Village Global Podcast

Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen), research fellow at Y Combinator Research, joins Erik for a wide-ranging discussion about a variety of topics, including: * Why the top names in the S&P 500 change over time, but the top names in global university rankings don’t — and how to fix that. * How Michael thinks about the role of risk in science, and why he'd like to see more risk-taking. * Memory, incl...

Erik is joined on this episode by Auren Hoffman (@auren), former co-founder and CEO of LiveRamp and Tod Sacerdoti (@tod), former CEO and founder of BrightRoll. They are now working together on a new fund. They talk about how they came to the idea they’re working on, including how to find the right intersection of ideas among those that are interesting to you, that you are uniquely skilled at, that...

Erik is joined on this episode by Ilya Sukhar (@ilyasu) of Matrix Partners and formerly of Parse, and Alex Yaseen (@alexyaseen), co-founder and CEO of Parabola. They start by talking about what exactly “devsumer” is and why it’s important. They discuss some of the biggest names in the space and how these tools are enabling people who are not engineers to have the kind of leverage that engineers ty...

Erik is joined by Vinay Gupta, CEO of Mattereum, for a wide ranging discussion about crypto, world government, existential risks, science fiction, energy, and much more. Vinay says that venture capital is a 40-year-old model and that the ICO boom — while having its own significant drawbacks — was a huge innovation in capital formation. He explains why the blockchain is such a huge innovation with...

Erik is joined by Scott Heiferman (@heif), co-founder of Meetup. They discuss the reason that IRL (in real life) meetups are important and why in-person contact cannot be replaced by virtual interaction. They talk about some of the most important communities that have started in the past, particularly involving religion, and why the connections they make have been so powerful. Scott mentions the h...

Erik is joined by Laura Behrens Wu (@LauraBehrensWu), co-founder and CEO of Shippo, and Talia Goldberg (@taliagold), venture investor at Bessemer. They start out by talking about how Laura started Shippo and how the team iterated through different ideas to get to what the company is today. She tells the story of trying to get attention from investors for a space that was not too familiar to them....

On this episode Erik is joined by Miki Kashtan, author and NVC teacher. They discuss the problems of exchange in general as a way of fulfilling human needs, the issues with reciprocity, and what fulfilling needs via “flow” and “natural abundance” means. Miki talks about some of the more interesting and unique studies that she has seen about societies from the very distant past and what kinds of le...

Robert Greene (@RobertGreene), author of The 48 Laws of Power and The Laws of Human Nature, joins Erik on this episode to talk about how we can “penetrate the masks that other people wear” and become effective judges of others' character. He calls his new book the “codebook for deciphering human behavior” and talks about why being able to look at something through the perspective of others is the...

Erik is joined by Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), economist, author, and returning fan-favorite. He talks with Erik about why big business should be celebrated and why capitalism is effective but unpopular. Tyler explains why he doesn’t quite believe that the main benefit of the firm is to lower transaction costs. He talks about why big business and capitalism have a branding problem, and what benefits...

Erik is joined on this episode by Noah Smith (@Noahpinion), Bloomberg opinion writer, and Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList. They cover a wide variety of topics relating to, among many others, labor productivity, the gig economy, healthcare, education, solar power and the Green New Deal. They start out by talking about productivity and why it hasn’t increased over the past decades, even...

On this episode Erik is joined by Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella), libertarian writer and patent attorney, Noah Smith (@Noahpinion), Bloomberg opinion writer, and Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList. In a spirited debate, the three of them discuss the relative merits of Austrian economics vs. Keynesian economics. They start out by defining the primary schools of economic thought and explain...

Erik is joined by Zach Perret (@zachperret), co-founder and CEO of Plaid, and David Haber (@dhaber), former co-founder and CEO of Bond Street, now at Goldman Sachs. Zach and David talk about how they met and how they started their respective companies. They explain how to find out whether you are passionate enough about an idea to start a company around it: are you passionate about it enough to be...

Newt Bailey (@nmbailey), founder of The Communication Dojo, and a nonviolent communication coach, joins Erik on this episode to talk about how the framework of nonviolent communication can help you be more compassionate in your conversations and improve communication at work, and in all aspects of your life. Newt tells the story of a protracted conflict at work that he was able to overcome with th...

This episode features Kim-Mai Cutler (@kimmaicutler) of Initialized Capital and Alex Danco (@Alex_Danco) of Social Capital. They start out by talking about the huge rise in housing prices over the last decades in the Bay Area and the fact that there is now net-negative domestic US migration to the Bay Area. They discuss the reasons for this, including the fact that in California, property taxes ar...

Mike Maples (@m2jr), founding partner at Floodgate, and Alok Vasudev (@alokvasudev), early-stage crypto investor, join Erik on this episode. They start out by talking about the biggest companies in tech and the discussion about whether they constitute monopolies. Mike points out the parallels between today’s uproar over big tech and similar eras in the past, including when Microsoft was said to be...

Erik is joined on this episode by Rebecca Kaden (@rebeccak46), investor at Union Square Ventures, Nikhil Basu Trivedi (@nbt), VC at Shasta Ventures, and Jonathan Yoni Regev (@jyonni), CEO and co-founder of The Farmer’s Dog. They talk about where we are in the evolution of the consumer packaged goods space. Rebecca explains why this is a unique moment where consumers are eager to try new things fro...

Erik is joined on this episode by Steve Schlafman (@schlaf), partner at Primary Venture Partners, and David Marcovitz, addiction psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University. They talk about the opportunities and challenges facing startups looking to tackle mental health and substance use disorder. They tell Erik what they would focus on if they were building a company in the space and some of the differ...

Erik is joined on this episode by Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck), co-founder and CEO of CircleUp. Ryan starts out by explaining how he got started in CPG and the mission of CircleUp. He talks about why some VCs don't realize that the market is worth paying attention to and some of their biases when evaluating CPG opportunities. He explains the data-driven approach that CircleUp uses to predict whi...

Dick Costolo (@dickc), former CEO of Twitter, joins Erik and co-host Jayni Shah (@shahjayni), in this special live episode. Dick explains why is focusing on travel and tells some stories from a recent trip to Tanzania where he met with a hunter-gatherer tribe. He recounts what it was like trying to make it as a comic in Chicago alongside Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, and how the lessons he learned f...

This episode features Ben Casnocha, Village Global co-founder and partner, in conversation with Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Cal starts out by defining what digital minimalism is exactly. He talks about why he refrains from using social media and explains how the mechanics of social apps create something resembling an addiction. They discuss...

We were thrilled to host a Masterclass roundtable session with our founders and John Donahoe (@Donahoe_John), CEO of ServiceNow. Prior to ServiceNow, John was CEO of eBay for more than seven years. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and Ben Silbermann at Pinter...

Eric Ries (@ericries) recently joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) in San Francisco to chat with some of the founders of our portfolio companies. Eric is a Village Global LP, friend of the firm, and author of The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Over the nearly 75-minute session, Eric g...

Erik is joined on this episode by Cyan Banister (@cyantist), partner at Founders Fund, and Niv Dror (@Nivo0o0), founder of Shrug Capital. They start out talking about why they’ve each been successful investors and what their respective “superpowers” are. Cyan tells a story about hearing Chris Sacca talk about his fund on a bus and meeting Travis Kalanick in a hot tub. Niv talks about the playbook...

Mark Goldenson (@goldenson), Village Global Network Leader, creator of VentureKit, and formerly founder and CEO of Breakthrough, joins Erik to talk about his requests for startups in the mental health space and in digital health more broadly. Mark recounts his entrepreneurial journey so far, including his experience at Breakthrough, a mental health startup he created and ran that was later acquire...

Jonathan Swanson (@swaaanson), co-founder and chairman of Thumbtack, and John Kobs (@johnkobs), co-founder of Apartment List join Erik to talk all about marketplaces. John and Jonathan talk about their lessons from running their respective companies about what makes a good marketplace, and how prospective founders can find opportunities in the space. They break down what it takes to get initial su...