Venture Stories

Michelle 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 rather than tell in your pitch. - How they found the best talent, including why their blog brought them plenty of inbound interest, and why searching far and wide around the globe for engineers helped them build their team quickly. - Why they don’t use recruiters at Cloudflare. - How to turn a weakness into a strength. - How to process feedback and when it makes sense to ignore it. - Stories of extreme frugality in the early days of the company, including building their own Ikea desks. - How an emotional response by customers help

We'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-programKevin 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 model in three weeks—a task that would typically take six months in academia.- He says that founders shouldn’t wait until they have plenty of data to make decisions — instead, start with first principles thinking while also building a virtuous data cycle by ensuring you are collecting data that will inform future decisions.- He comments that AI might be “overhyped on average” at the moment. The first breakthrough product is essentially an API, which has led to incumbents responding more quickly and more aggressively. Kevin argue

This 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 expertise help power our network of founders at Village Global. He shared advice on when to hire ahead, invest in and train, or replace personnel on your team and gave insight into his most common piece of advice on professional growth when advising CEOs. Quotes From This Episode "When you talk about priorities at an aspirational level, they overlap a lot. People start realizing we're more similar than we're dissimilar." "Adversity never feels fun. I don't seek adversity. But I'm no longer scared of adversity. When it emer

Chris 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 and being thoughtful about what the world should look like. Over the last couple decades it has become more venal.- Chris believes in the power of investing public money to create opportunities. He says that Silicon Valley is largely the story of a public private partnership and that it’s hard to do certain fundamental research in a purely market-based economy.- Chris says that the initiatives around Web3 weren’t grounded in a realistic understanding of human nature and the result was not a good outcome.- Healthcare is one o

Michael 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 photonics. Highlights: - In college Michael would tie together clusters of Dell machines to replicate the performance of supercomputers. - The core of building a successful company in Michael’s view is hiring the best people. The best can solve really hard problems but hiring mediocre people results in even trivial problems being unsolvable. - Silicon photonics chips are replacing things that could previously only be done in silicon. Data centres and telecom systems are now dominated by silicon photonics. - There’s a fundamenta

Matt 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 lower risk, shorter duration, and are more IRR-focused.- It’s key for LPs to understand the motivations behind a GP’s intentions to engage in secondaries transactions. There are very good reasons for doing so but transparency is key.- AI is in vogue but technology is only as good as the data that it’s using. The most sophisticated data analysis is not going to give a firm much of an edge if it's using incorrect data or publicly available data.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcas

Christopher 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 success as an investor is in being intentional about the culture you create. When Chris is evaluating a portfolio manager he likes to and sit on the floor with the employees and see what the vibe is like.- A lot of investors take a lot of econ and business classes but should take more psychology classes to deal with the human side of things (vs. the numbers side). He says that selecting portfolio managers is much more difficult than picking stocks.- Chris says that the energy transition will dwarf all trends over the next fifteen

This 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 event to meet with Village Global founders to give them his advice on growing their companies. 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 with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

This 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 important turning points in the early years of the company. - His thinking on work-life balance for founders and what he would do differently if he was starting again. - What he’s learned from the next generation of founders. - His perspective on the current tech landscape. - His views on philanthropy, global development, education, and much more. 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 with us on Twitter @

Jerry 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 villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Paul 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 lot from the people who make games and are willing to iterate and make changes quickly.They shy away from initiatives that would make money fairly easily but don’t grab the attention of the creative team.Paul says there is always a solution to everything and their job is to keep looking for it, whether that’s a creative solution or a business solution.They’ve created their own tech stack that enables them to create animations in hours that used to take weeks.Paul and Jennifer say that the edge is the new center of culture. The

Graham 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 example, you might be anxious and stressed yourself and that makes the candidate nervous — you may end up experiencing them as nervous, but in fact you are the one that has created that dynamic in the interview.- Ask the candidate: “If you were hiring someone to fill this role, what criteria would you use?” When someone is particularly good, they are skilled at capturing the essence of what makes someone good at it. This also lets you see how they respond without initial priming and framing.- The ideal reference check call s

Sebastian 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 hedge fund managers by saying that VCs are much more extraverted. VCs and others around the startup world are eager and willing to make introductions and actually follow through where others say they will make an intro and don’t follow through. - Venture is a fun and exciting business to be in because you’re dealing with bold visions of the future, highly talented and optimistic founders, and you get to see the progress and outcome of each startup that is trying to do something novel and ambitious. - Sebastian says that bubbles a

Julio 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 public market capitalization is made up of technology companies but in Latin America that proportion is only 1.8%.- Latin America is about 10-15 years behind where China is, which is itself about 5-7 years behind where the US is. There is a ton of catch-up that will happen over the next couple decades and that presents a huge opportunity.- Latin America has some deep scars from hyper-inflation decades ago. They were some of the first countires to quickly raise rates in order to tame the inflation that we've been seeing globally in t

Gurdane 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 population-level health benefit rather than developing drugs for small numbers of people that cost exorbitant amounts. - Noise pollution is actually a big public health issue that is linked to various diseases. Companies are working on making society less noisy using things like concrete that is quieter when cars drive over it. - Gurdane and Zeshan have learned from working together for a long time how to engage in productive disagreement well by acknowledging what their respective strengths and weaknesses are and weighing th

Lee 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 program solutions. Takeaways: - Lee says cities will look completely different in a few decades. Retail has been the backbone of cities for a very long time but as more and more commerces goes online, physical stores will transform into more of a place to go to have an experience. - In the old days loyalty programs used stamps to provide a potential discount on a future purchase but now provide the customer with more convenience and a better experience. - Loyalty programs have been transforming into tiered programs where a

Cameron 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 assets is often much more complex than managing money for an institution. At wealth management firms, each client is very different and each one is managing their own money rather than that of other individuals, which adds a new dynamic. The law of large numbers is a drag on funds. As they get larger the alpha that they used to be able to get decays into beta when they become less nimble. Being a jack of all trades is key to succeeding as a CIO. The last 16 months have been a whirlwind but have also provided a huge amount of lea

Prescott 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 work for fleets of commercial vehicles that need to be charged up overnight. This means that a fleet operator needs to build charging infrastructure to charge 30, 50, perhaps 100 vehicles simultaneously. - Building the charging infrastructure requires huge efforts by multiple players and right now the grid can only support a small fraction of the power that is required. Full support all of the charging that needs to happen is many years away. - Prescott says there are real “sticks” coming for fleet operators. As early as 202

Mark 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 pricing is completely transparent and shows their costs along with the exact fees they charge. He says that they do zero marketing and their growth comes from earned media and referrals from their existing patient base.- Mark advises founders not to try to optimize the current healthcare system but rather to work outside of the system to bring about real change. Working within the system can bring change around the edges but commits you to working inside a system that is already broken in the hopes that an incumbent player might bu

Eric 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 bifurcated into specialist and generalist investors.- Revere has found through their extensive data analysis that funds that are diverse outperform, funds with a female GP outperform, solo GPs outperform, and career operators outperform those with a fund management background.- Fund benchmarking requires more scrutiny. The same data can be presented in very different ways depending on the use case. For this reason, Revere uses a standardized rating system to equip allocators with the tools to evaluate funds.- At the median, fir