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Amjad Masad, co-founder and CEO of Replit, leads a browser-first, AI-driven platform that aims to make software creation accessible to non-developers. He talks about building a society of models and goal-driven agents that run for days. He discusses staying independent while competing with major AI players and the Apple App Store dispute over iOS app-building rules.

Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, built global payments and banking infrastructure across dozens of markets. He discusses taking the long, unglamorous path of licenses and local rails. He explains turning down a $1.2B Stripe offer, building end-to-end money movement, and why a decade of payments data positions the company for an AI-driven future.

In this episode, Connie Loizos talks with Rainmaker Securities managing director Glen Anderson about the surge in the secondary market as investors race to buy shares in some of tech’s most sought-after private companies. From SpaceX to OpenAI to Anthropic, demand is intensifying ahead of a potentially reopening IPO window. Glen explains how the secondary market really works, why some companies have plenty of buyers but no sellers, and what recent activity reveals about investor sentiment. He also shares why SpaceX has been such an outlier, what’s behind the imbalance between OpenAI and Anthropic, and how institutional investors are navigating this increasingly competitive market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Craig Piggott, founder and CEO of Halter, builds solar-powered smart collars and virtual fencing to modernize livestock management. He discusses shifting cattle moves from monthly to daily, how collars train animals with audio cues and low pulses, the hardware and AI behind reliability, and scaling a subscription model while protecting farmer data.

Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WHOOP, scaled a wearable from elite athletes to a subscription health platform. He discusses skipping a screen to boost continuous wear, winning authentic athlete validation, and pivoting to medical-grade monitoring, blood testing, and AI-driven insights. The conversation covers subscription mechanics, retention, partnerships, and rapid global expansion.

Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring who returned to steer product launches, discusses the new AI-powered Search Party and its aim to reunite neighbors with lost pets. He tackles privacy and encryption choices, explains why a Flock Safety tie-up was dropped, and outlines how law enforcement interactions and neighborhood features are designed to be opt-in and resident-controlled.

Max Tegmark, MIT professor and founder of the Future of Life Institute, warns about losing control of powerful AI and advocates binding safety standards and oversight. He discusses the clash over Anthropic, risks of military and surveillance uses, urgent AGI timelines, deceptive AI behavior, and the push for an FDA‑style regulatory regime to keep humans in charge.

Bill Gurley, longtime venture capitalist turned author and mentor, discusses career design and reinvention. He talks about regret-minimization, when to pivot, the power of peer networks and mentorship. He argues for running toward AI, not away, and outlines practical steps like research, small experiments, and building community to future-proof work.

Stacy Brown-Philpot, founder and managing partner of Cherry Rock Capital and former TaskRabbit CEO with Google experience. She explains why she launched a firm to fill a Series A/B gap. She talks about evaluating product-market fit at scale. She discusses AI’s impact on enterprise software. She stresses quality revenue over headline ARR and how board roles shape investment judgment.

This week on StrictlyVC Download, Connie Loizos talks with Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the company behind USDT, the world's largest stablecoin. With 536 million users globally, Tether has quietly become one of crypto's most powerful players—and now it's evolving far beyond stablecoins. Ardoino is transforming Tether into what he calls "the stable company," a diversified operation making bold bets on decentralized AI, agriculture, telecommunications, and gold-backed tokens.In this conversation, Ardoino explains how Tether generates billions in profit from U.S. Treasury holdings, why the company is building AI platforms that run locally on smartphones for emerging markets, and how its relationship with U.S. regulators has shifted dramatically. He also discusses Tether's geographic expansion, particularly in El Salvador and across Latin America, and makes the case that all of these seemingly disparate investments—from cattle ranching to brain-computer interfaces—are part of an interlocking strategy to serve the billions of people left behind by traditional finance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices