It's the time of year when Silicon Valley decamps to a party in the desert known as Burning Man. Grown adults, with children and jobs spend multiple weeks preparing, burning, then decompressing. In this replay episode, we take a light-hearted look at Burning Man as seen from Silicon Valley. We review the history of the event, which began at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We also cover a dark period in Burning Man's early history. Michael White is a recovering Silicon Valley attorney. I'm a ventur...
Sep 05, 2019•43 min
Alison McCauley is the Best Selling Author of Unblocked: How Blockchain will Change your Business and What to Do About It. Why does blockchain matter? Alison points out that disruption is no longer a moment in time. It's a continual state. How do you understand the new opportunity? Set priorities in a complex and ever-shifting landscape? Prepare for what's ahead? Alison helps you navigate the human side of digital acceleration. In this episode we discuss the moment Alison came to be blown away b...
Aug 26, 2019•56 min
In honor of Kelly's recent, well-received talk at Jackson Square Ventures, and the ongoing interest in mental health issues in Silicon Valley -- here she is again! ------ Keller Fitzsimmons is the author of Lost in Startuplandia: Wayfinding for the Weary Entrepreneur. She gives lie to the idea that entrepreneurship is a thrilling, lucrative adventure. All is great, of course, until things go horribly wrong. "As crisis after crisis hits, even the most seasoned founder can get disoriented. Whether...
Aug 20, 2019•42 min
Adriana is the Founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that empowers women in the tech industry across the globe. Before founding Girls in Tech, Adriana served in executive roles at Ogilvy & Mather, Interpublic Group of Companies, Social Gaming Network (SGN), and SecondMarket. She has been named one of the 20 most influential Latinos in Technology by CNET, among other awards. She is author of the book T ech Boss Lady: How to Startup, Disrupt and Thrive...
Aug 12, 2019•46 min
Anne Dwane is co-founder and partner of Village Global, the venture firm backed by an impressive and diverse group of investors that includes: Jeff Bezos, Sara Blakely, Reid Hoffman, Magic Johnson, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Green, Judy Estrin, and Ken Chennault. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Anne was a tech company co-founder, a private company CEO, and public company executive. She built Military.com with previous podcast guest Chris Michel, and was CEO of Zinch before it wa...
Jul 31, 2019•45 min
After attending the University of Illinois, Chris Michel began his career as a Naval Flight Officer, flying aboard P-3 Orion "sub-hunters". Today, he is a photographer, chronicling Silicon Valley and the World. His photography has taken him from the edge of space, to the North and South Poles and everything in between. Chris's path from the Navy to photographer was not a straight line, and in this podcast you'll hear his story. In this wide-ranging discussion we talk about how Chris made it from...
Jul 22, 2019•1 hr 7 min
Julian Guthrie is a journalist-turned-author, covering such topics as Larry Ellison's quest for the America's Cup, and the new age of private space exploration. She gravitates to tales of underdogs and innovation, and her latest book is no exception. " Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime " is the story of four women: Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane Elmore, Theresia Gouw, and Sonja Hoel Perkins. Each of these rose – against the wel...
Jul 15, 2019•45 min
Charles is the founder and Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's hot seed stage venture firms. He was previously at Uncork, the storied seed venture firm founded by Jeff Clavier. Precursor is a classic seed stage venture firm investing in founders they believe in. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Charles cofounded Bionic Panda Games, and held senior business development roles at Serious Business and Gaia Interactive. Also – he went to Stanford. Twice. In this episo...
Jul 08, 2019•53 min
Michael Tchong has been called "the most influential trend-spotter in America". He is a top-rated innovation speaker, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, trend forecaster and author of "Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future." He heads up incubator Ubercool Innovation and is the founder of four disruptive startups, including MacWEEK, Atelier Systems, CyberAtlas and ICONOCAST, all riding early market waves. In this podcast we discuss "Ubertrends" — hi...
Jun 18, 2019•42 min
Scott Kupor is the managing partner of famed venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm with more than $7 billion of assets under management that sits at the beating heart of Sand Hill Road. Sand Hill road is, of course, the physical center of the venture capital industry – the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world. So...Scott is at the center, of the center of the global venture capital industry. In his new book -- Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to ...
Jun 04, 2019•31 min
Ellen Pao is CEO of Project Include and author of the book Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change . Her book looks at power in the tech world – and why so few women and people of color hold it. She famously sued an elite venture capital firm for sexism, and in doing so set off a national conversation. As CEO of Reddit, she waged one of the first highly visible battles against Internet trolls – a topic which has since exploded as big tech companies come under heavier scrutiny. In this w...
May 28, 2019•47 min
Welcome to Episode 100! Yep, we've made it to 100. And for this one…Pete Alcorn stops by the podcast as he bucket-lists his way around the world. He has run, among other things – ebooks at Amazon (just before they cared about it) and podcasting at Apple. Also at Apple, he oversaw iBooks in Europe and education content discovery everywhere. Pete was also Kent's first partner in the startup world, building a company (that still exists today) called "NetRead". Oh, and we also went to high school to...
May 20, 2019•57 min
Eric Lagier co-founded and is a general partner of ByFounders, a 100 million Euro venture firm focused on Nordic and Baltic startups. As you grab your map to find where the Nordics and Baltics actually are, think about this: Since 2013, 41 startups built in Europe are now worth more than a billion dollars. (These are known as "Unicorns", a term coined by Ailene Lee of Cowboy Ventures). Even more extraordinary is the fact that 10 of those 41 are from the Nordics. So an area comprising of 4% of Eu...
May 13, 2019•40 min
Jay Adelson is the cofounder or CEO of Equinix, Revision3 and Digg. From a career that has taken him from building the first data centers to creating a wildly growing news aggregator, Jay has truly unique insight into Silicon Valley. In this conversation Jay traces his path from working at a temp agency to building the largest data center in the world. Nerd out with us as we discuss how you obtained a URL before the Internet even had a governing body – and before the web existed; the battle over...
May 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Best selling author Po Bronson has written deeply, often hilariously, about Silicon Valley and its effects on the world. After founding San Francisco's Writers Grotto, he wrote such books as The Nudist on the Late Shift , Bombardiers , and What Should I Do With My life? . Today, he's a venture capitalist at IndieBio – the Life Sciences accelerator. In this episode, Po discusses why 2019 feels like 1994, and what happens when daytime and nighttime conversations converge in Silicon Valley. We also...
Apr 30, 2019•49 min
Monique Woodard fell into venture capital. Or...wait. Actually, no. Monique grew up in rural Florida. Starting with an Atari game system and moving to a Commodore computer, she learned to write computer code This, in a place where coding was far from the norm, and computer class required a drive into town. She eventually became a venture capitalist, investing in such companies as: Blavity, Court Buddy , Silvernest , and Mented Cosmetics . In this podcast we discuss Monique's journey from the far...
Apr 23, 2019•47 min
Alan Eagle is Director of Executive Communications at Google. He is the coauthor of Trillion Dollar Coach, a book he co-wrote with Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt and Google's former SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. Trillion Dollar Coach tells the story of Bill Campbell – a football coach who became an executive at Apple, and then one of the most beloved coaches to a "who's who" of Silicon Valley. Among those coached by Bill Campbell are Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Sundar Pichai at Google; St...
Apr 15, 2019•27 min
James Currier is a partner at NFX a venture firm he co-founded with partners Gigi Levy-Weiss and Pete Flint, and advisor Stan Chudnovsky. As an investor, he has funded companies before or alongside firms like Sequoia, Greylock, CRV, A16z, First Round, Mayfield, Shasta, and GGV. He's also a four-time serial entrepreneur with unique expertise in network effects businesses (his firm has identified 13 different network effects models https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual ) James is also de...
Apr 11, 2019•47 min
Miyoko Schinner is the founder and CEO of Miyoko's – a vegan creamery that is leading the way to a dairy-free future. She an award-winning celebrity chef, restauranteur, cookbook author, and TV host. She brought all these experiences to bear as she founded and built Miyoko's from a small storefront to over 100 employees distributing vegan cheese around the country. Miyoko's has raised venture capital from firms like Obvious (Ev William's venture firm) and Stray Dog capital. In this conversation ...
Feb 26, 2019•32 min
Whether you call it "Gen Z" or "Post Millenial" -- Carter Cohen is one of them, embedded and here to tell you about the world as he sees it. Carter is the kind of guy who makes you feel bad about what you were doing in college. He's a biochemistry major at Georgetown, speaks 3 languages, studies electrochemistry and...well he's a member of Gen Z, also called "post millennial". In this wide-ranging conversation, Kent and Carter discuss the myths and realities about how Gen Z uses technology, what...
Feb 07, 2019•58 min
Ryan Bethencourt is the CEO of Wild Earth, a biotech startup developing meatless dog food. Its investors include Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, and Felicis Ventures. He is a Partner at Babel Ventures and Investor/Advisor to over 80 biotech startups. He also co-founded the Biotech accelerator Indiebio. We discuss why meatless pet food isn't as crazy as it sounds, the idea that animal-free meat is coming way faster than you think, and the decision between being a VC or an entrepreneur. We also discus...
Nov 27, 2018•55 min
You may think you know about diversity in Silicon Valley, but you may not have heard it this straight up and candid before. Michael Ellison is African American and grew up poor as far from Silicon Valley as possible. Here he discusses how he made his unlikely way to Silicon Valley to become CEO of Codepath.org. Codepath is the the hugely influential engineering training organization working with Silicon Valley's tech giants, and universities across the country. We discuss problems with diversity...
Oct 09, 2018•1 hr 2 min
In this replay episode, Kent Lindstrom and Michael White have a bit of fun at the expense of Burning Man. Burning Man is the the, um, art fest in the desert to which half of Silicon Valley decamps each year. We discuss the history of Burning Man, what might make people go to Burning Man, and the myriad benefits of hanging out in San Francisco while everyone else is away. --- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom goes behind the scenes as he sits down with the p...
Aug 22, 2018•43 min
Rick Marini is the founder of Protocol Ventures -- a cryptocurrency fund-of-funds, which is rapidly becoming a dominant force in the emerging cryptocurrency space. Previously, Rick has been an entrepreneur building and selling multiple companies, including early social network Tickle and professional networking site Branchout. Along the way, he has been a prolific angel investor, investing early in companies like Snapchat. For these efforts, Rick was recently named one of the Top 50 Angel Invest...
Aug 14, 2018•29 min
Rick Marini is the founder of Protocol Ventures -- a cryptocurrency fund-of-funds, which is rapidly becoming a dominant force in the emerging cryptocurrency space. Previously, Rick has been an entrepreneur building and selling multiple companies, including early social network Tickle and professional networking site Branchout. Along the way, he has been a prolific angel investor, investing early in companies like Snapchat. For these efforts, Rick was recently named one of the Top 50 Angel Invest...
Aug 07, 2018•29 min
Nick Heyman was an early (like, #8) employee at Facebook. He is now a founder and Managing Partner of DynoVC, a venture firm focused on the transportation industry. Nick believes the transportation market is undergoing the most radical change since inception. In this podcast we discuss a range of topics from self-driving cards, autonomous vehicles, the future of trucks, scooters and more! -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom goes behind the scenes in Silico...
Jul 17, 2018•1 hr
Joe Garofoli is the Senior Political Writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and host of their "It's All Political" podcast. Joe gives us his take on all things, um, political in Silicon Valley, California and beyond. -- In the Something Ventured podcast, Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom takes a look behind the scenes as he sits down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online....and beyond.
Jun 26, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Jim Scheinman, founder of Maven Ventures, has built Maven and achieved successful exits and investments such as Chariot, Cruise and Zoom.us. Immediately prior to founding Maven Ventures, Jim was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Charles River Ventures (CRV), a leading venture firm where he helped source, vet, and advise their consumer portfolio companies. Jim had an early seat at the emergence of social networking, first as an executive at Friendster, and then as an executive at Bebo (which was fo...
Jun 05, 2018•47 min
The second part of my conversation with Jim Scheinman --- Jim has been an entrepreneur and startup executive. He is also the founder of Maven Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's seed investment firms, which counts among its investments Cruise (acquired by GM for over $1 billion), Chariot (acquired by Ford) and Zoom (which has raised over $100 million from firms including Sequoia Capital). Jim discusses a variety of topics, including the state of entrepreneurship, the nearly billion dollar exit of ...
May 23, 2018•25 min•Ep. 83
Jim Scheinman has been an entrepreneur and startup executive. He is also the founder of Maven Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's seed investment firms, which counts among its investments Cruise (acquired by GM for over $1 billion), Chariot (acquired by Ford) and Zoom (which has raised over $100 million from firms including Sequoia Capital). Jim discusses a variety of topics, including the state of entrepreneurship, the nearly billion dollar exit of Bebo to AOL, and the implications of self-drivin...
May 15, 2018•23 min•Ep. 82
