Deepwell

Ariana Thacker, is the founder and CEO of MoldCo—a company bringing real science, structure, and care to one of healthcare’s most overlooked crises: mold-related toxicity.

Ariana’s journey started in venture capital, leading Conscience VC with a focus on health, biotech, and consumer innovation.

But everything changed when a sudden toxicity derailed her life and exposed the massive gaps in how mainstream medicine treats environmental health.

What began as a personal search for answers evolved into MoldCo—a platform combining validated lab testing, clinician-led treatment, and the largest biobank in the field to redefine how mold toxicity is understood and treated.

We talked about Ariana’s shift from VC to founder, why mold was just the starting point for a broader vision around chronic microbial toxicity, and how MoldCo is building slow-moving science and fast-moving care under one roof.

Ariana also shared the genetic reasons some people get sick while others don’t, why traditional mold tests often fail, and the massive ripple effects she sees ahead across healthcare, real estate, and biotech.

Learn more about Ariana and her company below:

linkedin.com/in/arianadthacker/

moldco.com/

Rob Biederman is the founder and MP of Asymmetric Capital Partners—a venture firm taking a contrarian approach to backing B2B technology companies, roll-ups, and under-the-radar market opportunities.

Asymmetric launched in 2020 with a $105M debut fund, built on Rob’s vision of avoiding venture hype and instead investing in companies with long-term durability, strong customer value, and scalable economics. They’ve already backed 29 companies, many of which are profitable or on track for significant exits, and they’re pioneering a roll-up strategy, consolidating cash-flowing businesses and transforming them through proprietary technology.

Before launching Asymmetric, Rob built a career spanning finance, private equity, and entrepreneurship. He started at Goldman Sachs, moved into private equity at Bain Capital, and then took the leap into founding Catalant Technologies, a company that started as a Harvard Business School project and scaled into a 120,000-member expert marketplace.

We talked about why most VCs misunderstand venture cycles, how Asymmetric is capitalizing on overlooked sectors, the shift toward AI-enabled industries, and what it takes to build a truly differentiated fund—plus, why Rob believes the next billion-dollar company will come from a “boring” sector most VCs are ignoring.

Learn more about Rob and Asymmetric below:

acp.vc/

linkedin.com/in/robertdukebiederman/

Kevin Jiang is one of the co-founders of Mangusta Capital, an early to growth stage venture capital firm investing in consumer technology and vertical AI.

With notable portfolio companies including Elon Musks xAI and Vanessa Hudgens Caliwater.

They have currently deployed around $50 million in proprietary capital and plan to deploy another $150 million over the coming years.

Prior to Mangusta, Kevin started his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, then quickly transitioned to private equity at Apollo, did long/short equity at Soros Fund Management, and eventually became VP on the founding Investment Team of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, leading deals like Flexport, Shipbob, and Wiz.

Learn more about Kevin and Mangusta below:

linkedin.com/in/jiangkevin

mangustacap.com

Jason Eichenholz is the founder and CEO of Relativity Networks, a company radically reimagining the physical infrastructure behind AI by enabling data to travel at the speed of light in air.

Jason's story begins with a laser beam in a high school physics lab. That spark launched a lifelong obsession with photonics, earning him a PhD in laser physics and eventually leading to Luminar.

He helped take the company from two people in a garage to a billion dollar plus public company powering next gen autonomous vehicles.

After stepping back from Luminar he thought he was done with startups until a Hollow Core Fiber prototype landed in his inbox. The physics checked out, the market was undeniable and the bottleneck was existential.

Latency is now a power problem. Relativity Networks was born.

Today, Jason is building a fiber network that literally moves light faster, shrinking digital distances between data centers and unlocking new possibilities for AI, climate tech, 5G and more.

We talked about building Luminar from scratch, leading through others, his work at Jonathan's landing, and how Relativity gives hyperscalers the freedom to put data centers where the power is, not where latency says they have to.

relativitynetworks.ai/

John Andrew Entwistle is the founder and CEO of Wander—a company blending real estate, software, and hospitality to create a radically better way to travel.

John Andrew started young. At 13, he was running game servers and managing six-figure revenue. By 18, he’d co-founded Coder, raised $50M+, and partnered with giants like Palantir and Goldman Sachs. But after leaving that company, he set out to solve something more personal: why is booking a vacation rental still such a gamble?

Wander began as a vertically integrated hospitality brand—buying and operating luxury homes. But over time, it evolved into something bigger: a fully software-driven infrastructure layer for managing high-quality stays at scale. Powered by Wander OS and coordinated by AI agents, the company now runs thousands of homes without compromising on guest experience.

We talked about what it takes to build a brand customers love, why he optimizes for values over credentials when hiring, and how software—not scale—lets Wander promise the same standard, every time. John also opened up about his childhood rules for living, his philosophy of “massive good,” and what it means to build a company worth running into old age.

Learn more about John Andrew and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/jaentwistle/

wander.com/

Aaron Bai is the co-founder and CEO of Affiniti—a fintech company building a financial operating system for overlooked small businesses, starting with a no-fee credit card.

Aaron started college at 16, dropped out at 17, and raised his first round shortly after. His first company, a neobank, failed—strong product, weak market fit. So he reset. He and his co-founder spent months reading 10-Ks, talking to small business owners, and figuring out why existing fintechs weren’t working.

They landed on a simple insight: trust is the bottleneck. Most SMBs don’t need more features—they need something they believe in. Affiniti’s wedge is the card, but the goal is deeper: become the financial back-end for businesses that don’t have a CFO.

We talked about underwriting human risk, why most fintechs chase the wrong SMBs, and how Affiniti is turning everyday transactions into a data-rich, trust-first engine for financial clarity.

Learn more about Aaron and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/aaronybai/

affiniti.finance/

Marty Kausas, is the co-founder and CEO of Pylon—a post-sales CRM redefining how B2B companies manage customer relationships after the close.

Marty grew up in San Diego after his parents immigrated from Lithuania following the fall of the Soviet Union. He was writing code before he could vote, living off lentils, and leading Purdue’s elite hacker group by 19. But it was two tough years of “pivot hell”—false starts, failed ideas, and no clear path forward—that laid the real foundation for Pylon.

What began as a simple integration between Zendesk and Slack quickly revealed a deeper opportunity. After consistent feedback from B2B teams, Marty and his co-founders realized that legacy tools weren’t built for the complexity of modern post-sales.

Today, Pylon serves over 500 customers—replacing fragmented point solutions with a unified platform purpose-built for how B2B teams actually work.

We talked about Marty’s unorthodox path from robotics to startup resilience, why “sell before you build” should be the default, and how shared context—not just tickets—is the currency of modern post-sales teams.

We also dug into how Pylon raised $20M in record time without a pitch deck, why they’re betting big on video-first marketing, and what it means to build a $10B company that’s optimized for fun.

Learn more about Marty and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/martykausas/

usepylon.com/

Yash Sheth is the co-founder and COO of Galileo—a platform helping enterprises measure, test, and scale AI applications with confidence.

Yash’s journey started in Mumbai, moved through investment banking at JP Morgan, and shifted into engineering at Google, where he helped build core parts of the conversational AI stack behind products like Google Assistant and Glass. It was there he saw the real challenge: getting powerful models into production without breaking trust.

That’s what led to Galileo.

What began as a focus on data quality has evolved into a full-stack evaluation platform—used by leading enterprise teams to measure performance, prevent regressions, and ship AI features with confidence. Galileo is now 11x faster and 97% cheaper than traditional eval tools—and built from the ground up for production-scale use.

We talked about Yash’s transition from finance to AI, lessons from scaling models inside Google, and why measurement—not modeling—is the missing layer in most AI stacks. We also got into Galileo’s agentic evaluations, the limits of generic metrics, and what it really takes to deploy AI you can trust.

Learn more about Yash and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/yash-sheth-/

galileo.ai/

Nelson Chu is founder and CEO of Percent—a capital markets platform bringing transparency, liquidity, and standardisation to private credit.

Nelson’s path started with a $1,000 “experiment fund” from his dad and early side hustles in design. After stints at Merrill Lynch and BlackRock, he left corporate life behind, built a consulting firm that helped raise over $1B, and used that momentum to launch Percent.

What began as a short-duration credit platform with $500 minimums has evolved into the infrastructure behind over $1.5B in transactions—now positioning itself to power the future of a $25T market.

We talked about Nelson’s journey from design to finance, how art influences his thinking, and what it takes to earn trust in a space that’s opaque by design. We also dug into Percent’s tech, regulatory approach, and long-term plan to bring public-market efficiency to private credit.

Learn more about Nelson and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/nelson-chu/

percent.com/

Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is the co-founder and CEO of Chapter—the most consumer-aligned Medicare guidance platform in the U.S., built to radically improve how seniors navigate retirement.

He grew up hearing stories of his family’s journey across borders and generations—from Havana to Rochester, New York. That early exposure to resilience, migration, and responsibility shaped everything that came next—from studying at Cambridge to working at Palantir, where he learned how to navigate complex, regulated systems.

Then came a turning point: watching his own family struggle to make sense of Medicare. That experience sparked a question that would drive the next chapter of his life—what if there were a better way to help people age with clarity, trust, and dignity?

With Chapter, Cobi is building just that. Backed by industry leaders and growing 4x year-over-year, it’s the only Medicare brokerage invited to testify before Congress. And it’s setting a new standard—where incentives are aligned, ethics are built into the product, and seniors are treated not as leads, but as people.

We talked about the broken state of Medicare, the hidden incentive structures shaping the industry, why most startups underestimate the power of distribution, and how Chapter is quietly laying the foundation for a more human future of retirement.

Learn more about Cobi and his company below:

linkedin.com/in/cobibgantz/

askchapter.org/