His journey started when he started building products & wrote blogs for different companies - he was in New Zealand. He was the first writer for Mashable. All of this while he was just 14! After sometime, he joined Teachable as a founding engineer. He grew in his role all the way to VP of product & with teachable doing reasonably well - he thought about why he origionally moved to the US. Despite having his family in US, he took some hard decisions to leave the job & freelance for Gumroad to boo...
Nov 29, 2023•35 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast I recorded this episode in Delhi - what a time to record! We started with the impact of AQI on lifespan & talk about the impact of pincode on your lifespan. Longevity feels like a field where you need to spend a ton of time in research but Alex shared his views on how we can get started with a lot less. It was interesting to get his thoughts on how young people are approaching the field & the progress we've already made. The contribution of Age1 has been quite phenomenal in the field & their ded...
Nov 15, 2023•23 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast We talk about the myths around remote work, how do we build the right culture at the company & deep dive into tons of challenges that becomes excuses for many to call their employees back to office. Some of the points we discussed include: Building the right culture Growing the team remotely Offsites or no offsited Cross team collaboration Global compliance Asynchronous work I first met Job years ago during his time at Gitlab - it's one of the OG remote work companies, probably one of the first ...
Nov 07, 2023•24 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Following his remarkable success with the $780M acquisition of his startup, Vungle, by private equity giant Blackstone in 2019, Zain founded Zain Ventures, a family office with a diverse portfolio spanning various asset classes. Zain's investment philosophy is straightforward: strategically allocate capital to the right fund managers and partner with visionary industry leaders. He leveraged his expertise to revolutionize the real estate investment sector, recognizing the need for advanced analyt...
Oct 31, 2023•21 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast Sid Mofya , a Kauffman Fellow, is the COO of the Draper Venture Network and has one of the most interesting roles in venture capital: helping his team coordinate the alliance of member funds and providing post-investment support for their collective portfolio of over 900 companies. Sid’s journey into the venture capital world is fairly non-traditional. Sid was born in Zambia and studied in the UK as a chemical engineer. After college, he went to work for Shell as a chemical engineer at an oil re...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast Elad Gil — most recently co-founder of Color Genomics, previously co-founder and CEO of Mixer Labs, which was acquired by Twitter. He was a VP at Twitter focusing on scaling the company from 90 to 1500 people. Previously at Google he started their mobile team, and worked on AdSense. He is also flat out one of the best angel investors/advisors in the startup community. His portfolio includes Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, PagerDuty...
Sep 11, 2021•40 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast Vlad Magdalin is the Founder & CEO at Webflow . the startup that allows you to build better business websites, faster, without coding. To date, Vlad has raised over $73m with Webflow from some dear friends of the show including Accel, Ron @ Rainfall, Brianne @ Work Life, Benjamin Ling and Y Combinator to name a few. Prior to founding Webflow, Vlad was a Senior Software Engineer @ Intuit. Before Intuit, Vlad co-founded Chatterfox, a web application allowing people to stay in touch with groups off...
Aug 28, 2021•49 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast Thai Son has spent the last 15 years building a world-class eCommerce service provider, through SmartOSC, the business he co-founded with his childhood friend. Under his leadership, the business scaled from zero to more than 600 people, achieving a constant 50%+ YoY growth. Today, as the global CEO, he's responsible for driving expansion, innovation and setting the vision for the business. The company's portfolio includes 500+ clients globally including Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, ASUS, Sony, P...
Aug 03, 2021•41 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast Henry Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Carta, a company that continues to revolutionize the way founders, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership. Since founding Carta in 2012, Carta has grown to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. Companies including Intercom, Samsara, and Flexport trust Carta to provide things like fund administration, 409A valuations, cap table management and scenario modeling. Carta has been included on the Forbes “World’s Best Cloud Companies”, F...
Jul 24, 2021•42 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) is the Captain & CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. Hoffman is also a venture investor, serial entrepreneur, and author of several award-winning books. These include “Make Elephants Fly” (published by Hachette), “Surviving a Startup” (published by HarperCollins), and “The Five Forces” (published by BenBella). Hoffman was founder ...
Jul 17, 2021•45 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast Leena Nair is the first female, first Asian and youngest ever CHRO of Unilever and member of the Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE). Under her leadership Unilever has achieved a 50/50 gender balance across global leadership, led the design and implementation of progressive new working practices and models. She has continued to lead a pioneering agenda, playing an instrumental role in launching Unilever’s new social commitments, including a commitment to pay living wage across its whole supply c...
Jun 05, 2021•43 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast Phil Libin is the Founder and CEO at mmhmm , the app that allows you to level up your remote presentations, making high-quality video content in minutes. To date, Phil has raised over $30M for the company from an incredible investor base including Sequoia, Kevin & Julia Hartz, Tony Fadell, Instagram’s Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and Brianne Kimmel. Prior to mmhmm, Phil was a Managing Director @ General Catalyst and prior to his time in venture, Phil most famously founded Evernote, where he le...
Apr 23, 2021•46 min•Ep 163•Transcript available on Metacast Stefano is a project management practitioner and an academic with 20 years of experience, and the designer of the Team Alignment Map. He has been leading digital projects for Swiss-based companies Rothschild and Pictet; advising cross-functional leaders and teams for Richemont, the World Economic Forum, Applied Materials and HSBC; teaching and doing research in project management at the University of Lausanne and at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, Mig...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast As the CEO of Skillshare, Matt Cooper believes that learning is transformative — individually, socially, economically. Skillshare's mission is to connect life-long learners everywhere and build a more creative and prosperous world. Before joining Skillshare, he was the CEO of Visually, an online marketplace for creative work that was acquired by ScribbleLive in January 2016. Prior to Visually, he was the VP of Operations, Enterprise and International for oDesk (now Upwork), the world's largest m...
Apr 10, 2021•43 min•Ep 161•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Do is an Emmy award winning designer, founder and CEO of Blind, Inc., where he oversees the creative and strategic direction of the company. He is also the founder of The Futur—an online education platform with the mission of teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love. Mr. Do currently serves on the board and is an advisor for organizations including: AIGA/LA, Emmys Motion & Title Design Peer Group, Otis Board of Governors, Saleshood, Santa Monica College and Woodb...
Apr 03, 2021•54 min•Ep 160•Transcript available on Metacast Misha de Sterke is partner at Innoleaps, managing the corporate innovation activities for Fortune 500 companies globally. Keynote speaker, nominated entrepreneur and lecturer at Universities. He is a corporate innovation and startup expert and has extensive experience. In the corporate world as an interim manager and staff advisor on digital transformation, and as an entrepreneur building different tech-driven startups. He advises C-level executives on how to build the 10X Growth Machine and he ...
Mar 25, 2021•43 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast Fenton created the online social hospitality network, the Couchsurfing Project which he began working on in 1999. Couchsurfing currently has over 15 million members worldwide. Fenton served as executive director of Couchsurfing until 2012 and the founding chairman of the board. Since exiting his position as CEO of Couchsurfing, he has also been a part of multiple startups including Sovolve (Wonder App) and Upstock. Fenton was looking for ways to motivate his team at Couchsurfing & discovered maj...
Mar 12, 2021•47 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast Finland-based Puro.earth is a marketplace for carbon removal that’s aiming to accelerate the development of emerging carbon net-negative companies by verifying the net negative impact of these companies, and connecting them with corporations seeking to reach Net Zero targets. Through its marketplace, Puro.earth is aiming to build a self-sustaining global market for carbon removal worth as much as $300bn, potentially removing 10 Gigatons of CO2 a year by 2050; the aim is to transform carbon from ...
Feb 19, 2021•46 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast Kendrick Nguyen has a wealth of experience in finance and law, but his heart lies in cryptocurrency. He barely talks about his personal life, but he revealed that his past is what led to him being interested in the world of entrepreneurship. So far, his dream of helping private companies raise funds has continued to be fulfilled since in the last two years Republic has facilitated the launch of at least 40 companies. However, that is just the beginning since Kendrick has a far much bigger vision...
Feb 12, 2021•30 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast SC Moatti is a technology visionary, venture capital investor, and bestselling author of Mobilized , an insider’s guide to the business and future of connected technology. While working at Facebook, Trulia and Nokia, SC has built mobile products that are used today by billions of people -one of them received an Emmy nomination. Andrew Chen, one of Uber's executives, called SC “ a genius at making mobile products people love .” Moatti frequently gives keynotes on business and technology, and has ...
Jan 22, 2021•40 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast Oliver Percovich first skated in an empty pool at the age of six, while growing up in Papua New Guinea. In 1995 he competed in the Mystic Cup, an international skateboarding contest in Prague. Prior to a life-changing move to Kabul, Oliver worked at the Centre for Risk and Community Safety on emergency management projects for various Australian government departments. In 2007 Oliver moved to Afghanistan from Australia when his girlfriend took a job in Kabul. Bored, he would skate the beleaguered...
Jan 15, 2021•44 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Branson is the Founder of Seedlip and Æcorn Aperitifs, the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirits and aperitifs. He gained inspiration from his family’s 300 years of North Lincolnshire farming heritage, and grew up alongside his two younger brothers, eights dogs, horses, rabbits and guinea pigs. Stoically a country boy, Ben now lives with his girlfriend and two dogs in a 15th Century cottage in the Chilterns, bringing his heritage with nature to the forefront of his new business ventu...
Dec 18, 2020•46 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast Brad Feld lives in Boulder, Colorado and Homer, Alaska with his wife and is on a quest to run a marathon in every state in the US.Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad is also a co-founder of TechStars. In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chair of the National Center...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast From supercomputers to innovating at incredible speed, Alex Dreiling’s work at Clipchamp may sound like something from a Douglas Adams novel, but his successful startup began with an everyday idea and a down-to-earth attitude. He shares that they created something no one else was doing, and managed to take it from an idea they had over lunch – to running software that’s been solving problems for millions around the world since they launched in 2014. It’s been an exciting – sometimes nail-biting ...
Nov 27, 2020•59 min•Ep 151•Transcript available on Metacast Eric originally hails from Lawrenceville, Georgia. While he’s moved around the country a bit, Atlanta has always pulled him back. He currently lives with his wife, Shirley, and their dog, Maize, in Atlanta, Georgia. The Co-founder and COO at Flatfile, whose mission is to remove barriers between humans and their data. Hundreds of enterprises use Flatfile products to aggregate, import, and normalize data from disparate and variant sources. Previously, Eric was the first product lead at Envoy, whos...
Nov 13, 2020•48 min•Ep 150•Transcript available on Metacast Maximilian Tayenthal is co-founder and CFO of N26 . Together with his business partner and friend Valentin Stalf, he has built one of the fastest-growing mobile banks in the world. Their vision is to create a bank that 100 million people around the world love to use, giving people the power to live and bank their way. Previously, Max worked in a variety of consulting and financial roles at leading professional services firms, including CMS and Booz & Company. Max holds bachelor’s and master’s de...
Nov 06, 2020•44 min•Ep 149•Transcript available on Metacast After growing up in Cairo, Egypt, she earned a PhD in Cambridge University, and then joined the MIT Media Lab as a research scientist, where she spearheaded the application of emotion recognition technology in a variety of fields, including mental health and autism. She left MIT to co-found Affectiva and is a passionate advocate for humanizing technology, ethics in AI, women in technology and diversity. Rana has been recognized on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list, Forbes' Top 50 Women in Tech, Inc.’s ...
Oct 27, 2020•32 min•Ep 148•Transcript available on Metacast Amy is Co-founder, former President, and a current board member of Medallia, a public enterprise SaaS company that pioneered Experience Management and is the leader in helping organizations capture and act on customer feedback. At Medallia, Amy built and ran many key functions from Marketing and Sales to HR and Talent Acquisition. Since its founding, Medallia has grown to 1,500 employees and over $400M in annual revenue, and trades on the Nasdaq exchange (MDLA). Prior to founding Medallia, Amy s...
Oct 16, 2020•22 min•Ep 147•Transcript available on Metacast Howie Liu is co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the platform democratizing software creation. Over 60,000 organizations, including half of the Fortune 1000, currently use Airtable to power their most ambitious operations. Launched in 2015, Airtable has raised over $70M in venture funding, and was recently added to Forbes’ “Cloud 100” list of the private companies leading cloud computing in 2018. Learn more about Oracle for Startups (Interviewed by Alexa von Tobel, CFP® is the Founder and Managing P...
Oct 09, 2020•30 min•Ep 146•Transcript available on Metacast Morgan DeBaun, Founder & CEO of Blavity. Fresh out of college, she headed to Silicon Valley to learn from the best and brightest about Product Management and Design. The St. Louis native became a growth hacker and small business advisor to aspiring entrepreneurs. In 2014, she launched Blavity - the largest media startup and lifestyle brand for black millennials. Under her leadership, Blavity has successfully acquired 2 companies, raised over 9 million in venture funding, and reaches millions of ...
Sep 25, 2020•23 min•Ep 145•Transcript available on Metacast 
