First Commit

This week, we sat down with Finn Murphy , General Partner at Nebular . Nebular is an early-stage VC fund based in NYC that invests in the US and Europe. We dive into building and selling his first company, how angel investing can sharpen your investing skills, whether Seed investing is a 15-year career, winning investments in Europe, and aligning LPs with your fund strategy.  Episode Chapters: Gro...

This week, we sat down with Robert Chandler , CTO and Co-Founder at Wordware . Wordware is a collaborative platform to build, iterate, and deploy AI agents. We explore his initial interest in self-driving cars, finding PMF (knowing when to pivot), turning weak AGI into a narrow AI expert, and why prompting is the new programming with first principles in mind.  Episode Chapters: Entrepreneurship cu...

This week, we sat down with Jonathan Baer , CEO and Co-Founder at Overlap . Overlap is an AI assistant that creates daily, personalized playlists of clips about anything you’re interested in We explore navigating public opinion at Meta, why business school is good for founders, and the team of AI agents focused on making curated Overlap content. Jonathan also offers helpful advice for applying to...

This week, we sat down with Nicholas Marwell , a member of the technical staff at Anthropic . Anthropic is one of the most fascinating companies of the decade, building foundation models focused on safe AI. We explore joining the post-training team at Anthropic, why folks started to be concerned about safety, understanding a model's neurons, using Claude at work, two areas Nick is most excite...

This week, we sat down with Kofi Ampadu , a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz who leads the Talent x Opportunity Initiative ( TxO ). TxO focuses on discovering and supporting high-potential entrepreneurs who have the vision and determination to build transformative businesses but lack traditional access to resources and networks.   We explore his experiences working as an engineer at Kraft, the impor...

This week, we sat down with Teddy Himler , General Partner at Optimist Ventures. Optimist is an early-stage fund backing founders focused on critical technologies at the inflection stage. We explore his experiences investing in SE Asia, taking less PMF risk in emerging markets, and signals that led him to start his own fund .  Teddy also shares his perspectives on technology's secular and cyc...

This week, we sat down with Leeor Mushin , General Partner at Formation. Formation is an early-stage fund that partners with founders from day one. We dive into his experience starting a fund at Stanford by investing in his classmates, the journey of building a managed marketplace, and key signals that indicate it's the right time to start a fund.  Leeor also shares insights on why 'ugly...

This week, we sat down with Alex Reibman , CEO and Co-Founder of Agency. Agency is an agentic platform to help build reliable agents at scale. We discuss learning through competing (in hackathons), agents as self-driving programs, multi-agent tenancy, and why LLMs are not best suited for agents. We also explored which failure scenarios we can accept when building agentic systems and why community...

This week, we sat down with Julia and Brian , co-founders of Pickle . Julia and Brian met at Blackstone before leaving to start Pickle, a P2P clothing rental marketplace. We discuss their founder dynamic, lessons learned through execution, leveraging micro-influencers, and scaling through network effects. We also explored their experience raising capital, how to identify the right investors, and m...

This week, we sat down with Div Garg , Founder of MultiOn . During the conversation, we discussed Div's journey from big tech to startups, the promise of agents, and how the LLMs are tackling agents. We also discussed how the agent ecosystem will evolve over time, whether we should pay our agents, and building a team as a first-time founder. Episode Chapters: Working in Big Tech - 2:28 Intro...

This week, we sat down with  Brett Perlmutter , Founder and CEO of Bulletpitch . During the conversation, we cover Brett's journey starting Bulletpitch as an undergraduate student to hosting events and writing for thousands of readers. We also cover wanting to break into VC, why top VCs are fantastic media companies, and why media yields deal flow. Episode Chapters:  Starting Bulletpitch - 1:...

This week, we sat down with Bobby Pinero , CEO and Co-Founder of Equals . During the conversation, we cover Bobby's journey from being inspired by "engineering entrepreneurship" at Stanford to leading the finance team at Intercom and then starting Equals. We also covered the moat behind Equals, having a clear end-user, competing with Excel and Google Sheets, and the importance of br...

This week, we sat down with  Eli Wachs , Co-founder and CEO of Footprint . During the conversation, we covered Eli’s journey from being an undergraduate student at Stanford to an obsession with KYC and starting Footprint. We also cover KYC, starting with the Patriot Act, how to find early customers, execution at scale, and Eli’s second career as a comedian.  Episode Chapters:  What makes Eli, Eli...

This week, we sat down with  Avante Price , CEO and Co-Founder of POSH . During the conversation, we cover Avante's journey from being an undergraduate student at NYU to dropping out and starting POSH. We also cover starting an event community, finding success in a consumer-facing space, optimizing for profitability, and hiring at the early stages. Episode Chapters: DJ to Startups - 1:12 Thre...

This week, we sat down with Avery Rosin , a Partner at Lead Edge Capital . During the conversation, we cover Avery's long journey at Lead Edge, where he has impressively navigated the path from Analyst to Partner. We also cover Lead Edge's strategy, Avery's areas of focus, his thoughts on the current macro environment, and his advice to aspiring growth equity investors.    Episode C...

We are excited to sit down with Sara Choi , Partner at Wing VC ! Prior to Wing, Sara co-founded the mobile data company Airfox. Since 2019, Sara has dedicated her efforts to investing in early-stage companies operating at the intersection of bio and data. During this episode, we discuss raising VC capital (versus not), the impact of a thematic focus, and the future trajectories of drug discovery....

We are excited to sit down with Pete Mathias , Partner at Alumni Ventures . Prior to VC, Pete was the lead drummer in a rock band, Filliger, where he traveled the world for 14 years. Later in his career, Pete found his way into the venture world and focused on strategic technologies critical to the United States. During the episode, we discuss breaking into VC from a non-traditional background, a...

We are excited to sit down with Alessio Fanelli , Partner and CTO at Decibel . Alessio grew up in Rome and made his way to the US as an engineer at 645 before landing at Decibel Partners, an early-stage fund focused on data, dev tools, and cyber security. During the episode, we discuss dropping out of school to start a company, the importance of open-source software, how to diligence pre-product m...

We are excited to sit down with Jeff Schumann , Co-Founder and CEO at Aware . Jeff started building technology at a young age (selling software to CBS and tracking Al-Qaeda) before founding Aware, a contextual intelligence platform for organizations. During the episode, we discuss intercepting terrorist communications, the employee voice as the most important asset, and why context is king. Episod...

This week, join us with Maxime Bucaille from Draper Associates . Maxime began his career as a foreign exchange trader before becoming an operator at Airswap. His passion for blockchain continued when he joined Atari, a multi-platform gaming company. During the episode, we discuss raising $37M in two hours, mitigating centralized risk, and consumer adoption of virtual reality. Episode Chapters: Mov...

This week, we're sitting down with Arjan Singh , the Co-Founder of Jolie . Arjan's journey into the world of beauty and wellness began early on and grew as he collaborated with entrepreneurs in high school and honed his expertise in luxury, consumer, and fashion at BCG. In today's episode, we'll delve into the essentials of building a successful consumer brand, the underlying f...

We're excited to chat with Luke Skertich , a Principal at FJ Labs .  Prior to his role at FJ, Luke transitioned from a pre-med background to a career in product management. FJ Labs, known for its focus on early-stage marketplace businesses, has invested in industry giants such as Alibaba, Uber, and Airbnb. In this episode, Luke delves into his journey from pre-med to venture capital, shares i...

We're excited to chat with Jacob Effron , a Partner at Redpoint Ventures .  Before joining Redpoint in San Francisco, Jacob served as a product manager at Flatiron Health.  In addition to being an investor, Jacob hosts two podcasts, Unsupervised Learning and Vital Signs. Jacob sheds light on the impact of artificial intelligence in healthcare, the influence of large language models (LLMs) on...

We're excited to talk with Jason Bornstein , Partner and Head of Research at Forerunner . Jason started his career by leading growth marketing at Bonobos, scaling it into one of the first venture-backed DTC brands to achieve $100M in revenue. Post business school, he joined Forerunner, a VC firm specializing in early-stage consumer-driven ventures.  Jason shares his experiences of shifting fr...

We are excited to sit down with Sean Thorne , founder and CEO at People Data Labs . Sean dropped out of the University of Oregon to start his first company, Hallspot. Taking his learnings from Hallspot, he started People Data Labs (PDL). PDL is an innovative API product for developers & data scientists, with over 3 billion data records. Sean discusses why every company is a data company, how p...