His journey started when he started building products & wrote blogs for different companies - he was in New Zealand. He was the first writer for Mashable. All of this while he was just 14!After sometime, he joined Teachable as a founding engineer. He grew in his role all the way to VP of product & with teachable doing reasonably well - he thought about why he origionally moved to the US.Despite having his family in US, he took some hard decisions to leave the job & freelance for Gumroad to bootstrap. We also talk about raising the first $1M & getting an offer from Tiger Global for their Series A which they couldn't refuse.This was such a fun podcast - going into a founder's life with every tiny detail. I had so much fun chatting with Sid, I'm sure you'll enjoy listening too! :) 

I recorded this episode in Delhi - what a time to record! We started with the impact of AQI on lifespan & talk about the impact of pincode on your lifespan. Longevity feels like a field where you need to spend a ton of time in research but Alex shared his views on how we can get started with a lot less. It was interesting to get his thoughts on how young people are approaching the field & the progress we've already made. The contribution of Age1 has been quite phenomenal in the field & their dedication to help more people get started. I've a lot of homework to do in the field & I find it quite exciting. I hope this episode can convince you to get started as well. Here's a good place to start reading in case you're curious: https://www.timeinitiative.org/resources

We talk about the myths around remote work, how do we build the right culture at the company & deep dive into tons of challenges that becomes excuses for many to call their employees back to office. Some of the points we discussed include:Building the right cultureGrowing the team remotelyOffsites or no offsitedCross team collaborationGlobal complianceAsynchronous workI first met Job years ago during his time at Gitlab - it's one of the OG remote work companies, probably one of the first few who scaled to more than 1000+ employees all remote. Job has been building remote companies for a while now & I enjoyed every bit of our conversation - I'm sure you will too!

Following his remarkable success with the $780M acquisition of his startup, Vungle, by private equity giant Blackstone in 2019, Zain founded Zain Ventures, a family office with a diverse portfolio spanning various asset classes. Zain's investment philosophy is straightforward: strategically allocate capital to the right fund managers and partner with visionary industry leaders.He leveraged his expertise to revolutionize the real estate investment sector, recognizing the need for advanced analytical tools. After orchestrating the impressive $780 million acquisition of his startup, Vungle, Zain founded Zain Ventures. This family office boasts a diverse asset portfolio, offering strategic capital allocation and visionary partnerships. Join us for a captivating conversation with Zain, where we delve into his remarkable journey and entrepreneurial insights.

Sid Mofya, a Kauffman Fellow, is the COO of the Draper Venture Network and has one of the most interesting roles in venture capital: helping his team coordinate the alliance of member funds and providing post-investment support for their collective portfolio of over 900 companies. Sid’s journey into the venture capital world is fairly non-traditional. Sid was born in Zambia and studied in the UK as a chemical engineer. After college, he went to work for Shell as a chemical engineer at an oil refinery. Sid yearned to move back to Africa and make an impact on the local communities there, so he left Shell for business school and eventually moved to Tanzania to work for a healthcare organization doing medical research that focused on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and influenza. It was around this time Sid started looking into venture capital and entrepreneurship with a greater focus. Sid eventually got in touch with the Draper Venture Network, which was searching for someone to help build a support platform for their global investments. He has been helping the Network grow since.Today, DVN consists of over 20 member funds and supports a full-time Services team based in Silicon Valley. The Network currently has member funds across Asia, Australia, Middle East, Europe and North, and South America. The funds are currently deploying over $2B in assets and are invested in almost 1000 active portfolio companies.(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Elad Gil — most recently co-founder of Color Genomics, previously co-founder and CEO of Mixer Labs, which was acquired by Twitter. He was a  VP at Twitter focusing on scaling the company from 90 to 1500 people. Previously at Google he started their mobile team, and worked on AdSense. He is also flat out one of the best angel investors/advisors in the startup community. His portfolio includes Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Samsara, Square, Stripe, and Wish.He has a kind of sight that makes the nonobvious appear obvious. (Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou). 

Vlad Magdalin is the Founder & CEO at Webflow. the startup that allows you to build better business websites, faster, without coding. To date, Vlad has raised over $73m with Webflow from some dear friends of the show including Accel, Ron @ Rainfall, Brianne @ Work Life, Benjamin Ling and Y Combinator to name a few. Prior to founding Webflow, Vlad was a Senior Software Engineer @ Intuit. Before Intuit, Vlad co-founded Chatterfox, a web application allowing people to stay in touch with groups offriends, family, or co-workers. (Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Thai Son has spent the last 15 years building a world-class eCommerce service provider, through SmartOSC, the business he co-founded with his childhood friend. Under his leadership, the business scaled from zero to more than 600 people, achieving a constant 50%+ YoY growth. Today, as the global CEO, he's responsible for driving expansion, innovation and setting the vision for the business. The company's portfolio includes 500+ clients globally including Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, ASUS, Sony, PayPal, Ricoh, etc., with a presence across 9 offices in 6 countries, and is recognized as one of APAC’s most prestigious eCommerce agencies. The company also built its own startup incubator and actively invests in solutions within fintech, digital, automation, and data. Thai Son currently lives in Hanoi with his wife and 2 lovely kids.

Henry Ward, CEO and co-founder of Carta, discusses the challenges of being a founder, the growth of his fintech startup, addressing employee equity loss, private equity and startup equity as new forms of wealth creation, prioritizing urgent tasks, being a CEO, remote work, and building an efficient business.

Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) is the Captain & CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines.Hoffman is also a venture investor, serial entrepreneur, and author of several award-winning books. These include “Make Elephants Fly” (published by Hachette), “Surviving a Startup” (published by HarperCollins), and “The Five Forces” (published by BenBella).Hoffman was founder and Chairman of the Producers Guild Silicon Valley Chapter, served on the Board of Governors of the New Media Council, and was a founding member of the Academy of Television’s Interactive Media Group.While in Hollywood, Hoffman worked as a TV development executive at Fries Entertainment, known for producing over a hundred TV shows, acquired by MGM. He went on to pioneer interactive television with his venture-funded startup Spiderdance, which produced interactive TV shows with NBC, MTV, Turner, Warner Brothers, History Channel, Game Show Network, and others.In Silicon Valley, Hoffman founded two more venture-backed startups, in the areas of games and entertainment, and worked as Mobile Studio Head for Infospace, with such hit mobile games as Tetris, Wheel of Fortune, Tomb Raider, Thief, Hitman, Skee-Ball, and X-Files.Hoffman went on to launch Founders Space, with the mission to educate and accelerate entrepreneurs. Founders Space has become one of the top startup accelerators in the world. Hoffman has trained hundreds of startup founders and corporate executives in the art of innovation and provided consulting to many of the world’s largest corporations, including Qualcomm, Huawei, Bosch, Intel, Disney, Warner Brothers, NBC, Gulf Oil, Siemens, and Viacom.Hoffman earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of California and a master’s degree in film and television from the University of Southern California. He currently resides in San Francisco but spends most of his time in the air, visiting startups, investors, and innovators all over the world. (Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).