Village Global Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Tim O’Reilly and Parker Thompson on Company Building, Venture Capital, and Inequality May 09, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly), Valley legend and founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, and returning fan favorite Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList.
They start out talking about Tim’s piece in Quartz about the hazards of the view that scaling one’s company as fast as possible should be one's top priority above all else.
He says that this approach is not for every entrepreneur and that it’s an artifact of the amount of money floating around today chasing returns. He has a biting critique of the companies that are going public without having ever been profitable or cash flow positive — but more importantly, without having a plan for getting to that point.
Parker and Tim discuss the misalignment of incentives that can happen in venture capital, and some of the alternative models that are sprouting up to solve that problem. He gives his advice for what entrepreneurs should do when getting started and how they should approach raising money.
They also discuss policy changes that could lead to longer-term thinking by investors, whether Tim foresees a “Silicon Valley meltdown,” as well as why inequality is such a pressing issue and how to solve it.
We want to apologize for the audio quality of the second half of this episode. We ran into technical difficulties again during recording but are working on getting them sorted out for you.
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.

A Primer on Life Sciences Investing with Jenny Rooke and Jared Seehafer May 07, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined by Jenny Rooke (@drjennyrooke), Managing Director at Genoa Ventures, and Jared Seehafer (@seehafer), Village Global Network Leader and CEO and co-founder of Enzyme.
They start out by talking about how Jenny got to where she is today and her career journey thus far. She explains what makes the team at Genoa unique and why it’s such a competitive advantage to have a team that is able to look at the raw data that a company is putting out and understand whether it’s compelling or not.
They define some commonly misused terms in life sciences and talk about how to differentiate between various areas of the space. Jenny mentions that part of being successful as a startup means choosing to stay focused and aggressively saying no to promising opportunities — and that Genoa follows the same advice.
Erik asks what some of Jenny’s requests for startups in the space would be, what her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is, and which emerging technologies in the space are over- or under-rated.
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 the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Requests For Startups: Software Meets Physical World with Sean Linehan May 05, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Sean Linehan (@seanlinehan), Village Global Network Leader, and former VP of product at Flexport.
Sean explains how he found his way to Flexport, which he says was like “the TurboTax of customs brokerages.” He explains the trend of entrepreneurs building software companies that are not afraid to “get their hands dirty” in areas that involve a lot of people and logistics.
He talks about his study of the history of different industries and why he says that today is analogous to the early industrial revolution. He says that there is a trend of “productizing professional services.”
Erik asks which industries Sean would be most excited about if he was starting a venture capital fund together. Sean explains why he works as a product manager rather than a software engineer in the interest of maximizing his impact per unit of time and talks about why zero-sum thinking is pervasive in the world today but is in most cases, wrong.
We apologize for the audio in this episode and the last couple episodes. We had technical difficulties the day of recording, but we’ve got them fixed now and have some great episodes coming up for you.
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.

Arjun Sethi of Tribe Capital on Data-Informed Investing May 02, 2019

Show notes

Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi) of Tribe Capital joins Erik on this episode to talk about Tribe Capital’s approach to investing. He talks about the “first principles” approach they take to evaluating companies and why he says rather than the company pitching their firm to Tribe, instead he tells prospective investments, “we will pitch you.”
He breaks down the data-driven analysis that Tribe does of the companies they look to work with, and talks about the kinds of data that work best for their analysis. Erik asks why the bigger venture capital firms aren’t taking the same approach and runs through a number of industries to get Arjun’s take on what the keys to success are in that sector.
Arjun talks about some of the writing on his blog over the past few years and points out that “any successful company is not successful because they have copied someone else’s framework.”
We apologize for the audio quality of this episode. We ran into technical difficulties during recording.
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.

Elad Gil on How to Evaluate Markets Apr 30, 2019

Show notes

Elad Gil (@eladgil), entrepreneur and investor, joins Erik and co-host Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol), Chief of Staff to Justin Kan, for a discussion of all things markets.
They start off talking about Elad’s philosophy of life and career in general, including why he says that “less happens than you think in 2 years, and more happens than you think in 5 years.” He points out that it’s hard to predict the future and says it’s impossible to say where he will be or what he will be doing 10 years from now.
Elad has a different way of looking at potential companies and investments than most investors. Rather than starting with the quality of founders, he starts by evaluating the quality of the market. He explains why this is important and how it has led to success for him as an entrepreneur and investor.
He talks about what makes a good market, and why “most startup markets have to be definitionally non-obvious.” They contrast the “Rabois School of Markets” versus the “Thiel School of Markets” and Elad gives his opinion on which markets are currently being ignored by Silicon Valley.
They finish with a rapid-fire round where they name a market and Elad gives his take on it, including VR, longevity, consumer social, and others.
Quotable Lines From This Episode
“Starting a company, at least for first-time founders, can really be an act of desperation.” — Elad
“Startups tend to fail at thing big companies are good at.” — Elad
“I see a lot of things done in professional services that should just be SaaS software.” — Elad
We apologize for the audio quality of this episode. We ran into technical difficulties during recording.

All Things Scaling, Managing and Hiring with Ryan Delk and Jared Fliesler Apr 28, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Ryan Delk (@delk), COO of Omni, and Jared Fliesler (@JaredSF), COO of Scribd.
They talk about the fact that Chief Operating Officer is a relatively new role in Silicon Valley that has emerged over the last several years. They explain how they make sure they are effective COOs.
They say that being COO is analogous to being a bumblebee in that a COO is always moving from place to place within the company making sure things are running smoothly. They use “how often am I surprised?” as a question to use to take the measure of how well they are doing their job.
They move on to talking tactics, including how to set up your org structure, how to think about recruiting in a growing startup, and the nuances of assigning titles in your company. They also discuss goal-setting within the company, performance reviews, the tough task of letting people go, 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. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

What Michael Nielsen Thinks About Basically Everything Apr 25, 2019

Show notes

Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen), research fellow at Y Combinator Research, joins Erik for a wide-ranging discussion about a variety of topics, including:
* Why the top names in the S&P 500 change over time, but the top names in global university rankings don’t — and how to fix that.
* How Michael thinks about the role of risk in science, and why he'd like to see more risk-taking.
* Memory, including how to improve yours and why professional athletes seem to have such good ones.
* The “compliment deficit” in the world and how to fix it.
* The silver lining of the Bay Area housing problem.
* The reproducibility problem in social science.
* Why he’s a fan of chaos.
…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, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Why What You Know Is More Valuable Than Who You Know, and More with Auren Hoffman and Tod Sacerdoti Apr 23, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Auren Hoffman (@auren), former co-founder and CEO of LiveRamp and Tod Sacerdoti (@tod), former CEO and founder of BrightRoll. They are now working together on a new fund.
They talk about how they came to the idea they’re working on, including how to find the right intersection of ideas among those that are interesting to you, that you are uniquely skilled at, that others don’t yet appreciate, and that are worth working on.
They explain what data co-ops are and the unique value that they can bring. Auren says he believes that the future is about managing vendors rather than people, and points out that WhatsApp didn’t even build their core messaging functionality themselves in the first place.
Erik asks what’s changed in company building since they started their companies in the 2000s and what the next ten years will look like in venture capital. They also talk about why the Valley is flush with cash and whether they are long San Francisco in an era of distributed teams.
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. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

The Rise of Devsumer/No-Code with Ilya Sukhar and Alex Yaseen Apr 21, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by Ilya Sukhar (@ilyasu) of Matrix Partners and formerly of Parse, and Alex Yaseen (@alexyaseen), co-founder and CEO of Parabola.
They start by talking about what exactly “devsumer” is and why it’s important. They discuss some of the biggest names in the space and how these tools are enabling people who are not engineers to have the kind of leverage that engineers typically enjoy.
Ilya and Alex talk about the trends in the space and what they would be looking for if they were running a venture fund focused on devsumer. They discuss some of the common pitfalls founders face and some of the unique forces at play in this market. They talk about why people get excited about what they can build with the tools and how they intersect with some of the more developer-focused applications that exist.
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. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Existential Risks, Ecological Economics, and How The Blockchain Will Transform Capitalism with Vinay Gupta Apr 19, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined by Vinay Gupta, CEO of Mattereum, for a wide ranging discussion about crypto, world government, existential risks, science fiction, energy, and much more.
Vinay says that venture capital is a 40-year-old model and that the ICO boom — while having its own significant drawbacks — was a huge innovation in capital formation. He explains why the blockchain is such a huge innovation with wide-ranging applications and laments the fact that people have a hard time seeing past its application in digital currency.
He lays out his thoughts on why reputation systems are broken and why Facebook could in a few years’ time be essentially a credit rating agency and a digital identity system for all aspects of your life.
Vinay discusses the existential risks that the world faces today, and why the lack of environmental sustainability is at the top of his list of fears. He says that he is neither a Keynesian or an Austrian, but instead subscribes to “ecological economics.”
They also talk about the influence of science fiction on engineers, the idea of "network escrow," why we need a nerd in the White House, and novel ideas for generating energy.
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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