Village Global Podcast

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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-storiesThanks 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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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-11871f129f7bhttps://beondeck.com/post/announcing-odxThanks 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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

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.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup