Top Decile Podcast

Vijay Rajendran led portfolio value creation at 500 Global across 2,800 companies in 80 countries before co-founding gAI Ventures. Amit Goel brings 20 years as a payments and identity operator, including building and selling a fintech company. Together they've built a venture studio around one central idea: vertical expertise should drive AI company formation, not the other way around. We get into...

Anthony Atlas won first place at the International Science and Engineering Fair at 17, earning himself a minor planet in the process. He spent years noticing that science fair alumni kept turning up as exceptional startup founders, then built the data to prove it: finalists who go on to start companies do so at a 15 percent unicorn rate, with over two-thirds making it through Series A. We get into...

Lorenzo De Leo spent more than a decade as managing director at Rocker, one of Miami's leading venture studios, where he helped build over 40 companies across the US and Latin America. That operator background is now the foundation of Enya Ventures, his pre-seed AI fund targeting Latin American founders at the moment before US capital starts paying attention. We get into why Latin America is at a...

Radhika Iyengar was named one of the Top 100 Women of the Future and has advised startups that generated $4 billion in shareholder value. Her co-founder Jorden Woods is a Caltech astrophysicist with her own exits and $50 million raised for portfolio companies. Together they wrote a book in 2019 predicting enterprise AI and blockchain would converge. Then, they spent six years building the track re...

J.P. Keating spent 25 years inside five Fortune 500 supply chains — Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, Allstate — before deciding insiders needed to be the ones writing the check. Now, as founder of ProChain Ventures, he's backing pre-seed and seed stage founders building the technology that makes global supply chains faster, more resilient, and harder to break. In this episode, JP and Connor dig into why su...

Galit Flasterstein sold a travel company she ran in Costa Rica for a decade, then built a marketplace connecting LatAm artisans to global buyers, and concluded the real gap wasn't commerce but early-stage capital. Now she runs Danta Fund, a pre-seed vehicle backing ag tech, biotech, food tech, and climate tech founders across Latin America with a thesis built on the region's biodiversity. We get i...

Walid Aradi and Wes Schwalje spent over 15 years at Tahseen Consulting advising heads of state, ministries, and 11 unicorns on navigating the regulatory and political realities of the MENA region, including structuring two of the region's biggest exits, Uber's acquisition of Careem and the Dubizzle-EMPG merger. Together they launched Red Tape Ventures, a Dubai-based seed fund backing marketplace a...

Nathan Maton built his career at the intersection of design, technology, and human behavior, with stints at Google, Khan Academy, and Omada. He became an angel investor and ran The Clearing, a workshop for founders navigating life after a significant exit. That work crystallized his debut pre-seed and seed fund thesis: repeat founders in FinTech and AI are systematically underserved at the earlies...

Vineet Shah spent 18 years inside the energy industry. From a 4.6 gigawatt power plant through CurtissWright and Caltrol to co-founding Honeywell's lithium-ion battery business, where he created the industry's first-ever performance guarantee product. He launched 8 Clockwise as both a venture studio and seed fund backing founders in energy access, decarbonization, and advanced materials, guided by...

Anca Burke and Andrey Mikhalchuk co-founded ARTA VC around a shared frustration: 70% of enterprise AI integrations fail because companies try to attach AI to systems that were never designed for it. Their fund backs early-stage founders in the DMV who have already done the opposite. We get into how AI-powered autofocus eyeglasses gave a retired military pilot better vision than he'd ever had, why...

Mike Keymer is an MIT-trained engineer who spent two decades commercializing deep science for U.S. defense agencies, biotech analytics, and quantum computing platforms. He launched AlphaKet Capital to back seed-stage companies building the infrastructure layer that quantum needs to scale: the quantum equivalent of modems, repeaters, and memory. We get into why a massive capital influx in late 2024...

Ryan Else spent nearly two decades working inside enterprise security, industrial markets, and frontier tech before launching Roadster Capital to back seed-stage founders modernizing the American industrial base. His portfolio already includes a company that received a $150 million commitment from the U.S. Department of Commerce for extreme ultraviolet lithography critical to national chip securit...

Garrett Smith holds a PhD in bioengineering from UC San Diego and co-founded two medtech companies acquired for a combined $600 million, one before FDA approval. After spending years investing in and partnering with early-stage companies at Johnson & Johnson, he launched Reef Haven Ventures to back life science and medtech founders at the convergence of biology, robotics, and AI. We get into w...

Alan Blakeborough is a military veteran and 35-year serial entrepreneur who built startup accelerator Launchpad after discovering South Carolina had no support system for tech founders. People were leaving for Atlanta, Charlotte, and Austin just to find a community. Now he's running the Launchpad Ignite Fund, which primarily invests in companies that stay on after graduating the accelerator. We ge...

Mike Saloio spent eight years as a sell-side equity analyst at Oppenheimer, covering Cisco, Apple, and EMC, before founding Huddle, a VC-backed marketplace that helped over 150 startups assemble design and engineering teams. Now he's launching Begin Ventures to back the founders pre-seed ecosystems routinely miss: domain experts using AI to reinvent legacy consumer industries. We get into why AI i...

Moy Aras spent over a decade running brand and innovation at Chobani, Nestlé, Nespresso, Aloha, and Applegate before betting on early-stage CPG founders the way he wished someone had bet on him. He wrote angel checks, built a 13-brand portfolio, and launched Lucinda Capital in 2025. We get into why the consumer brands that matter most get built by founders with audacity rather than pedigree, how o...

Collette Tibbitts spent years at the intersection of music and tech, consulting for Island Records and Sony Music Nashville and working on blockchain at Universal Music Group. She co-founded Joker Deck to back the founders venture capital has consistently walked past. We get into why music tech is a proving ground for innovations that expand well beyond the industry, how misaligned access and capi...

Oscar Carreón and Roberto Nieves co-founded Cabra Ventures after careers spanning Mexico, China, the Netherlands, and the Middle East, including Roberto's time in institutional investment at Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. They set out to build the fund they always wished existed for founders who don't fit the traditional VC mold. We get into why the next wave of fintech will be built by fo...

Backing the Systems Pharmacy Needs Next | Christian Tadrus, Pharmacy Innovator Fund Why pharmacy needs new infrastructure to connect to care, payment, and clinical workflows, how economic misalignment is holding the profession back, and what it takes to build a fund from inside the industry you're trying to change. Through Tadrus Advisory Group, Christian Tadrus launched the Pharmacy Innovator Fun...

Varun Turlapati spent 16 years as a software engineer before founding Chaanakya Capital, a $2M pre-seed fund backing US neurotech and medtech startups. His edge is his master's in electrical and computer engineering. He can evaluate the science-heavy deals most VCs don't even understand. Find out why neurotech is at the same inflection point AI was in 2016. Hear how one company puts a bionic hand...

Doug Griffin has founded four companies in computer vision and spatial AI. Three exited, including acquisitions by Apple and Roblox. Now he's running Spatial Capital, backing early-stage physical AI and spatial computing founders tackling the problems nobody else wants to touch. We get into why he only bets on unsexy problems, how AI can compressing 13-year mining timelines down to three, and what...