Seed to Scale
27 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 23 ratingsWelcome to Seed to Scale. The podcast where Eniac Ventures sits down with founders, investors, and influencers to discuss all things startups and seed stage.
Each episode will be hosted by an Eniac General Partner - Hadley Harris, Nihal Mehta, Tim Young or Vic Singh - to talk about the ups and downs of building an early-stage company, securing funding and what it takes to build a lasting business.
Send topics or guest suggestions to [email protected] or @seedtoscale, and please subscribe, rate and review it.
Music Credit: http://bit.ly/2PgfCO1
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Episodes
Renaud Visage, Cofounder & CTO of Eventbrite, on Taking a Startup through a Recession and then through an IPO
December 02, 2019 06:00 - 21 minutes - 48.5 MBRenaud Visage, cofounder and CTO of Eventbrite, the leading global ticketing and event technology platform. In the episode Renaud talks with Hadley about moving to San Francisco, joining his first startup and the early days of starting Eventbrite. Renaud details his experience when the financial crisis hit in 2008, which we feel will be especially useful for founders to consider when the next downturn happens. Renaud speaks to his experience spending time in both the US and European tec...
Josh Kopelman, Founder of First Round Capital and investor in Uber, Square & Flatiron, on living in Philly, investing in NY and scaling teams beyond Silicon Valley.
July 23, 2019 17:30 - 19 minutes - 27 MBJosh Kopelman, Founder and Partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture firm that has invested in some of the biggest names, including Uber, Square and Flatiron Health. First Round aims to help early-stage companies build a strong product-market fit and offers some of the industry’s first and best tools from their custom-built software to sharing their deep industry insight with their publication First Round Review. In this episode, Josh speaks with Eniac Co-founding Partner Nihal M...
Jake Saper, Partner at Emergence Capital, on Coaching Networks, Zoom, and Series A Signaling Effect
July 10, 2019 17:20 - 26 minutes - 59.5 MBJake Saper, Partner at Emergence Capital, a leading venture capital firm focused on world-changing enterprise cloud technology, including Salesforce, SalesLoft, Veeva, and Zoom. Jake serves on the boards of Textio, Guru, Drishti, and DroneDeploy. In this episode, Jake speaks with Eniac Co-founding GP Tim Young about the firm’s thesis on Coaching Networks and how they believe the under-explored side of machine learning is how to apply that same technology not just to automate tasks away, bu...
Rich Wong, GP at Accel (recent IPOs = Slack, Crowdstrike & Fiverr), on his thesis of picks & shovels, early bets in mobile and why enterprise automation is the next big thing
June 21, 2019 16:32 - 22 minutes - 20.6 MBRich Wong is a General Partner at Accel, a global venture capital and growth equity firm. Rich’s investment focus is on software, internet services, and mobile technologies and he currently serves on the Boards of Atlassian, Checkr, Instabug, Osmo, Qwilt, ServiceChannel, Tune and UiPath. In this episode, Rich speaks with Eniac Founding General Partner Nihal Mehta on his thesis of picks and shovels and why he placed early bets across mobile with Admob and MoPub. Rich shares his experience ...
Beezer Clarkson, MD at Sapphire Ventures, on reimagining the role of the LP in venture
May 30, 2019 20:57 - 18 minutes - 43.2 MBBeezer Clarkson is the Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, leading Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago and has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide, as well as operational roles in software business development. In this episode, Bee...
Brian Feinstein, Partner at Bessemer, on identifying opportunities in vertical SaaS
May 01, 2019 19:16 - 15 minutes - 35 MBBrian Feinstein is a partner at Bessemer Ventures. Since joining in 2008, has focused on investments in early and growth-stage vertical SaaS, including Procore, Restaurant365, and LiveAuctioneers, as well as supported the firm's investment in Mindbody. Brian is interested in founders who are shaping their industries outside of the Silicon Valley mold. In this episode Brian sits down with Tim Young, a founding partner at Eniac Ventures, to discuss Bessemer’s thesis around vertical SaaS and ...
Jenny Fielding, MD of Techstars & Founder of The Fund, on doubling down with the NYC tech community
April 15, 2019 19:57 - 17 minutes - 24.4 MBJenny Fielding is the newly appointed Managing Director of Techstars, an organization helping entrepreneurs grow their companies through a process of programming, mentorship, and funding. She has been involved with the organization for the past 5 years, working with the former MD Alex Iskold. Jenny also is the Founder and General Partner of The Fund, a community successful New York City founders and operators supporting the next generation of NYC-based entrepreneurs. In this episode, Jenny...
Sarah Cannon, Partner at Index Ventures, on lessons from her time working with Obama, Capital G & Slack
April 03, 2019 20:26 - 17 minutes - 20.3 MBSarah Cannon is a Partner at Index Ventures focused on investing in consumer businesses. She has had an unconventional path to venture, starting her early career by working in Ghana and as a Policy Advisor on the National Economic Council at the White House during the Obama Administration. In this episode, Sarah sat down with Hadley Harris, Founding Partner at Eniac Ventures, to share how she went from Ghana, the White House to CapitalG, what led her to join Index in 2018 and why she got i...
Omar Hamoui, Partner at Sequoia Capital, on the early days of AdMob, a call from Steve Jobs and the secret sauce to Sequoia’s success
March 20, 2019 15:26 - 20 minutes - 23.8 MBOmar Hamoui is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, arguably one of the most well-known VC firms in the world, with investments in some of the biggest names, including Dropbox, WhatsApp, Xoom, Square, Evernote, InstaCart to name a few. In this episode, Omar sat down with Nihal Mehta, Founding Partner at Eniac Ventures, to share his story on building AdMob, one of the most successful mobile ad networks, how it caught the attention of Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin and what it was like being acquired by...
Jeff Richards, MD of GGV, on board members: what to look for, how to optimize, expectations at each funding round and managing bad behavior
March 07, 2019 19:13 - 27 minutes - 38.1 MBJeff Richards, Managing Director of GGV Capital, speaks with Eniac Ventures’ Founding General Partner Tim Young on board members: what to look for, how expectations when recruiting & building out your early team and how being a founder is a lot like his experience being a father. As a two-time founder with more than 13 years building and operating his companies across the U.S. and Asia, Jeff joined the world of venture capital with a wealth of first-hand experience. Today, at GGV, Jeff foc...
Chris Farmer, Founder & CEO of SignalFire on reinventing the venture model with a many-to-many platform, powerful datasets and a full-stack team of engineers and data scientists
February 21, 2019 21:13 - 26 minutes - 30.2 MBChris Farmer, Founder and CEO of SignalFire speaks with Eniac Ventures’ Vic Singh on his early background as an investor and how he flipped the traditional venture model on its head with data-driven insights and a founder-centric thesis. In this episode, Chris discusses, after years of research, what led him to build SignalFire on top of infrastructure that powers the fund and empowers their founders through data, talent and their expansive advisory network. SignalFire aims to offer founder...
Shivani Siroya, Founder & CEO of Tala, on raising capital, scaling teams and funding the underserved
January 24, 2019 16:56 - 19 minutes - 22.4 MBShivani Siroya, Founder & CEO of Tala, speaks with Eniac Ventures’ Nihal Mehta about her journey from finance to entrepreneurship, and now a CEO of a fast-growth company with more than 270 employees across 5 countries and $100M in venture funding. Tala is a mission-driven tech company opening financial access across emerging markets. Working for the UN Population Fund across Africa, Shivani saw the lack of access available to millions of people firsthand and started working on ways to solve...
Michael Mignano, Founder & CEO of Anchor, on building the company that democratized podcasting
January 10, 2019 22:02 - 27 minutes - 32 MBFounding General Partner Hadley Harris talks with Michael Mignano, Co-founder & CEO of Anchor, the company making it easy for anyone to create a podcast. Michael built Anchor to democratize audio. By putting a free, full-stack podcasting platform in the pocket of anyone with a smartphone, Anchor is changing the way people think about audio, empowering everyone to have their voices heard, and pioneering new ways for creators to generate revenue. Anchor now powers one-third of all new podcas...
Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, on the current startup ecosystem in LA, why the city was quick to adopt Bird and the challenges facing the future of transportation
December 18, 2018 19:32 - 16 minutes - 23 MBFounding General Partner Nihal Mehta talks with Mark Suster, one of the very best VCs in the biz and a true pioneer of LA venture capital. Mark is the Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, the largest and longest-serving fund in LA - all the way back to 1996, long before the region became known as Silicon Beach. To date, they’ve invested in more than $1 billion, with about 50% going to tech companies from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Mark’s investments include Bird, Density, Imbellus, Invoca...
Shahin Farshchi, Partner at Lux Capital, on leading the deep tech boom & science vs engineering risk
December 10, 2018 22:43 - 22 minutes - 25.5 MBFounding General Partner Vic Singh sits down with Shahin Farshchi, a Partner at Lux Capital, to discuss his path to venture capital, by way of Detroit, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and founding a company that stemmed from his research in wireless, vital sign monitoring. Shahin speaks to how Lux spearheaded investments in science and deep tech when most venture capitalists were interested in adtech, cloud, and SaaS. He shares the mistakes he made and lessons learned along the way, such a...
Anu Duggal & Sutian Dong of Female Founders Fund on the inception of the world’s first female-fund
November 26, 2018 19:03 - 14 minutes - 16.2 MBFounding General Partner Nihal Mehta sits down with Anu Duggal and Sutian Dong, Partners at Female Founders Fund, to discuss the inception of the world’s first female-focused Venture Capital fund, how they were set up on a “blind date” by Ed Zimmerman of Lowenstein Sandler and have been able to use their unique backgrounds and points of views to make strong investments. In this episode, Anu speaks to risk tolerance and the challenges they’ve faced while fundraising and Sutian addresses the h...
John Borthwick, Founder & CEO of betaworks on “What is it that we actually want to build?”
November 06, 2018 15:40 - 16 minutes - 18.6 MBFounding General Partner Hadley Harris speaks with John Borthwick, the Founder & CEO of betaworks and long-time investor in the early NYC tech scene. In the past decade, John has helped hundreds of companies build products and scale - such as Giphy, bit.ly, Tumblr, GroupMe - and continues looking for ways to improve the model with each new company. In this episode, John speaks to a recent blog post he published on “Building Bicycles for Our Minds” in which he addresses his perspective on wh...
Clara Sieg, Partner at Revolution Ventures, on the capital gap & being bullish on tier 2-3 cities
October 22, 2018 18:09 - 14 minutes - 16.8 MBFounding General Partner Tim Young speaks with Clara Sieg, a Partner and Founding member of Revolution Ventures. Clara has been featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital and named LinkedIn’s Top 10 Professionals Under 35 for VC & Finance. In this episode, Clara discusses how her hometown of Pittsburgh has evolved as a tech hub and how it has influenced her passion for finding and investing in companies outside of Silicon Valley. She talks about the early days of Revolution and why ...
Jeff Clavier, Founder of Uncork Capital on transitioning from Angel to Seed & advice to aspiring VCs
October 10, 2018 16:15 - 16 minutes - 18.9 MBFounding General Partner Vic Singh speaks with one of the OG’s of seed investing and a Veteran of the Forbes Midas List, Jeff Clavier, Founder & Managing Partner at Uncork Capital. In this episode, Jeff recounts his journey from a small town in France to studying in Paris and landing in the startup circuit as an engineer that eventually led him to angel investing in successful the Web 2.0 companies of the early 2000’s. Jeff gives advice to aspiring VCs, his thoughts on what it was like tra...
Marah Lidey & Naomi Hirabayashi on how they are disrupting the wellness industry & secured Series A
September 26, 2018 16:16 - 15 minutes - 20.9 MBNihal Mehta speaks with the talented founders of Shine Text, Marah Lidey and Naomi Hirabayashi on how they’ve built one of the fastest-growing health and wellness companies. Working together at DoSomething.org, they realized the importance of daily peer-to-peer support and seized the opportunity to build a community to help others. In this episode, Naomi and Marah speak about the early days growing Shine from 50,000 to now 3 million users and their approach to fundraising. They discuss the c...
Brad Feld, Founder & MD of Foundry Group, on what makes an excellent board member, the biggest reasons startups fail and the 3 machines that must work together for a company to scale (Part 2)
September 17, 2018 15:21 - 11 minutes - 13.6 MBHadley Harris continues the conversation from last week with Brad Feld, Founder and Managing Director of Foundry Group. In this episode, Brad talks about the changing model of VC firms and how partners should be investing in each other in order to make the partnership and the firm stronger. He also answers fellow VC Jeff Clavier from Uncork Capital’s question on what makes an excellent board member, as well as the biggest reasons startups fail and the three machines that must work together ...
Brad Feld, Founder & MD of Foundry Group, gives advice to himself in the early days and speaks to why it is important to build long-term fund strategies with conviction and consistency (Part 1)
September 10, 2018 15:26 - 13 minutes - 15.1 MBHadley Harris speaks with Brad Feld, Founder and Managing Director of Foundry Group. Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987 and has authored several books on VC and entrepreneurship that are must-reads for everyone in the industry. In this episode, Brad shares his perspective on why it is important to build long-term fund strategies with conviction and consistency. Brad talks about one of his heroic figures, Warren Buffett, and how his thesis that everything run...
Alex Iskold, tech entrepreneur, investor & former MD of Techstars NYC, on why raising capital should be a side effect of growth and the importance of finding the Magic Moment
August 28, 2018 14:13 - 16 minutes - 22.1 MBVic Singh speaks with startup triple threat Alex Iskold. As a three-time founder, investor in 90+ startups and engineer, Alex is passionate about helping early-stage founders build the next generation of companies and connecting entrepreneurs through a global network. In this episode, Alex discusses the evolution of the semantic web, why he is bullish on blockchain for the enterprise and the new crop of personalized health startups focused on breakthrough technologies for health and longevit...
Lior Susan, Founder of Eclipse Ventures on why he is bullish on full-stack hardtech startups and what founders should do the second they raise their Seed Round
August 08, 2018 18:51 - 18 minutes - 21 MBVic Singh speaks with Lior Susan, Founder and Partner of Eclipse Ventures, a leading investor in full stack companies, combining hardware and software with the data layer. Lior’s journey as a founder of a venture backed hardtech Israeli startup with an outsized exit to Cisco, his time starting Lab IX at Flex to ultimately creating Eclipse offers a unique perspective as an investor in Silicon Valley. In this episode, Lior talks about the “Broken Market” and why he believes the excess of capit...
Chieh Huang, Founder of BOXED, on company culture & how his role as CEO changes every 6 months
July 13, 2018 23:00 - 12 minutes - 13.9 MBHadley Harris speaks with Chieh Huang, the co-founder & CEO of BOXED, an early Eniac company and one of Bloomberg’s Top 50 people to watch in 2018. Chieh is a charismatic, natural born leader, and his passion and dedication have grown BOXED from his parent's garage to raising over $130M with hundreds of employees. In this episode, he digs into his journey to BOXED, from his start as a lawyer to co-founding Astro Ape which sold to Zynga in a few short years. He speaks candidly about how hi...
Heather Hartnett, CEO of Human Ventures, on the Myth of the Big Idea and looking Beyond the Resume
July 13, 2018 21:10 - 11 minutes - 13.2 MBTim Young speaks with Heather Hartnett, the CEO at Human Ventures. She was NYC’s first female-led start-up studio founder and her philanthropic background brings a unique approach to investing, helping set the firm apart with their Human Network approach. In this episode, Heather speaks on the “Myth of the Big Idea” and how Human proactively looks at the zeitgeist to see what types of patterns and opportunities are starting to form. She gives the scoop on how this method redefines their thes...
Mike Maples, Founding Partner of Floodgate, on spotting the Thunder Lizards before they hatch
July 13, 2018 19:20 - 15 minutes - 17.8 MBNihal Mehta kicks off Seed to Scale’s opening episode with one of VC’s most prominent investors Mike Maples, the founding partner of Floodgate. Mike has backed some of the most well-known tech companies today, including Twitter, Twitch.tv, Lyft, Okta, Chegg, Demandforce, among many others. In this episode, Mike talks about his journey from being an entrepreneur in junior high writing video games to being a founder of two IPO companies, Tivoli and Motiv, and how his pivot to investor was his ...