Month: April 2019

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Best selling author Po Bronson has written deeply, often hilariously, about Silicon Valley and its effects on the world.  After founding San Francisco’s Writers Grotto, he wrote such books as The Nudist on the Late Shift, Bombardiers, and What Should I Do With My life?.  Today, he’s a venture capitalist at IndieBio – the Life Sciences accelerator. 

In this episode, Po discusses why 2019 feels like 1994, and what happens when daytime and nighttime conversations converge in Silicon Valley.  We also cover income inequality – the idea of ‘Basic Universal Equity”, and the futures of sports, medicine and…libraries.  But that’s just the beginning – stay tuned to hear what happens when climate change, biotech and automation converge.  And the big finish: whether our species will survive.

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Monique Woodard fell into venture capital.  Or…wait.  Actually, no.  Monique grew up in rural Florida.  Starting with an Atari game system and moving to a Commodore computer, she learned to write computer code This, in a place where coding was far from the norm, and computer class required a drive into town.  She eventually became a venture capitalist, investing in such companies as: Blavity, Court Buddy, Silvernest, and Mented Cosmetics.

In this podcast we discuss Monique’s journey from the farms of rural of Northern Florida to Miami’s music scene, to Silicon Valley.  We discuss how she established herself as an entrepreneur, and founded the organization Black Founders, eventually becoming a venture capitalist.  We cover a wide range of topics, including her demographic investment thesis, and why it should not be conflated with ‘diversity initiatives’.

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Alan Eagle is Director of Executive Communications at Google.    He is the coauthor of Trillion Dollar Coach, a book he co-wrote with Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt and Google’s former SVP Jonathan Rosenberg.  Trillion Dollar Coach tells the story of Bill Campbell – a football coach who became an executive at Apple, and then one of the most beloved coaches to a “who’s who” of Silicon Valley. 

Among those coached by Bill Campbell are Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Sundar Pichai at Google; Steve Jobs at Apple; Brad Smith at Intuit; John Donahoe at eBay; and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo.

In this podcast, Alan discusses what made Bill Campbell so special.  How did a football coach become beloved in Silicon Valley?  Why is Bill Campbell called a ‘trillion dollar coach”? Finally, Alan discusses and what lessons we can take from Bill today:  How to run a meeting, the meaning of leadership…and the power of love.

In this conversation Miyoko and Kent discuss her entrepreneurial journey from delivering bread in a backpack in Tokyo, to founding and building one of the fastest growing venture-backed food production companies in America.

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James Currier is a partner at NFX a venture firm he co-founded with partners Gigi Levy-Weiss and Pete Flint, and advisor Stan Chudnovsky. As an investor, he has funded companies before or alongside firms like Sequoia, Greylock, CRV, A16z, First Round, Mayfield, Shasta, and GGV.  He’s also a four-time serial entrepreneur. He has unique expertise in network effects businesses (his firm has identified 13 different network effects models https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual

James is also deeply understands the ebbs and flows of Silicon Valley:  Its technology, its trends, its tribes.  In this episode James and Kent cover myriad topics – including James’ perspectives on why Silicon Valley works, who should (and shouldn’t) come to Silicon Valley, and whether or not Silicon Valley has lost its soul.

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