Month: May 2019

Ellen Pao is CEO of Project Include and author of the book Reset:  My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change.    Her book looks at power in the tech world – and why so few women and people of color hold it. 

She famously sued an elite venture capital firm for sexism, and in doing so set off a national conversation.

As CEO of Reddit, she waged one of the first highly visible battles against Internet trolls – a topic which has since exploded as big tech companies come under heavier scrutiny. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, we cover a range of topics.  From Ellen’s experience litigating against a powerful venture capital firm to the current state of diversity in Silicon Valley she tells her story.

Listen on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Pete Alcorn discusses the democratization of publishing

Welcome to Episode 100!  Yep, we’ve made it to 100.  And for this one…Pete Alcorn stops by the podcast as he bucket-lists his way around the world.  He has run, among other things – ebooks at Amazon (just before they cared about it) and podcasting at Apple.  Also at Apple, he oversaw iBooks in Europe and education content discovery everywhere.  Pete was also Kent’s first partner in the startup world, building a company (that still exists today) called “NetRead”.  Oh, and we also went to high school together in La Jolla California.

In this wide-ranging episode we cover:  the future of edtech, the corporate path vs. the startup path, whether Pete agrees with Po Bronson, and the future of the planet.  Thanks for making it to 100.  Enjoy!

Listen on iiTunes

Something Ventured: https://somethingventured.us

NetRead https://netread.com

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Eric Lagier of ByFounders Discusses the Nordic Startup Ecosystem

Eric Lagier co-founded and is a general partner of ByFounders, a 100 million Euro venture firm focused on Nordic and Baltic startups. As you grab your map to find where the Nordics and Baltics actually are, think about this: Since 2013, 41 startups built in Europe are now worth more than a billion dollars. (These are known as “Unicorns”, a term coined by Ailene Lee of Cowboy Ventures). Even more extraordinary is the fact that 10 of those 41 are from the Nordics. So an area comprising of 4% of Europe’s population has generated 25% of Europe’s Unicorns. This includes companies like Unity, Spotify, Just Eat, Sitecore, Zendesk and Tradeshift among others

Yes, a lot of numbers! Join us as Kent and Eric talk about why such huge outcomes occur in Nordic countries, and what cultural differences define the Nordics vs. the U.S.  Learn who is behind ByFounders, how the fund came together and more. 

Listen on iiTunes

ByFounders: https://byfounders.vc/

Something Ventured: https://somethingventured.us

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We cover Jay’s journey from office temp to founder of the world’s largest data centers to building Digg… and beyond!

Jay Adelson is the cofounder or CEO of Equinix, Revision3 and Digg.  From a career that has taken him from building the first data centers to creating a wildly growing news aggregator, Jay has truly unique insight into Silicon Valley.  In this conversation Jay traces his path from working at a temp agency to building the largest data center in the world.

Nerd out with us as we discuss how you obtained a URL before the Internet even had a governing body – and before the web existed; the battle over whether the Internet should ever be commercial; and the kind of technologies you can only invent when you are at the core of the Internet. 

Also discussed – should you be CEO of two companies?  Why didn’t Revision3 become Youtube?  Why was it called Revision3?  Did Reddit replace Digg?  What did Youtube get wrong, and Twitter get right?

Listen on iiTunes

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