Magic Minds

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today's episode is another check-in episode. For this episode, I’m going to talk about the below the line, unscripted version, of what’s going on my side of things. I share the details about the reason why we decided to move to Los Angeles (and why LA is shaping up to become the creative capital in the next 5-7 years in my opinion). I also talk about the experiences that led me to start a new company, Magic Mind. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Rahul Vohra is a founder a couple of times over — with his last company Rapportive getting bought by LinkedIn in 2012. His next company, the one in which I became a customer of (and a major fan of), is called Superhuman. You may have heard of this fast-growing email application that easily cuts my inbox time in half each day. You may also be a customer and a fellow fan. For something that we all spend countless hours in each day like email, very few companies have succeeded in captivating our attention in recent years. Superhuman is seizing this moment, and you'd be surprised by the foundational thinking that goes into the design of this application. From this episode, you're going to get to hear all about the underlying design principles, the moments of joy, the key insights, and truly understand and appreciate the frustrations that have made Superhuman such a fan favorite and made Raul such a well-known founder in Silicon Valley and abroad. Similar to the product and the high flying company, you'll hear about the underlying experiences that shaped Rahul and his entrepreneurial path. He shares his key insights when it comes to building and creating, and his own moments of joy and defeat. You'll also get to hear about the things he thinks a lot about but rarely gets a chance to talk about on most business podcasts. I'm really excited for you to hear this episode from such a thoughtful and insightful founder. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today's episode is a deep dive into the space technology sector. It's with the Y-Combinator backed Momentus founder and CEO, Mikhail Kokorich. Momentus is one of the most exciting space tech startups in the world right now — and is a rocket technology company focusing on “last-mile delivery” based here in the Bay Area. He has founded five businesses before but we really focus the episode on his experience in the space tech sector, especially with SpaceX's recent launch of humans into space by a commercial, private company. The first of its kind. We cover everything from the current environment of launching satellites, astronauts, and so on, tourists, into space by a commercial private entity with something like SpaceX and others on the way. We also talk about the various other commercial aspects of Space Technology... from satellites to mining to tourism to energy... it’s about to become a space gold rush, and I wanted to chat with an expert to give us all an overview of where this whole Space “space” is going. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today's episode is with Immad Akhund who is a serial entrepreneur and serial investor. He has been through Y Combinator a couple times, and his current business, Mercury, is a bank built for startups. But really, it's a bank built for all businesses and full disclosure, I am fortunate enough to be an investor (but there’s a side to this that I still kick myself for — more details in the episode). Immad shares with us the “below the line” version of being acquired, the toll the founder life can take on a person and their family, as well as the reasons behind starting Mercury. He also shares why he persisted through many negative conversations, and why he still decided to build his current (and now very hip startup) even though there are many people who weren’t fans of the idea in the beginning — myself included. We talk about all of these things and more — and I really loved the candor and the simplicity in which he's able to articulate just what he was going through, what matters (and what doesn’t), and what decisions he would have made differently. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today’s episode is with one of the world’s best venture investors coming from perhaps the world’s best venture firm… My guest is Alfred Lin, who is a partner at the famed venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Alfred is an investor in companies like Airbnb and DoorDash and Instacart among others. With one of the best track records, I’ve ever come across… with publications like Forbes saying he has the Midas Touch. His track record as an investor is impressive, but as an operator, building companies like LinkExchange (sold to Microsoft), his own venture firm years ago that invested in winners like OpenTable, and then Zappos (selling to Amazon)… his track record as a builder is just about as impressive as an investor. So, as you can imagine, Alfred has a lot of insights from uniquely being at such high levels on both sides of the table. We talk about how he spots great founders, what the process at Sequoia is really like/peeking behind the veil of one of the most prestigious investment firms in the world. We talk about the books that have impacted his thinking as an investor, it’s not what you would expect. We talk about the silver lining of this new world we all find ourselves in, and we talk about the stories that shaped who he has become… All that and more with one of the smartest (but also kindest) people in Silicon Valley. This is Below The Line. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today's deep dive is with Brianne Kimmel where we discuss her (persistent) path to angel investing in technology startups. From purposefully connecting with the investor of the company she began working at (within months of starting) to hosting dinners for founders to teaching her craft openly and building a massive community to starting her own fund... and everything in between. Brianne is an early-stage startup investor here in the Bay Area, and her fund is called Worklife. It has a very interesting vision of investing in companies that make work more flexible, creative, human, and balanced. We talk about her journey to becoming an investor, which covers her first investment, and what she was doing before she became an investor... We also discussed her designs in her career path and the choices she made early on that helped her in her current path. We even covered what types of founders and companies will thrive in this post-COVID world... all that and more. It's a great conversation, and I'm really excited for listeners to get a deep dive into what it's like to become an angel investor. Enjoy. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author John’s monthly “Global Guerillas Report”: https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb Today's episode is with John Robb, a former aeronautical engineer, special-ops soldier, and then the first internet analyst in the 90’s (followed by becoming an extremely successful entrepreneur). He chats with us about his research report that he releases monthly called “The Global Guerillas Report” and answers the question of “What the hell is going on right now?” in the life and times of Covid-19. He predicted social networks and their impact on the world back in 1996. He also predicted this pandemic in January before most people knew what was about to happen. And he has a few other observations that I haven’t heard anyone mention anywhere else to date that make this one of my favorite episodes to date. Simply put, John’s monthly “Global Guerillas Report” is some of the best research and journalism on geopolitical trends I’ve ever come across. John was months ahead of pretty much everyone else with predicting this pandemic, and for someone that thinks deeply about the ramifications of what's happening in the present (and for what can / what will likely happen in the future), this is one of my favorite conversations that I've had in several months cutting across almost every question on my mind with regards to the global situation we’re currently in. Enjoy. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today's episode is with Andrew Wilkinson. I've been really anticipating meeting Andrew for a few years now. I'm a big fan of his agency, MetaLab, his firm, Tiny Capital, and his original views on investing and running technology businesses for a while. He has done things so idiosyncratically that there isn't anyone like him on the internet that I'm aware of — From starting businesses at 15 and dropping out of college a few years later to pursue his entrepreneurial path, that sounds like a story that you might have heard before. But the part that you probably haven't heard before is that a few years later, he's running five businesses at the same time, after that it’s 25. And he’s likely still just getting started. Instead of finding companies that he wants to invest in and deploy capital, they do things a little bit differently at his firm, Tiny Capital. They actually are looking to buy companies from founders that might have been running it for years, and are looking for some smart way out. If you’re familiar with venture capital, this is the exact opposite of that model. I can't wait for you to hear from Andrew himself on the story behind it, and how he thinks through approaching this unique side of investing, owning, and running businesses. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author This plog (podcast+blog post mashup) is called “The Wisdom of Insecurity”...“The desire for security is the same thing as insecurity” — Alan Watts. On my blog, podcasts, and even in my music, I reference the philosopher Alan Watts. If you haven't heard of him, you likely will in the coming decades because he happened to do three things uniquely well in the 20th century... He introduced the West to many Eastern concepts such as Vedanta, Daoism, and Zen Buddhism through a deep understanding of each (especially for someone that was born in Great Britain and was an ordained Anglican minister) + He articulately wrote and spoke widely throughout the country + And he happened to record those philosophical lectures for us to listen to 60-70 years later. In one of his books, “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, he makes the case that insecurity is both the inextinguishable and extremely valuable *if* we question why we’re trying to rid ourselves of it. Want to hear my personal point of view about this topic? Listen to this mini-episode to learn more. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author I am really excited about today's episode with none other than Hiten Shah. This is a topic that many people are thinking about, myself included — which is how to work from home productively and efficiently. I've been doing it for about a year and a half now. If you google “remote or work from home best practices” Hiten’s content is the stuff that comes up at the top of the list and for good reason. He's been working from home and running distributed teams for almost two decades... way longer than anyone else I know... So when I thought about a deep-dive episode in this topic, I couldn't think of anyone better than Hiten to join us with his best practices in general (as well as a COVID-19 version) of working from home. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC