Village Global's Venture Stories

Meka Asonye (@BigMekaStyle), partner at First Round Capital, joined Ben Casnocha at a Village Global event to discuss: - Meka’s time with the Cleveland Indians and what it taught him about finding hidden talent.- Why customer obsession is so important to Meka when looking at a potential investment and concrete examples of what that looks like in practice.- Lessons on customer obsession from Stripe and Mixpanel. He says that the Collisons had lunch with users every Friday and evangelized “teaching with every touch,” meaning leaving every user with more knowledge about the product at every interaction.- How an early-stage startup can get in the door at a large organization. He says to make sure to target the right person at the organization and offer tidbits about how other organizations are looking at a problem.- Common mistakes that founders make when pitching investors, including why having all the answers can be a red flag, and how to nail the right balance of confidence and humility.- How much money to raise at the early stage, including why you shouldn’t just raise as much money as you possibly can and instead should be most concerned with finding the right fit with the right firm.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Jacob Helberg (@jacobhelberg), author of The Wires of War, joins Erik to discuss:- The “gray war” that Jacob believes the US is in with China, and why he feels it’s important to call it a war rather than a competition.- Technology and cyber weapons and how they can be used for political warfare with plausible denability.- The window of opportunity that the US and its allies have to take a proactive approach to China.- The bull case and bear case for China.- What’s at stake in Taiwan.- Why countries involved in China’s belt-and-road initiative are having second thoughts.- What actions Jacob would like to see the US take in the future to counteract China.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Vance Roush (@vanceroush), founder and CEO of Overflow, joins Erik to discuss: - Overflow, the online donation platform for non-cash assets, and the story behind its creation.- Why the market is actually “sneakily big” and how he plans to create a new category that unlocks net new generosity by making donating shares, crypto, or other non-cash assets as easy as Venmo.- How the internet has changed philanthropy, the fact that philanthropic giving has never exceeded 2% of GDP, and how to increase that percentage.- The concept of tithing, why the church is a driver of charitable giving, and the idea of giving back instead of out of obligation.- Why philanthropy needs a rebranding, and how AngelList and Teach For America provide models for how that could be done.- Why there should be a stock market-like leaderboard for non-profits and why we need more seed stage philanthropists.- How he sees the future of philanthropy evolving.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha), Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), Anne Dwane (@adwane), partners at Village Global, and David Booth (@david__booth), co-CEO of On Deck, discuss:- ODX in partnership with Village Global, the $100M+ community-backed accelerator that plans to invest in 1000 companies over the next few years: https://beondeck.com/x- The key differentiators of ODX: a dedicated partner for each company, an all-access pass to the On Deck community, and the fact that the entire community has upside in the fund.- Examples of how founders have taken advantage of On Deck’s unique structure, including some examples of their most successful companies to date.- Why Erik has been so inspired by “putting people in business.”- On Deck’s belief that humanity primarily progresses through tech, that tech primarily comes from startups, and that there are not enough founders starting startups today.- How to get started with ODX.Read more about the announcement:https://medium.com/village-global/re-imagining-the-accelerator-in-partnership-with-on-deck-11871f129f7bhttps://beondeck.com/post/announcing-odxThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Andy Rachleff (@arachleff), president and CEO of Wealthfront, joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno to discuss:- What Andy learned from endowment investing and his quest to democratize excellent investing advice at Wealthfront.- Why you shouldn’t try to time the market and why in his opinion all-time highs are “absolutely irrelevant.”- Andy’s lessons from witnessing four day-trading frenzies in his career and why you should think about absolute return rather than relative returns.- How his position on crypto has evolved over time and why he’s optimistic about its ability to revolutionize commerce but skeptical about its place in an investment portfolio.- His learnings on product market fit from Don Valentine, and why Don said that if a startup can screw something up, it will. He also said that to succeed, it needs the market to pull the product out of the startup’s hands.- Why operating investors often make better investment decisions because operating experience is a proxy for network rather than because of the operating experience itself. - His top book recommendations.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Reinhardt (@Ben_Reinhardt), Research Fellow at the Astera Institute and host of Idea Machines Podcast, joins Erik to discuss:- Why we don’t have as much science fiction-like technology in the world as we could, and how to turn more of it into reality.- Why venture capital does a poor job of funding new physical technology and why ten year venture cycles are too short for breakthrough technologies. Ben points out that the transistor took 15 years between the kick-off of the project and the first prototype.- The article Ben wrote on how a private ARPA, or “PARPA” could help bring more breakthrough technology into the world.- The unique strength of corporate labs at bringing together academics, engineers, and manufacturing, which gave the world plastics, the transistor, and modern computing.- Ben’s idea of the rich tithing 10% of their income to technological research.- How philanthropy would need to change in order to help small researchers experiment on longer-term timescales than they do currently.- The impacts that PARPA would have if it was successful. Read more about the idea here: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/parpaThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Leigh Marie Braswell (@LM_Braswell) of Founders Fund and Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson), who built the music recommendation system at Spotify, join Erik to discuss:- How data flows through a company and the business decisions that can be made based on data.- The waves of change in the data tooling landscape over the last decade and why we’re only a quarter of the way to easy-to-use tools.- Why there are so many data roles and how the commercialization of open source projects drives fragmentation and specialization in the industry.- The exciting opportunities and potential pain points to build around in data tooling, including workflow scheduling, LTV predictions, and collaboration.- Why people building in the space shouldn’t index to existing roles, structures, and platforms, since those platforms may not be around in a few years.- Why AI and ML are just one tool in the data toolbox and the fact that there is more room to build around other, boring data science tasks.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Abhijeet Patra (@abhijeetpatra88), former Deep Tech entrepreneur and venture fellow at Susa Ventures who is now leading Deep Tech at On Deck, joins Erik to discuss:- What exactly Deep Tech is and some of the examples of technologies involved, including nanotechnology, quantum computing, hardware, autonomous vehicles, space, manufacturing, machine learning, and more.- Why there’s been an explosion in talk about Deep Tech over the last several years.- The fact that there’s almost always a market for a technology, if you can get the technical side figured out.- Democratization of technologies and how the trajectory of sequencing DNA is representative of the typical path of Deep Tech — first a technology is expensive, then it goes down dramatically in cost, then it becomes easy to build on top of.- Why it’s difficult to find enough talent in the field these days. He says that Deep Tech is still a niche.- How On Deck is aiming to 100X the number of people working in the space and how you can get involved.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

In this extended episode of Venture Stories, Erik interviews Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University. They discuss about a wide range of topics, including Tyler’s book Stubborn Attachments, the value of watching sports, travel, Bitcoin, the Knicks, and Effective Altruism — among many, many others.Tyler explains why he has only two “stubborn attachments” — human rights and economic growth. He takes us through his argument that there’s a moral imperative for economic growth. He talks about why economic growth is the greatest force for good in the world, why redistribution isn’t as effective as Effective Altruists would like, and why we dramatically underestimate the effects of compounding. He discusses some of the reactions to the book and why he says he’s “poked the left in the eye and poked the right in the eye” with Stubborn Attachments. They discuss the reasons for the extraordinary economic growth of East Asian countries and what kinds of lessons the West could take from those examples. Tyler talks about whether religion has an impact on economic growth and why inequality isn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be.Erik asks Tyler what he would do if he could wave a magic wand and change a number of entities, including the US healthcare system, the Knicks, and the Department of Education. Tyler tells Erik whether he would buy Bitcoin and gives his thoughts on central banking and Austrian economics. He also explains why travel is so valuable and why “at the margins people should be more like anthropologists.”Erik asks Tyler where his views diverge from those of a number of prominent intellectuals, including Thomas Piketty, Russ Roberts, Ayn Rand, and Glen Weyl. Tyler explains why he suspects the environment in which someone grew up influences their thinking style.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Gabby Dizon (@gabusch), co-founder of Yield Guild Games, and Linda Xie (@ljxie), co-founder of Scalar Capital, join Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode to discuss:- Why Gabby started YGG and the evolution of play-to-earn and blockchain in gaming. - Why gaming is a great way to onboard someone to the crypto ecosystem, as NFTs have done.- The key players in the crypto gaming ecosystem.- Why there is renewed hope that crypto governance can be solved.- Use cases for DAOs and how they can change the future of work.- Why Linda welcomes regulation and how it can actually encourage more projects in the space.Documentary on play-to-earn that Lucas mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo-BrASMHU4Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Erik is joined by Zach Perret (@zachperret), co-founder and CEO of Plaid, and David Haber (@dhaber), former co-founder and CEO of Bond Street, now at Goldman Sachs.Zach and David talk about how they met and how they started their respective companies. They explain how to find out whether you are passionate enough about an idea to start a company around it: are you passionate about it enough to be willing to pound the table to get your mother-in-law to invest?David points out that 90% of your work as a founder is selling — to investors, employees, customers, and many others. They talk about the future of financial services and fintech and make some predictions about what to expect in the space over the next several years. David and Zach share some tips for people building a company in the space on what works and what doesn’t, and how the space has evolved since they started their companies.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Elad Gil (@eladgil), entrepreneur and investor, and Kevin Hartz (@kevinhartz), investor and co-founder of Eventbrite, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- What they think is special about each other’s investing abilities.- How certain people are able to stay relevant in every investing cycle.- Kevin’s latest venture and the path he took to start it.- SPACs and their advantages.- How to find your own angel investing style.- How venture will change in the next ten years.- Elad’s COVID investment thesis.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.We were thrilled to host a masterclass roundtable session for our founders with John Donahoe when he was CEO of ServiceNow. John is now CEO of Nike and was CEO of eBay for more than seven years. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and Ben Silbermann at Pinterest. We’re honored to have him among our small group of world-class executives and collaborators whose time and expertise help power our network of founders at Village Global.He shared advice on when to hire ahead, invest in and train, or replace personnel on your team and gave insight into his most common piece of advice on professional growth when advising CEOs. John also did an in-depth demonstration of how to let someone go with dignity and grace.Quotes From This Episode"When you talk about priorities at an aspirational level, they overlap a lot. People start realizing we're more similar than we're dissimilar." "Adversity never feels fun. I don't seek adversity. But I'm no longer scared of adversity. When it emerges, instead of trying to run from it, I now accept that it is a reality and I say, 'well, at least I'm going to learn and grow.'" "My experience has been that around any issue that involves change, you have roughly 20-25% of people who want to be part of it, no matter what the topic is, you have 25-30% of people who want to fight it, and you have the 50% of people in the middle saying 'which side is going to win?'" "[When someone is let go] The fear is humiliation usually. That's almost a bigger fear than actually leaving the company." "We're never as good or as bad as labels make us out to be." "I would say in general, for every 10 hours of business development conversations, 8 of them are a waste." "I do gratitude practice driving into work every morning. It's proven in brain science that your brain becomes more negative over time. But it's also been proven in brain science that you can counteract that." "The older I get, the more I've made friends with uncertainty. I don't avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty is as present to me today as it was before but I'm a little more comfortable with it today." Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

We’re re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.On this special live episode of Venture Stories, Bill Gates was interviewed in 2018 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium by Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite. We are honored to have Bill Gates, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time, among our luminary LPs whose financial capital and engagement power the next wave of Village Global founders. They covered:- Gates’s entrepreneurial journey starting Microsoft, including the most important turning points in the early years of the company.- His thinking on work-life balance for founders and what he would do differently if he was starting again.- What he’s learned from the next generation of founders.- His perspective on the current tech landscape.- His views on philanthropy, global development, education, and much more.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.Erik and co-host Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol) interviewed Keith Rabois (@rabois).Keith starts out by talking about why he joined Founders Fund and the reason that the structure of VC means we don’t see more people moving from one fund to another. They talk about the future of venture and whether there will be more M&A in the space and where he sees things going in the next 10 years. Keith explains why being an effective VC is much more an art than a science.Erik asks about Keith’s goals at this point and why thus far it’s not been possible to scale one’s investing model beyond one’s self. Keith also has a well-known theory about breaking down businesses into equations and Erik asks whether one can do the same with careers as well. Keith recounts the story of working for Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel at PayPal and how he has learned to trust his instincts in the absence of specific quantitative metrics. He talks about why being vertically integrated is important for a startup, why getting the timing right is part of a founder’s job (and can’t be a founder’s excuse for failure), and why in his view founder quality trumps all other factors when evaluating a business.He also talks about some of his requests for startups, including an integrated fitness and nutrition company. They also talk about some of the places where he agrees or disagrees with prominent thinkers in tech and how Keith’s politics and contrarianism have evolved.Quotable Lines From This Episode"You want to solve your biggest risks first. Mediocre founders solve the easiest risks first. Take the three most risky things and conquer them. I always counsel a founder to address risks in order of difficulty not in order of ease.""To me when a founder says they didn’t get the timing right, that means they just didn’t do their job.""I focus all on the people and a lot less on the market, a lot less on the product and a hell of a lot less on the technology." Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.