On this week’s episode, Jim sits down with Erik Tarczynski, the founder of Contrary Capital, a venture fund focused on future leaders in engineering and design. Their conversation touches on the Contrary origin story, how Eric scouts, evaluates, and supports talent, and operating remotely long before COVID-19. Eric has some interesting ideas about work/life balance, mental health innovation and how to build a community focused on the next generation of venture tech. This is not to be missed!

Transcript available at: https://www.cmbginc.com/thepuckepisode31

On this week’s episode, Jim sits down with Will Schmitt of Miroma Ventures, the investing arm of The Miroma Group, an international firm focused on growth stage consumer brands and media platforms. Will walks Jim through his finance oriented background building models and doing financial diligence, and how working with food and beverage companies informs his work today. He talks about Miroma’s position as a long term strategic marketing partner, and the generational changes happening before our eyes in in consumer purchasing behavior.

On this week’s episode, Jim sits down with Elizabeth Edwards of H Venture Partners for a fascinating discussion covering a variety of topics, including the power of diverse lived experience in the venture world, the benefits of gender parity in finance, and investing in the consumer space through companies like Peloton. Their conversation covers Elizabeth’s background, including her time in M&A at Deloitte, as well as the role transparency plays in the founding and success of new companies. This episode is not to be missed!

On this week’s episode, Jim is joined by Kristina Serafim, managing director at Verizon Ventures. They touch on a wide range of topics, including Kristina’s background as an engineer, co-founding companies that eventually got acquired, and investing in state of the art technology like 5G and vertical AI. Kristina discusses how Verizon’s ecosystem provides resources to young companies beyond simply capital, and walks us through the new industrial revolution of 5G/ AI, helping to create smart cities, advancing interactive technology in healthcare and expanding our experience of live events in the post pandemic era.

This week, Jim speaks with Brad Feld, author of the recently published The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, as well as co-founder of Foundry Group, a tech-focused venture fund located in Boulder Colorado.  Brad and Jim discuss how Brad accidentally became a venture capitalist, gender and racial equity in the venture world, and setting aside bias as a leader.  They then move onto the advantages of Zoom meetings over old-school IPO roadshows (especially during the fundraising stage) and Brad’s experience with philosophy and bringing stoicism to entrepreneurship.

This week, Jim sits down with Vern Howard, co-founder and CEO of Hallo, the digital events platform transforming the job fair market. Over the course of their conversation, Vern talks Jim through the

the difficulties students face getting into the right rooms and the science behind finding applicants the proper job fit. Vern shares his experience relocating the company to LA from San Francisco right before the pandemic, working remotely, and speaks about other founders and CEOs he admires.

On this week’s episode, Jim talks with Sean Harper of Westlake Village BIOPartners about Sean’s experience working on the front lines of the medical technology industry. They discuss Sean’s background as a more traditional medical practitioner, his move into drug discovery, and how he and his partners run their current fund. Sean shares his views on biology as an engineering based discipline, accepting uncertainty in the state of biology today, and the near limitless opportunities for innovation in biotech as we move into the 21st century.

Today, in a very special episode of THE PUCK, our guest is… host Jim Baer! That’s right -- after three seasons of asking the questions, Jim will now occupy the hot seat himself. In a wide-ranging conversation guided by PUCK producer Caitlin Lalezari, Jim takes us on a deep-dive, starting with his childhood, and covering his legal background, culminating in his own personal opinion on… where the puck is going. Without spoiling too much, this is not a conversation you want to miss!

William Quigley is back in the second of our two-part series on the present state and future of cryptocurrency. After their first episode touched on blockchain in the global marketplace and our current financial structures, William and Jim spend time talking about blockchain as a secure record, the ease of auditing an un-editable database, the advantages of the lack of gatekeeping in the crypto marketplace, and the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin. After diving into Augmented Reality, William stuns Jim with the possibilities of living in an AR world.

William Quigley, Tether co-founder and Crypto pioneer, returns to the podcast in the first of a two-part series about the present state and future of cryptocurrency. He and Jim discuss the advantages of blockchain and a global commodity, how crypto might integrate with our current financial structures, and Bitcoin as a finite resource. William also clears up some misconceptions about crypto and whether Bitcoin can really be considered “currency.”