Venture Stories

Erik is joined by Brad Hargreaves (@bhargreaves), founder and CEO of Common and co-founder of General Assembly, and Zach Aarons (@ZacharyAarons), co-founder and partner at MetaProp, a proptech venture fund.The guests explain what exactly proptech is and why it’s an exciting space for entrepreneurs. They go over some of the sub-segments within proptech, some of the existing unicorns in the space, as well as the incumbents that new entrepreneurs might encounter and how they themselves getting involved in the crossover of tech and real estate. Brad explains how his time at General Assembly informed Common and how he “navigated the idea maze.” He points out that there are a lot of adults living with non-family roommates but that virtually none of the existing structures in real estate and property management are set up for that arrangement.They discuss the differences between residential and commercial real estate and why “they’re almost like separate industries." WeWork has even had trouble trying to add residen

Bradley Tusk (@bradleytusk) joins Erik on this episode to talk about the intersection of politics and tech. He’s founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures and author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death By Politics. He’s also a philanthropist, political strategist, and hosts his own podcast, Firewall.Bradley has worked with Michael Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, Uber, and many others. He shares the lessons he’s learned throughout his experience both working in politics and helping guide startups through the political and legislative processes. He explains the psyche of politicians and says that the actions of virtually every one is guided by whether it increases or decreases the chances of winning their next election. He talks about his work with Uber and how grassroots campaigns on behalf of startups with fervid customers can sway politicians to change existing regulations that tend to benefit entrenched interests. He discusses some of the best policies that legislators can implement to benefit startups

Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) joins Erik to talk about his new book The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture. Scott is Chief Product Officer at Adobe and was CEO and co-founder of Behance. He’s also an early stage investor.Scott discusses his experience founding, scaling and selling Behance, then working as a venture capitalist, early stage investor and as CPO at Adobe. He talks about what he means by “the messy middle” and talks about the three stages of “navigating the volatility” of the messy middle.He points out that the mission of the company is not going to keep you engaged eternally and that you need to “hack the reward system” instead. Erik asks how to know whether to quit or keep going and what some of the lessons he learned as an early stage investor are. Scott talks about the crucial importance of honesty and candor among team members and the self-awareness required to decide what one’s next career move should be.He explains why running a compan

Erik sits down with Donnie Dinch (@donnie), Michael Galpert (@msg) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg), to follow up on the projects they were working on a year ago when they all got together at the end of 2017 to talk about consumer social on one of our first podcast episodes. They discuss what’s changed since then and what they see ahead in the consumer social landscape. They discuss some of the unexpected twists and turns their ventures took over the course of 2018 and some of their lessons learned from the year. They talk about some of the trends that emerged during 2018 and which ones they expect to come in the year ahead. Greg points out that the big players in the space are distracted and a lot of people have given up on the space, so opportunity is ripe. He says “there have never been fewer people working on consumer social than in 2019.”They talk about where they think the next unicorn in consumer social will come from and what some of the most promising existing companies are, as well as some of the i

Erik talks to longtime friend and co-author of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work, Liz Fosslien (@fosslien / fosslien.com). She talks about the importance of “feeling your feelings” and not running away from them, especially at work. Liz gives some practical tips on how to give good feedback, how to approach negotiating, and how to be a good boss.She talks about the difference between diversity, inclusion and belonging, why it’s so important to strive to make people feel like they belong and how to do so (tip: learn how to pronounce *everyone’s* name, not just the easy ones). Erik asks how her own experience led her to these insights and how she’s able to find humor in the workplace. She also explains why not being so passionate about your job is actually a good thing, why you should stop feeling bad about feeling bad, and how to acknowledge your anxiety and move on.Quotable Lines From This EpisodeThis traditional notion that you should be able to check your feelings at the door

On this episode Erik is joined by Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), founder of Wordpress and Automattic, as well as Andreas Klinger (@andreasklinger), VP of Engineering at CoinList and a founding team member of Product Hunt (along with Erik).At Automattic, Matt works with over 850 employees working remotely in 70-plus countries. The three of them discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a distributed team, and why it is the future for knowledge work. Matt explains his quote that “every company over 100 people is already distributed, they just pretend they’re not.”They talk about some of the best protocols for managing distributed workers and why being able to pull from worldwide talent is such a big advantage. They mention that Invision, a large and successful company with distributed workers, requires everyone to work on Eastern Time. Matt points out that they don’t use email at Automattic and instead use their own custom tools. They also talk about some of the modifications to current collaboration tools that they’

On this episode, Erik is joined by Jd Ross (@justindross), co-founder of Opendoor. They talk about a wide variety of topics, including mental models, cities, governance, travel, founding myths, and “why all of us are solely responsible for western civilization.”They start with mental models, talking about some of the most useful mental models Jd has seen and how he identifies new ones (a mental model for mental models, if you will). They transition to talking about cities and governance, including why the Bay Area has a housing crisis, why Jd is very long on Oakland, and the policies that he would import from the UK to fix housing in the Bay Area. Jd observes that cities always endure, even through disasters and massive changes in the nation states surrounding them. He talks about founding Opendoor, the importance of founding myths, and what he’s learned from Keith Rabois. He explains what you need to scale your company effectively and the difference between entrepreneurs and executives. He talks about some o

Erik is joined by Jesse Genet (@jessegenet), co-founder and CEO of Lumi. Lumi is an online platform that handles all of the packaging needs for direct-to-consumer companies. Jesse explains what the typical process for procuring these types of supplies why even huge companies like Amazon still have to navigate a maze of relationships with various brokers and suppliers to fulfill their packaging needs. She compares buying a plane ticket prior to online aggregators to the current state of supply chain procurement.Jesse explains how she got into the space and talks about the importance of beautiful packaging to companies that, without retail stores, otherwise have very few touch points with a customer. She describes the emergence of a stack of services to serve direct-to-consumer companies and lets us in on some of the ins and outs of the hidden world of supply chain management. She also talks about the consumer goods space in general and what insights she’s gathered on what makes a successful consumer packaged g

On this episode Erik is joined by Antonio Garcia Martinez (@antoniogm), author of Chaos Monkeys, and Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList. Parker is a returning fan-favorite. Erik describes Antonio’s Chaos Monkeys as half Michael Lewis of Silicon Valley and half Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great read.Parker and Antonio debate whether the corrosion of discourse and the rise of fake news are a result of specific features of social media, like the News Feed, or whether they are a result of humans being interconnected instantly via smartphones. Antonio argues that WhatsApp is “the perfect foil to Facebook” but that it is still a distribution platform for fake news.They discuss why two people can see the same high-quality video of the same event, but still draw opposing conclusions on who was the “victim” and who was the “perpetrator.” They discuss the need for media literacy, the difference between media and journalism, and how Twitter and Facebook might be fixed.They talk about the change in sentiment abou

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Yunus Saatci, of Uber AI labs and a founding member of OnDeck, and Lewis Gyson, founder and CEO of Ant, a Village Global portfolio company. They were interviewed recently in downtown San Francisco. Yunus talks about the unique career he's had so far, with stops at big tech companies as well as in venture capital. Lewis explains what he and the team at Ant are trying to do and how his experience working for New Zealand's version of eBay (New Zealand and China are two countries where eBay doesn't operate) helped inform what he's working on now. They break down some of the most commonly used (and overused) terms in artificial intelligence, including machine learning, deep learning and others, and explain how those techniques work. They also talk about the relevancy of academic machine learning techniques to commercial applications and why machine learning is called "a solution in search of a problem."They talk about some of the ways that AI can transform bric

On this episode Erik is joined by Vijay Boyapati (@real_vijay), a returning guest who was previously here to talk about Bitcoin and crypto from an Austrian perspective. Today he’s here to talk about healthcare from the Austrian perspective. He breaks down the causes for the dysfunction in the US healthcare system as he sees them and talks about what (if anything) might fix them. They discuss the factors that are distorting incentives in healthcare and why they result from a lack of free markets. Vijay talks about employer-sponsored healthcare that emerged during World War Two, which has remained the default system “by accident” ever since. He also talks about Medicare and farm subsidies and how those have contributed to consumers paying more but getting less when it comes to healthcare.Erik asks what Vijay would do if he could wave a wand and change anything about the US healthcare system, but Vijay says that it might take a collapse of the system to change how things work. Vijay talks about why the US system

On this episode, Erik is joined by Renata Quintini (@rquintini), partner at Lux, and Brian Frank (@bfrank), early stage investor and advisor to food tech companies.They start out by talking about what food tech really is, why it’s exciting, and what some of the coolest companies in the space are doing. Brian points out that food is an 8.1 trillion dollar market worldwide, and that the industry is “all up for grabs.” They discuss what it takes for new entrants to get into the market and some of the advantages and disadvantages that the massive incumbents have.They discuss trends in the industry, including mechanization and automation, artificial intelligence, the demand for plant-based and organic food, and the newly health-conscious consumer. Renata and Brian talk about some of their investments in the space. They break down what new entrants in the space need to do to get in front of customers and talk about some of the data advantages that direct-to-consumer companies have that incumbents don’t.Erik also as

On this episode Erik is joined by his fellow general partner at Village Global, Ross Fubini (@fubini), and Misha Esipov (@mishaesipov), co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit.Ross and Village are investors in Misha’s company and Ross has been obsessed with fintech for a very long time. Misha tells the story of how his team came upon the idea and why the mission of the company has been resonating with the founding team and subsequent hires. He explains why credit reports are not shared between credit rating bureaus in different countries, making it really difficult to get a credit card, a loan, or even just an apartment, as an immigrant.Misha talks about going from a three-person founding team to where they are today and what kinds of learnings he has gathered along the way. He talks about the importance of hiring a general counsel and starting with smaller customers before bigger ones. Ross says he’s excited about how big Nova Credit could get and explains what he means when he says he likes to see entrepreneurs “

On this episode, Erik is joined by Deepen Parikh (@deepenparikh), partner at Courtside Ventures.Deepen explains how Courtside Ventures came to be and the thesis behind the fund. He breaks down the four areas where Courtside invests — all of which involve sports. Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is one of Courtside’s LPs, and Deepen at one time worked for a family office that was looking to purchase a pro sports team — so Deepen knows a lot about the space.Erik asks whether sports can really be a venture backable business and where the opportunities are to be in on the ground floor of a new sport and sports league, like UFC, competitive gaming, or drone racing. Deepen shares a number of interesting insights on the economics of professional sports and talks about the idea that “non-helmet sports generate bigger personalities.”Deepen also talks about some of the transformations we can expect in the sporting world in the next decades, some of his requests for products in the space, and how people wi

Erik is joined on this episode by Amir Bandeali (@abandeali1), co-founder and CTO of 0x, and Ivan Bogatyy, general partner at Metastable Capital. Erik and Ivan ask Amir about the background behind 0x and its creation. Amir says that 0x is a protocol, rather than an exchange. He also breaks down how a decentralized exchange is different from a centralized one. Amir predicts that "in the long run the types of assets that are going to be tokenized are mostly non-financial assets."Amir says that market makers want to port the paradigm of a centralized exchange over to decentralized exchanges, and talks about what kinds of ideas from a centralized exchange could be useful in a decentralized exchange. They talk about the problem of front-running and how to prevent it. Amir breaks down some of the most common misconceptions about decentralized exchanges and talks about some of his requests for products in the space. They also cover automatic market makers and derivative protocols.Thanks for listening — if you like w

Erik is joined by his co-host for this episode Ray Batra (@reesesandcoke), founder of Shift_Up, a platform for in-person learning that Ray calls “gyms for learning” and Austen Allred (@AustenAllred), co-founder and CEO of Lambda School, a pioneer in the income-sharing space. Their computing science program is free until a student gets a job, at which point they pay back their schooling with a percentage of their income (up to a capped amount).By the way, we apologize for the audio quality of this interview. We had to catch up with Austen over the phone while he was on the move between meetings.Austen talks about some of the other verticals that Lambda School is thinking about beyond computer science, and why they are also looking at taking care of other things in a student’s life like housing and bridge income. He points out that in addition to requiring a significant amount of capital, education just as importantly requires time and space and a clear head.They talk about Austen’s quote that Lambda School is

Erik is joined on this episode by John Robinson (@RohnJobinson), president and COO of 100 Thieves, and Blake Robbins (@blakeir), partner at Ludlow Ventures.Blake and John talk about how they got into eSports and what excites them most about the space. They run through some of the unicorns in eSports and the venture firms that saw their potential early. They also discuss how big companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook are or are not getting involved in the space. The three of them compare and contrast traditional sports leagues, athletes, brands and teams with those in eSports and talk about how the revenue streams differ in eSports versus those of traditional sports. They talk about the applicability of a single team like 100 Thieves across a bunch of different games, comparing it to having a Yankees team in every sport, instead of just baseball. They mention that contrary to traditional sports, there is something to watch 365 days of the year for fans of an eSports team. They also say that the spa

On this episode Erik is joined by Ooshma Garg (@ooshma), CEO of Gobble, and Micah Rosenbloom, (@micahjay1) partner at Founder Collective.They talk about big changes in the food landscape over the past several years. Ooshma points out that people in Silicon Valley often underestimate just how massive the food space is until they realize how many component parts it has. They discuss the new wave of vertically integrated food companies acting as both producer and distributor of their product. Ooshma explains how they have differentiated themselves at Gobble and what her vision is going forward.They break down some of the changes in grocery stores over the past several years and why they are now “more like buffets” in Micah’s words. They also discuss some of the difficulties in an “atoms-based” business that software businesses don't have to contend with.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch

On this episode of Venture Stories Erik is joined by Sean Byrnes (@sbyrnes) and Shastri Mahadeo (@ShastriMahadeo). Sean is CEO of Outlier, a company using AI to create better business intelligence, and previously founded Flurry Analytics. Shastri is co-founder and CEO of Union Crate, a demand-planning tool for consumer packaged goods companies.Sean shares an anecdote about how when he was in grad school for machine learning 20 years ago his classmates joked that what they were learning would never be relevant. He says that two things changed to make machine learning one of the hottest technologies of today: 1. the amount of data that companies have access to has exploded, and 2. the cost of computing has gone down dramatically. He also mentions that there have been no new machine learning techniques developed in the last 20 years and that the algorithms from his printed textbook from 20 years ago still encompass the breadth of techniques that are in use today. Shastri previously ran a consumer packaged goods

Erik is joined by Jonathan Gheller (@jgheller), founder of OneFix. Jonathan is a former product manager at Facebook and aims to use that experience to create retentive, easy-to-use products that create lasting behavior change. OneFix helps people eat better through a team of individuals who provide personalized support.Jonathan talks about why preventable disease is such a big problem in the US today and the types of conditions like heart disease, stroke and diabetes that are entirely preventable, yet cause one in three deaths in the US. He explains why he decided to create a startup in the healthcare industry and why he chose nutrition as an area to focus on. He also talks about the healthcare industry more broadly, including the misalignment of incentives between the parties involved, and why the industry does very well at acute care but not preventive care. He runs through what a prospective founder should think about when deciding what to work on in the health space and some of his requests for startups i