The VentureFuel Visionaries

Rudina Seseri is one of the top VCs in the world. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in the next generation of AI and frontier technology startups that are enabling the rise of the intelligent enterprise. She is Startup Boston’s 2022 Investor of the Year, Business Insider’s Most Important VC in Boston and Top VC investing in...

Eze Vidra is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Remagine Ventures and a former GP at Google Ventures, Alphabet’s venture capital arm. We talk about Gen AI from the hype cycle to incumbents vs upstarts to barriers to corporate adoption to the opportunities for strategic partnerships. Why the best large companies from Health to Finance to Tech aren’t sitting on the sidelines and are being rewarded...

Why do corporations work with startups? What is a venture studio? How can startups build faster by leveraging the studio model? Can consumer technologies make our lives better? Kristen Gendron is the COO and Principal at Wildwood Ventures, a new pre-seed venture studio and connected seed fund at the intersection of the outdoor and wellness economies. Kristen’s career includes building venture fund...

Why the #1 player in their industry, over 100 years old, with a $15 B market cap, partners with startups to see what the world is working on. How they are capitalizing on the 99.9% of innovation taking place outside of their four walls to solve for use cases. We discuss how to scale simplicity, the value of innovation, and the challenges of solving for synchronization and legacy. Marty is on my Mt...

David Radlo is an internationally recognized sustainable leadership, growth, and innovation expert. An accomplished Founding Partner that has led a six-fold EBITDA increase and a 30-fold increase in enterprise value, a 10x Entrepreneur, a 2x best-selling author, a founding partner, and has served on 15 boards. We discuss his billion-dollar success disrupting the egg industry as the founder of “Egg...

The Health Equity Accelerator at Boston Medical Center is an ambitious and aggressive approach to eliminating the race-based health equity gap that exists throughout the healthcare industry in the U.S. Sheila Phicil leads the program and shares with us how innovation is at the heart of serving vulnerable and marginalized populations. We talk about identifying gaps in data, co-designing solutions w...

10% of America is hungry, and 37% of Food made ends up as waste, equal to 140 billion meals of Food. Upcycled foods use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured and produced using verifiable supply chains, and positively impact the environment. We discuss renovation vs. disruptive innovation, radical collaboration, and turning pineapples into Nikes.

Bob shares how to unleash innovation in a successful, established industry. From close-in innovations to category-changing, game-changing, consumer behavior-changing transformations. Bob shares some of the successes as well as announces the return of the 5th year of the largest dairy innovation competition, The Real California Milk Excelerator, Powered by VentureFuel.

How do you scan for future growth? Is now the time to build? Where is VentureCapital heading (based on their Q1 2023 VC Benchmark report) and what does that mean for founders and corporations partnering with startups? We ask Laura who is the Founder & CEO of The Venture City and is also the General Partner of their Fund with over $145M under management. They have invested in over 100 seed to Serie...

How can corporates and startups collaborate? Is it possible for Enterprises and Entrepreneurs to drive mutual growth? Originally recorded live in Silicon Valley as part of the Angeles Investors’ Q2 Pitch Night, during this episode, we host Daniel Grubbs, Chief Venturing & Investment Officer at PepsiCo, and Bob Carroll, the VP of Business Development at the California Milk Advisory Board, to discus...

Founder Stories from three high-growth entrepreneurs whose unique perspectives and experiences help them rethink status quo solutions to some of industry & society's most pressing challenges. Featuring Nicole Schmidt, CEO of Source; Chekesha Kidd, Founder & CEO of Kinumi; and Tara Fung, Co-Founder and CEO of Co:Create. Moderated by Shira Averbuch, VP of Innovation at VentureFuel.

Discover how investors are rethinking traditional strategies and structures to build new onramps to funding. Featuring Allison Goldberg, SVP & Managing Partner at Comcast Ventures; Shila Nieves Burney, Founding and Managing Partner at Zane Venture Fund; and Jenny Fielding, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at The Fund; with Rogue Women's Fund Managing Partner, Caroline Lewis.

Clair Casey is the new President of AARP Foundation, the charitable affiliate of AARP focused on a future without senior poverty. She shares how the Foundation’s approach to innovation: leveraging empathy and experimentation to understand people's needs and find new, scalable solutions to complex issues.

Authentic innovation, seizing the right opportunities, and understanding when to strategically go Rogue – featuring Lesley Folensbee, Director of Marketing, Neuropsychiatry Franchise at Biogen; Joan Ondala, Director of Business Development and Corporate Strategy at Winnebago Industries; and Kristen Gendron, Director of VF Venture Foundry. Hear personal stories of triumph and challenges faced from...

The evolution the premier global corporate startup partnership program, the Comcast NBCUniversal’s LIFT Labs Accelerator. Laura Plunkett and Luke Butler, executive directors of Startup Engagement for Comcast NBCUniversal share why they now offer multiple programs throughout the year, open to various stages of startups and all aligned to strategic areas of interest for the core business. We go deep...

110 years of progress and counting, the General Manager of L’Oréal Paris shares how the company has embraced everything from AR to Sustainability to the Empowerment of Women. From Skin Genius to Virtual Hair Color Try-Ons to pioneering science in products, innovation is in the DNA of the organization. Eli shares her 20 years of experience leading multinational consumer goods companies from AB InBe...

Today’s episode features Sallie Krawcheck the Co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a financial company built by women, for women to reach their financial goals. Sallie is one of the highest ranked women ever to have worked on Wall Street, having held posts such as CEO of Smith Barney, CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and CFO of Citigroup. She is one of the most-read “Influencers” on LinkedIn and...

Fiercely female, always rogue. Why investing in women is good business and how innovation can change the world. This is a rebroadcast of our conversation with Caroline Lewis, Managing Partner Rogue Women’s Fund from 2020 as she was launching the Rogue Women’s Fund and we were beginning our Rogue Women Event Series together. This also serves as a preview for our 2023 Rogue Women VI event on Mar 9 2...

On Wednesday, February 1st, we honored the 2022 Visionary and Venture of the Year: Antonia Dean of Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs & Curio Digital Therapeutics’ Shaila Dixit. Join us for a conversation with them about the state of innovation today, the opportunity for entrepreneurs to reshape the industry, and the power to drive positive societal change through collaboration. Learn more about Comca...

On Wednesday, December 7th we sat down with leaders driving transformation within their organizations and reshaping industry in the process. They shared their take on the role of Innovation in 2022, learnings and lessons; plus made some predictions for 2023: what’s coming on the horizon in terms of consumer trends, customer needs, and business transformation. Featuring: Christina DeJesus, Chief In...

Why CVC? Why accelerators? Why startup collaboration in any form when you are a $79Bn a year company ahead of the pack? Daniel Grubbs breaks down the piece of the puzzle that corporate venturing plays in keeping your business ahead of the core, beyond the bottle, closer to consumers, and ahead of trends. We talk about the balance of strategic and financial goals, the value of tip-of-the-spear insi...

David Olivencia gives us an inside preview into his upcoming book NetWORKING Excellence with an actionable framework for the most important skill for career acceleration, community building and accomplishing goals. David is the CEO of Angeles Investors, has held executive roles at Verizon, Oracle, Ford, and Accenture; is an active Board Member of Chicago PBS, the National Museum of Mexican Art and...

“Games will become the creations of their players.” Chris shares how his company has built the business engine for creators to accelerate video game commerce globally. What can large organizations learn from gaming as they think about the metaverse and web 3? How to embrace emerging technologies like distributed development and Generative AI and how the continued improvement in tools and automatio...

What does the world’s largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes, defense, space and security systems, and global services think about innovation? Bobby Niehaus is on the Applied Innovation team, which is the corporate ventures group that brings outside innovation into Boeing, essentially the bridge between Boeing's internal technology strategy and external innovation p...

How do you innovate on one of the world’s largest and most iconic consumer brand portfolios? We ask Anton Vincent, President of Mars Wrigley - North America, which is the largest subsidiary of Mars Inc. which is one of the world’s largest privately held companies. We talk about fostering growth in various macro-economic situations, how to set the table for tomorrow and why the most difficult chall...