Venture Takes - a summary of takeaways of podcasts and content in venture capital

Allocate podcast episode "Robert Picard of Hightower Advisors on Individuals Entering VC Investing and the Evolution of the Market"

Podcast Episode Description

Date: Mar 2023

Time Saved: 55 mins

Recommendation

⁠Episode⁠ - Yes

Podcast - Yes

Interviewee

Dr. Lan Xuezhao is the co-founder of Anthropic, an AI safety startup. She was previously an AI Resident at OpenAI.

Podcast Episode Description

Date: Nov 2022

Time Saved: 1h 12 mins

Recommendation

Episode - Yes

Podcast - Yes

Interviewee

Jason Lemkin focuses on helping, founding, funding, and growing B2B start-ups and making it a positive-sum game for everyone involved.

Specialties: helping people grow and become their best. Doing not the impossible, but the unlikely. Never giving up.

Date: Dec 2022

Time Saved: 39 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

Venture Unlocked Episode - YES

Interviewee

Gautam Gupta is the founder/CEO of NatureBox (www.naturebox.com), a digitally native brand of snacks. He started the company because of his passion for nutrition. Earlier in life, learning about nutrition helped him lose 70 lbs in 6 months. While he was lucky to lose weight, he believes the next generation of food has to be about change. The company has attracted millions of customers and has over 40% brand awareness across the country. They achieved a lot but had their fair share of bumps. This experience gave him many hard-earned lessons in management, scaling, raising capital, and dealing with “shit-hit-the-fan” moments.

Gautam started his career as an early stage investor at General Catalyst. He had the great fortune to join the firm when he was 18 years old and spent the first 8 years of his career as part of the team that scaled it from a small firm to one with global reach. He helped open the west coast office. As a professional and angel investor, he has funded 30+ companies. This portfolio includes 8 companies valued over $1B and in aggregate, generates close to $2B in annual net revenue. Examples include BigCommerce, GoodData, Honest Company, Grammarly, Imperfect Produce, Pilot, The Pill Club, Heap Analytics, Split.io, among others.

Outside work, Gautam is passionate about enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs through education. He sits on the Board of Overseers at Babson College, his alma mater that is consistently ranked #1 in entrepreneurship, and co-created a class at Santa Clara University on emerging retail models.

Date: Nov 2021

Time Saved: 44 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

ETL - YES but selective on episodes, can get kinda long and long winded on reactions to tech news

Episode - YES

Interviewee

Jeff Epstein is an Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and a Lecturer at Stanford University. He specializes in B2B Software, Marketplaces and Vertical AI.

Date: May 2022

Time Saved: 50 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

ETL - YES but selective on episodes, can get kinda long and long winded on reactions to tech news

Episode - YES

Interviewee

Alfred Lin is a partner at Sequoia Capital and works with inspiring founders focused on disrupting the mobile, marketplace, commerce, consumer services, and online-to-offline sectors.

Date: Mar 2022

Time Saved: 1 hr 9 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

TWIST - YES but selective on episodes, can get kinda long and long winded on reactions to tech news

Episode - HELL YES

Interviewee

Douglas M. Leone is an American billionaire venture capitalist and former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, from which role he stepped aside in 2022 while remaining a general partner. As of August 2022, his net worth was estimated at US$6.1 billion.

Date: Sept 2022

Time Saved: 27 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

Distilling VC Podcast - YES.  Sincere host, great questions.

Episode - YES

Interviewee

Alex Branton – Partner Alex has 10 years of investment industry experience with a blend of direct investment experience and fundraising expertise. He was a key early hire to the current team, supporting the development of the strategy and infrastructure. Alex has studied and lived in emerging markets (most significantly China) on and off for nearly 15 years.

Date: Sept 2022

Time Saved: 46 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

Techcrunch Equity Podcast - YES. So far great insights, energy and funny. Smash the subs.

Episode - YES

Interviewee

Hello, my name is Michael Seibel. I am 39 years old and have lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2006. Currently, I work at Y Combinator as a Group Partner and Managing Director of YC early stage.

Previously, I was a co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv from 2007 - 2011 and the co-founder and CEO of Socialcam in 2012. During 2012, Socialcam participated in Y Combinator, raised angel financing from a group of amazing investors, and sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m (link). In 2014, Justin.tv became Twitch Interactive, and under the leadership of Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin sold to Amazon for $970m.

Before getting into tech, I spent a year as the finance director for a US Senate campaign and before that, I graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in political science. Today I spend the large majority of my free time cooking, reading, traveling and going for long drives. I live in San Francisco, CA with my amazing wife Sarah and our son Jonathan.

Date: Sept 2022

Time Saved: 35 mins

Recommendation

Podcast

Iterative Podcast - YES but more for founders in Southeast Asia but there are nuggets for investors as well

Episode - YES 

Interviewee

Koh Shiyan is the Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in pre-seed software startups in the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia.

Prior to that she was VP Business Operations and Corporate Development at NerdWallet, a Fintech Startup that helps users with a range of financial decisions through content, community and tools. Over the course of six years at NerdWallet, she led product teams, ran business operations and corporate development, and helped grow the company from US$1M to US$150M in revenue.

Shiyan’s first exposure to technology was as a summer intern writing technical documentation for a small 30 person startup Telenav, that is now listed on NASDAQ. She has also worked in a series of finance and investing roles at JPMorgan, Institutional Venture Partners and Bridgewater Associates before joining NerdWallet.

Shiyan graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biomechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School.