The VentureFuel Visionaries

Alumni Ventures is one of the most active venture firms in the world and under Mike’s leadership has reimagined the venture capital model—connecting accredited investors with professionally managed portfolios through the power of alumni communities. With over $1.5 billion in assets under management and more than 1,400 portfolio companies, Mike’s mission to democratize access to venture investing is transforming how innovation gets funded. In this episode, we dive into the future of venture capital, how networks unlock opportunity at scale, and Mike’s hot take on the impact of AI to investment and the world

John has co-founded and scaled 3 startups in consumer goods, from pioneering & creating the fresh soup category at New Covent Garden Soup Company to launching the toddler food category with Little Dish, he has spent over 30 years turning ideas into category-leading brands. Today he mentors entrepreneurs, invests in startups and helps large and small companies work together through Mission Ventures. We talk about the future of FCMG, why we need to buck conventional wisdom and the importance of understanding of deeply understanding your consumers. We also cover innovation vs. renovation, price pressures, the say to do gap, and why premium is the new standard and the value of brand.

When Jim Weber took over Brooks Running, the company was weeks from missing payroll and $30 million in debt. Two decades later, he built a billion-dollar performance brand that outpaced giants like Nike and Adidas. As CEO and author of Running with Purpose, Jim shares how radical focus, scientific innovation, and an unshakable sense of purpose fueled Brooks’ transformation—from near-bankruptcy to Berkshire Hathaway. He breaks down how to bet big on conviction, lead through crisis, and build trust that powers long-term growth.

Alexa Ryan left a decade-long career at P&G to launch Bakr, a frozen cookie dough brand built on real butter, clean ingredients, and bakery-quality flavor. What began with Alexa and her husband’s hand-scooping dough for 14-hour shifts has grown into the Midwest’s #1 frozen cookie dough brand. In this interview - originally recorded at the 2025 Midwest Dairy Pitch Competition in September of this year, Alexa shares how winning the 2023 Midwest Dairy Pitch Contest jumpstarted Bakr’s journey and opened doors to major retail expansion. She also reveals the biggest challenges of scaling, the importance of partnerships, and her advice for fellow founders. Tune in to hear how grit, vision, and a love of baking turned one woman’s idea into thousands of store shelves nationwide.

This week's VentureFuel Visionary is Ben Colman, founder of Reality Defender. It is the leading deepfake detection platform helping enterprises flag fraudulent users and content. Additionally, its enterprise-grade API and web app detect dangerous AI-generated and manipulated content across audio, video, images, and text. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of AI, cybersecurity, and the innovative solutions being developed to protect our reality in an increasingly digital age. This is crucial in today’s landscape where cyber threats are evolving rapidly, posing risks to individuals, businesses, and society as a whole!

Untapped markets to rising tides, Ruchi Desai career has spanned law, craft beer, and now venture investing. As co-founder of EIGHT Brewing Co. with NFL legend Troy Aikman, Ruchi scaled one of Texas’s fastest-growing beer brands before launching Rising Tide Ventures, a fund dedicated to fueling untapped consumer markets with often overlooked founders. She shares lessons from navigating industry to her playbook for spotting disruptive opportunities to the trends shaping the future of consumer goods and venture capital.

This week, we’re using NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research tool, to share insights from Alice Ponti’s on-the-ground experience at Shoptalk Spring in March. This conversation is a comprehensive, insight-rich overview of the conference, organized around ten core themes transforming retail. From the rise of Agentic AI and multimodal search, to the fast-evolving world of retail media, this episode captures the pulse of where commerce is headed, and what brands need to do next. We're excited to share this POV on key trends spotted last spring, as Alice prepares to take the stage at Groceryshop next week, where she'll moderate a conversation on Embracing Agility and Innovation featuring Emily Xu, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Republic National Distributing Company, Alastair Dorward, CEO, Dropps and Harshad Agashe, VP Data Products, Albertsons. Visit Groceryshop.com to learn more. .

We go inside Northwestern Medicine’s Innovation Engine to see how they are solving healthcare’s biggest challenges with Kali Arduini Ihde, Director of Ventures and Innovation at Northwestern Medicine. Kali is at the forefront of bringing emerging technologies into one of the country’s top academic health systems to help shape the future of patient care through innovation. She leads the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare Accelerator, which partners with AI and digital health startups to solve real, high-impact challenges in healthcare. We discuss the value of creating organized programmatic innovation to solve important problems (prior authorization, physician burden, supply chain) in a safe space that allows for co-creation to accelerate scale.

In this episode, we bring you an exclusive recording from the Innov8rs LearningLab featuring Tito Obaisi, Senior Manager of Pipeline and Insights at Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, in conversation with our Founder and CEO Fred Schonenberg. Tito shares how his team captures and socializes insights from startup collaborations across Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky to inspire colleagues, educate teams, and uncover opportunities for transformation. Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at how strategic partnerships with startups fuel enterprise-wide innovation and shape the next generation of products, technologies, and services.

Rohit Nuwal is a Partner at TELUS Global Ventures, Canada’s largest and most active corporate venture capital fund, with over 100 investments across transformative sectors such as HealthTech, AgTech, IoT, and AI. In this episode, we explore TELUS’ unique approach to commercialization beyond capital — and how they leverage deep insights from their global businesses to provide investment partners with a pathway to real-world traction and growth. Rohit shares how their Strategic Portfolio Development team, combined with a distinctive incentive structure within the core business, accelerates adoption — generating over $100M in P&L value.