Village Global Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Thiel Fellowship, 1517, and The Future of Education with Danielle Strachman and Mike Gibson Aug 04, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Danielle Strachman (@DStrachman) and Mike Gibson (@William_Blake), co-founders and general partners at 1517 Fund. They also both worked extensively on the Thiel Fellowship.
They discuss:
- The story of the genesis of the Thiel Fellowship.
- The lessons learned from running the Fellowship.
- Their idiosyncratic paths to running a venture capital fund.
- The signals they relied on to find the right applicants.
- How to change how higher ed works in the US.
- The lessons that the US can learn from other countries when it comes to college.
- How students can have a conversation with their parents about not going to college.
- Whether something like the Thiel Fellowship can scale.
- The lessons that homeschooling has for other forms of education.
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

What Alex Tabarrok Thinks About Basically Everything Aug 01, 2019

Show notes

Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok), economist and author, joins Erik on this episode for a wide-ranging discussion.
They talk about:
- The contributions of economics to society over the past several decades and the biggest challenges ahead for the field
- What “the great forgetting” means in economics and why bad ideas from the past keep coming back
- The arguments for open borders
- Why Alex thinks we should focus on increasing the number of police as opposed to increasing punishment for offenders
- Whether the US or China will pull ahead in the next decades
- Whether capitalism and democracy are compatible
- Why “democracy is not the secret sauce to riches”
- The merits of inductive versus deductive thinking
- Why he thinks too few robots, not too many, is the cause of low wages
- His thoughts on cost disease
- How he would change academia, the FDA, healthcare, the tax code, and other areas if he could wave a magic wand
- The ways in which he thinks differently from other economists
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

The State of Fintech in 2019 with Seth Rosenberg and Sheel Mohnot Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Seth Rosenberg (@SethGRosenberg), investor at Greylock, and Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi), fintech investor at 500 Startups.
They talk about:
- The biggest opportunities in fintech today.
- How traditional finance can be rebuilt from the ground up using software.
- How to think about different market segments in fintech.
- Their requests for startups in the space.
- Why the big companies in fintech are converging on the same set of features.
- Facebook’s Libra and the impact it might have.
- The “Asia model” as represented by WeChat and Grab, and whether that might transfer to the US.
… And much more.
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

What Samo Burja Thinks About Basically Everything Jul 27, 2019

Show notes

Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja.
In this episode they discuss:
- Why certain societies flourish while others decay
- Where Samo stands on the nature versus nurture debate
- Why he has “yet to hear a satisfying description of human social life”
- The lessons we can learn from places like Singapore
- The difference between the view of government as resource for the people versus the view of people as resources for the government
- Why he’s skeptical of happiness research as it relates to countries
- Why neither Obama nor Trump were inevitable
- The future of China, the US, and globalization
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

How Income Share Agreements Can Help Rebuild The Middle Class with Daniel Pianko and Andy Hall Jul 25, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Daniel Pianko (@danielpianko), co-founder and managing director of University Ventures, and Andy Hall (@AndyHall_SD), COO of the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
They talk about:
- How ISAs have been able to transform lives through Andy’s program in San Diego.
- Why tech titans providing massive amounts of money for scholarships is a suboptimal way of getting underprivileged people into school.
- The chasm between work and school in America.
- The fact that over 50% of all private donations go to 50 schools in the US.
- Potential bottlenecks to ISA adoption and how they can be solved.
- Why only 25% of people end up with a first job related to their degree.
- How to think about public vs. private responsibility to increase access to education in the US.
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

The Next Phase For Income Share Agreements with Chuck Trafton and Will Nelligan Jul 23, 2019

Show notes

On this episode Erik is joined by Chuck Trafton (@chucktrafton), of FlowPoint and edly, and Will Nelligan (@williamnelligan), of the Education Finance Institute.
They talk about:
- Why there needs to be a marketplace for ISAs.
- How ISAs ensure that schools have “skin in the game.”
- The problems with student loans.
- The mechanics of ISA repayment and the ways in which they are progressive.
- Why ISAs provide a unique opportunity for investors.
- How ISAs can fix some of the perverse incentives that schools have.
- Legislation that will enable ISAs to be more widespread.
- Why it makes financial sense for schools to spend so much money on “customer acquisition” and how ISAs can create a new funding model for higher ed institutions.
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

What Robert Wright Thinks About Basically Everything Jul 21, 2019

Show notes

Robert Wright (@robertwrighter), author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal, Why Buddhism Is True, and others, joins Erik on this episode.
They discuss:
- The common theme of exploring the meaning of life that Robert says runs through all of his books.
- Whether global governance could be feasible and how positive-sum thinking can play a part in reducing hostilities between nations.
- Why consciousness gives life meaning.
- How to deal with the quest for status.
- The emotional manipulation that political leaders employ.
- Why we shouldn’t rush to bring in new technologies before we know the consequences.
- Why evolution has not programmed us to be happy.
- How to deal with tribalism.
- Why people say that “to explain something is to excuse it” and why not thinking that way can bring about a more compassionate world.
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

The Future of Identity with Glen Weyl and Tomer Kagan Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Glen Weyl (@glenweyl), founder of RadicalxChange and co-author of Radical Markets, and Tomer Kagan (@Gradish), co-founder and CEO of Merit.
They discuss:
- What they’re working on in the space and how it will change how identity works in the future
- How to think about what makes up someone’s identity, including elements that are self-declared and those that can be independently verified
- Glen’s point that the internet is missing two crucial elements: a truth function and a dignity function
- How the world will be different if their projects succeed
- Pseudonymous identities
- The problem with large-scale identity or reputation systems, like the Chinese government or Uber have created
- Why blockchain is the wrong answer to the right question when it come to identity, and the idea that “most truth is local, not global”
- What they are still trying to figure out in the space
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Requests For Startups: Hard Tech with Trae Vassallo and Lee Edwards Jul 16, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Trae Vassallo (@trae) of Defy and Lee Edwards (@terronk) of Root Ventures.
They talk about:
- How their backgrounds and unique experiences have informed their perspectives on investing
- Whether venture capital should go back to funding technical risk
- Their advice for funds and how Trae has seen investing strategies come and go over time
- Why there are big opportunities in areas VCs don’t know much about, like logistics, warehousing, or agriculture
- Why Trae doesn’t differentiate between consumer and enterprise businesses
- Their requests for startups in the space
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

A Primer on Idea Markets with Mike Elias Jul 14, 2019

Show notes

Mike Elias (@harmonylion1), crypto consultant, joins Erik on this episode to talk about idea markets.
They discuss:
- How he came up with the idea
- Examples of how this could be implemented in the real world
- The problems with the incentives of the world’s media
- Why it’s “impossible to kill an idea with force”
- How an idea market is like a mix of the Nasdaq and Reddit
- Why, as a society, we want to search for the ideas that are both “outrageous and true”
- Why William James said that we should measure ideas primarily by their usefulness
Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.
Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

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