Village Global Podcast

Steve Blank (@sgblank), creator of Hacking For Defense and author of 4 Steps To The Epiphany, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The secret history of Silicon Valley is that it emerged from the government’s desire to develop advanced technology and weapons in universities during World War II.- Stanford became a powerhouse in microwaves and electronics post-WWII. People were encouraged to leave to start companies, which kickstarted Silicon Valley.- The Department of Defense needs a radical redesign. Steve says the US can’t even keep pace with innovation in North Korea, let alone China.- The DoD was designed for a different world. China currently operates like Silicon Valley and the DoD operates like GM.- The “game is fixed” against small startups trying to sell to the government.- Steve says things typically don’t change unless there’s a leadership change or a crisis, and that the US is lying to itself about China and how fast it is advancing.- Billionaires like Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, and Elon Musk have accomplished “miracles” building companies in the defense space in spite of how the system is designed. 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

Antonio Garcia-Martinez (@antoniogm), author of The Pull Request, joins Erik Torenberg and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- The first version of ads on the web, banner ads, looked like ads in the newspaper, because often the new version of media looks like the last version of media — that’s skeuomorphism.- Apple’s app tracking transparency is breaking the model for Facebook and Snap.- Antonio says there won’t be a media ecosystem in Web 3 without attribution.- The advent of balanced and nuanced journalism decades ago was a luxury born of ads.- We will likely live in a Web 2.5 world for a while where incumbents won’t lose their fiefdoms but there will be new experiences and new spaces to conquer.- Web 3 is both private and public — Visa doesn’t post all your transactions the way on-chain payments reveal them.- The average user trades privacy for other things and as the scale of Web 3 grows, privacy will likely become less of a focus.Antonio’s posts on ads and Web 3:Attribution rules the world (and it'll rule Web3 too)https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/attribution-rules-the-world-and-itllEverything is an ad network: How to pay for Web 3https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/everything-is-an-ad-networkThanks 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

Avichal Garg (@avichal), founder of Electric Capital, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways:- Downturns impact large companies much more than founders and early stage investors because the companies are so small relative to their total addressable market.- Managing your own psychology in a downturn is the most important skill for a founder in these times.- Crypto is like a platypus — it has properties of growth tech, a store of value, and commodities.- People in the US sometimes look at crypto and don’t see the use case but for those people around the world who are not on the US dollar, the use cases for crypto are clearer.- Crypto is an important technological breakthrough but more importantly is also a social science breakthrough: people are exchanging money for ones and zeros.- The transformation of money by crypto will start at the fringes rather than replacing conventional money all at once. It will start with young people, the wealthy, and the underserved.- An AI with a smart contract acting on chain managing a billion dollars in a non-jurisdctional way will be very disruptive.- In the future people will signal status in digitally, with NFTs rather than watches.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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj), investor at Chapter One, joins Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon. Takeaways:- Jeff realized the power of subscriptions during his time at Tinder. He says that digital goods are an even better version of subscriptions.- Web3 is almost entirely missing mobile usability.- Crypto apps could add a reputation layer to existing Web2 use cases, like dating apps.- People are still using Web 2.0 community products to create communities for Web3.- Web3 games need to move away from speculation and towards building genuine player enjoyment.- Seed investors need to be creative but also mindful of what other people will invest in. It’s important to understand business models and what is sustainable.- Corrections help to reset the whole ecosystem.- It’s hard to unseat the dominant marketplace, whether in Web 2.0 or Web3.- Crypto is big enough that even if you aren’t a crypto investor, you should be spending some time in the space.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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

AJ Piplica (@AJ_Piplica), founder and CEO of Hermeus, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:- Every time there has been an acceleration in the speed of transportation in history, high GDP growth has followed.- A switch to hypersonic transportation would unlock $4T in growth.- In the future the key differentiator in air travel will be speed, rather than comfort.- It’s currently extremely expensive to do flight testing at hypersonic speeds — $5-10M for only a few seconds of data.- In the 40s and through the Cold War, there were new aircrafts released every few years, but since then the pace of innovation has slowed significantly.- Cost-plus contracts are very comfortable for companies and create perverse incentives.- We are in the midst of a techno-economic pursuit in hypersonic transport and whichever country gets there first gets to write the rules.- The immense amount of political strife in this country keeps AJ up at night but unity amongst smaller cohorts of people working on challenges at a global scale keeps him optimistic.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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Mike Shebat (@mike_sheb), co-founder and CEO of Traba, joins Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:- There is a huge problem with meeting demand for workers at warehouses and fulfilment centres. There are 75% more jobs in those fields after the pandemic.- Mike worked in warehousing and helped scale UberEats so has strong founder-market fit. Traba’s mission of connecting people to work is very meaningful to him.- Mike met his co-founder Akshay through the On Deck Fellowship and they started working on projects together and did an extensive values questionnaire, both of which were very helpful when it comes to founder cohesion.- They have emphasized company values from day one and hired for people who share those values, which has paid dividends.- Mike recommends building trust with your existing investors by sharing challenges and how you plan to solve them. He recommends bringing your existing investors along for the ride into future rounds.- Mike calls Miami “Singapore and New York in Latin America” and loves the optimistic attitude of the people there.- When hiring, Mike looks for people with a high slope and asks them “what was something your manager wanted you to improve on a few years ago and what did you do to become better at it?”- Mike’s vision for a Traba mafia, akin to the PayPal mafia, some of whose members are backing Traba.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

Peter Newell (@PeterANewell), CEO of BMNT, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- Peter was “handed the Ferrari of skunkworks” when he came to be in charge of the Rapid Equipping Force. It was a program that handled over a billion dollars to deploy new technologies.- He became more of an entrepreneur after his time at the REF and that led to starting BMNT.- Often times procurement in the US military is HQ-centric and product-centric and does not take into account the needs of the people on the ground.- The acquisition system that was built in the 1950s in the US presumes that the military can perfectly understand the problem and build a perfect solution for it. However, this takes much too long to deploy and isn’t suited for modern times.- A founder can’t go all-in on selling to government — they have to be able to build for both government and commercial.- Often times companies will receive indefinite delivery contracts where it is unclear how much money they will actually receive. You might land a budget with SOCOM but it’s hard to actually get the dollars out of Congress.- Hiring a lobbyist to educate you on the processes and people within the US government is a good idea but hiring a lobbyist to do business development for you is often not the right approach.- It’s best to invest in building networks in VC and at DoD before hiring consultants.- Not having enough people to do the advanced manufacturing that the US needs keeps Peter up at night.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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of our web3 series. Takeaways:- Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on.- Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on.- The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just need a laptop.- Royal is trying to enable the fan-artist relationship to be more of a partnership.- When fans own a part of an artist’s song, they are tied for life.- Justin has sold a ton of tickets in his career but he has zero idea of who those fans are and doesn’t have the ability to contact them. The data layer built into Royal helps artists connect with their fans.- In the future, music labels will become much more competitive for artists than they have been in the past.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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and general partner at Village Global and co-founder and co-CEO of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems.- Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth.- Governments and startups need to work together, not against each other.- China has the GDP per capita of Mexico but they have power because of how big their population is.- Increasing population should be an aim of the US government.- Humans are a naturally technological species and the only way out of our current problems is through technology, not without it.- People in Silicon Valley need to invest in storytelling and capturing hearts and minds. They have a new appreciation for how important politics is.- Ideas from Silicon Valley are being exported around the world —among them are giving without asking for anything in return, alignment via equity, and decoupling where you live from where you work. 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 onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Tushar Jain (@TusharJain_), co-founder and managing partner of Multicoin Capital, joins Erik on this episode to discuss:- The history of crypto over the last several years and the various moments that different technologies like Bitcoin, NFTs, tokens, and others have had.- What the world looks like if the predictions for crypto’s impact comes true.- Why Tushar thinks that Ethereum has gone past the point of diminishing returns to decentralization.- Why it’s so hard to predict which chains will win.- How crypto can help coordinate millions of people to accomplish big projects.- What we’ve learned about stablecoins in the last few years.- Why this is a “golden era of investing in crypto” and why we’re at a place that is equivalent to mobile in 2012.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