The Logan Bartlett Show

In this episode, Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann (co-authors of Founder VS Investor) debate venture capital and startup dynamics. Liz is a 2x founder who’s raised over $100 million, and Jerry has over 25 years of experience as a venture capitalist with successful bets on companies like Datadog and The Trade Desk. The authors banter on topics from fundraising, board meetings, the best role of VCs, and...

Vlad Madgalin is the co-founder and CEO of Webflow, a platform with 3.5 million users that helps people develop websites and web applications. He shares Webflow’s journey as an integral player in the no-code movement, as well as why he's grateful for the opportunity to start this company in the United States. Vlad tells many sincere stories including immigrating from Russia at age 9, starting Webf...

Ryan Smith is the owner of the Utah Jazz, as well as the founder and former CEO of Qualtrics (recently acquired for $12B). In the episode, Ryan reveals why he bought his hometown NBA team, and what it’s like to own the Utah Jazz. He shares his unconventional path to founding Qualtrics, including how he dropped out of high school, ended up in South Korea with nothing, and later started the company...

John McMahon has served on the board of MongoDB and Snowflake and is best known as a five-time CRO who has built the sales processes that power enterprise sales in Silicon Valley. In this episode, John talked through a ton of practical topics around sales, including the biggest sales mistakes that early-stage startups make, how to hire a sales team to supercharge your company, and more. (0:00) Int...

Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus (VR headset maker that sold to Facebook for $2.3B) and Anduril (an autonomous military technology company valued at $8.5B). In the episode, Palmer uncovers the real story of why he was famously fired from Facebook in 2017. He also shares his thoughts about the virtual reality industry and discusses why building these autonomous military defense systems leads...

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier, an automation business most recently valued at $5 billion. In the episode, Wade discusses why Zapier only raised around $1M and unpacks Zapier’s strategies for growing profitably. Wade shares lessons from building one of the first remote-only companies in tech, including key tips for hiring, onboarding, building a great management team, and much mor...

Laela Sturdy is the managing partner at CapitalG, Alphabet's $4B independent growth fund. Laela has invested in a number of iconic companies across both consumer and enterprise, including Duolingo, Stripe, Gusto, UiPath, and more. In the episode, Laela gives a behind-the-scenes look at Alphabet’s startup bets and discusses how CapitalG makes their investment decisions. She shares how she stays ahe...

Jyoti Bonsal was the founder and CEO of AppDynamics, which sold in 2017 to Cisco for $3.7 billion right before it went public. We talk about that sale as well as Jody now running two separate businesses. He's the CEO of Harness. Which not coincidentally, was most recently valued at $3.7 billion, as well as the CEO of Traceable ai, which was recently valued at $450 million. In this conversation, Jo...

Zach Weinberg is the Founder and CEO of Curie. Bio, a $520M fund transforming biotech. In the episode, Logan and Zach banter on the current state of the venture capital industry, as well as everything from remote work, artificial intelligence, and founder advice. Prior to Curie. Bio, Zach was the Co-Founder at Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche) and the Co-Founder at Invite Media (acquired by Goog...

Peter Fenton is a renowned venture capitalist and a Partner at Benchmark, a leading venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. With a remarkable track record in the tech industry, Peter has played a pivotal role in shaping the success of numerous high-profile companies such as Twitter, Yelp, Zendesk, Elastic, Docker, and many others. Peter's ability to spot trends and invest in transformative i...

Jaan Tallinn is the Co-Founder of Skype and one of the most prominent voices in AI safety. After co-founding Skype he begun to delve into the world of AI safety and strongly holds the position that humans can not motivate AI and that action must be taken. Jaan initiated the 6-month pause on AI that was co-signed by Elon Musk. Nonetheless he's invested in some of the most influential AI companies l...

TJ Parker is the Founder of PillPack, one of the first-ever DTC Pharmacy companies that sold to Amazon in 2018 for $1B. Prior to founding PillPack TJ worked odd jobs in retail, pharmacy, and real estate and has a deep background in design which informed much of what he built at PillPack. In this episode, TJ shares stories from fighting off Big Pharma institutions that threatened to take his busine...

Tim Urban is the Author of the blog "Wait But Why" and has one of the most listened-to Ted talks of all time. His work covers a broad range of topics from why we procrastinate, to how much time we have left with our parents, to breaking down the US involvement in the Iraq war. In this episode, Logan and Tim dive into some of the ideas that Tim has written about, as well as newer topics like the ro...

Emmett Shear is the co-founder of Twitch, one of the most influential platforms in recent history. From its humble beginnings as a gaming streaming platform to becoming a cultural phenomenon, Twitch has redefined the way we connect, entertain, and build communities online.  The episode is packed with stories from Emmett’s 16-year tenure as CEO and his journey to founding the company. Emmett shares...

Immad Akhund is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Mercury, a FinTech Platform that was in the headlines recently for being the biggest beneficiary of the SVB crisis. In the 6 days after the crash, Mercury took in over $2B in new deposits from companies leaving SVB and raised FDIC insurance from 1 to 3 to $5M in a week. Immad is also known for being one of the best fundraisers in the game and sh...

Daniel Ek is the CEO and Co-Founder of Spotify and an overall legendary entrepreneur. Daniel grew up in Sweden and after selling a few businesses went on to found Spotify and disrupt the music industry against all odds. On this episode Daniel shares his entrepreneurial journey, stories from the earliest days of founding Spotify, his beef with Apple's app store policies, his views on enabling free...

George Boutros is commonly known in Silicon Valley as the man behind basically every big tech acquisition in the past 10 years. George was involved in the sale of LinkedIn to Microsoft, Slack to Salesforce, Figma to Adobe, and many others. On this episode he shares his background, how he got into investment banking, and what it was like advising on some of the greatest deals in history including S...

Aaron Levie is the CEO and Co-founder of Box - a now profitable public company he founded in 2005 after dropping out of USC. In his second appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show, Aaron shares what he's most excited about in the AI world including real applications that Box is building today. He also shares his takes on who will win the AI battle between incumbents and startups, AI doom and where th...

Jay Simons is a General Partner at BOND Capital and former President of Atlassian. Jay ran Atlassian between 2012-2020 taking them from pre-IPO to about $3B in revenue. Jay is known for being one of the earliest SaaS leaders to adopt and implement a product-led growth strategy. In this episode Jay shares his background, stories from the early days at Atlassian, building two products at once (Jira...

Eliezer Yudkowsky is a researcher, writer, and advocate for artificial intelligence safety. He is best known for his writings on rationality, cognitive biases, and the development of superintelligence. Yudkowsky has written extensively on the topic of AI safety and has advocated for the development of AI systems that are aligned with human values and interests. Yudkowsky is the co-founder of the M...

Keith Rabois is a prominent Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur. He is currently the CEO and founder of OpenStore, and a partner at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. Prior to this, he served as the COO at Square, a mobile payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, and was also part of the so-called "PayPal Mafia," a group of individuals who co-founded PayPal or wo...

Dan Runcie is a music industry analyst, writer, and the founder of the newsletter and media platform “Trapital.” Trapital focuses on the business strategies of hip-hop and offers insights into the intersection of culture and commerce in the industry. Runcie has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Billboard, and Forbes. Dan joins the podcast this week to discuss the business s...

Scott Raney and Satish Dharmaraj are Redpoint's most senior investors and both appeared on the Forbes Midas List in 2022. Having invested in companies like Stripe, HashiCorp, Snowflake, and Sonos - they go through their perspectives on where everything's headed, AI, the venture ecosystem as it stands, how our partnership works, and more. (0:00) Intro (1:24) Welcome Satish and Scott (7:27) Venture...

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason. He is known for a number of his works including Prediction Markets and Futarchy, writings on the possibility of alien life with both the Great Filter and Grabby Aliens, his book The Elephant In The Brain about our social programming, as well as extensive work and thought in the field of artificial intelligence including a very pr...

In the 58th episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, Annie Lamont (Co-founder, Oak HC/FT) joins to discuss the state of the market, being a woman VC in the 90s, run-ins with Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes, and her duties as the First Lady of Connecticut.  (0:00) Intro (2:18) State of the Market (16:23) State of the Venture Industry (28:00) Qualities of a Good Founder (32:00) Annie’s Background (35:44)...