Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital

In this final episode of Billion Dollar Moves for a bit, I sit down with Jake Karls, Co-Founder and Rainmaker of Midday Squares, for a candid conversation about building one of North America’s boldest founder-led consumer brands. Jake shares how he, his sister, and his brother-in-law went from making 50 bars a day in a Montreal condo kitchen to building an automated factory capable of producing mo...

In this episode of Billion Dollar Moves, I sit down with Suneera Madhani, founder of Stax and Worth, for a candid conversation about building, scaling, exiting, and knowing when it is time to begin again. Suneera shares how a rejected idea became a billion-dollar payments company, why focus and customer obsession mattered more than any single formula, and what she learned from raising capital as a...

Erika Aquino is a next-generation family office allocator and angel investor building on a Filipino family business legacy. In this episode of Billion Dollar Moves, Erika shares how her family moved beyond wealth preservation to deploy capital with purpose across wellness, education, sustainability, and the future of work. We discuss how she allocates to venture, why she prefers pre-seed and seed-...

Latasha Gillespie, former global executive at Amazon, shares how culture, customers, and risk were evaluated inside one of the world’s most powerful companies. We discuss Amazon’s six-page decision process, what Latasha learned from Jeff Bezos, why diversity is a growth strategy, and how greenlight decisions determine which stories, audiences, and ideas are able to scale. For founders, investors,...

In this episode of Billion Dollar Moves, I sit down with David Berry, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Averin Capital, for a conversation about building billion-dollar breakthroughs in healthcare. David has founded more than 30 companies, including seven valued over $1B, and has helped shape companies across biotech, AI drug discovery, microbiome therapeutics, agriculture, and health infrastruct...

Jaclyn Johnson built Create & Cultivate into one of the most recognized platforms for women in business—scaling it to eight-figure revenue before exiting in a multi-million dollar deal. But what happens after the exit is where the real story begins. From navigating private equity, burnout, and the loss of control over the company she built… to making one of the rarest moves in business—buying it b...

In this rare conversation, Jim Sorenson breaks down what happens after liquidity—when building a company turns into building systems of capital. We start with the moment everything nearly fell apart: losing $1M a month during the dot-com crash, and the unexpected pivot that transformed Sorenson Communications into a near $1B exit—by aligning technology with regulation and real, underserved demand....

In this episode of Billion Dollar Moves, Sarah sits down with Ariana Pareja for a conversation about exit timing, liquidity, and the difference between valuation and real wealth. Ariana speaks candidly about building and exiting Remine, why she believes “an exit isn’t real until it’s liquid,” and the lesson she learned the hard way: selling before Series B might have created more wealth with less...

We’re back—kicking off our 2026 season live from SXSW Austin with the Ayana Foundation. Featuring: Allison Ellsworth on scaling Poppi from kitchen experiment to a $1.95B sale to Pepsi; Rachel Roy on creative control, brand ownership, and navigating legal battles; Theresa Fette on the identity shift after exit—and choosing yourself over the title. From Shark Tank moments to hard decisions behind th...

The future of food and climate resilience in Southeast Asia is being shaped as much in cassava fields and starch factories as it is in boardrooms. In this episode of Billion Dollar Moves, Ho Ren Hua, CEO of Thai Wah Public Company Limited, joins Sarah to unpack how he is reinventing a 77-year-old family starch business into a regional agri-food and bio-materials platform built on “innovation and s...

The biggest industrial transformation of our lifetime is happening now and it’s not AI. It’s climate industrialism. Shawn Xu, Partner at Lowercarbon Capital (founded by Chris Sacca), discuss how Lowercarbon backs outlier founders, why “cheaper, better, faster” wins over green premiums, and where the biggest opportunities are emerging: energy, carbon removal, fusion, materials, resilience, and the...

In this Billion Dollar Bite, Joel Sandhu (Co-Founder of Top-Tier Access; Partner at Investors Capital) breaks down the forces reshaping private markets.  From the great normalization post-2021, to how LPs actually underwrite managers, to why family offices are rewriting their approach to access and alignment. We unpack the real liquidity picture, the rise of GP-led secondaries, and why the “elasti...

In this episode, we sit down with Chris Rynning (AMYP Ventures; Piëch/Porsche family office) and Anulika Malomo (HarbourVest & impact advisor) to unpack what it really takes to future-proof portfolios in 2025 and beyond. From AI’s existential risks to global liquidity crunches, China’s DeepSeek shock, secondaries, midstream renewable opportunities, and the rise of long-term family office strategie...

From a North Dakota childhood shaped by reinvention to a $100M exit and a $35M investing run, Anne Mahlum’s story is a masterclass in conviction, resilience, and ownership. In this powerful episode, the founder of Back on My Feet and solidcore pulls back the curtain on the defining moments that shaped her rise. In this episode, you’ll learn: The unconventional decisions that shaped Anne’s rise Wha...

India’s venture ecosystem is at a turning point — and women are leading the charge. In this powerful conversation recorded live in Bangalore, we brought together four trailblazers shaping the future of innovation and capital: Vani Kola (Managing Director, Kalaari Capital), Priya Mohan (Former Partner, General Catalyst), Aarti Gupta (CIO, Family Office DM Gupta & Anikarth Ventures), and Shuvi Shriv...

Fired at 36 from his dream job at Time Inc., Michael Loeb turned rejection into the billion-dollar spark behind Synapse and Priceline.com.  A true serial entrepreneur, Michael shares how he reinvented industries—from magazine subscriptions to online travel to healthcare—and why he believes the entrepreneurial gene shows up long before the first startup pitch. In this week's episode, we unpack the...

When you build beyond yourself — what does legacy really look like? In this special crossover episode, our own host Sarah Chen-Spellings joins The Jasmine Star Show for a candid conversation on leadership, investing, and the power of women building boldly. From cutting million-dollar checks in her 20s to co-founding Beyond The Billion, Sarah shares how she turned a question “Where are the women?”,...

The rules of private market investing are shifting; and so is the timeline for generating alpha. In this conversation from Arctic15 LP Summit earlier this year, leading allocators Selale Zaim (third-generation family business leader and venture investor) and Kim Groop (Co-Founder, First Fellow Partners) joined us to unpack how family offices and institutions are rethinking their playbooks. From co...

What does it take to build a billion-dollar fund from Australia — and back global unicorns like Canva, SafetyCulture, and Culture Amp? In this episode, we sit down with Rick Baker, Co-Founder of Blackbird VC, to unpack the journey from 530 investor rejections to becoming one of the most successful venture firms in the Southern Hemisphere. Rick shares the real stories behind meeting and backing Can...

With record outflows from ESG funds and rising political scrutiny, the climate investing conversation is shifting dramatically. In this episode, we sit with Anna Herlin (KONE Family, Tiina and Antti Herlin Foundation) and Dr. Krista Halttunen (Halton Ventures) — two next-generation family office leaders driving sustainable innovation in the built environment. We asked: what comes next at the inter...

From living in motels and battling recurring infections to leading one of the fastest-growing feminine care brands in America, Beatrice Dixon’s story is as unlikely as it is inspiring. In this episode, Bea reveals how a dream sparked the formula for The Honey Pot, how she scaled from kitchen batches to Target’s Super Bowl ads, and why she walked away from a higher $450M offer to exit on her own te...

From Wall Street to Silicon Valley's inner circle—this is the untold story behind one of tech’s most trusted capital stewards. In this episode, we sit down with Mike Anders, Partner at ICONIQ, the quiet powerhouse managing over $80B for tech’s most iconic names. Mike opens up about his activist roots, Wall Street disillusionment, and the journey to building a purpose-driven financial empire. We go...

How do you build a cross-border VC fund that backs female founders before the world sees their value? In this #MeritIn Motion series, we sit down with Marisa Warren, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of ALIAVIA Ventures and Founder of the ELEVACAO. A former Microsoft and SAP exec turned entrepreneur and investor, Marisa shares how she’s rewriting the rules of venture, by backing high-growth female fou...

When Guild Education’s co-founder Rachel Romer suffered a life-threatening stroke, the company’s future rested in the hands of Bijal Shah — then on maternity leave, recovering from a traumatic birth. In this intimate and deeply strategic conversation, Guild’s now-CEO shares what it took to step up, scale a mission-driven business, and guide 70,000+ employees toward career mobility. From building s...

This week we sit down with Jeffrey L. Bowman — former Ogilvy senior partner turned founder of Reframe Consulting and Reframe AI Technologies — for a bold, unfiltered look at what it really means to future-proof your business.  Jeffrey doesn’t just talk about diversity as a moral imperative; he reframes it as a growth strategy rooted in data, market opportunity, and long-overdue correction. From re...