FUTUREPROOF.

Send us a text

Last week we discussed blockchain, and I wanted to continue that conversation, at least for a few minutes, with Amy Wu, a Partner at Lightspeed Ventures I’ve become acquainted with recently. Amy joined Lightspeed in 2019 as an early member of the growth team, investing in growth-stage consumer and enterprise businesses. Prior to Lightspeed, Amy was an executive for several years, including at global media company Discovery, Inc, and at NewsCred, which she helped raise $60 million for, after starting her career at Insight Venture Partners.

Amy’s breadth of experience – in early-stage and corporate, in consumer and enterprise businesses, and across the US, Europe, and Asia – make her the perfect candidate to talk to about how venture capitalists make decisions. How, exactly, does a VC place bets on the future? Should emotion be a part of those decisions, or can emotion blind you? And does being a cheerleader and spokesperson, as many VCs are these days, throw off your judgement as a futurist? We talk about all of that and more in this conversation.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

Blockchain. It's one of those things the average person knows is going to be transformative in so many ways, but don't quite understand 100%. I have a confession to make: I'm one of those people. 

In a few words, Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets (both tangible and intangible) in a  network. Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, reducing risk and cutting costs for all involved.

To get a sense of some of the unexpected ways blockchain can be used, we wanted to speak to a few innovators doing interesting things with the technology. Let's start with Nadav Zemier [at the 1:31 mark], an award-winning educator, author, blockchain expert and pioneer at the intersection of technology and education. He's the author of Education in the Digital Age: How We Get There where he offers an evaluation of how digital technology and economics are poised to transform education by examining the concept of academic capital. 

Nadav's a big believer that Non-transferrable NFTs will Upend Public Schools—and after this conversation, there's a good chance you might too.

My conversation with Nadav got me thinking about all of the other innovative uses of blockchain technology are out there these days. Some common uses are anti-money laundering tracking system, supply chain and logistics monitoring, and secure sharing of medical data. But what about professional fighting? I spoke to Donn Davis [at the 18:20 mark], Chairman and Co-Founder of Professional Fighters League (PFL)—the #2 MMA league in the world right behind UFC— on how his league leverages technology, including blockchain, to provide a better fan experience.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

One of the most engaging interview subjects I’ve ever had is probably futurist Byron Reese a few years back, when I was writing for Inc.com, and it’s great to have the excuse to speak with him again. A successful tech entrepreneur, speaker, author, and inventor with 2 NASDAQ IPO's, Byron’s newest book Wasted  launched this past June from Random House, and it was one of my favorites of this past summer. Along with his co-author , Scott Hoffman, Byron interprets waste in a very broad way, looking at the subject through the lens of how we waste natural resources, time, money, and even human potential. 

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

I feel like most of us know on some level that recycling is important, right? But...how does it work? And why is it important? And are we even doing a good job at it? And how much is plastic an impediment to a brighter future?

To answer those questions, I wanted to turn to Jennie Romer. She’s a lawyer, a sustainability expert, and author of Can I Recycle This?, an illustrated guide to better recycling and how to reduce single-use plastics. 

I wanted to speak to Jennie since she has more than a decade of experience as an attorney and sustainability consultant fighting for effective legislation on waste reduction and single-use plastics. Her knowledge is routinely sought by legislators, environmental nonprofits, and businesses across the US, and her work and expertise has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, Vice, Politico, and other outlets. 

Send us a text

We wanted to do something a little different this week and do a deep dive on an important topic: the topic of content governance on Facebook, given that it is for all intents and purposes, the modern public square. A while back, we read about Facebook’s creation of an Oversight Board- almost like Facebook’s version of a Supreme Court, so to speak - to help the platform make the right decisions on some thorny issues. And shortly after its creation, the Oversight Board was tasked with a somewhat famous decision, weighing in Facebook’s decision to ban then-President Trump in the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection.

For this topic, I knew just who to turn to: Jennifer Broxmeyer, the Director of Content Governance at Facebook. (I’m actually related to Jen: she’s my cousin by marriage, but don’t hold that against her!)

We talk about what the Oversight Board is, how it’s autonomous from Facebook itself, the challenges of content governance at scale, how Facebook tries to have a fair appeal process for its users, and much more.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

What will the future of genetic testing look like, and why is it so important? To answer that question, we turned to Dr. Yael Joffe, an expert in the field of nutrigenomics. She started as a dietitian and then went on to obtain her Ph.D. in Nutrigenomics from the University of Cape Town, exploring various aspects of genetics. We wanted to speak to her because she’s a practitioner/scientist in addition to being an entrepreneur - she founded 3x4 Genetics in 2018. The startup has developed a proprietary genetic test that's sold through a network of accredited health practitioners. We talk to Yael about what exactly genetic testing is and what it isn’t, how the field has evolved over the past 20 years, where its future may lie, and how genetic testing could help us fight or even avoid the next pandemic.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

`It seems like the pandemic has forced many of us to realize how connected today’s kids are. Just think about how much of their life is spent online vs. so little of ours - I’m speaking as a kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s - It’s such a shift in just one generation. We spend a lot of time talking about all of the ills of this connectivity, but how can it be harnessed for good?

To answer that question, I wanted to turn to Richard Culatta. He was appointed by President Obama as the Director of the Office of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education. In that capacity, he focused on expanding internet connectivity to schools across the country, promoting personalized learning, and developing a national ed tech plan. He’s also the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a nonprofit serving education leaders in 127 countries,  currently serves as a senior fellow at NYU’s GovLab and as a design resident for the San Francisco-based innovation and design firm IDEO, and is now the author of DIGITAL FOR GOOD: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

1I don’t know how much time you spend thinking about things like how people move around cities and how inefficient urban mobility can be, but it’s admittedly something I’ve been thinking about since I developed the logo and branding for autonomous driving startup Mobileye, now part of Intel. How people get around, and even how we park, is an essential part of the future we live in. To that end, I wanted to speak to Alex Israel. He’s the CEO co-founder of Metropolis, the autonomous commerce platform disrupting the traditional real estate industry to make way for urban mobility - starting with the dirty underbelly of parking. I wanted to talk to Alex about his computer vision-based solution and autonomous vehicles in general, so I’m looking forward to this chat.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Send us a text

Rob Siegel teaches two of the most popular courses at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Business Insider listed him as one of the top professors to know at Stanford. He’s also a Silicon Valley VC, sits on the boards of several startups, is a many-time entrepreneur himself, and was previously an exec at GE and Intel, working with Andy Grove. He’s also the author of the new book, The Brains and Brawn Company, out as of July 27th.

We wanted to talk to Rob because he’s a contrarian in many ways. We talk about how logistics, manufacturing, customer service, and quality control are still important, the ten key attributes companies must master going forward, and why we sometimes overrate the importance of the digital disruptors and pretend like they're all going to win in the long-term. 

Send us a text

Bryan Walsh is Axios’ Future Correspondent, covering emerging technology and trends shaping geopolitics, work, warfare and more. He’s been the writer of the Axios Future newsletter, editor of the Axios What’s Next newsletter, and author of the 2019 book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World. In his new What’s Next newsletter from Axios, he’s overseeing coverage of the future of cities, autonomous vehicles, and the working world.

Today we discuss a few stories he’s been focusing on lately that might have been off your radar, including AI in medicine, the growth of automation technology, text-generation models and disinformation, and why we’re currently living with an unsustainable amount of risk in society. We talk about all that, and what it means to be a future correspondent.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!