150 Hooman Radfar: The Rise of the ‘Business-of-One’
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Release Date: 11/05/2020
Homebrew’s Hunter Walk and Satya Patel: The Power of a Partnership
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Homebrew is one of the great venture firm names. It hearkens back to the 1970s era computer hobbyist group that included people like Steve Jobs. Hunter Walk and Satya Patel are the partners who founded and built Homebrew (the venture capital firm). Nevertheless, if you say “Hunter and Satya” in Silicon Valley, people will know exactly who you are talking about. Hunter Walk came to homebrew with experience as a product leader at YouTube and Google. Meanwhile, Satya Patel's background was as a seasoned investor at Battery Ventures and product leader at Twitter. In...
info_outline
Atari’s founder Nolan Bushnell and Dr. Leah Hanes Have a (Better) Plan for Educating America
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Nolan Bushnell’s career is extraordinary. Nolan has ignited two entertainment revolutions: first with Atari, birthing the video game industry through classics like Pong, and later with Chuck E. Cheese, merging pizza and arcade games for family fun. A serial entrepreneur, he's founded over 20 companies, venturing into robotics, personal computers, and beyond, forever changing the landscape of leisure and inspiration. Nolan has turned his thoughts to the state of education in the US and has teamed up with Dr. Leah Hanes to form ExoDexa, a developer of educational games that seek to...
info_outline
Richard Socher: Exploring AI with the Visionary AI Scientist, Entrepreneur and Investor
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Richard Socher is a visionary computer scientist, entrepreneur, and AI researcher who has dedicated his career to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in AI. With a Ph.D. from Stanford University, Richard's groundbreaking work in deep learning, neural networks, and NLP has paved the way for remarkable advances in AI applications. It may seem like everyone is an AI expert these days: Richard Socher really is. Richarrd is founder of the AI-focused venture firm AIX, and founder of the AI-powered search engine You.com. He is the former Chief Scientist at Salesforce and founder of...
info_outline
Hadley Harris: Building Eniac Ventures with 3 Friends / Investing in AI
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
What are the odds that 4 friends can start a VC firm, and still be firing on all cylinders years later? Hadley Harris, one of Eniac Ventures’ 4 co-founders has the answer. Before co-founding Eniac, Hadley was as a developer and engineering team lead at Pegasystems, and later took on roles as a product manager at Microsoft and strategist at Samsung. His time at Microsoft and Samsung taught Hadley one thing: Big companies were not for him. So, Hadley joined a couple of talented AI founders out of MIT at Vlingo where he ran a several aspects of the business across product, strategy,...
info_outline
Samir Kaji: Building Allocate; The State of the Venture Market; Banking Meltdown (SVB/FRB) Post-mortem
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Samir Kaji is the founder behind Allocate, a pioneering platform in the venture capital space. Samir has established himself as a key connector between venture capital firms and the “LPs” (Limited Partners) who invest in them. He is building Allocate to leverage his experience into a platform. After observing inefficiencies in the venture capital market – between venture firms and the LPs that fund them – he was inspired to create Allocate. Allocate is described as “a game-changing solution that empowers venture capital firms to streamline allocation processes,...
info_outline
Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI Fund): Unleashing AI's Investment Potential
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Darian Shirazi is a general partner at Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI fund. Gradient Ventures invests in companies that are “developing AI technologies that have the potential to make a significant impact on the world”. Darian is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded and served as CEO of Radius, a leading customer data platform, for over 7 years. Under his leadership, the company grew to over 100 employees, raised over $100 million in venture capital, and served dozens of Fortune 500 customers. Darian is also an early investor in many successful companies, including...
info_outline
Anthony Soohoo: Bringing the Entrepreneurial Mindset to Walmart
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Anthony Soohoo is a Venture Advisor at AI Fund. It is a role he took on after building a company (Dot & Bo) that was acquired. He went from buidling his own company to becoming a leader at -- Walmart. . In fact, Anthony became the head of Wal-Mart’s Home Division. It’s the largest US retailer for home goods, and one of six business units at Wal-Mart. Anthony discusses what it’s like going from a startup to operating at the scale of, essentially, a Fortune 500 CEO. Anthony also begins the “AI Series” – where we start discussing what is happening as...
info_outline
Nnamdi Okike on Building 645 Ventures, Bias in Fundraising, and Being a Boston Sports Fan in New York
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
Nnamdi Okike is rapidly becoming a prominent figure in the venture capital industry. He is the co-founder of 645 Ventures, along with his partner Aaron Holiday. Recently, 645 Ventures successfully raised its fourth fund, of about $350 million. Nnamdi's background includes an education at Harvard, membership on the prestigious NVCA board (with former Something Ventured Guest Charles Hudson serving as the chair), and time at Insight Partners. We discuss Nnamdi's path to finding a partner and establishing 645 Ventures. He shares why he left Insight to start his own fund, how he determined...
info_outline
Coindesk’s David Z. Morris: The Wild Story of FTX and its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
David Z. Morris is part of the Coindesk reporting team that was critical in bringing to light the (apparently) massive fraud at FTX, the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX, abruptly collapsed in 2022, after having grown to become the world’s third largest crypto exchange with over a million users. While still unfolding, the FTX story so far has more layers, complexities and characters than a spy novel. David provides a thoughtful, nuanced explanation of what is known so far. We discuss what happened at FTX, how the events unfolded, and...
info_outline
Elad Gil: “A Startup is An Act of Desperation” and Other Wisdom from one of Silicon Valley's Best Investors
Something Ventured -- Silicon Valley Podcast
It is not a stretch to call Elad Gil one of Silicon Valley’s best investors. In a world where one big hit can make a venture capitalists’ career, Elad has invested in…Well, here’s a partial list Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Deel, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Notion, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Retool, Rippling, Samsara, Square, Stripe, TripActions, Wish. It seems almost impossible. But there it is. Elad’s career includes working at Google, founding a company acquired by Twitter, and founding Color Genomics (you probably heard...
info_outlineHooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.
Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move. He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.
On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State
“There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”
On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs”
‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models: premium, ad-supported, data-supported.”
On Why He Started Collective
“There are ‘businesses of one”: Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.”
Hooman Radfar on Twitter https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar
Collective https://www.collective.com
Something Ventured
Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.
Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move. He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.
On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State
“There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”
On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs”
‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models: premium, ad-supported, data-supported.”
On Why He Started Collective
“There are ‘businesses of one': Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.”
Hooman Radfar on Twitter https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar
Collective https://www.collective.com
Hooman Radfar is co-founder and CEO of Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other ‘businesses-of-one’. He is also a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner (along with Uber Co-Founder Garrett Camp). Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.
Recently, Hooman took the somewhat rare step of leaving a perfectly good venture capital job to start a company. In this episode, he describes why the idea he is pursuing felt so compelling he had to make the move. He also discusses his path to building and selling a company, as well as his immigrant parent’s path to the US.
On How Startups Emerge from their Initial State
“There's this murky period prior to figuring things out which people tend to write out of history. Where you're kind of trying to find out what's now called ‘product market fit’. Instagram went through it with Brbn, Twitter went through it with Odeo. You know, you get a group together, you create a chemistry, you start working on projects, and maybe that project works or it doesn't work. But it takes that initial leap to get that precipitate and go.”
On the Time People Mocked Websites that Were “Collecting Eyeballs”
‘I think the way to express it in modern terms is that when you have a flywheel with effectively a cost of acquisition of zero, it's uncommon. And I think now people realize how hard that is and how valuable it is because they know the distribution has value, that data has value. There are a LOT of monetization models: premium, ad-supported, data-supported.”
On Why He Started Collective
“There are ‘businesses of one”: Freelancers, consultants and whatnot. It’s the largest set of entrepreneurs in the country. And ultimately, if you believe in the next ten years, it could be fifty percent of the workforce. Not just the largest set of entrepreneurs, but the largest part of the workforce. And that's all I've been doing my whole career. And I said, wow, this is amazing. It looks like a straight line in hindsight.”
Hooman Radfar on Twitter https://twitter.com/hoomanradfar
Collective https://www.collective.com
Something Ventured https://somethingventured.us