The IO Podcast: Investor + Operator

In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with David Haber from a16z. David shares many important insights and tactics for both investors and operators, as well as his groundbreaking idea on the concept of "Firm over Fund". He also explains how he got started with a16z, what their focus is in 2026, as well as his involvement in the early stages with some of Silicon Valley's biggest startups. Th...

In today's episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Spenser Skates, Founder and CEO of Amplitude Analytics, the digital Analytics platform that helps thousand of businesses find ways to grow and improve. Spenser shares how he got his first investors, how to have the best relationships with VCs, his mindset around product and employees, and everything he's learned from over a decade growing his co...

A question every startup founder has is, "When do I know when to keep going or throw in the towel?" Today, Tyler and Sterling sit down with ex Navy Seal and Olympian, Larsen Jensen, to talk about just that. Larsen is the founder of Harpoon Ventures, an investment firm focused on building companies that assist the armed forces. He is also the founder and CEO of Vector, a tech company focused on bui...

Usually small startups fail when trying to take on big companies. Rainforest, however, is a different story. In the payments space dominated by Stripe and PayPal, founder Joshua Silver saw a gap no one was paying attention to. The result? Over $1 Billion in transactions in their first year! In this convo, Joshua explains how he found the opportunity, the steps he took to dominate it, and his minds...

Are you a small startup trying to compete with the big dogs? Well then this episode is for you. Tyler and Sterling sit down with Daniel Simon, co-founder of Bread (sold for $500M) who is now working on his next big startup: Coast, a fuel card and payment platform for companies that manage large fleets of vehicles. Daniel breaks down his learnings from his time at Bread, what he's doing differently...

If you need some motivation as an entrepreneur, then this is the podcast episode for you. In today's video Tyler and Sterling sit down with Rene Saul, the CEO and co-founder of Kapital, the $1.3 billion-dollar startup from Mexico City that is transforming the Latin-American banking space forever. Rene breaks down how they got started, the lessons and failures they've had along the way, and how he...

If you haven't heard of Entrata yet, then you need to listen to this episode. Entrata is a sleeping giant of a company that has quietly been growing in the background...and is on track to be the biggest company to ever come out of Utah. In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with their friend Adam Edmunds, CEO of Entrata, as he breaks down how he found the company, how fast it's growing, and...

Hands-down, Arjun is the most interesting man in venture capital. He thinks differently than everyone else, and as a result, his VC Firm, Tribe Capital, and his startup, Kraken, are completely unique. In this episode, he shares how he got started, and the exact tools he used to get where he is today... Check out Tribe Capital: https://tribecap.co/ Check out Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/ Subscrib...

What are the questions founders and VC firms should be asking when raising a Series A? How will AI impact things? What are the common pitfalls for Seed-stage startups? In this episode, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Brett Berson of First Round Capital to answer all these questions and more. -- Chapters: (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:29) Future of Venture Capital in Software Development (00:10:24) "Ubi...

How on earth do startup founders with zero experience in the security industry sell millions of dollars in contracts to police stations around the US? In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety, breaks down step-by-step 1) How they did it, 2) What process gave them the idea to go after crime, and 3), The biggest lessons he's learned during Flock Safet...

With so many AI startups these days, how do you identify which will be home-runs and which will be flops? In this episode of the I/O Podcast, Tyler and Sterling sit down with Eric Vishria, a General Partner at the legendary Benchmark Capital, who uncovers their exact process for finding and funding some of the world's fastest-growing and most successful AI startups. Chapters: (00:07:28) Exponentia...

How do you get paying customers...before you've even built your product? Time to find out! In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Tyler sits down with John Andrew Entwistle, Founder and CEO of Wander, the platform that's transforming the vacation-rental space. Tyler and John Andrew discuss waitlist tactics, how to solve the supply-and-demand problem for marketplace companies, and how to build a...

In this episode of the IO Podcast, Nakul Mandan (founder of Audacious Ventures) shares his tips and tricks for recruiting top talent, the most critical assets for successful companies. He also shares his story of how he became a top investor and what every startup founder needs to know to successfully raise capital. Chapters: (00:05:12) Hustle and Networking in Venture Capital Growth (00:12:50) Ma...

In this episode of Exceptional Startups, Brandon Rodman (founder of Weave and now Previ) breaks down how he’s quietly building a Costco for the modern workforce — one that’s already grown from 300K to 1.5M users in 3 months, all without charging employers a dime. He shares hard-earned lessons from going 0 to IPO with Weave, why he got rejected by 150 investors, and how he's self-funded Previ with...

In this episode, Pete Kazanjy—author of Founding Sales and a veteran sales leader—joins hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow to share a crash course in founder-led sales, explaining why early-stage founders must take charge of selling before hiring sales reps. He breaks down the key mindset shifts for technical founders, how sales is like “weaponized product management,” and when it’s time to deleg...

How do early-stage founders break through and build exceptional companies? In this upcoming season of the I/O Podcast, hosts Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge unveil a new approach—combining insights from the Exceptional Startups List with tactical advice from founders actively scaling their businesses. This season, we’re setting out to be the best podcast in the world for seed and Series A founders....

How do you become the best of the best—the top performer in your field? Dr. Julie Gurner, an acclaimed executive coach and once likened to Billions’ Wendy Rhoades by The Wall Street Journal, shares her insights on what it takes to excel at the highest level. In this episode, Dr. Gurner joins hosts Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge to explore the mindsets, strategies, and leadership styles that empower...

"Joining a company as early as possible, right after achieving product-market fit, offers the greatest career advantage." – Jack Altman Jack Altman epitomizes the true "Investor-Operator." As the co-founder and former CEO of the multi-billion-dollar startup Lattice, and now a full-time investor with his $150 million venture fund, Alt Capital, Jack has successfully navigated both sides of the entre...

In this episode, Tyler Hogge & Sterling Snow sit down with David George, General Partner at a16z, where he leads the growth investing practice. Since joining in 2019, David has been at the forefront of investments in companies like Coinbase, Databricks, Figma, Robinhood and Instacart. Prior to a16z, David was at General Atlantic, where he invested in iconic brands like Airbnb, Opendoor, Slack,...

Current Investor and Divvy's Former CRO Sterling Snow is jumping back into an operating role, this time as CEO of Redo, a fast growing customer experience platform. Sterling shares how Redo's founder Taylor Brown approached him to take on the job and how together they're building a company everyone in Utah can root for. Chapters: 01:03 Why The Investor Operator Podcast Was Started 03:45 How Sterli...

How far would you travel for a good conversation? For hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow it was a no brainer to fly 2000 miles to talk with Kaz Nejatian, the COO of Shopify in their Toronto HQ. Kaz is a fascinating mind in tech and an unconventional thinker shaping the the product culture of Shopify. He shares his story of growing up in Iran, experiencing the Iran-Iraq war, and eventually immigra...

When Blake Murray came up with the idea of Divvy, it was because he had a problem: he couldn’t get real-time data on the financial health of his business. So in 2016, Blake set out to find a solution and realized there was none. Blake spent the next several years building what would become one of the fastest-growing startups in history—a platform combining expense management software and a corpora...

Scott Sandell, Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at NEA is truly one of the great venture capitalists of our generation. With nearly three decades at NEA he leads the field with a track record of dozens of successful investments including unicorns like Salesforce, Plaid, Workday, Robinhood, Cloudflare and Tableau. How has he done it? Scott shares his investment philosophy influenced...

There may be no better pair of fintech investors than Better Tomorrow Ventures Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot. After successful exits in the industry -- Jake as the co-founder of NerdWallet, one of the OG consumer fintech companies, and Sheel with FeeFighter and Innovative Auctions, Jake and Sheel saw a gap in the market and started a fund to help fintech companies at the earliest stages. And they'v...

Immad Akhund had the idea for Mercury years before they started. In fact, he'd launched 3 other startups and been through YCombinator twice before even starting initial validation on what would become the beloved neobank of startups everywhere. And opinions were mixed. Immad himself recognized the need for a simpler and more efficient banking service while while operating Heyzap his previous compa...