Venture with Grace - podcast cover

Venture with Grace

Grace Gongsvppro.com
I host a top VC podcast called Smart Venture Podcast (SVPpro.com). Past guests include C-level/VPs of Google, Meta, Amazon, Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, Chipotle, Pepsi, Instagram, Deloitte, Reddit, Lyft, etc. Managing Partners of top funds (many were featured on the Forbes Midas List) and unicorn founders (founders of Craigslist, Square, Loom, Cruise, etc.) Venture with Grace is my new spin-off series that features top LPs, GPs, solo GPs, Angel Investors, top AI founders, and other experts in tech and business to cover specific domain expertise. Watch this Live on LinkedIn/ YouTube: Grace Gong
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Episodes

Caroline Duffy, Partner Cowboy Ventures: Investing in AI & Foundational Tech

Caroline Duffy is a Partner at Cowboy Ventures. She thrives partnering with ambitious builders reimagining existing categories or creating entirely new ones. She focuses on B2B software and AI, with a particular passion for teams modernizing overlooked, unglamorous industries burdened by outdated tech stacks. It’s never too early to reach out - she’s excited to collaborate with founders from idea inception onwards. Before Cowboy, Caroline was at Construct Capital, where she led investments in a ...

Sep 24, 20251 hr 1 min

Akankshu Dhawan, SVP Product Xero: AI-Driven Growth for Small Business

Akankshu Dhawan is Senior Vice President of Product Management and Executive General Manager at Xero, where he leads product strategy and AI-driven innovation for small businesses. He previously held leadership roles at Uber, AppDynamics, and Microsoft, and co-founded ImaZing. With an MBA from Chicago Booth, an MS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from UMass Dartmouth, and a B.Tech. from DAIICT, Akankshu brings deep product and engineering expertise to driving digital transformati...

Sep 24, 20251 hr 2 min

Alex Mashrabov Founder and CEO Higgsfield AI generative video and consumer AI

Alex Mashrabov is the Founder and CEO of Higgsfield AI, a leading generative video company whose personalized storytelling app quickly reached #1 in graphics on the App Store and debuted a state-of-the-art video world model in 2025. Previously, he served as Director of Generative AI at Snap Inc., leading MyAI chatbot development and GenAI AR effects for hundreds of millions of users, after Snap acquired his startup AI Factory for $166M. Alex holds master’s degrees from MIPT and Innopolis, is a F...

Sep 24, 202552 min

Kate Berardo, VP of Meta: Scaling Leadership Excellence & Development

Kate Berardo is the Vice President of Executive Development at Meta, where she leads the company’s most strategic coaching, team, and leadership initiatives. Trusted by senior leaders to navigate their most pressing challenges, she has designed and delivered some of Meta’s most impactful leadership programs and learning products. With a proven track record of building and scaling teams, practice areas, and centers of excellence, Kate is recognized for driving transformative leadership developmen...

Sep 17, 20251 hr 1 min

Andrew Chau: Boba Guys CEO on Building Iconic Consumer Brands

Andrew Chau is the co-founder and CEO of Boba Guys Inc., the revolutionary bubble tea company that has fundamentally changed how people view boba and tea culture in America. Starting from a shared passion for quality milk tea and a mission to elevate the boba experience with fresh, premium ingredients, Andrew and co-founder Bin Chen launched Boba Guys in 2011. What began as a single San Francisco location has grown to 24+ locations, making Boba Guys one of the most recognizable premium bubble te...

Sep 15, 20251 hr 6 min

Sequoia’s James Flynn on Backing Bold Founders at Growth Stage

James Flynn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital focused on post-Series A investments across the tech landscape. Prior to that he was a growth equity investor at General Atlantic. Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most valuable and enduring businesses. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey...

Sep 15, 202536 min

Vikram Chatterji, Co-Founder & CEO, Galileo — Generative AI & ML Evaluation

Vikram Chatterji is the co-founder and CEO of Galileo. Galileo is the leading platform for enterprise GenAI evaluation and observability. Our comprehensive suite of products support builders across the new AI development workflow—from fine-tuning LLMs to developing, testing, monitoring, and securing their AI applications. Each product is powered by our research-backed evaluation metrics. Today, Galileo is used by 100s of AI teams from startups to Fortune 50 enterprises, including Twilio, Comcast...

Sep 15, 202555 min

Shaun VanWeelden, Managing Director at Mercor - AI Talent Matching

Shaun VanWeelden is the Managing Director at Mercor, where he leads efforts to reshape how talent connects with work, using AI-led approaches to deeply assess candidate expertise. Prior to Mercor, Shaun held a key role at OpenAI leading their human data operations team within research, supporting critical initiatives around human feedback for AI training. Before OpenAI, he spent time at Scale AI, where he served as Director of Computer Vision Engagements and Field Engineering, managing global te...

Sep 14, 20251 hr 1 min

Dan O’Connell CEO of Front Driving AI Innovation in Customer Operations

Dan O’Connell CEO of Front. Front is the AI-powered customer service platform that helps companies deliver smarter, safer automation without sacrificing quality. We put humans in control of AI to ensure every customer interaction is handled by the best resource, whether that’s AI, a human agent, or both. More than 9,000 companies, including Uber Freight, Navan, and Stripe, trust Front to scale exceptional service, streamline team collaboration, and gain insights that improve customer experience ...

Sep 14, 20251 hr 1 min

Jiaona Zhang, CPO of Laurel: Building Great Products in the AI Era

Jiaona Zhang ("JZ") is the Chief Product Officer at Laurel. She has led product organizations at Linktree, Webflow, Airbnb, WeWork, Dropbox, and Pocket Gems. Prior to her career in product, she worked as a management and private equity consultant. In addition to her work, she advises and invests in start-ups. JZ received her BA from Yale University in Economics.Topics: How product leadership differs across company stage Building and scaling product organizations through hypergrowth phases Where ...

Sep 06, 20251 hr 1 min

Lauri Moore, Bessemer Partner: Early-Stage AI, Data & Dev Tools VC

Lauri Moore is a Partner at Bessemer’s Silicon Valley office, where she focuses on early-stage opportunities in data, AI, developer tools, and related infrastructure. With a unique background spanning research, data science, product management, and investing, Lauri is a passionate ally and coach for entrepreneurs, collaborating with them to tackle the inevitable challenges of company building. Before joining Bessemer, Lauri was a Partner at Foundation Capital. She also co-founded a company that ...

Sep 05, 202558 min

Umesh Sachdev, CEO Uniphore: Enterprise AI, Agents & $2.5B Growth

sands of enterprise companies globally. Sparked by his vision and focus to use AI technology to bridge the gap between humans and machines, today Umesh is recognized as an enterprise AI pioneer. Uniphore’s Business AI Cloud, launched in 2025, is among the first enterprise-grade AI platform purpose-built to unify data, knowledge, models, and agents in a way that’s truly usable, scalable, and secure for business. Known for his grit as a leader, his passion for customers and his deep understanding ...

Sep 05, 202557 min

Lars Leckie, Aspenwood Ventures: Early-Stage Enterprise Software VC

Lars Leckie is a Managing Director at Aspenwood Ventures. Prior to his career in venture capital, Lars was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics. Lars was in charge of strategy, product marketing, business development, and building the sales team across three continents. While Lars spends less time programming now, he started his technical career coding and hacking computer games. He is the holder of several US patents. Lars has a Masters of Science (Eng...

Sep 05, 202559 min

Sara Choi: Wing VC Partner - Healthcare Tech & Early-Stage Innovation

Sara Choi is a Partner at Wing VC. Sara brings her experiences as a former founder and product leader to her collaborations, investing in and supporting founders early on their entrepreneurial journeys, often at inception. Sara partners with founders of transformative tech companies working to shape the future of medicine and healthcare. Prior to co-founding Airfox, acquired in 2017, Sara was head of product at Ciao Telecom, where she co-founded a new wireless carrier. Sarabegan her career at Go...

Aug 23, 202554 min

Meera Clark, Partner at Redpoint: Early-Stage Software & Consumer VC

Meera is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures. She is passionate about empowering individuals in both their personal and professional lives. Having joined Redpoint in 2022, she supports the firm’s early-stage software and consumer investing efforts. Prior to joining Redpoint, Meera began her investing career at Obvious Ventures, and Obvious’ mission-driven approach is a theme that is evident in the many of the companies she’s been privileged to partner with at Redpoint. Prior to investing, Meera spent...

Aug 23, 202558 min

Maria Palma, GP at Freestyle Capital, on Investing in AI Infrastructure

Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital. While she is a generalist investor, most of her recent time and investments have been in AI both at the app and infrastructure level. She loves being involved in start-ups and enjoys the challenge of creating real value and changing industries that are broken. She finds it constantly inspiring, humbling and mostly, a ton of fun. Prior to Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on ...

Aug 20, 20251 hr 3 min

Keshia Theobald-van Gent, Partner at BDev Ventures - B2B SaaS Growth

Keshia Theobald-van Gent is a Partner at BDev Ventures. She previously served as the Sr. Director of the United States at German Accelerator where she led teams in NYC and Silicon Valley to help high-potential European startups enter the US. And, as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at GSVlabs, where she connected the world’s largest companies to the global startup community, accelerated new products, and generated real ROI through digital innovation. She holds an M.A. from the Rijksunivers...

Aug 19, 202559 min

Shimrit Ben-Yair, VP & GM at Google on Leading Google Photos & Google One

Shimrit Ben-Yair serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Google Photos and Google One. She has worked on various different products at Google, including on Google Docs sharing, Google Groups, YouTube Kids, and YouTube Community. Earlier in her career, Ben-Yair was the first product manager on Google+, contributing significantly to its early development. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.To...

Aug 17, 202556 min

Samir Menon, Dexterity CEO on Physical AI, Robot Dexterity & Logistics

Dr. Samir Menon is the Founder and CEO of Dexterity, Inc., a robotics company building autonomous systems with human-like dexterity to transform logistics, supply chain, and warehousing operations. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where his research pioneered simulation models and control theory to study the human musculoskeletal system. With deep expertise in robot control, dynamics, modeling, simulation, and haptic interfaces, Samir has been recognized with two...

Aug 17, 20251 hr 3 min

Nick Linck, The Residency Founder on Rethinking College for Builders & AI

Nick Linck is the Founder of The Residency. The Residency is a program that is designed for entrepreneurs, builders, and creators who want to take control of their life and turn their ambitious dreams into reality. The program is unique in that it offers the social experience of college with a revamped version of the traditional educational experience. we provide housing in locations all around the world so that our residents can live and work side-by-side with ambitious peers. we provide coachi...

Aug 16, 202558 min

Russ Heddleston, Distill & DocSend CEO on SaaS Exits & Scaling to $45M ARR

Russ Heddleston is the CEO of Distill, having previously founded and sold DocSend for $165 million with $15 million raised, scaling it to over $40m in ARR. Previously, he started and sold an HR tech startup Pursuit to Meta. Russ holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. His work on identity at Meta and his passion for intuitive product design drive his commitment to Distill.Topics: Designing products for virality in enterprise SaaS Structuring teams for speed w...

Aug 16, 20251 hr 3 min

Roman Chernin, Nebius CBO on AI Cloud Infra & Scaling Global Platforms

Roman Chernin is the Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Nebius, an AI-focused cloud infrastructure company. He is responsible for driving the company’s business strategy and growth. Roman's career spans over 20 years in the tech industry, with 12 of those years spent at Yandex, one of Europe's largest technology companies. He began his journey at Yandex leading the Search platform and later became CEO of the Geoservices business unit in 2016.Topics: Evolution of AI-Focused Cloud Infrastruc...

Aug 16, 20251 hr 1 min

Snehal Antani, Horizon3.ai CEO on NodeZero™, AI & Cyber Resilience

Snehal Antani is CEO & co-founder of Horizon3.ai, a cyber security company that pioneered the use of AI to autonomously conduct penetration testing. Prior to Horizon3, Snehal served as the first Chief Technology Officer for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As a member of the Commander’s executive team, he led data analytics, cloud/edge computing, and cybersecurity initiatives. Prior to serving within US Special Operations, Snehal was CTO & SVP at Splunk, held multiple CIO roles a...

Aug 16, 20251 hr 3 min

Sunil Rao, Tribble CEO on AI for GTM Automation & Sales Team Speed

Sunil Rao is the Founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-powered platform aimed at streamlining and automating go-to-market workflows for enterprise teams. With a technical foundation as a former software engineer at SAP, Rao rose to leadership roles at Salesforce—including VP and GM of Consumer Goods—before launching Tribble in April 2023. Drawing on experience in both engineering and enterprise sales, he drives Tribble’s mission to integrate AI into sales, marketing, and product management, enabling...

Aug 16, 20251 hr

Emily Bennett, Partner at Owl Ventures, on EdTech & Startup Growth

Emily Bennett is a Partner at Owl Ventures. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater ...

Aug 16, 202556 min

Alex Konrad, Upstarts Media Founder on Startup News & VC Coverage

Alex Konrad is the founder of Upstarts Media. He cut his teeth reporting at Fortune in 2010, writing about local New York startups such as ZocDoc and General Assembly. After joining Forbes in 2012, he kept covering the scene, writing some of the first in-depth stories about Blue Apron, Peloton and WeWork. For ten years, Alex managed the Midas List franchise of top venture capitalists, expanding the franchise to Europe and writing profiles about the likes of Chris Sacca, the All Raise community, ...

Aug 15, 20251 hr

Hadley Harris, Eniac GP on AI Apps, Dev Tools & Scaling SaaS Startups

Hadley is a co-founder and General Partner at Eniac Ventures, where his investment areas include AI (application and tooling layers), data/dev tooling, SaaS, and healthcare. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private...

Aug 15, 202559 min

Ashish Kakran, Sierra Ventures Partner on Infra, AI & Cyber Startups

Ashish Kakran is a Partner at Sierra Ventures, where he leads early-stage investments in AI, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual ...

Aug 15, 20251 hr 3 min

Molly Alter, Northzone Partner on Vertical SaaS, AI & B2B Scaling

Molly Alter is a Partner at Northzone, based in New York. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and...

Aug 06, 20251 hr 1 min

Marty Kausas, Pylon CEO on Modern B2B Support, AI KB & Post‑Sales Tools

Marty Kausas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pylon, one of the fastest-growing platforms modernizing B2B customer support. With prior engineering experience at Airbnb, Marty blends deep technical chops with a market-first mindset to tackle one of the most overlooked segments in enterprise software: post-sales support. Since launching, Pylon has become the go-to support infrastructure for high-growth B2B companies, backed by leading investors like Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Y Combina...

Aug 06, 202557 min
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