Alex Shilman isn't your typical VC — he's a trained social psychologist who spent the last decade helping governments and Fortune 500 companies make better decisions and outsmart their own biases, before turning that expertise toward startups.

As Managing Partner at New Gate Capital, he applies what he calls "Behavioral Venture Capital" — using psychological insight to back early-stage deep tech and AI companies out of Israel's top founder pool.

Raised as a Russian-speaking Jew in an ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, Alex brings an outsider's read on how systems and identities actually work — a lens he now applies to spotting founders who can navigate pressure. This episode is a rare crossover: behavioral science meets venture capital, with a global stage of clients to back it up.

Brandon Maier has sat on both sides of the venture table — as a founder who raised over half a million for his startup Jozii, and now as an investor whose portfolio companies have raised over $150M+ in venture funding, with a 10X+ return on his active investments over the last six years.

He co-founded Quake Capital, which Crunchbase ranked as the second-most active investor in female-led startups, and cut his teeth as an EIR at Plug and Play Tech Center, the accelerator behind PayPal, Dropbox, and Honey.

Today he's founder & GP of LvlUp Ventures, a seed-stage fund Forbes ranked among the best in the world. This episode is a rare look inside the mind of an investor who's built real conviction from both sides of the cap table.

Before founding Kinfolk Venture Capital, Toni Campbell trained under one of the most legendary venture firms in the world — Bessemer Venture Partners, the fund behind early bets on Pinterest, Shopify, LinkedIn, and Yelp. It's the kind of pedigree that produces some of the sharpest eyes in venture, and Toni brings that same instinct for spotting category-defining companies to every deal he sources today. A Harvard BA and MBA grad, he's built a career backing founders most investors overlook — with the same rigor that made Bessemer a household name in Silicon Valley. This episode is a masterclass in venture judgment, straight from a protégé of one of the industry's best.Email us at [email protected] for any questions or to be featured next.