The Takeoff Podcast

Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) is Co-founder & Partner at Homebrew, a seed-stage venture firm he founded in 2013 with Satya Patel. Homebrew has invested in the likes of Plaid, Gusto, Chime, Bowery Farming, Stir, Finix Payments, Honor, Lumi, Tia, theSkimm, Winnie, and many more (see full portfolio).

Prior to founding Homebrew, Hunter led consumer product management at YouTube, spent time on the product and marketing team at Linden Lab, and worked in management consulting at Deloitte.

In this episode, Hunter and The Takeoff’s Michael Spiro discuss:

You can find Hunter’s blog at https://hunterwalk.com/about/. He’s on Twitter @hunterwalk (I highly recommend following him if you aren’t already!).

If you dig what we’re doing with The Takeoff, go ahead and subscribe to our newsletter https://thetakeoff.substack.com/ and follow us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff.

We're a student-run podcast & newsletter hoping to become the go-to spot for students and young professionals looking to learn more about startups, tech, venture capital, and more.

Items reference in the episode:

(Apologies for the suboptimal audio in the first few minutes of the episode. I was recording out of my college apartment and a bunch of background noises popped up. We did our best to get rid of them all, but, unfortunately, we're not audio engineers)

Thanks to Eric Cohen, an early investor in Levels, I (Lukas Steinbock) had the chance to speak to Sam Corcos, their CEO and Founder.

Levels helps thousands of people stay healthy by tracking their glucose levels through its biowearable CGM metabolic sensor. Levels recently raised a $12M seed round led by Andressen Horowitz (read more about the round on TechCrunch). 

Sam is also the founder of three previous companies, including Cardash, which went through Y Combinator in 2017. He shares plenty of wisdom with us in this episode, including:

If you enjoy the episode, be sure to find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff and to subscribe to our Substack (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/) to be notified when we release new interviews and to have all future content sent directly to your inbox.

What is The Takeoff: We're a student-run podcast & newsletter hoping to become the go-to spot for students and young professionals looking to learn more about startups, tech, venture capital, and more. Follow along and learn by subscribing to our newsletter: https://thetakeoff.substack.com/

Relevant past interviews:

Ryan Kohlman is Founder & CEO at TriviaHub, the digital events company helping businesses build culture and increase employee engagement through virtual trivia events and experiences. Prior to founding TriviaHub, Ryan was Direct of Product at Ascend Learning, a PE-owned online learning platform (acquired by Blackstone in 2017). Before that, Ryan spent some time in various consulting roles throughout the Midwest. TriviaHub is headquartered in Minneapolis.

In this episode, Ryan and The Takeoff's Michael Spiro talk about:

- What Ryan is building with TriviaHub

- What TriviaHub’s growth has been like to date

- How being HQ’d in Minneapolis has impacted the business’s ability to raise capital and hire top talent

- How Ryan’s experiences before TriviaHub make him well-prepared for his new journey

- Advice for students interested in starting their own companies

- Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who may not have the most traditional tech founder & CEO background

- & much more.

You can find a written version of the conversation on our Substack (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/), and be sure to find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff.

Relevant past interviews:

- Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) (podcast)

- Henrique Dubugras (Founder & Co-CEO of Brex) (newsletter)

- Anu Hariharan (Partner at Y Combinator's Continuity Fund) (newsletter)

- Saam Motamedi (GP at Greylock) (newsletter)

- Russell Glass (CEO of Ginger) (podcast)

- Jeff Morris Jr. (Founder & Managing Partner at Chapter One) (newsletter)

Huge thanks to our former interview guest Andrew Oved (Reformation Partners) for the intro!

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Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Prior to joining OpenAI as CEO, Sam was the president of Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup accelerator, having helped launch companies such as Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Twitch, Reddit, Brex, and Dropbox. Before joining Y Combinator, Sam founded Loopt (a location-based social networking app) while at Stanford in 2005. He later sold Loopt for $43.4M. (Sam’s blog)

In this episode, Sam joins The Takeoff’s Michael Spiro to discuss:

This is Michael’s first podcast episode for The Takeoff. You can find a written version of the conversation on our Substack (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/p/samaltman). We decided to put together this podcast after getting tons of great reactions to the written version of the conversation.

Be sure to find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff and to subscribe to our newsletter (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/) to have all future interviews and other content sent directly to your inbox.

We’d love your feedback. This is only our fifth podcast episode, so we know there are lots of ways we can improve :)

Relevant past interviews:

- Henrique Dubugras (Founder & Co-CEO of Brex) (newsletter)

- Anu Hariharan (Partner at Y Combinator's Continuity Fund) (newsletter)

- Saam Motamedi (GP at Greylock) (newsletter)

- Russell Glass (CEO of Ginger) (podcast)

- Jeff Morris Jr. (Founder & Managing Partner at Chapter One) (newsletter)

Thrilled to release the fourth episode of The Takeoff's Telehealth Podcast, where I interview Justin Holland, CEO and Co-Founder of HealthJoy. After founding two companies, one being acquired by Rakuten Inc., Justin founded HealthJoy, which has funding from firms like Health Velocity Capital and U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). Special thanks to Saurabh Bhansali for the intro and I hope you enjoy!

Topics include: Lessons from a serial entrepreneur, the current go-to-market landscape, selling to HR and HR selling to employees, HR’s relationship with benefits consultants, effects of COVID-19 on Telehealth companies, pro’s and con’s of selling to employers and payers, how to prevent burnout.

Check out previous episodes: Episode 1 w/ Russell Glass, Episode 2 w/ Guy Friedman, Episode 3 w/ Saurabh Bhansali

Welcome to the third episode of The Takeoff’s telehealth podcast with Saurabh Bhansali, Partner at Health Velocity Capital (a leading healthcare-focused venture and growth equity firm). Saurabh currently sits on the Board of Directors at HealthJoy, Zipari, and Jvion. He is a Board Observer at Ginger.

Special thanks to our first podcast guest, Russ Glass, who made the intro to Saurabh and our second guest, Guy Friedman, for encouraging me to make more intro requests. I had an amazing time talking to an investor in this episode (Russ and Guy are both operators), which gave a refreshing perspective.

You can find the interviews with Russ and Guy, here: Russ (Spotify, Apple Podcasts), Guy (Spotify, Apple Podcasts)

We hope you enjoy the episode :)

In the second episode of The Takeoff’s telehealth Podcast series, I interview Guy Friedman, Co-founder and CEO of SteadyMD. Before founding the primary care focussed Telehealth company that is SteadyMD, Guy founded HigherNext, which was acquired by ProctorU in 2014. Guy now lives and works out of St. Louis, where he came and spoke in one of my classes at Washington University in St. Louis last year. His passion for helping students and energizing entrepreneurial spirit spoke to me, and I hope he does the same for you.

We hope you enjoy the podcast :)

Guest Profile:

Interview Guest: Guy Friedman (Twitter: @guyfriedman)

Role: Co-founder & CEO at SteadyMD

What is SteadyMD?: SteadyMD is a technology and healthcare company that helps members find long-term relationships with doctors online.

Previous: Prior to founding SteadyMD, Guy founded an online test platform, HigherNext, which was acquired by ProctorU in early 2014.

Moderator: Lukas Steinbock (@lukassteinbock)

Welcome to The Takeoff Podcast! In this Podcast series, focused on telehealth, I (Lukas Steinbock) will be detailing the rise and challenges of telehealth with our insightful guests. 

Our first guest, Russell Glass (@glassruss), is the CEO of Ginger, an on-demand mental health company backed by Bessemer, Khosla Ventures, Health Velocity Capital, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures, among others. Prior to joining Ginger as CEO, Russ was the Founder & CEO at Bizo, a B2B audience marketing and data platform. Bizo was acquired by LinkedIn in 2014 (Russ then joined the LinkedIn team as VP of Products). In this episode of our telehealth Podcast series, we discuss the market imbalance that exists within the space, go-to-market strategies for healthcare companies, the surge in growth that telehealth companies have seen due to COVID-19, career advice for students, and more.

We are super excited to officially launch our first podcast episode! This is the first episode in our telehealth series, and we look forward to releasing additional episodes in the coming weeks. Subscribe to The Takeoff at thetakeoff.substack.com to receive all future content (newsletters, podcasts, etc.) sent directly to your inbox. You can also find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff.

What is The Takeoff Podcast? 

In this trailer episode, Michael Spiro, Lukas Steinbock, and Roshan Chanda (undergrads at WashU and founders at The Takeoff) discuss The Takeoff, why they are launching The Takeoff Podcast, and more.

Background on The Takeoff: The Takeoff's goal is to inspire the next generation of startup and technology leaders. We do so through long-form interviews with leading founders, operators, and investors (Domm @ Fast, JMJ @ Chapter One, Ashley Brasier @ Lightspeed -- to name a few), curated content, cool projects, and more.

Check out our Substack newsletter, here: https://thetakeoff.substack.com/ (If you like our podcast interviews, you'll definitely want to subscribe to the newsletter, too)

We have a lot in store and are super excited to launch the Podcast!

Note: The Takeoff Podcast is currently being run as an experiment. We want to see how our followers / listeners reach to our early episodes before deciding whether or not to continue the Podcast moving forward. With that said, if you have any feedback, shoot us a DM on Twitter @_TheTakeoff.