We The Builders

Hi all,I was traveling for work the last couple of weeks which pushed back some of our episodes but excited to get back on schedule. This is one of the Lex Fridman-like long form ones, there will be 3-4 of these. I am still experimenting with the format and would love to hear your feedback. I am aiming to do 70-80 min pods post editing for future recordings but curious to hear if we should keep it under 1 hr. Mehul has spent the last 20+ years in Silicon Valley. He’s gone from moving to the US at 15 barely speaking English, to an early career in DC-area dot-com startups, to product leadership at Salesforce (back when it was just 300 people), and building and working with teams that launched like.com (acquired by google for ~$100M), Flutter (vision-based gesture recognition; acquired by Google for ~$40M), and key parts of the Nest camera and home hardware lineup where he worked closely with Tony Fadell, the father of iPod and Nest.From all his companies, he was compounding skills, relationships and experiences that led to Matic. This included his long term relationship with Navneet (Cofounder Matic) from Like.com days, insights from computer vision based products like Flutter which were ahead of their time and learning from Tony Fadell about building consumer hardware products. In this episode:* Value of compounding* How to create your own opportunities, “create a job for yourself rather than finding one” * How building companies is different from creating cool technology* Finding and keeping motivation after a $40M exit* Raising kids with ambition This is for if you are doing laundry, house chores or hiking. Timestamps00:00 - Introduction01:10 - Early life and the Immigrant Journey04:43 - How Mehul started his career11:42 - Role of proximity and entrepreneurship14:51 - Risk appetite16:56 - Value of compounding: Life, skills and work23:37 - The first Computer Vision startup27:42 - Cool tech vs useful product36:44 - The Tony Fadell story41:33 - Lessons in hardware by Tony46:37 - Building products through deletion52:22 - Safety in hardware products54:07 - How people emotionally connect to products58:44 - WhatsApp: Simplicity and failure to monetize1:01:04 - Defining breakthrough innovation1:10:49 - Identifying agency and hiring1:15:58 - Raising a teenager and the education debate1:27:42 - What motivated Mehul to keep building after million dollar exits1:33:19 - The Matic masterplan1:45:38 - The importance of storytelling1:51:51 - The role of Apprenticeships1:58:31 - The art of cold emails2:06:17 - Being shameless2:11:16 - Solving hard problems and being optimistic2:18:25 - Recommended reading and watchlist2:23:00 - The art of paying it forwardOn Youtube:Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

Shoutout to my friends at Reindustrialize who put together an incredible event in Detroit mid-July. On the sides of the conference, I interviewed Christian Garrett, Partner at 137 Ventures, a $6B+ AUM growth-stage venture fund known for backing generational cateogory defining technology companies, investments include SpaceX, Anduril, Palantir, Spotify, Airbnb, Turo, and Uber. Last month, Mario at The Generalist released an incredible four part series covering Founders Fund, their exceptional returns and what makes the firm so special. Part 2 of the series covers all associates of Thiel who have gone on to start incredibly successful VC firms, linking it below as it is worth the read and even worth paying just for the series. There is an image in there mapping out all the Thiel and his associate founded venture firms. They left out 137 Ventures (I am sure this was an accident) which was cofounded by Justin Fishner-Wolfson (Former Principal at Founders Fund) and Alexander Jacobson (Former EIR at Founders Fund). Christian brought up in the pod that he would need to have a word with Mario about it, no need - we have issued an update along with the pod!Christian also cofounded The Hill & Valley Forum with Delian Asparahouv (Founders Fund) and Jacob Helberg (Under Secretary of State Designate for Economic Security) to connect Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, the event started as a small dinner gathering over 3 years ago and has quickly become the premier place to bring together decision makers from venture capital, Silicon Valley’s top startups and tech companies and decision makers in D.C. I was at the “Winning The AI Race” Summit hosted by All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum last week where President Trump, JD Vance and four cabinet secretaries gave talks which is a testament to the influence and role of the forum in bridging D.C and the Valley. In this podcast we go through a range of topics. Christian talks about his journey building his first computer as a kid to play Runescape and how that developed his love for sci-fi. He talks about playing college basketball at the University of Kansas and his learnings from being a “benchwarmer for some NBA all stars” and going deep into philosophy and theology before venturing into tech investing.At 137 Ventures, Christian went from joining as an analyst to becoming partner in a very short period of time without taking the traditional business school detour to get into venture capital, he talks about what that taught him about finding and nurturing talent having been on the receiving end of the apprenticeship. Timestamps and Highlights(00:00) - Introduction (00:39) - Reindustrialize and Detroit (02:40) - Investing and growing at 137 Ventures(10:16) - Early life and influences(18:21) - Wanting to be an investor(28:25) - Forging and maintaining relationships (37:48) - Hill & Valley Forum and rallying people (42:57) - Obsessions, self reflections and weaknesses(40:37) - Capital allocation in venture (53:02) - Compounding in personal life(57:43) - Portfolio Construction Debates(1:05:36) - Remote work, city concentration and next wave of innovation(1:10:12) - Accelerated innovation due to growing private markets(1:15:05) - Rapid fire and closing thoughtsWatch On YouTube:Enjoy the weekend watch. The next episode drops Tuesday. Tune in on YouTube, X, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Last week on We The Builders:Feedback & Up NextPlease do share your feedback if you get a chance to tune in, I am a new interviewer and still learning to every day. I look forward to hearing from you. If you like the episode, you can support us by sharing the show with a friend. We have some great new episodes lined up including a series in the works on New Media. Until next Tuesday, Suffiyan MalikThanks for listening and reading We The Builders! If you liked what you saw, hit subscribe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

I got to sit down in San Francisco with Omri Amirav-Drory, General Partner at NFX, a $1.4B AUM pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm that invests in tech startups across various sectors, focusing on fostering network effects and defensible competitive advantages. They seek out companies in fields like AI, biotech, fintech, SaaS, marketplaces, and crypto. He started out conducting research in Israel’s intelligence corps to pipetting at Stanford labs. Exited Genome Compiler to Twist Bioscience ($2B market cap, NASDAQ: TWST). Launching a pre-seed venture fund called TechBio which lead him to his role at NFX.Worth reading, Omri’s “Race to 160” blog. This actually makes sense as the human lifespan has double in the last few centuries from ~40 to ~80 and up from ~20 from about 5,000 years ago - Omri discusses this in the pod. Timestamps: (00:00) - Introduction(00:55) - Early Life, Military, PhD(04:00) - Learnings from the Army(07:10) - Life at Stanford and Entrepreneurship(11:56) - Recruiting friends to start a company(13:30) - Race to 160(18:05) - ABCD plan for aging(26:59) - Companies actively working towards solving aging(31:22) - Singularity and Ray Kurzweil(33:12) - What it takes to be a founder(40:12) - People investing vs Technology investing(45:00) - DNA of a founder(48:11) - The initial spark to become an entrepreneur(51:37) - Agency, Risk Appetite and Perseverance(55:21) - Network Effects(1:04:47) - Breakthrough Innovation(1:09:41) - Storytelling and authenticity(1:14:58) - Role Models(1:18:11) - Rapid fire and closing thoughtsWatch On YouTube:Happy Tuesday y’all! Our next feature drops Friday. We have an incredible line-up. Tune in on X, Spotify, Apple, YouTube.Best,Suffiyan Malik This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

This is it—the very first episode of We The Builders. Earlier this year, I sat down with Shahin Farshchi in LA. He is a General Partner at Lux Capital, a venture fund with $5B AUM. To kick us off, who better than the man who was investing in hard tech 18 years before it was cool:Shahin has invested in companies manufacturing in space (Varda), building autonomous transportation systems (Zoox), providing robots as a service (Formic), automating industries (Covariant), using space to revolutionize the Earth observation industry (Planet), 3D printing rockets (Relativity Space) and many more. The Jetsons Future I thought I would be living in 2025 is partly being built. We have a long way to go but this is exactly how we inspire the next generation. If someone from 1900 woke up and read this, they would call it science fiction. Thank you Shahin, for believing in and being a partner to these incredible companies and founders. Shahin is an incredibly kind soul, helpful, accessible and a role model for younger aspiring venture capitalists. From what I have personally observed and heard from friends building companies, he will cheer you on and have incredible empathy for the fact that you had the courage to build. In many cases, more than capital, that is what you need most. Hope you enjoy the conversation!Follow on X:Shahin FarshchiSuffiyan MalikHighlights & Timestamps:00:00 Introduction02:13 Berkeley to Iran in teenage05:01 Adapting to different education systems09:05 Early transformative experiences14:49 Mentors and role models18:20 On breaking into research labs and flipping rejections25:01 Story of getting into grad school, applying for funding, and early research32:41 Going from research to venture capital34:50 Commercializing his research and starting a company38:04 Thoughts on ingredients of a good startup45:11 Where do the best founders come from50:34 Why PhDs are not equipped to commercialize1:02 Breakthrough innovation timeline1:05 Solving for shareholder demand1:10:22 How to think about what problem to solve1:14:10 State of the education systemWatch on YouTube here:P.S. Huge thanks to Mark and the Bonfire Ventures team for hosting this recording in Brentwood! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us