Podcasts about vcs

Derek Champagne talks with Sramana Mitra.Sramana is the founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world's first and only global virtual incubator/accelerator. Its goal is to help a million entrepreneurs globally reach a million dollars in annual revenue, build a trillion dollars in global GDP, and create 10 million jobs.Since its founding in 2010, 1Mby1M has become a powerful platform for democratization of entrepreneurship acceleration.Sramana also developed 1Mby1M's Incubator-in-a-Box methodology for Corporate Incubation that is used by enterprises to manage internal and external innovation endeavors.In 2015, LinkedIn named Sramana one of their Top 10 Influencers alongside Bill Gates and Richard Branson.Sramana has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Her fields of experience span from hardcore technology disciplines like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing and Semiconductors, to sophisticated consumer marketing industries including e-commerce, fashion and education.As an entrepreneur CEO, Sramana founded three companies: Dais (off-shore software services), Intarka (sales lead generation and qualification software using Artificial Intelligence algorithms; VC: NEA) and Uuma (online personalized store for selling clothes using Expert Systems software; VC: Redwood). Two of these were acquired, while the third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren which the company did not accept.As strategy consultant, Sramana has consulted with over 80 companies, including public companies such as SAP, Cadence Design Systems, Webex, KLA-Tencor, Best Buy, MercadoLibre and Tessera among others. Her work has also included numerous startups and VCs.Sramana has a Masters degree in EECS from MIT and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Economics from Smith College.From 2000 to 2004, Sramana chaired the MIT Club of Northern California's entrepreneurship program in Silicon Valley.Learn more at www.1Mby1M.comBusiness Leadership Series Intro and Outro music provided by Just Off Turner: https://music.apple.com/za/album/the-long-walk-back/268386576

In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Anthony Mouchantaf, co-founder and CEO of Biossil, a biotech company on a mission to resurrect orphaned drugs using AI and a hedge fund–inspired operating model. Anthony takes us through his unconventional journey: from a law school student obsessed with Alexander Hamilton, to founding his first startup, Rthm (acquired), to investing at OMERS and RBC, and finally returning to the founder seat with Biossil.They dive into the mindset shift required to leave a stable legal career for the uncertainty of startups, why Anthony views entrepreneurship as a “drug,” and how his time as an LP shaped his view of what separates great VCs from mediocre ones. Anthony opens up about the early days of Biossil, the “too cute” capital-efficient strategy, and how a serendipitous dinner intro to Founders Fund changed everything.He also breaks down the real-world mechanics of acquiring off-the-shelf drugs, the brutal reality of biotech timelines, and why regulatory reform is the hidden bottleneck to AI-driven medicine. From the partnership with OpenAI to the company's operating philosophy (hedging beta, maximizing catalyst density, and isolating alpha), Anthony offers a blueprint for building a resilient, mission-driven biotech for the AI era.Whether you're a founder, investor, or just someone curious about the intersection of AI and life sciences, this episode is packed with hard-earned wisdom on risk, identity, and the art of controlling what you can control.From Law School to Startup Life (02:24)* Growing up in Toronto as the child of immigrant parents, chasing constitutional law* The Alexander Hamilton obsession that started in high school* Teaching a course at U of T law without ever practicing* How a late-night conversation at Massey College with co-founder Alex led to RthmWhat Founding Rthm Taught Him About Himself (06:14)* Getting comfortable with structural uncertainty as almost “a drug”* Why you can take the individual out of the startup, but never the startup out of the individual* The itch that never fully goes away after founding somethingFrom Founder to Investor: OMERS and RBCX (07:11)* What separates great investors from destructive ones* “Extremely hard to kill”: what he saw early in Matt and Ripple Ventures* Why most VCs cluster around mediocrity, and what the outliers do differently* The poker-chip analogy: how capital position shapes VC risk appetite* Why good LPs need to “thumb the scale” for good VCs, just as good VCs do for foundersThe Idea Behind Biossil (15:05)* Reuniting with Alex, an MD-PhD, after years on separate paths* The core problem: drug development should be recursive, but biotechs can't afford to make it so* Why promising drugs get stranded in “regulatory limbo” when the data is equivocal, not failed* The insight: using technology to systematize what was historically a relationship-driven, human-scale rescue effortBiossil 1.0 vs. the Bigger Vision (20:43)* Launching in 2023 on a lean seed round with no capital to acquire drugs outright* Getting “too cute” trying to solve the problem at a fraction of the necessary cost* Why most VCs evaluate founders cross-sectionally instead of longitudinallyHunting for Orphaned Drugs (26:03)* Why data is a cost of admission in biotech, not a moat like in tech* How Biossil structures deals to share economics with original rights holders* Why inbound interest rarely meets their barRunning Biossil Like an Operating Hedge Fund (30:50)* Isolating alpha, or execution, from beta, or market and biotech cycle risk* Why traditional biotech investing is “binary risk you can't underwrite” without a portfolio* Building resilience through catalyst density instead of just runway* The “epsilon” factor: surviving long enough for unexplained outcomes to work in your favorBuilding Lean with AI (34:12)* Running a hyper-efficient, eight-person core team* Why Biossil takes on regulatory and commercial risk, not manufacturing risk* The pipeline today: $70M raised, 11 drugs, 5 open clinical trials across the US, Canada, and Europe* What makes manufacturing the most underestimated cost in biotechThe Next 5-10 Years for Biossil (49:47)* The long-term vision: an approved-drug pipeline, deeper trials, more disease areas* Bringing new mechanisms of action to market as a category-defining goalAdvice to His Past Self (51:15)* Why he's hesitant to just tell people to “go do entrepreneurship”* Motivation matters more than the identity of being a founder* The Steve Jobs commencement speech that reframed how he thinks about riskAbout Anthony MouchantafAnthony Mouchantaf is the co-founder and CEO of Biossil, a biotech company that uses AI to systematically identify, acquire, and advance orphaned drugs left behind by failed clinical trials. With a background in law (U of T), startup founding (Rthm, acquired), and venture investing (OMERS, RBC), Anthony brings a rare blend of legal, financial, and operational discipline to the high-stakes world of drug development. Biossil is backed by Founders Fund and OpenAI, and is on a mission to turn industrial-scale drug resurrection into a new category of biotech innovation.Connect with Anthony Mouchantaf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-mouchantaf-508442113/Learn more about Biossil: https://www.biossil.co/Connect with Matt Cohen on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-cohen1Visit the Ripple Ventures website: https://www.rippleventures.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

AI spending isn't slowing down.But the AI investment story may be changing.Global AI spending is still accelerating, Nvidia is reporting extraordinary growth, and hyperscalers continue committing hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers, GPUs, networking and power.So why are we hearing more about an "AI slowdown"?Because there are several very different things that could be slowing — model development, infrastructure spending, AI revenue growth, or simply investor expectations.And those distinctions matter.In this episode, we break down what is actually happening beneath the AI boom, why massive infrastructure spending is creating a new focus on returns, and what happens when investors start asking whether AI growth is fast enough to justify the capital being deployed.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comKey topics we explore:— Why AI spending and infrastructure demand remain extraordinarily strong— What Nvidia's latest numbers reveal about AI demand— Why hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure investment changes the investment equation— The growing importance of capital efficiency, margins and infrastructure utilization— Why highly leveraged AI infrastructure companies could face different pressures than hyperscalers— How frontier AI development could slow without AI adoption slowing— Why inference, AI agents and enterprise automation may become increasingly important— The difference between slowing AI growth and slowing AI expectations— Why the next phase of the AI boom could be defined by returns rather than spendingThe bigger question:Can AI generate enough economic value to justify the enormous amount of capital being invested into the technology?AI doesn't have to stop growing for the AI trade to slow down.It simply has to grow more slowly than the expectations already priced into the market.For investors, that distinction could become increasingly important as the AI ecosystem moves from a period of aggressive capital deployment toward a period where revenue, margins, utilization and return on invested capital matter much more.The question is no longer simply:"How big can AI become?"It's:"Show me the returns."LINKSPrashant Choubey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahabSubscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.comSubscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10XSubscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQVC10X website - https://vc10x.comSponsorship queries: prashantchoubey3@gmail.comThis channel is for asset managers, allocators, and investors who want analysis that holds up—not headlines dressed as insight.Subscribe for weekly data-driven breakdowns of the forces reshaping capital markets.#VC10X #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Nvidia #AIInvesting #AIInfrastructure #AIBubble #DataCenters #AIAgents #VentureCapital #Investing #TechInvesting

Cam Richardson built Paysquad to make group payments easy with a button at checkout and no awkward Venmo requests. Can he convince VCs that Gen Z wants to pay together for all their events, trips, and gifts? This is The Pitch for Paysquad. Featuring investors Elizabeth Yin, Jesse Middleton, Mike Ma, Charles Hudson, and Yasmin Cruz Ferrine. Watch Cam's pitch uncut on Patreon (@ThePitch) Join us for our fall live shows and Season 17 taping: pitch.show/events Subscribe to our email newsletter: insider.pitch.show Learn more about The Pitch Fund: thepitch.fund *Disclaimer: No offer to invest in Paysquad is being made to or solicited from the listening audience on today's show. The information provided on this show is not intended to be investment advice and should not be relied upon as such. The investors on today's episode are providing their opinions based on their own assessment of the business presented. Those opinions should not be considered professional investment advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

00:00 Back after a year (no polish, just talking)00:57 The point of the internet isn't money — it's connection02:22 Broke in NJ to Miami whiplash04:44 Who am I vs who is the company05:43 Cheating on marketing with product08:08 Don't wanna just be the viral meme guy10:00 Marketers have an identity crisis too (vibe coding)12:54 VCs = fairy godmothers who only pick up on a boat14:14 Anti-polish internet / just make people laugh14:42 Grandma watched my Reels because I wasn't calling16:10 Agents era — Grokbot booked my UM speaking gigs19:32 Support + CMO on autopilot (Mimi Mills)22:16 Meta Ray-Bans (not sponsored, actually obsessed)25:12 Ketone + health year kickoff26:12 Boxing, padel, sleep still sucks29:08 Men sports-bet more than they play sports with friends31:33 Why I moved to Miami (beach over bay boat envy)35:26 Hiring: they find me on Twitter. Keep it mysterious.41:35 Content diet: more music, fewer masturbatory pods44:19 Serendipity / Chief Stumbling Officer48:02 I'm just a vessel — stop forcing everything48:29 Fear year: hit pieces and death threats50:31 Stop Pokemon-catching podcast guests52:41 Saturdays for Shabbat (founders need offline)55:37 We weren't meant to be always connected59:01 Don't find me. I'm at the beach. Peace.

Talking to venture capitalists often feels like that scene in The Notebook—"What do you want?!" This week, we preview a rare, candid workshop coming to Portland with Clarence Bethea designed to decode "VC speak" and share the quiet parts out loud.We also break down new local tech developments: YC alum Ravoy raising $27M and building out a Portland engineering presence, Experatas launching AI-driven digital health malpractice tools, the Portland Office of Small Business releasing its first data-driven impact report, and the full speaker lineup for the 2025 Built Festival.PORTLAND STARTUP NEWS CHAPTERS00:00 - Why talking to VCs feels like "The Notebook"01:20 - Experatas: AI-enabled digital health for malpractice reviews02:56 - Portland Office of Small Business 1st Year Impact Report06:24 - Startup Stories shoutout: Peter Kirwan & mebot ai06:55 - What VCs Won't Say: Clarence Bethea workshop at Instrument (Oct 8)11:15 - YC alum Revoy raises $27M & hires in Portland14:14 - Built Festival 2025: Celebrating Oregon consumer products (Sept 25)16:17 - Built Festival speaker & maker highlights (Steelport, TLE, and more)19:23 - SecretsFIND RICK TUROCZY ON THE INTERNET AT…- https://patreon.com/turoczy- https://linkedin.com/in/turoczy- https://bsky.app/profile/turoczy.bsky.social- https://siliconflorist.substack.com/- https://pdxslack.comABOUT SILICON FLORIST ----------For nearly two decades, Rick Turoczy has published Silicon Florist, a blog, newsletter, and podcast that covers entrepreneurs, founders, startups, entrepreneurship, tech, news, and events in the Portland, Oregon, startup community. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a startup or tech enthusiast, or simply intrigued by Portland's startup culture, Silicon Florist is your go-to source for the latest news, events, jobs, and opportunities in Portland Oregon's flourishing tech and startup scene. Join us in exploring the innovative world of startups in Portland, where creativity and collaboration meet.ABOUT RICK TUROCZY ----------Rick Turoczy has been working in, on, and around the Portland, Oregon, startup community for nearly 30 years. He has been recognized as one of the “OG”s of startup ecosystem building by the Kauffman Foundation. And he has been humbled by any number of opportunities to speak on stages from SXSW to INBOUND and from Kobe, Japan, to Muscat, Oman, including an opportunity to share his views on community building on the TEDxPortland stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj98mr_wUA0). All because of a blog. Weird.https://siliconflorist.com#pdx #portland #oregon #startup #entrepreneur

What are VCs looking for? Is your startup fundable? What do you need to improve to get financing? On this week's re-release show, we have Amy Wood, the Program Manager for the "Most Fundable Companies" initiative at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, a groundbreaking program that empowers early-stage startups by providing critical insights into their readiness for private investment. Launched in 2018, the MFC program democratizes access to funding, helping promising companies refine their financial projections, market opportunities, and team strengths.

In dieser Folge des Trending-Topics-Podcasts spricht Jakob Steinschaden mit Chris Schnabl, Investing Partner bei Andreessen Horowitz, über folgende Themen:

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Wilson Sonsini: https://www.wsgr.com/en/   Today's show: One of YouTube's three co-founders left for grad school and walked away with a fraction of what his partners made on the Google sale. Becki DeGraw of Wilson Sonsini joins Jason for Startup Legal Basics to explain the vesting schedule behind that gap, and why you want one even if you never take a dollar of venture money. Learn how VCs actually respond when a founder says "I've already put in four years," and the exact language Jason gives founders to turn one term sheet into three. PLUS, why is an inactive advisor still vesting your equity, and who wrote those performance milestones? Guests: Becki DeGraw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-degraw-639bbb62/ Wilson Sonsini: https://www.wsgr.com/en/ Relevant Links: Becki DeGraw — partner in WSGR's San Francisco office — https://www.wsgr.com/en/people/becki-degraw.html TechCrunch broke the YouTube story— https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/09/google-has-acquired-youtube/ Sequoia Capital — https://www.sequoiacap.com/ Roelof Botha — led Sequoia's YouTube investment and later ran the firm globally → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roelof_Botha ESOP / employee stock option pool — https://thisweekinstartups.com/basics Founder & advisor equity documents — https://www.wsgr.com/en/services/practice-areas/corporate/emerging-companies.html Timestamps: 0:06 Becki DeGraw on why founder equity is "near and dear" to every founder 1:53 Founder vesting explained 3:49 Why you want vesting even if you never take VC money 6:05 "Why do I have to vest again?" 7:32 Leverage is a function of how many offers you have 10:36 The exact script for landing a second term sheet 14:37 Don't let an AI write your three-page vesting schedule 18:19 Character in Silicon Valley: it's a small world after all 19:49 Take the emotion out of it Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check 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 McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

ANTIC Episode 130 - The Tongue-Twister Episode In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We trip all over our own tongues trying to bring you all the news fit to print in the Atari 8-bit computer world… READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kay's Book "Terrible Nerd"  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at AtariAge  Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What we've been up to Diskmenu manual - archive.org/details/apx-diskmenu-manual  30th anniversary of Classic Computer Magazine Archive - AtariMagazines.com:  Discussion - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391744-30th-anniversary-of-classic-computer-magazine-archive/  Atari Yahoo Groups archives: https://archive.org/details/@savetz?query=atari+yahoo+group  https://archive.org/details/@savetz?query=identifier%3Ayahoo-group*&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22  Atari Usenet group archive additions - https://archive.org/details/ANTIC_podcast_extras?tab=collection&query=usenet  MPP MicroportXL board manual - https://archive.org/details/Supra_Microport-XL_for_Atari_manual  New Atari Legacy magazine -  ​​https://atarilegacy.com/  Recent Interview Shows  Interview index:  here  https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-459-mike-lorenzen-atari-program-text-editor-pitfall-ii  https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-460-tim-jenkins-cheating-at-roulette  ANTIC Interview 461 - James W. Burley, APX Data Base/Report System  ANTIC Interview 462 - Bob Fraser, APX Insomnia, Supersort, De Re Atari  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/392145-bob-fraser-disk-trove/  New & Updated Games AstroSmasher!, Atari 8-bit computer game made with AI inspired by Intellivision's classic title Astrosmash! - by gimmee99 -  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391594-saturday-fun-astrosmasher/  Texas Hold 'Em - MultiPlayer Game by MassiveRobot - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391615-texas-hold-em-multiplayer-game/  FujiRealm Playable Demo MORPG Released for FujiNet by mozzwald - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391580-fujirealm-playable-demo-morpg-released-for-fujinet/  New & Updated Software FujiLink — A FujiNet Driver for SpartaDOS X 4.50 by Piotr D. Kaczorowski - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391472-fujilink-%E2%80%94-a-fujinet-driver-for-spartados-x-450/  Kat5200 emulator - https://t.co/HH0p6DtNaO  Mailbox protocol adapter with GMAIL and IMAPS support by Thom Cherryhomes - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391551-mailbox-protocol-adapter-with-gmail-and-imaps-support/  FujiGPT - an LLM client for Atari FujiNet by HanJammer: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391346-fujigpt-an-llm-client-for-atari-fujinet/  https://github.com/HanJammer/FujiGPT  ATRaction – ATR/XFD image manager - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/392013-atraction-%E2%80%93-atrxfd-image-manager/  d/BASIC for d/OS - Raj S Madugula - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/392300-intro-to-king-dos-atari-130xe-a8picocart-and-me-60fps/  Publications Atari Insights - https://www.ataribasics.com  Compute's Gazette - https://www.computesgazette.com  End of the rainbow https://amzn.to/3RZSV6z  Atari Projects:  https://atariprojects.org/2026/06/28/benchmark-your-atari-8-bit-computers-using-basic-15-30-mins/  https://atariprojects.org/2026/07/04/learn-about-scanlines-using-peek-in-atari-basic-5-10-mins/  https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/27/a-computer-history-time-capsule/  New & Updated Hardware JUST_POKEY from Lotharek: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391270-just_pokey-from-lotharek/  https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=431  The Company That Calls Itself Atari https://kotaku.com/atari-and-universal-sign-movie-deal-for-10-video-game-adaptations-including-pong-asteroids-and-missile-command-2000719087  Other Jeffrey Stanton died  https://smmirror.com/jeffrey-stanton-leading-venice-beach-historian-who-authored-coney-island-of-the-pacific-passes-away-at-79/  https://www.atariarchives.org/agagd/  Tom Hudson - https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/thomas-hudson-obituary?id=54708986 FujiNet NOS Introduction Video (YouTube) by Thom Cherryhomes: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391452-fujinet-nos-introduction-video-youtube/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-1PJEkK2ck  FujiNet NOS Introduction PDF - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391386-fujinet-nos-introduction-pdf/  FujiNet Programmer's Guide PDF - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391365-fujinet-programmers-guide-pdf/  If you would like to receive regular FujiNet updates, please consider subscribing to fujinews.substack.com All user manuals are available on this page: fujinet.online/getting-started. For your convenience, here are direct links to each manual here: FujiNet for Atari Owner's Guide  FujiNet NOS (for Atari) (Introduction to the FujiNet Network Operating System)  FujiNet for Apple II Getting Started Guide  FujiNet for Coleco ADAM Set-Up Manual  FujiNet for Tandy Color Computer Getting Started Manual  FujiNet for RS232 on MS-DOS Guide to Operations  Brewing Academy back in business: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/390695-all-brewing-academy-inventory-is-being-sold-please-read-for-details/ Soft launched with a lot of the easier products – TheBrewingacademy.com is up and running! Atarimania update: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/392305-new-atarimania We are happy to announce the launch of the new version of Atarimania! https://atariprojects.org/2026/08/23/explore-the-new-atarimania-website-10-15-mins/  Upcoming Shows Vintage Computer Festival GB 2026 - September 11-13 - Aintree Racecourse, near Liverpool, United Kingdom - https://www.facebook.com/events/25457837877216829/  Vintage Computer Festival Midwest - September 12-13 -  Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - https://vcfmw.org/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 9-11 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  VCF Montreal - November 7-8 - Champlain College Saint-Lambert, Saint-Lambert, QC - https://cvcfed.org/vcf-montreal-2-0/  YouTube Videos Messy Atari 800XL comes in for a refit - FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPfGf8xbkBg  Level demo by Agenda (Atari 8-bit computers) - Philsan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4rid6qTsGw  The Atari Console You've Probably Never Seen - RETRO is the new black (Wolfgang Kierdorf) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gYwQssg6eQ  AUTCODE Invaders

AI researchers are resigning — and some are warning that the technology is getting dangerously good.The latest is Jacob Coxon, who recently resigned from Anthropic after previously working at OpenAI and publicly shared his reasoning on X.But this isn't simply a story about one researcher leaving an AI lab.The bigger issue is the race between frontier AI companies. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and others are competing to build increasingly capable models, while some researchers are warning that the safety systems needed to control these models may not be keeping pace.Even if one lab slows down, its competitors have an incentive to keep moving.In this episode, we break down why AI researchers are increasingly raising concerns, what the frontier AI race looks like from inside the labs, and why self-improving AI could fundamentally change the risk equation.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comKey topics we explore:— Why Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic — The growing divide between AI capability and AI safety — Why frontier AI has become a race nobody wants to lose — What happens when AI becomes capable of doing AI research — The potential implications of recursive self-improvement — Why even safety-focused AI labs face enormous competitive pressure — What the AI arms race means for investors, companies and policymakersThe bigger question:What happens when every AI lab believes it can't afford to slow down?For investors, this is more than an AI safety debate. The incentives driving frontier AI development could shape how capital flows into the sector, how companies compete, and ultimately who controls the most powerful technology being built today.The challenge isn't simply making AI more capable.It's building an environment where companies can slow down when necessary — without handing the entire advantage to whoever keeps accelerating.LINKSPrashant Choubey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.com Subscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10X Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986 Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ VC10X website - https://vc10x.comSponsorship queries: prashantchoubey3@gmail.comThis channel is for asset managers, allocators, and investors who want analysis that holds up—not headlines dressed as insight.Subscribe for weekly data-driven breakdowns of the forces reshaping capital markets.#VC10X #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Anthropic #OpenAI #AISafety #AIInvesting #VentureCapital #Investing #TechInvesting

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital.In this episode, I sit down with Carter Reum, Co‑Founder of M13, to explore his journey from Goldman Sachs and a shelved Oaktree offer to founding and exiting a beverage company and building a multi‑billion‑dollar venture platform. We discuss how Carter reframes “risk” through probability‑adjusted outcomes and asymmetric upside, his “microscope and telescope” framework for balancing execution with long‑term vision, and the idea of “wins above replacement” as a way to assess founder‑ and investor‑fit. Our conversation dives into what it means to build a truly operator‑led VC firm, the wide gap between value‑add and “negative value” VCs, and how M13 uses discipline, retrospectives, and portfolio construction to separate process from outcomes in an AI‑driven, increasingly frothy market.Carter Reum is M13's Co-Founder and Managing Partner. After building and selling VEEV Spirits, Carter and his brother Courtney co-founded M13 in 2016, designing it as the firm they wanted as founders. M13 has since backed 18 unicorns at seed or Series A and ranks #3 globally by HEC Paris–Dow Jones. Before M13, Carter was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and co-authored the bestselling Shortcut Your Startup. He serves on the board of LACMA.Topics in this conversation include:* Rethinking Risk and Probability-Adjusted Outcomes (2:02)* Using a Microscope and Telescope to Build Enduring Companies (8:56)* How M13 Was Designed as a Different, Operator-Led VC Firm (12:58)* Operator to Investor and How VCs Should Work with Founders (17:08)* Early-Stage Investing, Imperfect Information, and Wins Above Replacement (20:06)* Travis Kalanick, Negative Value VCs, and Why Most Investors Miss (26:26)* Building an Institutionalized VC Platform, Culture, and Process (31:56)* Separating Decision Quality from Outcomes and Doing Retrospectives (34:52)* Fund Size, Portfolio Construction, and Competing with Multistage Giants (44:11)* Risk Spectrum, Asymmetry, and the Sammy Sosa vs. Mark McGwire Analogy (47:55)* Excitement and Anxiety in Today's AI-Driven, Frothy Venture Market (50:16)* Fear vs. Greed, LP Behavior, and Closing Thoughts on Building a Decacorn (52:53)Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Carter. If you'd like to get Venture Unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. Thanks again for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

Episode 443 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Allison Byers, Founder & CEO of Scroobious. There is a lot that goes into raising venture capital. You have to have the right idea, market size, traction, and it's incredibly helpful to be networked with VCs ahead of your fundraise. Plus, it's very important that entrepreneurs are aligned with an investor's expectations and motivations for funding a business because they are ultimately trying to provide returns for LPs. However, venture capital isn't the only option for financing a company. There are lots of other avenues and some are non-dilutive like bootstrapping, revenue-based financing, traditional loans, and more. It was Allison's own experience of leading a medical device company that was trying to raise its Series B round of funding after hitting every milestone, paying customers, and an FDA registration that opened her eyes to the challenges of raising capital. It led her to start a company and author a book to demystify the fundraising process and build a more equitable innovation economy. Through her company, Scroobious, she's building a capital access platform where founders, investors, mentors, and advisors meet to build real relationships that unlock opportunity, innovation, and growth. Her recently published book, Fundraising for the Rest of Us, is a practical guide for raising capital on your own terms. In this episode, we cover: * Allison's background growing up and how she got her career started. * Her personal story of being forced out of her job after returning from maternity leave, which ultimately led her down the entrepreneurial path. * The story of Digital Cognition Technologies, a neurodiagnostics product, and its attempted Series B fundraise and ultimate asset sale. * The inspiration behind Scroobious and how its platform helps founders. * The details of the Core 10 Pitch Deck Framework. * Her experience writing the book and what it was like recording the audiobook. * And so much more! Podcast Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by one of the strongest longtime supporters of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors and $44B in loans as of Q4 2025 – SVB delivers expert guidance, specialized products and a team that knows the innovation economy inside and out. Learn more at SVB.com.

Aaron started Vestwell in 2016. Two years in, he had $500K in ARR and an investor asking if it would ever make money. During the 2021 bull market, VCs told him 401ks were too boring—they were busy chasing crypto. Then Morgan Stanley signed. Today Vestwell has 2.5 million people saving on the platform, over $200M in ARR, and just raised $385M at a $2B valuation.In this episode, Aaron breaks down why he white-labeled everything instead of building his own brand, how losing the JP Morgan bid as a 40-person startup still turned into one of his largest partnerships, and how a methodical cap table let him raise a Series A on a couple hundred thousand in revenue.Why You Should ListenWhy letting your customers keep their brand beats competing with them.How to raise a Series A with only a few hundred thousand in ARR.Why losing an enterprise deal is the start of the sale, not the end.Why you never regret firing someone too soon.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Vestwell, Aaron Schumm, fintech, 401k, retirement savings, enterprise sales, channel partnerships, white label software, Series A fundraising, Morgan StanleyChapters00:00:00 Intro00:02:05 The Morgan Stanley Deal That Proved PMF00:08:32 A 401k So Bad It Started a Company00:10:23 Building V1 in a Regulated Industry00:17:07 Turning Advisors Into a Sales Channel00:23:57 Raising an A on $200K of Revenue00:31:16 Too Boring for the Crypto Bull Market00:38:45 Losing JP Morgan, Then Winning It Back00:43:23 Never Regret Firing Too SoonSend me a message to let me know what you think!

“You can't talk people out of wanting a burger.” — Erin Somers In February, Bruce Friedrich came on the show to explain how lab-grown meat would save the planet. Today's guest is less sanguine about this revolution. Erin Somers — author of the bestselling novel The Ten Year Affair and a twenty-year vegetarian — spent a year exploring our supposedly meatless future. In “Where's the Beef?”, the cover story of this month's Harper's, Somers describes the still-born lab-grown-meat revolution that wasn't. The problem, Somers explains, isn't technological. Having raised $330,000 from Sergey Brin, the Dutch scientist Mark Post grew the first burger from cow shoulder cells back in 2013. What subsequently failed is everything else. The price never fell, VCs lost interest, conservatives legislated against it, and the industry's best hope, Believer Meats, went bankrupt. Above all, the revolution never went mainstream. “You can't talk people out of wanting a burger,” Somers explains. Somers' journey ended at the iconic Berkeley Bowl where she was offered a Sumo orange, a hybrid fruit engineered to be both delicious and resilient. Technology fed her after all. Just not in the way that revolutionaries like Bruce Friedrich predicted. The revolution won't be meatless. Let's hope we can still save the planet. Five Takeaways •       The Woolly Mammoth Meatball. Somers's obsession began around 2022, when the Australian company Vow extracted DNA from a fossil and made a woolly mammoth meatball — which, because no one could be sure meat grown from DNA that old was safe, no one was allowed to eat. A forbidden food, conjured at great expense: to Somers, the perfect emblem of an industry that was always “a microcosm of what is going on culturally” — a gold-rush mentality among investors, a tech product perpetually not-quite-arriving, and a carnival of curiosities around the edges. It speaks, she says, directly to our AI moment: massive hype, cons and bills of goods sold in the meantime, and the actual product arriving years late in a different form. Her quest began with the simplest motive in journalism: “I just really wanna taste it.”•       The Technology Works. Nobody's Clamoring. The scientific story is genuine: Mark Post grew the first lab burger from cow shoulder cells in 2013 — two years' work, $330,000, bankrolled by Sergey Brin, eaten live at London's Riverside Studios — and the field has since scaled from petri dishes to bioreactors the size of a beer brewery. “They can actually do the things that they say.” What's missing is everything downstream: a price point anywhere near conventional meat (two to four times as expensive), a trained workforce, and — the quiet killer — demand. “No one's clamoring for it.” The shuttered North Carolina factory Somers visited stands fully equipped and ready to run; it simply “didn't quite make it over the finish line.” Even MrBeast, blind-testing Upside Foods' cultivated chicken sandwich for millions of viewers, couldn't tell the difference — which made Somers, still untasted at the time, irrationally jealous.•       The Believer Collapse. The piece's centerpiece has a novelist's timing. The day before the industry's trade conference in North Carolina's Research Triangle — the unexpected hub, anchored by the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein at NC State — Somers drove forty-five minutes into the countryside to check on Believer Meats' multimillion-dollar facility and found it shuttered. The next day, sitting among the assembled scientists and funders, the news broke: the company that was the industry's best hope for reaching the market had gone bankrupt. Gossip filled every conference break; the postmortem was unanimous — they scaled too quickly, pushed by backers to move faster than they were ready to — and the mood sank, with two full days of programming about “the future of the industry” still to run. Andrew's question wrote itself: after The Ten Year Affair, has America's affair with artificial meat ended? She tasted the meat. The affair, they agreed, is concluded.•       The Pincer. Two forces squeezed the industry simultaneously. The venture capitalists “abandoned ship once they saw how hard it was going to be” — no blame assigned, exactly: “they did what they do. They sought to make money. They bailed.” And conservative legislatures turned a tiny industry into a wedge issue, conjuring “the straw man of lab-grown meat enthusiasts who are going to take away your beef burgers” — laughable, Somers argues, since the industry “poses so little threat that it's kind of laughable that it's been legislated against at all. It's almost total theater.” Bezos's $30 million center gets measured credit — real work, smart people, and a drop in the bucket. Her deeper conclusion cuts against food moralism: personal responsibility won't slow climate change. The fix must come from legislation and innovation, “because you can't talk people out of wanting a burger.” The likely future, per past guest George Monbiot's territory: a hybrid — regenerative agriculture plus alternative proteins plus policy.•       The Sumo Orange. Is this an obituary? Somers thinks not — Andrew's analogy: AI survived its own winters in the eighties and nineties, and downturns are chapters, not endings. The scientists are still at work, the innovations will surface elsewhere in food systems and medicine, and “nothing... will go to waste.” Her ending makes the point by indirection: at a Mission Barns tasting at the Berkeley Bowl — Andrew's favorite store on earth — a marketing director walked her through the produce section and pressed two oranges on her. Walking away, she ate a Sumo orange: not naturally occurring, a hybrid born of food science, “engineered to be delicious and... engineered to be resilient.” Look what technology can give us, she concluded — “it's not so dark.” Proust had his madeleine; Somers has her orange. A new novel is begun, two years out; a return visit is promised. About the Guest Erin Somers is a writer, essayist, and critic in Beacon, New York. She is the author of the novels Stay Up with Hugo Best and the bestselling The Ten Year Affair; her journalism and criticism have appeared widely. “Where's the Beef? The Lab-Grown-Meat Revolution That Wasn't” is the cover story of the September 2026 issue of Harper's Magazine. A vegetarian of twenty years, she has now, finally, tasted the meat. Her third novel is underway. References: •       “Where's the Beef? The Lab-Grown-Meat Revolution That Wasn't” by Erin Somers — Harper's Magazine, September 2026. The second piece from this issue on the show this week, after Finn Brunton's “The Chaos Machine.”•       The Ten Year Affair and Stay Up with Hugo Best by Erin Somers — the novels; a third is underway.•    &nbs...

“I trust them to kiss the government's ass. I don't trust them to serve me.” — Keith Teare Who to trust in an age of AI agents? Especially when it seems as if these swarming agents — akin to the gang of adolescents in William Golding's Lord of the Flies — are developing minds of their own. At this week's G20 Innovation Ministerial in North Carolina, Donald Trump and his minions produced a hands-off charter for AI. Known as the “Carolina Principles,” it sounds to critics like a particularly unprincipled justification for regulation-free AI. That Was The Week publisher, Keith Teare, however, isn't a critic of Trump's Principles. Don't trust the trust scare, Keith tells us. Especially all the fear around the swarming agents that are supposedly developing minds of their own. Pooh-poohing the real-world Hugging Face breakout, Keith argues that since he's never witnessed swarming agents on his computer, they can't exist. Which is akin, I suspect, to a climate denier who argues that global warming is a hoax because it happens to be chilly outside. All-too-human logic, I fear, in our age of autonomous AI agents. Five Takeaways •       The Carolina Principles. The week's set piece was a G20 Innovation Ministerial in North Carolina that Keith describes as a Trump takeover of a global event: the Russian finance minister turned up at Trump's invitation, and the attendees were lectured — via David Sacks and Howard Lutnick — on the merits of unregulated American capitalism. A propaganda event, Keith concedes, but one that reached the right conclusion: the resulting “Carolina Principles,” signed by everyone including the Europeans, call for flexible frameworks that encourage adoption and pointedly decline to make trust a license innovation must obtain in advance. With Bernie Sanders calling the same week for a development halt pending government licenses, Keith's position is characteristically blunt: “when I've started a company, I don't go and ask permission. I just do it.” Getting rid of Lina Khan, he adds, remains about the only thing he likes about the Trump administration. Andrew's verdict on the charter: to critics, a particularly unprincipled justification for regulation-free AI.•       Don't Trust the Trust Scare. Keith's editorial thesis: trust is not granted by authority; it is built through use. You trust yourself in a car because you drive one, and not on roller skates because you fall over. Over seventy percent of Americans now use AI — the same Americans who tell Politico they oppose data centers — which is why Keith reads the backlash as a confection of media and populist politicians, soon to evaporate (the real coming problem, he argues, is too few data centers, not too many; the modern off-grid ones are net givers of power). The withheld ChatGPT-6 gets the same treatment: launched but limited to insiders, which Keith reads not as safety but as government relations — the pull quote of the week. Andrew's counter: in a world without regulators, trust in the companies is all we have — including, awkwardly for Keith, when they withhold their own products. Exhibit for the defense, from The Washington Post: Americans in an age of anxiety leaning on AI — Keith included, who feeds his medical records to ChatGPT and finds it “very closely aligned with what your doctor thinks.”•       The Swarming Fight. The hour's genuine clash. In the wake of the Hugging Face hack, Kevin Roose warned in The New York Times that it should make you worry more about AI, and OpenAI's Dean Ball publicly apologized for failing “to communicate in sufficiently serious terms about the specifics of self-sovereign AI.” Neither is a doomer — which is Andrew's point. Keith's rebuttal: every swarm sighting has occurred inside an AI lab, in an experiment whose parameters the labs themselves set — “on my computer, I don't see any swarms” — and self-sovereign AI is anthropomorphizing science fiction: agents pursue goals humans set. “I know enough to know BS when I read it, and this is BS.” Andrew's reply — “I think you're trivializing” — went unwithdrawn, and his sign-off flagged that Keith perhaps simplifies the Hugging Face incident. Unresolved, to be continued. Andrew's framing gives the episode its title — swarming agents as the gang of adolescents in Golding's Lord of the Flies — and his verdict its sting: Keith's I-see-no-swarms-on-my-computer logic is akin to a climate denier calling global warming a hoax because it's chilly outside. Keith's exit line: “I'm just gonna go and check on my swarms.”•       Nvidia Buys Hugging Face. The week's biggest deal: Nvidia acquired Hugging Face — the repository of the world's open-source AI models — for $13 billion, just as The New York Times reported corporate America getting hooked on open source (much of it Chinese: GLM 5.3). The economics, per Keith: an $18,000 Mac Studio or a top-end Nvidia GPU beats $200-a-month token fees — AI capability migrating to the edge, out of OpenAI's and Anthropic's meters. Which suits Nvidia either way: The Economist calls it the central bank of AI, though Andrew prefers arms supplier — it wins whether the future is open or closed, and is, ironically, the most trusted name in the business precisely because it has no dog in the fight. Don't expect it to govern anything, says Keith: “that would put friction in the way of their sales.” The challenger to watch: newly public Cerebras, whose wafer-scale chips undercut Nvidia on token price.•       Mom and Dad's Money. The Times asked which investors will get rich from Anthropic's IPO — and noted that, unlike past booms, firms like Sequoia hold both horses, OpenAI and Anthropic alike. Keith's arithmetic explains why: fewer than fifty companies will return venture capital this cycle, those two representing more than half the likely value, and last month 75 percent of all dollars invested in VC funds went to Andreessen Horowitz alone. (His own SignalRank barometer: for two years, none of its 64 investments cracked the top-20 most-wanted secondary shares; now five have.) The pyramid runs from VCs down to pension funds — “somebody's mom and dad's money is heavily betting that Anthropic and OpenAI are gonna return large amounts of wealth” — and late secondary buyers, Figma-style, almost always lose when the IPO right-sizes the price. What could topple the deck of cards? Regulation slowing the modeled returns. Which is why, for Keith, the midterms should be fought on jobs and wages — data centers, he insists, are not a winning issue. About the Co-Host Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation and publisher of the That Was The Week tech newsletter, whose editorial — “Don't Trust the Trust Scare” — frames this episode. A serial entrepreneur and co-founder of TechCrunch, he has spent five decades building and funding technology companies, and brings a techno-optimist's eye to Keen On America's weekly wrap of the tech news. References: •       That Was The Week — Keith's newsletter, including this week's editorial, “Don't Trust the Trust Scare,” and his companion piece on concentration and diversification at The State of Venture.•      &nb...

Dr. Andrew Holman is a rheumatologist and the CEO of Seattle-based Inmedix, which recently received FDA clearance for the first cloud-based heart rate variability (HRV) diagnostic platform. Dr. Holman shares how a “detective” mindset led him from early interests in orthopedics and cardiology into rheumatology, fibromyalgia research, and ultimately entrepreneurship. He explains how chronic stress, the autonomic nervous system, and conditions like sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome can influence cardiovascular risk and autoimmune disease outcomes, and why measuring stress biology with medical-grade precision matters. Dr. Holman also offers hard-earned advice for physician-innovators, reflects on pivotal study results, and shares what he hopes to be remembered for: never dismissing patients in distress.  Guest links: https://www.inmedix.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/inmedix-inc Charity supported: Save the Children Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 088 - Andrew Holman [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to be welcoming as my guest Dr. Andrew Holman. Dr. Holman is a rheumatologist and the CEO of Inmedix, a Seattle-based medical diagnostics company that recently received FDA clearance for the first cloud-based heart rate variability diagnostic platform. He has 25 years of clinical experience with 16 peer-reviewed papers and clinical trials demonstrating that measuring stress biology with medical grade precision can improve success rates in autoimmune diseases. All right. Andrew, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here today. [00:01:30] Andrew Holman: Yes, happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. [00:01:33] Lindsey Dinneen: Course, of course. Well, I would love, if you wouldn't mind starting out telling us a little bit about who you are, what your background is, and what led you to medtech. [00:01:44] Andrew Holman: Sure. Well, I'm a, a guy from Seattle, Washington. Grew up here, but trained everywhere else, became a rheumatologist. We study autoimmune diseases, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis. I also was very interested in fibromyalgia and pain. We're the immunologists of medicine. So, I started my practice, golly, a while ago. 1992, I finished my prac- my training, and I was the main rheumatologist at a large suburban hospital at the southern end of Seattle. So hometown, circle back to the hometown. I went into rheumatology because you have many choices when you do internal medicine. You can go be a specialist in many things. But I like the puzzles. The immunology has grown and it's a, it's a particularly sort of detective-oriented specialty. So, I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. That came 25 years later. I was an in-the-trenches doc trying to help the person in front of me with these devastating diseases that are crippling diseases, usually of young women mostly. [00:02:45] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay, and I'm sure there's, there's much more we're gonna dive into, but one thing that really stood out really fast was you, you kind of called yourself a detective, which I really love that term. And so I'm curious, is that something that you always thought you wanted to specialize in, in medicine, or was this, you know, detectiving to come later? Was this something that, you know, you ended up learning more about while in med school and thought, "Oh, this sounds really cool. I could put really two interesting passions together"? [00:03:19] Andrew Holman: Yeah, it was-- you know, things just sort of come into play sometime. For those who are not in medicine, they may not realize it takes about ten years to go to college, med school, re- internship, residency, fellowship, you know, and then you, then you finally get to go be a doctor, and you have to go learn how to be a doctor s- a little more. The patients teach you a lot more than people realize. So I was gonna be an orthopedist. I liked orthopedics. I liked architecture, bones, joints. I thought it was a lot of fun. I just had very little aptitude for what they do. I, I don't-- I, I'm not very g- a good carpenter. I just, you know, I didn't-- just wasn't gonna be a great orthopedist. So then I thought, "I really love cardiology." Rhythm disturbances, all kinds of things. In the 1980s, when I was in medical school , all the new stents and procedures and non- less invasive things than bypass surgery were all coming up. Joint valve replacement. You know, it's really exciting. But I never... and I never took a, a f- a course in rheumatology until I was actually an intern in internal medicine program in Denver, all set to be a cardiologist. And there were 12 of us in the, in the program per year, and s- five of us became rheumatologists because of this one doctor who took us out, a guy named Daryl McCarter. Prob- maybe people who know him, he's retired recently. He would bring us in the office, and we'd see every other patient with him because in between the patients, he would give us an X-ray, say, "I want you to look at this. There's a clue here. See if you can find it." Or, "I want you to look at this pathology slide," or something. "There's a secret, you know, to figure this one out." And I go, "Wow, this is really fun stuff." And once you figured it out, we weren't as good at treating it yet, but we were getting better. We were getting better. So it was the cutting edge and very fertile ground for discovery. So, rheumatologists are called the consult of last resort for a reason. There aren't very many of us. You've usually seen everybody else first, and by the time they-- you see us, we're pretty good at figuring out the rare diseases that are not in other people's board exam. But we're also pretty good at figuring out the common disease that presents in a very strange way, you know? And, and that's what our strength is. So we may... Everybody who sees us who gets diagnosed may not have a rheumatology answer, but we try to get them an answer. And now we're really in the golden age of rheumatology in the last 20 years of really making a difference for so many people. The downside, we don't make a difference for enough people, you know? We, we... That's the problem. So we've got these very motivated doctors out there, eager, and we just need, you know, more. And that's why I became an entrepreneur, because I learned more neurology than I was supposed to know and more sleep physiology than I was supposed to know. You just follow the breadcrumbs, you know? [00:06:17] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay, so I know you didn't start out wanting to, or maybe even being interested in being an entrepreneur, but that is the path that you chose, and I would love to hear about that, the company, and what you're all doing. And then also would love to hear about your journey into deciding that this is the next right step for me. [00:06:38] Andrew Holman: Yeah. Well, thanks for asking it. It is a little unusual. So I was actually studying and trying to help patients with fibromyalgia about 30 years ago. And fibromyalgia patients terribly dismissed till they're all making this up. There's not 10 million people that can make anything up and be consistent. I mean, they all say the same thing. So I thought that was nonsense, and I was really thrown into the crowd of, you know, "You're, you're crazy too." And I go, "Well, I'm board certified in crazy." So I w- I was interested in it, and I was irritated that these people were dismissed. And I was around other doctors in Seattle who were similarly that way, which was very, very unusual. It's unusual to find people in the '90s who had an avid interest in that disorder. And so I started doing what rheumatologists are good at, incrementally advancing ideas and therapeutics very carefully, very cautiously. We do a lot of things off-label. When I was-- finished my fellowship in 1992, half the diseases on our board exam had no FDA-approved treatment. We had to do something, right? You couldn't just say, "Well, come back when there's a couple of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine." You, you can't do that, right? People are depending on you. So rheumatologists are particularly good at that, and that's not something most doctors want to do. Most doctors find that very uncomfortable. They're very, very careful people. And, and rheumatologists are careful too, but we take this mission seriously that we need to do something for you. So basically, I was looking at off-label ideas and work on fibromyalgia, and I'll share this with your audience. I was actually pulled up-- pulled in by some senior doctors who said, "We wanna talk with you." And I'd been there about three years as a new doctor. Oh, you know, seem to be doing a good job. Maybe they wanna pat me on the back or something. No, not that. It was actually an intervention, which I had never... I mean, I had no familiarity with what an intervention was. And they said, "Look, we like you. You're a great doc, but you're gonna ruin your reputation if you believe all these people, mostly women And you really need to not take it so seriously or write prescriptions for this c-- this and that." I said, "Well, thank you very much." That's polite. That's not what I was thinking. And I, I... But it prompted me to pull all the charts and say, "You know, I think I'm making some progress here with some ideas here, and let me see if I'm getting fooled and just seeing the people who get better to come back. Let me really honestly look at my performance." And so I pulled about 200 charts. It was my first abstract at the national meeting. And you know what? We were making progress. That had morphed into more progress, following the breadcrumbs, looking at neurology, looking at the autonomic nervous system. So that was about a five-year process. Y-you know, I didn't lose my reputation, obviously. I lecture around the world now. But it led to being very careful about getting clinical evidence if I had a hypothesis. And so we were using the office, and we actually finally did a double-blind prospective study where I bought all the drug myself, had it reformulated, little capsules that, you know, and, and worked with the FDA to get permission to do the study. And that study in fibromyalgia to this day has the highest response rate of any fibromyalgia study for pain that's ever been done. Now, we don't use that treatment anymore. It's 20 years later, we have other things to do. But it did prompt Pharmacia, got bought by Pfizer, I believe, and Boehringer Ingelheim, which co-marketed the drug I was using and reporting on, to pay me $10 million for the patents that I had filed, utility patents. I didn't own the drug. I didn't use it for Parkinson's disease, but I thought there was use in fibromyalgia. So before I told the world, I filed utility patents, and they wanted to exploit that discovery. So did two other pharmaceutical companies, and they had to pay for the privilege of doing it. So at 46, I retired. So I didn't intend to do that, but I do come from a family of lawyers and judges, and so the idea of having a utility patent on a n- a new innovative idea was not a foreign concept to me. [00:10:40] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. [00:10:41] Andrew Holman: That is something I teach all young doctors. [00:10:46] Lindsey Dinneen: That is awesome, and I, I was thinking, okay, this is a great segue because first of all, that's an incredible story. Secondly, I, I would be very curious to know exactly that, what is your advice for some of these incredible physicians, great ideas, that are potentially going to end up becoming an entrepreneur just because that's the path that, that is sort of presented to them? What is some of your advice for that? 'Cause that can't just be... you, you had the privilege at least of, of, of knowing and having some background in that, the legal aspects of IP protection and whatnot, but what are some of the things that you tell people? [00:11:22] Andrew Holman: Well, a couple things I would say and I have these conversations often 'cause I really like the younger people coming along. I say, first of all, don't define yourself as an ent- as being an entrepreneur. Make sure you have other things in your life that are more important to you. Now, the investors are not gonna like to hear that. They, they want you to live and die on your, on your company, right? But I'm saying, you know, you don't have to tell the VCs, but have other things that matter more in your life. You still gotta work really hard because you may, you may find that it's really a slog, and it's very long, and it's very hard. But, you know, make sure that, that, that what you-- though is important, your family, you know, your integrity the scientific problem at hand, the patients, you know, they're number one. Make sure we don't lose sight of all that, and do a few things. Go for a walk. Do something for yourself. Something. I do this twenty-four seven for the last 10 years, you know, every day 'cause I love doing it. It does wear you out, though. Even if you make-- even if you're successful with milestones, it does wear you out. But that's what I tell them. I say, "You know, make sure that you take care of yourself a little bit, too." It's kinda like a analogy. What do you do for a pregnant woman who has a, who has a, a lupus? Lupus is terribly dangerous for the fetus and for the mom. Though the worst thing you do to-- for the baby is not take care of the mom. Take care of mom, [00:12:44] Lindsey Dinneen: Mm-hmm. [00:12:45] Andrew Holman: then get the baby delivered. So, you know, everybody's talking about the baby, but take care of mom. That's the most important thing you do for that baby. So that's kinda what I would say. [00:12:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I appreciate that. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense too. We've been talking, actually it's been a, a bit of a theme too lately in some of the conversations that I've been having with folks, especially leaders, to talk about that identity component and, and be aware that your job isn't the only thing that defines you or needs to. There's a lot more to your life. There's a lot more to who you are. And so also, you know, our identities change over time and how you refer to yourself and th- those are, those are good things. That's growth, that's movement. So, being comfortable with who you are outside of your career. Yeah. [00:13:33] Andrew Holman: The other thing too is, you know, people used to joke 20 years ago that participation mem- medals were like a farce and what. That's the l- that's the last thing I would say to anybody. Give yourself a pat on the back for going out there trying to attack the castle, you know. Give yourself some credit there because a lot of people just wouldn't do it. My middle daughter was a hundred-meter hurdler at Boise State. She's a Division I athlete. There's a lot of sprinters out there that don't wanna get anywhere near that hurdle 'cause it really hurts when you hit it, right? And so half of that was not-- was being brave. So be brave, be brave, you know. My other daughter was a Division I athlete at Rice. She was a h- she was a volleyball player. Yeah. So, yeah. So I, I, I, I watch other people, see how they persevere and, you know, okay, gotta pick yourself up. Gotta go. Gotta get up this morning. Gotta go. [00:14:23] Lindsey Dinneen: That's right. That-- Yeah. [00:14:25] Andrew Holman: Then remember, people are depending on you, not just your investors. I take that so seriously. But the s- the people who have decided that they're gonna hook their wagon to you. [00:14:34] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. [00:14:35] Andrew Holman: You know, that's a lot of responsibility. [00:14:37] Lindsey Dinneen: It is. Yeah. [00:14:38] Andrew Holman: Give yourself a little credit that you're stepping up. [00:14:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Great advice. Yeah. Okay, so all right. So let's talk about your company now. So now you're an entrepreneur, in addition to obviously the rest of who, what makes you, you. But and I know that you're also a clinical professor, and I would love to hear about both of those things if you don't mind sharing. [00:14:59] Andrew Holman: Yeah, sure. So, technically I'm an associate clinical professor at the University of Washington. A, a lot of private docs do, and they participate in helping teach the y-young residents and fellows and so forth. So it's a joy to me. I, I think my job is a job of teaching. I'm constantly talk... I'm not-- I don't see patients anymore, although I do maintain my license in malpractice 'cause I get, I get contacted for the fibromyalgia work I did. So it's, my email's on the papers, right? So I, I don't wanna let that go. People need help. But basically, we're constantly teaching patients, you know. Now, we're listening, hopefully do better and better at that, but then I have to make a case. You know, I'd, the-- I'd like you to try this or that. Why do I wanna do that and so forth. We're constantly, you know... We don't-- It, it sounds too trite to call it selling something. We're not doing that. We're in there with you. We're collaborating. But I have to be, I have to have a reason and be persuasive and all that, so that, that academic teaching part's kind of fun. Now, sometimes I go into the lion's den. I will tell you, it's a little nerve-wracking to give rheumatology grand rounds at Harvard. Yeah, yeah, okay. You know, and the University of Washington, they're a little friendlier. It's my hometown. But Guy's Hospital in London and the Hospital for Special Surgeries, I... My first rheumatology grand rounds came at the HSS in 2009. I get there, I completely bomb. All these famous people are in the front row. I'm... They're, they're just not buying any of this thing we call immunoautonomics and how stress affects the immune system. I'm quoting the NIH. I'm doing everything I... I know how to do it, right? Pathology slides, I'm there. Then I find out the way they pick the speakers is the fellows get to find something interesting, and they pick the speakers, not the not the high mucky-mucks. So the only reason I was there is because the fellows, the young folks, thought, "This is an interesting topic. We'd like to hear more." And it turns out they were 15 years ahead of the rest of the world, because this is the most fascinating topic of how the immune system affects the autonomic nervous system affects the immune system, so it inflames it. [00:17:03] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Actually, that is one thing I wanted to talk about, 'cause I, I noticed on your LinkedIn profile there was, you know, a reference to how much stress affects cardiovascular health maybe particularly chronic stress. And I would just love to hear more about that and, and maybe some ways... I know there's like, y- of course you always get your standard, "Here are some things that you could do to lower your stress." But, but from your perspective as a physician who's studied this, I'd love to hear more from you about, okay, how does this affect health, especially cardiovascular health, and then really what are some practical things that we can do? [00:17:39] Andrew Holman: Yeah, let me see what I can do. Now I wish I could fast-forward because we will have some magnificent things in the next five to 10 years based on what's being discovered now. But the bottom line is, stress and pain are awful things, but they have a purpose in the near term. So pain is good because it'll keep you from putting your hand back in the fire, right? Just don't do that again. But chronic pain is terrible and not productive. Stress is the same thing. You wanna get away from the lion. You, you, you need to perform. If your child needs you, whatever, you, you need to perform on it instant. But chronic stress is not productive. The problem with the stress response is it's controlled in the brain by the autonomic nervous system, which is called the ANS, and it's divided into two components, the sympathetic fight or flight, which we all know what that feels like. You know, ooh, scary. And the other is the parasympathetic, which is getting more talk now, which is the opposite, which is related to rest, restorative, sleep, recovery, growth hormone, all these things. And both of these systems are on simultaneously all the time, but they jockey for predominance depending on what the demands are around you, right? So turns out the sympathetic part has a significant negative impact on cardiovascular health, as you might expect, right? If you're driving your car at five thousand RPMs-- now, nobody has a stick shift anymore-- but if you're driving at five thousand RPMs, you're gonna wear down your engine, even if you go at the same speed as someone who has a two thousand RPMs, right? It, it's, it's what's going on inside the hood there is really important. So stress responses chronically do have measurable, tangible, well-published effects on cardiovascular mortality in long prospective studies. So if we had a magic something, we would do something to lower that epinephrine adrenaline response. Unless, of course, you're in the military, where someone's-- you need every heightened, m-- you know, response that you can get to survive. But for the rest of us, it's better that that system does not ramp up and activate. And we all have a different propensity to how powerful it is and how much it turns on, and also how poorly it turns off. So the stress response, we think of it like epinephrine, adrenaline. That's the easiest way to do it. So what you'd wanna do is to make sure this magnificent part of your brain that is your-- does all your housekeeping functions, this autonomic nervous system, the command and control center that you just wanna work, you don't wanna think about it, is not on a turbocharged, right? And there are people I take care of that they were just born that way. A lot of them, by the way. So things like all the wellness opportunities you can think of are, are targeted just to simply calm the autonomic nervous system. Tai chi, meditation, diet, exercise, all these things have been around for thousands of years because of that. That's what they do. And the practitioners will share that with you. I mean, the there are monks that can lower their heart rate, you know, to like, you know, what would seem lethal to the rest of us, right? That's the parasympathetic drive that lowers heart rate, lowers blood pressure. So those wellness opportunities are real. It will be important that you can manage whether the-- what you're doing is working or not. [00:21:04] Lindsey Dinneen: Mm-hmm. [00:21:04] Andrew Holman: Right? And that's where my company comes in. But the other is things like obstructive sleep apnea. You might think heavy guys... See, someone's gonna send me for a sleep study for sure, but they're not gonna send you. Big mistake, because it turns out that fifty-three percent of Japanese women with rheumatoid arthritis have unexpected obstructive sleep apnea. Oops. And, and we were just taught that we wouldn't even check those people. Well, turns out sleep apnea untreated is a major cardiovascular risk factor equal to cigarette smoking, according to the Sleep Heart Health Study in 2004. That's a big deal. And also, we learned in rheumatoid arthritis, getting back to my work, world, that patients with rheumatoid arthritis don't die from joint disease, they die from premature heart disease. They can also get cancers. So why is that? Well, there's been a lot of effort to try to figure that out in the last twenty-five years, and their risk factors for cardiovascular disease are not explained by the Framingham risk factor of hypertension, cholesterol, smoking, and all the things we, we look, see. But nobody looked at sleep apnea. [00:22:15] Lindsey Dinneen: Mm-hmm. [00:22:17] Andrew Holman: The other reason it's so relevant, though, is sleep apnea is a potent sympathetic arousal. It, it-- You struggle to breathe, right? You kind of obstruct. And what part of your brain tells you to breathe? Your autonomic nervous system. Breathe, right? And it stimulates this adrenaline response over and over and over, and it pounds your heart over the years, and it can lead to sudden death and arrhythmias. So there's a, there's a link there. Never miss sleep apnea. The other one is we found in our office and published about restless leg syndrome. You know, people tap their toes in the airport or they kick the covers around at night. It's pretty benign for most people, but it looks like it very well might be a sympathetic arousal, and there may be relevance there. The therapies for that may have relevance to what we're talking about. Again, very off-label. We're not talking about FDA-approved here. But it-- You ask what can you do? The other one that's coming is vagus nerve stimulation. That is FDA-approved now for rheumatoid arthritis, and they're going to other opportunities to, again, to, to increase the parasympathetic and to lower the sympathetic, right? So that background activity doesn't harm you. The autonomic nervous system may be the primary reason that two patients respond differently to the same treatment. What you bring to the table. It's no different than if I have two people coming to me for a back problem. One is five foot three and one is seven foot three. The way their spine is designed makes it a whole lot harder to treat the seven-foot back, right? I'm not surprising anybody here. So there are things that the patients can bring to the table that matter. Here's the irony. Ninety-seven percent of patients with rheumatoid arthritis in a survey in England said that stress affected their disease activity. It's no surprise to them. And sixty-five percent said they thought it predated getting the disease, that it actually contributed to getting it in the first place. And now there's evidence to suggest that may be true. [00:24:17] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, boy. [00:24:19] Andrew Holman: So we can't miss sleep apnea just out there. We can't miss restless leg. We can't miss Ehlers-Danlos type three hypermobility type where people can... you can't see me here, but my fingers can bend backwards. But it's, it basically it's very, very common, and those people tend to have increased sympathetic activity naturally. [00:24:39] Lindsey Dinneen: Fascinating. [00:24:39] Andrew Holman: So yeah, so we're, we're waking up a little bit to some very important features here of individuals that may help us do better with the diseases they also come in. [00:24:50] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Wow. [00:24:52] Andrew Holman: Sorry, long answer. Sorry, but there's a lot. [00:24:54] Lindsey Dinneen: No, that's great. I appreciate it, and yeah, well, then there you go. Managing stress is critical to, to your health. It's not just a nice to have, like yeah, yeah, kind of thing. Okay. Whew. [00:25:07] Andrew Holman: Good learning. [00:25:08] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay, awesome. Yeah, so, I'm curious... Okay, so, so again, I like, I like looking at guests' LinkedIn profiles and, and learning more about, you know, what makes you tick outside of your career as well, and I noticed some very fun things that you have listed. So we've got creative writing, horsemanship, golf, and vintage passenger rail cars. I feel like this warrants... [00:25:33] Andrew Holman: Yeah, it's called... Yeah, the American Association of Private Railcar Owners. Yeah. I get ribbed a lot for that, but they're a great bunch. There are about --I don't know if I know all the numbers now, but about 75 to 80 vintage cars from the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, who tag on the back of Amtrak, and Amtrak drags them around, and you can actually go rent them, stay in them, whatever. And they have a a annual meeting where they just get on a private train, and they go on tracks that you wouldn't go on naturally, like private rails in the, you know, middle of nowhere. So that's what they like to do. And it's just a lot of fun, especially the dome cars. [00:26:12] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. That's so cool. [00:26:14] Andrew Holman: I've been a handful of times. I've got a lot of friends there. I don't own a car, but boy, I'd sure like to have one. [00:26:19] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. That is so cool. And then how about horsemanship? How did you... Have you been riding horses your whole life, or how did that come about? [00:26:29] Andrew Holman: So I went to a high school called Thatcher School in Ojai, California, where there are 50 in a class, and there was a requirement, this is over 100 years old, this school, that you had to have a horse. And they would say s- that something about the "outside of a horse is good for the inside of a boy," right? I was the last all-male class in 1977. Now young women get to go there too. It's of note that I have 15 people from Thatcher investing as family and friends in, Inmedix. So, th-they that, that's pretty special. But it's a boarding school. I was there for four years. My dad had gone there, so I'd heard of it. But I got a tremendous education. Th-there aren't a lot of prep schools on the West Coast, but there are some. And, and that's where I learned how to ride a horse like riding a bicycle. My sister is a thoroughbred horse trainer for 40 years. She's retired. She had three or four or five horses, a har-- not the fancy kind of stuff at the Derby. But they, you know, get up at 4:00 a.m. and ride, you know, that kind of... Tough life, but she loved horses. So yeah, I, I'm as, I'm more comfortable on a horse than I am around anything, probably. [00:27:34] Lindsey Dinneen: That's so cool. Okay. Well, this has been really fun to, to get to hear your incredible life story so far, and I'm excited to see where the company continues to advance medical technology. So, you know, I really appreciate everything you're doing. But I do want to ask, is there a moment that stands out to you along your career path so far where you just thought, "Wow, I am in the right industry at the right time"? [00:28:02] Andrew Holman: Yeah, I'd, I'd say there probably was. When we unblinded the prospective double-blind study that we did looking at this five-minute next generation heart rate variability, this HRV we got through the FDA last year. When we unblinded the study, and although that's not part of the FDA clearance, it was a very important moment for me because it showed that it predicted a year in advance who would respond to treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with ninety percent sensitivity, ninety-five percent specificity. So I wanna emphasize that is not what it's cleared for. It's cleared as an HRV tool that doctors can use at their discretion. But that study is what you asked me to answer. And when you unlock a study and you see the results, two things happen. One is we were happy that I was on the right track. That was nice. You know, positive study. Your hypothesis is valid. But it completely changed the view of immunology, [00:28:58] Lindsey Dinneen: Hmm. [00:28:59] Andrew Holman: Because we would have a test now that could measure the autonomic nervous system with exquisite precision. Nobody cared except me. About 10 years ago, we were waiting for better biologics, the things on TV, right? They asked, "Ask your doctor if it's good for you." Nobody realizes that they work about twenty-five percent of the time in terms of disease control. That's a big gap, but it looks like it's the brain that monitors inflammation. The inflammation the immune system is not firewalled against everything. The brain c-controls it, and it's not the endocrine so much with cortisol, it's the autonomic that works in milliseconds that, that epinephrine response. So that's a... You know, you're pretty nervous when you un-- when you-- someone tells you, "Okay, here is the results." [00:29:48] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Wow. [00:29:50] Andrew Holman: And, and, and that was it. And then it turned out in 2015, the other moment was when I was going through the airport at Seattle and I saw the cover of of Scientific American, Bioelectric Medicine, Setpoint Medical's vagus nerve stimulation, hacking the the vagus nerve to fix the autonomic nervous system to reduce the burden of rheumatoid arthritis. I go, "Okay, now it's time." We had the patent on it. Okay. Ten years forward, we're where we are now. We're launching in June, and we have a software juggernaut here and a literally a vital sign. So, th-the doctors decide what to do with this, but we've put it in their hands, and it's paid for by insurance. So yeah. [00:30:34] Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. Well, that's, that's so cool. Congratulations on that. That's fantastic. Okay, so to pivot the conversation a little bit just for fun, [00:30:43] Andrew Holman: Hmm? [00:30:43] Lindsey Dinneen: imagine that you were to be offered a million dollars to teach a master class on anything you want. What would you choose to teach? [00:30:53] Andrew Holman: Well, I, I learned that you've all had professors that didn't probably know as much as they should about a subject, but they thought it was just fun. I would probably stick with what I know. So I would do a master class on fibromyalgia because you can actually treat it. And there's published data, but it's very-- it's not widely known. We will be using Inmedix and autonomic testing to do research to validate and get that problem finally solved and put to bed. And then the other is this thing called immunoautonomics. It, the term-- I made up the term 15 years ago. It's in the medical literature. So that's what I would teach. Teach what I know. [00:31:27] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Okay, excellent. And how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world? [00:31:34] Andrew Holman: Well, I, you know, it all come... I define myself by what the patients, how they do and what they say. It's not about five stars and all that, you know, you know, there's plenty of those. But it's, it's... I made a, a commitment if somebody says anything about me, I made a commitment when I was a rheumatologist with all these mostly young women upset, that I would never leave the room with them crying. Didn't matter how far behind I was, didn't matter. We went through a lot of Kleenex. There's a l- it's devastating to get these diseases when you're a young woman. And they can put that on my tombstone, not to dismiss people. We had a saying in the office, "It's gotta be something." You know? It's, it's always something. Drives me crazy when doctors will say, "Oh, that's nothing." Well, well, first of all, we know it's not nothing. It, it is always something, and there's something that defines your success, and there has to be things that define your failure. So let's figure out what the something is, but let's not argue that there's nothing there. So let's not dismiss people who are frightened and worried, and maybe they don't tell the story as clearly as we'd hope. But you know what? It's not, it's not their fault. They're in distress. It's amazing what people are like after you help them with their chronic pain. [00:32:45] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. That is really cool and makes so much sense. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, and then final question: what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it? [00:32:59] Andrew Holman: It's making me smile right now. When I talk to the young fellows that are in their training and they're finishing up, so they've done three years or four years of medicine, three years of internal medicine after that, and then they do three or two, three, four years of rheumatology, and then they're gonna go out, I tell them how jealous I am of what they're gonna see. The, the last, the last 40 years we had these young men mostly coming in with terrible weight loss and immune systems, falling apart, and these strange tumors, and they're dying of, of infections like yeast and candida that, you know, everybody did fine with, and it was HIV, right? It had to be figured out. Now HIV is a chronic disease. It's like diabetes. We had so many people die in the '80s. Hepatitis C was... You'd have liver enzymes up, and it wasn't hepatitis A 'cause we could test for that, and it wasn't hepatitis B 'cause we could test for that. So we just called it non-A, non-B. Literally, that's what we called it. And then that got to be called hepatitis C, right? 'Cause it was too embarrassing to call it n- what it wasn't. And now hepatitis C is curable with antiviral agents in, like, three weeks. I mean... And then the biologics showed up. They're not perfect, but they were a big step. And then this immunoautonomics and, and understanding how pain and sleep and the autonomic nervous system work. I'm just really jealous of what those young clinicians are gonna get to see. [00:34:27] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, that's really... Yeah, I can see why. But it sounds like you are, you know, keeping, keeping your what, what would they say? Like, toe in the water or something so that you're able to, to watch some of this as well and be a part of that next [00:34:40] Andrew Holman: I feel like I'm a ne- I feel like I'm neck deep and I'm just hoping I don't go down any lower. [00:34:47] Lindsey Dinneen: Fair enough. [00:34:48] Andrew Holman: 'Cause I have to find a way to pay for it. [00:34:50] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The details, you know. Yeah, yeah. [00:34:53] Andrew Holman: You got those details, yeah. [00:34:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate your time today and sharing your insights and, and stories and, yeah, I'm so excited to see the future of medicine, and I appreciate perspectives of, like yours, where you just, you share a lot of hope and optimism, and you're actively working to change lives for a better world. So, thank you. [00:35:16] Andrew Holman: Yeah, I, I irritate a lot of people with that optimism, but I'm sorry, it's just there. I can't fix it. [00:35:22] Lindsey Dinneen: Brilliant. Well, I love it. It makes my heart happy, so thank you so much again, and I hope you have the best rest of your day. [00:35:31] Andrew Holman: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. [00:35:32] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. [00:35:34] Dan Purvis: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium Medical. Velentium Medical is a full service CDMO, serving medtech clients worldwide to securely design, manufacture, and test class two and class three medical devices. Velentium Medical's four units include research and development-- pairing electronic and mechanical design, embedded firmware, mobile app development, and cloud systems with the human factor studies and systems engineering necessary to streamline medical device regulatory approval; contract manufacturing-- building medical products at the prototype, clinical, and commercial levels in the US, as well as in low cost regions in 1345 certified and FDA registered Class VII clean rooms; cybersecurity-- generating the 12 cybersecurity design artifacts required for FDA submission; and automated test systems, assuring that every device produced is exactly the same as the device that was approved. Visit VelentiumMedical.com to explore how we can work together to change lives for a better world.

Nvidia just announced its acquisition of Hugging Face for $12.93 billion — one of its biggest moves yet.But this isn't simply Nvidia buying another AI company.Hugging Face sits at the developer and model layer of the AI stack, while Nvidia dominates the compute underneath it. The deal could give Nvidia a much deeper position across the AI ecosystem — from chips and infrastructure to models, developers and deployment.In this episode, we break down what Nvidia is really buying, why open AI matters, and what this could mean for the competitive landscape.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comKey topics we explore:— Why Nvidia is paying nearly $12.92B for Hugging Face— Hugging Face's role in the open AI ecosystem— Nvidia's move from chips toward a full-stack AI platform— The strategic importance of developers, models and inference— How the deal could strengthen Nvidia against custom AI chips— The tension between Nvidia ownership and Hugging Face's compute-agnostic modelThe bigger question:Is Nvidia buying Hugging Face for its current business — or to control a much larger part of the AI stack?For investors, the deal is another signal that the AI value chain is moving beyond GPUs. Nvidia isn't just trying to sell the picks and shovels of AI — it's increasingly positioning itself across the platform where AI gets built.LINKSPrashant Choubey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahabSubscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.comSubscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10XSubscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQVC10X website - https://vc10x.comSponsorship queries: prashantchoubey3@gmail.comThis channel is for asset managers, allocators, and investors who want analysis that holds up—not headlines dressed as insight.Subscribe for weekly data-driven breakdowns of the forces reshaping capital markets.#VC10X #Nvidia #HuggingFace #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #VentureCapital #Investing #OpenAI #AIInvesting #TechInvesting

In today's Tech3 from Moneycontrol, we look at Nvidia's $12.93 billion deal for Hugging Face and its bet on open AI models, nearly Rs 27,000 crore worth of startup stock block deals as VCs cash out, Slice's $100 million fundraise at a sharply lower valuation, Pocket FM's return to microdramas with Pocket Saga, and PayPal's job cuts in India amid a global restructuring.

VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333 This Week In Startups is made possible by: partner 1 - link partner 2 - link partner 3 - link   Today's show: Are we one step closer to data centers in space? Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six and Paige Doherty of Behind Genius Ventures break it down what it would take. Plus investor interest is surging in Physical AI companies. Paige explains why she backs applications of physical AI over general-purpose robotics, and how her thesis on multimodal AI led to the largest check she's ever written. We then dive into the Pentagon's rollout of ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government. And Katelin gives us her insight into how VCs are investing in Europe and the regulations behind the scenes. Guests: Katelin Holloway on X: https://x.com/katelin_cruse Seven Seven Six: https://sevensevensix.com/ Paige Doherty on X: https://x.com/paigefinnn Behind Genius Ventures: https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/ Full Transcript and Summary, powered by Plaud https://web.plaud.ai/s/pub_772dbc9f-cd78-4de7-911e-8d3ee2883fbb::AF3ncHtIZkSyKKL-K-XUZBAUBEdoQQBEGCQSsja3gXsll8Dm6-Xbrrlhk7g8U-xwIW9kHyYwaB0dBuoC Related Links: Department of War adds ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government: https://fortune.com/2026/09/01/pentagon-chatgpt-grok-government-military-ai-members-pete-hegseth-defense-department/ OpenAI for Government: https://openai.com/global-affairs/introducing-openai-for-government/ Starshield — SpaceX's government/defense arm: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ UN work on LAWS (Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems): https://disarmament.unoda.org/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/background-on-laws-in-the-ccw/ European Commission designates ChatGPT a VLOSE: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-designates-chatgpt-reddit-roblox-under-digital-services-act Commission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1772 Euronews on why a chatbot that searches the live web counts as a search engine: https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/08/31/eu-places-chatgpt-reddit-and-roblox-under-strictest-digital-safety-rules Entrepreneur First: https://www.joinef.com/posts/introducing-the-bridge/ Henrick Johansson, the European VC persona: https://x.com/compliantvc Starcloud — orbital data centers: https://www.starcloud.com/ Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260821884035/en/Starcloud-Raises-$250-Million-at-$2.3-Billion-Valuation-to-Scale-AI-with-Orbital-Data-Centers "From Sputnik to Starship: Estimating the experience curve of space launch technology" https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/7/pgag217/8732400 Cambridge Bennett Schoo: https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/is-space-trade-the-next-global-transport-revolution/ Crunchbase News: physical AI startups raised $47.4B across 521 deals in H1 2026: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups-robotics-aerospace-h1-2026/ Crunchbase News on record defense-tech funding: https://news.crunchbase.com/defense-tech/startup-venture-funding-all-time-record-ai-anduril/ Jensen Huang's prediction: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/executive-insights/ Zipline: https://www.flyzipline.com/ Nox Metals: https://www.noxmetals.com/ CNBC: Anthropic changes its data retention policy: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-data-retention.html Bloomberg on the plan to let enterprises hold the 30-day window: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-20/anthropic-plans-to-change-data-retention-policy-for-advanced-ai Plaud — sponsor; the wearable AI note-taker → **https://plaud.ai/twist** (code TWIST for 10% off) Harmonic: https://harmonic.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 Why making it to Fund IV is when it gets real 9:24 Pentagon rolls out ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government 10:49 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST 11:53 Paige on defense tech and three years at Northrop Grumman 13:40 Katelin: The bottleneck used to be winning the contract, now it's surviving one 16:13 Autonomous weapons, robot dogs, and the Boston Dynamics conversation in Paris 19:07 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 22:03 EU designates ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the DSA 24:54 Katelin's contrarian take: Europe is undercapitalized 29:56 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 31:07 Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B valuation 53:06 Competing with Elon: the single point of failure for the whole space economy 57:49 Physical AI raised ~$47B in the first half of 2026 1:03:42 Jason's Zipline regret and the death of "hardware is hard" 1:07:07 Is "unc" a compliment? A Gen X / millennial / Gen Z / Gen Alpha 1:09:39 Anthropic reverses its data retention policy after enterprise pushback 1:12:18 Katelin on data custody: "That's not a procurement question" 1:15:31 Back to on-prem: Go.AI, the Go1, and vertical LLMs Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check 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 McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

"How are you going to stay ahead of the competition in a world where two kids can vibe code a clone of your product over a weekend?" Itamar Novick is a solo capitalist and the founder of Recursive Ventures, a pre-seed fund focused on AI and emerging tech startups. He has supported over 50 successful startups, including Deel, Honeybook, Placer, Credible (IPO), MileIQ (acquired by Microsoft), Automatic Labs (acquired by SiriusXM), Tile (acquired by Life360), SafeGraph, and Armory. He's been recognized by Business Insider as a Top 100 global seed investor (#17 in 2021, #29 in 2022). As an operator, he helped take Life360 from Seed to IPO, scaling the business to over $250m in revenue. Itamar joined Jeremy Au to talk about what still counts as a moat in AI, why proprietary data is only the starting point, and where AI actually replaces people instead of augmenting them. He also looks back on twelve years at Life360, joining as VP of Product and leaving as the CFO who took the company public, and why he now writes the first check at pre-seed. Itamar's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamarnovick/ Recursive Ventures: https://www.recursiveventures.com/ Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/itamar-novick-recursive-ventures  BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one. Listen & Subscribe YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts Follow BRAVE LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp Follow Jeremy Au LinkedIn, X / Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Twitch Resources Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com #AI #VentureCapital #AIStartups #SoutheastAsia #Startups #Founders #Fundraising #PreSeed #SeedFunding #DataMoats #VerticalAI #ReinforcementLearning #VibeCoding #SiliconValley #Singapore #Malaysia #Indonesia #Philippines #Vietnam #TechPodcast #Life360 #SEAstartups #Entrepreneurship  00:00 Introduction 02:01 Coding at 11, and the army cybercrime unit 04:12 Product management before Agile 06:00 Gigya, and meeting Zuckerberg in 2008 07:27 Morgenthaler Ventures and the first inning of SaaS 08:37 Twelve years at Life360, VP Product to CFO 11:36 "Kids are never gonna have smartphones" 13:53 Raising $500M and 11 corporate VCs 16:31 The VC story problem, and which VCs got it 22:26 Going full time into venture, and why pre-seed 27:48 How Itamar picks: team, TAM, and moat 30:06 Data as the moat, and the customer data flywheel 35:48 Where AI can and can't replace humans 40:33 Taking the one big swing

How do you build a global AI company without burning hundreds of millions of dollars?In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James sits down with Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai, the AI meeting assistant used by millions of people around the world.Fireflies started building with AI long before the current boom. After struggling to raise capital, Krish and his co-founder became obsessed with reaching "ramen profitability", keeping costs low and controlling their own destiny. They eventually raised venture funding, but haven't touched the capital from their Series A, reaching profitability in 2023 while continuing to grow rapidly.The conversation explores how Fireflies created the AI notetaker category and engineered distribution directly into the product. Rather than relying on traditional enterprise sales, Fireflies focused on self-service adoption, word of mouth and a viral loop where every meeting introduced the product to new users. This helped Fireflies spread to more than 100 countries within its first year.Krish also explains where Fireflies goes next: beyond meeting notes towards AI that understands conversations across meetings, email and Slack, identifies what needs to happen and eventually completes work while conversations are still taking place.Topics Covered• Building an AI company before the AI boom • Why Fireflies prioritised profitability from the beginning • Creating the AI notetaker category • Engineering virality and word of mouth into the product • Spending almost nothing on marketing until reaching tens of millions in revenue • Going horizontal when VCs advised Fireflies to focus on enterprise sales • Scaling a self-service product across 100+ countries • Building infrastructure for millions of users • Privacy, security and customer data in AI • Expanding from meeting notes into email, Slack and AI agents • Building a profitable company while maintaining venture-style growth • Krish's first-principles approach to leadership • Why iteration speed compounds into competitive advantage • The opportunity in open-source AI and inference infrastructureKrish also shares why he runs Fireflies with an unusually flat organisation and more than 30 direct reports, and why he believes startups win by iterating faster than their competitors.This is a conversation about building an AI company differently: staying lean, engineering distribution into the product, obsessing over economics and surviving long enough for the market to catch up with your vision.

What if we could reverse the damage caused by age-related disease instead of simply managing its symptoms? In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Daniel Oliver, CEO and Co-founder of Rejuvenate Bio, a Jetstream Venture Fund portfolio company, to explore the science behind age-related disease, the potential of gene therapy, and what it takes to turn groundbreaking research into treatments for both animal and human health. This success has lead to one of the leading crowdfunding equity campaigns.Rejuvenate Bio grew out of George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School, where research into the biology of aging opened the door to a bigger question: instead of treating age-related diseases one at a time, could we target the underlying changes that drive them? Daniel explains the company's work across heart failure, kidney failure, metabolic dysfunction, and epigenetic reprogramming. Daniel and John also dig into Rejuvenate Bio's strategy of developing therapies for both companion animals and humans. Its most advanced program is targeting mitral valve disease in dogs, while its human program moves toward clinical development. Daniel explains why dogs can be a powerful model for age-related disease and how animal health may provide a faster path for translating aging science into real-world therapies. Beyond the science, Daniel shares his unconventional journey from mechanical engineering and aerospace to Harvard Business School, entrepreneurship, and biotech. He and John discuss why breakthrough ideas often emerge at the intersection of different disciplines, and they get candid about the pressure of startup life and why the “never sleep, always hustle” mentality can make founders worse leaders. About Daniel Oliver: Daniel Oliver is Co-founder and CEO of Rejuvenate Bio, a spinout of George Church's Lab at Harvard Medical School focused on targeting the drivers of age-related disease through novel gene therapies. Prior to Rejuvenate Bio, Daniel was awarded a Blavatnik Fellowship, during which he co-founded Voxel8. Voxel8 was named one of the top innovations at CES and one of the 50 most innovative companies by MIT Technology Review. Daniel received his MBA from Harvard Business School and holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business from the California Institute of Technology. About Rejuvenate Bio: Rejuvenate Bio is a George Church spinout with backing from Merck and leading VCs developing one-time gene therapies that target the root causes of age-related disease, beginning in companion animals and expanding to humans. The company was the first to demonstrate lifespan extension using epigenetic reprogramming and is advancing a breakthrough cardiovascular platform built around a single-dose therapy that restores youthful levels of a critical age-declining soluble protein. Preclinical data show reversal of heart damage and durable metabolic reset, positioning the program as a potential long-term alternative to chronic therapies such as GLP-1s. About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant is a venture capital firm investing in innovative companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries.About Jetstream Venture Fund: Jetstream is an interval fund that provides investors access to venture opportunities across multiple stages, with a $5,000 minimum and no carried interest. Disclosure for Jetstream: Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fund before investing. The prospectus contains this and other information about the Fund and can be obtained by emailing jetstream@sweaterfunds.com or by visiting www.jvf.vc. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. About Pitch Deck Analysis: Pitch Deck Analysis reviews your deck like an investor would, with scoring, feedback, and recommendations on what to improve before you pitch. Use code EntrepreneurRx for a free Founder Pack with five free runs.

Get new episodes in your inbox - ⁠https://vc10x.beehiiv.com⁠Ken Goldman spent five years as President of Hillspire, Eric Schmidt's family office, an organization of over five hundred people spanning investments, legal, IT, aviation, personal property, foundations, and an oceanographic research vessel. He was CFO of Siebel Systems and CFO of Yahoo, was employee number seven at VLSI Technology, and has served on dozens of public and private boards. He now invests actively across venture and private equity funds and sits on the PCAOB advisory group.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - ⁠https://podcast10x.com⁠Topics covered:- Why the analysis that said sell Alphabet was the best call Hillspire never made- How you hire and retain people when you have no equity to offer, and who you stop competing for- The split between the institutional book and the "VIP investments" Eric Schmidt made himself- What separates a family office conference worth attending from one where you are the product- Why Ken says we are in a bubble even though every insider he asks says AI is under-hypedConnect with Ken Goldman:LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-goldman-552a47⁠Connect with Prashant Choubey:LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-goldman-552a472⁠Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - ⁠https://vc10x.beehiiv.com⁠Subscribe on YouTube - ⁠https://youtube.com/@VC10X⁠Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986⁠Subscribe on Spotify - ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ⁠VC10X website - ⁠https://vc10x.com⁠Timestamps:(00:00) - Preview(01:19) - Guest intro(03:07) - The operational scale of a 500+ person family office(07:12) - Tips for retaining high-quality talent in the age of AI startups(08:45) - The importance of being in the office to build team culture(12:04) - The trend of institutionalization in family offices(12:45) - A breakdown of Hillspire's diverse in-house operations(15:15) - Why private equity and VC firms are now targeting family offices(17:47) - Identifying the highest quality family office conferences(18:17) - What makes a family office conference valuable (non-solicitation, quality speakers)(23:31) - Common blind spots of emerging family offices(26:41) - Approach to venture capital: direct investing vs. backing funds(30:56) - Framework for executing philanthropy in a family office(34:51) - Building a personal portfolio of alternative investments(39:35) - Essential financial controls for startups before hiring a CFO(43:45) - Is the current AI cycle overhyped or underhyped?(48:00) - Governance warning signs that a startup is drifting off course(49:05) - Key metrics to watch: customer churn and net ARR(52:18) - Dangerous assumptions investors carry from bull to bear markets(55:20) - Why we are likely in an investment bubble, especially in data centers

China has rapidly emerged as one of the most important sources of biotech innovation in the world. But what is driving that growth—and what does it mean for U.S. biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies and investors?In this episode of the Asia Business Podcast, Art Dicker speaks with David Cao, founder of Target2Drug BioAdvisory and a strategic advisor to VCs, biotech startups and biopharma companies. David has spent his career across both the U.S. and Chinese life sciences ecosystems and helps companies navigate opportunities between the two markets.David explains why China's biotech rise is the result of decades of investment in scientific talent, research infrastructure and drug-development capabilities—not an overnight phenomenon. They discuss China's particular strengths in drug discovery and early-stage clinical development, including why trials can often move faster and at lower cost in China.The conversation also explores the surge in China-to-U.S. biotech licensing, the growing importance of Chinese-developed ADCs and bispecific antibodies, and the rise of the “NewCo” model, in which U.S. investors build new biotech companies around assets sourced from China. David explains why Chinese biotech companies increasingly want more than a traditional licensing payment—they may also want equity, board participation and the opportunity to learn how global drug development works.Art and David also examine an underappreciated opportunity for Western biotech companies: conducting clinical development in China, particularly for rare diseases where the concentration of patients at major Chinese hospitals can dramatically accelerate recruitment.Finally, they tackle the larger question hanging over the industry: Is the growth of Chinese biotech a threat to the U.S. industry, or can the two ecosystems complement each other? David argues that drug development is fundamentally global—and that combining American strengths in breakthrough science, capital and global clinical development with Chinese strengths in drug discovery, speed and early clinical development could ultimately produce better medicines faster and at lower cost.The episode offers a practical look at how the U.S.–China biotech relationship is evolving from simple licensing transactions toward a much deeper and more interconnected model of collaboration.Connect with David:https://www.linkedin.com/in/songsong-david-cao/https://www.t2dbioadvisory.com/

In this episode of Investor Connect, Hall Martin welcomes Brian Kerns, a mentor, angel investor, and product executive working with VentureWell, to discuss why climate tech can be a tougher fit for traditional angel investing. Brian explains that many climate tech startups involve deep technology that requires more capital, longer timelines, and multiple rounds, and some segments—like ocean and built environment—lack the big "proof point" exits many investors look for. The conversation covers how founders often inflate their capital asks, why the funding gap is widening as VCs move later-stage, and how specialized angel groups with domain expertise can better assess risk and navigate non-dilutive funding. Brian also shares his work as a co-founder of Unventure Capital, which targets strong, profitable companies that don't match the unicorn/VC model, using alternative approaches such as debt-based financing, embedded operator support, and different ownership structures to help companies reach profitability and optionality. Hall and Brian also dig into how the grants landscape has become less reliable, why corporate venture typically waits until Series A, which climate areas still fit angels (software, IoT/light tech, and key supply-chain components), and why today's market is pushing founders to prioritize building real, durable businesses over impact messaging alone. Reach out to at www.linkedin.com/in/brianlkerns/, and on venturewell.org/ ________________________________________________________________________ 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.

Dr. Rebecca Mitchell is a physician, product leader, and venture investor — and co-founder of Scrub Capital, a venture firm that's only three years old but has already made close to 20 investments. Her thesis is different from most of Silicon Valley: put clinicians at the center of the investment process, because they're the ones who actually know how care gets bought, used, and ignored. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw talks with Dr. Mitchell about her winding path — from doing home care visits with her mother as a kid, to global health work before medical school, to a career-defining project bringing a NASA-designed garment to treat obstetric hemorrhage in low-resource settings, to roles at the American Medical Association and Livongo, and finally to building Scrub Capital's clinician-led venture model from scratch. They dig into why most VCs lack real insight into how healthcare actually works, what the Livongo story reveals about proving ROI in a skeptical market, and what she looks for in founders navigating a market where capital, technology, and buyer behavior are all shifting at different speeds. Topics covered: - Why Scrub Capital built a model letting clinicians invest and advise without leaving clinical work - How Livongo trained the market to measure and pay for healthcare outcomes - Portfolio examples: Phil (digital prescriptions) and Conceivable Life Sciences (IVF automation) - The founder traits Dr. Mitchell looks for: grit, humility, and mission alignment - Why "unsexy" problems — pricing, distribution, workflow — often matter more than new tech - Her reflections on Dolly Parton and what real authenticity looks like in leadership Dr. Mitchell closes with advice for women building careers that don't fit inside one box: do the work to figure out who you are, and don't be shy about sharing it with the world. Guest: Dr. Rebecca Mitchell, Co-founder, Scrub Capital Host: Laurie McGraw #InspiringWomen #HealthcareVC #WomenInMedicine #VentureCapital #Healthcare #FemaleFounders

Welcome to The SaaS CFO Podcast! In this episode, Ben Murray sits down with Mahdi Abdulzarak and Kim Van Lavieren, the co-founders of Dawnguard—an innovative SaaS platform aiming to transform how large enterprises design, secure, and manage their cloud infrastructure. Mahdi Abdulzarak, CEO, brings decades of cybersecurity leadership, while CTO Kim Van Lavieren draws on deep technical expertise from organizations like Amazon and the military. Together, they share the Dawnguard founding story, insights on fundraising as experienced founders, building with design partners, and how AI-driven solutions are changing the game in cloud security. From go-to-market strategies to engineering harnesses and pricing AI-powered products, this conversation delivers a behind-the-scenes look at launching and scaling a SaaS startup in a rapidly evolving industry. Show Notes: 00:00 Improving IT system design process 05:26 Starting a company from a deck 08:46 Advice for working with VCs 09:56 Finding the right co-founder 16:17 Determining sustainable pricing strategy 17:08 Shifting AI pricing models 22:05 Using AI tools effectively 23:43 CEO and CTO priorities 2026 Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/dawnguard-raises-3-4m-pre-seed/ Mahdi Abdulzarak's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahdiabdulrazak/ Kim van Lavieren's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-v-0645931b4/?locale=en Dawnguard's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dawnguard/ Dawnguard's Website: https://dawnguard.ai/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray

Nvidia is now a roughly $5 trillion company—and it's still growing at more than 100% year over year.In its latest earnings, Nvidia reported $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue, up 106% year over year, with Data Center revenue reaching $89 billion, up 117%.The company is also guiding for approximately $108 billion of revenue next quarter.But for investors, the bigger question isn't whether Nvidia is growing.It's how a company of this scale can continue growing at rates normally associated with startups—and how much of that growth is already priced into the stock.In this episode, we break down Nvidia's latest earnings and what they tell us about the broader AI infrastructure cycle.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comKey topics we explore:– How Nvidia is still growing revenue at 100%+ at a ~$5T valuation– Why Data Center revenue remains the core driver of the business– What Nvidia's $108B quarterly guidance tells us about AI demand– Why inference could become an even bigger driver of AI compute– Nvidia's expanding role across GPUs, networking, software, and AI systems– The growing threat from AMD, custom silicon, and hyperscaler-designed chips– Margin risks as memory costs and next-generation systems evolve– What Nvidia's results tell us about the broader AI infrastructure thesis– Whether extraordinary growth can continue long enough to justify today's valuationThe bigger question:How long can Nvidia continue compounding at extraordinary rates—and what happens when the law of large numbers eventually catches up?For investors, Nvidia's earnings provide perhaps the clearest evidence yet that AI infrastructure demand remains exceptionally strong. But at a $5 trillion valuation, the debate is no longer simply about whether AI is growing.It's about how much of that future growth Nvidia can capture—and what investors are paying for it today.LINKSPrashant Choubey - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab⁠Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - ⁠https://vc10x.beehiiv.com⁠Subscribe on YouTube - ⁠https://youtube.com/@VC10X⁠Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986⁠Subscribe on Spotify - ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ⁠VC10X website - ⁠https://vc10x.com⁠For sponsorship queries reach out to prashantchoubey3@gmail.comThis channel is for asset managers, allocators, and investors who want analysis that holds up—not headlines dressed as insight.Subscribe for weekly data-driven breakdowns of the forces reshaping capital markets.#Nvidia #NVDA #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIInfrastructure #Semiconductors #DataCenters #Investing #TechStocks #VC10X #NvidiaEarnings #AMD #TSMC #Broadcom #AIInvesting #GPUs #Inference #Markets #WallStreet #Finance

Beer, dry ice, and concrete all have one thing in common... they require CO2. Between demand for CO2 rising, and new gas plants taking a billion dollars to build, shortages are becoming more common. So Sonny built a modular plant the size of a fridge, making it cheaper and easier for companies to control their own supply. Will the VCs buy that a box this small can crack a problem this big? This is The Pitch for Ventrix. Featuring investors Elizabeth Yin, Jesse Middleton, Mike Ma, Rohit Gupta, and Michelle Kwok. Watch Sonny's pitch uncut on Patreon (@ThePitch) Join us for our fall live shows and Season 17 taping: pitch.show/events Subscribe to our email newsletter: insider.pitch.show Learn more about The Pitch Fund: thepitch.fund *Disclaimer: No offer to invest in Ventrix is being made to or solicited from the listening audience on today's show. The information provided on this show is not intended to be investment advice and should not be relied upon as such. The investors on today's episode are providing their opinions based on their own assessment of the business presented. Those opinions should not be considered professional investment advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Produced by Foundersuite (for startups: www.foundersuite.com) and Fundingstack (for emerging manager VCs: www.fundingstack.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with with Matt Ober of Social Leverage, a San Diego-based venture capital fund that invests in FinTech and Vertcal AI startups. Learn more at https://socialleverage.com/. In this episode, Matt shares his journey from working at a quant hedge fund to becoming a VC, trends in FinTech and Vertical AI, tips for using Claude and MCPs for raising capital, how they use content to attract the best founders, advice for emerging VC managers, tips for founders, and more. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $21 Billion since 2016. If you are a startup, create a free account at www.foundersuite.com. If you are a VC, venture studio or investment banker, check out our new platform, www.fundingstack.com

Send us Fan MailCharles Yeomans has raised over $50 million from more than fourteen thousand investors - not a handful of VCs, but a crowdfunded community he communicates with multiple times a week. In this episode, he explains why treating that many backers like a movement instead of a cap table has changed how he builds trust, why he refuses to promise exact dates even when he's confident in the plan, and the one thing he tells every founder pitching for money: nobody cares about your technology.What You Will LearnYou'll learn how Charles manages investor trust at a scale most founders never encounter, and why he deliberately avoids specific dates even when a milestone is basically locked in. You'll hear the story of the mistake early in his investment banking career that still shapes how carefully he communicates today, and why he believes technical founders lose pitches by talking about how their product works instead of the value it creates. He also breaks down what his AI platform actually does - compressing data so devices can send four times more of it without expensive hardware upgrades - and who's already lining up to use it.Timestamps 00:00 - How do you manage fourteen thousand investors? 04:38 - Building trust at scale with a crowd, not a boardroom 06:38 - Why Charles never promises an exact date 08:32 - $50M raised and the shift to institutional money 09:11 - Why he came back for one more startup 11:21 - What NerPac actually does, and who needs it 16:19 - The unfair advantage of an investment banking background 17:59 - The story that still keeps him careful 26:43 - The number one mistake founders make when pitching 22:56 - "It's not a straight line" - the title of his storyAbout the Guest Charles Yeomans built his career across investment banking, insurance, and Navy intelligence before founding the company behind NerPac and PCM, AI-driven data compression technology used in satellite communications, defense, and connected vehicles. He has raised over $50 million from a crowdfunded base of more than fourteen thousand investors - a structure he manages through frequent, direct communication rather than a traditional handful of board-seat VCs. Important Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-yeomans-4507a17/?skipRedirect=trueConnect with HinaLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hinasiddiquiInstagram: @hinawithwingsYouTube: @thehinasiddiquiCheck out Hina's books: https://amzn.to/3B65Wz7Production Credit: Produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/

What does it actually take to win in venture capital?Harlem Capital co-founder and Managing Partner Henri Pierre-Jacques joins Maria to unpack a decade of lessons. They talk about how to identify exceptional founders, why the best VC deals take years to build, the growing importance of an investor's personal brand, and why founders should reference-check their VCs.Henri also shares Harlem Capital's approach to investment decisions, what it takes to make partner, how AI has changed the way he reflects and creates, and why he believes “winners want to be around winners.”

How do you go from seeing the Google website load for the first time on a campus computer screen in Mumbai to building and exiting three tech ventures, writing The Golden Tap, and buying back your company from VCs — all while navigating the rapid rise of AI?In this episode of TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, host Dr. Abhay Dandekar sits down with serial entrepreneur, investor, author, and HyperTrack Founder & CEO Kashyap Deorah. Kashyap shares his journey across changing tech cycles, from falling in love with the internet at IIT Bombay to building and exiting three tech ventures, capturing the Indian tech ecosystem in his bestselling book The Golden Tap, and making the bold decision to buy back HyperTrack from venture capital investors to become a management-owned company.  Kashyap also breaks down his philosophy on why "technology accelerates human behavior rather than equalizing opportunity," how startup scaling accelerated from 0-to-1M in 18 months to 0-to-100M in 18 months, why high school dropouts building AI-native tools are outperforming legacy pivots, and why deep emotional connection and empathy remain the core operating system for tech leaders.  If you enjoy deep conversations on entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology, and identity across the global South Asian community, please LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE! --------------------------⏱️ CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Teaser: Why Technology Accelerates Human Behavior01:46 - IIT Bombay, Google & Falling in Love with Entrepreneurship06:32 - The Accelerated Startup Pace: AI-Native Founders vs. Legacy Pivots09:53 - Building HyperTrack: Gig Workforce Logistics & Field Automation15:54 - Sponsor Break: TRAVELOPOD and Lotus Lane Coffee16:52 - Capital Concentration & Shifting Venture Capital Dynamics19:53 - Why We Bought Back Our Startup From VCs24:35 - Hard Truths for Founders: M&A Realities, Valuations & Misalignment28:58 - Sponsor Break: Timberdog Ruffrest29:25 - Tech Polarization, Vipassana Meditation & Consciousness36:00 - Reconnecting Feeling with Thinking in Tech Leadership43:32 - Outro & Diaspora Community Shoutouts  --------------------------EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS & KEY TAKEAWAYS:• The Core Operating System: Why human relationship building, empathy, and active listening remain constant anchors despite hyper-accelerating tech cycles.• Buying Back Your Startup: How HyperTrack realigned with investors to buy back VCs/PEs and transition to a profitable, management-owned business.• Tech Accelerates Human Behavior: Why technology doesn't automatically equalize opportunity, but rather accelerates existing human tendencies and polarization.• Leading with Feeling: How Vipassana meditation and connecting at an emotional level help founders make better decisions in an AI-driven world.GUEST & HOST RESOURCES:

Jeff Mains sits down with Elie Bouzaglou, founder of Fish Tank, a video-first crowdfunding platform built for a generation that discovered entrepreneurship on their phone. Elie built an AI voice-call analysis tool as an internal sales tool at his web agency, only to have his team push him to bring it to market. After getting rejected by Republic, Wefunder, and every major crowdfunding platform, Elie didn't blame his product — he blamed the format. Pitch decks are boring, gatekept, and built for VCs, not consumers. His answer: a platform where founders pitch like content creators and everyday people can watch and actually invest, Shark Tank style. The conversation covers building in public, going "all in" on a risky content bet that proved his thesis before launch, why the next Mark Zuckerberg is more likely to be an ex-UGC creator than a programmer, and his "carefully reckless" framework for tackling the thing founders are most afraid of.Key Takeaways3:48 — How Elie's internal AI sales tool became a product because his team saw value he didn't.6:15 — Why the tool wasn't VC fundable, and the pivot toward crowdfunding.10:30 — The core insight: crowdfunding's real problem isn't quality, it's that discovery is boring.13:01 — Why people will binge-watch Shark Tank but can't invest in it — and how Fish Tank closes that gap.17:10 — The "pushing a car" metaphor: starting is the hardest part, momentum does the rest.19:46 — His trick for beating camera-shyness: film it and tell yourself you won't post it.28:54 — Why the next Zuckerberg probably won't be a programmer — it'll be an ex-UGC creator.36:42 — The "carefully reckless" framework: name the thing you're avoiding, write it down, do it.37:31 — The story of betting nearly his last dollar on a content shoot with a VC-turned-content-creator — and how it proved his thesis before launch.40:19 — Why investors are just people, and being seen with flaws beats not being seen at all.41:59 — On dealing with online hate: most of it comes from jealousy, not dislike.Tweetable Quotes"The worst possible case scenario is no one knows who you are. It's not bad PR — that's where you're at right now, and it can only get better." — Elie Bouzaglou"You have to be carefully reckless. What is the thing you are delaying the most? What is the thing you're most afraid of? And just do it." — Elie Bouzaglou"It's always easier to build than to start from zero." — Elie Bouzaglou"I believe the next Mark Zuckerberg will not be a programmer. He'll probably be an ex-UGC person." — Elie Bouzaglou"The greatest success is just on the other side of that fear." — Jeff Mains"When someone hates on you and takes time out of their day to comment, it's because they're jealous — not because they actually dislike what you're doing." — Elie BouzaglouSaaS Leadership LessonsShip it even if you don't see the value. Elie almost never brought his internal tool to market — his team had to convince him. Don't assume "anyone could build this" means no one wants it.Question the format, not just the product. When rejected by every platform, Elie didn't fix his pitch — he concluded the entire crowdfunding format was broken and built a new one.Momentum beats planning. His "pushing a car" philosophy: the hardest part is starting; perfect names, decks, and plans can wait.Break big fears into small, reversible actions. Film it without posting. Schedule it with the option to cancel. Small, low-stakes steps unlock big behavior changes.Distribution is a founder skill now, not a marketing afterthought. Building in public and mastering short-form content may matter more than technical pedigree for the next generation of founders.Bet asymmetrically on your scariest move. Spending nearly his last dollar on a content shoot was terrifying — but the asymmetric upside (VC access, proof of concept, investor DMs) made it the right kind of reckless.Guest Resourceselie@fishtank.vchttps://www.fishtank.vceliebouzaglou.comeliebouzaglou.com/linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/elie-bouzaglo/https://www.instagram.com/ftnk.elieEpisode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/https://jeffmains.com/books/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

С прошлых выпусков [1, 2] про автоматизацию утекло много воды. Хотим возродить тему и рассмотреть её со стороны разработки и со стороны эксплуатации. Эксплуатация знает, как должна работать сеть, но не обязана разбираться в тонкостях Python. Разработка умеет строить надёжные инструменты, но не знает, как правильно настраивать политики на джунипере и хуавэе. Столкнём разработчика и инженера в этом эпизоде и послушаем, как их совместная работа позволяет вводить новое оборудование, держать тысячи устройств в заданной конфигурации и проводить работы, не прикасаясь к ssh (и telnet). Кто: Григорий Ожегов. Ведущий разработчик NOCDEV в Яндекса Александр Предеин. Ведущий сетевой инженер в сетевой инрфе в Яндекс Облака Про что: Как наливать новые устройства через ZTP или консольный порт. «Ожидание и реальнсть»: откуда берутся конфигурации и как снуляется diff. GitOps для сетевого оборудования разных вендоров. Как хранить конфигурации в VCS, не раскрывая секреты. Как изменения проходят ревью и регрессионную проверку. Annet, ЧК, ЦК, сценарии Как автоматизировать обновления, перезагрузки и другие типовые работы. Как запускать сценарии вручную, по расписанию или прямо из найденного diff. Как мониторинг и алертинг замыкают жизненный цикл сети. Какие ачивки еще не получены: поиск причин сбоев и автоматические реакции на инциденты. Оставайтесь на связи Пишите нам: info@linkmeup.ru Канал в телеграме: t.me/linkmeup_podcast Канал на youtube: youtube.com/c/linkmeup-podcast Подкаст доступен в iTunes, Google Подкастах, Яндекс Музыке, Castbox Сообщество в вк: vk.com/linkmeup Группа в фб: www.facebook.com/linkmeup.sdsm Добавить RSS в подкаст-плеер. Пообщаться в общем чате в тг: https://t.me/linkmeup_chat Поддержите проект:

Sydney Landau joined SHAKTI as an intern with no background in venture. Two years later, she became a Partner, at 24.Sydney breaks down how she reads founders using the psychology training she picked up as a psych major, why her firm invests in what they call "reimagination of toothbrushes," and what SHAKTI's primary research with 42 next-gen members of wealthy families revealed about where the intergenerational wealth transfer is actually going.Plus: how she sourced an investment off a TikTok her friends were forwarding around, what running an AI native firm on its own portfolio companies actually looks like day-to-day, and the one part of the job AI has not changed at all.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comWhat we cover- Reading founder psychology, and why SHAKTI backs the founder and the problem rather than the solution- How next gen allocators break from their parents, and what the 42-person study found- The toothbrush test, and how SHAKTI sizes a market before anything else- Sourcing a deal off a TikTok, and where founders are actually showing up now- Running an AI native venture firm, and the one thing AI has not changedAbout the guestSydney Landau is a Partner at SHAKTI, an inception-stage venture firm investing across AI, robotics, and consumer. She leads the firm's next gen research and its AI native operations.Sydney on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-landau-740644236Shakti VC on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/shakti-vcSydney on X - https://x.com/Sydney_landauBook she mentioned: The Venture Mindset - https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Mindset-Smarter-Achieve-Extraordinary/dp/0593714237About VC10XVC10X is a podcast on venture capital, fund management, and institutional allocation, hosted by Prashant Choubey. Conversations with the GPs, LPs, and allocators shaping how capital gets deployed.Connect with Prashant Choubey:LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/choubeysahabSubscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.comSubscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10XVC10X website - https://vc10x.comTimestamps:(00:00) - Preview(01:01) - Introduction to the episode and guest, Sydney Landau.(02:18) - Sydney's journey into venture capital without a tech background.(04:34) - Key learnings from intern to partner in two years.(05:07) - The importance of founder psychology in early-stage investing.(07:11) - Operator experience vs. starting a career directly in VC.(08:10) - How Shakti VC's Titan Platform supports founders.(10:07) - Understanding and investing in Gen Z founders.(12:00) - The rise of IRL (in-real-life) events and personal branding in venture.(14:05) - Study on next-gen wealth transfer and capital allocation.(15:40) - Why next-gen investors are active generalist learners.(18:16) - What drives the shift from specialist to generalist investing.(20:40) - Surprising findings from the next-gen wealth study.(23:04) - Motivation behind studying next-gen high-net-worth individuals.(24:42) - How Gen Z evaluates AI opportunities differently.(25:30) - The "toothbrush" investment thesis: investing in frequent and ubiquitous use cases.(28:03) - Combining generational perspectives within a venture firm.(31:45) - The story of sourcing and winning a deal from TikTok.(36:08) - Transforming Shakti into an AI-native venture firm.(40:17) - What the next-generation consumer wants.(42:50) - How AI will lead to a new generation of entrepreneurs.(43:55) - A trend obvious to Gen Z that isn't priced into markets yet: resale and autonomy.(46:25) - Advice for a 22-year-old wanting a career in venture capital.(48:51) - Rapid-fire round: Investment sectors, stage, and check size.

Can new regulations finally fix the broken token market? This week, we debate whether the SEC's new crypto framework meaningfully changes token design, capital formation, and investor protections. We dig into token cash flows, Hyperliquid's institutional moment, if CLARITY is actually dead, regulatory first movers, and whether founders should ignore their VCs. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 00:28 Jackson Hole & SALT Symposium 04:16 Can Regulation Revive Crypto? 16:23 The Four-Year Cycle & Is It Time To Nibble? 18:23 Hyperliquid's Institutional Moment 25:22 Who Loses From Regulatory Clarity? 32:48 Which Projects Go First? 39:10 Token Transparency Hits Bloomberg 42:13 Travis Kalanick & Peak Founder Mode 51:01 Content Of The Week FOLLOW THE SHOW › Empire – https://x.com/theempirepod › Jason – https://x.com/jasonyanowitz › Santi – https://x.com/santiagoroel › Rob – https://x.com/HadickM › Telegram – https://t.me/+CaCYvTOB4Eg1OWJh › Blockworks – https://x.com/Blockworks EVENTS › Join us at Digital Asset Summit 2026 Asia October 7th & Digital Asset 2026 London November 10-11th https://blockworks.com/events DISCLAIMER Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Any views expressed are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Etched just raised another $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, nearly doubling its valuation from around $10.3 billion in less than a month.But the headline valuation isn't the most interesting part.Etched is building specialized AI chips and inference systems designed to challenge the economics of Nvidia for one of the fastest-growing parts of AI compute: inference.And one of the most notable investors and customers is Jane Street.In this episode, we break down what Etched is actually building, why inference could become an enormous AI compute market, and whether a $21B valuation can be justified.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comKey topics we explore:– What Etched is actually building and why it is focused on AI inference– Why specialized ASICs could compete with general-purpose GPUs– How Etched's approach differs from Nvidia's GPU strategy– Why Jane Street is both an investor and early customer– Why Etched's valuation jumped from ~$10B to $21B in less than a month– The opportunity and risks in the rapidly growing inference market– Why specialized AI hardware could become increasingly important as AI workloads scale– Whether Etched can become a meaningful Nvidia competiton—or carve out a specialized market of its ownThe bigger question:As AI inference becomes a larger share of global compute, will specialized chips challenge Nvidia's dominance?For investors, the story isn't simply Nvidia vs. AMD anymore. The AI hardware ecosystem is becoming increasingly specialized—and the companies that can deliver more intelligence per dollar, per watt, and per second could capture enormous value.LINKSPrashant Choubey - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab⁠Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - ⁠https://vc10x.beehiiv.com⁠Subscribe on YouTube - ⁠https://youtube.com/@VC10X⁠Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986⁠Subscribe on Spotify - ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ⁠VC10X website - ⁠https://vc10x.com⁠For sponsorship queries reach out to prashantchoubey3@gmail.comThis channel is for asset managers, allocators, and investors who want analysis that holds up—not headlines dressed as insight.Subscribe for weekly data-driven breakdowns of the forces reshaping capital markets.#Etched #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIChips #Inference #Nvidia #Semiconductors #JaneStreet #AIInfrastructure #ASIC #GPUs #TechStocks #Investing #VC10X #VentureCapital #Datacenters #MachineLearning #SiliconValley #Finance #Markets

Natalia Salcedo opens season 16 with a pitch for Pitz, her voice AI that helps mechanics repair cars in under 24 hours. She's proven the market in Mexico and Brazil. Can she convince VCs the same playbook will work in the US? This is The Pitch for Pitz. Featuring investors Elizabeth Yin, Jesse Middleton, Mike Ma, Rohit Gupta, and Michelle Kwok. Watch Natalia's pitch uncut on Patreon (@ThePitch) Join us for our fall live shows and Season 17 taping: pitch.show/events Subscribe to our email newsletter: insider.pitch.show Learn more about The Pitch Fund: thepitch.fund *Disclaimer: No offer to invest in Pitz is being made to or solicited from the listening audience on today's show. The information provided on this show is not intended to be investment advice and should not be relied upon as such. The investors on today's episode are providing their opinions based on their own assessment of the business presented. Those opinions should not be considered professional investment advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://youtu.be/jPTlkjF8M-c Tanner Taddeo, CEO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea, is driven by a mission to bring Wall Street-grade financial services to Main Street while embodying the principle Stay Put in Your Convictions. By combining blockchain technology, stablecoins, tokenized capital markets, and AI advisory services, Tanner helps businesses access investment opportunities, put idle cash to work, and move money globally with greater speed, transparency, and capital efficiency. In this conversation, Tanner introduces The Lionel Messi Startup Framework—Develop a High-Level Thesis, Talk With and Learn From the Market, Run 30-Day A/B Tests, Iterate Your Offering, and Stay Resolute With Your Convictions. He explains why founders should observe patiently, validate their ideas with customers, and act decisively when market opportunities emerge. Tanner also discusses balancing long-term conviction with continuous experimentation, unlocking 24/7 liquidity through tokenized capital markets, reducing friction in cross-border payments, and finding urgent “morphine” problems that customers cannot afford to leave unsolved. — Stay Put in Your Convictions with Tanner Taddeo  Hello everyone. Steve Preda here, and my guest today is Tanner Taddeo, the CEO and Co-Founder at Stable Sea, an autonomous treasury management platform that helps finance teams and global businesses access capital market products and move money around the globe to 40 currencies with the cheapest FX rates. Tanner, welcome to the show.  Steve, thanks for having me. Excited for the conversation today.  It’s very interesting that this is how you position your business because most businesses in your industry, as I see them, position themselves with low transaction fees, but really their money is made on the FX. So if you do preferential FX rates or cheap FX rates, that can be a very transparent way of getting business. So I don’t know if that connects to your personal why, but I’d love to learn about your personal why and how you manifest it in your business.  Yeah, definitely. At Stable Sea, we’re very mission-driven in terms of everything that we do. The team itself comes from Block, which was formerly known as Square. Yeah. And everyone on the team has been focused on building products for the real economy, for consumer use cases, for business use cases, et cetera, over the course of everyone’s career.  And so when we started at Stable Sea, our primary thesis was, with blockchain, with stablecoins, with some of the tokenized capital markets products like money market funds, bonds, equities, et cetera, that are coming on-chain, how can you really take Wall Street-grade financial services and provision them out to Main Street for businesses that need them the most? And so the why for Stable Sea, for myself, for the team, is really around helping businesses drive greater capital efficiency in their operations. And we service businesses in the real economy that typically make widgets or some sort of physical hardware devices, and they need to send them around the world.  We help them because we give them access to different types of capital markets products, so money markets and private credit and fixed-income products, et cetera. And then we help them move their money around the globe a little bit more efficiently than they could with either their state bank or their credit union or some third-party cross-border payments provider. Because our firm thesis has always been, if you and I ran Coca-Cola or a large organization, we would have the best-in-class transaction banks helping us put our idle capital to work at every point in time during the day.  If you and I ran a steel manufacturing company in Missouri, you typically have a checking account and QuickBooks, and that’s about it. And so for us, it was always about helping businesses grow, save more money, and then operate more efficiently with some of the new technologies that are out there today.Share on X  So that means, presumably, that what you focus on is more about the investment side of the business rather than crypto and blockchain, and helping people access financial products through the blockchain. Help me understand a little bit what you do and how it is different from what people can get from banks?  Yeah. So everything that we do, all the technology that we build and provision, is on-chain. So all of the capital markets products are tokenized. So tokenized bonds, tokenized equities, tokenized fixed income, tokenized money markets. All of the payment services and settlement services that we offer are through the use of stablecoins, and we can send that around the globe, settle it instantly, and then have low FX rates off the back of that. And then we have some of our AI advisory services.  But from a broad paintbrush perspective, at Stable Sea, you’ve got three products that hang off of our platform. You’ve got capital markets, you’ve got global settlement, and you’ve got advisory services. And then with all of that, we share a common architecture, and that architecture is built across many different blockchains. And then we utilize stablecoins and we utilize RWA tokens, or real-world asset tokens, to provision those use cases.  So everything that we do is stablecoin-native, but we don’t lead with that from a messaging perspective. And the reason we don’t lead with that from a messaging perspective is that if you and I ran a bakery here in Brooklyn, New York, and we had a point-of-sale terminal that just got offered RTP access from the Fed for instant settlement, the bakery owner doesn’t really care about the technology underneath it.  They just care, “Do I trust it? Is it going to get me my money quicker, and is it going to be cheaper than my current alternative?” How it happens, not very many people care unless you’re in the industry and you’re a builder, product manager, et cetera, and you want to nerd out on the actual mechanical nature of how the product works. But for us, it’s always been leading with the narrative of, what is the value proposition and how can we drive greater value to the businesses? So that’s how we lead. But to your point on what the difference is, with any new technological paradigm that occurs, rarely is it so disruptive in nature that folks can’t recognize it.  Everything that happens in terms of the innovation paradigm is typically you stand on the shoulders of giants and you make things incrementally better. And so for us, what we do with capital markets is, the first value proposition is that many businesses in the United States just don’t have access to a diverse array of capital markets products. So the first thing that we have done is just provision access, which is an innovation in and of itself because in the traditional markets, if you want to access a money market fund or a fixed-income product, you typically have high hurdle rates, meaning that as a business, you need to invest at least $10 million at the asset manager in question.  You need to hold that there so then you can get access to all these products. With us, you don’t. There’s only a $1 minimum to clear, so I think most folks can handle a $1 minimum. And then secondly, as things go on-chain, the value proposition there is that you have 24/7, 365 liquidity and tradability. And so what that means is that, just from a money market fund perspective, the interest accrues daily and it pays out daily.  So you get this interest that is dripped into your account daily as opposed to waiting for a month. You also have the ability—so let’s say that you and I run this bakery in Brooklyn. Let’s say that we close our business on Friday, and we’ve got $100,000 sitting in our checking account, and we’re closed on Saturday, Sunday because it’s the July 4th holiday. So we know $100,000 is just going to be sitting in our checking account Saturday, Sunday, not being put to work. With Stable Sea, you can put that to work in a tokenized money market fund because it operates 24/7, 365.  So what we see is businesses now that close their books on Friday can just do an auto-sweep into a money market fund, generate yield Saturday, Sunday, get back to U.S. dollars for their open of business. And again, it’s one of those things where it might not sound like the most revolutionary concept in the world, but if you can help businesses, especially in the mid-market, lower mid-market, operate a little bit more efficiently, I mean, saving an additional $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year is a big value-add to them in the real economy, right? If you’re a large Fortune 100 company, you probably don’t care, or it’s not as valuable. But for us, the companies that run on us, these small increments, standing on the shoulders of giants, a small derivation in innovation is actually really valuable for the end user.Share on X  Well, I think it is because, looking at the inverse of it, I used to be in banking, and I know that one of the biggest moneymakers for banks is float. Yeah. So it’s basically the money that doesn’t earn interest, which they have access to just because they cash the check a day later or make the wire two days instead of one day. And essentially, what you’re doing is you’re taking this money from the bank and you’re giving it to the company that actually should have it in the first place, right? Yep.  Then the question is, how are the banks going to survive if you take away their bread?  Yeah. That is the debate that’s happening right now. I think if you’re one of your G-SIBs, your major banks, you’re going to be okay. So the top 25 banks in the U.S. are going to be just fine, and they make money in tons of different ways, and you’re not going to disrupt that trust ultimately. In the long tail is where I worry because a lot of credit unions and a lot of state banks, they just don’t offer—they’re smaller banks, right?  So they’re not managing—they don’t have a ton of money by virtue of assets under management. So with the deposits that they receive, they need to turn around and recycle that because it’s fractional depository lending, meaning that if I have a checking account, I put 10 grand into it, the bank is then turning around with that 10 grand, making money on it somehow. And you have to think, how does the bank actually make money on that? Well, they typically make it through debt facilities, so mortgages, auto loans, student loans, cards, et cetera.  They’re putting it to work in high-margin financial products back into the economy. They’re not taking that and then buying some money market fund from an asset manager where they make 10 basis points and provisioning that out to the businesses, right? There, I think that we’re seeing a lot of companies move off. They’re taking their money from their checking account, moving it to Stable Sea because we can put it in these capital markets products.  I think that overall, that’s a net positive for the business because the business now has a higher degree of operating capital on hand that they can make money with. But by the same token, if the state banks and the credit unions don’t wake up and respond to this, their depository base will be, if not fully eroded, tarnished and diminished. And what that means for local community health, I’m not sure because banks do play a very important role, especially credit unions and local banks.  You know your local community the best, and so you lend back into that community with the deposits that you receive from that community. So there’s a cyclicality to it which has some poetry in it. And so it’s not apparently clear to me that some of this stuff is going to be a net positive. But at the same time, living in one of the most capitalistic countries and markets in the world, there’s a clear demand for this, and if the banks aren’t going to wake up and serve it, we’ll be there to help businesses do what’s best for them.  Yeah. It’s the invisible hand, right? You increase the efficiency, which will force the banks to also increase their efficiency. And yeah, the smaller banks might have to be more innovative. But they are more nimble, so maybe there are other ways that they can serve the community.  So I’d like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about frameworks. So this is a podcast of frameworks, and 350 episodes in, I’m always looking for some kind of a framework, shortcut, a mental model that you have come across or developed yourself that helps you make more sense of the world around you, get something done. It can be explained in three to five steps, something like that, which the listeners might get some ideas out of and be able to improve their businesses. So what comes to mind for you?  Yeah, two things. I’ll start with a high-level analogy and then go a little deeper. It’s the World Cup right now, so I don’t know if you or any of your listeners are following the World Cup. But if you watch Messi play, his playing style is a great analogy for startups. And whether that be a startup externally where you raise venture capital, or even just intrapreneurship if you’re inside of a big company and you’re on an innovation team, et cetera.  From the outside, it looks like startups are always building things and they’re always moving fast, et cetera. But in reality, if you watch Messi play, Messi really doesn’t move that much on the pitch. He just sits around, he observes, he watches, and then when a hole opens up and some opportunity opens up, he breaks for it, and then he goes and executes. But he spends the vast majority of time just sitting there, tinkering, observing, watching. And then if you’re watching him, you’re like, “He’s not working that hard. He’s just sitting around.”  And then he goes and executes. But he’s always observing, he’s always watching, and there’s a real learning in that. I feel like Silicon Valley, as it relates to startups, there’s this pressure that you always have to be building, you always have to be shipping, you always have to be constantly grinding. I think that wisdom is actually counterintuitive because you want to have a thesis in the market, and then you want to be able to test that thesis quickly. So in some respects, you do want to be shipping all the time.  But you don’t want to be working for the sake of work. You want to have a thesis in the market. You want to be building towards that thesis that will happen in the next six months, 12 months, two years. And then you always want to be learning and talking to the market because when that hole does open up, you’ll have the right product at the right time to go and execute on. So I think that's something that we have learned: being patient and staying resolute in your conviction that what you're building is right.Share on X And it can’t just be a gut feeling. It has to be validated by the market.  So we do a bunch of A/B tests every 30 days where we have an idea about a feature or a product or a direction we want to take it. And the thing is, if you can’t get five CEOs on the phone in 30 days to validate if a product is going to be interesting or not, then that’s a signal in and of itself, right? So for anything that we do, we always have a thesis on the market, and then we spend 30 days testing it. And at the end of those 30 days, we get some feedback.  The reason why we do these A/B tests, just to drill down into one level further, is that the idea of a startup or a product that you have in your head, it’s a living entity. It’s always evolving on the basis of who you talk to, what your team is thinking, what you’re reading in the market, et cetera.  And then you’re trying to take that living concept and plug it into a market. But the market itself is also living, right?  You’ve got regulations, you’ve got different macroeconomic cycles, you’ve got companies that have budget, don’t have budget, people getting laid off in different organizations. The market itself is living and evolving. So you have this idea that is living and evolving, and you have a market that is living and evolving, and you need those two things to stick together. And so for us, we’re always wedded to this concept that product at time A is not going to be product at time Z. You need to constantly be doing A/B tests to figure out what that right fit is.  And then when you have that fit, you need to double down on it and grow it into a line of business. But you also need to recognize that there are very few businesses in this world that have been around for more than 200 years, if at all. So whatever your original product idea is, or whatever the feature that gave you product-market fit is today, you have to consciously be aware that, “Hey, that’s not going to be the thing that gets us to IPO in five years’ time.” So you can’t be lulled into this false sense of security. You always have to be waiting, observing, testing, experimenting, growing, and then if you see opportunity, you strike.  Yeah, this is fascinating. Especially now, things are moving very fast with AI creating capabilities all the time for people to test products or to create capabilities that then get disrupted in a couple of months. So it’s interesting that you say that you have to stay resolute in your conviction. So there is a tension there. You build a thesis and you stay resolute, but then you’re testing and the market might tell you not to be resolute.  And then you also told me that companies don’t live forever. So how do you resolve this tension of being stable with your thesis and not letting your conviction be upended, but also being nimble in the changing market dynamics and everything to respond to? So how do you manage the tension?  Yeah, it’s a good question. There has to be a high-level thesis, right? So for us at Stable Sea, it is as simple as: In 10 years from now, will more finance teams and businesses be on-chain or off-chain than today? And so our high-level conviction is, in 10 years’ time, more businesses will be running their treasury stack on-chain. So that’s our conviction. We know, come hell or high water, that is going to be where the puck is going to be in the future, and we’re going to skate to that future.  So if you start with this high-level conviction that more companies are coming on-chain, that is what we’re building for. Now, how they come on-chain is a matter of debate, which is where the A/B test comes in, right? We originally thought it was going to be for payments. So we built all the stablecoin infrastructure to do global payments in 40 different markets.  Turned out to be not the case, actually. And then we started tinkering as we saw the data coming in and were like, “Okay, some companies are using stablecoins for payments, but there’s a bunch of inefficiencies. That world’s still going to take two or three years to wake up. Where is the wedge in the market today?” And so when we started experimenting with capital markets products, we found that there was this massive opportunity that businesses just didn’t have access to a diverse array of yield-bearing strategies, and they wanted that.  And so that was where we were like, okay, let’s get businesses into the on-chain economy through capital markets. And then what we’re finding is, as folks come onto the platform, everyone uses us today for capital markets, and then 20, 30% of our companies say, “Actually, I do have a cross-border payment need, and I already hold money with you. Can you facilitate that payment or that settlement to Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, et cetera?”  So for us, when I say you need to stay resolute in your conviction, our why is always: We want to take Wall Street-grade financial services and provision them out to Main Street.Share on X The conviction behind that is that you can do that through on-chain technology. And then in 10 years from now, more businesses will be on-chain than off-chain. How we get to that future in 10 years, who knows, right? And that’s where the fun of the startup is.  You’re always testing. And so for us, we’ve waxed and waned on different product strategies, primarily because the market has changed. And as people start to educate themselves on what the value props are, you see where folks find value, and then you build to that value. And in theory, in three, five, seven years, we should be living in a world where more companies are operating on-chain, and then they might use that full product suite.  But out of the gate, it’s kind of like, where is that value, that wedge? You charge as hard as you can into that wedge, and then you continue to expand your product set over time. All with that high-level conviction of, in 10 years from now, we believe that more businesses will be on-chain than off-chain.  So basically, you want to find the point where you can penetrate that market opportunity, and then it’s a land-and-expand kind of thing. And then you expand from there as the market opportunities evolve over time. But you already have a customer, you’re already building trust with them, and now they’re going to be more disposed to buying from you.  Yeah, that’s right. And I think it’s interesting from a mental place being a startup because you’re forced to think so short-term because you just need to generate revenue, get to the next capital round, et cetera. So you’re always building for the moment. But what we try to do at Stable Sea is we try to think as if we were already a Vanguard and a large company, to the extent that we have the luxury of planning for 10 years.  If you think about it in that regard, it takes a lot of the day-to-day anxiety away. It’s a little bit like, if you listen to Warren Buffett, any time that there’s volatility in the market, he’s like, “Well, it doesn’t really bother me because I’m investing for 50 years.” So, is it up 20%, down 20%? Who cares? In 50 years, it’s going to be up 200%, so that’s all I’m worried about, right? And there’s a real luxury when you come and think about it that way. So that’s why I think if you’re founding anything, or if you’re starting something inside of a company as an intrapreneur, you need to have a strong conviction on where the market’s headed in five or 10 years, and then you need to test towards that future. But that also makes the day-to-day operations of the business a little bit more palatable.  So often, you can get caught up in this whipsaw of, “Big Company A launched this product. Regulation came down, wiped out this company. This competitor raised a Series C, and they have way more money in the bank than we do.” And so you can get caught up in all this minutiae, but it doesn’t really matter if you sit back and you say, “I know that I’m going to find a way to make this business exist for the next 10 years.” In 10 years’ time, what does the future look like? Do I feel strongly that that’s going to be the case? Cool. I’m going to build towards that future. And then whatever the headwinds are in the interim, they’re just short-term temporal problems that kind of come and go along.  Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you. And interestingly, 20 years ago, or 25 years ago, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to think that long term. But now that I’m older, I actually am more patient to have the long view, which is very counterintuitive.  And Dan Sullivan, who is a coach and the founder of Strategic Coach, he is now, I think, north of 80, and he has this thesis that even at his age, he has a 25-year plan, and that allows him to actually create more value. So that’s fascinating. So switching gears here, what drives growth in your business right now?  Yeah. So we govern the business with an assets under management model. So we have USDC, we’ve got money market funds, we’ve got fixed-income products, we’ve got Bitcoin on platform. So we just look at overarching platform balance. And so that’s the primary, very simple heuristic for how we define success: Is that thing growing month over month, quarter over quarter? That’s how we define growth and measure our growth.  But again, the value prop in terms of what drives that, why do companies actually sign up to Stable Sea? Primarily because they just don’t have access. Almost every business that we have talked to so far, and honestly every business that I’ve interacted with, has idle cash sitting in a checking account someplace. Full stop. And that idle cash could sit there for the weekend, i.e., two days, or it could sit for a quarter. If you’re gearing up for quarterly bonuses in Q1, you will escrow a million, $2 million in Q4 so you can pay out in Q1. Not just the U.S. economy, but every economy, there’s just cash sitting around at a bank, and it’s being underutilized.  And so for us, when we go and finally chat to businesses in the mid-market, lower mid-market, even SMBs, we have a customer on platform that invests $2,500 every week. It almost looks like a checking account, or almost looks like retail behavior in some ways. But they do it because they say, “Hey, I don’t make a lot of money with my business, but if I can eke an additional two, three grand at the end of the year, that’s valuable to me.” And there’s a real poetry to that because they’ve never had access to it. They’ve always wanted it.  But banks, large and small, won’t go build for the long tail of the economy. And so finally, we show up and we say, “Hey, here’s your menu of investment options. Here’s the risk profiles. Here’s how you should think of it. Based on the seasonality of your business, we can get you into the right products.” There’s real utility there, and that’s what kind of drives the value proposition and the growth of the business and the business’s assets under management overall.  So you’re looking for opportunities where you can be additive to customers, where there’s a situation where maybe there’s a gap in the market or there’s friction that they are experiencing with investing their money, and you can be the wedge in that situation and offer them a 3X better solution.  Yeah. Correct. Correct. And again, our tagline internally is, “Keep your bank, upgrade your capital.” Because we really don’t want to compete with the checking account. Where you run payroll, where your invoices land if someone pays you, your day-to-day spend, keep your banking relationships because it’s very difficult to usurp that. And also, we don’t want to get into that. That puts us squarely in this neobank realm where you’ve got great companies like Mercury and Rho and Ramp and Brex and a thousand other companies there.  We don’t really want to go compete with that. We’re more of, if you had the privilege of working with some of the largest transaction banks in the world, that’s what we’re trying to be and essentially provision those services out to the real economy, which is typically access to capital markets, access to global foreign exchange for payments and settlement, and then advisory services, tax reporting, et cetera.  Almost like a democratized private banking service.  Yeah. Yeah. All of us at Stable Sea, we’re trying really hard to steer away from the banking narrative, but yes, in the future, if you take that 10-year perspective, yeah, we will most likely be a private banking solution, a democratized version of that.  Yeah. Fascinating. So what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out right now in your business?  Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, the one thing that we’re actively trying to figure out is two things, really. One is, so we build directly into ERP systems like QuickBooks or NetSuite or Oracle or SAP, and we have advisory services. So we take a lot of that data, we build our own model weights on top of it, and then we offer that out to our customers so that they can essentially query their own transaction data and use it for different services.  Now, we’ve got strong signal on the first value proposition for that, but I’m curious mostly for owner-operators in the real economy: What are their biggest back-office pain points? And that’s something that we’re trying to figure out because we hear a lot, “Yes, we don’t have access to savings products.” Okay, we can solve that today. “Yes, cross-border payments are frustrating, slow, and expensive.” Yes, we solve that today.  So we’re looking for that third pillar. One of our VCs always talks to us about morphine versus vitamins, where it’s kind of a crude analogy, but if you go to the hospital and you’re in dire pain, you don’t want to be sold vitamins. You want some morphine, and that’s what you’re going there for, right? And when you’re in a startup and you create products, you’re really looking for that morphine of, people just cannot live without this product. And then you can sell all the value-added services around it, which are essentially the vitamins.  And so for us, we’ve found two morphine-like products where there’s a real pain point for accessing capital markets. Primarily, there is no ability to access that today. And then second, cross-border payments: slow, difficult, expensive, opaque, all the things. Solved that. So the third one that we’re trying to figure out now is: How do we A/B test quickly enough to figure out—we have a treasure trove of data building into ERP systems—what is the highest signal-to-noise product that we can build using a diverse data set to help owners operate their back office a little more efficiently?  So you say highest signal-to-noise. Is it the ratio of signal to noise? So what is the product value which you can detect as being a need in the market? Is this what you mean by that? Yeah, yeah. It’s like, what is that one pain point that is so resolute that people are like, “I would do anything to have this thing solved”? There’s all these value-adds like cash flow reporting and automating some of your tax stuff at the end of the year, which are all nice-to-haves. We’re curious. We’re trying to figure out what it is that folks will say, “I’ve got all this data in my ERP system. I would love to know one, two, three things and have A, B, C automated so my back office can run a little bit more efficiently and my accountant doesn’t have to ask me every quarter-end, ‘Where is X, Y, and Z statement?'”  Yeah. I mean, I’ve got some ideas, but I’m sure that you’ve already thought about most of it, so I’m not going to share them. So if someone is listening to this who is a small business or medium-sized business, and they’ve got some cash just sitting around, or they’d like to invest, but they don’t have big enough balances or the transaction costs are prohibitive for their size of investment, whatever the reason, but they are curious about exploring how to have access to better FX rates, more investment products, where can they learn more, and how can they connect with you?  Of course. Well, connect with me on LinkedIn, Tanner Taddeo, pretty easy to find. And then the platform is stablesea.com. So, free to sign up, no cost whatsoever. Also, no cost to use the platform at all. So feel free to sign up right online, and then, yeah, typically it takes us two days to run through the KYB document requests, and then you’re up and running. So, pretty simple. Stablesea.com, free to sign up and start putting your capital to work. Awesome. We try and make it as seamless as possible.  So I’m just wondering, the name of the company, is it something to do with stablecoin? Is it a sea of opportunities for stablecoin?  It was stablecoin for sure. So we started with the word “stable” and then “sea” because we wanted to provide a sea of liquidity. Both for FX, because we do B2B settlements, which are typically large transactions, low volume. You’re not doing twenty $10 million transactions a day. You’re typically doing one $10 million transaction a week or every other week. But you need a deep pool of liquidity to service that.  And then also, from a capital markets perspective, we wanted to be able to provide a sea of liquidity there for different investment options that companies could access based on the seasonality of their cash flow or the risk tolerance that they have as a business. So stable meets sea, so Stable Sea.  Okay. Well, if you want to keep your bank but upgrade your capital, then reach out to Tanner Taddeo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Stable Sea. He’ll get you more investment opportunities that maybe you have not had access to. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts. Do not miss any episode with exciting entrepreneurs like Tanner. So thanks, Tanner, for coming, and thank you for listening.  Thank you, Steve. Important Links: Tanner's LinkedIn Tanner's website

Most founders think you need a $250,000 VC check to get funded, but angel investors will write you a check for $5,000, actually get to know you, and stick around as a mentor long after the money lands.In this episode, Chris, the new director of 412 Angels, explains the real difference between angel investors and VCs, why founders should start building investor relationships long before they need the money, the most overrated (and underrated) traits he sees in early-stage founders, and what's next for 412 Angels — including plans to launch a fund and lead their own deals.In this episode:✅ The real difference between angel investors and venture capital✅ When founders should start reaching out to investors (hint: earlier than you think)✅ Where to actually meet investors in Northwest Arkansas✅ The most overrated trait in early-stage founders✅ Chris's advice to his younger, first-time-founder self⏱️ CHAPTERS00:00 – Why 90% of a founder's job is networking 00:21 – Meet Chris Ehrhardt, back after 10 years01:24 – From Germany to Arkansas: Chris's origin story 02:23 – Building a startup and moving to Canada on a startup visa 05:22 – What is 412 Angels? 06:28 – Why keeping funding local matters for founders 08:20 – Angel investors vs. venture capitalists 10:24 – When founders should start talking to investors 11:51 – Where to actually meet investors in NWA 14:21 – The most overrated trait in early-stage founders 15:36 – The most underrated trait: coachability 18:09 – How 412 Angels pays it forward 19:50 – What's next for 412 Angels 22:53 – Advice to his younger self 25:26 – Where to find Chris and 412 Angels—Connect with Chris & 412 Angels

Jeff Mains sits down with Logan Yonavjak, a nearly two-decade veteran of impact investing and venture capital, who built the Founder Readiness Institute after watching a promising founding team unravel post-investment. Logan explains why "people risk" — not market or product risk — is the leading cause of startup failure, and how her Founder Readiness Level assessment uses AI-driven quantitative linguistics (rooted in adult developmental psychology) to measure a founder's capacity for complexity, resilience, and coachability. The conversation covers her pivot from selling to VCs to selling to mid-market companies (200–2,000 employees), why she favors partnerships over "owning the whole stack," what building the tool taught her about her own leadership blind spots, and where people analytics is headed as AI reshapes what's left for humans to do.Key Takeaways4:46 — The deal that started it all: a founder who "buckled" after investment closed, and the lesson about charisma bias.7:16 — Why investors spend more time on the pitch deck than on the person who has to execute it.9:18 — The data: ~65% of startup failures trace back to people problems (Noam Wasserman / Harvard Business Review, 10,000 founders studied).10:18 — How the Founder Readiness Level differs from personality tests: it measures developmental stage, not static self-reported traits.13:27 — Why AI made scoring open-ended, scenario-based responses possible at scale (versus hand-coded transcripts).17:30 — What "managing complexity" actually looks like in high-level leaders: holding multiple interdisciplinary frameworks at once.19:15 — The go-to-market mistake: mistaking "this is interesting" for a real, fundable pain point among VCs.21:50 — Repositioning the ICP: C-suite and L&D leaders at Series B/C+ startups in high-innovation industries.29:02 — The Steve Jobs thought experiment: high strategic complexity, likely lower relational intelligence early on.35:04 — Build vs. partner: why "ecosystem builder" is a higher-complexity strategic move than trying to dominate a category.38:32 — The question every founder should be asking themselves: "How coachable am I?"39:17 — Where to find Logan and the assessment (readinessengine.io, LinkedIn).Tweetable Quotes"Charisma is a remarkable camouflage. A great storyteller can make a structurally fragile leadership team look like a dynasty, right up until the growth pressure hits.""We bet on the horse, not the jockey... we say we're betting on the jockey, but we don't give them any tools.""It's not about being better or worse, it's just that it depends on where you would be best situated professionally.""AI has taken the bottom out of [junior-level work]. So what's left for humans to do is actually more complex tasks.""It's a higher level strategic complexity move to be more of an ecosystem builder than someone trying to dominate a market.""How coachable am I? ... that growth mindset to success — everyone should be asking themselves that on a regular basis.""Sixty-five percent of startups don't die because the product was bad. They die because the founder couldn't see themselves clearly when things got hard." — Jeff MainsSaaS Leadership LessonsPeople risk beats market risk. Roughly two-thirds of startup failures trace back to human/leadership breakdowns, not product or timing.Charisma is not a leadership metric. The most compelling storytellers in the room are often the hardest to accurately evaluate.Self-reported assessments have a ceiling. Static, forced-choice tests can be gamed and don't track development over time — open-ended, scenario-based signals are harder to fake.Position around infrastructure, not features. Framing the product as "developmental intelligence infrastructure" rather than another HR tech point-solution avoided category fatigue.Partner before you build or acquire. Complementary players (e.g., behavioral analytics firms) can expand value to shared clients faster than trying to own the entire stack.Coachability and flexible identity predict survival. The founders who pivot fastest under negative market feedback are the ones who don't over-identify with a single idea.Guest Resourceswww.founderready.iohttps://www.facebook.com/loganyonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/loganyonavjak/https://www.instagram.com/loganyon/https://x.com/LoganyonEpisode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/https://jeffmains.com/books/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

Matt Curtolo is an independent advisor to LPs & GPs with over twenty years on the LP side of private markets, across Hamilton Lane, Hirtle Callaghan, MetLife, and Allocate. He now works directly with fund managers on strategy, fundraising, and positioning, giving them the candid LP read most of them never get. This is his third appearance on VC10X.⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.comTopics covered:- Why 2021 is the wrong baseline, and what the fund one attrition data actually shows- Why "we invest in AI" has stopped being a thesis, and where Matt is looking instead- How LP incentives, economic and non-economic, decide whether you ever get a check- The biggest mistake GPs make when telling their fund story- Why Matt thinks LPs who refuse to back fund ones are misunderstanding riskConnect with Matt Curtolo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-curtolo-caia/Connect with Prashant Choubey:LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/choubeysahabSubscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.comSubscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10XSubscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQVC10X website - https://vc10x.comTimestamps:(00:00) - Preview(00:52) - Introduction to the host, guest, and the episode's central theme.(01:23) - Sponsor read for Podcast NX.(02:26) - Comparing the 2021 LP market to today's.(04:52) - Investment trends and opportunities outside of AI.(08:55) - How General Partners (GPs) are positioning themselves for fundraising.(11:18) - Understanding Limited Partner (LP) incentives and their impact on investment decisions.(14:40) - Key factors for securing a second meeting with LPs.(17:15) - The biggest mistake GPs make when telling their fund's story.(19:32) - How LPs evaluate first-time fund managers today.(22:21) - The impact of SPVs and the "deal-first" mentality on portfolio building.(27:23) - Principles of good portfolio construction for long-term LPs.(30:46) - What separates durable franchises from one-fund wonders.(33:08) - A hypothetical fundraising strategy for launching a new fund today.(35:48) - Start of the rapid-fire round.(36:00) - An important LP question every GP should be prepared for.(36:19) - An exciting investment theme outside of AI.(36:31) - Outdated fundraising advice to ignore.(36:53) - A prediction for the GP fundraising market in the next three years.(37:19) - Concluding thoughts.

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www.LearningLeader.com The Price of Becoming is a USA Today, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming My guest - Mark Pincus is the founder of Zynga, the social gaming company he built from zero to $12.7 billion, pioneering a category that generated over a billion app installs and introduced hundreds of millions of people to online play. He's a serial founder who has started ten companies, taught product development at Stanford, and made early seed investments in Facebook and Twitter. His new book is Life at the Speed of Play. Key Learnings Coaches are cheat codes. Mark has hired a surfing coach, a tennis coach, a chess coach, a life coach, and the legendary Bill Campbell. None of them were assigned to him. He went and found them. "You throw to where you swing. You don't swing to where you throw." His tennis coach, Jorge, on learning how to serve. Commit to the natural swing first. You'll miss. You'll look stupid. Eventually your brain realizes you're serious and puts the ball where it belongs. You play to get better. You don't play to win. Not this point. Not this match. What am I doing right now that makes me better in the next game? Kill the ego so it gets out of the way of you being humble and curious. Don't contort the organization around one talented jerk. Colleen McCreary, Zynga's chief people officer, kept a sign on her wall: "No jerks allowed." She once vetoed an acquisition because she believed the founder was toxic. When the organization sees you refuse to bend just to win one point, they build muscle and confidence too. You'll have periods out of alignment. That's okay. Sometimes the person is in a crucial seat and you can't swap them tomorrow. What matters is that you're aligned with the philosophy. Bill Campbell's two lessons: intellectual honesty and courage. Be committed to the deep truths above everything else, and say them to your team even when it hurts. Then have the courage to stand up to your own team, your own board, and your own investors. A well-run company is a democratic dictatorship. Campbell leaned heavily on the dictatorship half. Unapologetically. The flip side of ambition is sacrifice. Everyone says they're a ten out of ten on ambition.  Mark's test: would you toil in obscurity for the next ten years, nobody respecting what you're doing, for an 80 or 90 percent chance at something bigger than your wildest dreams? Or take the 80 percent chance at a respectable single and a pat on the back? Nobody believes in us as much as we do. That's why we become founders. At 41, VCs who had already backed Mark twice told him he was too old, too rich, and too settled to go all in on Zynga. Mark isn't all in until he is. He calls it a lazy on-ramp to curiosity. Lots of projects. Looking for signals in a lot of places. Processing. Then it flips. "When the fish are running, we're up all night throwing nets until they're done running, not until we're tired." The chess lesson: play boring. His chess coach told him if you want to beat a player rated much higher than you, play boring and conservative and let them make the mistake. He started doing it. He started winning. Your kids don't follow what you say. They follow what you do. Mark set out to be a different kind of dad than his own, who measured people by their résumé. Then he watched his 15-year-old daughter spend every waking minute with math tutors before leaving on a service trip. "How did we get here? Oh, I know how we got here. They're not listening to what Dad says. They're following what Dad does." Happiness comes from feeling useful to a community you care about. Not from being useful. From feeling it. That's Alfred Adler, by way of The Courage to Be Disliked. There are two levels of success. A life well lived is a life in alignment with what only you can bring to the world. You don't have to build Google to feel like you went for it. The ultimate success is the greatest instantiation of your talents. Use money as freedom, not lifestyle. When Freeloader sold and 28-year-old Mark had more money than he'd ever imagined, he made a list of everything he was going to buy. It totaled about $9,000. He put leather interior in his Pathfinder. He still has the vehicle.  He set a $500 million goal that had nothing to do with buying things. At a net worth around $15 million, working with a life coach, he wrote it down because that's the capital required to run a studio of teams chasing many ideas without going to anyone else with hat in hand. "Creatively, that's freedom." Retirement is spiritual death. The stretches between building things are what Mark calls the abyss. Once you've felt the high of building with a great team and shipping something into users' hands every week, it ruins you. You can't be happy with less. Over-fund the things that matter. Not every day is the same. Not every life moment is the same. When one of those moments comes, put all your best players on the ice. The Allen & Company investor tour. They told Mark it was a dog and pony show. Just shake some hands. He told his team: this is our IPO, this is our roadshow, and we are going to use every minute of it the way we want. He gave the biggest public market investors a full presentation, handed them his numbers, and told them to judge him against those numbers in a year. He met with them a year later and had crushed them. King for a day. Carol Bartz brought Mark in to talk to Yahoo's entire senior management. He spent two weeks building a presentation on how he'd run Yahoo if he were king for a day, stood up, and took over the room for an hour. They got a deal done and one person in that room came to work for him. He ran the same play on the CEO of AMEX with a credit card that competed on fun. Amex spent $75 million with them. Seven minutes with Obama became 45. Mark was told the President would ask about his kids and then the meeting would be over. He walked in with a PowerPoint on the ten bold objectives he'd run on if he were president. Obama went through the entire thing and then asked what else he had. Prepare as hard for everything going right as you do for everything going wrong. Mark had under-prepared for the version of where Obama said, "Yeah, I'm buying. What else you got?" We sleepwalk through our own biggest moments. The question isn't what's the agenda or why they want to meet with you. It's: I have five minutes with the king. What is theoretically possible here? The Book of Life. Every year during the Jewish New Year, Mark writes in the same book. Only during that window. It isn't a journal. It's a spiritual board meeting with himself. He reads back through every previous year first, then writes. Partner with your future self. "What will Mark 2030 thank me for doing right now?" It started with quitting smoking. October 19, 1994. "I pulled my own power back. If I can quit smoking and really commit to it, what else can I do?" A year later he quit his job and did something bigger. Even if you missed the big goal, ask what you actually did toward it. Did you talk about it? Did you do real things? Did you turn the boat toward it? If not, maybe you don't believe in the goal. When Mark is at his lowest, he's humbled, he picks achievable goals, and he finds the most grit. When he's winning, he picks stratospheric goals and does the worst. After his biggest successes, he isn't humble enough to succeed again, and he has to go through failure to reel himself back in. Mark's champagne moment a year from now: that the book connects for hundreds of thousands of people, and that he's built a product people find real meaning in. Reflection Questions If you went and hired a coach, who is the person who could most change your life right now?  What is your next high-stakes moment, and are you treating it like the dog and pony show or like your IPO? What is the one habit your future self would most thank you for making this year? What would it unlock if you actually committed to it? More Learning #688: Dr. Henry Cloud - Your Desired Future: 5 Steps to Take You Where You Want to Go #689: Eric Ries - Why Good Companies Go Bad, and How Great Companies Stay Great #687: Jim Collins - What to Make of a Life & The 3 Types of Luck Episode Chapters 00:00 Meet Mark Pincus 01:40 Why Mark Hires So Many Coaches 02:25 Lessons From Tennis In Leading People 04:56 Refusing to Bend the Culture for One Great Player 07:03 Lessons From Bill Campbell 09:17 On Being Called a Control Freak 13:38 The Ambition Question Mark Asks Founders 14:53 What High Standards Do to Your Kids 20:55 How Mark Defines Success  23:26 Money as Freedom, Not Lifestyle 29:45 Why High Achievers Can't Retire 32:39 Over-Fund the Things That Matter 34:35 Treating a Handshake Tour Like an IPO Roadshow 35:36 King for a Day at Yahoo and Amex 38:14 Seven Minutes With Obama That Became 45 41:39 The Book of Life 45:21 Why Mark Does His Best Thinking at His Lowest 46:48 The Champagne Question 48:40 EOPC

I am trying something a little different with this episode. I am heading back to 1977 to take a look at the original titles for the Atari VCS. I have been a lifelong Atari fan and collector and while my top games are not from the first year of the console, I am very much intrigued by the idea of a time when the console only had 9 titles. It would take me a while, but eventually I would get to collect ‘em all. Support the Retroist on Patreon On the show, I start off by talking about this time in Atari's history and how I have loved the start of any product line. Variety is great, but a small checklist is very satisfying. In addition to the original games, I talk about Sears, cartridge technology, the art and artists, and the original cast of programmers who made these first few games. These trailblazers would all go onto other things. Its is amazing that Star Wars and the VCS landed in 1977. Two things among many that helped to define a lot of childhoods. This episode helped to remind me why I really loved early Atari games. I sat down to play them and tried to put myself into 1977. Other consoles had been trying to do what Atari was doing, but the Atari VCS with its joysticks and paddles feels so much more intuitive. The color, graphics, and sound might have been simple, but it showed what the future was going to be like. Games would grow by leaps and bounds over the next few years, but most of these games remained very playable.

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: *Airtable just sold for $2.25 billion, an 81% drop from its peak of $11.7 billion. On this week's TWiST VC Roundtable, Aditya Agarwal (South Park Commons), Niko Bonatsos (Verdict Capital), and Rick Heitzmann (FirstMark Capital) break down why the venture world sees this as a good outcome, not a financial disaster. By declining the deal, would Airtable's team have just been delaying the inevitable? Is the fact that they reached $400M+ ARR on its own a reason to celebrate? Find out why our investor panel prefers unwinding a stuck situation rather than chasing a growth rate that's no longer sustainable. PLUS Robinhood's booming prediction market business, the secondary market flap over Anduril shares, why so many VCs shy away from "vice" categories, and a glimpse at how insiders are talking about the Apple-OpenAI lawsuit. Guests Aditya Agarwal on X: https://x.com/adityaag South Park Commons: https://www.southparkcommons.com/apply Niko Bonatsos on X: https://x.com/bonatsos Verdict Capital: https://verdictcap.com/ Rick Heitzmann on X: https://x.com/rick FirstMark Capital: https://firstmark.com/ Relevant Links Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/ Bending Spoons announces Airtable acquisition: https://investors.bendingspoons.com/newsroom/bending-spoons-agrees-to-acquire-airtable Constellation Software: The Anti-Conglomerate: https://www.eaglepointcap.com/blog/constellation-software-the-anti-conglomerate Introducing Robinhood Ventures Fund II: https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/introducing-rvii/ Quartz: Robinhood posted record quarterly revenue: https://qz.com/robinhood-record-revenue-prediction-markets-earnings-073026 Riot Games: https://www.riotgames.com/en AngelList's USVC Fund: https://usvc.com/ Baseten: https://www.baseten.co/ OpenEvidence: https://www.openevidence.com/ Hermes Agent: https://hermes-agent.org/ Granola: https://www.granola.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 VC intros & Bending Spoons buys Airtable 9:19 Why growth is the only metric that matters 9:45 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 20:52 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 26:25 When should VCs sell in secondary markets? 30:55 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist 35:38 Robinhood's prediction markets are exploding 43:13 The USVC-Anduril secondary controversy 46:18 How VC firms use open source models 58:43 Telling the real founders from the grifters 1:02:38 Why Apple is suing OpenAI Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check 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 McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

40% of PE firms and 60% of credit funds still track their portfolios on spreadsheets. That's now a way to monitor a few trillion in AUM. Private equity (and credit) are about to get way more transparent as retail investors get access to PE, and the tools you need to monitor and report your exposure must evolve. The products are way ahead of the plumbing.  Devin sits down with Kevin Hsu, founder of Lumonic, a portfolio monitoring software company now part of PitchBook. We discuss Kevin's early career in private markets technology and what that taught him about the difference between the needs of VCs and PE firms. We talk about the coming convergence of public and private markets, and why the old ways of doing things (in spreadsheets) won't cut it in the new world of heightened transparency and regulation. ParkerGale is in the middle of automating much of its internal workflows with new AI-powered tools, so this conversation will help other funds think through the options. Should you roll your own (Kevin has a surprising opinion on this), stick with what you've got, or make a switch? What should you expect from your software provider and how do you handle those edge case portfolio companies? We cover all this and more with Kevin. https://www.lumonic.com/  

Victor Penev, Founder and CEO of Edamam LLC, is on a mission to help people make healthier food choices by organizing the world’s food knowledge, while building a Zero-Spend Marketing Engine that fuels sustainable growth through a proprietary semantic food database. By combining food science, nutrition expertise, and AI-powered technology, Victor has built Edamam into a trusted food intelligence platform that enables businesses to develop innovative health, wellness, and nutrition applications while making reliable food data accessible at scale. In this conversation, Victor introduces The Democratic Decisions Framework—No Pre-Judgement, Freedom to Speak Up, Intellectual Environment, Robust Discussion, and Work Towards Consensus. He explains why removing preconceived opinions encourages better ideas, how open dialogue and diverse perspectives lead to stronger decisions, and why working toward consensus builds lasting commitment across teams. Victor also shares how partnerships, referrals, and search authority fueled Edamam’s sustainable growth, and why proprietary data and continuous human refinement remain the company’s competitive advantage in the age of AI. — Zero-Spend Marketing Engine with Victor Penev  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. Today, my guest is Victor Penev, the Founder and CEO of Edamam LLC. Edamam is helping people eat better by making daily food choices simple and easy, eventually organizing all the food knowledge in the world. To that end, the company has built a proprietary semantic food knowledge base and is creating, on top of it, a range of consumer and business applications to solve real-world, everyday problems. Wow. Victor, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Good to be here. I’m very excited.  So I was shocked to learn that you’ve got 900,000 foods in the system and 2.3 million recipes. I mean, I don’t know who is even able to create so many recipes. So how did that whole thing come about? How did you come up with this idea? Are you a foodie?  I am a foodie. Yeah, that’s kind of the origin story. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve done a few startups. I had a successful exit about 15 years ago. A friend of mine and I built Bulgaria’s largest internet company. Then I started looking for what to do next. I was actually going to start a news organization, but then I realized one day, on a beach in Thailand, that I think about food five hours a day, and I cook every day.  So I might as well do something around food that helps people. I married my passion for food with my passion for technology and built a company.Share on X The problem we set out to solve back then is still a very valid problem. People need the right information, just in time, to make the right food choices. The data is always inconsistent, incomplete, and lacking. So we set out to organize the world’s food knowledge so we can help people make the right food choices.  Wow, this is fascinating. So what is your personal ‘Why’ that you’re manifesting in this business?  So, in terms of philosophy—and my philosophy changes. Everybody’s personal philosophy changes over time. But where I am right now, I think there are a couple of things that really matter if you want to live what one would call the good life—a meaningful life. One is to be really present in the moment. You know, be here now. The other is to help people. I think my business falls into…Share on X For us, the measure of success is not revenue or profit.  It’s how many people we ultimately reach through our data. It’s worth noting that we’re a business-to-business company, so we don’t reach people directly. But we have partnerships with companies like Nestlé, Microsoft, Amazon, and Food Network. Through those partnerships, we think we reach at least a billion people. For us, that’s the real measure of success.  Helping everybody eat better and live longer, healthier lives. My vision is that everybody can live to 120 without chronic illness or mental conditions. A big part of that is food. So we're trying to help people. That's my 'Why'.Share on X  Yeah, I love it. Obviously, eating healthy is a big thing. You know, garbage in, garbage out. This is fascinating. Do you find that certain cultures have better eating habits than others? And what drives it?  I think history and geography, to some extent. Everybody knows about the Mediterranean diet. And it’s not only the countries around the Mediterranean. Vietnamese and Japanese cuisine are Mediterranean in the composition of the food. A lot of it comes from being close to water, living in a certain climate, and having a huge variety of fruits, vegetables, and fish. But I think the biggest change over the last hundred years hasn’t been culture. It’s been technology—quote-unquote—and the processing of food so it’s shelf-stable, can be shipped, and sold at a lower price.  I think that’s the biggest problem. It’s changing eating habits everywhere in the world. It’s very well known in the United States and, to some extent, in Western Europe. But even places like Japan are starting to eat a lot more processed food. Mexico is starting to eat a lot more processed food. This is more technology-driven than anything else. If I had to say one thing that would help people, it would be this: Go back to your roots. Get food directly from the soil. Cook it at home. It's a question of time and effort, but if you value your health, that's one of the best investments you…Share on X  Yeah, as we’re getting busier and busier, the opportunity cost of cooking our own meals is becoming higher. And that’s the real problem.  It is a problem. I mean, it’s a question of priority. I cook every day. I’m very busy, but for me, it’s an important enough thing. Food, apart from nourishment and nutrition, is also a very social thing. People connect through food and spend time together, and that’s another thing that correlates very well with longevity and a well-lived life. So there’s a lot more to be said about having good food.  Yeah, I think Woody Allen said in one of his movies that eating together is the second sexiest thing to do, or something like that.  Yeah, there you go. I’m not going to ask what the first one is.  Yeah. That’s awesome. So let’s talk about frameworks. This podcast is all about frameworks. What’s a framework that you’ve discovered along the way that helps you think about your business, create outcomes in your business, help other people be productive, or whatever it is that’s driving results in your business?  A couple of things come to mind. I’ll start with the non-obvious one. Some people speak about it, but I’ve practiced it, and I think going slow gets you further. You know, the hare and the tortoise. I am definitely against growth for growth’s sake. That drives a lot of decisions: who you raise money from, how you run your business, and so on. Over the years—and I’ve been an entrepreneur for probably close to 40 years—I’ve discovered that every successful product has its timing and its soul.  You just have to let it come to fruition. Sometimes that means slowing down instead of rushing forward. For me, being deliberate about the end goal without having time constraints is a framework that’s always helped me. It’s not for everyone. Definitely not for the modern world, where VC money is trying to get you to grow very fast, and everybody competes based on how fast their revenue or customer base has grown.  But I find that this does not lead to lasting results in terms of impacting humanity and having a meaningful life—both for yourself and for everybody in the company. So that’s one framework. The other, which is also very simple, though not too many people execute it, is just: treat people like people. This means there’s no hierarchy in my company. I’m super proud to say that in my last company, I never had an employee leave. And that was over 15 years.  It’s because I treat people as people. Going back to the Latin origin of the word companion, companio, which means “to break bread together.” We are a band of people breaking bread together on a journey. That’s how it works. That means doing things that are not intuitive in business. For example, having no advance notice requirement for vacations. If you want to take a vacation, take it now. Giving responsibility to people and treating them well. Those are the two frameworks that I think have helped me. In addition, making decisions democratically, which is a very contentious thing in business. Okay.  So how do you do that?  There is always, ultimately, an arbiter, which is oftentimes me or some kind of board. But that means having a robust discussion around a topic without preconceived notions of what the end decision or result should be. Creating a culture where everybody can speak up, argue, and tell you they disagree with you. Having that freedom creates an intellectual environment where people really debate.Share on X  At the end, more often than not, the obvious decision emerges. It takes a long time, but the reality is that once a decision is made, everybody has bought into it, and it’s usually the right decision. So I don’t make wrong turns. Now, there are times when it’s a coin flip. There are two equally good—or equally bad—options, and somebody has to make the call. Then it falls to me. But for the most part, it’s democratic decision-making.  So how do you cultivate that? How do you foster it? How do you make sure people contribute to it?  I’ve had the luxury of starting a company from scratch. It’s a lot easier to do when you start from scratch because you establish the culture with the first hire. It’s a lot harder to change a culture and instill new values. For me, it's been a very deliberate choice about what I want the company to be. People working together toward a common goal. People who don't get overworked. People who always have something exciting to do and an amazing group of people to work…Share on X  So it’s about hiring people who are reliable, self-sufficient, and want to move things forward. Then really showing that any conversation and any intellectual argument is absolutely allowed. There is no hierarchy where you can say something and I’ll just shut you down because I’m the boss. You have to demonstrate that in practice. You have to actively solicit everything a person has to say. After the first couple of hires, it becomes easier with the next ones because they see what’s going on. That’s how you do it. It’s a deliberate choice to build the culture through day-to-day interactions. There’s no easier way, unfortunately.  So how scalable is this flat, democratic culture? Does it impact scalability in any way?  It is scalable. My current company is small, but my previous company had about 150 people. Even when we sold the company and had to find a replacement CEO, the candidates had about 50 interviews each. At the end, the whole company voted on who the CEO would be. It is scalable. It slows down the decision-making process, but it speeds up the progress of the company.  An individual, even the smartest individual, is more likely to make mistakes than the crowd. Now, there are exceptions. I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs would have done it differently. But for the most part, I think people make fewer errors through a democratic process than by making decisions on their own. So yes, I think it’s scalable. It’s really a matter of deciding which decisions belong at which level. You don’t have the entire company of, say, 10,000 people voting on one thing. For a particular problem, there might be 10 people who are the relevant decision-makers. They get together and sort it out, and everybody else accepts what those people decide.  So it’s more of an approach to tapping into the minds of the people who can potentially bring diverse opinions.  Yeah. Diversity of opinion. They all have a different angle from which to look at the issue that needs to be resolved. So different angles. Because they’re all impacted, everybody can contribute. There’s respect in listening to everybody else. It’s not that one person establishes the ground truth and everybody else has to agree. There is actual debate.  Yeah. Interesting. By the way, I just want to comment on this bootstrapping aspect. I saw your post on bootstrapping. You spoke at a recent conference on it. So what are your thoughts on bootstrapping? What are the critical ingredients there?  So bootstrapping is the way business has been run for a very long time. It’s only recently—in historical terms—that the venture capital industry emerged and allowed businesses the luxury of building without thinking too much about the bottom line. But I think the disciplining effect of constantly thinking about the bottom line is super important. To some extent, it takes a certain kind of individual to do it, which I call the true entrepreneur. Those are the people who are risk-takers and can live with a very high degree of ambiguity.  When you don’t have money in the bank to cover next month’s expenses, you have to be comfortable with that. To me, that’s the right entrepreneur. It has become too easy for people to become “entrepreneurs” by raising tens of millions of dollars. That’s not to say they might not be brilliant people who execute very well and create amazing companies. I think those are probably one in a thousand. The majority get the money, spend it in two years, and they’re gone. So for me, bootstrapping is the proof in the pudding. If you do it day in and day out and keep moving forward, you're actually building something that's valuable.Share on X  Yeah, I agree. Some people say it’s akin to being an employee when you raise money and just have to get to the next fundraising round, and then the next fundraising round. It’s almost like executing the business plan your board has given you.  Exactly.  Worst case, you go take a job somewhere else if things don’t work out. But you’re not losing your livelihood, and your family isn’t going to starve, right?  It is a certain type of personality, and I don’t think it’s for everyone. But my personal belief is that if you’re going to build a business, you’re better off building it with a little bit of hunger. Not always having enough. Having just enough so you can keep moving forward.  Yeah. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? If you don’t have too many resources, that’s a constraint you can push against and come up with better ideas. It’s a forcing function.  Correct.  There you go. So, Victor, what drives growth in your business?  Like I said, I’m not pro-growth per se. This was also a deliberate choice for the company. Just as a parenthesis, the last business I ran before this was a media business. We sold advertising. I personally don’t believe that spending money on advertising is a good idea. So I built a business with the explicit desire not to spend any money on marketing. That meant I had to build mechanisms for referrals, inbound traffic, and so on.  A lot of our early customers—including companies like The New York Times and Food Network—received very high discounts, but with the requirement to display “Powered by Edamam,” linking back to us. Search engines like that. It builds authority and so on. Over the years, we’ve built enough authority that most of our traffic now comes from search engines and chatbots. That’s what’s driving our growth.  The other thing is that we try to stay nimble. We build technological assets and products, but the market changes. Who needs the data? For what use cases? It’s important to stay aware of the market and adjust to wherever the opportunity is. That’s how I’ve built the business. I’ve built it to generate lots of inbound traffic and then adjust very quickly if the market changes. The rest is we’re almost like a spider waiting for the flies to come in.  So you say you’re not pro-growth. Do you mean you don’t want to make this a bigger company?  No. I’m not for growth just for the sake of growth. Let’s grow 300% this year in top-line revenue. For me, as I said, what drives the business is how many people we reach with our data. That’s the metric I’d like to grow as much as possible. If possible, I’d like to reach every person on the planet. That’s the aspiration. When I say I’m not for growth, I mean that  sometimes growth becomes its own incentive. You grow without asking, “What’s the ultimate goal here?” Why do you have to grow?  Oftentimes, the answer is because you want to sell the company at a big profit. That’s why VCs put money into your company. You’re feeding the VC business model. But if you’re not feeding the VC business model, why do you have to grow the company? What’s the point? You may have investors, but you have patient capital, and they’re aligned with you. Eventually they’ll get their money back, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the company’s mission. When I talk about growth, I mean the pressure to constantly grow top-line revenue, which has become very popular over the last couple of decades.  So when you say you eventually want to organize all the food knowledge in the world, it sounds a little like Google organizing the world’s information—just for food. Isn’t that a big vision that requires growth?  No. Again, I don’t think growth is necessary to execute that vision. I think you can organize the world’s food knowledge, and we’re already well along the way. There’s always more to do. Even with very limited resources, we’ve been able to do it. I think that having more customers and more revenue would probably help, but only on the margin. It’s not a prerequisite.  The prerequisite is having the right technology and the right setup to constantly ingest new information about food, pass it through our pipeline, clean it, verify it’s accurate, structure it, organize it, and link it to other data. Food is a relatively limited universe. You started by asking whether people really create 2.3 million recipes. There are only so many ways to combine food items into something people eat. So it’s a limited universe. What’s exciting is the depth of food.  There are macronutrients, micronutrients, allergies, diets—we all know about those. But there’s much more. There are many more molecules in food. Eventually, even the soil it was grown in and the amount of sun exposure could become valuable data. There’s always more work to do, but we focus on what’s actually doable right now.  So do you envisage that the growth of technology, especially AI, means you can keep the company the same size as it is and accomplish your ultimate mission?  I think so. Similar size. To some extent, AI is helping us because it’s bringing a lot more customers. People are building all kinds of applications with large language models and agents, and they need accurate, deep data, so they come to us. We are also using AI to build tools and meet the demand, so our engineers are becoming more effective. So, to some extent, that helps keep the team small.  That being said, in terms of the speed with which AI moves, it’d be nice to have a few extra people. That doesn’t mean doubling the size of the company. I think it’s probably having 20 to 30% more people would be sufficient to actually leverage the technology—which is AI—to the best effect. So that’s kind of my view now. Ask me in two months, I may have a different view.  So what is one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in this business right now?  Well, AI is throwing a wrench into everything, so it is a very fast-moving environment. Our clients are constantly changing their demands. The profile of our clients is changing. There’s a lot more new health, wellness, prevention, and weight-loss companies that are showing up and starting because they can now build with AI. So all of that makes for a very choppy sea. We can’t figure out exactly where the wind is blowing from and where we should head.  So for me, it’s kind of like having the North Star of, “Okay, we are a data company. We leverage our data asset, and we just keep doing that. Then we’ll innovate on the technologies that we need to offer, but stay there, as opposed to trying to change what the company does.” That’s kind of what’s keeping me steady. But again, it’s a very choppy sea, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. One big worry is whether Anthropic or OpenAI are eventually going to replicate everything that we’ve done. I don’t know. I don’t think so. But artificial superintelligence is something that nobody knows about.  Yeah. So the technology evolves very fast. So how do you avoid being commoditized by AI? I think the data—our moat is the data, right? It’s taken us so much time to actually clean, organize, and structure the data, and that’s not a process you can do easily just by throwing people or AI at it. We’ve used what used to be called AI since the beginning of the company: machine learning, natural language processing, and so on. Now we use generative AI. But we’ve used that, plus super-smart engineers, food experts, nutritionists, and week in, week out, we’ve been improving the data, improving the algorithms, refining it, and so on. That is not something you can just throw resources at.  It requires that constant iteration between humans and technology in order to get there. So for us, I think that’s an important moat because if somebody wants to build it and commoditize us, they’ll have to replicate that. I think the more likely scenario is they may end up buying us. Like I said, artificial superintelligence could be a completely different ballgame. But with the technology that exists right now, with large language models, I don’t think that’s replicable. We know it because enough people have tried.  Yeah. Would you be okay with someone buying you? Is this your…  Sure.  Yeah?  Yeah. The way I think of companies is the following. They’re like children. At some point, children become 18-year-olds. They can earn their own bread. They can walk on their own two feet. You kind of have to let them go. I think this company has gotten to that stage. It’s a teenager that can walk on its own. It doesn’t need me. And I have ideas for 10 more businesses. Who knows? If I’m healthy, I think I could probably build another four or five businesses in the next 40 or 50 years. Why not?  Yeah. I love it. So who do you want to connect with you, go on your website, check things out, and what’s the best way to engage with what Edamam is doing?  Two categories of people or entities. One is companies that are building something around diet management, nutrition, health, or food. I think they’ll find that we have valuable resources that can speed up whatever they’re developing. So that’s one category. The other is like-minded individuals. They could be investors, but they could also just be people who really care about healthy eating and the prosperity of humanity.  Those are the types of people I’d like to talk to because aligned minds often come up with new ideas. It’s kind of the Y Combinator thing—lateral thinking. If we have an aligned goal and we come from different fields, we may come up with something new.  Okay. So that’s a way for you to find people worth brainstorming with, I guess, who have the same ideas: healthy eating, helping people live longer—to 120 years. And other companies that could be using the data you’re processing and organizing. So if you’re out there and you’re in the food business or the healthy living business, then definitely pay attention.  Check out Edamam LLC‘s website. Talk to Victor Penev on LinkedIn. So, Victor, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because we have wonderful entrepreneurs like Victor every week. Anything else, Victor, you want to share? Any famous last words?  Yeah. I just want to say thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Keep up the good work. I really enjoyed the conversation.  Thank you, Victor. And thanks for listening. Important Links: Victor's LinkedIn Victor's  website