Village Global Podcast

Lorin Gu, founding partner of Recharge Capital, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global to discuss:- Why Recharge structures its investing thematically, rather than by asset class.- The three themes that they believe have multi-decade headwinds behind them: semiconductors, women’s health, and fintech/crypto.- What Lorin learned from working with David Swensen, including the importance of the qualitative measurement of the people running the fund alongside any quantitative analysis of fund strategy.- How asking fund managers about their motivations and how they make decisions can determine the outcome of an investment.- The current wave of technonationalism around the globe.- Lorin's media diet and his interest in art.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

Alex Chalunkal is Chief Investment Officer at a family office where he manages a $1B+ portfolio focused on impact, venture, and climate tech investing. He was interviewed by Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Takeaways: - Alex says that the consensus is that there will be a mild recession in 2023. - He says that the energy transition, health, and climate are key sectors he is focusing on. - Technology is an important tool to help improve the labor shortage in the US because tech creates more productive workers who can get more done with less. - Structured equity can be an important tool for companies with stable revenue and cash flow. There are many covenants that are often added to a debt product so it’s not necessarily the right tool for a company that has lots of potential volatility in revenue, product, or pricing. - Alex is excited about climate tech investing. He says that in the US we have the raw materials but not necessarily the policies in place to combat climate change so investing in areas that are aligned with policy is key. 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

Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer), president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global for a conversation about global geopolitical trends and their impact on technology. Takeaways:- Ian has been in the room with world leaders as they make decisions about how to prepare for potential wars. He says that it’s easy to criticize their decisions afterwards but having been there has given him an appreciation for just how difficult it is to make those decisions under constraints and how little ideology plays into those decisions.- The US is no longer willing to act as global policeman, architect of global trade, or cheerleader for values the way it has in the past. No other country is wiling or able to fill that void, which leads us to a “GZERO” world where there is no clear leadership.- Tech companies like Microsoft and Starlink acting as sovereigns in Ukraine helped the country stay independent and likely kept Zelensky in power.- Ian says that the US and China are not in a Cold War and are not headed for a Cold War. He says that the leadership of both countries isn’t interested in a Cold War from a political perspective and that there is too much interdependence between the two nations for tensions to be ratcheted up.- Ian says that AI and algorithms have become deeply political without us realizing it. Tech companies have been A/B testing not for what makes for a better society but for what leads to more addiction. He says this is the most disturbing and destabilizing trend in tech today.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

Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says.- The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission.- There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving other companies in space) and beyond earth (“science fiction”-type activities like colonization, mining, and exploration).- The International Space Station cost $100B to build.- SpaceX built the Falcon 9 at 1/10th the cost that NASA estimated.- In the 1960s there were only two space programs but now there are 80+ and they are all trying to get an economic return on investment.- Mo’s contrarian take is that launch is actually underhyped. Very few companies have a launch vehicle that has made it to orbit with a significant payload capacity.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

Ari Schuler, CEO of goTenna, and Andrea Garrity, Chief Growth Officer of goTenna, join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon join us on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- goTenna was founded after Hurricane Sandy when a brother and sister didn’t know if the other was safe because the cell network weren’t working. It has since grown into the company that it is today, selling to government as well as consumers.- Ari and Andrea suggest that startups refrain from complaining or dwelling on how tough the procurement system is to navigate in the US government. They say “pass the test, don’t fight the test.”- Andrea says that much of innovation is personality driven — finding the right people who will run through walls when everyone else gives up.- There is plenty that they would change about the government procurement system. If one agency has found a tech useful, other agencies should be able to also use that tech without going through all the paperwork and bureaucracy over again.- The fact that US doesn’t manufacture much at home and would be stranded if a major war started tomorrow is of concern to them.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 Connor (@josephjconnor), founder of Odyssey (@WithOdyssey_), joins Anne Dwane and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- ACT test scores are at the lowest level in 30 years. 42% of students met none of the college readiness benchmarks.- District schools are not providing what parents need so children are leaving them in large numbers.- Parents have realized that they would be better off unbundling education so that children receive different parts of their education in different places, not just at a single district school.- Odyssey is fundamentally changing how education is funded in the US.- The US has 132,000 K-12 schools. For context, there are 13,000 McDonald’s locations. Teachers are the second largest occupation category in America after retail clerks.- Parents have been able to successfully push for programs like Odyssey’s by contacting their state senator or congressperson.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

Ian Cinnamon (@iancinnamon), co-founder and CEO of Apex Space, and Max Benassi (@mxbenassi), co-founder and CTO, join Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The cost per kilogram to get things into space has gone down dramatically over the last several years. - Satellites have two parts: a payload and a bus. The bus is the actual structure of the satellite and despite all the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in launch companies, basically no venture money has gone into satellite bus manufacturing.- Satellite buses are currently designed from the ground up and assembled by hand in small volumes.- Apex (apexspace.com) is working on building scalable and reliable satellite buses.- The founders fundamentally believe that humans will be a multi-planetary species and that in the future all these spacecraft that will be carrying people around the solar system will not be made by hand. - Despite the economic downturn, there has never been a better time to be a founder. 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 Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program.- If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract.- It has been very difficult for software companies to get a program of record contract because that has not been the typical model of defense in the past.- The nature of war is shifting away from large platforms and big garrison-style bases.- There have been 20-30 “SBIR mills” that have taken $3.5B combined in phase 1 and 2 contracts. Ben would put hard caps on the amounts that companies can get from the program and the types of companies that can apply to the SBIR program.- Commercial technology has outpaced the defense industry by far.- It’s very difficult for small companies to even fill out the forms required for the SBIR program. Making it more friendly for newcomers would make a big difference to the program.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

Deep Nishar (@deepnishar), Managing Director at General Catalyst and formerly of LinkedIn and Google, joins Anne Dwane on this episode. Takeaways:- The best product hires have the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat. - When you’re interviewing people for product roles at startups, don’t ask people what they would do but rather what they have done in the past. You want people who have a sense of adventure and can work without a lot of structure.- The first fifty hires at a company completely define the company culture.- Tech debt is a fact of life. Don’t worry about it until you get to MVP.- When you’re a founder, consider whether you want a poet or a librarian as a product leader. A poet will take on product strategy as well as execution, while a librarian will take product direction from you and implement it.- Truly world-class product leaders can build not just a product, but a product operating system — the product that builds more products. 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

Christian Brose (@cdbrose), Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril and author of The Kill Chain, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- The US military and its procurement system has been built for equipment that is big, heavy, and hard to replace — things like ships and aircraft carriers and tanks. - Commercial technologies can contribute to a military with equipment that is more agile, lower cost, and easier to replace.- People in the government are, in 2022, trying to figure out what the military is going to need in 2032. This eliminates incentives for disruption and surprise. The military gets what it wanted, even if what it wanted doesn’t solve the problem.- It would be ideal to bring capitalism into the procurement process so that there are new incentives and real competition.- China has been using a systematic, methodical strategy since the 1990s with the aim of displacing the US.- There has never been a competitor to the US with the scale that China has in more than a century.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