As software eats the world, the idea of moats and the power of compounding have taken a new turn of influence. I chatted with Leo Polovets, General Partner at Susa Ventures on the importance of these two fundamental concepts and why they are so powerful, but yet still so counterintuitive in 2019. In this episode, Leo expanded on his experience from being one of the first dozen employees at LinkedIn to experiencing hypergrowth at Google and how this has enabled him to find and support the next set of generational companies, e.g. Robinhood, Flexport, Andela and LendUp. He expanded on Susa's investment thesis in funding entrepreneurs that are building highly defensible companies that leverage data, economies of scale, and network effects to build value and achieve longevity. We also touched on nuanced philosophical concepts in company creation such as "position vs. momentum" and "ego vs. perception." It was a pleasure to have Leo on the show. He's one of the most thoughtful venture investors I've had the privilege of getting to know.

Today, the mental health crisis has reached a tipping point - one in five adults has a mental health condition and over the last 20 years there has been a 30% increase in suicide rates and 130% increase in depression amongst young adults. From a economic perspective, we're facing a staggering ~$200 billion in lost earnings (per annum) attributed to mental illness.  In many ways, there are troubling signs that these numbers will actually get worse - these conditions are further exacerbated by two phenomena: (1) uneven access to mental health services (the Mental Health America study found that 50+% of Americans don't have access to basic services) and (2) the stigma against mental health (many don't get the care they need even if they have access, because of the associated label).   Despite the sheer size and growing demand for services, (e.g. over 2.5 mental health providers for everyone one primary care physician and a labor market growing 25% per annum), the space is incredibly fragmented and underserved. NYC alone has a staggering 90% of its providers working as solo practitioners. The lack of sophistication, quality of user experience and shortages that follow sub-scale practice add up. In this episode, we unpacked all these dynamics and how software and design play a pivotal role in improving the patient and provider experience with Harry Ritter, Founder and CEO of Alma. Alma is a new practice model for therapists designed to elevate the therapy experience and simplify access to great care. It was a pleasure to have Harry on the show to discuss this distinctly important topic.

The last decade has seen significant change across virtually every function in business; the evolution of marketing, sales, customer success, product and operations departments has been tremendous. HR on the other hand, has been a laggard; historically a back office cost-center, typical HR organizations have followed the mandate of being compliant, administrative and "doing less." However in 2018, this is all changing. In a world where the leverage in the "war for talent" has shifted to employees, HR is becoming a strategic asset; companies are understanding more and more they are above all in the people business. This mindset shift has pushed HR to focus on employee experience, improving engagement and overall organizational health.  In this episode, we unpacked all these dynamics and how software plays a pivotal role in the new HR world-order with Jack Altman, Founder and CEO of Lattice. Lattice offers an elegant user experience on the front end with a rigorous data engine on the back-end to help organizations drive best in class performance management. It was a pleasure to have Jack on the show.

In 2018, Uber is a household verb. The company is on an absolute tear; Dara Khosrowshahi has assembled a world class management team and Uber is evolving from a ridesharing company into a full scale transportation business. The company now has multiple business units at multi-billion dollar run rates; earlier this year Uber announced Eats is at a $6B+ bookings run rate. Excitement around the company is steep and in 2019 we are likely to see an IPO. The early view on pricing is Uber will enter the public markets at $100B+ market cap. Back in 2011 however, Uber was anything but a foregone conclusion. The company had raised a small Series A and the incumbent taxi industry threw everything they had at the business. Fights were prevalent in every market, but the battle in New York City was especially high stakes. The world was watching New York and if Mayor DeBlasio succeeded in shutting Uber down, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world followed. Founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick engaged Bradley Tusk to help with the fight. One of the most public and epic battles between private enterprise and city hall, Bradley ran a genius political campaign that ultimately kept Uber up and running as a business. We unpacked how it all went down in this episode.  It was a pleasure to have Bradley on the show; we spent most of the time chatting about Uber, but we also touched on how he's using blockchain to empower mass mobile voting - a key initiative to fix low voter turnout - and whether his former boss Mike Bloomberg will run for President in 2020.

One of my favorite writers (and thinkers) in tech today is Morgan Housel. Morgan consistently puts out some of the most provocative thought pieces and draws connections that routinely leave me wanting more. This week, it was a thrill to chat with Morgan. We touched a number of topics across philosophy, investing and psychology. Unlike many of our other episodes, I didn't have a few "favorite moments" - the entire conversation was filled with nuance and timeless perspectives.  Also check out these pieces from Morgan that we referred to in the conversation: The Psychology of Money, Immeasurably Important, The Lifecycle of Greed and Fear, Tails You Win, Useful Hacks. You can read Morgan's other articles and subscribe to his writing on the Collaborative Fund blog.

One of my favorite pieces for how to think about technology platform shifts is Chris Dixon's "What's Next in Computing". Chris notes that if we look at history, we see that irrespective of the way financial markets perform, technology platform shifts happen consistently every 10–15 years.  One of the most important platform shifts of the next decade is voice. Consumer markets have started to appreciate the strength of Alexa, Echo and Google Home but the recent demonstration of Google Assistant at Google I/O 2018 really expanded the imagination for what will be possible in a decade as deep learning and natural language exponentially improve.  Lately, I've been incredibly interested by the impact voice will have in the enterprise. This week, it was a thrill to chat with Omar Tawakol, one of the key players in today's enterprise voice landscape. Omar is the CEO of Voicea, a voice-activated AI for the workplace; he's raised $20M to leverage AI to augment tasks, make meetings more productive and create more efficient workflows. Eva (Voicea's AI-assistant) in actionPrior to Voicea, Omar was the founder and CEO of BlueKai which built the worlds largest consumer data marketplace and DMP. Oracle acquired BlueKai in 2014 & Omar led Oracle Data Cloud where he scaled the team to over 1,000 people and pioneered the ODC to become the leading Data-as-a-Service provider to 96 of the top 100 US marketers. Omar earned an MS in CS from Stanford (BS, MIT) where he researched and published work on AI agents. Check out the conversation and our other episodes on iTunes.