Sunil Rao is the Founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-powered platform aimed at streamlining and automating go-to-market workflows for enterprise teams. With a technical foundation as a former software engineer at SAP, Rao rose to leadership roles at Salesforce—including VP and GM of Consumer Goods—before launching Tribble in April 2023. Drawing on experience in both engineering and enterprise sales, he drives Tribble’s mission to integrate AI into sales, marketing, and product management, enabling organizations to scale their expertise more efficiently in an increasingly complex technological landscape.Topics:

• AI-powered platforms for go-to-market workflow automation
• Streamlining enterprise sales and marketing processes
• Integration of AI in sales, marketing, and product management

#AI #GoToMarket #SalesAutomation #MarketingTech #EnterpriseAI

Emily Bennett is a Partner at Owl Ventures. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~Emily brings a strong foundation driving product strategy for technology and media companies to the Owl team. Prior to receiving her MBA, Emily served as Product Marketing Manager for News Integrity at Facebook, implementing products and scaled initiatives to help curb misinformation and better incentivize high quality news across the platform. Previously, she was Product Manager for video at the New York Times, where she drove product strategy for immersive streaming experiences, and worked on growth product strategy for the artist-facing platform at Spotify. Emily’s passion for education stems from her early teachers, many of whom she remains in touch with today, who instilled in her a strong belief that high quality education is the most powerful means to generate opportunity. Emily graduated from Middlebury College with a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, in Neuroscience, where she was actively involved in music and creative writing. Emily received her MBA from Harvard Business School.Topics:

• Sourcing and evaluating early-stage EdTech and AI startups
• Trends and opportunities in the global EdTech sector
• Navigating challenges and achieving product-market fit in EdTech

#VentureCapital #EdTech #Startups #AI #Entrepreneurship #Investing

Alex Konrad is the founder of Upstarts Media. He cut his teeth reporting at Fortune in 2010, writing about local New York startups such as ZocDoc and General Assembly. After joining Forbes in 2012, he kept covering the scene, writing some of the first in-depth stories about Blue Apron, Peloton and WeWork. For ten years, Alex managed the Midas List franchise of top venture capitalists, expanding the franchise to Europe and writing profiles about the likes of Chris Sacca, the All Raise community, a16z, Benchmark and Sequoia. As co-creator and editor of the Cloud 100 list, he camped in the Utah foothills with Silicon Slopes software billionaires, sang karaoke with Salesforce’s Marc Benioff in Tokyo and traveled to Sydney to tell the world about Melanie Perkins and Canva. Alex’s 15-plus Forbes cover stories also include profiles of Asana’s Dustin Moskovitz, Snowflake’s Frank Slootman, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Stripe’s Collison brothers and Wiz’s Assaf Rappaport. He’s also profiled Figma, Plaid and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, among many others.Topics:

• The Three Questions That Reveal Everything About a Startup
• The Power of the Uncomfortable Question
• The Art of the Cold Email

#VCPodcast #StartupStories #VentureCapital #TechJournalism #ForbesAlumni

Hadley is a co-founder and General Partner at Eniac Ventures, where his investment areas include AI (application and tooling layers), data/dev tooling, SaaS, and healthcare. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~He also takes the lead on developing the firm’s long-term strategy. Before becoming a VC himself, Hadley built two successful, VC-backed startups. He joined Vlingo in 2007, working with talented AI founders out of MIT to manage aspects of the business across product, strategy, and marketing, until the company was sold to Nuance for $225M. He then became Chief Business Officer at Thumb, a real-time recommendation app that reached user engagement levels second only to Facebook and was ultimately acquired by YPulse.Topics:

• The evolution of AI investing
• Application layer vs. infrastructure
• The transition from building companies to funding them

#VCPodcast #EniacVentures #SeedInvesting #AIInvesting #StartupFounder

Ashish Kakran is a Partner at Sierra Ventures, where he leads early-stage investments in AI, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~Before Sierra, Ashish spent seven years in venture, most recently as a Partner at Thomvest Ventures, where he invested in companies including Cohere, Harness, Isovalent (acquired by Cisco), Opaque, and Exaforce. Ashish is known for working closely with technical founders. Prior to venture, he spent nearly a decade in engineering and product leadership roles at early-stage infrastructure startups, giving him firsthand insight into company building from the ground up. He holds a BS in Computer Science from IIT and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. Ashish has been recognized by VC Journal’s “40 Under 40” and Business Insider’s “Rising Stars in VC.” Topics:

• The current AI infrastructure stack
• Evaluating AI companies: technical differentiation vs. go-to-market execution
• Security in the age of AI

#VCPodcast #AIInfrastructure #CloudNative #Cybersecurity #TechnicalFounders

Molly Alter is a Partner at Northzone, based in New York. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~She invests across early and growth stages, with a particular focus on Vertical SaaS and AI. Her portfolio includes companies such as GovDash and Clarium.Before joining Northzone, Molly was an investor at Index Ventures and Insight Partners, where she served on the boards of leading technology companies including Quantive, Glia, Lightricks, and Frame.io, which sold to Adobe for $1.3B. Since beginning her venture capital career in 2016, she has led and supported investments across both the U.S. and Europe, building a transatlantic perspective on scaling B2B software companies. Molly holds a degree in the History of Science from Harvard University.Topics:

• The $1.3B Exit Playbook: Lessons from Frame.io's Journey to Adobe
• How AI is Modernizing Ancient Industries
• AI-First vs. AI-Enabled: Which Business Models Actually Scale?

• Healthcare supply chain AI trends

#VerticalSaaS #AIInvesting #HealthTech #GovTech #VentureCapita

Marty Kausas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pylon, one of the fastest-growing platforms modernizing B2B customer support. With prior engineering experience at Airbnb, Marty blends deep technical chops with a market-first mindset to tackle one of the most overlooked segments in enterprise software: post-sales support. Since launching, Pylon has become the go-to support infrastructure for high-growth B2B companies, backed by leading investors like Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator. Under Marty’s leadership, the company is pioneering an AI-native approach to customer success—replacing outdated ticketing systems with a platform purpose-built for tools like Slack and Teams. He’s part of a new generation of founders scaling category-defining companies by staying close to the customer and building in public.Topics:

• Reimagining B2B Support with AI-Native, Workflow-First Tools
• Skipping technical screenings for your first engineers - unconventional hiring philosophy
• Building for the "chat-first" generation of B2B buyers and sellers

#VCPodcast #B2BStartups #CustomerSupport #Pylon #StartupFunding

John Zeratsky (JZ) is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Character Capital, where he supports startup founders with capital and sprints. He’s a bestselling author of Sprint and Make Time, and has reached millions with articles in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and other outlets. JZ is a former Design Partner at GV (Google Ventures), where he developed the Sprint method and supported many of GV’s most successful investments, including Slack, One Medical Group, Flatiron Health, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Gusto. Previously, JZ was a design leader for YouTube, Google Ads, and FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google in 2007.Topics:

• How VCs can use sprint principles to make faster, better investment decisions
• Common traits across successful investments like Slack, One Medical, and Blue Bottle
• Industries where AI will create the most venture-scale opportunities

#VentureCapital #AI #StartupInvesting #DesignSprint #ProductMarketFit

Lisa Xu is a partner at Threshold. Based in New York, she is responsible for leading new investments and supporting Threshold’s portfolio companies. She serves on the board of directors of Suger and is actively involved with Threshold's investments in Motion, Numa, and VideaHealth. Before joining Threshold, Lisa was a principal at FirstMark Capital, where she focused on early-stage investments in B2B software companies with a focus on vertical software and commerce infrastructure. She helped lead and support investments in twenty different companies, including Loop Returns, EvolutionIQ (acquired by CCC), Justworks, Pigment, Alloy Automation, Archive Resale, and TextIQ (acquired by Relativity). Prior to venture capital, Lisa was a product manager at venture-backed startups Peloton (NASDAQ: PTON) and Handy (acquired by ANGI Homeservices). Previously, she was a senior associate consultant at Bain & Company, where she performed investment due diligence for private equity and growth equity firms. Lisa graduated summa cum laude from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in finance and management. She was named to the EVC (Emerging VC) list in 2022 and 2023, which recognizes the top rising stars in venture capital.Topics:

• How AI is fundamentally rewiring commerce
• Which AI companies will survive and thrive vs. which are riding the hype wave
• Lessons learned from successful exits

#VentureCapital #AI #VerticalAI #CommerceAI #VoiceAI #StartupPodcast

Jon Carr-Harris is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CRED, which he founded and initially seeded. Previously, Jon was the Co-Founder and CEO of Swish Labs & Ventures, a technology consulting firm and venture group specializing in financial services and marketplace innovations. Under his leadership, Swish developed groundbreaking technology solutions for industry-leading organizations including Prudential, Nasdaq, Gatorade, and HSBC.Topics:

• Unifying fragmented enterprise data
• Balance proprietary data generation with client data privacy and security
• How enterprises should think about their "data readiness" for AI transformation

#VCPodcast #PredictiveAI #EnterpriseAI #DataIntelligence #AIOperatingSystem