Distilling Venture Capital

UNICORN MANIA, The Real Facts About Post-Money Valuation Post-Money Valuation; The Facts It is absolutely NOT the market capitalization or market value of a tech unicorn company; PM Valuation completely ignores all the prices paid, preferences, and rights granted, for ALL prior rounds – a major flaw and a farce; Thus, a completely distorted picture of value is created by actually assuming that all of these past preferred rounds of equity, plus common, are all magically worth the same price as the round just completed.  This is insanity; To make matters worse, The derivation of the PM Valuation is cloaked in secrecy – it´s a black box - you don´t get to see the calculation! Remember, from the Stanford Study, ALL 135 Unicorn companies evaluated were overvalued using the PM Valuation AND, 65 lose their Unicorn status!   This is a ‘Houston-we-have-a-problem’ moment.  If these statistics aren’t an indicator that something is terribly wrong with the PM Valuation...well…then you are in Unicorn land.   A Unicorn In

Tech Unicorn Valuations are Fake Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use. It is your podcast for Fintech, DeFi, Blockchain and smart contracts, digital banking and all the frontier Web 3 technologies changing the financial landscape globally.   Hello everyone – it´s been a couple of months since my last podcast episode – I took some time off...It´s great to be back with you again. After some thought, consideration and a couple defining events, and an announcement by Pitchbook, one of the so called data analytics firms in the VC space, I decided it was imperative that I do an episode in my Unicorn Mania series.  I´ll fill you in on the PB announcement I am referring to in a moment – it

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  It is your podcast for Fintech, Decentralized Finance, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Digital Banking and all the frontier technologies that are changing the financial landscape globally.  Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  We have a fantastic program for you today.  I am excited about today´s conversation because I have the pleasure of welcoming to the podcast Jonathan Hung; Jonathan is a successful and accomplished angel investor based in Los Angeles.  He is considered one of the most active angel investors in Southern California.  In addition, he serves as Co-Managing Partner at Unicorn Venture Partners and Senior Venture Partner and Head of Due Diligence at Expert Dojo.  We´ll get into that and a lot more.  Jonathan, thank you for making the time to be on the podcas

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger, Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  This is your podcast for Fintech, Decentralized Finance, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Digital Banking and all the frontier technologies that are changing the financial landscape globally.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  I am really excited about today´s conversation because we`re going to chat with a very innovative investment firm, known as Fuse Capital, based in Rio de Janeiro, that is changing the Inv. Fund Model for investing in early-stage and growth stage technology companies with an interesting approach, and has also created a new fund that provides dedicated exposure to DeFi (Decentralized Finance) for institutional investors.  We´re going to get into all of that and more… To help me do that, I have the pleasure of welcoming to the program, João Zecchin,

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger, Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  This is your podcast for Fintech, Decentralized Finance, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Digital Banking and all the frontier technologies that are changing the financial landscape globally.     We will start here - Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  I am really amped and excited about today´s conversation because I have the pleasure of welcoming to the program Slater Victoroff, Founder and CTO of Indico. Indico is the leading machine learning, and AI platform that has developed technology to unlock the value of unstructured data, about 85% of all data, providing enterprises with the ability to automate heavily time-consuming tasks and derive value from unstructured docs like emails, images, texts and more. The Indico Platform uses AI and ML technology to automate the in

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger, Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  This is your podcast for Fintech, Decentralized Finance, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Digital Banking and all the frontier technologies that are changing the financial landscape globally.   We will start here - Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  I am really excited about today´s program because I have the pleasure of welcoming to the program Jeremy Neilson, Co-Founder and CEO of Assure Assure specializes in Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and Fund Administration for the private investment marketplace, simplifying the deal process and fund administration so funds can focus on finding deals and building relationships.  We´re going to get into that and more…Jeremy, thank you for making the time to be on the show today…   Before we dig into the meat of what Assure is re

Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  I am really excited about today´s program because we are going to do a deep-dive and explore DeFi – Decentralized Finance, a topic you hear much about but may have little insights into what this frontier technology is all about and what its true impact will be on the future of global finance. To help me do this I have the pleasure of welcoming to the show Jim Bianco who is the President and Founder of Bianco Research, LLC in Chicago.  Jim is someone I consider a visionary thought leader on the DeFi sector.   Jim, thank you so much for making the time to be on the podcast today… So, before we dig into the meat of what DeFi is really all about, I thought it would be useful if you could tell us a bit about your background and about your journey, more broadly, that ultimately led to take a bullish stance toward DeFi.  Mainly because you have this traditional Wall Street, I-bank research background.  Tell us how the long-time, traditional finance guy goes actively pro

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use. Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  I am excited about today´s program because I have the pleasure of welcoming to the show James Giancotti who is the Founder and CEO of a really interesting company called Oddup.   Oddup is a provider of a data-driven, intelligence platform that helps users more efficiently evaluate and understand the startup ecosystem and for digital assets it includes a proprietary Cryptocurrency Rating System.  Oddup provides users with powerful tools and proven methods of data collection and insights for making investment decisions in a more efficient manner…[My attempt at describing the co. and what you do…feel

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  Today, we have a really interesting program for you b/c I have the pleasure of welcoming to the show Tigran Nazaryan, who is the CEO of 10Web, a   Tigran, thank you for making the time to be with me today on the podcast. I am super excited about today’s conversation after learning about the company b/c 10Web has created a really interesting business model and is changing the game around the area of Web design and hosting, and is doing that through automation of an old but very reliable tool and ecosystem many of us are familiar with have used, WordPress.   10Web has a very interesting history and s

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  Today, we have a really fantastic program b/c I have the pleasure of welcoming to the show John Zic who is a Partner and Founding Member of EQUIAM, a San Francisco based firm that provides access to VC investments in a  John, thank you for making the time to be with me today on the podcast. I am really excited about today’s conversation about EQUIAM for a couple of reasons:  One, because it represents a true, analytics and data-based approach to investing in a basket of VC-backed private tech companies, and we’ll get into that; Also, b/c as a venture lender, the team I worked with spent many hours

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use. Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  Today, we have a really fantastic program b/c I have the awesome pleasure of welcoming to the show Brian Requarth – who is an entrepreneur and true veteran of creating and scaling a technology businesses in Brazil and LatAm.  Brian is the co-founder and former CEO of Viva Real, the leading real estate, property technology business in Brazil.  He raised over $74MM in venture capital for Viva Real.   He merged the company with ZAP Imóveis (owned by Grupo Globo) and became the Chairman of Grupo ZAP.  He later sold the business for $550MM He now invests in the most promising tech companies in Brazil an

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech landscape.  And provide you with information you can use. Episode Introduction: Hello again everyone.  Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the program one of my favorite guests, JP Baric, CEO and Founder at Aurum Capital Ventures, because he is my go-to source & expert in explaining and making sense of all things crypto;  BTC, crypto-mining, crypto-energy… JP thank you for coming back to join me on the show.    And to reiterate so that folks know, Aurum Capital Ventures is technology/energy company engaged in multiple aspects of the crypto-mining business. And we’re going to highlight a new Fund you’ve launched for providing exposure to crypto assets, called Lucid River Partners BTC’

Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world, including Fintech.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech and VC landscape.  And provide you with information you can use. Episode Introduction: Today’s Episode is another in my Focus-on-Fintech Series where I provide you with a close-up look into the top companies in the Fintech sector that are bringing new innovations to the financial services market globally; In Today’s Episode, I once again highlight the hot FINTECH market in Brasil. I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the show, André Bastos, who is a Co-Founder and the Chief People and Strategy Officer at Open-Co, the largest Consumer Credit Fintech in Brazil. André, thank you for coming back to the show… André, the last time you and spoke it was October 2020 and the company was called REBEL

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech and VC landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  We have what I believe is a very interesting program for you today b/c I have the pleasure of speaking with a true veteran of the Brazilian technology investment landscape, Anderson Thees, who is a Managing Partner at Redpoint e.Ventures based in São Paulo, Brasil.  Anderson, thank you very much for making the time to join me today.   So, I labeled you a veteran in tech investing in Brasil because you’ve been at it for about a decade or so with Redpoint.  I think it would be useful to begin by telling the listeners about your background and experience and then how Redpoint eVentures came

DISTILLING VENTURE CAPITAL Episode 014 SPECIAL EDITION – Investing in Human CapitalProjeto Sol, São Paulo, Brasil Sister Angela Mary, Co-Founder, Director Recording Date: February 24, 2021 Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.   So, as many of you know, this podcast covers multiple aspects of key technology trends, including Fintech, and venture capital and I even talk about over-valued Unicorns at times. Today, however, we are going to change things up a bit – b/c I want to talk about a different type of Capital that’s just as important or likely more important than the financial capital we often discuss…  Today, I want to talk about Human Capital – what do I mean by that?   As many of you know, There is an entire area, Social Impact Investing, that has been a rapidly grow

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech and VC landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  We have what I believe is a very interesting program for you today.  Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Kiyan Zandiyeh, Chief Investment Officer of Sturgeon Capital, a London-based [boutique] investment firm with a very unique investment strategy and thesis.   Sturgeon was established specifically to tap into Central Asia. Kiyan, thank you very much for joining me today… Let’s begin by providing some background on yourself and then an overview of Sturgeon Capital, when and why it was founded, etc. History of Sturgeon, why founded with this vision for frontier markets in Central

Episode Overview: My guest today, Alberto Gaidys is a Brazil Fintech Pioneer.  He was involved in creating some of the first Fintech companies in Brazil, even before it was called “fintech.”  Settle in for a highly informative and detailed look at Brazilian Financial markets and Brazilian Fintech. Alberto takes you on a remarkably interesting journey through the creation of the first fintech companies in Brazil in which he was directly responsible with building. Some of the companies you will hear about include:  Grana AQUI, Brazilian Mortgages, BankFacil, and Creditas, among others. In this Episode, Alberto provides an in-depth, well-informed analyses of credit and capital markets in Brazil along with incredibly interesting first-hand accounts of the beginnings of Fintech in Brazil. Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup worl

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger; Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech and VC landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.  [This intro para. is pre-recorded so you won´t hear it] Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.  We took December 2020 and the beginning of the New Year off – so I am definitely excited to be back providing you with the quality content you´ve come to rely on at DVC. Today’s Episode is another in my Focus-on-Fintech Series where I provide you with a close-up look into the top companies in the Financial Technology sector that are bringing new innovations to financial services markets globally; In today’s Episode, I have the pleasure to be joined by Sameer Soleja, Founder & CEO of Houston-based Molecule Software;   Molecule Soft

Introduction Welcome to Distilling Venture Capital.  I am your host, Bill Griesinger Distilling VC is a visionary podcast that provides an insightful and informed view of the key trends affecting the VC and tech startup world.  My mission is to cut through and go beyond the hype that tends to dominate the tech and VC landscape.  And provide you with information you can use.   Episode Introduction: Welcome back everyone.   In today’s Episode, I have the pleasure to be joined by Thomas Healy, Founder & CEO of Hyliion, creator and maker of high-tech drivetrain for traditional Class 8 long haul trucks powered by lithium-ion batteries and CNG Thank you Thomas for making the time to join me today…   First, congratulations on your public launch via the SPAC – Special Purpose Acq. Corp. which was official as of Sept. 28th.  It doesn’t seem all that long ago that we were getting introduced to Hyliion at the 2015 Rice Business Plan Competition – when you guys rolled into Houston – literally – from Carnegie Mello