Village Global Podcast

Co-founder of Cloudflare, Michelle Zatlyn, shares insights on fundraising, hiring, and frugal practices. She reveals how they found talent without recruiters, turned weaknesses into strengths, and achieved product-market fit. The podcast also touches on extreme frugality, customer feedback, and the importance of a skilled Product Manager for company growth.

Former Uber employee and founder of Rackhouse Ventures, Kevin Novak, shares insights on developing surge pricing at Uber in just three weeks, advises founders to start with first principles thinking, cautions against falling in love with one idea too early, and discusses the challenges and strategies for AI startups in a competitive market.

CEO of Nike and former eBay CEO, John Donahoe, shares insights on leadership, team building, and navigating adversity. He discusses hiring strategies, optimizing team performance, and emotional resilience in leadership. Donahoe's advice on professional growth and aligning teams towards common goals is invaluable for aspiring CEOs.

Chris Lunt discusses Silicon Valley's potential for sociological change, the power of public investments in innovation, and the need to reimagine healthcare delivery. He highlights the importance of government mandates in dragging healthcare into the future and emphasizes the opportunity to completely reshape the industry soon.

Physicist and founder of four successful startup companies, Michael Hochberg, discusses the importance of hiring the best people, the rise of silicon photonics in data centers and telecom systems, and the need for thorough diligence when choosing co-founders.

Matt Pellini, Managing Director at Hamilton Lane, joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode. Highlights:- Matt says the secondaries market has grown over 5x from 15 years ago to now.- Selling in the secondary market used to be a sign of distress but is no longer. There are many different reasons for doing so and it’s mostly a sign of a manager being more active in the overall management of the fund.- Secondaries, in contrast to other asset classes in the private markets, are typically lower risk, shorter duration, and are more IRR-focused.- It’s key for LPs to understand the motivations behind a GP’s intentions to engage in secondaries transactions. There are very good reasons for doing so but transparency is key.- AI is in vogue but technology is only as good as the data that it’s using. The most sophisticated data analysis is not going to give a firm much of an edge if it's using incorrect data or publicly available data.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.

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.

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.

Bill Gates, Co-founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, discusses his entrepreneurial journey, work-life balance for founders, his perspective on the current tech landscape, and his views on philanthropy and global development.

Jerry Yang, Co-founder of Yahoo! and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures, discusses the early days of Yahoo!, lessons learned, what American entrepreneurs can learn from China, and thoughts on early stage investing.