The Sure Shot Entrepreneur

Andrew Gluck is a General Partner at irrvrntVC, a New York-based venture capital firm focused on direct-to-customer, AdTech, and NextGen Commerce. Andrew strongly believes in founder-market fit and is excited to invest in startups targeting fast growing markets. He shares insightful stories of founders transforming ideas into market-defining businesses. Approaching the process like customer sales...

Phil Boyer is a Partner at Crosslink Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm focused on enterprise applications, infrastructure, vertical software, and frontier technology. As a passionate technology investor, Phil shares how he evaluates early-stage founding teams and provides real-life examples of category-defining companies. His portfolio includes Weave, Chime, Coupa, Yotascale, De...

Ken Singleton is a professor at Stanford University - Graduate School of Business. Through a glamorous 30-year career in academia, he has contributed significantly to development finance and economics in distinguished teaching, research and advisory roles. Today, he mentors and supports Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in building sustainable businesses rooted in social impact through financial techno...

Eugene Zhang is a founding partner at TSVC, a Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm that focuses on emerging deep tech and FinTech startups. Eugene has invested in over 170 startups, including ZOOM.us, Carta, Gingko Bio, Quanergy, TrustGo, Plus.ai, and Lambda School. He is always looking for visionary and articulate entrepreneurs building the next big hit in the tech industry. An e...

Jacob Gibson is the Founding Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm investing in the future of Fintech. Before getting into investing, Jacob was co-founder and COO at NerdWallet. He helped develop a world-class team working to build the massively successful personal finance company. Gibson considers in depth risk analysis and unique insights key to forming...

Steven Lurie is the founder of Team Builder Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that helps founders build world-class teams. Drawing from decades of experience scaling teams at tech start-ups, Steven shares proven ideas for successful recruiting and building high-quality teams. Listen to the episode to avoid common hiring mistakes founders make during early startup stages. Lack o...

Homan Yuen is a partner at Fusion Fund, an early-stage VC firm focused on investing in innovative companies with a technology barrier to their business models. He gives examples of hand-on support as an investor using prior experiences in research & academia and high-tech entrepreneurship. Homan insists that honesty is key in building solid startup foundations to create lasting power. Disclose all...

Swati Chaturvedi is the co-founder and CEO of Propel(x) - a marketplace that connects investors and experts with science & technology startups. Swati shares her unique experience at the rare intersection of entrepreneurship, investment banking and venture capital roles. She is keen on deeptech  innovation and customer traction when evaluating startups.  Use resources like investment bankers to eff...

Vivek Krishnamurthy is a venture capital investor at Commerce Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based VC capital firm focusing on investments in the e-commerce, FinTech and Insurance sectors. Vivek is particularly interested in entrepreneurs with extensive market knowledge and practical vision for what’s going to happen in the future. The humility of acknowledging your competition helps you discover the...

Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator, shares insightful experiences and lessons learned over three decades in Silicon Valley. He talks passionately about his interest in education technology and why Y Combinator invests in startups at their earliest stages. Accelerators have helped reduce information asymmetry and level the playing ground for entrepreneurs Technology will be at the center of v...

Cindy Padnos, founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures, invests in B2B SaaS, enterprise cloud and mobile computing startups. She shares her incredible journey as a female founder of a venture capital firm. Named one of the Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley by New York Times, Cindy cares deeply about increasing diversity in the technology industry. Founders are judged for who they...

Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner at Preface Ventures, invests in early stage enterprise software startups. An optimist by nature, he entered into VC at the age of 19. He shares why founder openness, commitment and grit are key to investments. Career trajectory indicates long-term commitment to the mission of a startup Best VCs aim not to poke holes in the business but to illuminate risks...

Sandeep Bhadra is a partner at Vertex Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC firm that invests in B2B software and services. He candidly talks about his career as an engineer and experiences in venture capital. His methodical approach to researching startups creates the thesis for his investments. Interesting ideas  often start with a sense of frustration about an inefficiency and a strong desire to...

Andrea Kalmans, founding partner at Lontra Ventures, launched an investment firm with her husband and invests in 2 to 4 startups every year. She gives real-life examples of startups from her portfolio in healthcare, enterprise infrastructure, software, block chain technology and other sectors.  Startup ecosystem in Austin, Texas is booming Bold founders grounded in reality whom people want to foll...

Gaurav Jain, co-founder and managing partner at Afore Capital, describes the process of leading pre-seed and seed stage investments.  He gives examples of founders of startups with unproven business models and what convinced him to invest.  Think non-linear to create non-obvious insights like Kyle Vogt, founder and CEO at Cruise Automation Learn by playing in the field not by operating in vacuum V...

Steph Khoo, a venture capital investor at NYCA Partners, shares examples of  innovative fintech startups changing the global financial systems. She talks about her due-diligence process, and how the changes caused by COVID are permanent.  Fintech 2.0 is about re-bundling financial services After COVID, connecting with people and have meaningful discussions is a lot easier Prevention instead of cur...

Ashmeet Sidana, chief engineer and founder of Engineering Capital, invests in startups with technical insights. He gives authentic examples success and failure stories from his portfolio of 20 startups. Education transformed his life starting in a rural village in India to the Silicon Valley.  Great entrepreneurs are good at storytelling VC is a service business. It is the job of a VC to make it e...

Ullas Naik, Founder and General Partner at Streamlined Ventures, shares his journey as investor on Wall Street and later starting a venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley. He has invested in >100 startups including 30 companies valued at >$100 mil. He gives real-life examples of founders with a bold vision and the perseverance for execution.  Extreme scale businesses are led by opinionated ent...

Vinay Iyengar is a venture capital investor at Two Sigma Ventures based. His describes his investment thesis focused on the infrastructure for creative work. He talks about lessons learned in empathy through his failed startup and the evolution of remote work.  Empathy for the customer, clarify of thought and humility are qualities of greatness in entrepreneurs Venture capital business will always...

Mar Hershenson, founding managing partner at Pear Ventures, shares her journey starting as a successful entrepreneur to launching a VC firm with Pejman Nozad. Her authentic description of failure in a startup she founded highlights her lessons as a CEO.  Founders grow professionally with the company and by consistently investing in themselves Pivoting a business for the right reasons can open door...

Sydney Thomas at Precursor Ventures talks about founders who truly care. She describes how she wants to work with inspiring entrepreneurs. She invests in startups to build the middle class.  Entrepreneurs relate better to people like themselves, but not with career VCs who live a very different life The true power of entrepreneurship is in creating long-term sustainable economic development in loc...

Clint Korver, co-founder and managing director of Ulu Ventures, talks about managing uncertainties in venture capital investments. He describes his Vulcan mind-meld market mapping session with examples of both successful and failed startups. Decision analysis process combines data and intuition to minimize cognitive biases and reduce risk Uncertainty is common in venture capital: only 2.5% of 4000...

Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and general partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, has a gut feel about the founders. He gives an insider view using examples of fintech investments.   The role of a VC is a combination of a management consultant and a psychotherapist Fintech started in 2014 and is still in the early days of innovation At the pre-seed and seed stage venture capital investments team is most i...

Consuelo Valverde, founder and managing partner at SV Latam Capital, supports startups focusing on Latin America. She describes using real-life examples how decision analysis helps her evaluate founders and their ambitious ideas.  Invest in ideas generated by brilliant minds looking to transform the world in some meaningful way is exciting When faced with uncertainty of markets and uncertainty of...

Ankur Jain, Founding Partner at Emergent Ventures, describes how transformation through self-reflection shaped his investment philosophy. He empathizes with the challenge entrepreneurs face while seeking honest feedback from investors.  Decision from first meeting to investment takes 6 weeks Transform your life with inner engineering Entrepreneurs face many pessimistic questions from everyone but...