The Deep End by ODF

Ben Kuhn is the CTO at Wave, a mobile payment company whose mission is to make Africa the first cashless continent by building ways for unbanked people to send and save money. Our discussion today covers a wide variety of topics — everything from how going cashless can help lift people out of poverty in sub-saharan Africa, to how social enterprises differ from tech companies. to why soccer balls d...

Alex Kantrowitz is a reporter who contributes to CNBC, hosts the "Big Technology" Podcast and writes the "Big Technology" newsletter, which includes reports & analysis of big tech firms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft Apple, and more.   Alex is an independent reporter with a background working at media orgs like BuzzFeed. He's optimistic about the impact of tech on the world. As such - he occupies...

Our discussion today centers on the “market for solutions”, a mental model that guest Charles Cushing explored in a 2020 essay he wrote where he wondered if there was a way to improve the market for solutions in order to make all downstream problems easier to solve. In Charles' view, On Deck’s mission is to help improve the market for solutions by bringing together capital, talent, and customers a...

Anand Chandrasekaran is a partner at General Catalyst with extensive executive experience at some of the biggest names in tech, including Five9, Facebook, and Yahoo. He has also started several of his own companies.  Today’s episode is about the startup ecosystem in India, where Anand has invested in dozens of up-and-comers. We discuss first the phase-by-phase evolution of India’s startup ecosyste...

This week's guests are Ian Cinnamon and Lucas Bagno. Ian and Lucas are the co-hosts of Village Global’s new Solarpunk podcast, which focuses on space, technology, and defense.  The theme of the conversation today is Solarpunk. It was interesting that, although they say they’re inspired by the aesthetic of Solarpunk, Ian and Lucas emphasize that they have their own interpretation of what Solarpunk...

This week's guest is Eli Dourado, an economist who says that all he wants is for GDP per capita to reach $200k in 2050.  Marshall's conversation with Eli today centers around how to get economic growth back on track after the Great Stagnation, which was a slowdown of total factor productivity growth from 2% annually in the post WW2 period to .3% by 2005.  We discuss the causes of economic stagnati...

Today's guest is "Default Friend," an internet personality who writes about internet culture and digital communities.    Our discussion starts by using the recent Taylor Lorenz controversy regarding her story on Libs of TikTok to launch into a broader discussion of how the internet and tech are reported on, and why there’s a one-dimensional focus on fear mongering or trend analysis in media covera...

Fred Stutzman is founder and CEO of Freedom - a company developing a toolset for the future of focused work in a distraction-first world.  Our discussion is about what the future of work will look like in a world where the things that enable remote collaboration, like Slack and email, are the very things which make it hardest to focus.  We talk about fighting the negative externalities of social m...

 Rachel Sanders is co-founder and CEO at Rootine, a company focused on optimizing health and performance through precision nutrition. Rootine is focused on what they call precision health and nutrition, which involves looking at hundreds of data points to identify your nutritional deficiencies and sending you tailored supplements to optimize your health, along with a way to track if it's working. ...

Julien Smith is co-founder and CEO at Practice. He's also a bestselling author  and executive coach.  Today’s discussion focuses on Julien’s journey from starting as an online author and creator and then turning into a multi-time startup founder, instead of vice versa.  We discuss what it takes to make the leap from talking about something to actually doing it, how publishing has changed and why i...

Lukky Ahmed is the founder & CEO of Climate X. Today’s discussion is about understanding climate change from the standpoint of how it affects us and the world around us for generations to come, using data and machine learning.   Our conversation covered topics like how climate change can be used to inform risk models for everyone from property holders to businesses to governments, and the variable...

Paul Millerd is author of the Pathless Path, which is about his personal journey of leaving the traditional realm of work and finding something holistic and sustainable.  In this conversation we discuss what Paul calls “the default path” — a cultural script we grow up with that tells us what to do in order to be a successful adult, like getting a “forever job”, versus what Paul calls the “pathless...

Today you’ll hear On Deck CEO Erik Torenberg interview Emil Michael - Uber’s Chief Business Officer during their hypergrowth period from 2013 to 2017. While he was there, Uber grew from 250 employees to 15,000 and raised $15 billion. He shares the lessons he learned and systems he built during this blitzscaling with Erik. For more tactical episodes like this, you can listen to Execs wherever you g...

Muhammad Lila is Founder and CEO of Goodable. He is also previously a Warzone Correspondent, leading global news coverage at CNN and ABC. He has been nominated for 2 Emmy awards.  Today’s discussion is around Muhammad’s vision for fixing the news by changing it from one of the biggest drivers of anxiety and depression into a cure .  This discussion includes topics like how and why more than 90% of...

Rob Paddock is co-founder & CEO of Ahead Wind. Ahead Wind was one of the first companies admitted into ODX and is currently technology that reduces human involvement in 3D printing.  Today’s conversation is about the future of 3D printing automation. Rob outlines how the general public is usually under the assumption that 3D printing is a push-button process. He underscores how it isn’t actually t...

Jonny Price is VP of Fundraising at WeFunder. WeFunder describes themselves as Robinhood for pre-IPO startups. In May 2016, the Obama administration made it legal for everyday people to invest as little as $100 in startups or other businesses. On today’s show, Jonny and Marshall talk about how to level the investment playing field. They chat about why it’s a problem that 77% of venture capital has...

Trevor Martin is founder & CEO of Mammoth Biosciences. Mammoth is  building the platform for CRISPR applications of the future. They currently have technologies built for diagnostics, genome editing, and protein discovery. CRISPR is a novel system that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence. Trevor joins...

Dan Miller is Founder & CEO of Spora Health. Spora Health is a radically inclusive, virtual-first telemedicine provider focused on health equity and providing culturally competent care.  Today’s conversation is about disparities in health care. Dan shares a little bit about his family’s experience with the healthcare system and outlines how technology can help alleviate some of the challenges that...

 Ish Baid is Founder & CEO of Virtually. He's also the host of the popular podcast "Reshaping Education.  Virtually is building what it envisions as the Shopify for online schools. Ish and I spend the episode enthusiastically discussing the ongoing disruption of the higher education system. On Deck and Virtually have both built their businesses on the back of cohort-based courses. Ish outlines why...

Nikolaus Redl is co founder and CEO of Colorful.app . Nikolaus and the Colorful team are changing how photos are created. Their virtual, drag & drop 3D photo studio allows creators to build stunning photos in minutes. We talk about why this is useful, the future of 3D modeling, and the European tech scene, among many other topics within the future of photography. For more on On Deck’s programs, vi...

Dr. Clea Kolster is a partner and Head of Science at Lowercarbon capital. Lowercarbon backs companies that make money slashing CO2 emissions and removing carbon out of the atmosphere. Clea leads the firm’s technical research, development, diligence, and scientific strategy efforts. She’s also a founding fellow of On Deck’s Climate Tech programs. Last July, On Deck’s climate director Candice Ammori...

This week, we figured we’d give you a peek under the hood of On Deck’s programs. Every week, dozens of amazing events take place in our programs across sectors (like climate tech, health tech, and longevity) as well as across professional verticals like business development engineering, and many more.  Most of these events happen behind closed doors, but this week we’re releasing one of our favori...

Francesco Agosti is an ODF alum and  co-founder and CTO of Phantom - a wallet for the Solana blockchain. We’ve had many web3 guests on the show in the past year, but none have focused on the wallet. Wallet applications are one of the primary ways in which users interact with blockchains directly. They come in many different forms - some are custodial, meaning they are managed by third parties like...

Jimmy Soni  is author of "The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley." The book hit shelves yesterday.  In 2022, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered one of the technology industry’s most powerful alumni networks. Since leaving PayPal, these players have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook...

Alexander Harmsen  is Founder & CEO of Global Predictions. Global Predictions has created a wealth optimization platform to help make its users better investors. Alex leaned on his experience in both On Deck Founders and On Deck Investing to make the early product and has now grown a sophisticated Deep Tech company that has built a digital twin of the economy to make unbiased forecasts into the fu...