In this episode of the Slow Hunch, I spoke with Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky. Originally conceived as an initiative within Twitter under Jack Dorsey, Bluesky was designed to transform Twitter from a closed platform to an open protocol-based network. Jay initially joined as an external researcher before being selected to lead the project, ultimately negotiating for Bluesky's independence before Elon Musk’s acquisition. Jay believes thoughtful systems design can reshape our online experiences. With ...
Apr 02, 2025•47 min•Ep. 9
In this special episode of the Slow Hunch, I sat down with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, founding partners of USV. Since founding USV in 2003, Fred and Brad have backed companies like Twitter, Etsy, Cloudflare, and Coinbase while developing an investment thesis focused on enabling new forms of value creation through open access to networks, capital, and knowledge. Fred and Brad bring decades of investment experience, having seen multiple tech cycles from the early internet to mobile, cloud, cryp...
Mar 20, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 8
In this episode of the Slow Hunch, I spoke with Jake Heller, co-founder and CEO of Casetext, a legal tech startup that pioneered the use of large language models in the legal industry. Jake and his co-founders built Casetext over a decade — going through multiple pivots before eventually finding PMF as an AI tool that helped lawyers do better and faster legal research. In 2023, Casetext was acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million. In this conversation, Jake recounted how an early relationsh...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 7
I spoke with Amir Haleem , founder of Helium and CEO of Nova Labs , about his journey building the world's largest decentralized wireless networks. Amir started Helium in 2013, with the initial vision to make it easier to connect IoT devices to the internet. After trying the traditional telecom playbook, he realized that combining crypto incentives with community participation could actually be key to scaling a truly global wireless network. In our conversation, we spoke about how Amir came to t...
Feb 05, 2025•54 min•Ep. 6
In this episode, I spoke to Zoe Weinberg, founder and managing partner of ex/ante, a venture fund focused on technology that enhances human agency. Zoe actively invests in a growing number of founders committed to empowering users by giving them control over their data and digital identities. Our conversation explored the ever present threat of digital authoritarianism, the product tradeoff between privacy and convenience, the potential of portable digital identities, and how emerging technologi...
Jan 14, 2025•54 min•Ep. 5
In this episode, I spoke to Dani Grant , CEO of Jam.dev , a tool that reimagines the way software teams communicate about and fix bugs. Dani brings an infectious energy to her work. Before starting Jam, she worked at Cloudflare and was an analyst at USV, where we first crossed paths. For Dani, Jam isn’t just about making software teams more efficient—it’s about unlocking human potential and bringing the future closer, faster. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Chapters: 00:00 C...
Nov 23, 2024•58 min•Ep. 4
In this episode, I spoke to Steven Johnson - one of my favorite authors and thinkers. Steven has written 14 popular books, including “Where Good Ideas Come From” which inspired the name of this podcast and my blog, The Slow Hunch. Steven has an unmatched ability to stitch together ideas from technology, science, and history to make stories come to life. He has had a significant impact on the way I see the world today. In this conversation, we double clicked on Steven's journey to unlock “network...
Oct 25, 2024•56 min•Ep. 3
In this episode, I spoke to Muneeb Ali, the co-founder of Stacks — a Bitcoin L2 that aims to make BTC more programmable and scalable. At USV, we originally backed Muneeb and his co-founder Ryan Shea back in 2014. Our shared hypothesis was that Bitcoin had the potential to impact more than just finance—it could be a new foundation for the internet itself. Of course, this idea wasn't as obvious back then. In my conversation with Muneeb, we used his personal and professional journey to trace the or...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 2
I spoke to Fraser Kelton, General Partner at Spark Capital and the former Head of Product at OpenAI. Fraser played a key role in the launch of ChatGPT, which is widely considered AI's "iPhone moment." Before his stint at OpenAI, Fraser built Koko, a platform that was initially built to provide cognitive behavioral therapy at scale, transitioned to AI-driven online content moderation, and eventually acquired by Airbnb in November 2018. At Airbnb, as Fraser experimented with early models like BERT...
Jun 04, 2024•51 min•Ep. 1
