Village Global Podcast

Nan Li (@nanli), Managing Director at Obvious Ventures, and Zavain Dar (@zavaindar), Partner at Lux Capital, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:-How Deep Tech has evolved over time-The state of Computational Biology today-What the future of Biology looks like-What Big Pharma is focused on and the market opportunity for biotech startups-What’s their request for startups in computational biologyThanks 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.

Malay Gandhi and Nikhil Krishnan discuss trends and innovations in healthcare startups, MRI accessibility and pricing, opportunities in the healthcare sector for entrepreneurs, challenges in the healthcare supply chain, unbundling hospitals and empowering physicians, success of One Medical and standardized solutions in healthcare, the state of digital health in 2019 and potential developments in 2020, and challenges and market failures in addressing infectious diseases.

Venture capitalists Greg Rosen (@Grosen) at Bedrock and John Melas Kyriazi (@jmelaskyriazi) at Spark join Erik to discuss:- Deep tech as the answer to the drought of pure play consumer companies.- Leveraging regulatory arbitrages for deep tech companies to get to market faster.- Intersection of consumer and biotech.- Enabling infrastructure for biotech.- Emergence of food/agtech.- New computing platforms.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.

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Nabeel Hyatt (@nabeel), partner at Spark Capital, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Why they love investing in marketplaces and the evolution of marketplaces over the last decade.- Why the wave of Uber For X startups didn’t take off.- How they evaluate marketplaces, and why founders get confused about “which race they’re running” when creating a marketplace startup.- Where they’re excited about seeing more marketplaces and which spaces they advise founders to avoid.- The impact of SoftBank and their analysis of the current crop of public marketplace companies.- Common mistakes they see founders making in marketplace startups.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.

Eric Vishria (@ericvishria) and Chetan Puttagunta (@chetanp), general partners at Benchmark, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- The unique partnership structure at Benchmark and how it has led to the continued success of the firm.- Why they are purposefully not trying to scale the firm, unlike other venture firms.- Their investments in open source, why the space is unique, and where the white space is.- What will change in the future in open source and web infrastructure.- Biotech as a space and some of the companies they’ve invested in.- Why entering the healthcare market is fraught with difficulty 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.

Bailey Richardson (@baileyelaine), partner at People & Company, and co-author of Get Together, and Rei Wang (@heyreiwang), founder of The Grand and former CEO of the Dorm Room Fund Investment Team, join Erik on this episode.They discuss: - The companies they’re creating and the unique insight about communities that lies behind each company. - How they define community, and what makes a community different from other things like networks. - How communities change over their lifetimes. - The differences between the big companies in the social media space and how they’ve evolved over time. - Whether community startups can be venture-backable.- The future of countries and religions as communities.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.

Brian Frank (@bfrank) of FTW Ventures, and Rob Rhinehart (@robrhinehart) of Soylent, join Erik on this episode. They discuss:- Some of the most exciting developments in bioscience these days.- The possibilities for biohacking and whether there is an “AWS for bioscience” emerging.- The interplay of startups and incumbents in the space and how incumbents can be more helpful to the startup community.- What is under- or over-hyped in the space.- The existing big companies in food and bioscience and what will change in the next 5-10 years.- The future of retail and how data can transform supply chains.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.

Joel Monegro (@jmonegro), partner at Placeholder, joins Erik on this episode.They talk about:- The waves of centralization and decentralization in finance, government, and culture over time.- How value accruing to incumbents has resulted in completely new fields opening up for innovation.- Why crypto networks are analogous to countries.- Joel’s thesis that "ultimately capital is control."- Why crypto is not a new technology revolution.- How crypto can change the problem of mis-distribution of capital in societies.- How Joel’s thinking on these topics has influenced his investment thesis.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.

Keith Rabois (@rabois), partner at Founders Fund, joins Erik on this episode. It was recorded live at an On Deck Fellowship event in San Francisco. They discuss:- The kinds of companies and founders he looks to fund, including why he wants half of his VC friends to laugh at how ambitious and ridiculous the companies he’s funding are.- Why going from zero to one involves roughly the same amount of pain no matter whether the “one” the company gets to is tiny or a billion-dollar-plus enterprise.- Some of the different spaces he’s invested in recently and how he’s navigated the idea maze in different sectors.- Stories from the early days of PayPal.- Why he likes regulated markets, and why he says “the more legal risk, the better.”- How to think about creating a founding team, and why you need to absolutely make sure you and your co-founders agree on first principles.And of course, they also discuss basketball and politics.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.

Katherine Boyle (@KTmBoyle), investor at General Catalyst, and Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes), partner at Lux Capital, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Their requests for startups in the space.- The current landscape and the types of companies they are looking to invest in.- What implications geopolitics has for the deep tech space.- Their predictions for the next ten years.- Katherine’s thesis about the privatization of government.- What to know about how the defense sector works.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.