Village Global Podcast

Erik is joined on this episode by Cyan Banister (@cyantist), partner at Founders Fund, and Niv Dror (@Nivo0o0), founder of Shrug Capital.They start out talking about why they’ve each been successful investors and what their respective “superpowers” are. Cyan tells a story about hearing Chris Sacca talk about his fund on a bus and meeting Travis Kalanick in a hot tub. Niv talks about the playbook for micro VCs and why after suggesting as a joke that he start his own fund, he actually ended up doing so. In contrast, Cyan explains why she would never start a fund of her own.Cyan talks about how the team at Founders Fund works together, how they hired Keith Rabois even though they thought they never would be able to, and what kind of talent they’re looking for. They move on to some of the most exciting spaces in consumer social, including AR/VR gaming, virtual celebrities, live, and new applications that are enabled with AirPods. They finish by talking about career development, why connecting people is such a valuable skill, and Cyan’s unique Twitter photo.Quotable Lines“I tend to be a listener, not a talker. I will sometimes be in a room or a party or an event and I hear what someone is working on and I say, hey, tell me more. With Chris Sacca’s fund, I heard him talking about it on a bus.” — Cyan“Most people just try to shoot down things. I just want to believe and see what can be. I want to say yes. Pessimism is not very good in this business.” — Niv“The thesis of the fund is things that I’m excited enough to talk about for an hour with a non-technical audience.” — Niv“We are incredibly lean and nimble. When we want to get something done, it’s a small office, and we just pull whoever needs to be in a meeting into a meeting and it just happens and then it’s done.” — Cyan“We probably wouldn’t hire Peter [Thiel] when he was just starting. He had to go do PayPal and all the other things that he did to become the Peter that he is today.” — CyanThanks 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.

Mark Goldenson (@goldenson), Village Global Network Leader, creator of VentureKit, and formerly founder and CEO of Breakthrough, joins Erik to talk about his requests for startups in the mental health space and in digital health more broadly.Mark recounts his entrepreneurial journey so far, including his experience at Breakthrough, a mental health startup he created and ran that was later acquired. He talks about the four key problems in mental health and how connecting therapists and clients through the internet can solve those problems. He explains how they tackled the problem in a unique way at Breakthrough and explains some of the nuances of operating in the health market. He points out that health is not a product-driven market and that at Breakthrough, instead of running a technology company as they had intended, they were running (virtual) clinics.They talk about telehealth and what opportunities exist in digital health more broadly. He also lists some of his requests for startups, including the intriguing idea of a “Fitbit for mood.”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.

Erik is joined by Afton Vechery (@aaffttoonn), co-funder and CEO of Modern Fertility, and Anarghya Vardhana (@anarghya503), VC at Maveron.Afton explains how she went from private equity to running a women's health startup and talks about the problems that she saw in the space and how Modern Fertility aims to change the lives of women.Anarghya talks about their investing criteria at Maveron and what they're looking for in the healthcare space. They talk about the reasons that women's health has been neglected and talk about some of the startups that are working on changing that.Afton points out that there are a number of companies working in healthcare that have a complete lack of articles published in peer-reviewed journals and Anarghya says that "brand is not enough" and that "you want to win the right way."They discuss what their requests for startups are and where they would be investing if they were running a fund devoted solely to women's health.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.

Aline Lerner (@alinelernerLLC), founder of interviewing.io, and Tasneem Minadakis, Engineering Leader at Google and advisor to interviewing.io, join Erik to talk about recruiting software engineers and opportunities in the recruiting space more broadly.Aline explains how interviewing.io allows for anonymous interviews, including the story of creating software to mask voices so neither side could tell who exactly the other party was. She talks about some of the correlations they found in their studies between the quality of a resume and likelihood of getting extended an offer, and whether the school you went to or companies you worked for are predictive of success in a job.Tasneem talks about how they are working on they are working on changing recruitment process at Google and some of the insights she’s gained over the years in various organizations. They also talk about the unique dynamics of recruitment businesses, the potential for disruption in the recruitment space, and whether LinkedIn might be disrupted.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.

Blaine Hatab (@blainehatab), CEO of Distru, joins Erik to talk all about the cannabis space. He explains what he is doing at Distru, how he got into the business and why the cannabis space is ripe with opportunity. He talks about the changes that have occurred in the market over the past several years with legalization in various localities and why that has led to a challenge for companies trying to comply with varying and changing rules. He discusses the different types of companies that exist currently, including his assessment of which ones will succeed and which will face challenges.Blaine also talks about the wide variety of uses of the cannabis plant, including in industrial materials, and some of the potential changes to the market with more widespread legalization of recreational use.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 by Ron Bouganim (@ronboug), founder and managing partner at Govtech Fund. Ron explains his thesis at Govtech Fund and how he got started in the space. He gives us a sense of just how neglected the technical operations of government are and why there are so many ripe opportunities in the space.He talks about why traditional venture capital wasn’t interested in the deals he was sending his way and why he had to start his own fund. He paints a market map for us in the space and differentiates between civic tech and government tech.He talks about some of his requests for startups, gives his advice for founders and talks about how government tech products can increase transparency in government around the 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 and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Jonathan Swanson (@swaaanson), co-founder and chairman of Thumbtack, and John Kobs (@johnkobs), co-founder of Apartment List join Erik to talk all about marketplaces.John and Jonathan talk about their lessons from running their respective companies about what makes a good marketplace, and how prospective founders can find opportunities in the space. They break down what it takes to get initial supply and demand, and the merits of two-sided marketplaces. They talk about some of the trends in real estate more broadly and the key limiting factors in marketplace businesses. They talk about their requests for startups in the space, where the opportunities are and what they would stay away from if they were a potential founder.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.

Erik is joined by Vincenzo Iozzo (@_snagg), Village Global network leader and director at CrowdStrike, as well as Jamie Butler (@jamierbutler), CTO at Endgame.James and Vincenzo talk about where opportunities are in the space and what their requests for startups are. Vincenzo says that he’d like to see cybersecurity risk securitized to create financial incentives for companies to insure their operations against cyberattacks.The two of them create a market map of the space and talk about the thesis they would have if they were running a fund in the space. They talk about where to avoid building and some of the nuances of the security market, including that there are rarely novel ideas, only great execution.They also talk about how cryptocurrencies and blockchain are spurring developments in the space and the the reversal that is happening with data becoming more important than the code that it runs on. 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.

Ashu Garg (@ashugarg), partner at Foundation Capital, joins Erik for a primer on the marketing tech space. They talk about how Ashu got started in the space and Ashu discusses a blog post he wrote predicting that this decade will be the decade of the CMO. He says that marketing is key in the current business landscape, in the same way sales, finance and IT held that mantle in previous eras.He talks about some of the big trends in marketing tech over the last several years, which ones are in vogue right now and what waves he expects in the future. He also talks about his advice for founders in building a marketing tech company and which areas he would avoid.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.

Elaine Wherry (@elainewherry) joins Erik on this episode to give us the playbook for recruiting for your startup. Elaine was co-founder of Meebo and is now investing at Edelweiss VC (https://www.edelweiss.vc) alongside co-founder Lee Jacobs (https://www.leejacobs.co).Elaine explains her superpower — being able to build quantitative systems around qualitative characteristics. She talks about how to evaluate candidates with your team and the way she uses TaskRabbit workers to calibrate her team’s assessment of a candidate. Elaine discusses why work simulations are so important in hiring and breaks down how you create a good simulation. She explains why she asks behavioral questions exclusively in interviews. She tells founders that it's okay (and ideal) if they are spending more than half of their time recruiting. Elaine points out that an employee’s experience on the first day is the best predictor of the length of their tenure.She talks about the “recruiter honeypot” that she set up — a fake profile on LinkedIn of a Javascript programmer. She looked at how recruiters approached it in order to potentially hire those recruiters to her company.She also addresses some of the biggest misconceptions about recruiting and talks through how to deal with some of the thorniest aspects of managing people, including annual reviews, compensation, and having difficult conversations.Quotes From This Episode“The test of a work simulation is that any smart, well-intentioned person should fail that simulation.”“[When interviewing someone] within the first five minutes, you have a tendency to have a reaction. It’s easy to fall into first impressions, but it’s your job to challenge that first response.”“If people just want to get their review to find out whether they got their raise or their bonus, that isn’t going to be a great conversation, so my goal is to de-couple that.”“People always seem to care more about where they stand in the organization than they do about where they stand outside the organization.”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.