After attending the University of Illinois, Chris Michel began his career as a Naval Flight Officer, flying aboard P-3 Orion “sub-hunters”.
Today, he is a photographer, chronicling Silicon
Valley and the World. His photography has taken him from the edge of
space, to the North and South Poles and everything in between. Chris’s
path from the Navy to photographer was not a straight line, and in this podcast
you’ll hear his story.
In this wide-ranging discussion we talk about how
Chris made it from the Navy to Harvard business school, where he met his
business partner (and future podcast guest) Anne Dwane. Also covered are
his path to founding two Silicon Valley companies, and his struggle to guide
them through difficult times.
Finally, we discuss Chris’s advice on how to think
about structuring a career and life.
Listen on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Julian Guthrie is a journalist-turned-author, covering such topics
as Larry Ellison’s quest for the America’s Cup, and the new age of private
space exploration. She gravitates to tales of underdogs and innovation, and her
latest book is no exception.
“Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon
Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime” is the story of 4
women: Magdalena Yesil, Mary Jane
Elmore, Theresia Gouw, and Sonja Hoel Perkins.
Each of these rose – against the well-known odds of Silicon Valley – to
the top of the game.
Well before “me too” these 4 women juggled work and family, overcame
unequal pay, and faced the sexist attitudes prevalent in male-dominated Silicon
Valley. Nevertheless, they rose to
rewrite the rules of an entire industry.
Each story is amazing on its own. Magdalena Yesil, came from Turkey
with $43 to her name, and would go on to help Marc Benioff build Salesforce.
Mary Jane Elmore went from the cornfields of Indiana to Silicon
Valley and landed at the storied venture capital firm IVP – where she was one
of the first women in the U.S. to make partner at a venture firm.
Theresia Gouw, Asian American from a working-class town, ultimately
helped venture firm Accel Partners invest in firms like Google, Facebook,
Imperva, Forescout, and Trulia.
Sonja Hoel Perkins, a Southerner, became one of the first women
investing partners at white-glove Menlo Ventures, and invested in McAfee,
Hotmail, Acme Packet, and F5 Networks.
In this wide ranging conversation, Julian shares her experience in writing this book, and previous books including “How to Make a Spaceship,” with a foreword by Richard Branson and an afterword by Stephen Hawking, and “The Billionaire and the Mechanic,” about Larry Ellison. We also discuss the current state of sexism in Silicon Valley, her predictions for the future, and the in-the-works adaptation of her book for television.
Charles Hudson is the founder and Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s hot seed stage venture firms. He was previously at Uncork Capital, the storied seed venture firm founded by Jeff Clavier. Precursor is a classic seed stage venture firm investing in founders they believe in.
Before
becoming a venture capitalist, Charles cofounded Bionic Panda Games, and held
senior business development roles at Serious Business and Gaia Interactive.
Also
– he went to Stanford. Twice.
In this episode we discuss a range of issues including what it’s like to be a black VC in a mostly white industry, how he made his way to venture, what it’s like working at In-Q-Tel, and why he left a hugely successful VC to start his own.
Listen on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts!
Michael Tchong has been called “the most influential trend-spotter in America”. He is a top-rated innovation speaker, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, trend forecaster and author of “Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future.” He heads up incubator Ubercool Innovation and is the founder of four disruptive startups, including MacWEEK, Atelier Systems, CyberAtlas and ICONOCAST, all riding early market waves.
In this podcast we discuss “Ubertrends” — his proprietary framework of massive waves that are reshaping global human behavior. In this podcast, Michael and Kent discuss the trends that are shaping the future — from “time compression” to the to the ‘rise of women’ — we cover them all.
The full set of trends discussed includes: Digital Lifestyle — Marriage of Man and Machine; Fountain of Youth — Rejuvenating Body, Spirit and Environment; Generation X-tasy — Been There, Done That; Time Compression — The Acceleration of Life; Unwired — Untethered and Unfettered; Casual Living — The Evaporation of Decorum; Voyeurgasm — I Like to Watch; WAF (Woman’s Acceptance Factor) — Ascent of Woman; Innovation — Reinventing Business and Life
More about the book: Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future is a graphic and eye-opening exploration of nine disruptive forces that are shape-shifting society. As these massive waves crash into the future, they leave many subtrends in their wake while leading to many cultural value changes. Society’s permanently altered behavior provides ready context for how the future will evolve
Scott Kupor is the managing partner of famed venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm with more than $7 billion of assets under management that sits at the beating heart of Sand Hill Road. Sand Hill road is, of course, the physical center of the venture capital industry – the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world. So…Scott is at the center of the center of the global venture capital industry.
In his new book — Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It — Scott covers a range of topics critical to any founder: Why VCs invest in particular stages, the key skill for raising venture capital, and what happens when things don’t go so well.
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.
Pete Alcorn discusses the democratization of publishing
Pete Alcorn
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!
Eric Lagier of ByFounders Discusses the Nordic Startup Ecosystem
Eric Lagier, ByFounders
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.
We cover Jay’s journey from office temp to founder of the world’s largest data centers to building Digg… and beyond!
Jay Adelson
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?
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.
