Michael Steed is the Founder and Managing Partner of Paladin Capital Group and serves as Chairman of the Paladin Cyber Fund, Paladin Cyber Fund II and Paladin III Investment Committees.

Mike started his professional career as a lawyer in Los Angeles. In 1981, he headed to Washington DC where he served as Special Counsel to the Chairman, and as the National Director, of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Mike was in a unique position to learn the skills needed to negotiate with the Republicans, find common ground in matters of policy disagreement and put one's differences aside; it was an age when polite discourse still meant something.

Mike took inspiration from great men such as Chuck Manatt and Tip O'Neill (47th speaker of the US House of Representatives) and by observing the quality of people that Reagan surrounded himself with, Mike applied the same philosophy to building an exceptional team when he founded Paladin Capital Group in April 2001.

As a cybersecurity-focused VC firm, Paladin soon found the world had changed when, in September that same year, the terrible attack on the World Trade Center took place. If ever there was a need for calm and steady leadership in the early stages of running a new firm, this was it.

Mike has since gone on to turn Paladin into one of the world's pre-eminent cybersecurity VC investors.

As you will hear during this discussion, Mike is a fascinating individual. His experiences of meeting world leaders during the 80s have helped him construct a wide lens through which to develop an investment and leadership style where the art of negotiation, respect and empathy ring true.

In this latest episode I discuss leadership with Justus Parmar, CEO and Founder of Fortuna Investments, an award-winning VC firm.

One of its areas of investment, currently, is in the fast evolving Space Tech space, having recently invested in Starfighters Space, led by industry veteran Rick Svetkoff.

On this episode Justus discusses:

Praveen Sahay is the Founder and Managing Director of Boston-based impact investment firm, WAVE Equity Partners. Praveen has had an incredible career, one which has seen his role change from nuclear physicist to UN Armed Forces Battalion Commander and now, today, a VC investor with a focus on tech-enabled sustainability.

On this episode I discuss leadership with Michael Harris, President at Quest Partners, a New York-based quant fund.

Michael highlights the challenge of determining how much time each to spend thinking about the strategic path of the company versus day-to-day business issues and during our discussion he talks about:

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Before establishing Runa Digital Assets, Jennifer was Chief

Prior to this, Jennifer worked at Legg Mason as Chief Administrative Officer and as President and CEO of Legg Mason Capital Management.

On this first episode, Jennifer shares an array of fascinating insights and anecdotes on various aspects of how she has developed her leadership style and philosophy including: