Homeroom Podcast

Oliver Gunasekara is the co-founder and CEO of Impossible Mining , a startup building robotics vehicles that collect battery metals from the seafloor without harming ocean ecosystems.

Alisha Fredriksson is the co-founder and CEO of Seabound , a company building carbon capture equipment for commercial ships.

Max Liben is the co-founder and CTO of H3X Technologies , a company building the lightest electric motors in the world for aviation and regional air mobility.

Ibrahim Irfan⁠ is the co-founder and CTO of ⁠Superpowered⁠ , an AI copilot and calendar app for your meetings.

Greg Baker is a software investor and Managing Partner at Alumni Ventures .

Scott Johnston is the CEO of Docker .  Beginning his career in 1989 as an engineering intern, Scott has over 30 years of experience working in tech at places such as Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Loudcloud and Alloy Ventures. With such a track record comes wisdom, and we were very curious what advice Scott would have if he were to do it again. Today, we discuss how the Silicon Valley landscape...

Dalal Alghawas and Nick Sardjono are the Program Director and Program Associate respectively at Big Idea Ventures . A food-tech accelerator with offices in New York, Paris and Singapore, Big Idea Ventures has been investing in cellular agriculture products at the seed and early stage for the last 4 years. Some of their biggest investors include Tyson Foods and Temasek. In this episode, we speak ab...

Daan Luining is the co-founder and CEO of Meatable . Having worked on the first meatless burger under Professor Mark Post, it's safe to say Daan has been in cellular agriculture since the beginning. In the episode, we talk about how public opinion has changed, new innovations in the space, and where he sees the most interesting research being done. Food tech is here to stay, but when and where it...

Brandon Toushan is a consultant at McKinsey .  Undergrad is truly a special time in anyones life. Whether it's the ability to dive deep into projects with no immediate payoff or finding friends to party with, this is a time to figure out who you are and what you want to be. Yet with all this evolution, there's a type of pressure hoisted on people to figure it all out. That can be challenging...

Dan Altschuler Malek is a Managing Partner at Unovis Asset Management . Passionate about all things food and startups, Dan began his career as an entrepreneur in Mexico City, later opening a restaurant as well as managing a creative agency. He joined Unovis in 2018 and now sits on the board of 5 different food-tech companies. In this episode, we discuss career experience, how founding teams are as...

Heather Payne is the founder and CEO of Juno College . Raising venture capital is often seen as a rite of passage in the startup space. You incorporate, gain a handful of customers, and then hit the road to speak with investors to raise a round of funding. But is this something you should actually do? Why. even though most businesses are not venture fundable still go down that path. This week, we...

David Breslauer is the co-founder and CTO of Bolt Threads . There is so much that goes into building a company it's hard to keep track of all the moving parts. When it comes to particular industries like biomaterials, they often get overlooked by other domains like software and hardware. But David managed to circumvent all of this! In the last 12 years, he's created a billion dollars business, has...

Chris Grouchy is the co-founder and CEO of Convictional . It goes without saying creating a business is an incredibly challenging task. Hiring employees, scaling, and raising money is an entirely other traumatic endeavour. In this episode, Chris tells us his incredible story of adversity, what he did to overcome toxic mindsets, and how he grew Convictional to what it is today. This episode truly d...

Prashanth Balasubramanian is the co-founder and CEO of Lastbit - rebranded to Striga . Looking back on our catalogue, we realized how myopic and focused it was on one specific ecosystem in tech. Great companies know no boarders and it was an honour to speak with Prashanth about his journey to Estonia and how it compares to building a company in the United States. From how hiring is conducted, to s...

Brett Thompson is the co-founder and CEO of Mzansi Meats . In the last few years, food-tech has bloomed into a global phenomenon with companies all over the world creating new ways to build a more sustainable food supply. Based in South Africa, Brett explains his goals behind animal husbandry alternatives, what barriers there are to overcome, and what he's most excited about in the future. Homeroo...

Ali Abramovitz is the co-founder and CEO of Chorus . Meditation is like eating healthy: it's easy to start or try, but hard to remain consistent. Chrous is solving that issue by building a community around practicing. Whether it be a group sessions or private lessons, the platform has you covered. Ali's story of creating the company is incredible too, having been a star college athlete and hedge f...

Molly Alter is a Partner at Index Ventures . The Venture Capital industry is not one to make job postings. Role are highly exclusive and to be successful in the space is even harder. So how exactly do you stand out and break out from the competition? Through her experience, Molly explains that while there is no easy route in, there are things in your control that can make this career path more ach...

Reza Azizian is the co-founder and CEO of Ferveret . Given the rise of big data, complications that can occur in data centres are massive. The answer to this is making the cooling far more efficient. By doing so, centres can run at a maximum level of output for longer period of time. If you think this a hard problem, you're right. However, the sign of someone's true intelligence is their ability t...

Gary Amaral is the co-founder and CMO of Breadcrumbs .  He brings over 2 decades of sales and marketing experience to the table. His outlook on life was particularly refreshing, noting it was simply a series of inflection points that if taken advantage of correctly could turn out life changing results. Advice on how to think about imposters syndrome was also incredibly helpful. Homeroom is ho...

Ismael Belkhayat is the co-founder and CEO of Chari . One of the biggest privileges in running operating a podcast is ability to connect with people around the world. Ismael is a proud Moroccan founder, and a serial entrepreneur. As he touches on in the episode, there is no cookie cutter formula for starting a startup, and often, the hardest part is taking that first step. In North America, we fre...

Joyce Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Alariss . We touch on two very important topics pertaining to the journey of a company: how to prevent founder conflict, and how to approach product development. Both are items that occur in the early days of company building, so it was vital to touch on them. In the next 20 minutes we’ll be hearing from Joyce’s experiences and how she grew the team to wher...

Aleksandra Medina and Katrin Kaurov are co-founders of Frich . The fin-tech space has grown an incredible amount in the last few years, and we wanted a firsthand explanation on how build a company in the space. We’re going to be covering a number of topics in this episode, including how to learn from failures in the early days, how to fundraise, and some of the subtle nuances founders may want to...

Seth Rosenberg is a Partner at Greylock . We got the chance to sit down with him and speak about networking and how to break into new industries. It is a personal favourite of ours given how much advice and perspective he has for young professionals! It was a pleasure having him on the program. Homeroom is hosted by Cassius Felicella . Connect with Seth Rosenberg Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethG...

Paul Dix is the co-founder and CTO of Influx Data . Paul is an industry veteran and a man of many accomplishments. Having created the company in 2013, it has amassed thousands of customers and is now 200 employees strong. Given his experience as a CTO and understanding of programming, we asked what advice he had for non-technical people. Many people see learning to code as an impossible task, espe...

Janelle Tiulentino is the co-founder and CTO of Talendrop . This episode is dedicated to showing just how important working hard is and how it can pay off. Janelle's life began in a small town, later moving to study at Stanford and is now working in Silicon Valley. We’re reminded by her remarks just how important it is to focus on the process and not the results. Everyone has a non-linear path uni...