Max Chafkin is the author of "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power". Max is a technology reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. "The Contrarian" isn't just about Thiel. It's about that, too, of course -- from PayPal to his Facebook investment to his failed hedge fund, etc. But it's also about "Silicon Valley's political coming-of-age", as the New York Times describes it. We discuss how Peter Thiel came to wealth, and the many controversies surrounding him. We also disc...
Jun 17, 2022•42 min
Howard Morgan is one of those few – very few – people who have built multiple game-changing firms. He is co-founder of Renaissance Technologies (sometimes known as "RenTec"). While a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , he divined the opportunity to apply emerging computer technologies to investing. The resulting firm – Renaissance Technologies -- is one of the most famous, and successful, hedge funds. It pioneered systematic trading using quantitative models deriv...
Apr 15, 2022•39 min
Jenny Lefcourt is a partner at Freestyle Capital, a seed stage venture firm overseeing $450 million in seed investments. Jenny dropped out of her Stanford MBA program – before that was cool -- to co-found online wedding registry startup WeddingChannel.com (with classmate, Jessica Herrin) After The Knot acquired WeddingChannel.com, Jenny started another company – Bella Pictures – also subsequently acquired. Today she is a partner at Freestyle Capital, and was recently named one of Barron's "100 W...
Mar 21, 2022•55 min
I talk to a lot of founders and CEOs in Silicon Valley. They started telling me "you know, I couldn't have done it without…" When I heard that multiple times, I just had to meet the guy they were talking about – Joe Hudson. Turns out, Joe Hudson is a sought after executive coach and creator of The Art of Accomplishment , an online learning platform for personal development. And get this – he quit his job as a venture capitalist to become a coach. Yep -- as a venture capitalist Joe found that the...
Jan 17, 2022•45 min
Eliot Brown, with Maureen Farrell, is co-author of "The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion". As a reporter for the Wall Street Journal he became intrigued by the messianic founder who had raised billions of dollars, and developed a cult-like following at his startup WeWork. "In little more than a decade, Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic, hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billion - on paper. With his long...
Oct 27, 2021•48 min
Brad Feld's latest book (with David Jilk) is "Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche (A Book for Disruptors)". Those familiar with Brad's "Feld Thoughts" blog, will find the unexpected title – unsurprising. While reading Nietzsche (um, yes) Brad noted that his favorite personality was a "free spirit: An obsessed individual with a vision of the future and the will to make it so, a rebel who creates the future with childlike enthusiasm." That, thought Brad, sounded a lot like…an entrepreneur. The book is...
Sep 15, 2021•57 min
Auren Hoffman is one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley. In a place where the currency of the land is connections – Auren is near the top of the heap. Auren is a Founder and CEO -- He founded SafeGraph in 2016, and previously founded LiveRamp, which is now public (NYSE: RAMP) – a leading data platform. Auren is also an investor – he has invested in more than 120 active technology companies. Auren went to UC Berkeley a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC B...
Aug 18, 2021•40 min
In Silicon Valley enormous wealth and huge need sit side by side. The gap is bridged in large part by an important organization – Silicon Valley Community Foundation ("SVCF"). SVCF manages more than $10 billion. In this episode Nicole Taylor, SVCF's CEO, tells us where the money comes from, where it goes, and the practical issues of giving to support Black Lives Matter. Since taking the helm at SVCF, Nicole has led the organization to renew its focus on the many challenges facing residents of Sa...
Jul 30, 2021•42 min
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 memb...
Jun 25, 2021•46 min
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 cover...
Jun 18, 2021•36 min
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 historica...
Jun 03, 2021•36 min
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,...
May 18, 2021•39 min
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 ...
May 05, 2021•37 min
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 ...
Apr 13, 2021•45 min
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 par...
Mar 16, 2021•35 min
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...
Feb 19, 2021•40 min
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...
Jan 29, 2021•40 min
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 Applicat...
Jan 11, 2021•41 min
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 Produce...
Dec 30, 2020•24 min
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 ...
Dec 10, 2020•34 min
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 t...
Nov 18, 2020•41 min
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 jo...
Nov 05, 2020•44 min
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 ab...
Oct 29, 2020•1 hr 2 min
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 Colo...
Oct 07, 2020•56 min
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 nei...
Sep 29, 2020•53 min
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...
Sep 18, 2020•52 min
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 cha...
Sep 10, 2020•33 min
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 cultur...
Sep 03, 2020•41 min
Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm that manages more than $2 billion. She is particularly interested in entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies enabling human and environmental health, access, and productivity. While her immediate background before joining Lux sounds familiar – she was a partner at GV (previously "Google Ventures") – her path before that is a bit more unusual. As a journalist, Deena once hosted the pilot episode of a bilingual Arabic-English T...
Aug 26, 2020•49 min
Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm that manages more than $2 billion. She is particularly interested in entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies enabling human and environmental health, access, and productivity. While her immediate background before joining Lux sounds familiar – she was a partner at GV (previously "Google Ventures") – her path before that is a bit more unusual. As a journalist, Deena once hosted the pilot episode of a bilingual Arabic-English T...
Aug 26, 2020•49 min
