StrictlyVC Download

This week on StrictlyVC Download, we’re sharing a conversation from our event in Palo Alto, where TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin spoke with Mina Fahmi, the founder and CEO of Sandbar, and Toni Schneider of True Ventures.  

Mina Fahmi is the CEO and co-founder of Sandbar, a startup building the Stream ring—an AI wearable designed to capture your whispered thoughts. Toni Schneider is a partner at True Ventures who backed Fitbit, Peloton, and Ring, and was initially skeptical of AI wearables until he saw Sandbar's demo – and to be clear, Schneider says he’d seen a whole lot of demos. In this conversation, they unpack what it takes to build hardware that people actually want to wear, why "self-extension" beats AI companions, and how privacy through whispering changes everything. They also discuss competing with OpenAI's rumored device with Jony Ive, why devices must do one thing brilliantly before doing ten things adequately, and what Sandbar learned from two years of prototyping to get the interaction model right. 

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This week on StrictlyVC Download, Connie Loizos spoke with Conlin Angle, the founder and former CEO of iRobot. Fom his living room into a household name, Angle spent 30 years turning iRobot into one of the most pioneering companies in the robotics industry stepping down as CEO following the failed Amazon acquisition. In this conversation, he unpacks why he considers iRobot's bankruptcy "avoidable and a tragedy," what regulators got catastrophically wrong in blocking the $1.7 billion Amazon deal, and why the FTC's office walls covered with "blocked deals" as trophies revealed a deeply misguided approach to protecting innovation.  

Angle also shares the brutal reality of fighting regulators for 18 months while producing over 100,000 documents, why nascent American tech industries keep getting handed to overseas competitors, and what he's building next with his stealth startup, including his contrarian take on humanoid robots and why Rodney Brooks is "never factually wrong, but not necessarily answering the question you think he's answering." 

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Pat Gelsinger spent 35 years across two stints at Intel, most recently as CEO. Nicholas Kelez is the CEO of X-Light, a semiconductor startup developing breakthrough EUV laser technology for next-generation chipmaking. In this conversation, they unpack what it takes to wake Moore's law from its nap, why the U.S. government just became X-Light's second-largest shareholder, and how faith and deep tech are shaping the future of American competitiveness in the AI era.

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This week on StrictlyVC Download, Connie Loizos spoke with Science Corp founder Max Hodak to discuss how brain-computer interfaces are arriving faster than anyone realizes. The Neuralink co-founder and former president shares how his company recently achieved what may be the biggest breakthrough in vision restoration in decades, enabling 80% of blind patients to read again with a tiny retinal implant smaller than a grain of rice. In this conversation, the two also explore the near-term commercial path for BCIs through medical applications, the long-term potential for cognitive enhancement and “binding” multiple brains together, and why Science, which has so far raised $260 million from investors, is keen to generate revenue while it invests in its future products. Not last, Hodak addresses the practical and ethical questions around hacking, enhancement, and why he thinks it may well be possible in the not-too-distant future to “move consciousness” outside of the body.

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In this episode, TechCrunch's editor-in-chief, Connie Loizos, sits down with Kevin Hartz, the serial entrepreneur behind Zoom and Eventbrite who's now managing partner of A-Star Capital, a $300 million generalist fund. Recorded live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Kevin shares his unique perspective as a founder, investor, and LP—discussing why staying in the market matters even when two-month-old companies are raising at $60 million valuations. The two explore the dramatic rise in teenage founders, with Kevin revealing that 20% of his recent investments now include teams with a teenage founder, up from just 5% two years ago. Kevin also discusses A-Star's approach to differentiated deal flow through company incubations, including Sauron, his autonomous drone security startup applying self-driving car technology to home security. They dive into the controversial question of whether venture capital is truly an asset class, the lessons learned from taking companies public through both traditional IPOs and SPACs, and why the abundance of private capital is keeping quality companies out of the public markets indefinitely.

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This week we're sharing an interview from our friends over at Equity.

After a small startup exit and being turned down by every VC firm he applied to, Tim Chen began angel investing and eventually stumbled into raising his own fund.  

Now, as the solo investor behind Essence VC, he just closed his ⁠fourth fund at $41 million⁠ "without even trying." Chen's secret weapon? Being technical enough to debate PhD founders on implementation details while understanding the market dynamics that turn scrappy startups into category leaders. 

Today on TechCrunch's ⁠Equity⁠ podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Tim Chen to explore the rise of solo VCs and who's rewriting the traditional venture playbook. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

Subscribe to Equity on⁠ Apple Podcasts⁠,⁠ Overcast⁠,⁠ Spotify⁠ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on⁠ X⁠ and⁠ Threads⁠, at @EquityPod.  

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TechCrunch’s editor-in-chief, Connie Loizos, sits down with Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at Alphabet’s X, to explore what it takes to build a factory for truly radical innovation. Astro reveals the three components that define a true moonshot—a huge problem, a science fiction-sounding solution, and a glimmer of breakthrough technology—and why X deliberately kills 98% of its ideas early. Teller also explains why X keeps teams incredibly small, how it decides between spinning companies out independently versus keeping them as Alphabet “other bets” like Waymo and Wing, and his take on AI hype—why we should stop treating it like magic and start treating it like electricity.

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 In this episode, TechCrunch’s editor-in-chief, Connie Loizos, and StrictlyVC’s Alex Gove, sit down with Winston Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of Harvey, the legal AI startup that’s quietly become one of the most talked-about companies in Silicon Valley. Winston shares the origin story of how a first-year associate at O’Melveny used GPT-3 for Dungeons & Dragons before realizing it could transform legal work—leading to a cold email to Sam Altman on July 4, 2022, that changed everything. The three discuss Harvey’s rapid growth to more than $100 million in ARR, why 33% of the startup’s revenue now comes from corporates rather than just law firms, and the technical challenges of building a truly multiplayer platform that navigates complex ethical walls and permissioning across 63 countries. Winston also addresses the “ChatGPT wrapper” criticism — and he explains why he believes professional services will be less disrupted than people think.

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In this episode recorded live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, TechCrunch's editor-in-chief, Connie Loizos, talks with Vinod Khosla about entrepreneurship in the age of AI and the massive disruptions ahead. They discuss why Khosla believes every profession represents a startup opportunity, his investment thesis of building AI workers rather than tools, and why he asks entrepreneurs to envision their company in 2030 before anything else. Khosla also shares his prediction that Fortune 500 extinction rates will triple by 2035, his controversial idea for sharing corporate wealth through a national pool, and why he thinks we'll have a hugely deflationary economy with free healthcare, education, and legal services. They also cover his early bet on OpenAI, the collision course between AI and climate (which he disputes), his investments in fusion and super-hot geothermal energy, and why the Trump administration's immigration policies represent "the worst damage possible" for American innovation.

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In this episode recorded live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, TechCrunch’s editor-in-chief, Connie Loizos, talks with Roelof Botha about Sequoia’s approach to finding and backing outlier companies — just days before he announced he was stepping down. They discuss why he thinks venture capital isn’t really an asset class, how Sequoia’s partners make investment decisions through fierce debates and consensus voting, and what the firm looks for in its Scout program. Botha also shares his perspective on the current AI boom—whether we’re in a bubble, how quickly winners are emerging in different verticals, and why founders should be careful about raising successive rounds at skyrocketing valuations.

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