Village Global Podcast

Michael Dempsey (@mhdempsey), partner at Compound, joins Erik on this episode to talk through a wide array of sectors that he has delved into.(We apologize for the audio quality of this episode. We had technical difficulties during recording).They talk about:- The model and approach at Compound, including how writing definitive blog posts about a particular industry fits into their investing strategy.- The state of robotics today, including why he’s not as bullish on robots in warehouses as he once was, and how robots can potentially transform food and retail.- Machine learning, its applications, and why it’s so difficult to reproduce the findings seen in research papers in the space.- Different approaches to making self-driving cars work, and his predictions for the future of the industry.- The state of the investment landscape for other applications of ML, including radiology, voice and phone calls, image recognition, and animation.- Digital celebrities, identity, and how self-expression on the internet will change in the future.- His deep dive into women’s health, family planning and reproductive health, and what kinds of opportunities exist 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.

Erik is joined on this episode by Nicolas Colin, co-founder and director of The Family, and author of Hedge: A Greater Safety Net For The Entrepreneurial Age.They discuss:- Why in the future we can expect more social change from tech companies than from government.- The key functions of version 1.0 of the social safety net.- How to solve the problem that most jobs are located in cities, but cities are also mostly unaffordable.- Why the 21st century will be more like the 19th century than the 20th.- Why this is the entrepreneurial age, and what that means for workers.- The story of the Rothschilds and how they prevented potential wars.- The problems with universal basic income.- How China is innovating on the social contract.- The fact that nation-states are a recent invention and are not necessarily the only way to organize in the future.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.

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.

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 economistsThanks 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.

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.

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 globalizationThanks 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 spaceThanks 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.