Innovation with Mark Peter Davis

As you can tell from the title, this isn’t a normal episode. I just wanted to give a couple of quick updates. 1) THANK YOU for listening and supporting the pod. It's crazy to think that we’re 27 episodes in!! I very much appreciate you joining me on this journey. 2) We’re taking a summer break and just wanted to let you know so you didn’t think we were bailing on you! We’re going to take the rest...

On this week’s episode I chat with Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners. Javelin is a premier VC firm that has invested in a ton of successful companies including a bunch of unicorns like Master Class and Thumbtack. Now, this episode is a bit special for me because Jed gave me my first break into VC back in 2006. He’s been a long time friend and mentor, so much so that I thanked...

On this week’s episode I chat with Alex Taub. Alex is the Co-Founder & CEO of Upstream, a digital platform that is redefining professional networking. Over the years I’ve watched many community platforms fail. I don’t know the exact stats, but the success rate is low. I think one of the reasons why a community platform is so hard to build is that it requires so many features to deliver suffici...

On this week’s episode I chat with Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners. Sapphire Partners invests in early-stage venture capital funds and Beezer leads their investment team, focusing on both domestic and international funds.

 Beezer is a star and began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and...

On this week’s episode I sit down with Noah Glass, Founder and CEO of Olo. Olo isn’t a household name, but that’s by design. They are a white label solution that powers most of the restaurant apps you have on your phone. These apps streamline ordering and specialize in supporting takeout.  While I suspect that most people would correctly guess that the majority of the food ordered from restau...

On this week’s episode I chat with Darius Monsef, Founder and CEO of Brave Care. Brave Care is creating a new, better healthcare system for kids by providing primary, urgent & remote care catered just for them, 365 days a year. By tech-enabling a system that’s been long overdue for an upgrade, Darius hopes to make Brave Care the premier children’s healthcare partner for parents. Interplay is l...

On today’s episode I sit down with Peter Sullivan, the Founder and CEO of Jackpocket. Jackpocket is digitizing the lottery - allowing everyone to play the lottery from their phone. Peter shares his epic entrepreneurial tale that I think will one day become startup folklore. He persevered through an extremely long development cycle - during which he put it all on the line - only to emerge with a co...

On today’s show I chat with Jeff Bussgang, Co-Founder and General Partner of Flybridge Capital Partners, a Boston based VC fund with 700M under management. As you know from previous episodes, I’ve been interviewing different VCs on the show with the goal to highlight different geographies. Jeff’s on to represent Boston. Along with being a VC, Jeff is the author of “Mastering The VC Game” and a pro...

On this week’s episode I have a great conversation with David S. Rose, a serial entrepreneur who’s current venture is US Real Estate Market, also known as USREM. US Real Estate Market is a startup developing a capital markets platform for fractional institutional investment in commercial real estate.  David's path to this current venture has been a lifelong journey. He comes from one of the g...

On today’s show I chat with Jon Stein, the Founder and Chairman of Betterment. Betterment is an investing platform that helps people manage their money. Jon and I met at Columbia Business School way back in 2007, which is when he first told me about his idea for Betterment. I didn’t get it at the time, but Jon had a vision. After navigating the murky waters of a HIGHLY regulated sector, Jon launch...

On today’s episode I catch up with Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures. New Stack is a VC firm based out of Chicago, IL that focuses on early seed stage investing. With a strong focus on investing in their own backyard, Nick and New Stack are on pace to build a brand name VC between the coasts that represents the Midwest on the national stage. It was great to hear about how things are going and what...

On today’s episode I catch up with David Cummings, an entrepreneur on a mission to put Atlanta on the map when it comes to tech and venture capital. He also happens to be an old friend of mine.  David and I met during our undergraduate days at Duke where we were two of only a few entrepreneurs on campus. My endeavors fizzled out while David’s became massively successful. He sold one of them -...

David Cohen is the Founder and Chairman of Techstars, one of the largest venture capital operations in the world. Since 2006 they’ve been on a mission to help entrepreneurs succeed and have invested in over 2,400 companies. What began in Boulder, CO is now a global network of entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, and cities. You know innovation isn’t far behind when Techstars comes to town!&nbsp...

Samer Hamadeh is the Founder and CEO of Zeel. Zeel started by providing in-home massage therapy, but looks a bit different these days. As you might suspect, the pandemic crushed their business and overnight their revenue went to zero. But in a time of crisis Zeel was able to leverage the logistics network they had built over the years to start offering in-home COVID testing. They’ve now expanded t...

As the Managing Partner of Upfront Ventures, Mark Suster has helped Los Angeles, where he and Upfront are based, reach the national stage when it comes to venture capital. The landscape was totally different 20 years ago and Mark/Upfront is a big reason why. After two successful exits as a founder, Mark joined Upfront in 2007. Since then Mark has become one of VCs most prominent venture capitalist...

VCs invest in startups and founders, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they always provide the support and patience that the founders need. On this week’s episode I chat with Josh Stein - Managing Partner of Threshold Ventures - about Threshold’s emphasis on how they champion their founders by supplying them with that support and giving them time to develop. Josh is acutely aware of this need in V...

Ian Sigalow is the Co-Founder and Partner of Greycroft, one of the biggest and most successful VCs out there. Over their 14 year history they've invested in a long list of success stories such as Public, Acorns, Goop, Bird, and many more. On this week’s episode Ian and I discuss the strategies Greycroft has followed in order to grow into a firm that manages more than $2 billion. We chat about how...

Limited Partners are a critical part of the venture capital ecosystem. They provide capital to VCs who in turn invest that money in companies, so the LP perspective is important to consider when trying to fully understand how VCs operate. Graham Pingree is a Partner at Cendana Capital, one of the preeminent LPs in the tech community. Graham and I discuss the role of LPs in venture capital, strateg...

Modern Meadow is revolutionizing the materials industry by inventing brand new materials that can be used in our everyday lives. Inventing new materials is exciting, but Modern Meadow's sustainable approach might just be the best part. By using nature's building blocks - proteins - to build these brand new materials, they hope to replace the the materials used in most of today's goods that are lar...

The full legalization of cannabis is approaching FAST and with it a multi-billion dollar industry looms. Ryan G. Smith is a serial entrepreneur who’s current venture - LeafLink - is a B2B e-commerce platform servicing the cannabis industry. Ryan, who at 30 years old has built/exited multiple successful startups and is a member of Forbes 30 Under 30, breaks down the current state of the cannabis in...

Philip James is the Founder and CEO of Penrose Hill / Firstleaf, a wine club for the modern age that uses data science to match the perfect wine for each customer based on their personal preferences. They ship over 100k boxes of custom wine every month. The company is a behemoth. This isn’t Philips first go around in the wine industry. Philip has been a dominant force in the space for the past 15...

Zach Sims is the Co-Founder and CEO of Codecademy, an education company that empowers people to transform their personal and professional lives by helping them learn modern skills. Zach started Codecademy 10 years ago when he was still an undergraduate student at Columbia University. As Codecademy gained momentum and took on investors, Zach decided to pursue it full time and left college. Now a de...

What is Israel doing to produce the most startups per capita, VC dollars spent per capita, and unicorns per capita? Yaron Samid is the Founder of TechAviv, a global Israeli startup founders club that's 3,000 members strong. He is also the Managing Partner of TechAviv Founder Partners, a pre-seed venture fund backed and powered by some of the world’s most successful company builders. Yaron was born...

Peter Boyce II is a Partner at General Catalyst, one of the preeminent venture capital firms out there. General Catalyst makes early-stage and transformational investments while backing exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market leading businesses. Investments include the likes of Airbnb, ClassPass, HubSpot, KAYAK, Oscar, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. P...

Lisa Barnett is the Co-Founder, President, and CMO of Little Spoon, a fresh, direct-to-consumer baby food and early childhood nutrition company reinventing the modern parent’s experience of keeping their child happy and healthy. Lisa and I discuss her journey (which has a unique twist as she left a coveted job in venture capital to start Little Spoon), the importance of identifying an enemy when h...