On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by co-host Tony Sheng to interview John Backus (@backus), founder of Bloom and Cognito, two companies working on decentralized lending and identity. Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders. John recently wrote a popular post about the history of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing in the late 1990s...
Nov 26, 2018•52 min
Erik is joined in this episode by co-host Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education, and Dave Girouard (@davegirouard), CEO and founder of Upstart. They have a lively discussion about the history of income-sharing agreements, the forms in which they exist presently, and how the agreements might change or expand in the future. Dave gives us an overview of Upstart and why he says they are like “Kickstarter meets LendingClub.” Although Upstart is thriving now, it wasn’t al...
Nov 23, 2018•51 min
Erik’s co-host for this episode is Ali Hamed (@AliBHamed) of CoVenture. They are interviewing Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education. They talk about the history of income-sharing agreements, including that Milton Friedman had once proposed the idea and that Yale University had experimented with them at one point. Tonio talks about starting Vemo and how he has brought income-sharing agreements to more and more educational institutions. They discuss the fact that 88% ...
Nov 21, 2018•48 min
On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Mike Merrill (@kmikeym), the world’s first and only publicly traded person, along with Mike’s friend, co-founder and shareholder, Marcus Estes (@marcusestes), co-founder and CEO of Chroma. We hear the backstory on how Mike became the world’s first “publicly traded person” and hear a funny story about an early 2000s arts group turned their group into a corporation in order to thwart an attempt by an e-commerce company to take over their domain...
Nov 19, 2018•51 min
In this special live episode of Venture Stories, Erik Torenberg interviews two special guests about the present and future of crypto: Naval Ravikant (@naval), CEO and co-founder of AngelList, and Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), CTO of Coinbase. They start with an overview of the history of organizing societies and the role of centralized decision-makers from kings to democracies and why decentralization — where no one in particular is in charge but everybody follows the rules — has so much potenti...
Nov 16, 2018•1 hr 4 min
Patri Friedman joins Erik on this episode of Venture Stories. He founded The Seasteading Institute in 2008 with funding from Peter Thiel. His father is political theorist David Friedman and his grandfather is Nobel Laureate in economics, Milton Friedman. Over the course of their nearly two-hour conversation they cover a lot of ground, including crypto, physical (and virtual) governance, the current state of politics, Silicon Valley, and much more. Patri starts by explaining why he is both skepti...
Nov 14, 2018•1 hr 43 min
This is a special episode of Venture Stories recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, featuring Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University and Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt), former executive chairman and CEO at Google/Alphabet. Cowen talks to Schmidt about a wide range of topics, from Schmidt’s college years, to his time as an intern at Bell Labs, to working for Scott McNealy at Sun Microsystems, to the early days of Google, to today. Cowen asks abou...
Nov 12, 2018•54 min
Erik was interviewed by Jacob Evan Smith (@jacobsmith88) at Venture For America in Detroit, which is where Erik attended the University of Michigan before he started his live rap battle app, rapt.fm. In this episode he talks about founding and running rapt.fm, why it didn’t work out, and how he ended up joining Product Hunt before co-founding Village Global. Erik explains why it’s not important that entrepreneurs get it right the first time, but instead that they don’t stop trying. He talks abou...
Nov 09, 2018•57 min
On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by James Hardiman (@hardimanjames) and Scott Barclay (@SABarclay) of Data Collective, a deep tech and AI venture fund. Scott and James are live in-studio with Erik to discuss a number of interesting topics around the health space. Scott and James explain what they mean when they say innovation in the last 50 years was driven by the semiconductor but the next 50 years will be driven by biotechnology. The three of them discuss the state of the heal...
Nov 07, 2018•50 min
On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng are joined by Jacob Arluck (@JacobArluck) of Tezos and Peter Czaban of Polkadot and the Web3 Foundation. The four of them get into the details of the mechanisms of governance, including voting, councils, and other methods of governance. They discuss hard forks and why they are not ideal but sometimes necessary. The group also discusses common misconceptions around on-chain governance and their requests for products or startups i...
Nov 05, 2018•49 min
On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by James Currier (@JamesCurrier) and Pete Flint (@peteflint), of NFX. NFX is a great venture capital firm founded on the concept of network effects. Erik, James and Pete cover a bunch of fascinating topics in the interview. Pete and James explain why network effects make such good businesses — so good in fact, that they don’t have to even be run particularly well to still have great revenue, as James found out when he sold to a big incumbent. Er...
Nov 02, 2018•56 min
Gabriel Otte (@gabeotte), CEO and co-founder of Freenome, joins Erik on this episode of Venture Stories to talk about cancer screening. Gabriel starts out by talking about why he got into the cancer screening space and how Freenome got started. He lays out the different methods of cancer detection and why Freenome has chosen their specific approach to the problem. Erik asks how it compares to other companies working on similar problems and Gabriel helps create a market map of the space. Gabriel ...
Oct 31, 2018•34 min
Gabe Bassin (@gabebassin) and Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe) join Erik for this episode. They cover a lot of ground in this episode where they explore some of the coming financial challenges that the US faces and how crypto might impact the markets and the economy in general. Gabe gives an overview of the current state of public debt and future government obligations. He explains how the fed ended up with four trillion dollars on its balance sheet. He says that “the market’s been programmed t...
Oct 29, 2018•53 min
This is a deep dive into the mind of Eugene Wei. Erik and Eugene discuss all kinds of topics, including the unique state of ambition in Silicon Valley, “apprenticeships” for white collar jobs, Eugene’s favorite fiction books, what he would do if he was running the New York Knicks, and much more. They start by talking about the differences in extent and type of ambition between Silicon Valley and other places like New York or LA, as well as how you might spread the spirit of entrepreneurship that...
Oct 26, 2018•56 min
In this episode of Health Stories, Erik is talking to Othman Laraki (@othman) and Alicia Zhou (@ay_zhou) of Color. Othman is co-founder and CEO and Alicia Zhou is Head of Research. Othman explains the personal reason that he started Color and why he got involved in the healthcare space after previously working at Google and running a company that was acquired by Twitter. Alicia and Othman explain the advances Color has made in genomics and how the approach they’re taking is different from that o...
Oct 24, 2018•37 min
Sunny Aggarwal (@sunnya97) of Cosmos and Tendermint joins Erik and co-host Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb), GP at MetaStable Capital, for this episode of Crypto Stories. They discuss how blockchains could be made to be interoperable with one another. Sunny explains why this is an important problem and what he is doing about it with Cosmos. He talks about why different types of tokens cannot yet be exchanged confidently. Sunny uses the analogy of a multithreaded CPU that we all use these days to explai...
Oct 22, 2018•50 min
In this episode Alex Danco (@alex_danco) of Social Capital joins Erik to talk about Silicon Valley, economics, innovation, crypto, software and more. He is a very unique thinker with interesting opinions about the tech space. Alex explains the influence of Peter Thiel and Rene Girard on his thinking. He explains what he means when he says the key to understanding the world is asking, "what is everyone is compelled to lie about?" He gives a history of how innovation has traditionally proceeded in...
Oct 19, 2018•1 hr 57 min
Erik is joined by Adrian Aoun (@adrianaoun), founder of Forward, a company that is trying to reinvent how primary healthcare is delivered. His previous company Wavii, was acquired by Google — where Adrian led AI efforts as well as working on special projects for Google’s CEO. Adrian explains the personal reason for his desire to found a healthcare company. He talks about why he is trying to build something completely outside the traditional healthcare system and gives a rundown of the amazing te...
Oct 17, 2018•26 min
Erik and his co-host Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe), author of The End of Jobs, are joined by Dhruv Bansal (@dhruvbansal), co-founder of Unchained Capital. On this episode they discuss a number of interesting topics, getting progressively “weirder” as they go along. In the beginning they get Dhruv’s take on the contrasts between Bitcoin and Ethereum and how the prevailing narrative around each of them affects how people perceive their strengths and weaknesses. By the end, they’re discussing i...
Oct 15, 2018•1 hr 8 min
This episode of Venture Stories was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October 2018. Keith was interviewed by Village Global partner and co-founder, Erik Torenberg. In the episode they cover a number of topics, and Keith (as usual) is very insightful. Keith breaks down some of the successes that mentees of his have had over the past few years. Many of them came from non-technical backgrounds and non-elite schools. He talks about their career trajectory and which inflection ...
Oct 12, 2018•1 hr 17 min
On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Jay Desai (@jdesai01) of PatientPing (patientping.com) and Joe Kahn (@josephwandile) of Karuna Health (meetkaruna.com). Both Joe and Jay are working on how to make sure that patient care is coordinated across multiple providers. When patients visit different providers, their care information is not shared between them and Jay and Joe are working to change that. The two companies are taking different approaches to the problem and the two founde...
Oct 10, 2018•39 min
In this episode Erik is joined by Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) of Mythos Capital and Dan Zuller (@danzuller) of Vision Hill Advisors. They talk about their backgrounds, how they became interested in crypto, and how that has informed what they are doing now with their companies in the space. Ryan explains why he’s structured Mythos as a holding company rather than a hedge fund or venture fund. Dan talks about how to bridge traditional finance and crypto and takes us through the current “money st...
Oct 08, 2018•1 hr 14 min
Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) is an investor at Greylock and one of the most expansive and intriguing minds around. In this episode Kevin and Erik talk about... basically everything, from the org chart of the future to the history of religion. Along the way they discuss a number of topics, including: - Why the stock market exists and why after the crash of 2008 no one said that we should shut it down. - Why Amazon is starting to look like Berkshire Hathaway and whether it could be broken up and still...
Oct 05, 2018•2 hr
Kelsey Mellard (@KelseyMellard), co-founder of Sitka (trustsitka.com) and Kristin Spohn (@kbakes), partner at Social Capital, join Erik for this enlightening episode of Health Stories. In it they talk about a number of topics related to go-to-market for startups in the health industry. Kelsey explains what Sitka is trying to do in the musculoskeletal space, which is the #1 cause of disability in the US. They discuss the misaligned incentives in healthcare and the interplay of the various stakeho...
Oct 03, 2018•41 min
On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik talks to David Vorick (@DavidVorick) of Sia. David explains why a fork of Sia became necessary, even though doing so was not ideal or their preferred option. He talks about what precipitated the fork and how they came to the decision. He recounts his outreach to ASIC manufacturers and why their actions were problematic. They move on to a more general discussion of the philosophy on when to fork or not and how to manage doing so. David also gives an overvi...
Oct 02, 2018•1 hr 7 min
Aleksandr Bulkin (@coinfund_al), co-founder of CoinFund and creator of ADAPT (adaptk.it) joins Erik on this episode to discuss: - How Alex got involved in crypto and why the Ethereum white paper and Augur white paper contributed so much to his interest. - His time working at Goldman Sachs on human-computer interaction and how he transitioned from Goldman to the crypto world, as well his predictions on where Goldman will be disrupted and where it will stick around in a new crypto-oriented world. ...
Oct 01, 2018•53 min
Glen Weyl (@glenweyl) and Riva Melissa-Tez (@rivatez) join Erik for this episode. They discuss Glen’s book, Radical Markets, and a number of topics related to it, including: - The similarities between Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco when it comes to wealth distribution - Why Glen has received blame and praise on different issues from both sides of the political spectrum - Why the book appeals primarily not to the right or the left, but to the open-minded - The reason that Glen calls himself a s...
Sep 28, 2018•57 min
Nick Reber of Oscar Health and Kareem Zaki (@KareemZaki_) of Thrive Capital join Erik in this fascinating episode exploring the ins and outs of the health insurance industry. They talk about the misaligned incentives in healthcare and why it maybe shouldn’t be the case that “most people trust their doctor and hate their insurance company.” Nick and Kareem break down why it’s difficult for new entrants to get a foothold in the market and talk about the barriers to competition created by legislati...
Sep 26, 2018•38 min
Myles Snider (@myles_snider), CEO of Aurora EOS and advisor to Multicoin Capital, joins Erik and co-host Tony Sheng to discuss his new role as head of a block producer for EOS. Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at www.tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders. Myles explains how he ended up in that position after working at Multicoin Capital. He gives us an overview of EOS and talks about h...
Sep 24, 2018•1 hr 11 min
It's double the Sriram Krishnan for the price of one! Sriram Krishnan (@sriramk) of Twitter and Sriram Krishnan (@sriramkri) of HeadSpin join Erik to talk about dating apps, streaming music, the online advertising business, as well as the hilarious stories about people mixing up the two of them. They start off by recounting some of the times their identical names have gotten one or the other in trouble for something the other Sriram Krishnan did, as well as the hilarious story of them both showi...
Sep 21, 2018•1 hr 10 min
