Venture Stories

Joining Erik on this episode is Jarrod Dicker (@jarroddicker), who is CEO of Po.et. He has a background in journalism and tech and formerly worked at the Washington Post and the Huffington Post. Jarrod explains how he came to the idea for Po.et, why blockchain technology is important, and how it can augment journalism. He points out that if the protocol is successful, the company is likely to go out of business since the network will be self-managing. He talks about the idea of “proof of effort” and how it enables third party verification and smart contracts via the blockchain for journalists, photographers, and hopefully in the future all kinds of content creators.They talk about the news business more broadly, including how the big tech platforms have been encroaching on the businesses of news organizations and why Slate makes more money on 50,000 pageviews on its own site than it would make through 6 million pageviews via Apple News. Jarrod explains why he says that we are in the “Napster era” of the news

On this episode Erik is joined by three guests, each with a personal connection to elder care:- Natalie Dillon (@ntdillon), investor at Maveron- Shawn Xu (@shawnxu), managing partner at Dorm Room Fund- Lisa Marrone (@marronelisa), VC at August CapitalThey start off by discussing Lisa's recent post about how we can better care for our elders and how to solve the often-occurring problem of loneliness in the elderly.Throughout the episode the guests mention a bunch of startups doing great things, such as preventing falls using technology, connect college students and elders, and even detecting Alzheimer's using artificial intelligence. They talk about the three main categories that they see in the space: digital therapeutics, virtual companionship and new models for residential care. Baby Boomers have different needs than those a decade or more older than them, and the four of them talk about how Boomers plan to age differently. They also point out how connected to technology Boomers are (60% of 65-69 year olds

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Lee Jacobs (@leejacobs), partner at Edelweiss Capital. He recently wrote a great post about breaking up with his co-founder at a previous company. Lee and Erik discuss the post, some of the thorny issues around co-founder relationships, and investing strategy more broadly.Lee tells the story of the startup he co-founded and how he came to realize that he and the company needed to part ways. He talks about what he did well in the situation, including getting third-party coaching, and what he would do differently next time. Lee’s former co-founder was one of his groomsmen at Lee’s wedding, so in his case things worked out for the best in the long-run.He talks about how to avoid blowing up your startup via a "co-founder breakup" and why open and honest communication is so important. They talk about having a “startup prenup” between the co-founders, how to pick a co-founder, and why these relationships are analogous to other types of non-work relationships.The

This episode is part of a three-part series taking listeners behind the curtain to discuss the inner workings of venture capital. Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList, and Ash Fontana (@ashfontana), general partner at Zetta Ventures, join Erik on this episode.They start off by discussing why topics around VC and portfolio construction in particular are so controversial. Parker and Ash give a rundown of how they invest with their respective funds and what their theses are when it comes to venture investing. They address the perennial debate of how much money to allot to initial round investing versus reserves for follow-on investing. It gets pointed out that based on the data, new funds are as likely as existing funds to succeed, and they talk about whether there’s a universal answer to the question of how much money under management a VC would ideally like to have. The three of them talk about the possibility of scaling up a fund with operating partners and discuss research that shows that the more com

This episode is part of a three-part series taking listeners behind the curtain to discuss the inner workings of venture capital. On this episode Erik is joined by Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList, and angel investor Dustin Dolginow (@dolginow).The trio discuss the past, present and future of scout programs. They start out by talking about Sequoia’s creation of the scout program nearly ten years ago and why it was considered a “loss leader” for the firm, meaning that it generated goodwill and created a network, but the return on the deals was not actually very good. The three of them discuss some of the potential pitfalls of the scout program, whether it can create good returns on its own, and the similarities and differences of Village’s Network Leader program to existing scout programs.Both Dustin and Parker have worked at AngelList, and the two discuss why AngelList’s model, which Parker calls a “1099 VC model.” They talk about how and when we might see a recreation of the consensus decision-mak

This episode is part of a three-part series taking listeners behind the curtain to discuss the inner workings of venture capital. Erik is joined by co-host for this episode, Adam Corey (@frumpy), partner at Village Global, and Clint Korver (@ckorver), managing director at Ulu Ventures. They discuss Ulu’s approach to portfolio construction and how it is using data to figure out which companies to invest in. As you'll notice, Clint is a wealth of fascinating statistics about venture investing.Clint explains why venture investing is analogous to other industries like pharmaceuticals and oil and gas extraction that follow a power law distribution. He points out that 100 venture investments out of 4,000 total in a given year create nearly all the profit in the venture industry. Clint explains how, taking cues from other industries mentioned above, Ulu uses data to predict which companies will be worth investing in.He says that the two main tenets of their investing thesis at Ulu are: 1. Invest early, and 2. Have l

On this episode of Venture Stories Erik is joined by Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList, and Parker Conrad (@parkerconrad), CEO of Rippling. In this episode they talk about how much value investors provide to founders, if any at all. They agree that the number one piece of value that an investor provides is as therapist for the founder. They get into the issues around mis-alignment of incentives between investors and founders and discuss some investor horror stories they’ve heard from founders that you typically won’t hear discussed out loud. Parker Conrad says that sometimes investors are value-destroyers.They discuss why investors need to market themselves as “founder-friendly” and why if someone needs to point out that they “add value” then they likely aren’t adding as much value as they’d like you to think. Parker and Parker talk about the amount of signalling in investing and why VCs do things as much for their LPs as for the founders. They agree that the impact of investors on your company is o

Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) joins Erik on this episode. Noah is an economist and Bloomberg Opinion writer. The two have a wide-ranging discussion on a number of topics around tech, economics, politics, and more.Noah explains why concern over big Silicon Valley tech companies is perhaps overblown. They discuss cryptocurrency and why in Noah’s opinion the Austrian economists have it wrong. He also explains why he is not a fan of techno-libertarianism and runs through the gun as historical example of why technologists shouldn’t just build new tech to circumvent laws they don’t like.The two talk about why the government drives more innovation than it commonly gets credit for, what kinds of policies Noah would implement to reduce inequality, including why he would like to see an inheritance tax. Erik also asks about charter cities and Noah explains why they are a great idea in theory but that they will be a “hard sell.”Erik asks about a blog post of Noah’s from 2015 that seems quite prescient given the current moment

Laura Deming (@laurademing) joins Erik in downtown San Francisco on this episode of Venture Stories. She is the creator of Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies that will let humans live both longer and healthier.Erik starts by asking about the state of longevity science and which discoveries about aging Laura is most excited about. It turns out that certain animals don’t age the way that humans do and that there are certain animals that are similar to each other (like rats and naked mole rats) that nevertheless have wildly different life expectancies. These discoveries have Laura very excited about the possibilities for extending the human lifespan — in fact, she compares them to “finding gold in your living room” and says they don’t get enough attention.They talk about why creating a venture fund is the best way for Laura to make an impact on this problem as well as the realities of venture funding in the life sciences space. Laura explains why returns are so important.Erik asks how

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Daniel Gross, founder of Pioneer, “an online tournament for productivity.” Prior to starting Pioneer, he founded Cue, a machine learning company that was acquired by Apple.Erik and Daniel discuss a wide variety of topics, including why saying something is “insanely great” isn’t necessarily a compliment for a founder, how to play “the video game that is life,” why the best way to get the physique you want is to move (cities), and how Twitter has reshaped the human psyche.They discuss Pioneer and how Daniel has thought about the decisions that went into its design. He talks about his aim of creating a “digital Ivy League campus” that harnesses the mechanics of games and applies them to more productive ends. Daniel also discusses why he says that life is like "a series of infinite games.”They also cover a number of other topics, including how Daniel thinks about friendships, the parallels between Pioneer and religion, how Daniel would change the education sys

Mark Lutter (@MarkLutter), founder and executive director of the Centre For Innovative Governance Research, joins Erik on this special two-hour episode to talk about charter cities. They start off by discussing how Mark became interested in the idea of charter cities. Mark explains the two main schools of thought when it comes to new forms of governance and talks about his philosophy for figuring out the best way to govern and how that involves charter cities.He talks about the recent interest from Silicon Valley in charter cities and some of the projects that have been going on in the space. Mark talks about seasteading and why the promise of that project wasn’t realized. He points out that there are over 200 masterplanned cities being built around the world.Mark explains the differences between charter cities and special economic zones and the main models for charter cities and special economic zones. Erik asks what forms of government Mark would advocate for if he was building a brand new charter city from

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by two exciting guests: Qasar Younis (@qasar), co-founder of Applied Intuition, and Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang), CEO of Scale.Both Qasar and Alex are creating software that is transforming the way autonomous vehicles are being developed. The three of them have an expansive conversation about where autonomous technology is at today and how the technology and industry might evolve in the future. Throughout the conversation the founders peel back the curtain on the autonomous vehicle development process and put forth are a number of ideas about autonomous technology that run counter to the prevailing narrative in the media today.They begin by talking about some of the specific ways that software is transforming the auto industry and in what ways the tools the founders are building are being used in the development of autonomous technology. Erik asks about the pros and cons of being a horizontal company vs. a vertical company in the space, and Qasar and Alex d

Erik Torenberg, co-founder and partner of Village Global, recently hosted an event for entrepreneurs in San Francisco to hear from founders of Village Global portfolio companies who have been through Village’s Network Catalyst accelerator.Joining Erik were:Nancy Yu (@nancyyu25), co-founder and CEO of RDMD, a company working to accelerate treatment for patients with rare diseases. Amrita Saigal, co-founder of Saathi, a company creating fully eco-friendly, compostable sanitary napkins in India.Jared Seehafer (@seehafer), co-founder and CEO of Enzyme, and a Village Global Network Leader.Nancy and Amrita talk about what it was like to go through the Network Catalyst program and how it has impacted the growth of their companies. Jared discusses being an advisor to the founders in the program.They talk about what makes Network Catalyst unique, including the emphasis at Village on the network, Village’s personalized one-on-one work with companies, the willingness to put on events dedicated entirely to one company an

Joining Erik for this episode are Brianne Kimmel (@briannekimmel), investor, advisor and Village Global Network Leader as well as Josh Stein (@dfjjosh), partner at DFJ.They start off by discussing the "consumerization of enterprise SaaS." More and more frequently new software is implemented at enterprises because ordinary employees use a service as a consumer and advocate for its use within the company. Brianne and Josh talk about why the enterprise is such a different animal compared to consumer SaaS and the challenges that fact presents for young founders. Josh tells the story of Aaron Levie, who was only 20 when Josh backed him at Box and had not only not sold to the enterprise but had never worked in a big company.They discuss how the SaaS landscape has changed, including why $50-100M in revenue isn't enough to go public and why investors are now looking for companies doing at least $1B in revenue. Brianne and Josh also point out the uniqueness of Silicon Valley, and caution that founders from the Bay Are

In the first all-Australian episode of Venture Stories Erik interviews returning guest Ash Fontana (@ashfontana), general partner at Zetta Ventures, and his fellow countryman, Anthony Goldbloom (@antgoldbloom), CEO of Kaggle.Ash’s fund is the first fund devoted exclusively to AI and machine learning, and the three talk about how to evaluate companies, founders and ideas in the space. Ash says that the founders he looks for are often pre-traction but post-data, meaning that they have the data but are trying to find a way to make their machine learning work commercially viable. He points out that certain data-gathering techniques just aren’t viable for a startup when “you have to lose money to learn in the machine learning space.”The trio discuss a number of the coolest current applications of machine learning as well as where they would like to see companies bring machine learning in the future. They talk about the present and potential future impact of machine learning techniques in data labeling, oil and gas

In this extended episode of Venture Stories, Erik interviews Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University. They discuss about a wide range of topics, including Tyler’s book Stubborn Attachments, the value of watching sports, travel, Bitcoin, the Knicks, and Effective Altruism — among many, many others.Tyler explains why he has only two “stubborn attachments” — human rights and economic growth. He takes us through his argument that there’s a moral imperative for economic growth. He talks about why economic growth is the greatest force for good in the world, why redistribution isn’t as effective as Effective Altruists would like, and why we dramatically underestimate the effects of compounding. He discusses some of the reactions to the book and why he says he’s “poked the left in the eye and poked the right in the eye” with Stubborn Attachments. They discuss the reasons for the extraordinary economic growth of East Asian countries and what kinds of lessons the West could take fro

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Nikhil Krishnan (@nikillinit), of CB Insights and Nick Soman (@nicksoman), of Decent.Today they're talking about “the combination of two insanely complex topics.” They start out by discussing the potential applications of blockchain technology in the healthcare space and why it might not be ready for primetime just yet.They dive into some of the applications, including unique patient identifiers and why the lack of a system to transfer records between health providers results in a “ludicrously high number of medical errors.” They also talk about the fact that anonymized health data is often sold without the consent of the patient and that there are billion-dollar companies that advertise on the front page of their websites that they can provide anonymized health data for 500M patients.As with any Health Stories episode, they discuss the distortion of incentives in the healthcare industry. On this episode they discuss the “medical loss ratio” and why it mean

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by co-host Tony Sheng to interview John Backus (@backus), founder of Bloom and Cognito, two companies working on decentralized lending and identity.Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.John recently wrote a popular post about the history of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He joins Erik and Tony to expand on the post and talk about what that history can teach us about decentralization today.He takes us through the history of file sharing apps from Napster to Kazaa to BitTorrent. He explains why the way BitTorrent is architected “doesn’t make sense” from a technical point of view and why the legal system has had such an impact on the way BitTorrent works.John explains some of the legal challenges to peer-to-peer sharing and how they’ve adjusted. The push to decentralize is

Erik is joined in this episode by co-host Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education, and Dave Girouard (@davegirouard), CEO and founder of Upstart.They have a lively discussion about the history of income-sharing agreements, the forms in which they exist presently, and how the agreements might change or expand in the future.Dave gives us an overview of Upstart and why he says they are like “Kickstarter meets LendingClub.” Although Upstart is thriving now, it wasn’t always that way. In the early days of the company, they tried to pioneer the idea of a generalized income-sharing agreement. Dave runs through why that didn’t work out and how they got to where Upstart is today. Dave and Tonio share some stories about their early work on income-sharing agreements and compare theories on how these agreements might evolve and spread to different areas in the future. They talk about how income-sharing agreements align incentives between two parties and help quantify the value that one party p

Erik’s co-host for this episode is Ali Hamed (@AliBHamed) of CoVenture. They are interviewing Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education.They talk about the history of income-sharing agreements, including that Milton Friedman had once proposed the idea and that Yale University had experimented with them at one point.Tonio talks about starting Vemo and how he has brought income-sharing agreements to more and more educational institutions. They discuss the fact that 88% of students entering college are doing so to improve their early career path but that most institutions would say that providing a career path is not the primary value they provide. Tonio explains that Vemo has helped students find the right institution for them by publishing outcomes from the income-sharing agreements. He says that this transparency of outcomes has in and of itself changed how colleges look at the service they provide.They move on to talking about the future of higher education in general, why there doe