Innovation with Mark Peter Davis

On this week’s episode I chatted with Sam Lessin, Co-Founder of Fin and General Partner at Slow Ventures.Sam is, in the truest sense, a Silicon Valley insider. He’s a part of the Harvard tech mafia, friends with Zuckerberg and has built a few different tech startups.Beyond all of that, he is an extremely deep and abstract thinker. I’ve always been a fan of listening to and learning from him.During our chat we discussed how he sees the VC model changing (he has some strong opinions on this which are great), the evolution of media and its business models, the differences between US and China government strategies towards tech and a whole lot more. Enjoy.Follow us on Twitter: @lessin / @slow / @betterwithfin / @mpdGuest Links: Slow Ventures, Fin, The Information, Book: The Invention of NewsPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Zheng Huang is the President of the Committee of 100. Committee of 100 is a non-profit U.S. leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, healthcare, and the arts focused on public policy engagement, civic engagement, and philanthropy.Z is incredibly smart and during our chat we cover a lot.We talk about what the Committee of 100 is and why it was created (which includes a bit of history on the Chinese-American experience in the US), the different approaches of the US and China when it comes to tech and free speech, and how the two countries can avoid war (which history shows normally happens during the a transition of economic power). This is a FASCINATING conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed and hope you do too.Follow us on Twitter: @ZhengZhuang / @Committee100 / @mpdGuest Links: Committee of 100Podcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

For this week’s episode I chatted with Angela Lee, Founder of 37 Angels, an investment network that activates female investors through an educational bootcamp. She is also a professor at the Columbia Business School where she focuses on teaching about venture capital.Angela is great at sharing her knowledge about the world. She has a very structured way of communicating her wonderful insights. During our chat she shared some of her favorite lessons she teaches at CBS and useful business strategies everyone should keep in mind, like how to ask for help the best way. We also talked about the gender gap in angel investing and venture capital, an issue that Angela and 37 Angels is doing amazing work to help with. I always love catching up with Angela and I hope you enjoy the conversation.Follow us on Twitter: @angelawlee / @37AngelsNY / @mpdShow LinksGuest Links: @37AngelsNY / @Columbia_Biz / Give and Take by Adam GrantPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

For this week’s episode I chatted with Hal Callais, Managing Partner and CIO of Callais Capital. Callais Capital is a southern Louisiana based alternative asset management firm that invests in tech companies in the South and Mississippi River Delta region. Hal is from a multi-generational family of entrepreneurs in Louisiana. He is very connected to the geography of the region and has been playing a crucial role in New Orleans’ blossoming startup and innovation scene. I thought this was a really interesting conversation, a way to see into a nascent ecosystem and get a sense of what it is like in the earlier days of an entrepreneurial boom. We talk about everything from tech and innovation in New Orleans to the evolution of this ecosystem post Hurricane Katrina. Enjoy.Follow us on Twitter: @hal_callais / @CallaisCapital / @mpdShow LinksGuest Links: Callais CapitalPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

On this week's episode I sit down with John Lochner, the Vice President of Innovation at New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).NYSERDA was established in 1975 to support clean energy and protect the environment. They're the government entity in the state of New York that is taking the lead to help drive innovation in the CleanTech ecosystem. Not only are they helping NY meet climate goals, they're also essentially writing the playbook for how governments can drive drive the initiatives and investments needed to combat climate change. What they're doing is incredible. This is a wildly interesting and important topic. I hope you enjoy learning about it as much as I did.Follow us on Twitter: @NYSERDA / @mpdShow LinksGuest Links: NYSERDA, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram Podcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

On this week’s episode I sit down with Mike Tarullo, COO of Banza. Banza makes pasta, pizza, and macaroni and cheese from chickpeas. You’ve probably seen their products at your local grocery store with their signature orange packaging. They’ve raised about $30 million and have products in 18,000 stores nationally. Before Banza, Mike helped run Venture for America, the non-profit company Andrew Yang started.As you will hear during the chat, Mike is clearly an expert on food start-ups and we dive deep into some of the intricacies of what it takes to build them. We get into the nitty-gritty of how the food industry operates, useful strategies that young companies might want to keep in mind, why raising mega rounds might not always be the best strategy, and the importance of conducting research (and actually following what the data tells you!). Enjoy.Follow us on Twitter: @tarullo / @eatbanza / @mpdGuest Links: Banza, Venture for America, Oath PizzaFood Documentaries: What the Health, Fed UpPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

As you can tell from the title, this isn’t a normal episode. I just wanted to give a couple of quick updates.1) THANK YOU for listening and supporting the pod. It's crazy to think that we’re 27 episodes in!! I very much appreciate you joining me on this journey.2) We’re taking a summer break and just wanted to let you know so you didn’t think we were bailing on you! We’re going to take the rest of July and the month of August to record a bunch of episodes and plan for the future, but maybe most important of all… to CHILL a bit. Life is too short to not enjoy.We’ll continue to broadcast the live recordings on Twitter Spaces so if you want to tune in give me a follow on Twitter @ MPD.New episodes will come late August / early September.3) I’d love to hear from you about... anything! Topic suggestions, thoughts on the podcast structure, general VC questions, or whatever else is on your mind. Please feel free to reach out to me on socials.Once again, thanks so much for listening. Have a GREAT summer. I’ll see you on the other side.

On this week’s episode I chat with Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners. Javelin is a premier VC firm that has invested in a ton of successful companies including a bunch of unicorns like Master Class and Thumbtack.Now, this episode is a bit special for me because Jed gave me my first break into VC back in 2006. He’s been a long time friend and mentor, so much so that I thanked him for all that he has done for me in the opening of my book.Though Jed might not like it, he’s a vetern venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Before helping to start Javelin over 12 years ago, he was a successful entrepreneur that navigated the craziness of the dot com boom and bust era, eventually landing a $1 billion acquisition of his venture Move.comDuring our chat we discussed how Javelin operates, the current state of the VC world, the political implications of social media, important lessons he’s learned from both the VC and entrepreneur perspective and much more. Enjoy.Follow us on Twitter: @JedKatz / @javelinvp / @mpdShow Notes: Javelin Venture PartnersPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

On this week’s episode I chat with Alex Taub. Alex is the Co-Founder & CEO of Upstream, a digital platform that is redefining professional networking.Over the years I’ve watched many community platforms fail. I don’t know the exact stats, but the success rate is low. I think one of the reasons why a community platform is so hard to build is that it requires so many features to deliver sufficient value.Upstream seems to have broken through by rapidly iterating on features and keeping the overall product lean. They delivered a complete product fairly quickly and the platform appears to be scaling.In addition to running Upstream, Alex manages one of the communities on the platform: NFT Community.We get into a general overview of what NFTs are, plus chat about some of his favorite projects which include NBA Topshot and a digital horse racing game called Zed Run.If you’re interested in understanding the NFT market and how to profit from it, have a listen.Follow us on Twitter: @ajt / @JoinUpstream / @mpdShow Notes: Upstream, NFT Community, Zed Run, NBA Topshot, Epic Games vs Apple Court HearingPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

On this week’s episode I chat with Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners. Sapphire Partners invests in early-stage venture capital funds and Beezer leads their investment team, focusing on both domestic and international funds.

Beezer is a star and began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.

In 2016, Beezer led the launch of OpenLP, an effort to aggregate and amplify insights across the entrepreneur-to-GP to LP venture ecosystem. There’s a lot of helpful information in this conversation with some great tips for GPs to keep in mind when working with LPs. If anyone is interested in raising capital from institutional LPs, this is a worthwhile listen.Follow us on Twitter: @Beezer232 / @Open_LP / @SapphireVC / @mpdShow Notes: OpenLP, Sapphire Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Article - Fund RecyclingPodcast Links: Website, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn