Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Leo Polovets is one of the Founding Partners of Susa Ventures, which launched in 2012. Over the last 8 years, Susa has established itself as one of the premier seed funds in the world, and have made more than 80 investments in companies like Robinhood, Flexport, Andela, and Expanse (recently purchased by Palo Alto Networks for $800MM).  Leo began his career as a software engineer, first at LinkedI...

This episode is a fun one as I had the pleasure to interview Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, an online platform that allows creators to sell directly to their consumers. The company has facilitated the sale of $356 million in products since its launch in 2011 and now helps over 70,000 creators. Gumroad raised capital from legendary angels like Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, Naval Ravikant, and from...

On this episode, we speak with Ted Maidenberg, co-founding partner of Tribe Capital, which he launched with his partners Arjun Sethi and Jonathan Hsu. I’m especially excited to bring this episode to you as Ted draws from experiences working within a Corporate VC (Time Warner), a traditional VC (USVP), and now has co-founded two firms known for their innovative approaches to investing —- Social Cap...

Jon Sakoda is the Founding Partner at Decibel, a venture firm that was created in partnership with Cisco (but independent in nature) in 2018 to invest in early-stage companies. Hear how Jon, who describes himself as a “recovering entrepreneur,” started his first company, Imlogic, Inc. which was eventually acquired by Symantec, and then joined New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in 2006 where he served...

Jodi Sherman Jahic is a managing partner of Aligned Partners , a Silicon Valley-based venture fund investing in early-stage, enterprise technology companies that are have a lean toward capital efficiency. Jodi has nearly 20 years of venture experience and started Aligned Partners in 2011 with her co-founder Susan Mason. A meticulous designer of market strategies and a fierce ally of entrepreneuria...

Follow me on Twitter @ Samirkaji to get my ongoing and frequent updates on the early stage venture landscape Roger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. In this episode, Roger gives a master class on all aspects of starting and building a venture firm. IA is managing $475M across four funds, and is currently invest...

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder at Precursor Ventures, one of the first and most active pre-seed focused venture firms in the world. Precursor seeks to invest in a company’s first round of institutional investment and focuses on investments in B2B software applications, B2C software and services, and connected hardware. Prior to founding Precursor Ventures, he spent 5 years as a...

Elizabeth Yin is Co-Founder & General Partner at Hustle Fund , a pre-seed focused firm based in the Bay Area. Appropriately named, Elizabeth and her team truly epitomize the word hustle. She and her co-founder Eric raised $11.5MM Hustle Fund I in the fall of 2018 and more recently started investing out of a larger Fund II. The firm has a unique investment model that starts by investing $25K in eac...

I’m excited to announce the imminent release of Venture Unlocked, the first podcast dedicated solely to helping emerging venture investors launch, operate, and scale successful venture capital firms.  The trailer embedded here provides a bit of background on the podcast —- if you like what you hear please forward this email to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign-up for the Ventu...