The Delphi Podcast

Join José as he hosts another episode of the Emerging Manager series on the Delphi Podcast, sitting down with Ian Rowntree, founder and managing partner of Cantos. Ian details the ten-year journey of Cantos, moving from early vertical software into hard tech and physical AI, while announcing the launch of their $70M Fourth Fund.  They dive into the reality of venture capital returns, the power law...

In this episode of The Delphi Podcast, Tommy sits down with AccelXR, author of Delphi Digital’s “Evaluating the AI Labs of China” report, to break down what’s actually happening in the US-China AI race.  You can read the report here: https://members.delphidigital.io/reports/evaluating-the-ai-labs-of-china?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:35 Is China Innovating or...

 Join José as he hosts another episode of the Emerging Manager series on the Delphi Podcast, sitting down with Michael Dempsey, managing partner of Compound. Michael makes the case that most venture funds being raised today are playing momentum games that won't survive contact with a real cycle, and explains why Compound has become known as one of the slowest-deploying seed funds in the US. T...

In this episode of The Delphi Podcast, Tommy sits down with Steve McLaughlin, founder and CEO of FT Partners, to unpack how he left Goldman Sachs at 32 and built one of the most influential investment banks in fintech. Steve shares the story behind FT Partners’ early days, including how his team took a company that had received roughly $150 million offers and ultimately sold it for $550 million. H...

Join José as he hosts a special edition of the Emerging Manager series on the Delphi Podcast, sitting down with Andrew Kang, founder of RoboStrategy. After managing personal capital through Mechanism Capital across both public and venture markets, Andrew turned his focus entirely to the under appreciated robotics industry a space he identifies as being at a critical inflection point reminiscent of...

In this episode of The Delphi Podcast, Tommy sits down with Travis Good, co-founder of Ambient, to discuss why open-source AI may ultimately beat the closed labs and what that shift means for developers, businesses, and the broader AI economy. Travis explains how Ambient is building a decentralized marketplace for AI inference, matching demand with underutilized GPU capacity while verifying that u...

Join José as he hosts the first episode of the Emerging Manager series, sitting down with Jordan from Nomads—the fund-of-funds arm of the legendary VC firm Hummingbird. Together, they break down what truly separates elite venture investors from the rest of the market and how small, nimble emerging managers can outmaneuver multi-billion dollar tech funds. They dive into the concept of "pre-con...

What makes a great founder? Sandy Kory has spent decades trying to answer that question. As the founder of Horizon, he's backed companies like Palantir, BillionToOne, Canva, BaseTen, and SendCutSend long before they became breakout successes. In this episode, Sandy shares the unconventional framework he uses to identify exceptional founders, why he ignores most pitch decks, why talent density...

Join Yan Liberman and Can Gurel as they speak with Samed Düzçay, founder of Tori, a yield protocol bringing institutional-grade delta-neutral strategies on-chain. Samed shares his journey from mining Bitcoin as a child to building and exiting a successful SaaS company, eventually identifying a massive gap in the stablecoin yield market.  They dive into the mechanics of the "carry trade,"...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he speaks with Logan, Managing Partner of Frictionless Capital, about the high-stakes race to build a global blockchain-based financial system. Logan shares his updated thesis on why monolithic, high-throughput architectures like Solana are winning the battle for real revenue and trading dominance over modular designs. They dive deep into the "Global Exchange" v...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy in San Francisco for the first podcast from the new Coliseum office. In this episode, Clay Robbins, Co-Founder of Coliseum, discusses how his team manages the world's largest online hackathons and why they chose to double down on the Solana ecosystem. They dive into the mechanics of sourcing 80,000 builders, the transition from remote to a massive in-person accelerator,...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he speaks with Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, about his deep dive into the existential threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin. After six months of intensive research and discussions with Nobel Prize-winning physicists, Nic breaks down why the "quantum threat" has moved from theoretical FUD to a material risk that the Bitcoin community is curre...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he speaks with Mike McCormick, founder of Halcyon, about the urgent intersection of AI acceleration and safety. Mike shares his path from venture capital to launching a hybrid nonprofit–fund model focused on securing advanced AI systems. They dive into mechanistic interpretability, global competition for AGI, and what a safe superintelligence future could look like. Can w...

Join Ashwath Balakrishnan and Neel Daftary as they explore the future of DeFi infrastructure with Connor Howe, co-founder of Enso. After nine years of building in crypto, Connor has created what he calls "the shortcut to building on-chain applications" - a developer tool that abstracts away the complexity of integrating with hundreds of DeFi protocols. From powering Berachain's $3.1...

Join Alex Golding as he sits down with Austin Federa, Co-founder of DoubleZero, to explore how they're building permissionless high-performance fiber infrastructure that could revolutionize blockchain performance. Austin shares the technical vision behind creating a parallel internet for distributed systems, starting with Solana validators as their initial market. DoubleZero: https://doubleze...

Join José Maria Macedo as he co-hosts with Matt O'Connor from Legion and Filip Wielanier from Cookie3 to explore "Attention Capital Markets" - revolutionizing token distribution by linking social influence with capital commitment. Fresh off Legion's funding from VanEck and Brevan Howard, discover how they're moving beyond airdrops to merit-based investing that rewards genu...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he sits down with Mike Dudas, Managing Partner at 6th Man Ventures, to discuss one of the most successful seed investments in crypto history. Mike shares the inside story of backing Pump. Fun years before it became a cultural phenomenon, generating over $800 million in fees and reaching a $5.5 billion FDV. From cold DMs to billion-dollar outcomes, this conversation explor...

Join José Macedo and Yan Liberman as they host Michael Egorov, co-founder of Curve Finance and one of DeFi's original pioneers. Michael introduces Yield Basis — his ambitious new protocol that aims to solve one of DeFi's biggest problems: impermanent loss. Learn how this innovation could finally unlock natural, sustainable yield on Bitcoin at scale, creating the long-sought "holy gr...

Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman host Sapijiju, co-founder of Pump.fun. Sapijiju shares Pump.fun’s bigger vision: beyond meme coins, it’s aiming to be the most rewarding social platform, revolutionizing creator monetization, and building a $2B-backed financial ecosystem. Pump.fun: https://pump.fun 🎯 Key Highlights ▸ Pump.fun’s vision: TikTok + Robinhood + Twitch in one ▸ Streamers earning 100–300x mor...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he hosts Pondering Durian (Lead at Delphi Intelligence) and José Macedo (Co-Founder at Delphi Labs & Founding Partner at Delphi Ventures) to introduce Delphi Intelligence — Delphi’s new open research initiative focused on artificial intelligence. Learn why Delphi is going deep into frontier models, robotics, reinforcement learning, and the intersection of crypto and A...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he dives into the world of Dev. Fun with founders Devlord and Robi. Dev. Fun is revolutionizing app creation by enabling anyone — regardless of technical background — to build and launch applications using AI-powered vibe coding. Learn how the team is merging Web3, tokens, and consumer apps to create a decentralized ecosystem of user-generated tools, games, and communitie...

Join Can Gurel as he hosts Harry Dewhirst, co-founder and CEO of 375ai, to discuss their ambitious real-world application of DePIN. Learn how they're building a decentralized network of sensors to capture and monetize physical data at scale. 375ai: https://www.375.ai/  🎯 Key Highlights ▸ Harry Dewhirst’s background in Web2/Web3 and his path to founding 375ai. ▸ How 375ai evolved from deployi...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he hosts Mitch and Mikel, co-founders of Taofu and TPN, to discuss Taofu, a launchpad for Bittensor subnets. Learn about how they're democratizing subnet funding and their first subnet launch. Taofu: https://www. Taofu.xyz/ Taofu Funding Form: https://form.typeform.com/to/KmvNfUg5 🎯 Key Highlights ▸ Mitch and Mikel's journey from DeFi to discovering Bittensor a...

Join Jordan Yeakley as he hosts David Choi and Conor Moore from USD.AI to discuss their innovative synthetic dollar backed by AI and DeepEnd hardware assets. Learn about USD.AI's unique approach to on-chain infrastructure financing. USD.AI: https://usd.ai 🎯 Key Highlights ▸ David and Conor's journey from Deutsche Bank to creating USD.AI ▸ USD.AI's three-pillar structure: Caliber, m...

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he hosts Logan Allen, founder of Zorp and Nockchain, to discuss Nockchain, a new proof-of-work L1 blockchain. Learn about its ZK Powell consensus mechanism, where miners generate ZK proofs. Zorp: https://zorp.ioNockchain: https://nockchain.org 🎯 Key Highlights ▸ Logan Allen's journey to creating Nockchain. ▸ Nockchain's "ZK Proof of Work" (ZK Powell)...