The VentureFuel Visionaries

Mike Jackson, Managing Partner of Earthshot Ventures. Earthshot Ventures invests in entrepreneurs making a dent in climate change. Collectively, their team has invested in 200+ startups over the last fourteen years and Mike’s investments have collectively raised over $1.1 billion in follow-on funding from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, BlackRock, Microsoft, Google, Patagonia, and the like. We talk about the business models and playbooks that work, “what can go right” thinking, specific areas of climate tech that are most interesting, the future of sustainable entrepreneurship and the role of large corporations in the clean tech.

Ben Colman is the founder of Reality Defender, the leading deepfake detection platform helping enterprises flag fraudulent users and content. In this episode, join us as we dive deep into the world of AI, cybersecurity, and the innovative solutions being developed to protect our reality in an increasingly digital age.

Originally recorded at our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, Fred Schonenberg, VentureFuel’s Founder and CEO dived into the heart of Gotham FC’s remarkable comeback story with Yael Averbuch West, the General Manager and Head of Soccer Operations; and Nan Vogel, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Game Day at Gotham FC. Hear how a mix of resilience, strategic foresight, and unwavering determination helped them pivot from enduring one of the league's toughest seasons to securing their inaugural NWSL championship.

At our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, Yao Huang, founder of The Hatchery, moderated a panel discussion with venture capitalists. The panel included Caroline Lewis, Managing Partner of Rogue Women's Fund; Sydney Paige Thomas, Founder and General Partner of Symphonic Capital; and McKeever "Mac" Conwell II, Managing Partner of RareBreed Ventures. Understand the strategies that enabled these venture capitalists to invest in the overlooked and the results they've realized: a thriving portfolio.

Thoughts: 5 years from now, grocery stores will be half the size and entirely stocked with fresh products served by subject matter experts (the baker, the monger, the butcher). The back half of the store will be mini-fulfillment centers with autonomous robots packing personalized orders of your non-emotional staples and customizing your outputs based on Gen AI and personalized dietary preferences. In a way, future technology and innovations will allow you to return to the grocery store your grandparents enjoyed. How else will Silicon Valley Culture Disrupt the Food Business? Tune in to this special interview with the Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert in the latest installment of The VentureFuel Visionaries podcast. 

At our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, Danielle Cohn, Founding Partner and CEO of The Wave Ventures, hosted a panel discussion with executives from corporate companies. The panel included Limor Schafman, Director of Operations and Programs at LG NOVA, a division of LG Electronics that collaborates with startups to develop businesses; Lizzie Naylor, Global Platform Manager for Start Path, Mastercard's acclaimed startup engagement program; and our own Shira Averbuch, Vice President of Innovation and Partnerships at VentureFuel. Find out how these executives are partnering enterprise organizations with startups to drive growth and create new markets, together.

Last week, we had an 'Ask Me Anything' session with Danielle Cohn, CEO and Founding Partner of Wave Ventures, on Building an Innovation Ecosystem for Enterprise Organizations. The discussion centers on Danielle’s leadership in a top Fortune 30 innovation function. Danielle shared insights on founding an award-winning startup platform and emphasized creating innovation spaces in large organizations and nurturing startup engagement.

A fireside chat originally recorded at our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, The theme Advocacy Access and Acceleration features a wonderful discussion with Charlotte Newman, Global Head of underrepresented founder and investor startup business development. Charlotte is a global business development leader for Amazon Web Services, and a former entrepreneur who leads the AWS startup strategy to engage and accelerate underrepresented founders and investors. During this conversation, moderated by rogue women fellow, Aina Fadina, they talk about how AWS is reshaping the innovation ecosystem by providing founders with the resources and networks needed to succeed.

Avra van der Zee is the COO of Elemental Excelerator, a global climate technology accelerator started in Honolulu with over 150 portfolio companies that have received over $8B in follow-on funding. We talk about using entrepreneurship for social change, catalytic capital, how to scale new technologies and the role of corporates in solving the climate challenge and the economic benefit of societal impact – including great case studies of United Airlines and Amazon.

Philipp has over two decades of expertise catalyzing the evolution of Fortune 500s, like Deloitte and Vontier, to drive transformative impact. We discuss Corporate Venturing and its various iterations, from Accelerators to Venture Studios to Pilots to Partnerships to Hackathons, and why insights from this work not only inform strategic decisions but can make future growth like “selling ice cream on the beach.”