Astella Around The World

From musician to VC seems to be quite a path these days; this was Gurdane's path while he completed his degree in Computer Science, Public Policy, and Economics from Duke University.

Gurdane shares how he learned the venture business "by doing" with at FundRx, a leading life sciences/healthcare investment and research marketplace he co-founded back in 2015. After 20 or so investments under the belt, they spun of the business to MBX Capital in July 2020. 

Beyond any thesis, MBX's underlying purpose is beyong being a sustainable asset for LPs, but focuses on categories that are underlooked "diamonds in the rough". With 1K venture advisors as part of the community, they rely on many industry experts throughout the investment journey.

Tune in to learn about a couple of MBX's investments: Vaxxinity, which offers hope by developing disease altering vaccines and Contraline, inventing the future of male contracepting! 

Meet Dima Kuzmin, founding partner at 4BIO Capital, where he invests, supports and grows early stage companies developing treatments in areas of highly unmet medical needs, with an ultimate goal of ensuring access to these potentially curative therapies for all patients. Prior to becoming a VC, Dima was in academia, focusing successively on structural biology, neurochemistry, systems neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and gene therapy. It was when doing his PHD that his VC friends would ask him for help with scientific reviews that he got introduced to the opportunities helping investors with their scientific portfolio, and later founding 4BIO. Tune in to learn why he says that “genetic disease are the ultimate chronic disease” and how Covid was able to capture resources that were going elsewhere and successfully approve a vaccine that would typically take 10 years, in 11 months!

"Proud Geek; Hacker turned VC" is what Lucas Nelson, Founding Partner at Lytical Ventures intitulates himself. In this weeks' episode, Lucas shared with us how he turned his experience and passion for hacking into his full time career, firstly as an operatior, then as a VC specialized in the corporate intelligence space: cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI.

He also shares with us how spending in cybersecurity is growing at a fast rate, as CEO's are getting more scared of breaches. Acording to Lucas, "Good and bad cyber security looks very simular until somebody pokes a whole in it".

Tune in to learn about how he sees cybersecurity ventures in the different ecosystems, and what he realized about the space in Brazil, many years ago, when he spent a sabbatical in Brazil, to learn capoeira. 

Meet Christina, Founder of The One Health Company, and learn how she is revolutionizing how drugs and medical devices come to market by re-imagining how animal testing is done. From capital markets to venture, Chris spent a portion of her career specializing in emerging markets as an investor and lecturer. Diversifying her time between non profit boards, she has always been involved with exciting big issues that fuel her to wake up with energy every day! She shares with us about her experience living in Palo Alto, and tips on how to raise capital with prominent global funds, such as A16Z. Tune in to learn more about this mission driven Irish/Brazilian global citizen who is making a big impact with BioTech.

Born in Brazil from parents who migrated from India, Amit moved to US for college and has been in California ever since. Post his education at Stanford and Harvard, he spent time as a product manager at Google and as a VC at Norwest Ventyre partners,  fund with over $10Bi in AUM that has been around since 1961. 

He is mission driven and health is the common denominator, in his words “it’s the foundation of everything”. At Tau Ventures, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, he invests in seed stage AI-first health and enterprise startups.

On top of it all, he is a 70.3 Ironman finisher, lives carbon neutral and has built a hospital in rural India. Listen in to hear more on the above and his positive outlook and lessons on life and the future. 

We loved our time getting to know more about Brocks professional experiences and life views, and I'm sure you will learn so much from him too. Enjoy!

Mark Roberge is the MD at Stage 2 Capital, Professor at Harvard Business School and former CRO at HubSpot, (NYSE: HUBS) where he scaled annualized revenue from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark shares with us how his engineering background helped him shape a scalable and predictable sales model at a time when SaaS was just a baby, and how that experience helped him design a GTM system that he shares in his book and classes at HBS. Tune in to be inspired by his buddhist-like approach to life and how responding to opportunities that excited him has led his path in a serendipitous way. In this episode you will also find out his promising view about the Brazilian Tech scene and what is currently most exciting (and scaring) him!