Jesse Draper is the Founding Partner of Halogen Ventures, a Los Angeles–based VC firm investing in early-stage consumer and B2B startups led by female and co-ed teams. A fourth-generation venture capitalist and the first solo female GP in LA, Jesse has backed more than 100 companies, 6 of which are now valued at over a billion (unicorns), while building a platform focused on uncovering overlooked opportunity. Drawing on her widely known perspective that “investing in women isn’t a f*#*king charity,” she explains how Jesse shares how backing female founders and investing in emerging ecosystems like Alabama, represent undervalued markets rich with untapped potential and why recognizing that gap is a competitive advantage. The conversation dives into how Jesse identifies signal in the noise when evaluating startups, what sets breakout founders apart, and why she sees opportunity in non-obvious places. She also breaks down her perspective on solo founders versus co-founding teams, the importance of solving real problems in differentiated ways, and how investors can better recognize value where others aren’t looking. Whether you're a corporate innovator, founder, or investor, this episode offers a fresh lens on how to uncover hidden opportunities and why the best investments are often the ones others overlook.

Charlie O’Donnell is one of the most influential figures in New York’s startup ecosystem. With more than two decades of experience spanning Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, and then creating the first venture capital fund based in Brooklyn, Charlie has backed well-over 100 early-stage startups. In this all-Brooklyn episode, Charlie brings his uniquely candid and deeply informed perspective on how venture capital actually works and insights from his new book Founder Unfriendly where he unpacks common misconceptions about VC and how both founders and investors can build more transparent, productive relationships. We dive into the evolving venture landscape, the realities behind investor feedback, and how startups and large corporations can better collaborate for mutual success. We talk about why fundraising isn’t winning and how to sell tickets to the future. If you want a clearer, more honest understanding of how venture capital decisions get made—and how to navigate them—this episode is a must-listen.

Prabagar Sankar, Senior Engineer at Intuitive, a leader in robotic-assisted healthcare innovation, shares a front-line perspective on how healthcare innovation actually makes it from lab to patient. We explore the critical role of concurrent engineering and early stakeholder alignment in bridging the gap between technical breakthroughs and real-world, regulated deployment. With experience spanning wearable health technologies, medical device R&D, and clinical research across organizations like Sonova, Boston Scientific, and Drexel University, Prabagar dives into how clinician–engineer collaboration drives adoption, and why the future of healthcare lies at the intersection of sensors, data, AI, and robotics. He also unpacks the shift from reactive care to proactive and preventative medicine, powered by continuous monitoring and smarter systems. From wearable sensors to scalable medical devices, this conversation highlights what it takes to build technologies that are not only innovative—but safe, effective, and truly impactful for patients.

Payments may look simple — tap, swipe, click — but behind every transaction is a highly orchestrated system designed for scale, stability, and security. Prateek Khamesra, Director of Product at Visa, unpacks how innovation actually happens inside one of the world’s most critical financial infrastructures. We explore the technologies shaping the next wave of commerce — from agentic commerce and data-to-data transactions to blockchain, tokenization, stablecoins, and crypto — and what these shifts mean for enterprises operating in highly regulated environments. Prateek also shares how large organizations evaluate emerging technology and startup partnerships: Does it solve a real pain point? Can it scale globally? And how easily can it integrate into complex enterprise systems? For corporate strategy, innovation, and R&D leaders navigating disruption, this conversation offers a practical look at how to innovate responsibly — without compromising trust.

Katie Teuber, Director of Startup Engagement at Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, shares how to identify the right startup partners, pilot their innovative solutions, and most-importantly scale them across a large enterprise. From AI transformation to building true partnerships (not just vendor relationships), Katie shares how she bridges the gap between startup speed and enterprise complexity to commercialize innovation at scale. From mutual transformation, to top-down and bottom-up buy-in, to the value of patience and persistence, to why innovation fails in silence (the need for internal story telling) – Katie gives a roadmap for how to commercialize innovation at scale.

Raju Dandigam, Engineering Manager at Navan, the all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management platform built for modern enterprises shares what it takes to build high-impact products that scale. Raju has more than 14 years of experience spanning front-end engineering, full-stack development, DevOps, and team leadership. From leading the development of Navan’s rewards and personal travel experiences to implementing automation that dramatically reduced production bugs, Raju brings a pragmatic perspective on modern engineering execution. In this conversation, we explore how engineering leaders balance speed and quality, why analytics should guide product decisions, and how front-end architecture becomes critical as products grow in complexity. Raju also shares lessons from shipping AI-powered features that users actually rely on — and the pitfalls enterprises face when integrating AI into real workflows. His core takeaway: focus on solving meaningful problems, build what’s core to your advantage, and partner for everything else in a world moving faster than ever.

Corporate innovation programs often generate activity but struggle to produce measurable business impact. Ronja Stoffregen, Director of Corporate Venturing at REHAU New Ventures, shares how venture clienting can bridge that gap by turning startup partnerships into operational outcomes. Leading REHAU’s corporate venturing efforts across mobility, manufacturing, medtech, and the built environment, Ronja focuses on embedding emerging technologies—especially industrial AI, automation, and sustainability—directly into production environments and supply chains. In this conversation, Ronja breaks down what makes venture clienting fundamentally different from traditional corporate venture capital and how enterprises can structure programs that deliver both near-term operational wins and long-term strategic advantage. She shares the frameworks her team uses to move from pilot to production, why she measures pain points solved, how she launched six startup pilots in six months, and what it takes to build a venture client unit with limited budget and headcount.

Scaling innovation inside a global legacy brand isn’t about ideas — it’s about execution, alignment, and measurable impact. Manasa Nalla, Associate Director of Product Innovation & Strategy at The Duracell Company, explores how enterprise leaders can move from innovation activity to scaled business growth. With nine years at Duracell spanning engineering, R&D, and product strategy, Manasa shares how she builds consumer-centric roadmaps, aligns 100+ external partners, and translates technical differentiation into compelling customer ROI. We discuss: What “innovation impact” really means inside a Fortune 1000 company, How to prioritize what makes it into the product roadmap — and what doesn’t, The story behind Duracell’s ProCell Cost Savings Calculator and proving labor savings to unlock growth, How to scale new products without getting trapped by legacy systems or internal politics, and Emerging technologies enterprise leaders should be watching from CES and beyond. If you’re in corporate strategy, innovation, CVC, or R&D, this episode is a practical guide to scaling innovation inside complex organizations.

With a data engineer career spanning telecom (AT&T) and global banking (Barclays), Monika brings a pragmatic perspective on what it really takes to move from experimentation to production-grade AI at massive scale for large enterprises. From embedding governance and control by design, to having process clarity and investing in AI literacy; from the importance of unified data to humans-in-the-loop; from creating custom metrics to measure real business value to using Evals and third parties to validate and build confidence; from managing tradeoffs like speed vs. security, scale vs. risk and to treat AI as infrastructure vs. getting stuck in POC-Mode. This is a masterclass in scaling AI capabilities that are reliable, governed, and adopted by the business.

AI is no longer a future bet — it’s a board-level mandate. But for corporate innovation leaders, the real question isn’t whether to invest in AI… it’s how to turn AI from experimentation theater into measurable enterprise value. Taylor Black, Director of AI & Venture Ecosystems in Microsoft’s Office of the CTO, works at the intersection of AI strategy, venture ecosystems, and internal venture building. Taylor brings a rare dual perspective: enterprise AI leadership inside one of the world’s largest technology companies — combined with firsthand startup-building experience. We unpack how AI takes impossible problems and makes them merely difficult, how this growth mindset of hyper abundance is paired with the enterprise rigor and the internal velocity needed to scale.