Valley Nordic

Send us Fan Mail We are excited to have Mike Polacek as a guest of honor on this episode. Mike is one of the few business leaders who has run large tech businesses and has been a professional investor in public companies.  We dig deeper into the how building semiconductor business is different than building a SaaS business, complexity, Moore's law, and many other interesting subjects related...

Send us Fan Mail Quick Commerce and its history  Venture Capital flowing to Quick Commerce in Europe  How Quick Commerce might evolve 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the emergence of new companies like Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna which are popularizing the idea of Point of Sale financing i.e. when you are buying something you can choose to pay later. We tried to have structured conversation today:)  What is BNPL History of BNPL Why is it happening now How does it work  Who are the players  Future of BNPL 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the recent Chinese government investigations of Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Didi, etc. Is it good governance and China is leading the world in regulating tech or is it a way to gain more control for the government?

Send us Fan Mail Three unique things about Robinhood IPO, growth numbers,  and a discussion on its business and financials. Useful links: 1. Robinhood S1 2. Why Chander is not participating in the Robinhood IPO

Send us Fan Mail We discuss: 1. Space tech market and segments  2. Why some space tech market segments are not suitable for venture investments  3. What are the drivers of space tech

Send us Fan Mail We discuss:  1. Why startups need boards 2. How the role of the board changes as the company evolves  3. Types of board members  4. Common mistakes CEOs and board members make when they work together 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss:  1. What are CBDCs?  2. State of CBDC in China 3. Benefits of CBDC 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss what is the current chip supply and demand situation, why it happened, and how the countries and companies are trying to solve the chip supply problem. 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss:  1. What is Clubhouse? 2. Why Clubhouse it getting popular now? 3. Discussion on the future of Clubhouse.  Let us know if you need an invite to join Clubhouse. 

Send us Fan Mail 1. What are NFTs? 2. Why are they in the news? 3. What new opportunities become possible because of NFTs? You can buy the NFT for our blockchain episode (S1E3)   here :)

Send us Fan Mail We discuss Roblox's history, business, and its upcoming IPO. Useful links: Roblox S1

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the latest phenomenon of retail investing that caused GameStop stock to go up more than 2,000% in a few weeks. 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss Tesla's origins (spoiler alert - Elon Musk is not the founder) and its evolution.  We also debate its current valuation of ~$800B. 

Send a text Happy New Year! We are back with our new biweekly and shorter episodes schedule. We start the year with reviewing the history of Virtual Reality (VR) and discussing its barriers to mass adoption. 

Send us Fan Mail In our season 2 finale, we review the 2020 trends we had identified in Season 1 finale. See the trends here . You can find the Morgan Stanley report on Private Equity here .  We will be back on January 14th, 2021 on biweekly basis.  Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! 

Send us Fan Mail We have a guest on the podcast this week, David Krieger, who is back with us after a year.  David and I discuss fundamentals of embedded systems and his experience in designing them.  Useful links: 1. David Krieger on LinkedIn 2. Embedded Systems

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the recent S1 (a required document to be filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a private company to raise money in the public markets like NYSE or Nasdaq) filing by Airbnb to public in the US. Useful link: Airbnb S1 S1 definition 

Send us Fan Mail This week, we are delighted to  have a guest on the podcast, Joanna Jones, Founder & CEO of InterQ Research. Joanna and Chander discuss User Research and why the qualitative methods are necessary to complement quantitative methods. Useful links: 1. Joanna's LinkedIn profile 2. InterQ Research  

Send us Fan Mail We discuss how the US elections have caused the tech stocks to go up. We get deeper into California Prop 22 (a ballot measure by ridesharing and food delivery companies to change the law about classifying their drivers as employees and stopping them from forming a union). Useful links: 1. Prop 22 2. Direct Democracy

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the unique nature of Ant Group IPO which is going to be the world's largest IPO ever. Ant Group which has 700M+ users is raising >$34B in the IPO at a valuation of >$300B. Ant Group is a spinoff of Alibaba and has a special relationship with the Chinese government. Useful Links: 1. Ant Group 2. Ant Group IPO filing documents 

Send us Fan Mail This week, Depart of Justice (DOJ) and 11 State Attorney Generals in the US filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. We discuss the intricacies and history of these type of lawsuits. Useful Links: 1. DOJ Workshop at Stanford  2. DOJ Google Lawsuit press release 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss a new IPO market in Norway and other innovative IPO strategies. 2020 has turned out to be the most innovative year for finance. 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss Google's launch of new smartphones - Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5,  new video streaming device - Chromecast, and new smart speaker - Nest Audio. 

Send us Fan Mail We experiment with a shorter episode ( < 30 minutes). Spotify co-founder, Daniel Ek, made an announcement last week that he will invest ~$1.2B in deep tech in Europe. This prompted us to discuss what deep tech investing is and how it is different between the US and Europe. Useful links: 1. Daniel Ek announcement at Slush