Sarah Smith is currently a partner at Bain Capital Ventures after an early career of building elite HR teams for huge tech players, including Facebook and Quora, where she helped scale Quora from 40 to 160 people in 3 years.

In this episode, we discussed hiring that first crucial people person, how to train first-time management, how to nail goal setting, and how to improve vesting schedules.

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Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale.

Share your thoughts with us on Twitter:
Hosted by: @eriktorenberg
Guest: @sasmith4
Produced by: @jacksonsteger

Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi), founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, joins Lucas Bagno (@lucasbagnocv) of Village Global to discuss:

- Sheel’s reflections on raising a fund and the opportunities he sees in fintech today.

- The importance of ownership in seed investing.

- How the fintech landscape has evolved over the last year.

- Why non-fintech companies are integrating fintech into their business.

- Whether banks can be disrupted and the unique regulatory environment that influences the financial market.

- The advice he gives to founders on which investors to work with.

- Opportunities in fintech globally.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Anne Dwane is co-founder and partner at Village Global. She was previously CEO at Zinch, a network connecting students with colleges and scholarships. Zinch was acquired by Chegg, where she served as Chief Business Officer, before and after the IPO. Previously, Anne co-founded Military.com, a social and professional network for service members and veterans that was acquired by Monster.

In this episode, they discussed how to do annual planning, how to figure out comp, why the role of a CBO is an allocative role, and much more. 

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Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale.

Hosted by: @eriktorenberg

Guest: @adwane

Produced by: @jacksonsteger

Today’s guest is Ben Braverman. Ben is currently Chief Customer Officer at Flexport after 6 years of being their Chief Revenue Officer during Flexport’s hypergrowth period.

In this episode, we discussed how to build a good sales machine from the ground up. Ben also shares his thoughts on all things revenue - from marketing to BD to forming early SDR teams.

On Deck and Flexport are co-building the future of logistics — learn more about their joint accelerator at www.beondeck.com/x/flexport.

Adam Gelman, On Deck’s Head of Go-To-Market, joined Erik in this episode as a guest co-host. We hope you enjoy.
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Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale. We will be simulcasting the podcast on the Village Global feed.

Share your thoughts with us on Twitter:
Hosted by: @eriktorenberg
Guest: @braveben
Guest co-host: @Adam_Gelman
Produced by: @jacksonsteger
Brought to you by: @beondeck

Execs is a show from Erik Torenberg and On Deck for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale. We're simulcasting the series on the Village Global podcast.

Anand Chandrasekaran is a full-time angel and advisor with extensive executive experience at some of the biggest names in tech. Prior to being EVP to Five9, Anand worked at Facebook, Yahoo, and started several of his own companies.

He was most recently EVP at Five9 after three years as director of Facebook’s Messenger platform and five years at Yahoo. He has extensive founding, advisory and C-Suite experience with both American and Indian companies.

In this episode, Anand shares incredible frameworks for product leadership. You can read his thoughts in more detail @anandc on Twitter.

Rishi Tripathy, group product lead at On Deck, joined Erik in this episode as a guest co-host. We hope you enjoy.

Execs is a show from Erik Torenberg and On Deck for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale. We're simulcasting the series on the Village Global podcast.

Gina Gotthilf spent five years at Duolingo and helped the company grow from 3 million to 300 million users. She is the kind of VP of Marketing that isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

Gina is an A/B testing vet, and shared her best frameworks and lessons for how to A/B test well. She also shares her PR and influencer strategy tips, as well as her thoughts on how to hire your first marketing person.

She is now cofounder of Latitud, which supports early-stage entrepreneurs in Latin America solving some of the biggest problems in emerging markets across the globe.

Her passion for her job and life are evident throughout this episode. We hope you enjoy.

Execs is a show from Erik Torenberg and On Deck for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale. We're simulcasting the series on the Village Global podcast.

The first guest on Execs is Jared Fliesler. Most recently, Jared was COO at Scribd. Prior to Scribd, Jared was a VP at Square, and director at Google, and a GM at Slide (acquired by Google), where he worked closely with Keith Rabios and Max Levchin

In this episode, we discuss symmetry in execs’ ability to hire and fire, how to build world-class onboarding experiences, what it means to be vulnerable as an exec, and much more.

Scott Sumner (@scottsumnertmi), economist and author of The Money Illusion, and Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact), investment strategist, join Erik on this episode to discuss:

- Whether monetary policy has been too expansionary.

- Where Lyn and Scott differ on inflation.

- Why interest rates have declined over the last several decades.

- The nuances of the correlation between growth in money supply and CPI.

- Potential downsides to being the global reserve currency.

- Why the US has been able to run trade deficits without a day of reckoning (so far).

- The bull and bear cases for the US and China.

- Why the US has been able to dominate the world in high-tech industries.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Scott Sumner (@scottsumnertmi), economist and author of The Money Illusion, and Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact), investment strategist, join Erik on this episode to discuss:

- Lyn’s position that the US needs to inflate its debt away and the mechanics of how that works.

- The similarities and differences between the 1940s and the 2020s, when an external shock hit a highly leveraged economy.

- How to monetize debt.

- Why interest rates have remained low.

- How the fed can keep inflation at bay.

- The transitory inflation hypothesis.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Elias Torres (@eliast), co-founder and CTO at Drift, joins Lucas Bagno for this episode, which was recorded as part of a special event for Villagers. They discussed:

- Why Elias is so grateful for the US and the differences he noticed when he came here from Nicaragua.

- How he has forged a great relationship with a co-founder who is the opposite of him in many ways.

- Why people should be taking more risks.

- Why they hired a recruiter as their first employee at Drift.

- Why they place less emphasis on resume and more on culture fit, as well as how to test for fit.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup