Village Global Podcast
676 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 79 ratingsThe Village Global podcast takes you inside the world of venture capital and technology, featuring enlightening interviews with entrepreneurs, investors and tech industry leaders. Learn more at www.villageglobal.vc.
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Episodes
Encore: Secrets of Public Speaking and Oral Communication from Renowned Speaking Coach
June 12, 2024 18:26 - 42 minutes - 38.8 MBMichael Balaoing, founder of Candlelion, joins Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha on this episode to discuss: - The importance of the acronym WTF (what’s the feeling?) when you’re giving a presentation. - The four roles that you take on as a speaker: captain, pilot, guide, and game show host. - The five questions to ask when seeking feedback on a presentation. - How to keep the audience engaged throughout a talk, not just during the Q&A at the end. - How to bake stories i...
Encore: Brad Feld on What Nietzsche Can Teach Entrepreneurs
May 17, 2024 17:05 - 50 minutes - 45.9 MBBrad Feld (@bfeld), VC at Foundry Group and co-author with Dave Jilk of The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha to discuss: - Common misconceptions about Nietzsche and why being misunderstood makes him an especially interesting philosopher. - What Nietzsche can teach entrepreneurs deciding whether to pivot or persevere. Brad says that founders should view their entrepreneurial journey not in terms of a single company, but as the next 3...
How to Nail Product-Market Fit and Scale a B2B Company with Thejo Kote of Airbase
April 25, 2024 17:29 - 57 minutes - 52.9 MBThejo Kote (@thejo) talks to Village partner Ben Casnocha. Thejo is a two-time founder and CEO. His current company, Airbase, is a spend management platform serving companies with 100 and 5,000 employees like Coda, 15Five, Front, Marqueta, CaptivateIQ, Abnormal, and more. Airbase has raised over $200 million, has tens of millions in ARR, and is consistently ranked as a top spend management company by G2. Highlights: - Rather than jumping into building Airbase, he built high-fidelity mockups...
Encore: Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn’s Advice on Hiring, Fundraising, Scaling, and more
April 17, 2024 21:56 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBMichelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020. They discussed: - The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company. - Her advice on fundraising after raising more than $300M for Cloudflare, including why you should keep the rest of the VC partnership in mind, and how to show rat...
Lessons from the Early Days at Uber and Advice for Founders with Kevin Novak
April 05, 2024 18:09 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBWe're excited to launch a new EIR program for data science founders in partnership with Rackhouse Ventures, founded by Kevin Novak. Learn more about the program: https://www.villageglobal.vc/rackhouse-village-global-eir-program Kevin Novak (@novakkm), an early Uber employee, was instrumental in developing their data science program and was the creator of surge pricing. Highlights: - Kevin, originally a nuclear physicist, applied his analytical skills to develop Uber's first surge pricing m...
Encore Episode: John Donahoe’s Lessons on Leadership and Being a Better CEO
March 15, 2024 19:38 - 54 minutes - 49.6 MBThis encore episode is a recording of a special masterclass roundtable session for our founders with John Donahoe. John is CEO of Nike and was previously CEO of ServiceNow and eBay. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and Ben Silbermann at Pinterest. We’re honored to have him among our small group of world-class executives and collaborators whose time and e...
Identifying 275M Unreported Genetic Variations To Improve Healthcare with NIH All of Us Program CTO Chris Lunt
March 01, 2024 23:31 - 49 minutes - 45 MBChris Lunt is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience building web services and data platforms. He is in his seventh year as the CTO for the NIH's All of Us Research Program. He joined the NIH from GetInsured, where he worked to improve health insurance shopping and enrollment systems. Previously Chris ran VC-backed internet startups, with one IPO. Highlights: - Chris is hopeful about Silicon Valley going back to its roots to create sociological change by uniting people...
Building Hardware Companies and Choosing Co-Founders with Michael Hochberg
February 16, 2024 18:12 - 57 minutes - 52.2 MBMichael Hochberg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hochberg/) is a physicist and a founder of four successful startup companies in semiconductors and telecommunications, including Luxtera, acquired by Cisco in 2019, and Elenion, acquired by Nokia in 2020. He won the highest awards for young scientists in Singapore (NRF Fellowship) and the United States (PECASE), is an author on over 60 patents, and has been involved in the creation of over 30 companies in biotech and applications of silicon photon...
Secondaries with Matt Pellini of Hamilton Lane
February 09, 2024 17:30 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBMatt Pellini, Managing Director at Hamilton Lane, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights: - Matt says the secondaries market has grown over 5x from 15 years ago to now. - Selling in the secondary market used to be a sign of distress but is no longer. There are many different reasons for doing so and it’s mostly a sign of a manager being more active in the overall management of the fund. - Secondaries, in contrast to other asset classes in the private markets, are typically lowe...
Lessons Learned From Running CalSTRS with Chris Ailman
February 02, 2024 22:15 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBChristopher Ailman (@CJAtheCIO), Chief Investment Officer at CalSTRS, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights: - CalSTRS, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, was created in 1913 and is actually older than Social Security. It has over 400 members who are over 100 years old who are still receiving their pension. - Chris says no bear market is alike and that the key is to have the discipline during that time period to actually start buying. - Chris says the key to su...
Encore: Mark Pincus on Product Management, Raising Capital, and Building Zynga
January 26, 2024 21:00 - 1 hour - 64.3 MBThis encore episode is a recording of a special event where Mark Pincus (@markpinc) was interviewed by Ben Casnocha in San Francisco in front of a live audience of portfolio founders, friends of the firm, and LPs. Mark is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Zynga, and is an angel investor in Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and other companies. He talked about about raising venture capital, his philosophy of product management, the early days at Zynga, and much more. He also took time at the ev...
Encore: Bill Gates on Advice For Founders, Mistakes, and Philanthropy
January 19, 2024 19:02 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBThis encore episode is a recording of a special event where Bill Gates was interviewed in San Francisco by Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite. It originally took place in 2018 in front of a live audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm. We are honored to count Bill Gates among our luminary LPs whose financial capital and engagement power the next wave of Village Global founders. They covered: - Gates’s entrepreneurial journey starting Microsoft, including the most i...
Encore: Jerry Yang on Yahoo!, Early-Stage Investing, and China
January 12, 2024 19:12 - 56 minutes - 51.5 MBJerry originally joined us on the podcast in 2019. He is co-founder of Yahoo! and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. He was interviewed in front of a live audience in San Francisco by Village Global co-founder and partner, Ben Casnocha. Jerry told stories from the early days of Yahoo! and explained his lessons learned from the experience. He also talked about what American entrepreneurs can learn from China and his thoughts on early stage investing. Check us out on the web at villageg...
How Superplastic Built a Social Media-Native Character Universe
January 04, 2024 01:14 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBPaul Budnitz, founder of Superplastic, and Jennifer van Dijk, CEO of Superplastic, join Christina Des Vaux, head of marketing and platform at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways: Superplastic is a creatively-led company that has managed to maintain its unique identity and artistic integrity while nevertheless running a thriving business. The team comes up with ideas for characters but the characters grow and change as the audience gives them their own identities. They’ve learned a ...
Reference Checking and Personality Assessments with Investor Graham Duncan
September 22, 2023 11:00 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBGraham Duncan (@GrahamDuncanNYC) is a longtime investor and author of a legendary essay on reference checking: https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/ He was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) during a special masterclass for Village Global founders and friends of the firm. Takeaways: - Be aware of how your own mindset and mood affects your analysis of a candidate as well as how it impacts how the candidate shows up in the interview. For...
Insights on Capital Power Brokers from Hedge Funds to Venture Capital with Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Power Law
September 19, 2023 11:00 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBSebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of five books, including most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. He joined Olga Serhiyevich, head of investor relations, for this conversation. Takeaways: - Sebastian wrote a book about hedge funds prior to The Power Law and he contrasts VCs and hedg...
LatAm Digital Transformation Report from Atlantico
August 30, 2023 15:33 - 49 minutes - 45.1 MBJulio Vasconcellos (@JulioV), managing partner at Atlantico, and Ana Martins (@martinsg_ana), partner at Atlantico, join Anne Dwane (@adwane), co-founder and partner at Village Global, to discuss Atlantico’s 2023 report on digital transformation in Latin America. Takeaways: - If Latin America was its own country it would be #3 in the world in terms of population and GDP. - Brazil and Mexico combined make up over half of the population of all of Latin America. - In the US about 60% of pub...
Opportunities in Public Health Investing with Gurdane Bhutani and Zeshan Muhammedi
August 24, 2023 11:00 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBGurdane Bhutani and Zeshan Muhammedi are co-founders and GPs at MBX, a VC firm investing in early-stage bio/healthtech companies tackling major public health threats. Prior to that they co-founded healthcare and life-science venture capital firm FundRx, where they championed the firm's build-out of its community-driven investment infrastructure, modeled on the scientific peer-review process. Takeaways: - Pharma companies have realized that it makes sense to develop drugs that will have a ...
The Future of Retail with Lee Hnetinka
August 17, 2023 11:00 - 38 minutes - 34.8 MBLee Hnetinka, founder and CEO of Future and Darkstore, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global, on this episode. Lee and his companies are building innovative solutions in retail and e-commerce and have worked with world’s most admired brands like Nike, Adidas and Disney where they enabled same-day and 1-hour delivery for customers nationwide. They’ve also worked with tech companies like Snapchat, Shopify and Stripe to enable next generation payments and loyalty p...
CIO Series: Wealth Management Platforms, Private Investment Strategies, and the Current (non-Twitter) Macro Outlook with Cameron Dawson
August 10, 2023 11:00 - 39 minutes - 36.4 MBCameron Dawson, Chief Investment Officer at NewEdge Wealth, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Prior to joining NewEdge Wealth, Cameron was the Chief Market Strategist at Fieldpoint Private Securities and a Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America. Takeaways: Cameron says that wealth management firms can provide the next chapter of growth for VC. There’s a notion that clients at wealth management firms are less sophisticated but in fact managing their ass...
Opportunities at the intersection of software and hardware in national development projects with Prescott Watson
August 03, 2023 11:00 - 56 minutes - 51.3 MBPrescott Watson (@prescottwatson) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Prescott is co-founder of Port Power, a software platform that aims to de-risk commercial fleets’ adoption of electric vehicles by ensuring their charging infrastructure functions flexibly and reliably. Takeaways: - With gas or diesel-powered vehicles, drivers take the car to the energy source (the gas station). With electric vehicles, that paradigm doesn’t w...
Mark Cuban on Disrupting Healthcare, Trends in AI, and Randomness
June 15, 2023 12:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBMark Cuban (@mcuban) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways: - In the US healthcare system the interests of patients, providers, and payers are not aligned. This drives many of the problems in the system today and is part of what inspired Mark to get involved in trying to disrupt the system. - Mark started Cost Plus Drugs to try to address some of the pricing issues with prescription drugs in the US. The company's pricin...
Disrupting VC Benchmarking and Closing The LP-GP Information Gap with Eric Woo and Spencer Tyson
June 01, 2023 11:00 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBEric Woo (@ericjwoo), co-founder and CEO of Revere, and Spencer Tyson (@SpencerGTyson), Head of Investment Ratings at Revere, join Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Revere has pioneered the world’s first rating system for venture capital funds. Takeaways: - Venture has changed a lot over the last couple decades and continues to evolve quickly. In the last decade emerging managers has become its own sub-category, and venture as an asset class has bi...
Investing Across Cycles, Tech Transformation, and Partnering Effectively with Entrepreneurs with Jon Korngold
May 18, 2023 11:00 - 46 minutes - 42.8 MBJon Korngold joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Jon is the Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) and Co-Head of Technology Investing at Blackstone. Prior to joining Blackstone, Jon was Head of General Atlantic’s Global Financial Services and Healthcare sectors. Takeaways: - The vast reach of Blackstone, as one of the biggest asset managers in the world, allows them to apply their huge base of operational infrastructure to “make the winning company, not jus...
Tokenizing Film Finance with Marc Iserlis
May 09, 2023 11:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBMarc Iserlis is a film/TV producer and documentary filmmaker joins Village Global's Head of Investor Relations Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi). Marc is currently building tokenized film financing at Republic, an alternative fundraising platform. Takeaways: - Marc’s ambition is at Republic is to allow individuals to join in the success of film production through an equity "fan raise" that allows fans of a particular project to invest directly in its production and share in the project’s succes...
The Startup of You: Navigating Status Dynamics, Name Dropping, and Lessons on Hustle
April 18, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes - 20.6 MBBen Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com. Th...
The Startup of You: How To Reference Check, Taking Smart Risks, and Lessons from Airbnb
April 14, 2023 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MBBen Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com. T...
The Intersection of Technology and Media with Louise Story
April 11, 2023 10:00 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBLouise Story (@louisestory) most recently was the Chief News Strategist and Chief Product & Technology Officer at The Wall Street Journal. Louise also spent more than a decade at the New York Times. She joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode to discuss: Her unique role at the Wall Street Journal and some of the products that she built, including AI/ML models to alert reporters when stocks were moving in certain ways that let them get ahead of emerging stories, as well as an early version of ...
Creating a Talent Marketplace with David Boehmer
March 16, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 32.3 MBDavid Boehmer (@DavBoehmer) speaks to Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi) about the talent intermediation industry, the evolution of business models in the sector, and creating a talent marketplace at Banff. Takeaways: - Chance often has a significant impact on a person’s career but David says that a life’s impact is too important to be left to chance. - David likes to think of a career as a river. You can be swept downstream by momentum and wake up 20-30 years later without realizing that there...
Talent Identification, Hierarchies, and Clustering with Rohit Krishnan
February 07, 2023 13:00 - 40 minutes - 37 MBRohit Krishnan (@krishnanrohit), venture capitalist and author of the blog Strange Loop Cannon, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Many of the people at the top of their fields today say they would never get hired if they were just starting out today. Today’s selection process at elite institutions has become more stringent but has dropped the interesting variance that exists at the top of the pyramid. Plenty of people have gamified the selection process. If you’re hiring, you want to ...
Thematic investing in fertility and semiconductor sectors at Recharge, technonationalism, and lessons from David Swensen with Lorin Gu
January 26, 2023 11:00 - 48 minutes - 44.8 MBLorin Gu, founding partner of Recharge Capital, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global to discuss: - Why Recharge structures its investing thematically, rather than by asset class. - The three themes that they believe have multi-decade headwinds behind them: semiconductors, women’s health, and fintech/crypto. - What Lorin learned from working with David Swensen, including the importance of the qualitative measurement of the people running the fund alongside an...
Alex Chalunkal on Structured Equity and The Current Investing Environment
January 12, 2023 12:00 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBAlex Chalunkal is Chief Investment Officer at a family office where he manages a $1B+ portfolio focused on impact, venture, and climate tech investing. He was interviewed by Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Takeaways: - Alex says that the consensus is that there will be a mild recession in 2023. - He says that the energy transition, health, and climate are key sectors he is focusing on. - Technology is an important tool to help improve the labor shorta...
Ian Bremmer on The Intersection of Geopolitics and Technology
December 13, 2022 11:00 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBIan Bremmer (@ianbremmer), president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global for a conversation about global geopolitical trends and their impact on technology. Takeaways: - Ian has been in the room with world leaders as they make decisions about how to prepare for potential wars. He says that it’s easy to criticize their decisions afterwards but having been there has given him an appreciation for just h...
The Future of the Space Economy with Mo Islam
November 10, 2022 11:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBMo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says. - The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission. - There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving ...
Dual Use Tech with Ari Schuler and Andrea Garrity
November 03, 2022 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBAri Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn’t know if the other was safe because the cell network weren’t working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as consumers. - Ari and Andrea suggest that startups refrain from complaining or dwelling on how tou...
Unbundling K-12 Education with Joe Connor of Odyssey
October 26, 2022 16:28 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBJoe Connor (@josephjconnor), founder of Odyssey (@WithOdyssey_), joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - ACT test scores are at the lowest level in 30 years. 42% of students met none of the college readiness benchmarks. - District schools are not providing what parents need so children are leaving them in large numbers. - Parents have realized that they would be better off unbundling education so that children receive different parts of their education in different p...
Spacecraft Manufacturing with Apex’s Ian Cinnamon and Max Benassi
October 24, 2022 14:30 - 32 minutes - 29.4 MBIan Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years. - Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in launch companies, basically no venture money has gone i...
A Deep Dive on SBIRs with Ben Van Roo
October 20, 2022 14:12 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBBen Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program. - If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract. - It has been very difficult for software companies to ...
Deep Nishar’s Lessons From Building Products at Google and LinkedIn
October 18, 2022 10:00 - 39 minutes - 35.9 MBDeep Nishar (@deepnishar), Managing Director at General Catalyst and formerly of LinkedIn and Google, joins Anne Dwane on this episode. Takeaways: - The best product hires have the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat. - When you’re interviewing people for product roles at startups, don’t ask people what they would do but rather what they have done in the past. You want people who have a sense of adventure and can work without a lot of structure. - T...
Reimagining The Kill Chain with Christian Brose
October 06, 2022 10:00 - 52 minutes - 47.9 MBChristian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks. - Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower cost, and easier to replace. - People in the government are, in 2022, trying to figure out w...
Restoring Dynamism in a Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
September 29, 2022 10:00 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBRoss Douthat (@DouthatNYT), New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Since the moon landing, we have entered a period of stagnation. Confidence and optimism have declined and culture has entered a repetitive spiral where patterns from the 60s/70s have been repeating themselves. - Government has become less effective and more gridlocked over time. - The world’s richest societies are dealing with a populatio...
Data-Driven Insights on Venture Capital with Steve Kim
September 27, 2022 10:00 - 49 minutes - 44.9 MBSteve Kim (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenrkim/), Partner and head of Investment Strategy at Verdis, a 9-generation single family office, joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways: Early stage venture is a power law asset class where the returns of the asset class are driven by outliers. The best way to increase probability of getting asset class rate of return is by increasing variance in the portfolio through diversi...
Innovating in National Security with Raj Shah
September 22, 2022 10:00 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBRaj Shah, Managing Partner at Shield Capital, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Raj and Shield don’t care whether a founding team has experience selling to government, because the firm can help with that. They evaluate the team, the market and the tech when they’re looking at an investment. - Ash Carter was the first sitting Secretary of Defense to come to Silicon Valley in decades when he visited to jumpstart new initiatives to encourage startups working with...
The State of Digital Transformation in Latin America in 2022
September 20, 2022 10:00 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBJulio Vasconcellos and Ana Martins, partners at Atlantico, join Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode to discuss Atlantico's Latin America Digital Transformation Report 2022. Takeaways: - In the rest of the world, digital adoption has reverted to the pre-pandemic mean, but digital transformation has continued at the same pace in Latin America. - Developers in Latin America are more likely to accept remote job offers and people working remotely have more satisfaction in their jobs than ...
Mike Brown on How To Ensure The US Leads Defense Innovation
September 15, 2022 10:00 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBMike Brown, former director of the Defense Innovation Unit, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - It can easily take 10-20 years for tech to make its way into the Department of Defense. The Defense Innovation Unit helped speed that process up dramatically. - Some of the most important technologies being used in the war in Ukraine are commercial technologies. Mike thinks that the Department of Defense should be focusing on commercial technology much more often. - ...
Investing in Defense with Alex Moore
September 01, 2022 10:00 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBAlex Moore (@AustinGiraffe), investor at 8VC and board member at Palantir, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Alex was one of the original team members at Palantir. He says that helping build the company helps him pattern match today to find the best founders. - Defense investing is not like normal VC investing. The usual model of investing $2M, then $10M, then $30M to give a company momentum doesn’t work when you have to deal with budget cycles, l...
Web 3 Series: Bringing Smart Contracts to Bitcoin with Muneeb Ali
August 30, 2022 10:00 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBMuneeb Ali (@muneeb), co-founder of Stacks, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Muneeb says that Bitcoin is winning as money, and that he wants to make that capital productive. He’s "bringing smart contracts to where the money is." - Bitcoin’s architecture implies that there shouldn’t be much flexibility and programmability on the base layer blockchain. - A criticism of Ethereum is that it is trying to be too many things to too many people. - There is a basket of Layer-1s that are ga...
Web 3 Series: Building a Decentralized Social Network with Dan Romero of Farcaster
August 23, 2022 12:00 - 55 minutes - 51 MBDan Romero (@dwr) of Farcaster joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Dan says that his first love was information. He loved RSS and the goal with Farcaster is to improve RSS enough so that it can compete with Twitter. - He aims to grow Farcaster large enough so that developers can innovate using their API and data permissionlessly. - Any developer can build whatever they want on Farcaster — features are not limited to what the core team wants to see built. - Eugene Wei’s Status as a Se...
The Rare Earths Threat with Nathan Picarsic
August 11, 2022 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.3 MBNathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - There are 17 rare earth metals that are of immense strategic importance. They are used in a vast array of everyday products like consumer electronics, medical devices, electric vehicles, and more. - China has a strong influence in this space. They have many mines but are even more dominant downstream — they control much of the processing of these metals and the man...
Web 3 Series: The Transformative Power of Smart Contracts with Joel Monegro
August 09, 2022 10:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBJoel Monegro (@jmonegro), partner at Placeholder, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Every financial asset is a contract between two or more people. The world economy is basically a set of contracts on a ledger. - A smart contract is like an API, but on-chain, so it can’t be taken down. In many cases, not even the developers can retract a smart contract. - Value capture and value accrual are two different things — capture is where the value is stored and accrual is where it is going....