Village Global Podcast

Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says. - The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission. - There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creatin...

Ari Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn’t know if the other was safe because the cell network weren’t working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as co...

Joe Connor (@josephjconnor), founder of Odyssey (@WithOdyssey_), joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - ACT test scores are at the lowest level in 30 years. 42% of students met none of the college readiness benchmarks. - District schools are not providing what parents need so children are leaving them in large numbers. - Parents have realized that they would be better off u...

Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years. - Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundr...

Ben Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program. - If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not c...

Deep Nishar (@deepnishar), Managing Director at General Catalyst and formerly of LinkedIn and Google, joins Anne Dwane on this episode. Takeaways: - The best product hires have the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat. - When you’re interviewing people for product roles at startups, don’t ask people what they would do but rather what they have done in the pas...

Christian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks. - Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower...

Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Since the moon landing, we have entered a period of stagnation. Confidence and optimism have declined and culture has entered a repetitive spiral where patterns from the 60s/70s have been repeating themselves. - Government has become less effecti...

Steve Kim ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenrkim/) , Partner and head of Investment Strategy at Verdis, a 9-generation single family office, joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global, on this episode.   Takeaways:   Early stage venture is a power law asset class where the returns of the asset class are driven by outliers. The best way to increase probabili...

Raj Shah, Managing Partner at Shield Capital, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Raj and Shield don’t care whether a founding team has experience selling to government, because the firm can help with that. They evaluate the team, the market and the tech when they’re looking at an investment. - Ash Carter was the first sitting Secretary of Defense to come to Silicon Va...

Julio Vasconcellos and Ana Martins, partners at Atlantico, join Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode to discuss Atlantico's Latin America Digital Transformation Report 2022. Takeaways: - In the rest of the world, digital adoption has reverted to the pre-pandemic mean, but digital transformation has continued at the same pace in Latin America. - Developers in Latin America are more likely to...

Mike Brown, former director of the Defense Innovation Unit, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - It can easily take 10-20 years for tech to make its way into the Department of Defense. The Defense Innovation Unit helped speed that process up dramatically. - Some of the most important technologies being used in the war in Ukraine are commercial technologies. Mike thinks...

Alex Moore (@AustinGiraffe), investor at 8VC and board member at Palantir, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Alex was one of the original team members at Palantir. He says that helping build the company helps him pattern match today to find the best founders. - Defense investing is not like normal VC investing. The usual model of investing $2M, then $10M...

Muneeb Ali (@muneeb), co-founder of Stacks, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Muneeb says that Bitcoin is winning as money, and that he wants to make that capital productive. He’s "bringing smart contracts to where the money is." - Bitcoin’s architecture implies that there shouldn’t be much flexibility and programmability on the base layer blockchain. - A criticism of Ethereum is that it is...

Dan Romero (@dwr) of Farcaster joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Dan says that his first love was information. He loved RSS and the goal with Farcaster is to improve RSS enough so that it can compete with Twitter. - He aims to grow Farcaster large enough so that developers can innovate using their API and data permissionlessly. - Any developer can build whatever they want on Farcaster — fea...

Nathan Picarsic, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - There are 17 rare earth metals that are of immense strategic importance. They are used in a vast array of everyday products like consumer electronics, medical devices, electric vehicles, and more. - China has a strong influence in this space. They have many mines but are e...

Joel Monegro (@jmonegro), partner at Placeholder, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Every financial asset is a contract between two or more people. The world economy is basically a set of contracts on a ledger. - A smart contract is like an API, but on-chain, so it can’t be taken down. In many cases, not even the developers can retract a smart contract. - Value capture and value accrual are...

Steve Blank (@sgblank), creator of Hacking For Defense and author of 4 Steps To The Epiphany, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - The secret history of Silicon Valley is that it emerged from the government’s desire to develop advanced technology and weapons in universities during World War II. - Stanford became a powerhouse in microwaves and electronics po...

Antonio Garcia-Martinez (@antoniogm), author of The Pull Request, joins Erik Torenberg and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - The first version of ads on the web, banner ads, looked like ads in the newspaper, because often the new version of media looks like the last version of media — that’s skeuomorphism. - Apple’s app tracking transparency is breaking the model for Facebook and Snap. -...

Avichal Garg (@avichal), founder of Electric Capital, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways: - Downturns impact large companies much more than founders and early stage investors because the companies are so small relative to their total addressable market. - Managing your own psychology in a downturn is the most important skill for a founder in these times. - Crypto is like a platypus — it has pro...

Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj), investor at Chapter One, joins Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon. Takeaways: - Jeff realized the power of subscriptions during his time at Tinder. He says that digital goods are an even better version of subscriptions. - Web3 is almost entirely missing mobile usability. - Crypto apps could add a reputation layer to existing Web2 use cases, like dating apps. - People a...

AJ Piplica (@AJ_Piplica), founder and CEO of Hermeus, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways: - Every time there has been an acceleration in the speed of transportation in history, high GDP growth has followed. - A switch to hypersonic transportation would unlock $4T in growth. - In the future the key differentiator in air travel will be speed, rather than comfort. - It’s cu...

Mike Shebat (@mike_sheb), co-founder and CEO of Traba, joins Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways: - There is a huge problem with meeting demand for workers at warehouses and fulfilment centres. There are 75% more jobs in those fields after the pandemic. - Mike worked in warehousing and helped scale UberEats so has strong founder-market fit. Traba’s mission of connecting peopl...

Peter Newell (@PeterANewell), CEO of BMNT, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways: - Peter was “handed the Ferrari of skunkworks” when he came to be in charge of the Rapid Equipping Force. It was a program that handled over a billion dollars to deploy new technologies. - He became more of an entrepreneur after his time at the REF and that led to starting BMNT. -...

JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of our web3 series. Takeaways: - Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on. - Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on. - The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just need a laptop. - Roya...