Village Global Podcast

Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi) of Tribe Capital joins Erik on this episode to talk about Tribe Capital’s approach to investing. He talks about the “first principles” approach they take to evaluating companies and why he says rather than the company pitching their firm to Tribe, instead he tells prospective investments, “we will pitch you.”He breaks down the data-driven analysis that Tribe does of the companies they look to work with, and talks about the kinds of data that work best for their analysis. Erik asks why the bigger venture capital firms aren’t taking the same approach and runs through a number of industries to get Arjun’s take on what the keys to success are in that sector. Arjun talks about some of the writing on his blog over the past few years and points out that “any successful company is not successful because they have copied someone else’s framework.” We apologize for the audio quality of this episode. We ran into technical difficulties during recording.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.

Elad Gil, an entrepreneur and investor known for his market evaluation insights, discusses the unpredictability of life and careers, emphasizing a long-term perspective. He highlights how evaluating market quality takes precedence over founder qualities, sharing his thoughts on what defines a favorable market for startups. Elad contrasts different philosophies on market evaluation, offers insights into overlooked sectors in Silicon Valley, and shares rapid-fire assessments of current trends like VR and longevity. His perspective on innovation in professional services also sparks intrigue.

Ryan Delk, COO of Omni, and Jared Fliesler, COO of Scribd, dive into the dynamic role of COOs in startups, likening their work to that of bumblebees—always buzzing around to ensure smooth operations. They tackle effective hiring tactics for senior roles, emphasizing personal involvement and alignments with company culture. Goal-setting and transparent performance reviews are highlighted as keys to team success. Lastly, they discuss the balance of compensation, championing equity to foster long-term commitment from employees.

Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen), research fellow at Y Combinator Research, joins Erik for a wide-ranging discussion about a variety of topics, including:* Why the top names in the S&P 500 change over time, but the top names in global university rankings don’t — and how to fix that.* How Michael thinks about the role of risk in science, and why he'd like to see more risk-taking.* Memory, including how to improve yours and why professional athletes seem to have such good ones.* The “compliment deficit” in the world and how to fix it.* The silver lining of the Bay Area housing problem.* The reproducibility problem in social science.* Why he’s a fan of chaos.…and much more.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Auren Hoffman (@auren), former co-founder and CEO of LiveRamp and Tod Sacerdoti (@tod), former CEO and founder of BrightRoll. They are now working together on a new fund.They talk about how they came to the idea they’re working on, including how to find the right intersection of ideas among those that are interesting to you, that you are uniquely skilled at, that others don’t yet appreciate, and that are worth working on.They explain what data co-ops are and the unique value that they can bring. Auren says he believes that the future is about managing vendors rather than people, and points out that WhatsApp didn’t even build their core messaging functionality themselves in the first place.Erik asks what’s changed in company building since they started their companies in the 2000s and what the next ten years will look like in venture capital. They also talk about why the Valley is flush with cash and whether they are long San Francisco in an era of distributed teams.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Ilya Sukhar (@ilyasu) of Matrix Partners and formerly of Parse, and Alex Yaseen (@alexyaseen), co-founder and CEO of Parabola.They start by talking about what exactly “devsumer” is and why it’s important. They discuss some of the biggest names in the space and how these tools are enabling people who are not engineers to have the kind of leverage that engineers typically enjoy. Ilya and Alex talk about the trends in the space and what they would be looking for if they were running a venture fund focused on devsumer. They discuss some of the common pitfalls founders face and some of the unique forces at play in this market. They talk about why people get excited about what they can build with the tools and how they intersect with some of the more developer-focused applications that exist.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Vinay Gupta, CEO of Mattereum, for a wide ranging discussion about crypto, world government, existential risks, science fiction, energy, and much more.Vinay says that venture capital is a 40-year-old model and that the ICO boom — while having its own significant drawbacks — was a huge innovation in capital formation. He explains why the blockchain is such a huge innovation with wide-ranging applications and laments the fact that people have a hard time seeing past its application in digital currency. He lays out his thoughts on why reputation systems are broken and why Facebook could in a few years’ time be essentially a credit rating agency and a digital identity system for all aspects of your life. Vinay discusses the existential risks that the world faces today, and why the lack of environmental sustainability is at the top of his list of fears. He says that he is neither a Keynesian or an Austrian, but instead subscribes to “ecological economics.” They also talk about the influence of science fiction on engineers, the idea of "network escrow," why we need a nerd in the White House, and novel ideas for generating energy.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Scott Heiferman (@heif), co-founder of Meetup.They discuss the reason that IRL (in real life) meetups are important and why in-person contact cannot be replaced by virtual interaction. They talk about some of the most important communities that have started in the past, particularly involving religion, and why the connections they make have been so powerful.Scott mentions the health benefits of belonging to a community and talks about the importance of network effects in building new groups. He also talks about what makes a successful community and how people looking to build communities can make theirs grow.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Laura Behrens Wu (@LauraBehrensWu), co-founder and CEO of Shippo, and Talia Goldberg (@taliagold), venture investor at Bessemer. They start out by talking about how Laura started Shippo and how the team iterated through different ideas to get to what the company is today. She tells the story of trying to get attention from investors for a space that was not too familiar to them.Talia talks about Bessemer’s investments long ago in then-new retail companies like Staples and Dick’s Sporting Goods, and where they are thinking about where they want to invest.They move on to talking about the rise of direct-to-consumer and consumer packaged goods, and discuss how companies like Shippo can help new entrepreneurs get to market. They discuss some of the changes in e-commerce over the years and how new channels like Instagram are helping create a new relationship between consumers and brands.They also talk about companies that Talia wishes she had invested in but didn’t, their recommendations for entrepreneurs looking at the space, and their requests for startups.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode Erik is joined by Miki Kashtan, author and NVC teacher. They discuss the problems of exchange in general as a way of fulfilling human needs, the issues with reciprocity, and what fulfilling needs via “flow” and “natural abundance” means.Miki talks about some of the more interesting and unique studies that she has seen about societies from the very distant past and what kinds of lessons they may hold for how we should organize societies today. They talk about why in society we are always rationing, whether we realize it or not, and are usually determining how to allocate scarce resources by wealth rather than by need. Miki talks about the idea that shame was once a useful emotion that has been co-opted by the powers that be to keep people in line.She also talks about the distinction between governments and governance, why we need to innovate on innovation, and why she never does anything for the money, but instead does things for the relationships.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.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.