Village Global's Venture Stories

In this episode Alex Danco (@alex_danco) of Social Capital joins Erik to talk about Silicon Valley, economics, innovation, crypto, software and more. He is a very unique thinker with interesting opinions about the tech space.Alex explains the influence of Peter Thiel and Rene Girard on his thinking. He explains what he means when he says the key to understanding the world is asking, "what is everyone is compelled to lie about?"He gives a history of how innovation has traditionally proceeded in the world and explains how Silicon Valley — via software specifically — has changed the mechanism of innovation. He talks about how this has resulted in disproportionate gains accruing to the huge tech companies. This new model of innovation has also changed how companies are valued. Alex breaks down the new metrics that are being used by VCs and founders to value their firms — and why this could be contributing to a new tech bubble.Alex also talks about the economics of the Valley and why gains in productivity from technology have not resulted in increased leisure for the Valley's inhabitants. He also talks about crypto, career strategy, cost disease, scooters, 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 by Adrian Aoun (@adrianaoun), founder of Forward, a company that is trying to reinvent how primary healthcare is delivered. His previous company Wavii, was acquired by Google — where Adrian led AI efforts as well as working on special projects for Google’s CEO.Adrian explains the personal reason for his desire to found a healthcare company. He talks about why he is trying to build something completely outside the traditional healthcare system and gives a rundown of the amazing tech that Forward has been working on.The two of them also discuss why no healthcare company has achieved the scale that tech companies have — and how Forward might be one of the first companies to achieve that scale. Erik asks Adrian about his lessons learned when it comes to scaling and Adrian has a number of great tips about how to identify talent.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 Adrian Aoun (@adrianaoun), founder of Forward, a company that is trying to reinvent how primary healthcare is delivered. His previous company Wavii, was acquired by Google — where Adrian led AI efforts as well as working on special projects for Google’s CEO.Adrian explains the personal reason for his desire to found a healthcare company. He talks about why he is trying to build something completely outside the traditional healthcare system and gives a rundown of the amazing tech that Forward has been working on.The two of them also discuss why no healthcare company has achieved the scale that tech companies have — and how Forward might be one of the first companies to achieve that scale. Erik asks Adrian about his lessons learned when it comes to scaling and Adrian has a number of great tips about how to identify talent.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 and his co-host Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe), author of The End of Jobs, are joined by Dhruv Bansal (@dhruvbansal), co-founder of Unchained Capital. On this episode they discuss a number of interesting topics, getting progressively “weirder” as they go along. In the beginning they get Dhruv’s take on the contrasts between Bitcoin and Ethereum and how the prevailing narrative around each of them affects how people perceive their strengths and weaknesses.By the end, they’re discussing if it’s possible to have money if humans are an interstellar species and whether it’s possible that Satoshi is a time-traveller from the future.In between, they cover a number of (equally) interesting topics, like Dhruv’s idea that blockchains are technologies for building political system” and why blockchain and Bitcoin are not actually a continuation of the internet, as they are commonly portrayed. Dhruv also explains what the “Nakamoto Point” is, where he would be investing, and what his “requests for products” are 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 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 and his co-host Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe), author of The End of Jobs, are joined by Dhruv Bansal (@dhruvbansal), co-founder of Unchained Capital. On this episode they discuss a number of interesting topics, getting progressively “weirder” as they go along. In the beginning they get Dhruv’s take on the contrasts between Bitcoin and Ethereum and how the prevailing narrative around each of them affects how people perceive their strengths and weaknesses.By the end, they’re discussing if it’s possible to have money if humans are an interstellar species and whether it’s possible that Satoshi is a time-traveller from the future.In between, they cover a number of (equally) interesting topics, like Dhruv’s idea that blockchains are technologies for building political system” and why blockchain and Bitcoin are not actually a continuation of the internet, as they are commonly portrayed. Dhruv also explains what the “Nakamoto Point” is, where he would be investing, and what his “requests for products” are 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 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.

This episode of Venture Stories was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October 2018. Keith was interviewed by Village Global partner and co-founder, Erik Torenberg. In the episode they cover a number of topics, and Keith (as usual) is very insightful.Keith breaks down some of the successes that mentees of his have had over the past few years. Many of them came from non-technical backgrounds and non-elite schools. He talks about their career trajectory and which inflection points led to their advancement and how young people in similar situations can model their careers after them.Erik explains the four dimensions over which he thinks about career building and where he thinks young people are over-optimizing.Keith shares what Peter Thiel told him about hiring while the two were on a run around the Stanford campus shortly after Keith joined PayPal. He talks about how as a manager he challenges the people working for him, and why as an employee you should always want to feel like you’re pushing the boundaries of what you’re capable of.They move on to what makes a good startup idea and the three factors that Keith uses to evaluate business ideas.They also take questions from the audience where Keith addresses work-life balance and why creating a startup is like casting and creating a movie. Quotable lines from this episode:“You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one that does what you do.” “If you’re going to start a company and if you believe that the team you build is the company you build — you want to have unfair advantage in evaluating people.”“VC is one of the best jobs in the world if you’re intellectually curious.”“[Working in VC] is like learning to play basketball with NBA all-stars.”“When you want to make a decision, optimize on one variable. Don't make a pros and cons list.”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.

This episode of Venture Stories was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October 2018. Keith was interviewed by Village Global partner and co-founder, Erik Torenberg. In the episode they cover a number of topics, and Keith (as usual) is very insightful.Keith breaks down some of the successes that mentees of his have had over the past few years. Many of them came from non-technical backgrounds and non-elite schools. He talks about their career trajectory and which inflection points led to their advancement and how young people in similar situations can model their careers after them.Erik explains the four dimensions over which he thinks about career building and where he thinks young people are over-optimizing.Keith shares what Peter Thiel told him about hiring while the two were on a run around the Stanford campus shortly after Keith joined PayPal. He talks about how as a manager he challenges the people working for him, and why as an employee you should always want to feel like you’re pushing the boundaries of what you’re capable of.They move on to what makes a good startup idea and the three factors that Keith uses to evaluate business ideas.They also take questions from the audience where Keith addresses work-life balance and why creating a startup is like casting and creating a movie. Quotable lines from this episode:“You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one that does what you do.” “If you’re going to start a company and if you believe that the team you build is the company you build — you want to have unfair advantage in evaluating people.”“VC is one of the best jobs in the world if you’re intellectually curious.”“[Working in VC] is like learning to play basketball with NBA all-stars.”“When you want to make a decision, optimize on one variable. Don't make a pros and cons list.”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.

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Jay Desai (@jdesai01) of PatientPing (patientping.com) and Joe Kahn (@josephwandile) of Karuna Health (meetkaruna.com).Both Joe and Jay are working on how to make sure that patient care is coordinated across multiple providers. When patients visit different providers, their care information is not shared between them and Jay and Joe are working to change that.The two companies are taking different approaches to the problem and the two founders explain why they’ve chosen to attack the problem the way they have and how they got started down this path.Joe and Jay explain how they are helping some of the most vulnerable individuals in the healthcare system and why this is nevertheless a good business to be in and why optimizing their care is good for providers. They give their recommendations on where they would be investing if they were running a fund in the healthcare space as well as what opportunities exist in the industry. They also explain why healthcare is not like e-commerce or ridesharing and instead more like advertising, in that we are in general trying to spend less, not more, on healthcare and are trying to get more value while reducing spend. 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.

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Jay Desai (@jdesai01) of PatientPing (patientping.com) and Joe Kahn (@josephwandile) of Karuna Health (meetkaruna.com).Both Joe and Jay are working on how to make sure that patient care is coordinated across multiple providers. When patients visit different providers, their care information is not shared between them and Jay and Joe are working to change that.The two companies are taking different approaches to the problem and the two founders explain why they’ve chosen to attack the problem the way they have and how they got started down this path.Joe and Jay explain how they are helping some of the most vulnerable individuals in the healthcare system and why this is nevertheless a good business to be in and why optimizing their care is good for providers. They give their recommendations on where they would be investing if they were running a fund in the healthcare space as well as what opportunities exist in the industry. They also explain why healthcare is not like e-commerce or ridesharing and instead more like advertising, in that we are in general trying to spend less, not more, on healthcare and are trying to get more value while reducing spend. 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.

In this episode Erik is joined by Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) of Mythos Capital and Dan Zuller (@danzuller) of Vision Hill Advisors.They talk about their backgrounds, how they became interested in crypto, and how that has informed what they are doing now with their companies in the space. Ryan explains why he’s structured Mythos as a holding company rather than a hedge fund or venture fund. Dan talks about how to bridge traditional finance and crypto and takes us through the current “money stack” that is worth an estimated 80-90 trillion dollars. Ryan talks about what he calls “maximalist hubris” and why he believes both Ethereum and Bitcoin can co-exist and both have massive upside. He explains why he believes that Ethereum is about 30% finished, Bitcoin is about 80% finished, and why in judging their probabilities of success, one should look at the finished end state and discount from there based on the probability of executing.They also talk about Web3 and why digital scarcity is the key innovation contained within it. They explain why people tend to overestimate the extent to which Web3 will disrupt Web 2.0 and why Web3 will instead disrupt the industries and companies that weren’t disrupted by Web 2.0 in the first place.The three discuss why one should think about work or utility tokens as analogous to taxicab medallions, which are similar to money — but that no coffee shop in NYC would accept in exchange for a coffee.They also talk about what other protocols still have a chance to be the “winning money,” tokenized securities, and the potential drawbacks of stablecoins. 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.

In this episode Erik is joined by Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) of Mythos Capital and Dan Zuller (@danzuller) of Vision Hill Advisors.They talk about their backgrounds, how they became interested in crypto, and how that has informed what they are doing now with their companies in the space. Ryan explains why he’s structured Mythos as a holding company rather than a hedge fund or venture fund. Dan talks about how to bridge traditional finance and crypto and takes us through the current “money stack” that is worth an estimated 80-90 trillion dollars. Ryan talks about what he calls “maximalist hubris” and why he believes both Ethereum and Bitcoin can co-exist and both have massive upside. He explains why he believes that Ethereum is about 30% finished, Bitcoin is about 80% finished, and why in judging their probabilities of success, one should look at the finished end state and discount from there based on the probability of executing.They also talk about Web3 and why digital scarcity is the key innovation contained within it. They explain why people tend to overestimate the extent to which Web3 will disrupt Web 2.0 and why Web3 will instead disrupt the industries and companies that weren’t disrupted by Web 2.0 in the first place.The three discuss why one should think about work or utility tokens as analogous to taxicab medallions, which are similar to money — but that no coffee shop in NYC would accept in exchange for a coffee.They also talk about what other protocols still have a chance to be the “winning money,” tokenized securities, and the potential drawbacks of stablecoins. 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.

Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) is an investor at Greylock and one of the most expansive and intriguing minds around. In this episode Kevin and Erik talk about... basically everything, from the org chart of the future to the history of religion.Along the way they discuss a number of topics, including:- Why the stock market exists and why after the crash of 2008 no one said that we should shut it down.- Why Amazon is starting to look like Berkshire Hathaway and whether it could be broken up and still run effectively.- The ideas of "loops and funnels" and "constraints and compounding" — and how Kevin thinks about those mental models.- The history of corporate structures and what they might look like in the future.- What might be possible with crypto that was previously impossible without crypto, and why people seem to be only trying to replicate already-existing tech using crypto. - Twitter, and why it's like being "on chain."- How to think about your career and how the Valley's unique work culture has contributed to its success.- The idea of personal ICOs.- Why most companies think about the impact of PR on consumers when in reality they should think about PR's impact on recruiting.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.

Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) is an investor at Greylock and one of the most expansive and intriguing minds around. In this episode Kevin and Erik talk about... basically everything, from the org chart of the future to the history of religion.Along the way they discuss a number of topics, including:- Why the stock market exists and why after the crash of 2008 no one said that we should shut it down.- Why Amazon is starting to look like Berkshire Hathaway and whether it could be broken up and still run effectively.- The ideas of "loops and funnels" and "constraints and compounding" — and how Kevin thinks about those mental models.- The history of corporate structures and what they might look like in the future.- What might be possible with crypto that was previously impossible without crypto, and why people seem to be only trying to replicate already-existing tech using crypto. - Twitter, and why it's like being "on chain."- How to think about your career and how the Valley's unique work culture has contributed to its success.- The idea of personal ICOs.- Why most companies think about the impact of PR on consumers when in reality they should think about PR's impact on recruiting.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.

Kelsey Mellard (@KelseyMellard), co-founder of Sitka (trustsitka.com) and Kristin Spohn (@kbakes), partner at Social Capital, join Erik for this enlightening episode of Health Stories. In it they talk about a number of topics related to go-to-market for startups in the health industry. Kelsey explains what Sitka is trying to do in the musculoskeletal space, which is the #1 cause of disability in the US.They discuss the misaligned incentives in healthcare and the interplay of the various stakeholders that have an input into an individual's care. They explain why cost of care varies so much based on your ZIP code.Kristin and Kelsey talk about the types of startups they'd like to see in the healthcare space and where the opportunities are at this point in time. They also talk about some of the potential pitfalls and what founders can do to succeed.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.

Kelsey Mellard (@KelseyMellard), co-founder of Sitka (trustsitka.com) and Kristin Spohn (@kbakes), partner at Social Capital, join Erik for this enlightening episode of Health Stories. In it they talk about a number of topics related to go-to-market for startups in the health industry. Kelsey explains what Sitka is trying to do in the musculoskeletal space, which is the #1 cause of disability in the US.They discuss the misaligned incentives in healthcare and the interplay of the various stakeholders that have an input into an individual's care. They explain why cost of care varies so much based on your ZIP code.Kristin and Kelsey talk about the types of startups they'd like to see in the healthcare space and where the opportunities are at this point in time. They also talk about some of the potential pitfalls and what founders can do to succeed.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.