Venture with Grace

Nick Adams is the co founder of Quill. Quill is a local meeting tool designed to free you to be present in meetings, and get work done fast afterward. Whether you're capturing notes from startup pitches, documenting founder updates, or organizing insights from multiple discussions, Quill makes post conversational work a breeze. With customizable templates for various roles and industries, Quill fu...

Mark Kraynak is a Founding Partner at Acrew Capital. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Mark Kraynak is a technology executive, company builder and erstwhile poet/engineer. Before co-founding Acrew, Mark joined Aspect Ventures as Entrepreneur in Residence and converted to a full time investor at the end of 2017. Prior to joining Aspect, Mark spent nearly 13 years at Imperva, w...

Chris Picardo is a Partner at Madrona. Chris joined Madrona in 2017. As a partner on the investment team, Chris focuses on identifying, evaluating, and leading new investment opportunities and working closely with existing companies. Chris helps lead Madrona’s investments in companies innovating around the intersection of life and computer science through combining novel wet lab science with cutti...

Arvind Jain is the Co-founder and CEO of Glean ($4.6 Billion valued), the Work AI platform connected to all your data. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 Find, create, and automate anything. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded and led R&D at Rubrik, one the fastest growing companies in cloud data management. Arvind also spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engine...

Sumit Chauhan is the Corporate Vice President of Office Product Group at Microsoft. 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Quill Meetings. 🚀 She heads up a wide portfolio of Microsoft 365 experiences, guiding product, design, and engineering teams for both M365 Copilot and M365’s flagship applications and creator tools. Her portfolio includes M365 Copilot, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Designer...

Scott Walbrun is a venture capital investor at BMW i Ventures, BMW's independent VC fund, where he focuses on investments targeting the future of mobility, energy, supply chain, and artificial intelligence. In addition to this role, he provides workshops and coaching to hundreds of startups each year through various accelerator/incubator programs. Prior to joining BMW i Ventures, he provided M&amp...

Amin Shaykho is the CEO of Kadama, social media star, and TED talk speaker honored on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Shaykho is a former senior software engineer at Apple on teams like iMessage and Health. Shaykho raised $1.7M for Kadama and grew it to 2M+ users, 2.5M+ followers and 1B+ views on social media, and reached a peak App Store ranking of #2 in education. Shaykho has over 2M+ followers acr...

Elana Gold is a partner at Red Beard Ventures (RBV), a pioneering Web3 fund with over $25M in capital, investing in blockchain consumer apps, infrastructure, gaming, metaverse, and DeFi, both in equity and tokens. She leads the RBV Syndicate, which invests in startups at any stage and sector, with over 3,900 LPs, 210+ company investments, and over $50M deployed. An advocate for women in investing,...

René Lomelí is a Partner at 500 Global, he joined the team back in 2013. Since then, he has been responsible for the 16-week program they run for their investments in Spanish-speaking LatAm "Somos Lucha". He's also been part of the +240 investments they've made in the region such as Konfio, Clip, Ayenda, 99Minutos, Conekta, Jüsto, Terapify, and Graviti. He enjoys helping early-stage companies in s...

Ashu Garg is a General Partner at Foundation Capital. Foundation Capital is a leading Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm. He focus on investing in bold founders who have a vision to transform markets and build enduring companies. Ashu has extensive experience across the stack from AI 1st applications to data/ML infrastructure, cyber security, and cloud infrastructure. Ashu is an...

Jeff Seibert is the co-founder and CEO of Digits, where he's building the world's first AI-powered accounting platform for startups and small businesses. He previously served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, leading the company's teams across Twitter for iOS, Android, and the Web, as well as its Developer and Data platforms. Jeff was the co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics, the award-winning m...

Kyle Harrison is a General Partner at Contrary. Contrary is a talent and research-driven investment firm. We back a small number of exceptional people and the companies they build, from seed to scale. He is an investor in Ramp, Replit, Anduril, OneSchema, Zepto, Moment, Nomic, Pave, Patch, Modern Intelligence, Teamshares, Leland, Synthesis, Armada, Power, and more. Prior to Contrary he is a Partne...

Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tools. He has spent more than a decade building products at startups. Wei was a co-founder of StackRox, a cloud-native security company, where he was responsible for product management, user experience, product marketing, and technical evangelism prior to its acquisition...

#159 JuE Wong is the former President & CEO/ Executive Board Director of Olaplex Inc. (Nasdaq: OLPX). Prior to Olaplex, she was the Global CEO/ Executive Board Director of Moroccanoil, the President of Elizabeth Arden, and an Independent Board Director of The Red Door by Elizabeth Arden. Other notable companies she has served as a leader include Murad and Perricone MD, among others. You can le...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Watch the latest Smart Venture Podcast episode. #156 Mark Rostick is a Vice President & Senior Managing Director located in Raleigh, NC. He is a voting member of Intel Capital’s investment committee. He joined Intel Capital in 1999. Mark also co-manages our Cloud domain investment activities and portfolio. He has deep investment experience in cl...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Amit Vasudev is the Managing Partner of Earl Grey Capital. Earl Grey Capital is an early-stage venture fund run by Amit Vasudev, Alex MacCaw, and Matt Sornson. They were part of the founding team at Clearbit. Clearbit helps companies create, capture, and convert demand from ideal customers — all from one powerful and flexible go-to-market platform....

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Matthew Weinberg is a Partner at Max Ventures Partner. Matt joined Max Ventures in 2018 after serving several years as an Obama Administration White House appointee where he helped drive $6 billion in federal funding to early-stage technology startups and investment groups. Matt has led several key investments at Max and is the Co-founder of Elion H...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Rajeev Dham has been a Partner at Sapphire Ventures since 2013, splitting his time between applied AI companies across horizontal and vertical SaaS, as well as category-defining innovators in fintech and healthcare. For his work, he has been recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investor by GrowthCap and most recently, the Silicon Valley Business J...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Jason Yeh is the Co-Founder & General Partner of Patron Fund. Patron, an early-stage VC firm investing in the next generation of consumer startups announced the raise of a $100 million USD Fund II. The company's second fund has attracted significant institutional and individual support, anchored again by Horsley Bridge Partners and joined by...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Giuseppe Stuto is the CO-Founder and Managing Partner of 186 Ventures. Giuseppe built his first software company, Fam, where he was the founder and CEO shortly after he graduated college. Fam built one of the largest group video communities ever by scaling to more than seven million users in about a year. Fam was acquired by DraftKings in 2018, and...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Eric Zhu the co-founder of Aviato, which is the "Bloomberg Terminal" for private markets, and an Investor at Bachmanity Capital. Topics: - Content marketing strategies for a B2B startup - Leveraging social media and digital platforms to reach potential clients and investors - Leveraging unique Gen Z perspectives and skills in product devel...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Shira Eting is a Partner at Vintage Investment Partners. Prior to joining Vintage, Shira managed ‘Mechinat Bnei Zion,’ an NGO for non-formal education. Before that, Shira worked as a Strategic Consultant for McKinsey & Company, focusing on a wide range of industries. Shira was also a ‘Milken’ fellow in the Ministry of Economy, focusing on the ex...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director at Berkeley SkyDeck. Berkeley SkyDeck is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator and incubator. Through the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, they invest $200,000 in each of their cohort startups, and provide the powerful resources and network of UC Berkeley to help cohort companies grow. The Berkeley SkyDeck Fund share...

Sponsor Spotlight:🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 Sokwoo Rhee is Corporate Executive Vice President for Innovation at LG Electronics and Head of LG NOVA, LG Electronics' Silicon Valley-based innovation center. He leads LG Electronics’ global innovation projects, new business creation, strategic partnerships, and ecosystem development. Prior to joining LG, Sokwoo served as Asso...

🚀 This episode is brought to you by LG NOVA. 🚀 David Cohen is the Founder and CEO of Techstars, a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, programming and connections to early-stage entrepreneurs. David is a lifelong entrepreneur, and has founded three companies, two of which had successful exits. Since founding Techstars in 2006, the company has invested in more than 4,400 startups th...