Village Global Podcast

Aline Lerner (@alinelernerLLC), founder of interviewing.io, and Tasneem Minadakis, Engineering Leader at Google and advisor to interviewing.io, join Erik to talk about recruiting software engineers and opportunities in the recruiting space more broadly. Aline explains how interviewing.io allows for anonymous interviews, including the story of creating software to mask voices so neither side could...

Erik is joined by Ron Bouganim (@ronboug), founder and managing partner at Govtech Fund. Ron explains his thesis at Govtech Fund and how he got started in the space. He gives us a sense of just how neglected the technical operations of government are and why there are so many ripe opportunities in the space. He talks about why traditional venture capital wasn’t interested in the deals he was sendi...

Erik is joined by Afton Vechery (@aaffttoonn), co-funder and CEO of Modern Fertility, and Anarghya Vardhana (@anarghya503), VC at Maveron. Afton explains how she went from private equity to running a women's health startup and talks about the problems that she saw in the space and how Modern Fertility aims to change the lives of women. Anarghya talks about their investing criteria at Maveron and w...

Blaine Hatab (@blainehatab), CEO of Distru, joins Erik to talk all about the cannabis space. He explains what he is doing at Distru, how he got into the business and why the cannabis space is ripe with opportunity. He talks about the changes that have occurred in the market over the past several years with legalization in various localities and why that has led to a challenge for companies trying...

Erik is joined by Vincenzo Iozzo (@_snagg), Village Global network leader and director at CrowdStrike, as well as Jamie Butler (@jamierbutler), CTO at Endgame. James and Vincenzo talk about where opportunities are in the space and what their requests for startups are. Vincenzo says that he’d like to see cybersecurity risk securitized to create financial incentives for companies to insure their ope...

Ashu Garg (@ashugarg), partner at Foundation Capital, joins Erik for a primer on the marketing tech space. They talk about how Ashu got started in the space and Ashu discusses a blog post he wrote predicting that this decade will be the decade of the CMO. He says that marketing is key in the current business landscape, in the same way sales, finance and IT held that mantle in previous eras. He tal...

Elaine Wherry (@elainewherry) joins Erik on this episode to give us the playbook for recruiting for your startup. Elaine was co-founder of Meebo and is now investing at Edelweiss VC ( https://www.edelweiss.vc ) alongside co-founder Lee Jacobs ( https://www.leejacobs.co ). Elaine explains her superpower — being able to build quantitative systems around qualitative characteristics. She talks about h...

Erik is joined by returning guest, Simon de la Rouviere (@simondlr), co-founder at Ujo and ConsenSys, and Achill Rudolph (@AchillRudolph), lead link and initiator at Convergent. They start with an introduction of what personal tokens are, how they work, and why they have the potential to empower people around the world. Achill explains how they are thinking about them at Convergent and how they’ve...

Erik and co-host Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol) interview Keith Rabois (@rabois), newly announced GP at Founders Fund. Keith starts out by talking about why he joined Founders Fund and the reason that the structure of VC means we don’t see more people moving from one fund to another. They talk about the future of venture and whether there will be more M&A in the space and where he sees things going in the...

Erik is joined by Justin Kan (@justinkan), founder of Atrium, Twitch and others, as well as Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol), Justin’s Chief of Staff and Erik's co-host for this episode. Justin talks about the wisdom he’s gained over the past few years after selling Twitch and founding Atrium. He explains why it’s important to stay humble, not get too attached to any particular outcome for your startup and...

On this episode Erik is joined by Christina Cacioppo (@christinacaci) of Vanta, and Amjad Masad (@amasad) of Repl.it. They discuss the reasons why developers tools are for the most part “primitive” and the cause of the mess of different technologies and utilities that a developer needs to know how to use in order to create an app. They talk about the concept of “end user computing” and the progres...

On this episode Erik talks to Andrew D’Souza (@andrewdsouza), founder and CEO of Clearbanc, and Ali Hamed (@AliBHamed), investor at CoVenture, recurring guest and fan favorite. Andrew breaks down how Clearbanc works, why now is a unique time to build a new model of funding, and how they are using quantitative metrics in a business that has typically relied heavily on qualitative factors. He says t...

Erik is joined by Anda Gansca (@agansca), co-founder and CEO of Knotch, an independent content intelligence platform for marketers. Anda starts out by explaining the shift in the marketing world to content, the story of Knotch, and why the company has been in a great position to take advantage of that trend. She says that display advertising, including banner ads, outdoor advertising and televisio...

Erik is joined by his co-host for this episode, Brianne Kimmel (@briannekimmel), investor, advisor and Village Global network leader. They talk to Christoph Janz (@chrija), investor at Point Nine Capital, a Berlin-based early stage venture capital firm focused on SaaS and digital marketplaces. Christoph lays out their investing thesis at Point Nine and talks about why they are geography-agnostic w...

Erik is joined by Brad Hargreaves (@bhargreaves), founder and CEO of Common and co-founder of General Assembly, and Zach Aarons (@ZacharyAarons), co-founder and partner at MetaProp, a proptech venture fund. The guests explain what exactly proptech is and why it’s an exciting space for entrepreneurs. They go over some of the sub-segments within proptech, some of the existing unicorns in the space,...

Bradley Tusk (@bradleytusk) joins Erik on this episode to talk about the intersection of politics and tech. He’s founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures and author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death By Politics. He’s also a philanthropist, political strategist, and hosts his own podcast, Firewall. Bradley has worked with Michael Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, Uber, and many others. He shar...

Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) joins Erik to talk about his new book The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture. Scott is Chief Product Officer at Adobe and was CEO and co-founder of Behance. He’s also an early stage investor. Scott discusses his experience founding, scaling and selling Behance, then working as a venture capitalist, early stage in...

Erik sits down with Donnie Dinch (@donnie), Michael Galpert (@msg) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg), to follow up on the projects they were working on a year ago when they all got together at the end of 2017 to talk about consumer social on one of our first podcast episodes. They discuss what’s changed since then and what they see ahead in the consumer social landscape. They discuss some of the u...

Erik talks to longtime friend and co-author of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work, Liz Fosslien (@fosslien / fosslien.com). She talks about the importance of “feeling your feelings” and not running away from them, especially at work. Liz gives some practical tips on how to give good feedback, how to approach negotiating, and how to be a good boss. She talks about the...

On this episode Erik is joined by Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), founder of Wordpress and Automattic, as well as Andreas Klinger (@andreasklinger), VP of Engineering at CoinList and a founding team member of Product Hunt (along with Erik). At Automattic, Matt works with over 850 employees working remotely in 70-plus countries. The three of them discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a distributed tea...

On this episode, Erik is joined by Jd Ross (@justindross), co-founder of Opendoor. They talk about a wide variety of topics, including mental models, cities, governance, travel, founding myths, and “why all of us are solely responsible for western civilization.” They start with mental models, talking about some of the most useful mental models Jd has seen and how he identifies new ones (a mental m...

Erik is joined by Jesse Genet (@jessegenet), co-founder and CEO of Lumi. Lumi is an online platform that handles all of the packaging needs for direct-to-consumer companies. Jesse explains what the typical process for procuring these types of supplies why even huge companies like Amazon still have to navigate a maze of relationships with various brokers and suppliers to fulfill their packaging nee...

On this episode Erik is joined by Antonio Garcia Martinez (@antoniogm), author of Chaos Monkeys, and Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList. Parker is a returning fan-favorite. Erik describes Antonio’s Chaos Monkeys as half Michael Lewis of Silicon Valley and half Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great read. Parker and Antonio debate whether the corrosion of discourse and the rise of fake news are...

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Yunus Saatci, of Uber AI labs and a founding member of OnDeck, and Lewis Gyson, founder and CEO of Ant, a Village Global portfolio company. They were interviewed recently in downtown San Francisco. Yunus talks about the unique career he's had so far, with stops at big tech companies as well as in venture capital. Lewis explains what he and the...

On this episode Erik is joined by Vijay Boyapati (@real_vijay), a returning guest who was previously here to talk about Bitcoin and crypto from an Austrian perspective. Today he’s here to talk about healthcare from the Austrian perspective. He breaks down the causes for the dysfunction in the US healthcare system as he sees them and talks about what (if anything) might fix them. They discuss the f...