Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast

Avi Loeb is author of the book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”.  It’s a story you can hardly believe, once you hear it.  But here it is -- the story of the day in 2017 when telescopes around the world started tracking an object in our solar system.  It was moving in such a way that scientists around the world came to the same, startling conclusion:  It was an extraterrestrial spaceship.  Avi Loeb is a professor of the Harvard Astronomy Department.  He is also a member of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (which is a collaboration of Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.  Professor Loeb received a PhD in plasma physics at age 24 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1986) and was subsequently a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1988-1993), where he started to work in theoretical astrophysics. In 1993 he moved to Harvard University where he was tenured three years later.  He is now the

Big Vape is a nicotine-high of a book:  An intense ride-along with the story of the rise of Juul.  The story begins innocently – a couple guys don’t want to quit smoking, but also do not want to suffer the ill effects of cigarettes.  They start Juul, and its rise – the massive wealth created, the social phenomenon, and the arrival of Big Tobacco -- are the touchpoints of Jamie Ducharme’s book “Big Vape:  The Incendiary Rise of Juul”. Jamie Ducharme is a staff writer at TIME magazine, where she covers health and science. (Right now, that means she’s writing almost exclusively about COVID-19.) Her work has won awards from the New York Press Club, the Deadline Club, and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. Previously, she was the health editor at Boston magazine. Jamie Ducharme’s first book, Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul, was published by Henry Holt on May 25, 2021. It’s a deep-dive into the e-cigarette company Juul Labs and an exploration of the complicated search for an alternative to cigarettes. https://

Ryan and his dad are one of only two father/son NFL players to both win Superbowl rings.  Today Ryan a venture capitalist at the firm he founded,  Next Play Capital.  His many co-investments include Hippo, ByteDance (TikTok), Flexport, Hims, Impossible Foods, Peloton, (IPO), and Rubrik among others. We’ve covered a lot of paths to becoming a VC on Something Ventured, but none has run through the NFL! In this episode we discuss the football roots of the name “Next Play”, and why there were historically so few Black people in venture capital, among many other topics.  We finish with an amazing thought from Ryan on how someone might be supportive of diversity in Silicon Valley – one of the most thoughtful and poignant I’ve heard. Next Play Capital https://www.nextplaycapital.com/ Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us/

Ali Tamaseb pulls the curtain back on the myths about billion-dollar startups – and he does it with data.  That’s not surprising for a guy who is a partner at DCVC, the multi-billion dollar venture firm focused on deep tech. Ali is a scientist turned engineer who works on a broad spectrum of areas ranging from computational health/bio to cybersecurity. More specifically, Ali identifies early-stage highly technical and defensible startups in diagnostics tools, neuro-technology, precision medicine, synthetic bio and bio-logic, disruptive healthcare models, financial technologies, alternative data, next-generation computing, cryptography and blockchain. “Super Founders” analyzes 65 factors to determine what differentiates billion-dollar companies.  Interviewees in the book include: Arie Belldegrun - Co-founder, Allogene, Kite Pharma: Founded Two Billion-Dollar Startups While a University Professor Nat Turner - Co-founder, Flatiron Health: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup With No Industry Experience Max Mullen -

Suneel Gupta is author of the book “Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance”.  Backable tells Suneel’s journey from first-time entrepreneur to being named “The New Face of Innovation” by the New York Stock Exchange. Suneel’s ideas have been adopted by firms like Greylock and Google Ventures, and he served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He has personally backed startups including Impossible Foods, AirBnB, 23&Me, Calm, and SpaceX. Also -- In 2018, Suneel ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Michigan’s 11th Congressional District. Before running for Congress, Suneel co-founded and served as CEO of RISE, a mobile health company that partnered with Michelle Obama to lower the cost of quality care for thousands of patients. Just two years after launch, One Medical acquired RISE. If that wasn’t enough: Suneel is also a lawyer and filmmaker. Yup. He started his career in the Clinton White House where he served as a speechwriter,

David Bohnett founded GeoCities in the 1990s, well before the internet attained its current ubiquity.  GeoCities became publicly traded on NASDAQ and was acquired by Yahoo! Inc. in 1999. In a 2007 article, the Wall Street Journal described it as a Facebook prototype and noted, “Back then, entries were known as home pages, not profiles. But the basic, expressive elements of today’s Facebook and competitor MySpace … were all right there.” David found himself wealthy with the ability to do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. He became a philanthropist and social activist. In addition to serving as Chair of the David Bohnett Foundation, he is the Chairman of the Executive Committee on the Board of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Vice Chairman of the Board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Trustee of the Brookings Institution, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the University of Southern California (USC). Since 19

Kara Nortman is a Managing Partner of venture firm Upfront. Upfront famously hosts the “Upfront Summit” – a hard-to-describe, but massive confab of celebrities, entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders held in Los Angeles. Kara is a founding member of All Raise – you’ve heard about All Raise a number of times on Something Ventured. She’s also an owner – along with Natalie Portman and Serena Williams – of LA’s women’s soccer team Angel City Football Club (“Angel City FC”). As co-Managing partner of Upfront, she is one of the first women promoted to a leadership role at a major venture capital firm. EPISODE QUOTES: On Being Asked to Join Natalie Portman and Serena Williams as Co-owner of Angel City FC Soccer Team “It is probably the craziest story of my life and one that I have a great amount of gratitude for. I think it's made me realize that butterfly effects do happen. But you can't force them. When you get the pocket of energy in from a butterfly flapping, you have to follow it. And that’s what happ

In their new book “WORKING BACKWARDS: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon” (St. Martin’s Press, February 9, 2021.) Bill Carr and Colin Bryar share Amazon’s secrets.   They had a front row seat for most of Amazon's history, and they are sharing what they learned in their new book. Not only is Amazon one of the most valuable companies in the world, it has succeeded across a stunning array of categories from web services to movies.  So it’s hyperbolic, but possible to make the case that this is the most important business book….ever. “Like being in the room with Jeff Bezos” Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practi

Amy Nauiokas is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anthemis, a leading digital financial services investment firm.  Anthemis manages nearly $1 billion.  Amy is also Founder and Chair of Archer Gray, a media production and content company. Straightforward for a venture capitalist, right?  Except maybe for the TV/Movie company she also runs.  But wait – she’s also a liberal arts major who joined the Peace Corps out of college.  In this episode we discuss how she made her way from the Peace Corps to leading one of the biggest fintech venture capital firms. We also talk about the early 80s women in finance who she views as pioneers truly worth paying homage to, and whose issues she contrasts to those faced by women in today’s finance/venture world. EPISODE QUOTES On the Diversity of Anthemis and Its Investments “We brought together people of very eclectic, different and diverse backgrounds to form this platform. And now we're 50 people around the world and we're working out of three physical offices and pr

Vern Howard’s story is remarkable.  Vern was a math prodigy who left high school early, when he tested into Virginia Commonwealth University to study Computer Science and Math.  He paid his way through school by teaching math and serving as a janitor on campus. He went on to sell men’s suits, which taught him the art of selling.  After joining Capital One – whose signing bonus he used to rebuild an Alpha Romeo – he built Capital One’s first mobile banking application.  He also built out the Application Security Team at Capital One before, naturally, becoming a securities trader. Hang on, we’re not done yet.  He became an entrepreneur.  He sent a book to Steve Case’s partner at Revolution and….well, listen to find out what happens! Episode Quotes On Getting Started as an Entrepreneur “So two people I met accelerated everything. Ted Leonsis kind of introduced me to this network of people. Mike Lincoln over at Cooley was like, “Yeah, everyone is raving about you. You didn't go to an Ivy League school, you're not

An episode in which I thank each of the 2020 guests.  A podcast first (probably).  I briefly recall – fondly – a bit of each of the 2020 episodes. Is it interesting?  I think so.  Can I do it in one take?  Turns out, yes.  Enjoy, and thank you for listening. Marco Zappacosta, Thumbtack Founder Keller Fitzsimmons, “Lost in Startuplandia” Author Jeff Macpherson, Tiki Bar TV Creator Brianne Kimmel, worklife Founder Paul-Henri Ferrand, Brex COO Matt Hulett, Rosetta Stone CEO Mike Stutz, Television Producer Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle Senior Political Writer Kaiser Kuo, Sinica Podcast Host Eric Tarczynski, Contrary Capital Founder Somesh Dash, IVP General Partner Monique Woodard, Cake Ventures Founder Michael Ellison, Codepath Founder Promise Phelon, The Growth Warrior Founder Scott Simpson, Comedian – Cheaper than Therapy Founder Parker Conrad, Rippling Founder Brad Feld, Foundry Group Founder Domm Holland, Fast Founder Garrett Smallwood, Wag Labs CEO Deena Shakir, Lux Capital Partner Rob Chesnut, AirB

Stacey Bishop is a partner at Scale Venture Partners where she invests in “business applications driving the Intelligent Connected World”. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of companies like Abstract, Airspace, Demandbase, Extole, Lever, and Textio. Stacey is a founding member of All Raise – an organization frequently mentioned on Something Ventured. She is also an advisor to The University Growth Fund Stacey got her MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from The University of Michigan. In this episode we discuss her path to becoming a partner at a prominent Silicon Valley firm, and the role All Raise played in accelerating her career. Notable quotes from this episode:   On the Early Days of “All Raise” “Before All Raise, women in venture, we just put our heads down, did our job -- just focused on trying to get ahead and do the right thing. And I think the most eye-opening thing – when All Raise started, it changed the dynamic. It suddenly brought all the women together. And even though we h

In 2013, Fortune’s Jeff Roberts visited "Satoshi Square" in New York.  It was the name of the location where a group of crypto anarchists and Wall Street traders bought and sold Bitcoin in the open air. Since that day, Jeff became fascinated with Bitcoin and new forms of money. That fascination led him to write the new book “Kings of Crypto:  One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street”. Said Fortune Senior Writer Robert Hackett: "'Kings of Crypto' tells the story of a ragtag band of rebels who saw the future of finance before anyone else and who wrenched the revolution into their orbit. Reading this book is like using a stethoscope to open the vault containing the cryptocurrency industry's origins. Click, click, click—and a wealth of secrets spills out. Learn what made Coinbase, one of the most improbably successful Silicon Valley startups, hit it big—and what makes its founding 'Vulcan Swiss bankers' tick. As long as Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains secret, this

Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis.  AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016. Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move.  He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.   On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State “There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through

Fabrice Grinda is a wildly successful entrepreneur and investor.  In this episode he recounts in detail 4 stories that any entrepreneur – any person, really – will find fascinating. The first is the story of building one of Europe’s first marketplaces before eBay got there – and what happens when you turn down $100 million for your company. The second is the story of Zingy, and what it’s like to grind without capital and miss payroll 27 times, before ultimately succeeding. Third, Fabrice talks about building OLX, the global trading platform, after Craig Newmark refused his offer to fix Craigslist.  Learn what happens when OLX and its competitor go to war and spend billions on – TV advertising. Finally, Fabrice offers his considered view of the future:  On how climate change is being addressed through technology, and how COVID has affected startups that will ultimately change the world. https://fabricegrinda.com https://fjlabs.com https://somethingventured.us    

Jaclyn Hester has just become a Partner at Foundry Group.  So first, “Congratulations, Jaclyn”. Jaclyn joined Foundry Group – the Boulder-based tech company and venture fund investor -- after a few years at big law firms.  As a lawyer, she worked on everything from startup formation and financing to large M&A processes. During graduate school at CU Boulder, she caught the entrepreneurship bug and immersed herself in the local startup community, serving as the Executive Director of Startup Colorado. She has also built a startup with her husband, Anders.   Their family’s bootstrapped tour and activity software company was successfully acquired in 2018 by Booking.com. She becomes a partner Foundry just as it raises its first Foundry Group Next (“FG Next”) fund.  Episode Quotes: On Her Path from Lawyer to Entrepreneur “I always had a feeling that there was something more interesting about the businesses themselves than about the legal aspect. I think for me, it felt like being the attorney was just a way to b

There are only so many iconic social networks in the world – and Nextdoor is one of them.  While perhaps not as fast-growing as Facebook or even LinkedIn, Nextdoor has steadily become the hub for neighborhoods around the world. Sarah Leary founded Nextdoor, along with Nirav Tolia, Prakash Janakiraman, and David Wiesen. In this episode, Sarah tells the story of getting Nextdoor off the ground.  She talks about the painstaking work they did to figure out how to build a healthy community around a neighborhood, before they were ready to scale. We talk about the impact COVID-19 had on Nextdoor communities, and how and why she decided to become a venture capitalist at Unusual Ventures. Notable Episode Quotes On Starting Her Career at Microsoft “I joined Microsoft at really a golden time:  The early 90s.  I was on the product team that launched the first version of Microsoft Office, and that was an all-star team. It was a time when Microsoft was just taking off and went from being this software company that some peo

Trae Vassallo is co-founder and partner at Defy, a venture capital firm she built with Neil Sequeira.  She was previously a general partner at Kleiner Perkins. Trae made her way to Silicon Valley from…rural Minnesota.  As a girl, Trae fell in love with coding – on an Apple II.  She went, sight unseen, to Stanford University, where she studied mechanical and electrical engineering.  After a stint at design firm IDEO, she co-founded and led product at Good Technologies. In this episode we discuss Trae’s path to Kleiner Perkins, and her experiences being one of relatively few female venture capital partners in Silicon Valley. She contrasts the treatment of women in Silicon Valley before, and after, Ellen Pao’s lawsuit (Check out Episode 101).  We discuss why she struck out on her own rather than staying at Kleiner, and how she and her partner came together to form Defy. Finally, Trae discusses a health scare that led to her discovery of integrative medicine and lifelong quest for healthy living. EPISODE QUOTES O

William Davidow is a Silicon Valley pioneer, former Intel VP, and renowned venture capitalist.  He is author of the new book, with tech journalist Michael Malone, THE AUTONOMOUS REVOLUTION: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines (Berrett-Koehler, February 18, 2020).  It’s a provocative look at how to safeguard humanity from our autonomous future and how to harness its benefits. According to Davidow and Malone, for the third time in the history of humanity civilization is undergoing phase change.  The first was the Agricultural Revolution, the second the Industrial Revolution, and we are now in the midst of the Autonomous Revolution. Some ideas discussed: How to adapt society to our new era and transform our relationship with intelligent machines the authors propose in the new book Creating tiered personal information “safety deposit boxes” over which users would have complete control to protect internet privacy; Imposing a tax on sending emails, time spent on social networks, and gaming; Programs that

Rob Chesnut is an advisor to Airbnb, where he was previously Chief Ethics Officer and general counsel.  His recently released book is Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead An Ethical Revolution. Rob started his career as a federal prosecutor, but decided he could do more good in the world by working for companies like eBay and Chegg. Eventually joining Airbnb, he helped Brian Chesky navigate issues such as racial discrimination by Airbnb hosts.  He also helped Airbnb create a culture of “Intentional Integrity”. In this episode we discuss Rob’s journey to and through Silicon Valley, and his experience creating ethical cultures those companies.  We also discuss what happened to Airbnb when the COVID crisis hit. Hear what Brian Chesky said as Airbnb was faced with lawsuits over discrimination by its hosts Rob Chesnut Episode Excerpts On leaving the role of federal prosecutor to work for tech companies: “After a while, it's a real negative. It has a negative aspect to it.  You're putting young peopl