The Deep End by ODF

Navigating the Idea Maze to The Unlikely Birth of Finch Finch, a platform providing a unified API for employment data, was born out of failure and uncertainty. Ansel Parikh and Jeremy Zhang, the co-founders, first met during On Deck's second cohort. Both were passionate about solving the plumbing behind big problems and gravitated towards challenging infrastructure issues. Finch was born out of fa...

Gina Gotthilf is the co-founder and COO at Latitud, a platform helping build the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through products, a dedicated fellowship and fund. Gina met her co-founder, Brian Requart, through On Deck. Before Latitud, Gina was the VP of Marketing and Growth at Duoloingo, helping scale the company from 3 to 200 million users, and worked on the Mike Bloomb...

Joining us in The Deep End today is Sophie Alcorn. Sophie is the founder of Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration law firm that helps tech talent immigrate to the US. She is also the host of the podcast Immigration Law for Tech Startups and author the TechCrunch weekly immigration advice column “Dear Sophie.” Continuing with our series on the meta-problem of helping people start more companies, we...

On The Deep End today, we welcome Sasha Orloff, the Founder and CEO of Puzzle, a modern accounting software package for startups that recently raised $15 million in series A. Sasha joins us to discuss the use of accounting as a powerful decision-making tool and the creation of infrastructure to start and scale businesses, as part of our series on meta-problems to help founders start more companies...

Joining us on the Deep End today is Minn Kim. Minn spent a few years as an investor at Ridge, Bloomberg Beta and On Deck, backing founders as early as possible and is now building Plymouth to help extraordinary talent immigrate to the US. In this conversation we go deep into Minn’s core belief – that technology enables step changes in human agency. We discuss navigating the idea maze, picking who...

Last week in The Deep End we spoke with David Booth, CEO of On Deck. Today we're continuing our mini-series on the meta problem of how to help more people start more companies by re-publishing an episode of the Solarpunk podcadst with Erik Torenberg, co-founder and Chairman of On Deck. Erik joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon discuss why startups are the most effective organizations for solving our...

On the latest episode of The Deep End podcast by On Deck, we interview our very own David Booth, CEO of On Deck. Recently, David has announced one of the biggest updates to On Deck since the program went virtual in 2020, with the return of in-person programming and community space in San Francisco. In this conversation, we discuss why On Deck is doubling down on IRL programming, why he believes ve...

Vivian Chen is the CEO & Founder of Heyo, a bite-sized pitch platform for professional success. Before starting Heyo,Vivian was an operator who built products across categories from high-growth startups to global enterprises. Vivian is on a mission to build the future of work. Heyo enables users to build profiles online short-form content and video, offering a new way to tell your professional sto...

Ani Pai is an investment partner at Dragonfly, where he focuses on highly technical Web3 projects in emerging markets. Ani believes that progress happens on the frontier. Whether it be outer space, the mind/body, and the oceans. He’s focused on using crypto to explore these frontiers and eventually merging crypto networks with analog industries in order to shepherd the next billions users into web...

Lauren Self is the founder of Roots Homes, a platform that helps put the dream of homeownership within reach by allowing prospective buyers to effectively pay rent while building equity in their home with fractional ownership.  In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey and life experiences that motivate her to build in this space, why the dream of owning a home feels increasingly out of...

Madison Campbell is Co-Founder and CEO of Leda Health, which provides aftercare for sexual assault survivors. Leda Health approaches its space through a survivor-focused lens, developing self-administered DNA collection and testing, while also connecting survivors with professionals and resources. In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey since leaving school to pursue a startup, fundra...

Joseph Connor is the CEO & founder of Odyssey, a platform that helps families access state microgrants for K-12 education. Prior to starting Odyssey, Joseph was a former teacher, school founder, and attorney.  Joseph and his team at Odyssey are on a mission to empower everyday parents by enabling access to public education dollars. Odyssey’s technology provides states with a turnkey platform to ma...

Andrew Rea is an angel investor and operator, who recently started and organized New York Tech Week. He leads go-to-market at Capital (formerly Party Round) and has invested in over 20 startups, including Motion and Cococart. Before he was at Capital, Andrew was vital in building the community at the On Deck Angels fellowship . Andrew also has founder experience, having co-founded an EV startup, r...

Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and Executive Chairman of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Village Global’s Solarpunk is a podcast series about technology, space, and defense. Takeaways: Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems. Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth. Governments and startup...

Lawson Baker is the Founder of RARA, a social curation protocol for NFTs that revolutionizes how creators benefit from sharing their art, and how curators interact with and gain value from interacting with artists’ work.  Our discussion centers around how web3 will forever change the dynamic between creators and curators. “Likes” and “heart” buttons are remnants of web2 — RARA creates tools to mov...

Rehan is the Founder and CEO of Chptr, a startup fixing the way the world remembers people who have passed away. Prior to creating Chptr, he had a long career in music, founding the “Life is Beautiful” festival, and led marketing teams at high-profile Las Vegas hotels.  Rehan and his team at Chptr are vying for the memorialization space, which up until now has been owned by legacy media obit pages...

Julian Weisser is the co-founder of On Deck, partner at our Founders and Angels programs, and investor at Other Ventures. He is a prolific startup investor and has backed over 100 companies ranging from asteroid mining to dog longevity and decentralized museums. He’s often one of the first angels that founders seek out for guidance on how to construct their fundraise. Our discussion today covers h...

Emmanuel Straschnov is the Co-CEO and Founder of Bubble, an online tool to build web applications without code. Our discussion is about the state of No Code: what it is, where it came from, and where it's going. The pandemic saw a huge growth of interest in No Code in mid-to-late 2020 as people everywhere began looking for cheap and fast ways they could start building from their own homes. We also...

JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of Venture Stories web3 series. Takeaways:   - Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on.   - Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on.   - The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just nee...

Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion company. Our conversation today centers around the different use-cases of AI, from task-oriented chatbots to emotionally-supportive AI companionship. We delve into the current state of conversational tech, including how chatbots can become good listeners, and why Replika used a mixture of scripted retrievals and generative AI models...

Today, we’re syndicating an episode from the Village Global podcast hosted by On Deck co-CEO Erik Torenberg . The guest on the show is Mike Shebat  - CEO & Co-founder of Traba and a member of Forbes 30 Under 30. Mike participated in the 8th cohort of our On Deck Founder fellowship. He and the team at traba recently closed a $20M to match contractors with events and warehouse work. He met one of hi...

A year ago, we launched The Deep End with Balaji Srinivasan as one of our first three guests. In the episode, he discussed the impending arrival of The Network State. Flash forward to this Monday on the fourth of July when Balaji released his book “The Network State: How to Start a New Country.” In a single sentence, a network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collecti...

Mark Switaj is co-founder & CEO of Roundtrip Health. Roundtrip is driving better health by providing a full suite of non emergent transportation options to patients in different care settings across the country.  After exploring the India and health tech market in India last week, we wanted to revisit  healthcare in the US.  Today’s conversation is about social determinants of health. Social deter...

Amrit Singh is a co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India.  Our discussion today is about what it’s like to be a founder in India, and what the startup ecosystem there looks like relative to the US. India is an interesting paradox because although it’s a massive country in terms of population which contains almost 1 in 5 living people, that doesn’t always eq...

Joel Alexander is the founder and CEO of Crowdpad, a tokenized community-building platform for creators whose goal is to help creators monetize on day one.  Our conversation today centers around web3 and the future of the creator economy. We discuss how the path to monetization on traditional creator economy platforms like YouTube is so long and onerous that most people give up, and how allowing c...