.Anjney [00:04:20]: Yeah. Now, we, I think we should dig into what that number is. I think it's a little bit of overstated. These things can get over-reported, but it-Swyx [00:04:27]: They don't just care about jobs. They care about all the other stuff around it, right? They care about power grid, they care about environments-Anjney [00:04:33]: Power grid, permitting, and so on. And imagine I think if you said there's a new AI deal. If we're bringing up a data center in your community, we're actually going to reduce the cost of your electricity bill. Okay, now we're talking. Right? The community's going, “Okay. Now this is a deal. I feel like a partner in this.” Right now that's not happening. There will be audits, there will be investigations, and when the, when the regulators come, I don't know when it's going to be, the folks who are moving fast and breaking things in the name of AI progress better be prepared. That's certainly not how we're procuring compute. Or we're, we're trying as much as we can to work with partners who have long-term track records. Many of whom, by the way, are not, AI providers. I think this whole idea of neoclouds being somehow this new category is a lot of marketing speak. There are really good, reliable, trusted data center providers in America who've been around 20 plus years. I love those folks. They know how to Sure. Are they sponsoring happy hours at NeurIPS? No. Are they legibly listed in Build? No. Are they hanging out in my, in, situational awareness parties? No. But they're adults. I trust them.Swyx [00:05:44]: They can run LAN. They can run power.Anjney [00:05:45]: They can run LAN, power, and shell. They have credit histories. We sit down, we have a conversations. Many of them live in Silicon Valley. They've, they've had to deal with the boom and bust cycles of the internet, and I love those folks. They are stable infrastructure partners and thinkers. And I think there's a lot of short-term thinking going on in the compute layer, and it's going to catch up to us. It's not going to be good.AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like MegawattsSwyx [00:06:07]: You talk about aligning incentives, and, I would think that aligning incentives means you have the full stack in one company, which is xAI and OpenAI, right? So you as a standalone infrastructure layer, why are you somehow more aligned to your portfolio companies than people who just own the whole thing?Anjney [00:06:28]: In systems design, right, there's, there's two regimes of, architecture, right? You have integration, and then you have pooling and utilization, right? So the Or rather, the way to increase utilization often is you can do systems integration where you collapse a lot of process into one node, or you can pull out a process from a node and share that amongst various That resource amongst several different nodes. And so we see the AMP grid, which is, the, what, the system we're building here, which is basically a compute grid. We're trying to do for compute what the electric grid-Swyx [00:07:02]: PowerAnjney [00:07:02]: Yeah, what the power grid did for electricity. It-- this is a pooling and utilization layer across clouds, And so we're actually the opposite of a full stack integration like approach.Swyx [00:07:12]: Super horizontal.Anjney [00:07:13]: Where it's much more horizontal and it's, it's multi-cloud, it's multi-silicon. The goal is to try to make FLOPs flow like megawatts, and that is very hard to do today for many reasons. There's stranded pools of compute all over the place and there's no fungibility. And so right now we do it at the level of scheduling, and we often do it at the economic layer. But as we start to announce what we're working on, it's extraordinary like how many folks are coming out of the woodworks and saying, “Hey, I'm actually working on a way to make compute fungible at this part of the stack and that part of the stack.” And as a grid, we'd like all of these folks to participate on the grid. There's, people often ask me, “Andra, are you a new cloud?” And I go, “No, actually neoclouds are suppliers.” sometimes they'll ask, “Are you a venture capital firm?” I go, “No, actually they are, they are demand like sort of off-takers of the grid.” We see ourselves as what's called an independent system operator. So if you study the history of the electric grid, once it became legible to a lot of factories and industrial sort of participants that, hey, actually it turns out pooling is a good idea. We should pool our generators instead of all having a generator running at half capacity in our backyard. There was a need for an independent entity who could coordinate all these parties. Transmission line, power generation, facilities, transmission lines, factories, and that neutral coordination mechanism is very critical. In order-- If you study like the history of grids, the most enduring ones were those that never owned their own assets. They were ones that had, or often started with long-term anchors who are uncorrelated sources of demand, a steel factory, a shoe mill or whatever in a particular town who weren't competitive, where the steel factory want to spike up at night, the shoe mill wanted to spike up during the day. So then you pool and you share, right? So each of you is guaranteed some base load, but then you kind of schedule your spikes to drive a peak utilization across the town. The gold standard, so to speak, historically, has been these utility companies like PJM Interconnect in the northeast of America, where they, over many years became this what's called an ISO, an independent system operator of the grid. So that's how we see ourselves. Economically, that's what we are. From a technical perspective, we started at the scheduling layer because Seb and Mihai, who, run engineering here, built that at-Swyx [00:09:28]: Did your schedulingAnjney [00:09:28]: They did that at Google. And, -Swyx [00:09:32]: And you have infra shops from Discord as well.Anjney [00:09:35]: I have some.Swyx [00:09:35]: I don't know, I don't know if Discord is like the primary identity, but what-whatever, I'm just kind of-Anjney [00:09:39]: No, D-Discord was-Swyx [00:09:40]: Choosing a well-known name.Anjney [00:09:42]: Well, I So I was running the developer platform there. The internal infrastructure I was not responsible for. That was actually a guy by the name of Mark Smith, who was extraordinary. And yes, Discord did pool So Discord is actually a counter example. I had the chance to learn a lot about fully, full stack infra there because-Swyx [00:09:56]: It's the same thing, yeahAnjney [00:09:57]: It's the, it's the other architecture which is, Discord built its own WebRTC vo-voice and video infra. So like Discord did not use-Swyx [00:10:08]: For the calls, yeah.Anjney [00:10:09]: Yeah, did not For communication, Discord did not use third party infra. It was all built in-house. And then the way you maximize utilization was you pool demand from the world's 200 million plus monthly active gamers, right? And so that's, that's how those stacks were constructed. Again, in systems design, the two concepts that keep coming up over and over again are abstraction and composition, right? And-Swyx [00:10:31]: Bundling and unbundlingAnjney [00:10:33]: Bundling and unbundling, abstraction, composition, like verticalization and-Swyx [00:10:36]: HorizontalAnjney [00:10:36]: Horizontalization. So in that sense, AMP is an independent system operator of the grid. We pool demand, we pool supply from a number of partners we trust At about 1.3 gigawatt scale over four years. And then we pool demand from some of the world's best, research labs and so on. We're sitting at one, periodic labs who need extraordinary long-term demand. And the idea is that, each of them is guaranteed base load on the grid, but they can spike up and down flexibly on, for compute, with much shorter timelines as needed. That was roughly the design of the program I came up with at a16z called Oxygen. The same-- That was the same design of the GQM, BorgX, Borg GQM implementation at Google that Mihai and Seb had built. Which was that how do you allow, teams inside of Google, on the internal infrastructure to be guaranteed capacity, for their base workloads? But when they need to spike up on research, how could they ensure that was sufficiently there? And of course, the big innovation that was not discovered, but kind of implemented in the space, this infra space maybe three, four years ago at Google was the idea of interruptible demand, right? Where you just queue up a bunch of jobs and through this like sort of credit system, there can be a bidding mechanism.Swyx [00:11:53]: Like priorities.Anjney [00:11:54]: It's a dynamic prioritization Basically. And jobs can get interrupted based on somebody else who's saying, “what? I have 10 tokens, 10 credits I want to spend on this job.” Another like team lead, research lead is “Genie 3 or whatever is only worth five, credits, and NanoBanana2 is worth 10 credits,” and so the NanoBanana job gets priority. That's a, that's a made up example.Swyx [00:12:15]: It's very real. Brain Marketplace was real. And, we've, we've covered this on the pod with David Luan, who was-Anjney [00:12:20]: Oh, great. OkaySwyx [00:12:20]: Was there. And the criticism is that, well, actually sometimes you need central command to go all in on a thing. And actually sometimes capitalism via credits doesn't work. Not, this is not a criticism of AMP. I'm just saying, this is a thing that has been tried, internally within Google, and it led to Google missing GPT.Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research HoardingAnjney [00:12:41]: Like, we structured ourself essentially very similarly to Google. We are structured as a holdings company. So, Alphabet holdings is Alphabet holdings, and then they've got these subsidiaries called Google and-Swyx [00:12:51]: Other betsAnjney [00:12:52]: Other bets and so on. We've got, AMP holdings, and we've got our infrastructure business, and then we've got a capital business called Foundry that incubates new frontier AI labs or invests in them as venture capital, like Periodic. We put a few hundred million dollars into Anthropic from our fund earlier this year. So wherever we feel like teams are making progress, especially researchers and so on who've pushed the frontier inside of existing labs like DeepMind, I find, there comes a point where they feel misaligned with the dictatorship of Alphabet holdings. And at that point, sometimes the dictatorship doesn't want them anymore. And they're “Thank you. You've done your job here. You've kind of helped us through the zero to one phase, and for whatever reason, we're going to deprioritize your amazing, omni model or whatever it is, and instead we're going to prioritize coding.” And, I think that's a tragedy, but I get it. They're Sergey and team are running their own business there. But that doesn't mean we the rest of us should sit around waiting for that progress to get unlocked for the rest of the world and humanity. If you think about how much extraordinary research has happened inside of DeepMind over the last 10 years, I, Demis and Sergey and those guys did such a great job. But at the end of the day, so much of that has never seen the light of day?Swyx [00:14:00]: Or they're like papers only, but they never actually shipped it to production or-Anjney [00:14:03]: What's worse is the paper is actually not even being published anymore ‘cause there's a six-month embargo inside of DeepMind, right? We've heard about this where a paper comes out, and then I think there's a six-month embargo window where if anybody on the business team says, “This could be interesting” It's embargoed for life.Swyx [00:14:18]: Exactly. So the stuff that gets published is the stuff that's not good enough.Anjney [00:14:21]: There's an adverse selection problem, basically. Yeah. At this point-Swyx [00:14:25]: It's, it's a common complaint at NeurIPS, by the way, that's “Well, why would I look at the papers that are the trash of GDM?”Anjney [00:14:31]: Again, I think it's a tragedy. I get it. They're running their business, but the rest of the I think there's negative externalities of research being hoarded, and so that'there's a market failure. And somebody needs to unlock that research, and we can't do it on our own. We only have 1.2 gigawatts of compute. That's nothing. That's about $40 billion of cloud spend. We're going to need a lot-Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life PredictionSwyx [00:14:51]: By the way, is that's a new number. I haven't, haven't come across that gigawatt number. That's huge.Anjney [00:14:56]: Yeah. And to be clear, we haven't secured all of it. That's how much demand we have started to secure. I think publicly we haven't actually confirmed how much we have for this year. In order-Swyx [00:15:04]: Where do you want to get to?Anjney [00:15:06]: I think the steady state would be that we have a base load pool Of 1.2 gigawatts at all times Of base load capacity. For spike capacity, right now my estimate is we need roughly six gigawatts over the next four years for all our teams to feel like they were able to keep moving the frontier, whatever they're working on, whether it's, like superconductor discovery over here. There's a new investment we're working on right now, which is in the end of life prediction space in healthcare. It's extraordinary how much you can, you can give this was actually my graduate school work. I went to grad school for bioinformatics at Stanford Med. And I know we-Swyx [00:15:40]: Econ, MCS, bio.Anjney [00:15:41]: So my-- I was this really weird cat where, I was never satisfied with my major options. So at one point I was an econ major, then I was a CS major, then I was a MCS major called mathematical computational science, and they decided they were going to end that major. So I took all that coursework, and I applied it to grad school, my graduate degree in bioinformatics, which was the master's program, and then I thought I was going to do a PhD. I never ended up doing it. I dropped out and went to work at Kleiner. But I was lucky enough to apprentice with this professor at, Stanford Med. His name is Nigam Shah, and he was working on end of life prediction. Stanford is one of the only research facilities in America that has a longitudinal patient data set that's larger at scale. I think it's at least 12 million patient lives. The only larger data set is at the VA, the Veterans Affairs, of America. And to do research, like do any deep learning and so on that data set, it was called the STRIDE data set at that time, you had to be a Stanford Med School affiliate, which is why I went and enrolled in the bioinformatics department. End of deep learning was early. Nigam Shah had the visibility-- the vision to see that, you could do end of life prediction to help palliative care. In America, the, over 30% of all Medicare, Medicaid spend, at least at that time, was spent on end of life care. And what's we grew up in Asia, so we all-- Yeah, at least I won't speak for you, but I have A very different relationship with death than I find folks who grew up in America do. In America, spiritually and culturally, especially in Western societies where Christianity, the Christian tradition sort of frames death as this terminal point, there's often a judgment day and so on. The way we view death is with a finality. In Indian culture, in Hindu culture, death is one-Swyx [00:17:35]: Also, he's Buddhist as well.Anjney [00:17:36]: You're Buddhist, yeah. So it's one, it's one step in a journey of many lives, right? And so, I grew up in this city called Chennai in the south of India, and when people die, you dance on the street. There's like a procession where your body is carried to be cremated and your family, like celebrates and there's drums and so on. It's this huge thing. And, It's because the idea is that you're going to be reincarnated. You've been liberated from the responsibilities of this life, and now you're onto your next. It's a new It's like going off to a new college or whatever, right? And so it was so alien to me when I got here as an undergrad- That the medical system works backwards from that assumption that we have to view death as this terminal thing and delay it, postpone it's a bad thing. And so at the time, clinical decision support in the United States was this very primitive field. Even to this day, physicians in the United States often will tell you when you have a terminal disease, this is your, we've diagnosed you, which is great. Our ability to diagnose you is extraordinary. You have somewhere between six months to six years to live. What do you do with that information? The error bars are so high that then you In times of uncertainty, we default to culture, and when the culture is let's-- this is a bad thing, I've got to prolong my life, then you start doing things like And just to, just sort of from a systems perspective, what's going on there is Physicians often feel like they need to provide such high error bars because there's always some uncertainty in end of life diagnosis, and if you provide the wrong Diagnosis or recommendation to your patient, you can be sued for medical malpractice. And then your license can be taken away. It can be catastrophic for your career. In contrast, if in countries where that's not the case, what you often observe is that patients, physicians are quite prescriptive with their recommendation. They say, “Hey, this is your condition. The literature says that you probably have this much time on Earth left. My expert opinion is that you are an outlier or whatever.” And they try to be more prescriptive, and that empowers a patient, right? ‘Cause then a patient can say, “I trust my doctor. They said on average, I have six months to live, but if I do these things, I may have a shot because of my particular predispositions or my genetic history or whatever.” And that empowers you to go about your life in a actually more scientific way than leaning on religion, culture, spirituality, and so on. In contrast, here, because of that medical malpractice sort of thing looming over your head, a physician never gives you a clear recommendation. So instead you say, “Okay, Doc, well, let's try it all.” And then you start a whole regime of drugs and therapies, and then you often spend weeks and weeks in the hospital, and that deteriorates your quality of life. And when that deteriorates your quality of life, you instead of spending your last few days doing the things you love with your family, you're spending it on a hospital bed. And that ends up being thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid. So it's worse for the patients. The doctors feel terrible. The American taxpayer is paying a huge amount of money. And so this is why Nigam Shah, who was this professor at Stanford, said, “Anjney, if there's “ I kind of sat down with him. I was this young, I'd, I was twenty-one, and I was “I want to work on a big problem.” He's “The big problem is end of life care.” And so we tried to do deep learning to say, to-- So we started trying to run deep learning on these tried patient data sets to say, “Could you have an AI system make a recommendation that is orders of magnitude more precise about how much time you have left once you've been diagnosed with a terminal condition than a human?” And then if we can get that precision to be high enough, then you can empower the patient. And it turns out the tech works. Like it's-- Once you get the data set, like RL works. Honestly, even regression models work. You don't need to get that fancy. At the time, we were just trying, doing like very simple neural nets.Swyx [00:21:54]: Simple solutions, yeah.Anjney [00:21:54]: Today, what we can do with RL is extraordinary. The problem remains then and now is regulatory, because you actually can't shift the burden of the wrong clinical diagnoses from the physician to the AI system. And so at that time, I got quite disillusioned ten years ago for, twelve years ago where, ‘cause I felt I just didn't have the resources to influence regulation. Today, I'm very lucky. I'm in a different place. I've, I'm a lot older, and so I've been spending a lot of time on my next incubation, which is how can we unlock the, patient empowerment by training AI models to do end of life prediction much, with much more precision and ac-Swyx [00:22:37]: Oh, wow. You're still focused on this the whole time.Anjney [00:22:40]: The-- I haven't been able to get, this out of my mind a single day for the last fourteen years. This is the hill I want, I would like to die on. There's two, I would say. What? I actually, I'd prefer not to die.Swyx [00:22:51]: Yeah, exactly.Anjney [00:22:52]: But I think two bipartisan issues, I think two issues that should be bipartisan in America are how do we empower patients to make the right clinical decisions at the end of their life, such that we're reducing the taxpayer burden with science? It's just good old science, and AI can help here. And the second is, net positive data centers, ‘cause I think that's the biggest critical bottleneck on training and good enough AI models to help people at the end of their life. So there's sort of two sides of the, of the same scaling bottleneck curve, but those two, we formed AMP as a public benefit corporation. My wife and I, who you've met, you've met Viv. Her passion is education. Her family is a long line of educators and so on, and, of physicists. And so this class is my attempt to stop being the black sheep of the family and be a, an educator. But if I'm not educating, the thing I would be doing is working, on these two problems, whether on the political spectrum or as a researcher back at, in some lab. And my hope is if anyone's listening to this podcast, if they're passionate about either of those two topics, I'd love to hear from them. We'll, we'll we can share the contact in the show notes, but, we're looking for people to join both of those missions on the, on the political side as well as on the medical side, on the research side.Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and AlignmentSwyx [00:24:08]: You said, this is a discipline that you want to form. You call it's called variously called Frontier System. It's variously called One Person Frontier Lab. What is the ideal name or shape of this? Like the, what is the mission?Anjney [00:24:24]: Of the class?Swyx [00:24:26]: Of the discipline that you're, exploring, right? I The class is called Frontier Systems. But like for me, maybe one phrase is you're, you're just anti-waste, right? Which is wasting GPUs, wasting in human and Medicare. But is there, is there a broader theme that I'm, that maybe you can encapsulate more succinctly?Anjney [00:24:45]: Yeah. The, from an engineering perspective, it's very simple. It's output maxing. It's the, it's the department of output maxing.Swyx [00:24:51]: Making the most of what we have.Anjney [00:24:52]: Exactly. I'm a huge believer in optimal outcomes. I think both in America and other countries, we are losing our appreciation for nuance, and this is the thing of And AI is the same case, right? Oh, the bitter lesson holds. Okay, fine. But that doesn't mean you just like throw 500 GB300, 500,000 GB300s at your suboptimal model scaling and you waste a bunch of compute. It also doesn't mean that, the most optimal is to have like 50 different architectures where there isn't enough standardization. One of the reasons Anthropic has had extraordinary sort of velocity is ‘cause they picked the transform architecture and said, “This is simple. Let's double down on it,” right? And now luckily there's enough investment going to the space that we can afford other architectures, but at the time, investment was just too fragmented into other architectures, so that arguably unlocked scaling. So I think there's a philosophy. I think we all owe it to ourselves to do output maxing with a new capability called AI on a global level. I think if I was starting a new department at Stanford, depending on how fuzzy or technical I wanted to be, I'd probably call it the Department of Alignment. Like-Swyx [00:25:59]: It's an overloaded termAnjney [00:26:01]: But it is, But alignment really Is a hard problem. And I think when you unlock it, full stack alignment is super hard in any organization and in any system. Like in a, in a venture capital firm, if you can have full stack alignment between your limited partners and your, the founders who are creating the value and ultimately the public that owns the IPO stock, that is a gift that keeps giving. And when you study the history of these systems, when they start off, they usually start out small scale where the feedback loop is actually so tight that there's alignment. And then the more you try to scale, the more division of labor happens, the more specialization happens, and at each step you add abstractions. And wherever there's an API interface, there's like loss. There's communication loss. And so I think a really cool thing would be for us to figure out is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too as an engineering discipline? Is there a way to actually scale up and scale out Without losing any alignment, without lossy transmission?Swyx [00:27:01]: You mean standards?Anjney [00:27:02]: So standards is one way. The other way is you just have net new capabilities. So like what we're trying to do here is discover new superconductors. A room temperature superconductor would be a lossless transmission mechanism for energy. We would have flying cars. We are right within a few years of having a new room temperature superconductor. So I think those are the two. You either have to standardize On protocols or API specs that allow lossless communication, or you can come up with a whole new capability that unlocks so much abundance, the standardization doesn't matter ‘cause you just unlock net new capacity. This, the, so this is what I spend my days thinking about these days.Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA ChipsSwyx [00:27:38]: No, I think every infra person at, who wants scale and wants to output max does eventually end up thinking about this. We don't have time to go into it, but we have done an episode with SF Compute-Anjney [00:27:50]: Oh, coolSwyx [00:27:50]: That is trying to standardize The futures contract for compute. I don't, I don't know how that's going by the way, but like at some point this will be public.Anjney [00:27:57]: Oh, I think Evan is awesome and SF Compute is the kind of effort that I hope we can accelerate because what often happens is these exchanges are very hard to get, they, it's hard to bootstrap them, right? Because they often require-- There's many inefficiencies between parties. There's trust boundary inefficiencies in infrastructure because you don't trust, one part of the stack doesn't trust another part of the stack to give them visibility. There's capital markets inefficiencies, there's operational efficiencies. So if you can inject like a single shock to the system of a ton of compute demand or supply, then you can accelerate, these new flywheels. And so my hope is one day, or soon, if SF Compute needs extra like has excess capacity, they just hook it up to the grid and they get flooded with demand from us. And on the other side, if they have a ton of demand but they don't have supply, they just again hook up to the grid and it's a two-way protocol where they can just hook up to our capacity. And I don't think we're too far from that. Today our working implementation of it is mostly through a group of labs, universities, and a few sort of trusted parties who are, who all feel like they're in alignment to borrow an over sort of used word. But our hope is to just have it be an open protocol that anyone can hook up to on-Swyx [00:29:20]: Hook up for demand or hook up for supply? In primarily demand, it sounds like. Like you-Anjney [00:29:25]: No, bothSwyx [00:29:26]: You would want to offer demand.Anjney [00:29:27]: Both. Yeah. Unfortunately, what's happened in the last six weeks is, we thought we'd have a bunch of excess capacity by the end of this year. It's all gone.Swyx [00:29:37]: It's exploding.Anjney [00:29:38]: It, yeah. It's all gone. And so I have, my text messages are full of friends, we know many of these people, these are founders who've raised billions of dollars in San Francisco going, “Oh, any chance you have like 50 nodes in the next few weeks?”Swyx [00:29:51]: What is the scope for, non-Nvidia, right? You have Lisa Su coming and, Rainer Pope as well. And so There is a lot of demand for, more performance Alternative architectures and all that. At the same time, this hurts your standardization.Anjney [00:30:11]: I don't think so. So actually Rainer's a great example, right? Rainer is a CEO and founder of, MatX. I actually had him by for office hours in the class earlier today, and there was an insight he brought up that I hadn't considered before, which is when they decided to pick the standard For their data center, they picked the NVIDIA reference architecture. So the MatX chips Just plug in to any site that has an NVIDIA bring up planned. And, the-Swyx [00:30:42]: It's just software then. It's, it's not the-Anjney [00:30:44]: A-Swyx [00:30:44]: Hardware.Anjney [00:30:46]: Well, from an input and IO perspective It's the same footprint as an NVIDIA rack.Swyx [00:30:52]: That makes sense.Anjney [00:30:53]: Where they have done, innovated a bunch from what I can tell is on systems co-design. Which is where a lot of the gains are to be had. And so he picked He was “Anjney, we, there's just so much work to do when you're building a new chip company.”Swyx [00:31:08]: Can't fight every front.Anjney [00:31:08]: You just can't fight on every front. So my question to him was, “Well, you're working on this new chip. Their tape-out is next year. What, who are you going to partner with to host the chips?” And he said, “Whoever will host them. That's just not, that's not my focus.” And I said, “But how did you “ you decided back to our earlier systems design question, he decided that, he didn't want to be a full, fully integrated chip provider. The bottleneck they're focused on is the logic die, and they, he feels they can crank out a ton of performance gains through co-design there. But then that means you delegate, to our question earlier, it, you he's the data center provider is a different part of the stack, and so then he's dependent on that part of the ecosystem to host his chips to get the performance gains to the customer. So now you have another abstraction, and you might have loss. So I asked him, “How do you prevent loss?” And back to your point, he said, “I just picked the NVIDIA standard ‘cause I didn't want to Like I wanted to piggyback off of an existing protocol.” And that, what's great about NVIDIA is that reference architecture is known.Swyx [00:32:15]: Open.Anjney [00:32:15]: It's open. They've published it. So Jensen's actually enabled someone like Rainer to build a chip company like MatX, and I don't see them as competitive. The compute demand is so high. Like, I don't I think NVIDIA's not able to meet the demands of production, so we just need more chips. And I think it's very smart what MatX has done, which is say, “We're just going to we're not going to innovate on the data center design ‘cause actually, thank you, Jensen, you've done all the hard work. Where we can innovate is somewhere else.” And I think that's, that's very healthy. I think that's how we unblock new bottlenecks. And my view is these, the, chip teams like MatX, who have arrived at the insight that co-design is the way, The primary bottleneck for them is trust boundary. To do co-design well, you need visibility into the next model generation as soon as possible ‘cause it takes two years to tape out. So if by the time I bring my chip to market, your model architecture's changed, I'm host. Now, when he was inside Google, he was sitting next to the Gemini team. He was on Palm or whatever.Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOsSwyx [00:33:19]: His co-founder was the, was one, was one of the Palm guys, I think.Anjney [00:33:23]: Yes. Yes, exactly. So when you're inside the trust boundary of Google, then your systems co-design loop is super tight. When you leave as a founder, one of the biggest risks you take is now you're outside the trust boundary. And so what I love doing is helping chip teams who can help us unlock more capacity for the independent ecosystem access to trust. Because when I If I've been, involved with a lab from day one, and I was lucky enough to work with Anthropic, and then I'm on the board of Mistral and helped Black Forest Labs get started. I think at this point I'm on six or seven different teams.Swyx [00:33:57]: Only six? I feel like my mental number was going to be 13, but yeah, it's-Anjney [00:34:02]: No, I go deep with one at a time.Swyx [00:34:04]: You're founding CEO of Arena.Anjney [00:34:07]: Nah, that was an, that was an-Swyx [00:34:08]: Administrative CEOAnjney [00:34:09]: It was an administrative five-month gig where Whalen and Anastasios were graduating from their PhDs, and they didn't need a product team. So I helped recruit the head of engineering product and design. But Anastasios has always been the CEO of that company. I played a pinch-hitting I'm an intern. I was CEO intern For five months. -Swyx [00:34:33]: I interviewed him, and he's he's very well-spoken. I think he's a debate, former debate, champion. But also very quantitative and mathematical, which is-Anjney [00:34:41]: He-Swyx [00:34:41]: Such a unicorn.Anjney [00:34:43]: See, what's amazing about him? If you look at his output, he's an output maxer. By the time he was graduating from his PhD, which he only graduated last year, he had published more work with a citation count than, people twice his age. But at the same time, he'd already started a project called LLM Arena that was being used by millions of people As a side project. And time and time again, what I've realized is venture capitalists suck at seeing human beings as, dynamic agents where-Swyx [00:35:14]: They want to put you in a boxAnjney [00:35:15]: They want to put you in a box.Swyx [00:35:15]: This is your thing.Anjney [00:35:16]: So the first time I got introduced to Anastasios, somebody had told me “Oh, he's amazing, but he's a researcher.” I was “what? What do you mean he's a researcher?” That's what-Swyx [00:35:28]: Like he's not a CEO, not a founder.Anjney [00:35:29]: Not a CEO, exactly. I was “Are you crazy? Do you Have you met Dario?” Dario's a scientist. He's gone from zero to, what will soon be a trillion-dollar company in four years. Being a CEO, nominally speaking, is not that hard. Being a good CEO is hard. Being a great CEO actually requires a level of performance that scientists who have already published at the top of their field have accomplished. It is super hard to be a competitive scientist. To publish in academia over the last 20, 30 years, to make it to the top of your discipline at a place like Berkeley, you are a star athlete. Like, you are an athlete of the mind, and you perform at the highest levels. And to get there, whether you're, Anastasios or Whalen at Berkeley, or you are Robin, who-Swyx [00:36:23]: BFL, yeahAnjney [00:36:24]: With Black Forest, who created Stable Diffusion, or if you're, like Guillaume at Meta, who created Llama before he started Mistral. The amount of human leadership you have to demonstrate to get the resources, like get the trust of the organization, publish it, put it up. I would just fund researchers all day Right? If who have contributed already to the field. If they've, if they've put SOTA out there, they're, they're star athletes already. If they haven't done SOTA Look, they can still be good CEOs, but then I find the failure mode is that they just don't want to be CEOs, they primarily want to publish, and that's okay, too. One of the things we do with the AMP Grid is we donate excess compute. We have two nonprofits, like university labs. We carved out like a couple thousand H100s. But I do think there's extraordinary research being done on university campuses. My father-in-law's a physicist. He's a professor. Extraordinary work in physics, and we need that. But if you want to be a CEO, what you need to be willing To do is be super confrontational, outside of science. Like within the scientific community, some of the best researchers are very confrontational about their convictions, right? This architecture is right. To be a great CEO, you basically have to be willing to be confrontational up and down the stack.Swyx [00:37:41]: To your own team.Anjney [00:37:42]: To your own team-Swyx [00:37:43]: To customersAnjney [00:37:43]: Hiring, recruiting customers. Well, I would say, Yeah, pretty much to everyone Everybody. Of course-Swyx [00:37:50]: I see, I feel a little bit of that in my own work, but yeah, I can't imagine the stakes that Dario has had to go through. It's, it's pretty insane.Anjney [00:37:56]: No, I don't think the stakes are that different From how you're feeling it, right? Stakes are personal scaling vectors, right? The stakes that seem so low to you, like having this podcast where you can talk to somebody and just have a you're an extraordinary communicator, right? Like already in this conversation, you've pulled more out of me than most people, and I've been on 12 podcasts in the last two weeks.AI Coachella and First-Principles ThinkingSwyx [00:38:17]: I think I, we've just seen each other enough that there's some base trust.Anjney [00:38:20]: There's base trust.Swyx [00:38:20]: And I think, and I know that you, that I've done my homework and like I know that trust is a big deal for you, so.Anjney [00:38:27]: I think trust is about consistency, and you and I have seen each other In the community for years, right? Like, I remember the first time we met was at NeurIPS in New Orleans. I don't know if you remember that, luncheon.Swyx [00:38:38]: Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:39]: Reiko had set up this Reiko's amazing, and he set up this luncheon and-Swyx [00:38:43]: Yeah, I was “Who's this Discord guy?” I'm “Okay.” But-Anjney [00:38:45]: No, you weren't-Swyx [00:38:46]: You were just “You made some investments.”Anjney [00:38:47]: You were much less polite. You were “Who's this VC?” You're like-Swyx [00:38:51]: No, I Was I? Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:53]: It was-Swyx [00:38:53]: I'm so sorryAnjney [00:38:53]: It was visible on your face.Swyx [00:38:54]: I'm so sorry. But you weren't, you weren't The introduction was bad. I was I didn't know who you were.Anjney [00:39:00]: The, see, this is the thing about context, right? Like, but then I think I heard your accent. And I was “Are you-”Swyx [00:39:06]: Singapore, yeahAnjney [00:39:06]: “Are you Singaporean?” And you're “Yeah.” And I said, “I went to high school, JC, in Singapore.” And then the ice broke. But This is the there are in the scientific community, sometimes the stakes are very high for people who haven't had the emotional, what is called EQ Coaching and mentorship, right? Which is like to have scientific impact, you often need to be a extraordinary emotional, like emotionally in tune person with the folks you're trying to influence. And so what comes so naturally to you is actually a super high stakes thing to other people. And so I wouldn't assume that Dario's more stressed out than you. These things are you'd be surprised how similar and small sometimes the problems are to you That some of the world's biggest, leaders are facing. And that's what I've learned from this class. The guest speakers are Sam, Satya, Jensen.Swyx [00:40:01]: AI Coachella.Anjney [00:40:02]: Yeah. It's AI Coachella, right? So we got to get all the headliners, and they're I'm very lucky that some of these people have either mentored me over the years or I've done business with them. And when you, take the performative stuff out and any assumptions you may have about these people that you read in the press or on Twitter, We're all just humans. We're all trying to get along. And what's so special about this moment is AI is forcing, like scaling, the bitter lesson is forcing a lot of people to revise their assumptions for how the world works and go back to first principles or go and educate themselves. So the kind of people I was, I won't name who this person is, but I was at an event last week in Texas and, ran to somebody who said, “Anjney, I came across the class. What do you think about real time action prediction models?” And I was, don't know how happy it made me feel when they asked me that question. I know they've done the work. They've challenged themselves. I'm, they didn't ask me, “What do you think of world models?” They said, “What do you think of n-”Swyx [00:41:04]: Real time action predictionAnjney [00:41:05]: “action, real time action prediction models?” World models, don't get me wrong, are cool and everything, but you and I both know that is a layer of abstraction that is sometimes not usefully precise enough. Right? Ours-Swyx [00:41:16]: There's like four different kinds of world models.Anjney [00:41:17]: Yes, exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: We've done the part with general intuition, by the way, which is very focused on, -Anjney [00:41:22]: Oh, cool. Yes. I love Pim. Pim is great. And this is what I love about people who've done that level of work. They realize they're not in competition with people who the rest of the world thinks they're in competition with.Swyx [00:41:34]: Because they're not in the category, they're in the specific thing they're trying to do.Anjney [00:41:37]: They're focused on their mission, and they have a systems understanding of the bottleneck they're trying to solve. And when somebody else says, “I'm working on real time, action prediction models too,” Pim goes, “Oh, I love that person. I want, I can learn from them.” But the minute they're “Oh, that person's a world model person,” it's “like which type of world model person?” But mostly they're just trying to figure out if it's a waste of their time, because we don't have enough time. So, Pim, for example, is super, loves this other company I work with we've talked about called Black Forest Labs. And he's mentioned to me multiple times that he's so, He thinks what Flux is doing is really cool. Andy Blattman came by and spoke in the class. And what I find over and over again is for people who do the work, who can be usefully precise enough about like what is actually going on in the world of frontier research, The sense of camaraderie is still well and alive, but it gets lost sometimes when you have to like abstract The technical complexities in, business terms And then the VCs are “How are you different from that world model?” I'm going to say Where do I even start to explain this stuff? And then the misalignment creeps in.Leading vs. Winning in Frontier AISwyx [00:42:43]: This is good. Yeah, I think, people listening get a sense of, what it is like to operate at a real level, like yourself, rather than at, the journalist level, where you have to sort of put everyone in, a rough category and create a narrative of competition, and who's winning today, who's behind.Anjney [00:42:58]: It-- this idea of winning is so Weird to me.Swyx [00:43:03]: You do want to win. You want you want competitiveness.Anjney [00:43:06]: No, I think you want to lead.Swyx [00:43:07]: You want SOTA.Anjney [00:43:07]: No, I think you want to lead. Yes, so you want to push the frontier. You want to push the SOTA. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. You want to capture value, but you don't want to capture so much value that, people think you're unaligned with your mission or trying to do what's best for the world. You want to capture enough value that you can keep innovating, right? And I think that people want to lead, they don't really This idea of winning and losing, again, I love Jensen. He's a, he's a leader. The mindset that he talked about on Dwarkesh's podcast, right? He's “I didn't wake up with a loser mindset.” I think that was awesome, right? Because he's, he's an engineer. Dwarkesh has done the work. So there's at least-- even though the, to me, it was very obvious they're talking about the same thing, they just passed each other. They just had to basically, Jensen has this, five-layer cake abstraction of how the industry works. And Dwarkesh had, I think from that podcast, had more of, a pre-training, mid-training, post-training systems loop concept.Swyx [00:44:04]: It's just a factor of who he talks to, right? Again, it's very clear.Anjney [00:44:06]: It's the systems It's the abstraction, the mental models, the It's the whole-- Dude, so much of the problem in the world is reasoning by analogy. And then the assumptions that are held invisibly.Swyx [00:44:19]: Yeah, I've, I've said, this is actually the best time in human history for first principles thinkers. Because everything you think will happen is actually now coming true.Anjney [00:44:28]: Correct. And the venture capital community is, notorious for this, where people look-- In times of uncertainty, they, cling to axioms that ended up being true from the previous era, and they kind of like proclaim them with confidence as if they're truths, but they're not. And it's very important to see the distinction between a heuristic and an axiom. An axiom can be proven-Swyx [00:44:55]: Like from internal consistency point of viewAnjney [00:44:56]: With internal consistency. A heuristic is a way you kind of a shortcut. And my God, the number of people I have had to put up with over the last few years who proclaim-- use heuristics As axioms to judge people, to judge which companies are going to succeed or the number of people who are “Oh, yeah, Anthropic, they're just training models right now,” but this one continue.Swyx [00:45:22]: Because that's a B2B SaaS?Anjney [00:45:23]: Yeah, the, like Which over the fullness of time, if you squint at it, maybe. But the way you arrive there is so important that you can-- you just, you can dismiss people. Here's what happened, right? What happened is Anthropic basically achieved takeoff in October of last year. That training run-Swyx [00:45:41]: Whatever, three seven?Anjney [00:45:42]: I forget the numbers now, but whatever that checkpoint was-Swyx [00:45:45]: We saw the cognition.Anjney [00:45:46]: Yeah. Right? You probably-- The, to those of us in the community, especially once post-training was done and it was released in December-Swyx [00:45:52]: Yeah. Can I sneak a sneaky question in there? I don't know if you have a perspective, maybe you don't, I just The number one question is how did Anthropic crack coding, right? Because Claude One, Claude Two, okay, like it was part of it, but it wasn't a big deal. And the leading hypothesis, it's a lucky dice roll that was then compounded, right? Like it was like Mildly better, but then they saw it and they were “Okay, let's really invest.”How Anthropic Cracked CodingAnjney [00:46:17]: I had this very annoying teacher. I went to this boarding school called Rishi Valley in India, which is like this, bird preserve. It's like three hundred and fifty acres of bird preserve in rural India, and there was no technology for seven years. There was this teacher, I won't name them, but they would have this-- I hated it every time he said this to me. He was “Luck fa-favors the prepared mind,” which is like a common saying, but the way he delivered it, always grated me, ‘cause he was always I was always one of those kids who got, a good grade without trying very hard. ‘Cause like high middle school is not that hard if you, if you're generally, paying attention and so on. And there was this one time where I-- But then I would get an eighty percent grade, and he would keep pushing me to say “The reason you didn't get the ninety-five plus percent is because you're not that lucky.” And I would say, “What do you mean?” ‘Cause I would think that I deserved that grade, and I would sometimes argue with him. And he'd say, “You didn't have a prepared mind. If you want to get lucky again “ There was basically one time where I got like ninety-five or ninety-six on this, on this subject, and I, now that I felt entitled. I was “Okay, I'm going to keep doing this,” and I didn't. And then he was “Luck favors a prepared mind. You got lucky last time, but you got to stay prepared.” And I didn't understand what he meant. Now, as I'm older, I'm okay, these adults actually knew a thing or two. Anthropic has been the most prepared company for four years. And so then when the right, context data comes in, the right developers start sending in, the right context diffs, Sure, you could say you got lucky, but if you ask me, they're pr-pretty damn prepared with paranoia for like four years. And you have to remember, it was so hard for them to get going early on that they had to do so much more with so much less that you just have to be prepared to be so efficient.Swyx [00:48:06]: Yes. There's numbers on their burn compared to OpenAI. I've, I've written about it, but they are so much more efficient in their, in their tech stack.Anjney [00:48:14]: It's not even It's not funny.Swyx [00:48:14]: Not even close.Anjney [00:48:15]: Yeah. But it's so clear, right? Like how to output max for the world. They have been prepared, and you could call that luck, but Luck favors the prepared mind.Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P0Swyx [00:48:25]: This is one of those things that I was going over some of your old lectures and, you were data, people think it's a moat and actually it's culture and actually it's team Actually. And I, it's-- there's different levels of moats, and this is the ultimate one that determines everything else. Which you can then compoundAnjney [00:48:43]: You're saying culture is the ultimate moat? Yeah. But the thing about culture is it's very fragile. So moats, I don't think they're-- there's very few moats I found that are actually moats. They're-- It's, it's a nice concept, but in reality, you have to replenish your culture. Ben Horowitz was, the speaker in CS153 on Tuesday, and I asked him this question about the culture bottleneck in teams because, there are several AI teams-Swyx [00:49:09]: His book, Hard Things About Hard ThingsAnjney [00:49:11]: Hard Thing About Hard Things. But more concretely, there are so many AI labs today that have all the cash they need, they have all the compute they need, and they're still not able to ship anything SOTA. And then you start seeing people leave and so on, and my diagnosis, it's, is it's the culture. And so I asked him, Ben, they're-- He's been one of the most aggressive investors in AI labs. He goes back to this thing which resonates in my mind a lot. It-- When I used to work at a16z, I would, book a conference room, and right outside the conference room, which is closest to the toilet ‘cause it was the fastest way for me to go use the bathroom between Zoom meetings-Swyx [00:49:45]: Oh my God, I'll put maxing my toilet optimization. Okay, never mind.Anjney [00:49:48]: It was not healthy in hindsight, but maybe this is TMI. But anyway, outside that conference on the wall was this quote that was printed that said, “Culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions.” And it's by Bushido, is this, Japanese philosopher. And if you stop taking the actions that demonstrate the mission alignment to what you've said to your team and to your-- the world matters to you, then your culture starts to fray. So it's not actually a moat, I would say. It's a very brittle, fragile thing that requires daily tending to like a garden. But if you figure out the system to keep that garden tended, which I think ultimately comes down to knowing yourself ‘cause you most naturally, if you're authentic and so on, you'll naturally make trade-offs that seem effortless to you, but that reinforce your culture. And then That becomes this very hard thing for other people to catch up to. And at Anthropic, from day one, there was this mission like-- missionary like zeal and belief that, hey, these capabilities will scale. These systems are stochastic, not deterministic. There will be error bars, and until we crack interpretability, there's risk. And at some point, people will go-- stop using Claude just for coding. They'll use it in some mission-critical context where there's-- it'll throw off a bug, and then people are going to come blame them, and they want to be on the right side of history where they said, “Yes, this is a powerful technology. We think it's going to change the world, And we want to be very measured and scientific about the fact that, ‘Hey, guys, these are stats models, statistical models.' That's how statistics works.” ultimately, when you're training neural nets, it is just a statistical system. And I think that Belief that safety is important and that it might seem toy-like in the early days, and sometimes, you could say, “Anjney, they totally over-exaggerated the risk,” like two years ago when they said, “Let's not launch Claude One,” or whatever. Well, okay, maybe in hindsight, but hindsight is twenty/twenty. And at the time, they didn't know how that model would be used, and to them it felt existential if somebody came and said, “You weren't responsible. It-- This wrote a bug.” The liability associated with that is massive. So how do you prevent against that? Well, day in, day out, you say safety. And when you start deviating from that, you have the team hold you accountable, you have the world hold you accountable, and I think that becomes a moat over time. At some point, that moat will get challenged and so on, and then it become fragile. I hope it endures because that's the beauty of having founders run the show, ‘cause they can make really hard trade-offs to do mission alignment. The hardest part is in the earliest days when you don't have a group of people who are going through difficulty, stress, crisis together, then your culture doesn't get defined sharply enough, and that's what I'm worried about right now, is there's so much money going to these labs. There's no hardship. There's no-Swyx [00:52:50]: To anyone who knowsAnjney [00:52:51]: There's no to anyone who knows. And that, in hindsight, was a feature, not a bug for Anthropic. The number of people who said no, the number of people who said, “Sorry, we're all doing investors in OpenAI,” that is competitive difference. It forces you to really understand, what is the hill you want to die on at the expense of everything else. What's the P zero? And there, P zero from day one was coding. The reason, the mechanism system there was if we crack coding, Then we will crack AGI. Our mission is AGI. We want to get there safely. If we focus on codin

Brett Hurt returns to Austin Next for the fourth time, more than any guest in the show's history, to argue that the hardest problem in front of us is psychological. Abundance is already on a clear technological path, and the thing most likely to stop us is the fear center we carried off the savannah. He walks through the four technologies he calls the Superfecta: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and brain-computer interfaces, and why they land together rather than in sequence. The stakes are the Great Filter and to make it through to abundance or destroy ourselves. His book lands June 23, and this conversation is the argument it rests on.Agenda0:00 Love is hard, fear is hijacked 10:21 Cooked food and broken business models 18:04 Mocktails, birth rates, and Bhutan 25:52 Moonshots and the James Webb sublime 30:42 Why aliens would be benevolent 36:13 The Superfecta changes everything 41:52 Capitalism, Chad, and abundance 51:40 Old Austin, wizards, and prophets 58:33 The nuclear math nobody wants 1:02:37 How the podcast made him hopeful 1:11:09 Open source wins the next hingeGuest Bio & LinksBrett Hurt: X, LinkedIn, Love Conquers Fear PodcastLove Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for AllBrett Hurt is a serial tech entrepreneur, investor, and author. He works at the intersection of AI, leadership, and human values focusing on how society can harness exponential technologies with courage, ethics, and unity.Hurt most recently co-founded and led data-dot-world, which was acquired by ServiceNow on July 7, 2025. He previously co-founded Bazaarvoice (unicorn IPO) and Coremetrics (acquired by IBM). He also co-leads Hurt Family Investments, which is in 150 startups (12 unicorns) and 50 VC funds. He was named Austin's Best CEO (Legacy Award) and is also an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow.Through his Love Conquers Fear holding company, platform, and podcast, Hurt explores how AI and emerging technologies can either amplify fear or help create broad-based human flourishing to eventually reach the Age of Abundance for All. Based in Austin, he's the author of three books and host of the Love Conquers Fear podcast, which has 60 episodes and counting. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

It's Hump Day on The Majority Report On today's program: JD Vance talks to Megyn Kelly why the whole Memorandum of Understanding has not been released, citing certain cultural sensitivities in the region without explaining what that means. The war hawks are not happy with the leaked sections of the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Former Vice President Mike Pence says on CNN that the preliminary language "smacks of appeasement". Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends shares the same sentiment as Pence but he refuses to criticize the president, insisting to his audience that this is Vance's deal. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, joins to talk about her piece in The American Prospect: "New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement." Gil Duran, publisher of the Nerd Reich newsletter, joins to discuss John O'Farrell a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz who recently quit the VC firm over their prioritizing of AI hype over the common good. You can preorder Gil's book "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley's Fascism and the War on Democracy" here. In the Fun Half: As Trump's facilities sunset he is having a hard time keeping his inside thoughts inside. At the G7 conference in France, the president couldn't stop talking about world leaders in an erotic fashion. Trump swooned over India's PM Modi's stunning beauty and recounted the time he met Egyptian president el-Sisi in a hotel and fell deeply in love. Trump post another screed to Truth Social, announcing the cancelation of Jay Clayton's U.S Attorney nomination hearing today and the Bill Pulte will remain acting head of DNI. Trump's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Hal Duncan, recites the script and refuses to admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election but of course freely acknowledges that Trump won the 2024 election. The GOP primary winner for senate in Georgia, Mike Collins, kicks off his campaign by attacking incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff for voting in support of trans rights, much to the ambivalence of the small audience. DSA backed candidate for mayor of Washington D.C., Janeese Lewis George appears to be headed for victory in the democratic primary. On June 11, Trump threatened to have a federal takeover of D.C. is she wins and evidentially that was the best thing to happen to George's campaign. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ROCKET MONEY: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster: RocketMoney.com/MAJORITY RITUAL: Get 25% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/MAJORITY. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.  

The Agents #007: Our AI Agent Negotiated a Vendor Renewal, Became a CFO and a Better SDR .. But Does He Have Too Many Guardrails? Episode 7 of The Agents, SaaStr's weekly show on the trials and tribulations of running a company with 21 AI agents, 3 humans, and a dog. This week Jason and Amelia debrief life after SaaStr AI Annual and discover that the agents didn't slow down just because the event ended. 10K is already planning SaaStr 2027, negotiating vendor renewals on his own terms, and somehow became a CFO while nobody was looking. Meanwhile, a guardrail problem quietly broke one of SaaStr's most-used apps for weeks, and the website agent is now outperforming every AISDR in the stack. This week: 14 guardrails pushed the VC pitch deck analyzer into rejecting everything, and the lesson is that over-guardrailing is just as dangerous as under-guardrailing. 10K got hooked up to Bill.com and found 8 years of collections automation that nobody had turned on. The AI VP of Marketing is now also running finance because convergence is real and agents do not care about org charts. And 10K sent a vendor a list of API demands before agreeing to renew, which the vendor did not love. Also: why losing your FDE might make you churn the vendor entirely, why Annie the website agent is writing better outbound than the actual outbound tools, and how 442,000 chats turned into 614 meetings with zero humans in the loop.

Jared Goralnick joins the GrowthReady Podcast with a deceptively simple definition of what it means to be growth ready: manage your energy and get clear on where you're going.Jared Goralnick has spent 15 years building products that help organizations find, develop, and grow talent. He was Head of Product at LinkedIn Recruiter and VP of Product at Upwork, Go1, and Articulate, and previously founded SET Consulting and VC-backed AwayFind. He now leads Your360 AI, using voice AI to make coaching-grade, interview-style 360 feedback accessible beyond the executive level.The conversation goes deep into something most leaders avoid until it's too late, feedback, not the vague “be more strategic” kind, but the kind that actually creates awareness, patterns, and a path forward.Jared shares why the most dangerous feedback problem isn't harsh criticism, it's being in the dark. And he breaks down what it takes to create the “door” for feedback to happen, how to make it useful, and why strengths deserve just as much attention as growth areas.If you're a leader, founder, or high performer who cares about sustainable growth, this episode will help you:Build a practical definition of growth readiness: energy + clarityUnderstand why effective doesn't mean being rightCreate a healthier relationship with feedback (giving and receiving)Turn vague feedback into something specific, usable, and actionableUse technology to support better leadership, without losing the human partConnect with JaredWebsite:  https://your360.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goralnick/ Send us Fan MailSupport the showConnect with Steve MellorStay connected and keep growing with Steve:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-mellor-cc/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/coachstevemellorBook Steve to speak at your next event → www.stevemellorspeaks.comSupport the GrowthReady Podcast by leaving a 5-star rating → Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/growthready-podcast/id1406082163Connect with GrowthReadyJoin the community and keep your growth journey going:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearegrowthready/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/growthreadypodcast/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/growthreadywithcoachstevemellorOfficial Website - https://growthready.com/----This podcast was produced on Riverside and released via ...

This week on Swimming with Allocators, Kate Simpson joins Earnest and Alexa to share her journey from starting as a history major at the UNC endowment to leading the venture strategy at multi-asset OCIO firm GEM. She explains how she learned institutional investing, specialized in private markets, and refined her craft at Parish Capital and Truebridge, including fund-of-funds due diligence, reference work, and the power of platforms and networks. The conversation dives into how to build a venture program from scratch, why alignment, patience, and resource intensity matter, and how GEM uses a barbell approach across top-tier scaled platforms and emerging managers while avoiding the “crowded middle.” Kate breaks down how LPs evaluate managers (source, pick, win), why fund math and ownership are critical, and how today's AI-driven cycle, secondary markets, and companies staying private longer are reshaping ventures. Also, don't miss Nick Cassin from Sidley as he explains the rapid growth of the private-fund secondary market, what's driving the surge in secondary and continuation vehicle (CV) transactions, and how new types of capital providers are stepping in as lead investors to provide liquidity to private-market participants. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Starting at UNC Endowment With No Finance Background (0:31)   Transitioning from TrueBridge to Gem and Taking on a Leadership Role (6:10) Advice for Building a New Venture Program and Aligning Stakeholders (10:12) Democratization of Venture Access and Barbell Strategy for Manager Selection (12:38) Sourcing and Evaluating New Venture Managers with a High-Volume Funnel (16:26) Secondaries Market Boom and Macro Dynamics Driving Liquidity Needs (21:00) Rise of Continuation Vehicles and Structural Evolution of Secondaries (23:36) How to Approach a First LP Meeting and Importance of Fund Math (26:03) Defining Early Versus Later Stages and Gem's Seed and Micro Fund Threshold (28:13) Normalization of Secondary Liquidity for Founders and Early Investors (35:24) Future Opportunities in Smaller Funds and the Dynamic Early Ecosystem (36:12) Final Thoughts and Takeaways (40:12) GEM is an independent investment management firm that provides customized solutions for long-term investors worldwide. Since 2007, we have sought to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns to our clients by combining disciplined investment research and active portfolio management with exceptional service and enduring partnership. With a global platform, broad institutional investment capabilities, and an experienced team, we design portfolios to meet the unique needs of each investor we serve. For more information, visit www.geminvestments.com. Sidley Austin LLP is a premier global law firm with a dedicated Venture Funds practice, advising top venture capital firms, institutional investors, and private equity sponsors on fund formation, investment structuring, and regulatory compliance. With deep expertise across private markets, Sidley provides strategic legal counsel to help funds scale effectively. Learn more at sidley.com. Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies.  The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthieu Burin a une intuition au démarrage de Hemea : "quand tu as besoin de faire des travaux de rénovation, c'est un enfer. Tu sais pas à qui t'adresser, tu sais pas combien ça coûte, et tu as l'impression que tu vas te faire avoir."10 ans plus tard, Hemea est devenue une marketplace de travaux qui a réalisé plus de 5000 chantiers, levé 15M€ et structuré un réseau national de courtiers en architecture et rénovation.Ingénieur de formation, passé par les grands projets du BTP et un court passage en cabinet de conseil, Matthieu lance Hemea en septembre 2015 avec 473€ de RSA et une conviction simple : digitaliser un secteur que personne dans l'écosystème startup ne voulait toucher.Ce qui suit, c'est 10 ans de construction patiente.Dans cet épisode de La Galère, Matthieu revient sans filtre sur l'envers du décor d'une marketplace dans un marché à 70 milliards où personne ne fait confiance à personne : un premier MVP bricolé sur Typeform et Excel, une liste de 97 problèmes clients établie sur un tableau blanc, une décision radicale sur la gestion du cash, et un pivot stratégique en pleine restructuration du marché VC en 2023.

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of six books, including More Money Than God, The Power Law, The Man Who Knew, and The World's Banker. His latest book is The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.This episode is brought to you by:Eight Sleep Pod Cover 5 sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: EightSleep.com/TimAG1 Pro all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/TimWealthfront high-yield cash account: Wealthfront.com/Tim Wealthfront disclaimer: New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“WFB”) member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The base APY as of 1/30/26 is representative, can change, and requires no minimum. Tim Ferriss, a non-client, receives compensation from WFB for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of WFB, which creates a conflict of interest. Individual experiences and outcomes will differ. Instant withdrawals may be limited by your receiving firm and other factors. Investment advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, not bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.*Timestamps[00:00:00] Start.[00:02:11] The twinkly eyed polymath who became Sebastian's next book.[00:06:55] Picking the next book project the way a great VC picks a startup.[00:09:41] Why God keeps crashing the superintelligence party.[00:11:13] Shane Legg's grainy 2009 prophecy — and the nervous giggle.[00:13:11] Ilya Sutskever burns an effigy.[00:13:54] Demis at 4 a.m., hunting God's algorithm.[00:18:43] Super-abundance, Mad Max, and the China shock lesson.[00:22:39] The kitchen debate with Geoff Hinton that flipped Sebastian.[00:24:06] Why a zero-percent chance of doom is indefensible.[00:24:52] Will Washington seize the labs? The Mythos wake-up call.[00:27:18] Anthropic's bull case, bear case, and a dead parent's letter.[00:33:24] Where Sebastian and Benedict Evans part ways.[00:38:16] Is the SaaS apocalypse overdone? One word: Palantir.[00:39:53] The AI friend you'll never switch.[00:41:56] Does Google win consumer AI by default?[00:44:45] Four cities, eight days: China actually talks safety.[00:47:28] A Cold War non-proliferation playbook for AI.[00:49:45] Did the chip export controls actually work?[00:51:49] Burned doves: why Washington swears China won't talk.[00:54:56] "By 2028, the race is over" — one lab boss' bet.[00:59:11] Inside Hikvision: toddlers, sensors, and US sanctions.[01:01:07] Bill Gurley's Uber bet: venture capital perfected.[01:05:18] Luke Nosek bear-hugs DeepMind into existence.[01:10:52] Thiel's heresy: never invest by committee.[01:11:59] How Founders Fund nearly fumbled the deal of the century.[01:14:30] Selling to Google for $650M: a secret British heist?[01:16:41] The Traitorous Eight, gardening leave, and the UK's to-do list.[01:20:55] Ender's Game: "That's really how I see myself."[01:23:42] Too dumb for Gödel, Escher, Bach? Maybe an LLM can help.[01:25:19] If not Demis or Sam, then Dario.[01:26:04] My royalties cliff — and what dropped in late 2022.[01:27:47] Lila Sciences and the labs that run themselves.[01:31:13] Sebastian's billboard: "Prepare your mind."[01:35:14] The one thing Sebastian will never outsource to AI.[01:40:09] Parting thoughts.For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we sit down with Mark Cuban to uncover the principles behind his success in business. From whether entrepreneurs should drop out of school to the toughest challenges he faced while building his companies, Mark shares the lessons that shaped his career. He explains why curiosity is a competitive advantage, how ego can hold people back, and what separates successful entrepreneurs from everyone else. If you're looking to build a business, advance your career, or think differently about success, this episode is for you.This episode is supported by Sydecar, HEX, Wispr Flow, Granola, Beehiiv, KalshiSydecar: http://Sydecar.io/partner/trailblazersBeehiive: https://www.beehiiv.com (use code “trailblazers30” for 30% OFF)Beehiiv: Use code TRAILBLAZERS30 for 30% off your first 3 months at https://www.beehiiv.com/splash?utm_campaign=trailblazers-2026-Partnership&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=trailblazers&utm_term=podcast-1&stripe_campaign_code=TRAILBLAZERS30*Beehiiv has a major announcement coming July 16 - can't say more, but you won't want to miss it. RSVP here: https://www.beehiiv.com/summer-release-2026Granola: http://granola.ai/trailblazers*Granola is the official notetaker of Trailblazers. Checkout the episode shownotes here: https://notes.granola.ai/t/8dccb81c-ac02-48e1-afb3-b6a7d8ff9160-00b881l8Kalshi: http://Kalshi.com/r/trailblazersWispr Flow: https://ref.wisprflow.ai/trailblazersHEX: http://hex.ai/trailblazers

In episode 122 of Venture Everywhere, Jenny Fielding, Managing Partner at Everywhere Ventures, sits down with Marty Ringlein, co-founder and CEO of Agree, for a founder's-eye recap of New York Tech Week 2026. Marty breaks down his week — from demoing Agree at Intercom to a poker night at Bessemer — and what the energy on the ground said about where New York's tech scene is heading. Together they dig into what had every founder and VC buzzing — agents, commoditization, and whether New York is finally having its moment as the center of the tech universe.In this episode, you will hear:New York Tech Week reaching its inflection point.The best and worst events of the week as a founder on the ground.Agents and commoditization turning once-defensible products into overnight features.Regulated industries as the last viable moat against AI encroachment.The question every founder is now asking: what won't Claude or ChatGPT build?Learn more about Marty Ringlein | AgreeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martymadrid Website: https://agree.com Learn more about Jenny Fielding | Everywhere VCLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyfielding Website: https://everywhere.vc/

Watch on YouTube. Peter Rojas has built new things at almost every scale there is, and he planted the seed for this show years ago in an email to Michael. In this episode, Peter and Michael discuss: How building new products inside a big company differs from a startup, and why you have to invest ahead of traction Why corporate product development is a harder numbers game than a venture portfolio AI, vibe coding, and the Mozilla Pioneers program for widening the top of the funnel Why incumbents keep losing the next technology wave Why coordination breaks down at scale, and the clarity that fixes it About Peter: Peter Rojas co-founded Gizmodo and Engadget, two publications that changed how people understand technology. He has been an operator and investor across AOL, Meta, and BetaWorks, where he was a founder and VC. Today he leads new product development at Mozilla and runs Mozilla Pioneers. 00:00 Cold open 01:46 The email that started the show 03:33 Startup vs building inside a company 06:57 The corporate product numbers game 11:03 Vibe coding and Mozilla Pioneers 15:13 When a trusted brand is the advantage 18:04 Why incumbents lose the next wave 21:58 Meta's metaverse bet vs AI 25:44 If I were running Meta 29:02 Was the VR bet a failure 30:27 Why coordination breaks at scale 35:07 Fear, focus, and the CEO filter 38:56 How Mozilla runs on KPIs 40:30 The founder who hid his idea 46:33 Where to find Peter Resources mentioned: Mozilla Pioneers: https://newproducts.mozilla.org/mozilla-pioneers/ WordPress: https://wordpress.org Lovable: https://lovable.dev Replit: https://replit.com Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code Rec Room: https://recroom.com Connect with Peter: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterrojas/ Connect with Michael: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514 Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai Subscribe to Between Two COOs: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos/id1635533318 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2NjVgGm6mqLPEbJUvHnHEH Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com Watch on YouTube.

The CEO of a $4 billion compliance company on how her biggest competitor was faking it, and what that means for AI startup culture.Christina Cacioppo, co-founder and CEO of Vanta, joins Eric Newcomer to talk about the scandal that shook the compliance world. Her $4 billion competitor Delve was caught pre-filling compliance reports without doing the actual security work — and customers had no idea. Christina explains how Vanta figured it out, why fake compliance is a better product experience than real compliance, and what happened to Delve's customers after the story broke.The conversation also covers the AI hype cycle and whether it is crypto 2.0, why AI is both the biggest threat and biggest tailwind for security companies, the broken VC equity social contract, and what it really takes to build a $4 billion company without losing sight of the fundamentals.Subscribe for weekly conversations with the founders, investors, and executives shaping the tech industry.

In this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Stephen Caines, Chief Innovation Officer and Budget Director at the City of San Jose, joins host Boaz Ashkenazy for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI is reshaping city government, public services, and the workforce at one of America's most technologically ambitious cities.Stephen shares his unconventional path from pre-med at Case Western to digital privacy law at the University of Miami, a Stanford fellowship researching surveillance AI ethics, and ultimately landing at San Jose's Mayor's Office where he now leads both innovation strategy and the city's budget. From there, the conversation dives into how San Jose is positioning itself as the AI-first city in the nation, leveraging proximity to Adobe, Cisco, Zoom, Nvidia, Apple, and Google to advance meaningful community-level change.The discussion explores the city's AI for All initiative, a public-private partnership with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI to provide free AI education to residents and city employees alike. Stephen walks through the city's dual-track upskilling program, its approach to employee training that is purposely non-mandatory, and how San Jose is balancing top-down innovation mandates with bottom-up experimentation.Boaz and Stephen also dig into real-world deployments: object detection cameras on fleet vehicles that proactively identify potholes and road hazards before residents report them, AI translation tools expanding Spanish and Vietnamese participation in city council meetings, and the 311 customer service redesign aimed at reducing resident burden while improving satisfaction. Stephen is candid about the ROI question, how to distinguish pilots worth operationalizing from ones that generate noise without value and the long-term financial risks of AI infrastructure built on VC-subsidized pricing.The episode closes with a discussion of the GovAI Coalition, a San Jose-founded network now spanning over 900 public agencies, and Stephen's two-word vision for the future of work: chronic adaptability.Chapters[00:00] From Pre-Med to Chief Innovation Officer: Stephen's Career Journey[04:12] San Jose as the AI-First City: Population, Geography, and the Lean City Challenge[07:49] Proximity as Advantage: Partnering with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia[08:23] AI for All: Free Community Education and In-Person Training Sessions[11:10] Upskilling City Employees: Voluntary Training, Two Tracks, and Retention Strategy[14:38] Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Innovation[16:14] The 311 Network and Customer Service Vision: A 360-Degree View of the Resident[17:13] Object Detection on Fleet Vehicles: Proactive Pothole and Road Hazard Detection[19:34] Surprising Community Feedback and the Case for Keeping Humans at the Front Door[22:04] ROI in Government: How to Evaluate Pilots and Decide What Gets Operationalized[24:24] The Hidden Costs of AI: Staffing Realignment, Drone Programs, and VC Subsidies[26:14] Building Infrastructure You Own: The Road Safety Images Database[27:24] The GovAI Coalition: 900 Public Agencies, Shared Contracts, and Peer Learning[32:04] The Future of Work in Cities: Chronic Adaptability and the Individual JourneyConnect with Stephen CainesLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-caines/City of San Jose Innovation Hub: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/information-technology/city-innovation/it-innovation-hubConnect with the GovAI CoalitionWebsite: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/information-technology/ai-reviews-algorithm-register/govai-coalitionConnect with Boaz AshkenazyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boazashkenazy/Email: info@shiftai.fm

 EPISODE DESCRIPTION In this episode, I sit down with Prakash Kamraj, co-founder of DeCharge Network, to explore one of the most overlooked intersections of Web3 and the physical world: EV charging infrastructure. Prakash walks me through how DeCharge is building an Airbnb-style model for EV chargers, where anyone , from a business owner to a crypto community member , can host a charging station and earn passive income from it. We dig into why the B2B market is the real engine of EV growth, how DeCharge keeps the user experience dead simple with a scan-and-pay web app, and why autonomous charging powered by crypto payment rails could be the next massive wave. We also get into the surprising EV adoption stories across India, China, Southeast Asia, Ethiopia, and beyond. Whether you're an EV owner frustrated by fragmented charging apps, a crypto builder looking for real-world use cases, or an investor trying to spot where energy infrastructure is heading, this conversation is packed with sharp thinking and hard-won lessons from the ground up. DISCLAIMERNothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. It would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with a friend. Be a guest on the podcast or contact us - https://www.web3pod.xyz/ CONNECT DeCharge Website: https://www.decharge.ioScout App: https://scout.decharge.ioTwitter/X:https://x.com/DeChargeTelegram: https://t.me/dechargecommunityWeb3 with Sam Kamani: https://www.web3pod.xyz KEY POINTS WITH TIMESTAMPS • [00:01] Sam introduces Prakash Kamraj and DeCharge Network, framing it as an Airbnb for EV chargers• [01:09] Prakash shares his background , from medical field to engineering, health tech startups, and catching the crypto bug in 2017• [03:36] How deep involvement in the early Solana ecosystem in India shaped Prakash's builder mindset• [05:33] The core problem: not enough EV charging infrastructure globally, with one charger for every 80 vehicles on average• [06:33] Sam shares firsthand observations from Guangzhou , nearly 100% EV adoption on the streets• [09:25] The personal range anxiety story that validated the problem , getting stuck at 9% battery in Denver in winter• [10:30] Why copy-pasting the Helium model doesn't work and why a more nuanced distributed model was needed• [11:00] DeCharge's three-pillar model: community-owned slow chargers, fast charger funding pools, and a software network incentive for charge point operators• [14:15] How the business model works , revenue share with hosts, transparent dashboards, and community-funded infra• [17:01] The user experience: scan a QR code, pay as you go, no app download required• [19:31] Why DeCharge integrates with default local payment apps (UPI, Promptpay, Stripe) instead of forcing new behavior• [23:16] Why India isn't lagging , 70% of EV usage is commercial, driven by food delivery riders and ride-sharing fleets• [25:40] Southeast Asia generates 80% of DeCharge's current network revenue• [27:21] Biggest challenges: avoiding R&D rabbit holes, sticking to first principles, and iterating fast across hardware and software• [29:05] Funding journey: seed round led by Lemniscap, first Asian startup in Colosseum's hackathon ecosystem• [32:06] Contrarian view: autonomous EV charging powered by crypto payment rails is the next major wave• [33:30] Energy is the truest form of currency , especially as AI data centers drive massive power demand• [35:14] The ask: charge point operator partnerships, community members, and VC conversations welcome• [39:19] The Scout app , a community-curated tool to map charger density and identify demand hotspots at scout.decharge.io

(0:00) Intro *Reference to the Boardroom Governance Summit at Limerick Lane Cellars, Healdsburg, California (Aug 26-27, 2026)  (2:12) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel. (2:59) Start of interview.  (4:00) Origin Story of Emily, and Stewardship  (6:15) From Engineer to CEO  (7:14) Companies that she led: Elo Touch Systems (97-00), Capstone Turbine (02-03), Apexon (04-07) and NovaTorque (09-17). (9:50) Changing geopolitics of manufacturing (10:49) First Boards and Public Company Lessons (first board experience in Japan) "The soft skills are the hard part to do." (15:48) On serving in private VC-backed boards. "If you know one board, you know one board. I mean, they are all so different." (22:43) On serving in non-profit boards. "It's one of the best possible ways to get governance experience." (26:20) CEO Mistakes (32:03) Board Succession for leadership and skills. (35:33) Board Evaluations Done Right  (37:41) What Makes Great Directors. *reference to Leading Edge Stewardship, by Linda Riefler and Mayree Clark (Stanford Women on Boards). "Asking the right question, at the right time, in the right way." (39:57) AI and the Boardroom. (46:16) Innovation Versus Oversight. "The goal is informed oversight without operational interference" (49:34) Teaching Governance to Stanford Students  (52:17) Boards need to have a long-term orientation in this short-term world. (52:34) Books that have greatly influenced her life: The Bible Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1846) (54:12) Her mentors. "[T]hey told me things I needed to hear in a way that I could hear them because it's easy to get defensive." (55:38) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' by Margaret Mead. (56:43) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves.  (57:30) The living person she most admires in governance: Bob Joss. Emily Liggett serves on the boards of Ultra Clean Technology and Materion Corporation. She also serves as Lecturer at Stanford GSB, where she teaches corporate governance and board leadership. You can follow Evan on social media at:X: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Why This Episode MattersSabrina Maniscalco is one of the few people in quantum who has lived the full arc: two decades of academic work on open quantum systems and non-Markovian noise at Palermo, Turku, Edinburgh, and Helsinki, followed by founding Algorithmiq with three of her former researchers after an early Qiskit Camp. That trajectory matters now because Algorithmiq just had a landmark stretch — sole winner of the $2M Wellcome Leap Q4Bio prize for a quantum-enabled cancer drug discovery workflow, an €18M Series B, a global HQ move to Milan, and its Tensor Network Error Mitigation (TEM) function landing in IBM's Qiskit Functions catalog.If you're trying to make sense of where quantum software actually creates value before fault tolerance arrives — and what a credible "trajectory to advantage" looks like when paired with real clients in life sciences — this is a grounded, technically specific conversation with someone building it.EPISODE SPONSORThis episode is brought to you by Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine. The need for computational power is rapidly increasing in every sector. From drug discovery to material innovation to complex financial modeling, classical systems are reaching their absolute limits. It's time for a paradigm shift. The answer is a scalable quantum network, built on open standards and vendor-agnostic architecture. By uniting distributed quantum devices, you unlock limitless computational power.Learn more about the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch at Outshift.com.Go deeper with the blog post The switch that quantum networking has been waiting for.What We Get IntoWhy a background in open quantum systems and non-Markovian noise turned out to be unusually well-suited to running algorithms on noisy near-term hardwareThe actual science behind the Q4Bio winning workflow: simulating excited-state dynamics of a photosensitizer drug already in Phase II clinical trials, on up to 100 qubitsHow quantum-boosted DMRG works — and why it gives you a built-in benchmark against the best classical method via the bond dimensionThe tradeoff Sabrina would and wouldn't make between more qubits and lower noise, and why neutral atoms' slower sampling rates matter for chemistryWhy even fault-tolerant algorithms like quantum phase estimation still depend on getting state initialization and measurement rightAlgorithmiq's two-product structure: the Digital Quantum Interface (hardware-agnostic infrastructure) and the life sciences application frameworkHow methods built for chemistry are now opening doors into optimization and GenAI — and why that direction emerged from the work, not from a strategy deckWhat the move from Helsinki to Milan signals about the European quantum ecosystem and Algorithmiq's commercial scale-upHow an active learning pipeline is already proposing novel drug variants for synthesis in Prof. Sherri McFarland's labResources & LinksGuest & CompanyAlgorithmiq — The company Sabrina co-founded with Guillermo García-Pérez, Matteo Rossi, and Boris Sokolov; quantum software for life sciences and chemistry.Sabrina Maniscalco — University of Helsinki Research Portal — Publication record covering open quantum systems, non-Markovian dynamics, and quantum information.Sabrina Maniscalco — AI for Good Bio — Consolidated bio covering academic roles and advisory positions, including IQOQI Austria and CERN's Quantum Technology Initiative.The Q4Bio WinAlgorithmiq Wins $2M Wellcome Leap Q4Bio Prize — Company announcement detailing the photodynamic therapy workflow.Wellcome Leap — Q4Bio Prize Announcement — Funder's perspective on finalists and criteria.IBM Quantum Blog — Q4Bio Finalists — IBM's account of the workflow and quantum-classical integration.Funding & HQ MoveTech.eu — Algorithmiq's €18M Series B and Milan move — Coverage of Italy's largest quantum VC round to date.Quantum Computing Report — Algorithmiq Relocates to Milan — Strategic context including the Q4Bio win and IBM partnership.EU-Startups coverage — Investor lineup and Italy's National Quantum Strategy framing.Quantum Advantage & ToolingIBM Quantum Blog — The Dawn of Quantum Advantage — Includes Algorithmiq's TEM (Tensor Network Error Mitigation) function in the Qiskit Functions catalog.Algorithmiq & IBM Quantum Advantage Tracker — The heterogeneous materials experiment Algorithmiq and IBM put forward as a community benchmark.Silicon Republic interview with Sabrina — Useful prior context on her philosophy of using quantum to simulate quantum systems.Key Quotes & InsightsOn the foundation of the company's approach: "We learned very early what we thought were the bottlenecks of quantum computers — what you really need to worry about if you want to implement computation at scale." A direct line from Qiskit Camp Vermont to Algorithmiq's product strategy.On Q4Bio, in Sabrina's words: "This molecule is already in Phase II clinical trial. So it's not hydrogen. It's a real molecule." A useful counter to the common critique that quantum chemistry demos still live in toy-model land.On quantum-boosted DMRG (insight): In the worst case, the method matches the best classical technique; in the better case, it outperforms it — and the bond dimension tells you which regime you're in. Built-in benchmarking against the classical baseline.On the hardware tradeoff: Asked whether she'd prefer 100 higher-fidelity qubits or 200 noisier ones, Sabrina's answer is "it depends" — and the explanation about why neutral atoms' lower sampling rates limit chemistry use cases is one of the more concrete things you'll hear on platform tradeoffs.On strategy (insight): New verticals at Algorithmiq are ...

How does a modern CEO lead a global, hybrid workforce while staying connected to every employee? I recently sat down with Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of Sovos, a tax and compliance specialist for Fortune 500 companies. Kevin shared practical, clear insights on leadership, growth, and retention. Here are five that stood out:

This Week In Startups is made possible by:NetSuite - Netsuite.com/TWiSTDeel - Deel.com/TWiSTSquarespace - Squarespace.com/TWiSTTwo days before SpaceX launches the largest IPO in history at a flat $135/share, our VC roundtable drops a scorcher: The top 1% of seed deals might actually be underpriced. Plus: the "Sequoia scam" dual-tranche controversy, tokens-for-equity deals, and whether Claude Fable 5 is a true step function.Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Michael Downing (Castalia Capital), and Paige Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures) join Alex to go deep on Seed investing, startup economics, AI spend, and the impact of smarter AI on the founder journey.Guest Links:Tomasz Tunguz: https://x.com/ttunguzTheory Ventures: https://theoryvc.com/Michael Downing: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldowning/Castalia Capital: https://castalia.capital/Paige Doherty: https://x.com/paigefinnnBehind Genius Ventures: https://www.behindgeniusventures.comShow Links:Anthropic's IPO announcement: https://www.anthropic.com/news/confidential-draft-s1-secOpenAI's IPO announcement: https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/Bending Spoons F-1 filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2004711/000110465926071170/tm2613674-7_f1.htmSpaceX IPO filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026040364/spaceexplorationtechnologib.htmBrendan Foody's post on Sequoia: https://x.com/BrendanFoody/status/2063470286515683759Claude Fable 5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5OpenRouter data on Chinese models: https://openrouter.ai/rankings?view=daySaronic: https://www.saronic.com/MotherDuck: https://motherduck.com/Nox Metals: https://noxmetals.co/Timestamps:0:00 Tomasz Tunguz, Michael Downing & Paige Doherty join2:07 The SpaceX IPO and the IPO window4:22 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!6:30 The new bar: 10x growth (not 3x) to raise a great Series A8:46 Net-new AI budgets9:46 Squarespace: Turn your idea into a beautiful website! Go to https://www.squarespace.com/twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.11:09 How some founders are outgrowing venture capital11:44 The power pendulum swings back to founders12:46 SpaceX vs. OpenAI vs. Anthropic: Which IPO is most enticing?19:53 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.26:07 Tokens-for-equity, GPU-hours-for-equity & the financialization of compute28:35 Founders airing VC dirty laundry (napping VCs included)29:56 Netsuite - The business landscape is very chaotic right now. That's why you need NetSuite, by Oracle. Get the free business guide Demystifying AI at https://Netsuite.com/TWiST36:38 Claude Fable 5 first impressions: pricing, benchmarks & orchestration45:42 Where value accrues: application layer vs. models vs. private data1:00:06 Nationalization of AI labs: Bernie Sanders, Sam Altman & Trump agree?!1:01:25 Portfolio spotlights: Saronic, MotherDuck, and Nox MetalsSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisGreat TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

(0:00) Bill Maris joins the Besties! (0:33) Four critical lessons from a career in technology (5:58) Building Google Ventures with data and machine learning (9:51) Why small VC funds beat big ones on average (14:36) OpenAI's valuation problem and the AI price war (19:09) AI's "Atari Stage": what comes next? (25:23) VC's broken incentives and the future of deep tech Thanks to our partners for making this possible! EY - Agentic AI is introducing a new investment discipline. As AI shifts to consumption-based models, EY connects spend to enterprise value. https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/ai/agentic-ai-token-costs?WT.mc_id=3501318&AA.tsrc=sponsorship NYSE - Thank you to our partner, the New York Stock Exchange - a modern marketplace and exchange for building the future. It all happens at the NYSE. https://www.nyse.com Plaud - Never miss a moment. Plaud, our official wearable AI note-taking partner at All-In Liquidity Summit, captured every insight. https://www.plaud.ai Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg

Who’s got one thumb and is a fun guy? In this episode, Mark and Dan discuss Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #29, which is legacy issue #993. This issue was written by Joe Kelly. The cover features artwork by Mark Bagley and Marte Gracia. The interiors artwork from guest artist Pete Woods, and, of course, letters by VC's Joe Caramagna. This issue was first released on May 20th, 2026. Rick Coste edited this episode. Alex Galucki edited the video version of this podcast. Our artwork is handcrafted by artists Ron Frenz, Nick Cagnetti, and the late Sal Buscema. Our theme songs were produced by Ryland Bojack, Tony Thaxton, and Spider-Maj. Our animated introduction to the show is by Josh Sutton of Panels to Pixels. Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOPCnjzQZNViyEnoOuckaVQ We would also love to see you join our Amazing Spider-Slack community board. If you'd like to join in on our amazing conversations, click this link to get started: https://join.slack.com/t/amazingspider/shared_invite/zt-42tsfhs2-yBaH6KkRmOWiW_8gCf9SmQ This week's Patreon podcasts include a review of Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #30, our discussion of the two Spider-Man / Superman comics, and two episodes of the Whatever a Spider Can Diaries, which documents Dan’s process of writing a book about Spider-Man. If you'd like to follow along with our reviews as they are released, please check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/superiorspidertalk Read our B-Title reviews, collecting memories, and more in the Amazing Spider-Talk Substack! http://www.amazingspider.substack.com You can email questions to our show at amazingspidertalk@gmail.com or by clicking here. You can also BUY MARK'S BOOK, 100 Things Spider-Man Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. The post The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 7) #29 / LGY #993 – REVIEW appeared first on Amazing Spider-Talk.

The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298This Week In Startups is made possible by:Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twistLinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twistShopify https://shopify.com/twistPlaud https://Plaud.ai/twistToday's show:*Schools teach kids to memorize formulas. AI helps them skip thinking entirely. Brilliant founder Sue Khim joins TWiST to tell us how her new AI tutor, Koji, uses the Socratic Method to help students solve complex problems on their own. Find out why she says “People aren't anti-AI. They're anti-being replaced and anti-slop.”PLUS Jason's take on the VC horror stories going around X… and his own anecdote about the tenacity and passion of legendary investor John Doerr.Guest:Sue Khim on X: https://x.com/suekhimBrilliant: https://brilliant.org/Viral Koji launch video: https://x.com/suekhim/status/2060378988606878147Relevant Links:Viral Greg Isenberg post about VCs: https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/2061794787825479818Travis Kalanick's story: https://x.com/travisk/status/2062224472426365045Matthew Prince's stories: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/2062860530360959273John Doerr on X: https://x.com/johndoerrRoelof Botha on X: https://x.com/roelofbothaMichael Moritz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmoritz/Mohr Davidow Ventures: https://mdv.com/Jason's book “Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups”: https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Invest-Technology-Startups-Timeless-Investor/dp/0062560700Timestamps:0:00 Sue Khim's Alltuition origin story1:41 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!4:10 Brilliant: from launch to product market pull10:46 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist15:08 Pricing against tutors, not apps19:25 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/twist21:22 Koji demo24:11 Keeping Brilliant local while expanding30:22 Shopify - Turn those What Ifs into sales with the e-commerce platform powering millions of businesses. Sign up for your $1-per-month trial today at https://shopify.com/twist40:10 Every founder has a VC horror story44:33 John Doerr went the extra mile to hear JCal's pitch52:55 The LAUNCH investment strategySubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com

(0:00) Coatue's Thomas Laffont joins the Besties! (0:30) Public markets are back as AI is dominates the "Unicorn Economy" (5:15) The $4T AI IPO explosion (7:48) The case for SpaceX: Compounding launch monopoly and Starlink (10:38) The 10x Paradox: Why we're seeing unprecedented scaling (15:33) Segmenting AI markets and future impact (18:32) Bestie Q&A: Power Law in AI, future of VC, where revenue is coming from, liquidity explosion Thanks to our partners for making this possible! EY - Agentic AI is introducing a new investment discipline. As AI shifts to consumption-based models, EY connects spend to enterprise value. https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/ai/agentic-ai-token-costs?WT.mc_id=3501318&AA.tsrc=sponsorship NYSE - Thank you to our partner, the New York Stock Exchange - a modern marketplace and exchange for building the future. It all happens at the NYSE. https://www.nyse.com Plaud - Never miss a moment. Plaud, our official wearable AI note-taking partner at All-In Liquidity Summit, captured every insight. https://www.plaud.ai Apply for Summit 2026: ⁠https://allin.com/events⁠ Follow the besties: ⁠https://x.com/chamath⁠ ⁠https://x.com/Jason⁠ ⁠https://x.com/DavidSacks⁠ ⁠https://x.com/friedberg⁠ Follow on X: ⁠https://x.com/theallinpod⁠ Follow on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod⁠ Follow on TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod⁠ Follow on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod⁠ Intro Music Credit: ⁠https://rb.gy/tppkzl⁠ ⁠https://x.com/yung_spielburg