Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Takeaways:

- Any modern cloud-native app is a nexus of services that all work together to create a coherent interface for the user. For example, Auth0 handles login, Stripe handles billing, React is used for the interface, among many more services all working in concert. Vercel helps ensure that the user has an amazing experience no matter what services are all working together on the back end.

- Guillermo tells the story of open source Unix winning out over proprietary versions of Linux, even though the proprietary versions had an early lead. He suggests that over the long term, open source will win, more often than not, and that the same story will likely play out when it comes to AI models, with open source models winning out in the end.

- When it comes to investing, Guillermo loves to bet on someone who has been obsessed with a topic for years and years. He recounts the story of the Auth0 team who had written books and given talks and spent years of their lives just on logging in and logging out. He also says that he prefers a leadership team that lives and breathes a company’s problem space. He says that he's allergic to the idea of a professional leadership team swooping in at a certain stage.

- Rauch was born and raised in Argentina. He says that he has a sense of urgency and that tomorrow is not promised that stems from his childhood experience growing up in Argentina. He tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg keeping the Sun Microsystems logo on the back of the Facebook sign at their headquarters when they moved in to cultivate a sense that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

- Guillermo believes in giving his team leads radical ownership of their products. He provides the leads with frameworks that explain clear principles for how they build products at Vercel but beyond that he gives the leads a long leash and a sense of ownership over the product.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Michael Balaoing, founder of Candlelion, joins Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha on this episode to discuss:

- The importance of the acronym WTF (what’s the feeling?) when you’re giving a presentation.

- The four roles that you take on as a speaker: captain, pilot, guide, and game show host.

- The five questions to ask when seeking feedback on a presentation.

- How to keep the audience engaged throughout a talk, not just during the Q&A at the end.

- How to bake stories into your presentations and remix your talks for different audiences.

- The keys to virtual communication.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Christopher Ailman (@CJAtheCIO), Chief Investment Officer at CalSTRS, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights:

- CalSTRS, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, was created in 1913 and is actually older than Social Security. It has over 400 members who are over 100 years old who are still receiving their pension.

- Chris says no bear market is alike and that the key is to have the discipline during that time period to actually start buying.

- Chris says the key to success as an investor is in being intentional about the culture you create. When Chris is evaluating a portfolio manager he likes to and sit on the floor with the employees and see what the vibe is like.

- A lot of investors take a lot of econ and business classes but should take more psychology classes to deal with the human side of things (vs. the numbers side). He says that selecting portfolio managers is much more difficult than picking stocks.

- Chris says that the energy transition will dwarf all trends over the next fifteen years. He says that by 2035 parts of the earth will start to become uninhabitable and there will be mass migrations to other areas.

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.

Wesley Samples (@wesleysamples), founder and COO of Sora Schools, and Nick Grandy (@ngrandy), co-founder and Head of Product at Outschool, join Anne on this episode.

- How the pandemic has “fractured the status quo” and how it will lead to a period of rapid change for education systems around the world.

- How they’re building a world where kids love learning and why autonomous learning is so important.

- How Sora and Outschool are partnering to support learners.

- Why kids want, above all else, to engage with others who share their interests.

- How they’ve overcome early ideas of what an online school would look like.

- The explosive growth they’ve seen over the course of the pandemic and how they’ve kept up.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Julio Vasconcellos (@juliov), managing partner at Atlantico, joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno to discuss:

- The state of venture capital in Latin America and its vibrant yet nascent ecosystem.

- Why companies shouldn't underestimate the difficulties of expanding from one country to another within LatAm.

- The fact that Latin America is one of the earliest adopters of tech. Internet penetration is 75% in Brazil and 81% in Mexico, both higher than China and India. Brazil also leads the world in number of hours a day the average person spends online.

- Advice on pitching, including why Julio needs to see authentic excitement from a founder for a company to last for the long term.

- Why he had half local and half global investors on his cap table when he was building his companies in LatAm.

- The bull and bear case for LatAm.

- How the rise of distributed teams has impacted the region and the talent landscape in LatAm.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Travis Hedge (@the_hedgefund), co-founder of Vouch Insurance, and Nick Shalek (@nshalek), partner at Ribbit Capital, join Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno to discuss:

- How Vouch came to be and their vision to be insurance for the innovation economy from inception to IPO.

- What Travis and Nick are most excited about in insurtech.

- The enormity of the market and the fact that there are so few entrepreneurs with the ability to build in the space.

- How companies can grow the size of the market and why this has led to investors missing out on companies like Coalition.

- Requests for startups in the space, including opportunities in crypto.

- Why it’s never too early to have a board if you’re building in insurtech, even if it’s a synthetic one.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Joe Garafalo, co-founder of Mosaic, and Trevor Oelschig, managing director at General Catalyst, join Erik on this episode to discuss:

- How Mosaic is building the future of tooling for modern finance teams and how it started from the team’s time at Palantir.

- Why finance has to be the connective tissue for the organization, given that they have a vantage point on the whole company.

- Why a CFO needs to have a skillset in data science or computer science.

- How to work with your investors effectively and what companies should expect from their venture firm.

- Why to think of your relationship with investors as a marriage, the importance of transparency, and the concept of the “trust battery” that gets recharged or depleted as you work with someone.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Brie Wolfson (@zebriez), founder of the The Kool-Aid Factory, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why there are detailed playbooks for creating products and other tactical advice for startups, but very little on building culture at your startup.

- Why culture is “how it feels to get the work done” and why it’s a set of actions rather than beliefs.

- Why it always starts with the founders.

- What she learned from Stripe’s approach to crafting their company culture.

- The power of setting your company’s “non-values.”

- The importance of treating internal comms as a first class product.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Matt Schulman (@Matthewschulman), founder and CEO of Pave, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why your company needs a compensation philosophy.

- How COVID and The Great Resignation have wreaked havoc on employee compensation.

- The fact that employee churn is up 2X over last year and software engineering salaries have increased by 20%.

- Competing philosophies on remote employees: “cost of labor” which pays employees based on where they live and “free market” which pays employees the same regardless, and why the “free market” philosophy is gaining ground.

- Why consistency is key when it comes to granting equity to candidates.

Get access to Pave's benchmarking data for free: https://www.pave.com/benchmarking/village-global-venture-stories

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Meka Asonye (@BigMekaStyle), partner at First Round Capital, joined Ben Casnocha at a Village Global event to discuss:

- Meka’s time with the Cleveland Indians and what it taught him about finding hidden talent.

- Why customer obsession is so important to Meka when looking at a potential investment and concrete examples of what that looks like in practice.

- Lessons on customer obsession from Stripe and Mixpanel. He says that the Collisons had lunch with users every Friday and evangelized “teaching with every touch,” meaning leaving every user with more knowledge about the product at every interaction.

- How an early-stage startup can get in the door at a large organization. He says to make sure to target the right person at the organization and offer tidbits about how other organizations are looking at a problem.

- Common mistakes that founders make when pitching investors, including why having all the answers can be a red flag, and how to nail the right balance of confidence and humility.

- How much money to raise at the early stage, including why you shouldn’t just raise as much money as you possibly can and instead should be most concerned with finding the right fit with the right firm.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Jacob Helberg (@jacobhelberg), author of The Wires of War, joins Erik to discuss:

- The “gray war” that Jacob believes the US is in with China, and why he feels it’s important to call it a war rather than a competition.

- Technology and cyber weapons and how they can be used for political warfare with plausible denability.

- The window of opportunity that the US and its allies have to take a proactive approach to China.

- The bull case and bear case for China.

- What’s at stake in Taiwan.

- Why countries involved in China’s belt-and-road initiative are having second thoughts.

- What actions Jacob would like to see the US take in the future to counteract China.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Vance Roush (@vanceroush), founder and CEO of Overflow, joins Erik to discuss:

- Overflow, the online donation platform for non-cash assets, and the story behind its creation.

- Why the market is actually “sneakily big” and how he plans to create a new category that unlocks net new generosity by making donating shares, crypto, or other non-cash assets as easy as Venmo.

- How the internet has changed philanthropy, the fact that philanthropic giving has never exceeded 2% of GDP, and how to increase that percentage.

- The concept of tithing, why the church is a driver of charitable giving, and the idea of giving back instead of out of obligation.

- Why philanthropy needs a rebranding, and how AngelList and Teach For America provide models for how that could be done.

- Why there should be a stock market-like leaderboard for non-profits and why we need more seed stage philanthropists.

- How he sees the future of philanthropy evolving.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha), Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), Anne Dwane (@adwane), partners at Village Global, and David Booth (@david__booth), co-CEO of On Deck, discuss:

- ODX in partnership with Village Global, the $100M+ community-backed accelerator that plans to invest in 1000 companies over the next few years: https://beondeck.com/x

- The key differentiators of ODX: a dedicated partner for each company, an all-access pass to the On Deck community, and the fact that the entire community has upside in the fund.

- Examples of how founders have taken advantage of On Deck’s unique structure, including some examples of their most successful companies to date.

- Why Erik has been so inspired by “putting people in business.”

- On Deck’s belief that humanity primarily progresses through tech, that tech primarily comes from startups, and that there are not enough founders starting startups today.

- How to get started with ODX.

Read more about the announcement:

https://medium.com/village-global/re-imagining-the-accelerator-in-partnership-with-on-deck-11871f129f7b

https://beondeck.com/post/announcing-odx

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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This encore episode is a recording of a special event where Mark Pincus (@markpinc) was interviewed by Ben Casnocha in San Francisco in front of a live audience of portfolio founders, friends of the firm, and LPs.

Mark is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Zynga, and is an angel investor in Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and other companies. He talked about about raising venture capital, his philosophy of product management, the early days at Zynga, and much more. He also took time at the event to meet with Village Global founders to give them his advice on growing their companies.

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.

Andy Rachleff (@arachleff), president and CEO of Wealthfront, joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno to discuss:

- What Andy learned from endowment investing and his quest to democratize excellent investing advice at Wealthfront.

- Why you shouldn’t try to time the market and why in his opinion all-time highs are “absolutely irrelevant.”

- Andy’s lessons from witnessing four day-trading frenzies in his career and why you should think about absolute return rather than relative returns.

- How his position on crypto has evolved over time and why he’s optimistic about its ability to revolutionize commerce but skeptical about its place in an investment portfolio.

- His learnings on product market fit from Don Valentine, and why Don said that if a startup can screw something up, it will. He also said that to succeed, it needs the market to pull the product out of the startup’s hands.

- Why operating investors often make better investment decisions because operating experience is a proxy for network rather than because of the operating experience itself.

- His top book recommendations.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Ben Reinhardt (@Ben_Reinhardt), Research Fellow at the Astera Institute and host of Idea Machines Podcast, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why we don’t have as much science fiction-like technology in the world as we could, and how to turn more of it into reality.

- Why venture capital does a poor job of funding new physical technology and why ten year venture cycles are too short for breakthrough technologies. Ben points out that the transistor took 15 years between the kick-off of the project and the first prototype.

- The article Ben wrote on how a private ARPA, or “PARPA” could help bring more breakthrough technology into the world.

- The unique strength of corporate labs at bringing together academics, engineers, and manufacturing, which gave the world plastics, the transistor, and modern computing.

- Ben’s idea of the rich tithing 10% of their income to technological research.

- How philanthropy would need to change in order to help small researchers experiment on longer-term timescales than they do currently.

- The impacts that PARPA would have if it was successful. Read more about the idea here: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/parpa

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Leigh Marie Braswell (@LM_Braswell) of Founders Fund and Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson), who built the music recommendation system at Spotify, join Erik to discuss:

- How data flows through a company and the business decisions that can be made based on data.

- The waves of change in the data tooling landscape over the last decade and why we’re only a quarter of the way to easy-to-use tools.

- Why there are so many data roles and how the commercialization of open source projects drives fragmentation and specialization in the industry.

- The exciting opportunities and potential pain points to build around in data tooling, including workflow scheduling, LTV predictions, and collaboration.

- Why people building in the space shouldn’t index to existing roles, structures, and platforms, since those platforms may not be around in a few years.

- Why AI and ML are just one tool in the data toolbox and the fact that there is more room to build around other, boring data science tasks.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Abhijeet Patra (@abhijeetpatra88), former Deep Tech entrepreneur and venture fellow at Susa Ventures who is now leading Deep Tech at On Deck, joins Erik to discuss:

- What exactly Deep Tech is and some of the examples of technologies involved, including nanotechnology, quantum computing, hardware, autonomous vehicles, space, manufacturing, machine learning, and more.

- Why there’s been an explosion in talk about Deep Tech over the last several years.

- The fact that there’s almost always a market for a technology, if you can get the technical side figured out.

- Democratization of technologies and how the trajectory of sequencing DNA is representative of the typical path of Deep Tech — first a technology is expensive, then it goes down dramatically in cost, then it becomes easy to build on top of.

- Why it’s difficult to find enough talent in the field these days. He says that Deep Tech is still a niche.

- How On Deck is aiming to 100X the number of people working in the space and how you can get involved.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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In this extended episode of Venture Stories, Erik interviews Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University. They discuss about a wide range of topics, including Tyler’s book Stubborn Attachments, the value of watching sports, travel, Bitcoin, the Knicks, and Effective Altruism — among many, many others.

Tyler explains why he has only two “stubborn attachments” — human rights and economic growth. He takes us through his argument that there’s a moral imperative for economic growth. He talks about why economic growth is the greatest force for good in the world, why redistribution isn’t as effective as Effective Altruists would like, and why we dramatically underestimate the effects of compounding. He discusses some of the reactions to the book and why he says he’s “poked the left in the eye and poked the right in the eye” with Stubborn Attachments.

They discuss the reasons for the extraordinary economic growth of East Asian countries and what kinds of lessons the West could take from those examples. Tyler talks about whether religion has an impact on economic growth and why inequality isn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be.

Erik asks Tyler what he would do if he could wave a magic wand and change a number of entities, including the US healthcare system, the Knicks, and the Department of Education. Tyler tells Erik whether he would buy Bitcoin and gives his thoughts on central banking and Austrian economics. He also explains why travel is so valuable and why “at the margins people should be more like anthropologists.”

Erik asks Tyler where his views diverge from those of a number of prominent intellectuals, including Thomas Piketty, Russ Roberts, Ayn Rand, and Glen Weyl. Tyler explains why he suspects the environment in which someone grew up influences their thinking style.

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.

Gabby Dizon (@gabusch), co-founder of Yield Guild Games, and Linda Xie (@ljxie), co-founder of Scalar Capital, join Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode to discuss:

- Why Gabby started YGG and the evolution of play-to-earn and blockchain in gaming.

- Why gaming is a great way to onboard someone to the crypto ecosystem, as NFTs have done.

- The key players in the crypto gaming ecosystem.

- Why there is renewed hope that crypto governance can be solved.

- Use cases for DAOs and how they can change the future of work.

- Why Linda welcomes regulation and how it can actually encourage more projects in the space.

Documentary on play-to-earn that Lucas mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo-BrASMHU4

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Erik is joined by Zach Perret (@zachperret), co-founder and CEO of Plaid, and David Haber (@dhaber), former co-founder and CEO of Bond Street, now at Goldman Sachs.

Zach and David talk about how they met and how they started their respective companies. They explain how to find out whether you are passionate enough about an idea to start a company around it: are you passionate about it enough to be willing to pound the table to get your mother-in-law to invest?

David points out that 90% of your work as a founder is selling — to investors, employees, customers, and many others. They talk about the future of financial services and fintech and make some predictions about what to expect in the space over the next several years. David and Zach share some tips for people building a company in the space on what works and what doesn’t, and how the space has evolved since they started their companies.

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.

Elad Gil (@eladgil), entrepreneur and investor, and Kevin Hartz (@kevinhartz), investor and co-founder of Eventbrite, join Erik on this episode.

They discuss:

- What they think is special about each other’s investing abilities.

- How certain people are able to stay relevant in every investing cycle.

- Kevin’s latest venture and the path he took to start it.

- SPACs and their advantages.

- How to find your own angel investing style.

- How venture will change in the next ten years.

- Elad’s COVID 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.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

We were thrilled to host a masterclass roundtable session for our founders with John Donahoe when he was CEO of ServiceNow. John is now CEO of Nike and was CEO of eBay for more than seven years. He is known as one of the most inspirational leaders in Silicon Valley and is a highly sought-after mentor to CEOs including Brian Chesky at Airbnb, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and Ben Silbermann at Pinterest. We’re honored to have him among our small group of world-class executives and collaborators whose time and expertise help power our network of founders at Village Global.

He shared advice on when to hire ahead, invest in and train, or replace personnel on your team and gave insight into his most common piece of advice on professional growth when advising CEOs. John also did an in-depth demonstration of how to let someone go with dignity and grace.

Quotes From This Episode

"When you talk about priorities at an aspirational level, they overlap a lot. People start realizing we're more similar than we're dissimilar."

"Adversity never feels fun. I don't seek adversity. But I'm no longer scared of adversity. When it emerges, instead of trying to run from it, I now accept that it is a reality and I say, 'well, at least I'm going to learn and grow.'"

"My experience has been that around any issue that involves change, you have roughly 20-25% of people who want to be part of it, no matter what the topic is, you have 25-30% of people who want to fight it, and you have the 50% of people in the middle saying 'which side is going to win?'"

"[When someone is let go] The fear is humiliation usually. That's almost a bigger fear than actually leaving the company."

"We're never as good or as bad as labels make us out to be."

"I would say in general, for every 10 hours of business development conversations, 8 of them are a waste."

"I do gratitude practice driving into work every morning. It's proven in brain science that your brain becomes more negative over time. But it's also been proven in brain science that you can counteract that."

"The older I get, the more I've made friends with uncertainty. I don't avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty is as present to me today as it was before but I'm a little more comfortable with it today."

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.

We’re re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

On this special live episode of Venture Stories, Bill Gates was interviewed in 2018 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium by Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite.

We are honored to have Bill Gates, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time, among our luminary LPs whose financial capital and engagement power the next wave of Village Global founders. 

They covered:

- Gates’s entrepreneurial journey starting Microsoft, including the most important turning points in the early years of the company.

- His thinking on work-life balance for founders and what he would do differently if he was starting again.

- What he’s learned from the next generation of founders.

- His perspective on the current tech landscape.

- His views on philanthropy, global development, education, 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.

This encore episode is a recording of a special event where Bill Gates was interviewed in San Francisco by Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite. It originally took place in 2018 in front of a live audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm. We are honored to count Bill Gates among our luminary LPs whose financial capital and engagement power the next wave of Village Global founders.

They covered:

- Gates’s entrepreneurial journey starting Microsoft, including the most important turning points in the early years of the company.

- His thinking on work-life balance for founders and what he would do differently if he was starting again.

- What he’s learned from the next generation of founders.

- His perspective on the current tech landscape.

- His views on philanthropy, global development, education, 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.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

Erik and co-host Anuj Abrol (@nujabrol) interviewed Keith Rabois (@rabois).

Keith starts out by talking about why he joined Founders Fund and the reason that the structure of VC means we don’t see more people moving from one fund to another. They talk about the future of venture and whether there will be more M&A in the space and where he sees things going in the next 10 years. Keith explains why being an effective VC is much more an art than a science.

Erik asks about Keith’s goals at this point and why thus far it’s not been possible to scale one’s investing model beyond one’s self. Keith also has a well-known theory about breaking down businesses into equations and Erik asks whether one can do the same with careers as well.

Keith recounts the story of working for Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel at PayPal and how he has learned to trust his instincts in the absence of specific quantitative metrics. He talks about why being vertically integrated is important for a startup, why getting the timing right is part of a founder’s job (and can’t be a founder’s excuse for failure), and why in his view founder quality trumps all other factors when evaluating a business.

He also talks about some of his requests for startups, including an integrated fitness and nutrition company. They also talk about some of the places where he agrees or disagrees with prominent thinkers in tech and how Keith’s politics and contrarianism have evolved.

Quotable Lines From This Episode

"You want to solve your biggest risks first. Mediocre founders solve the easiest risks first. Take the three most risky things and conquer them. I always counsel a founder to address risks in order of difficulty not in order of ease."

"To me when a founder says they didn’t get the timing right, that means they just didn’t do their job."

"I focus all on the people and a lot less on the market, a lot less on the product and a hell of a lot less on the technology."

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 Mike Maples (@m2jr) of Floodgate.

The discuss:

- The difference between fake growth and real growth, and how to know which one your company is experiencing.

- Why fake growth has taken hold in so many companies in the Valley, and its broader systemic causes.

- The difference between value hacking and growth hacking.

- Why once you’ve entered the growth stage, it’s next to impossible to go back to the value hacking stage.

- His thoughts on the Thiel vs. Rabois philosophies of markets.

- His tips for growing SaaS companies.

- How to think about incumbents.

- Why a pivot is not the same thing as a mulligan.

- The reasons for the fact that, in Mike's opinion, there is too much money in VC.

- Why companies are staying private longer.

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.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

This episode was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, featuring Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University and Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt), former executive chairman and CEO at Google/Alphabet.

Cowen talks to Schmidt about a wide range of topics, from Schmidt’s college years, to his time as an intern at Bell Labs, to working for Scott McNealy at Sun Microsystems, to the early days of Google, to today.

Cowen asks about Schmidt’s formative intellectual experiences as a young person and we hear the story of Schmidt studying as an architect prior to entering into a computer science program. After graduation, Schmidt interned at both Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. He recounts stories of his time at the research labs and discusses to what extent the lab model does or doesn’t work today. Cowen points out that Schmidt is one of the few people around whose career spans several significant eras in the history of computing.

They move on to talking about the early days at Google, where it turns out that Schmidt was hired to run the company after a skiing trip with Larry and Sergey, whose first concern in hiring “adult supervision” was to find someone they enjoyed hanging out with. Schmidt says that he initially assumed that search wasn't very important and that Google’s ads didn’t work. He reveals that during his first year he was so terrified that their "ruse would unravel" that he made anyone who wanted to spend money come to him personally on Fridays at 10am to justify the expense.

Cowen asks about Schmidt’s insights on hiring and managing talent. Schmidt explains that in the beginning Larry and Sergey primarily hired their classmates and friends, but over time Google’s hiring became highly structured. He tells the story of interviewing a single candidate 16 times and explains the logic of why initially they were so focused on school and GPA, rather than industry experience.

Cowen and Schmidt also talk about in which areas even Schmidt himself has been surprised at the extent of technological progress and where he'd like to see more innovation. They discuss social media and why Schmidt says that it amplifies human weaknesses rather than strengths. The two of them also talk about transforming cities, including Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto and the Bay Area's housing crisis.

They also have a round of rapid-fire “overrated vs. underrated,” covering subjects like Antarctica, Picasso, effective altruism, Yellowstone and North Korea. Cowen also asks about the Eric Schmidt "production function" and how Schmidt is able to be so productive.

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.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath), CEO of Social Capital, and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman), partner at Greylock, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha at a special Village Global event.

Angel Island brought together 100+ angel investors for talks from world-class investors, discussions, and opportunities to make new connections.

In this session they discussed:

- What is broken about venture and how to fix it.

- Why Reid is backing new experiments in venture.

- Their thoughts on the solo GP phenomenon.

- How to think about risk when evaluating an investment.

- Whether they're long or short Silicon Valley.

- Why SPACs are here to stay.

- How to think about diversification in an angel portfolio.

- The state of pricing across different rounds.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

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We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Nabeel Hyatt (@nabeel), partner at Spark Capital, joined Erik on this episode.

They discussed:

- 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.

Ramit Sethi (@ramit), founder and CEO of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, joined Ben Casnocha to discuss:

- Ramit’s philosophy of personal finance. He says he focuses on $30,000 questions as opposed to $3 questions because there’s no limit on how much you can earn, but there is a limit on how much you can save.

- How “invisible scripts” rule how you think about money. Ramit talks about how to figure out and interrogate what those invisible scripts are so you can move past them.

- How to figure out what your “rich life” looks like. He suggests writing down in great detail and texture exactly what you aspire to when it comes to your financial goals. For example, when you go on vacation, what kind of hotel are you staying in? Are you flying in business or economy class?

- The fact that people often have a prime twenty years between ages 40 to 60 to spend their money and why you shouldn’t defer your goals until late in life.

- Why he decided to start a podcast about love and money and the challenges inherent in dealing with differing approaches to personal finance in relationships: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/podcast/

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

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Max Greenwald (@MaxPGreenwald), founder and CEO of Warmly, joins Erik to discuss:

- Max’s journey navigating the idea maze to start the company.

- The problems with virtual meetings and why they lead to fatigue.

- How to ask questions of prospective customers without leading them into providing the answers you want to hear.

- Why he says that all interviews, first-time meetings, and team meetings are better done virtually than in-person.

- The future of work post-pandemic.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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We’re re-releasing some of the best episodes of the podcast this summer.

In this episode Alex Danco (@alex_danco) of Social Capital joined Erik to talk about Silicon Valley, economics, innovation, crypto, software and more.

Alex explains the influence of Peter Thiel and Rene Girard on his thinking. He explains what he means when he says the key to understanding the world is asking, "what is everyone is compelled to lie about?"

He gives a history of how innovation has traditionally proceeded in the world and explains how Silicon Valley — via software specifically — has changed the mechanism of innovation. He talks about how this has resulted in disproportionate gains accruing to the huge tech companies.

Alex also talks about the economics of the Valley and why gains in productivity from technology have not resulted in increased leisure for the Valley's inhabitants.

He also talks about crypto, career strategy, cost disease, scooters, 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.

Santiago Suarez (@SantiaSua), co-founder and CEO of ADDI, joins Village Global co-founder and partner Anne Dwane on this episode. They discuss:

- What he wish he knew when he started ADDI.

- Why hustle alone has never made a company successful, and why he says it’s necessary but not sufficient.

- His experience going through the Village Global Accelerator, and now mentoring founders in the program.

- Where he’s looking to invest in fintech.

- Startups he would like to exist that don’t yet.

- Why he has changed his mind on investing in founders working in a space he doesn’t like.

Companies Santiago has invested in:
ProTalento - https://protalento.org/english-version/
Kolors - https://kolors.com.mx/
Rubik - https://www.getrubik.com/

*The deadline to get your application in for the fall vintage of the Village Global Accelerator is August 10th! It’s a personalized and tight-knit program with an amazing network of peers, advisors, and experts. Companies that have been through the accelerator have raised from some of the top venture funds in the world, like a16z, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, True Ventures, Felicis and more.

Learn more and apply at www.villageglobal.vc/accelerator!

Erik was joined on this episode by Mike Maples (@m2jr) of Floodgate. We're re-releasing some of the best episodes of the podcast from over the years.

They discuss:

- How the best founders approach entrepreneurship.

- The power of “change events” for startup creation.

- How important is it for your idea to be non-consensus.

- What makes a great founding team.

- How you know when you have an insight that’s worth pursuing.

- What VC could look like a decade from now

- The relationship between VCs and their LPs.

- Mental models for what makes a successful investor.

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.

Jerry originally joined us on the podcast in 2019. He is co-founder of Yahoo! and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. He was interviewed in front of a live audience in San Francisco by Village Global co-founder and partner, Ben Casnocha.

Jerry told stories from the early days of Yahoo! and explained his lessons learned from the experience. He also talked about what American entrepreneurs can learn from China and his thoughts on early stage investing.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the last few years.

James Currier (@JamesCurrier) of NFX joined Erik on this episode. They discuss:

- Why LinkedIn hasn’t been disrupted yet

- Where are today’s opportunities in consumer social

- Market networks and how they’ve evolved over time

- What’s wrong with education and whether homeschooling can be a solution

- Commoditization of higher education

- How to evaluate startup ideas

- How venture will evolve over the next decade

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.

Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) joined Erik in 2018 to discuss a wide range of topics. We’re re-releasing some of the best episodes of the podcast this summer.

They talked about:

- Why the stock market exists and why after the crash of 2008 no one said that we should shut it down.

- The ideas of "loops and funnels" and "constraints and compounding" — and how Kevin thinks about those mental models.

- The history of corporate structures and what they might look like in the future.

- What might be possible with crypto that was previously impossible without crypto, and why people seem to be only trying to replicate already-existing tech using crypto.

- Twitter, and why it's like being "on chain."

- How to think about your career and how the Valley's unique work culture has contributed to its success.

- The idea of personal ICOs.

- Why most companies think about the impact of PR on consumers when in reality they should think about PR's impact on recruiting.

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.

This special live episode was recorded in 2018. We’re re-releasing some of the greatest hits this summer. Erik interviewed Naval Ravikant (@naval) and Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis).

They start with an overview of the history of organizing societies and the role of centralized decision-makers from kings to democracies and why decentralization — where no one in particular is in charge but everybody follows the rules — has so much potential. They talk about how this could be disruptive to a wide swath of society today, including areas like money, electricity, social networks, storage, and more. They explain why decentralization will "fulfill the original promise of the internet."

Erik asks how each of them got into the space after having had success in other areas. It’s pointed out that it’s very rare that something comes along that is “technologically interesting, socially revolutionary, and that can also make you very rich.” They move on to a discussion of the history of money, the three key functions that money provides (store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange) and how good a job current cryptocurrencies are doing at fulfilling those three functions.

They move on to what they see in the future for crypto and how it will change society at large. They paint a picture of a world where there might be virtual “instant jobs” available on-demand in a feed akin to the feeds in current social networks and where the “99%” will be investors, as opposed to the present where only 1% of individuals are investors. There might also exist in the future “instant companies” that can be created as easily as someone can create an account on a social network today and that programmable smart contracts might spread opportunity far and wide without the need for armies of lawyers and judges.

They explain what it means when they say that blockchain will create “an open financial system” and what they mean when they say it will be to the current financial system what Linux was to Windows. They also talk about what kinds of facts would change their mind about blockchain, the role of identity and anonymity in a crypto world, and the concept of a “personal burn rate.”

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.

Daniel Gross (@danielgross), founder of Pioneer, joined Erik in 2018 for a wide-ranging conversation. We're re-releasing some of the greatest hits this summer.

Erik and Daniel discuss a wide variety of topics, including why saying something is “insanely great” isn’t necessarily a compliment for a founder, how to play “the video game that is life,” why the best way to get the physique you want is to move (cities), and how Twitter has reshaped the human psyche.

They also cover a number of other topics, including how Daniel thinks about friendships, the parallels between Pioneer and religion, how Daniel would change the education system, and why people will compete against each other but cooperate against an AI. They close with a game where Erik names a number of prominent individuals and Daniel talks about what he’s learned from that person.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

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We're re-releasing some of the greatest hits from the podcast over the years. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October 2018.

Keith breaks down some of the successes that mentees of his have had over the past few years. Many of them came from non-technical backgrounds and non-elite schools. He talks about their career trajectory and the inflection points that led to their advancement.

Erik explains the four dimensions of career building and where he thinks people early in their careers are over-optimizing.

Keith shares what Peter Thiel told him about hiring while the two were on a run around the Stanford campus shortly after Keith joined PayPal. He talks about how he challenges the people working for him, and why as an employee you always want to feel like you’re pushing the boundaries of what you’re capable of.

They also talk about what makes a good startup idea and the three factors that Keith uses to evaluate business ideas.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Nathan Cheng (@realNathanCheng), program director for On Deck Longevity, joins Erik on this episode to discuss:

- The key breakthroughs in aging research in the past.

- Why we're still waiting for the first success story in humans, and why he predicts the first drug will be approved in the next ten years.

- Why the space has plenty of capital but not enough founders.

- The challenges and roadblocks in the space.

- Common misconceptions about longevity.

- Who should think about applying to the program.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Kevin Leland (@kmleland), founder and CEO of Halo, and Phil Taylor, Bayer’s Open Innovation Lead, join Erik to discuss:

- Why the current RFP process resembles recruiting in the 1990s pre-LinkedIn and Monster, and how Halo can change that.

- What open innovation is and some of its success stories.

- How to connect companies and scientists to drive innovation.

- How to create an innovation ecosystem.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

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Noah Smith (@noahpinion), Bloomberg Opinion writer and author of the Noahpinion Substack, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why colleges should try to emulate the Cal State and CUNY systems, which Noah says provide the best value for dollars in education.

- Why the US should want to copy the Japanese and Korean healthcare systems, and the power that a national health insurance program has to drive cost down.

- Why the oil shock precipitated the great stagnation, and the evolution (and non-evolution) of energy sources over the years.

- What climate economics got wrong and why the revolution in green energy is will not only be about reducing carbon emissions but rather the abundance of cheap energy.

- What people get wrong about inflation and monetary policy and how the fed really works.

- What the US should do to increase innovation, and Noah’s take on whether science and commercialization of discoveries is slowing down or not.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Caleb Watney (@calebwatney), Director of Innovation Policy at Progressive Policy Institute, joins Erik to discuss:

- How views have changed on whether we are in a great stagnation, and what someone from the 1970s who was brought to 2021 would think about the technological changes in the interim.

- Whether a technological slowdown is inevitable or a choice that a society makes.

- The fact that COVID drastically accelerated adoption of technology that was already in existence.

- Caleb’s view that there has been a slowdown in both the pace of scientific discoveries as well as the commercialization of those discoveries.

- The decline of the industrial research lab and the fact that there is more competition in technology today.

- Whether certain institutions need to be “retired” after a certain period of time.

- The incentives that distort immigration policy and the possibility of turning immigration officers into “talent scouts.”

- Why fertility rates are falling and how to allow people to have the number of kids that they say they want to have.

- The power of agglomeration clusters and what portion of work will revert back to in-person once the pandemic ends.

Chris Toy (@ChrisToy), co-founder and CEO of MarketerHire, joined Anne Dwane in a special session for Villagers. They discussed:

- Why if you don’t know who your customer demo is, you need a marketer on your team earlier than you think.

- The misconception that marketing is something to be done at a later stage, or is expensive, or is only about customer acquisition.

- Why marketing is part of the de-risking process for your company.

- The tech stack to use at the early stage.

- The ideal marketing budget for 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 www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Paul Budnitz, founder of Superplastic, and Jennifer van Dijk, CEO of Superplastic, join Christina Des Vaux, head of marketing and platform at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways:

• Superplastic is a creatively-led company that has managed to maintain its unique identity and artistic integrity while nevertheless running a thriving business.
• The team comes up with ideas for characters but the characters grow and change as the audience gives them their own identities.
• They’ve learned a lot from the people who make games and are willing to iterate and make changes quickly.
• They shy away from initiatives that would make money fairly easily but don’t grab the attention of the creative team.
• Paul says there is always a solution to everything and their job is to keep looking for it, whether that’s a creative solution or a business solution.
• They’ve created their own tech stack that enables them to create animations in hours that used to take weeks.
• Paul and Jennifer say that the edge is the new center of culture. The characters they’ve created are weird, but likeable.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

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Emily Anhalt (@dremilyanhalt), co-founder of Coa, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why people should have a proactive approach to emotional fitness and should think of it like to going to a gym on a regular basis, rather than only seeking help when things go wrong.

- The seven traits of emotional fitness and how to get them.

- Why the true mechanism of healing is relationships.

- The fact that sometimes a founder’s biggest strength and can become a weakness.

- Why so many founders aren’t happy even after achieving significant success.

- Therapy vs. coaching and the main schools of thought in therapy today.

- Why group therapy is effective and the fact that people in group therapy actually find that helping others was the most helpful part of going to therapy.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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Brad Feld (@bfeld), VC at Foundry Group and co-author of The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche with Dave Jilk, joins Ben Casnocha to discuss:

- Common misconceptions about Nietzsche and why being misunderstood makes him an especially interesting philosopher.

- What Nietzsche can teach entrepreneurs deciding whether to pivot or persevere. Brad says that founders should view their entrepreneurial journey not in terms of a single company, but as the next 30-50 years of their life.

- Why Brad hates the term “passion” and says it’s overused in entrepreneurial circles.

- Why to focus more on whether someone’s words and actions line up rather than the strength of their beliefs.

- The lessons that Brad has for making decisions among groups today given Nietzsche’s aphorism that “insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. 

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This is a special cross-posted episode of The Deep End, a new podcast from On Deck. Erik Torenberg is interviewed by Marshall Kosloff about:

- What’s causing incumbent universities to fail.

- The opportunities that exist for new institutions to chart a different path.

- Unbundling and cost disease in education.

- Talent identification and credentialism.

Subscribe to The Deep End: https://ideas.beondeck.com