Venture Stories

Raj 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 government.- Raj recommends that startups work with organizations within the government that have a mandate to move quickly. - If a company decides to work with consultants, ensure that incentives are aligned such that the consultant benefits when the company benefits, rather than the consultant receiving a large payment regardless of the outcome.- Many more generalist investors have been investing in defense, but it’s a very difficult space to invest in. It takes time for investors to learn the jargon and the players.- When

Julio 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 those working in-person.- Fintech deals continue to be 40-50% of volume in the region.- Latin America has a higher proportion of SMBs than any other region but they contribute less to GDP comparatively.- Brazilians are some of the most active internet and social media users in the world.- Julio and Ana say that there is an immense opportunity in this digital transition but that it still requires a lot of caution. Funding has been drying up as public market multiples trickle down to earlier stages. They recommend that founders

Mike 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.- Many founders don’t realize that government dollars are allocated for specific uses, i.e. marketing, or research and development, and those dollars can’t be used in another area, even within their company.- Commercial synthetic aperture radar technology used in satellites made a big difference in Ukraine. The US played a large role in developing that game-changing technology and Mike wants to keep it that way.- It’s estimated that there will be 1000 commercial satellites for every government satellite in the future.- Defense pr

Alex 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, lobbying, and politics.- It typically requires $1B to get a defense company to IPO.- Alex would like to see procurement officers in the US government be allowed to be more entrepreneurial and for the government itself to move away from rigid line item budgeting, so that it wouldn’t take 2-3 years for high priority items to make it into the budget.- He would like to radically expand the SBIR program so that more contracts go to startups.- Governments should be picking winners, in his opinion. The best tech should win the whole

Muneeb 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 gaining market share against Ethereum.- One criticism of Bitcoin is that there are only two things you can do with a wallet — sit on your BTC or send it to someone else.- Bitcoin has the most mainstream adoption and has “crossed the chasm” more than any other cryptocurrency.- All of the forks of Bitcoin are worth less than 1% of the current market cap of Bitcoin.- Bitcoin is very durable and resilient. Software created years ago for Bitcoin still works today, something that can’t be said about other chains.Thanks for listening — if

Dan 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 Service theory is correct in Dan’s opinion.- They doubled down on the client and having a polished UX at Farcaster. Dan says that the platform is only as good as the number of people using it. The client helps grow the user base.- Dan believes in first principles thinking when it comes to product decisions. He strongly believes that the average user is not going to spend money to take action on a social network.- According to Tim Wu’s The Master Switch, all major communication technologies typically start out decentralized and beco

Nathan 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 manufacturing of products from them.- Nathan says there should be more awareness of the geopolitical risks associated with rare earth metals, there should be more investment in the space within the US, and the US should work with its partners and allies to help secure the supply chain.- China’s ambitions to control rare earth metals intersect with their Belt and Road initiative and their Made in China 2025 strategies.- Nathan says that the US needs policy changes to combat this threat, including changes to the tax code to incent

Joel 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. This is something that is often misunderstood about the fat protocols thesis.- The best way to think about smart contract networks is as nations. They enforce contracts the way nations do and in Joel’s opinion the ones that are most sovereign are the ones that are most decentralized.- Over time functionality and performance will come to be similar between networks and it is trust and governance that will differentiate them.- Joel expects 4-6 very large smart contract networks to emerge.- The core of decentralized social will b

Steve Blank (@sgblank), creator of Hacking For Defense and author of 4 Steps To The Epiphany, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The secret history of Silicon Valley is that it emerged from the government’s desire to develop advanced technology and weapons in universities during World War II.- Stanford became a powerhouse in microwaves and electronics post-WWII. People were encouraged to leave to start companies, which kickstarted Silicon Valley.- The Department of Defense needs a radical redesign. Steve says the US can’t even keep pace with innovation in North Korea, let alone China.- The DoD was designed for a different world. China currently operates like Silicon Valley and the DoD operates like GM.- The “game is fixed” against small startups trying to sell to the government.- Steve says things typically don’t change unless there’s a leadership change or a crisis, and that the US is lying to itself about China and how fast it is advancing.- Billionaires like Peter

Antonio Garcia-Martinez (@antoniogm), author of The Pull Request, joins Erik Torenberg and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- The first version of ads on the web, banner ads, looked like ads in the newspaper, because often the new version of media looks like the last version of media — that’s skeuomorphism.- Apple’s app tracking transparency is breaking the model for Facebook and Snap.- Antonio says there won’t be a media ecosystem in Web 3 without attribution.- The advent of balanced and nuanced journalism decades ago was a luxury born of ads.- We will likely live in a Web 2.5 world for a while where incumbents won’t lose their fiefdoms but there will be new experiences and new spaces to conquer.- Web 3 is both private and public — Visa doesn’t post all your transactions the way on-chain payments reveal them.- The average user trades privacy for other things and as the scale of Web 3 grows, privacy will likely become less of a focus.Antonio’s posts on ads and Web 3:Attribution rules the world (and it'

Avichal Garg (@avichal), founder of Electric Capital, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways:- Downturns impact large companies much more than founders and early stage investors because the companies are so small relative to their total addressable market.- Managing your own psychology in a downturn is the most important skill for a founder in these times.- Crypto is like a platypus — it has properties of growth tech, a store of value, and commodities.- People in the US sometimes look at crypto and don’t see the use case but for those people around the world who are not on the US dollar, the use cases for crypto are clearer.- Crypto is an important technological breakthrough but more importantly is also a social science breakthrough: people are exchanging money for ones and zeros.- The transformation of money by crypto will start at the fringes rather than replacing conventional money all at once. It will start with young people, the wealthy, and the underserved.- An AI with a smart contract acting on chain ma

Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj), investor at Chapter One, joins Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon. Takeaways:- Jeff realized the power of subscriptions during his time at Tinder. He says that digital goods are an even better version of subscriptions.- Web3 is almost entirely missing mobile usability.- Crypto apps could add a reputation layer to existing Web2 use cases, like dating apps.- People are still using Web 2.0 community products to create communities for Web3.- Web3 games need to move away from speculation and towards building genuine player enjoyment.- Seed investors need to be creative but also mindful of what other people will invest in. It’s important to understand business models and what is sustainable.- Corrections help to reset the whole ecosystem.- It’s hard to unseat the dominant marketplace, whether in Web 2.0 or Web3.- Crypto is big enough that even if you aren’t a crypto investor, you should be spending some time in the space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us

AJ Piplica (@AJ_Piplica), founder and CEO of Hermeus, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- Every time there has been an acceleration in the speed of transportation in history, high GDP growth has followed.- A switch to hypersonic transportation would unlock $4T in growth.- In the future the key differentiator in air travel will be speed, rather than comfort.- It’s currently extremely expensive to do flight testing at hypersonic speeds — $5-10M for only a few seconds of data.- In the 40s and through the Cold War, there were new aircrafts released every few years, but since then the pace of innovation has slowed significantly.- Cost-plus contracts are very comfortable for companies and create perverse incentives.- We are in the midst of a techno-economic pursuit in hypersonic transport and whichever country gets there first gets to write the rules.- The immense amount of political strife in this country keeps AJ up at night but unity amongst smaller cohorts of people working on challe

Mike Shebat (@mike_sheb), co-founder and CEO of Traba, joins Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- There is a huge problem with meeting demand for workers at warehouses and fulfilment centres. There are 75% more jobs in those fields after the pandemic.- Mike worked in warehousing and helped scale UberEats so has strong founder-market fit. Traba’s mission of connecting people to work is very meaningful to him.- Mike met his co-founder Akshay through the On Deck Fellowship and they started working on projects together and did an extensive values questionnaire, both of which were very helpful when it comes to founder cohesion.- They have emphasized company values from day one and hired for people who share those values, which has paid dividends.- Mike recommends building trust with your existing investors by sharing challenges and how you plan to solve them. He recommends bringing your existing investors along for the ride into future rounds.- Mike calls Miami “Singapore and New York in Lat

Peter Newell (@PeterANewell), CEO of BMNT, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- Peter was “handed the Ferrari of skunkworks” when he came to be in charge of the Rapid Equipping Force. It was a program that handled over a billion dollars to deploy new technologies.- He became more of an entrepreneur after his time at the REF and that led to starting BMNT.- Often times procurement in the US military is HQ-centric and product-centric and does not take into account the needs of the people on the ground.- The acquisition system that was built in the 1950s in the US presumes that the military can perfectly understand the problem and build a perfect solution for it. However, this takes much too long to deploy and isn’t suited for modern times.- A founder can’t go all-in on selling to government — they have to be able to build for both government and commercial.- Often times companies will receive indefinite delivery contracts where it is unclear how much money they will actual

JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of our web3 series. Takeaways:- Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on.- Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on.- The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just need a laptop.- Royal is trying to enable the fan-artist relationship to be more of a partnership.- When fans own a part of an artist’s song, they are tied for life.- Justin has sold a ton of tickets in his career but he has zero idea of who those fans are and doesn’t have the ability to contact them. The data layer built into Royal helps artists connect with their fans.- In the future, music labels will become much more competitive for artists than they have been in the past.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch wi

Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and general partner at Village Global and co-founder and co-CEO of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems.- Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth.- Governments and startups need to work together, not against each other.- China has the GDP per capita of Mexico but they have power because of how big their population is.- Increasing population should be an aim of the US government.- Humans are a naturally technological species and the only way out of our current problems is through technology, not without it.- People in Silicon Valley need to invest in storytelling and capturing hearts and minds. They have a new appreciation for how important politics is.- Ideas from Silicon Valley are being exported around the world —among them are giving without asking for anything in return, alignment via equity, and decoupling where you liv

Tushar Jain (@TusharJain_), co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin Capital, joins Erik on this episode to discuss:- The history of crypto over the last several years and the various moments that different technologies like Bitcoin, NFTs, tokens, and others have had.- What the world looks like if the predictions for crypto’s impact comes true.- Why Tushar thinks that Ethereum has gone past the point of diminishing returns to decentralization.- Why it’s so hard to predict which chains will win.- How crypto can help coordinate millions of people to accomplish big projects.- What we’ve learned about stablecoins in the last few years.- Why this is a “golden era of investing in crypto” and why we’re at a place that is equivalent to mobile in 2012.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Vill

James “Hondo” Geurts, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- What kept Hondo up at night was that there was a good idea out there that wasn’t passed on to him and thus wasn’t used on the battlefield.- A society can’t be secure without prosperity and can’t have prosperity without security.- The challenge for startups working with government is that the public is a fickle venture capitalist. They don’t like to fund things that don’t go anywhere.- It tends to be small and large companies (but mostly large) supplying the Department of Defense. The “middle has been lost.”- The DoD overvalues standardization.- Often in government, the user of the product is not the same as the buyer. Commonly startups make a mistake by not having buyer fit even if there is user fit for a product.- Government values past performance to a fault.- The United States, both via government and private enterprise, needs to build the i

Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb), managing partner at Dragonfly Capital, joins Erik for an episode of our Web3 series. Takeaways:- This bear market is driven by macro factors rather than endogenous ones. - It turns out crypto is in fact correlated with other assets, largely because in 2020 institutions started buying crypto.- Projects searching for yield in a yield-starved environment drove growth in crypto. That may change with rising interest rates.- Adoption will drive the next chapter of crypto. Gaming and NFTs will lead the way.- Sometimes boring, stable governance is best. ETH has that today. It’s like Manhattan — it’s old and kind of pricey, but it’s the most important place that things are happening today.- Governments could ban Bitcoin, but they haven’t, likely because it’s not actually all that threatening to them.- Blockchains are like cities. They each have their own unique and vibrant cultures.- More decentralization is not always better in practice.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, plea