This series dives deep into the journeys and process of the inner workings of founders and funders shaping our startup landscape today. Recorded in front of a live audience in New York, Founders, Funders & Friends aims to inspire by uncovering what fuels like-minded founders and funders. Join us as we explore what drives creative leaders to bring to live work that resonates, challenges and transcends.
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Learn from angel and seed investors bold enough to write the first check. How do they decide which startups to invest in? How do they gain conviction in founders and ideas? How do they add value to their companies? Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani are operators turned investors. They chat with their friends investing in early-stage technology startups and learn about their strategies to fund the best founders and startup companies. If you are an angel investor or seed investor, you'll hea ...
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There are a lot of great builders out there. There are also a lot of funds & investors willing to fund them out there. Yet a lot of great startups & founders still struggle to raise the funding. Why? Join us as we uncover the gap and work towards bridging it. Each episode will aim to dissect the mind of an investor & help founders connect with investors / venture capitalists.
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Founders, funders, and followers is a podcast about the people who give life to early-stage companies and their innovations. We aspire to inspire through conversation with notable entrepreneurs and investors, and those who follow them.
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Interviews with the boldest and most interesting women founding and funding companies that will change the world. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/femalefoundersandfunders/support
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Podcast by Wharton Alumnae
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10: How Amit Garg co-founded an AI-first seed fund before AI took off
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Armed with an educational background in computer science and biomedical informatics, Amit Garg switched to venture capital after a long, successful career in the corporate world, which included stints at companies like Google and Samsung. And that’s just the way he never planned it. That’s right, the almost-doctor didn’t intend to get into venture …
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On this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Josh Constine, a distinguished venture capitalist and former top tech journalist whose career has been defined by his deep understanding of technology and its impact on society. Josh’s journey began at Stanford, where he earned a master’s degree in Design and Cyber Sociology. He went on to become the Edit…
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On this episode, we are excited to welcome Vinay Hiremath, a visionary entrepreneur who co-founded Loom, a company that has transformed the way we communicate in the digital age. Vinay's journey began with a deep passion for technology and innovation, which led him to work at renowned tech companies like Yelp, Quora, and Medium. It was during a bra…
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In this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Mark Peter Davis, a seasoned entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a mission-driven approach to supporting startups. Mark, also known as MPD, is the founder of Interplay, a unique ecosystem that goes beyond traditional venture capital to empower entrepreneurs through incubation, foundry initiatives, an…
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On this episode, we are excited to welcome Byron Ling, a visionary venture capitalist who has played a pivotal role in shaping the early-stage startup landscape. Byron’s journey into the world of venture capital began over a decade ago, where his keen eye for innovation and passion for supporting founders led him to become a partner at renowned fir…
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EP #4: How to build relationships & trust with investors | Shane Feldberg
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Shane Feldberg is a fascinating character, having helped built Clearbank into a unicorn startup as an early employee, Shane is now the Founder & General Partner of Feld Ventures. A venture capital fund with $35M+ AUM and deals invested alongside elite funds & investors like a16z and Michael Dell. One of the most notable investments of Feld Ventures…
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Join us in this insightful episode featuring Russ Huddleston, a three-time founder best known as the co-founder and former CEO of DocSend, a successful document sharing platform acquired by Dropbox for $165 million. Russ shares his entrepreneurial journey, key lessons from his experience with DocSend, and his new venture, Distil, which utilizes AI …
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EP #3: Psychologist VC Explains How to Use Hyman Psychology to Fundraise
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Today we have Alex Shilman with us, GP at New Gate Capital and a career psychologist. Alex explains how to use psychology and human behavior to fundraise, build trust with investors, and why you should always fundraise as soon as possible even if it means rejection. Connect with Alex on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandershilman/ Lookin…
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Toni Campbell on How to Talk To VCs & What Investors Look For
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Today I had the pleasure of speaking of Toni Campbell, the GP of Kinfolk VC. A venture capital firm focused on investing & empowering African founders. Before founding Kinfolk, Toni worked at Bessemer & Arcadia. During this interview Toni went over how he evaluates startups, what makes a pitch convince him to invest, and other essential fundraising…
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Building a Forbes Ranked Seed VC Firm & Fundraising Advice - Brandon Maier of Lvlup Ventures
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Brandon Maier is a unique personality in the venture world - he has sat across both sides of the table as an entrepreneur having raised over half a million for his startup Jozii and now as an investor. Some of Brandon's accolades include being a part of the EIR program at The Plug and Play Tech Center which has incubated world-class startups like P…
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09: Angels of Shopify investing collectively and lessons on following your gut - Atlee Clark, Angel
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What do you get when you mix U.S. national security, angel investing, and kids’ pajamas? Atlee Clark. Proud Canadian Atlee took a hard pivot from the public sector to the tech world, first through a nonprofit called the C100, which supports entrepreneurs, and later at Shopify, focusing on 0 - 1 initiatives. Similar to other angel collectives emergi…
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08 Takeaways: Charles Hudson, Precursor Ventures: macro, team vs market, fund size vs. outcomes
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Join Shaherose & Aamir as we reflect on our conversation with Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures. Highlights: Don’t forget the macro: Government regulations can lead to massive opportunities or failures. We discuss case studies of companies like Samsara, Movtive (fka KeepTrucking), Republic, and Zum, showing how regulatory shifts led to category-…
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08: From the CIA to Google to 400+ pre-seed investments, first and early to define pre-seed - Charles Hudson, Precursor
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Hailing from Michigan, Charles developed an early obsession with the public markets in high school. Charles Hudson is now the Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures, a pre-seed venture fund that has defined and has become synonymous with “pre-seed”. Charles is known for his ability to identify and mentor early-stage companies that have the potentia…
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On this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Hamilton Morris, a renowned journalist, documentarian, and scientific researcher. Hamilton is the creator and director of the acclaimed television series Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, where he explores the chemistry, history, and cultural impact of various psychoactive drugs. In September 2021, Hamilton transi…
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FFF EP. 3 Eugene Wei and Oana Olteanu
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On this episode, we are delighted to host two distinguished guests, Eugene Wei and Oana Olteanu, whose expertise spans the realms of technology, investment, and innovation. First, we have Eugene Wei, a top voice in technology with an incredible background in product and investing. Eugene has had a remarkable career, starting at Amazon.com and later…
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On this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Ankur Nagpal, a dynamic entrepreneur whose journey from Bombay to the U.S. has been marked by remarkable achievements. Ankur began his entrepreneurial career by building Facebook apps in his college dorm room, generating significant advertising revenue. After moving to New York, he started teaching market…
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On this episode, we are excited to welcome Tobias Rose-Stockwell, a writer, designer, and technologist whose work has made significant impacts across various fields. Tobias's research has been featured in The Atlantic, WIRED, NPR, The BBC, CNN, and many others, and has influenced key interventions aimed at reducing toxicity and polarization within …
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07: Angel in 100+ startups, focused on learning and catalyzing mission-first startups - Eric Ries, Creator Lean Startup, Founder, LTSE
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Eric Ries has invested in over 100+ early-stage startups. He is best known as the author of The Lean Startup, a must-read for entrepreneurs worldwide. He also founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), a new stock exchange designed to support companies with long-term goals. He recently launched a new podcast discussing ways to re-think corporate …
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06: Finding Alpha in Texas - Rajiv Bala, Clutch VC
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Rajiv Bala, GP of Clutch VC, a pre-seed and seed-stage fund exclusively investing in Texas. Rajiv is committed and bullish on the region with a hands-on approach to investing, working with founders on product feedback, team building, and more to see initial customer validation before investing. Rajiv also embraces sub $500 million outcomes to drive…
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05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech - Meka Asonye, First Round Capital
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Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital, started angel investing in 2018 while working at Stripe and joined First Round in 2021. He has made dozens of Angel investments and 13 Venture investments, and he's just getting started! While he focuses on B2B SAAS, he has not shied away from investing in audacious founders, from modernizing 911 call …
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04: 3x tech founder turned seed VC brings a founder mindset to startup investing - Amit Kumar, Accel
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Amit Kumar, former founder and angel investor, is a generalist venture capitalist at Accel focused on dev tools, healthcare, and fintech startups. Twitter acquired Amit’s third company, and it was then that he realized his true purpose was supporting startup founders, and he shifted to venture capital. Amit shares insightful stories and lessons lea…
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03: Angel vs VC, finding purpose and community in startup investing - Rachel Sheinbein
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Rachel Sheinbein is an angel investor with over 250 startup investments. She shares her insights on angel investing and how it allows her to work with founders “even before the seed stage,” writing $25k checks into technology startups through her vehicle Very Serious Ventures. Later, Rachel discusses how building a community drives her investing st…
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02: 300 startup investments, 500 LPs, sharp elbows - Jenny Fielding, Everywhere Ventures
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Jenny Fielding, a pre-seed investor and angel with 300 early-stage startup investments, discusses investing in FinTech, hard tech, and consumer spaces over the past decade. From studying law to working in finance to leaving it all to found not just one but two startups, Jenny brings a founder-operator mindset to her fund, Everywhere Ventures. She w…
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01: State of Venture Capital 2024 with Arjun Arora
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We're all discussing current market conditions - valuations, AI hype, fundraising challenges... Before we kick off our planned interview series on First Funders, we sat down with our friend Arjun Arora to discuss the Trends in Venture Capital 2024. As investors, we always look ahead, making this a great way to start 2024. Highlights from our discus…
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About the Hosts: How they got into Seed and Angel Investing
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Before you dive into our archives or the next episode, learn about First Funders and its hosts, Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani. You'll hear about Shaherose's background as a startup builder turned VC who started as a product marketer and how she started Women 2.0, a startup ecosystem, and Founder Labs, a tech incubator. She also reviews her ti…
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Coming Soon - a podcast for Angels and Venture Capitalists who write first checks
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Coming soon. First Funders is a podcast for the Angels and Venture Capitalists who write first checks. Co-hosted by Shaherose Charania, startup builder turned VC. And Aamir Virani, founder turned angel investor. In each episode, you'll hear from angel and seed-stage VCs who wrote the first checks into startups that made it. How did these investors …
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Brian Gormley Discusses The Evolution Of Venture Capital
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Brian has been with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal for almost 17 years, and has a Bachelor's degree from UMass Amherst and a Master's in Journalism from Boston University. He began his career writing for local newspapers in the Boston area, and then moved on to writing for business pages. He then went to work for a publishing company that pr…
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Founders, funders, and followers is a podcast about the people who give life to early-stage companies and their innovations. We aspire to inspire through conversation with notable entrepreneurs and investors, and those who follow them. Find out more at Acumen. Follow us on LinkedInBy Acumen Strategies
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The Business of Building a Brand with Dagne Dover, Of Mercer, and Idea Farm Ventures
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This podcast is a recording of a panel discussion of the business of building a brand and our first event in New York. Thanks to 3L Capital for hosting! On the panel is Erum Hasnain, partner at Idea Farm Ventures, Melissa Mash, founder & CEO of Dagne Dover, and Dorie Smith, co founder of Of Mercer. We discuss their customer, what their brands stand…
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Talking seed stage statups and diversity debt with Phin Barnes, First Round Capital
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59:33
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This podcast is a recording of a fireside chat with Phin Barnes, partner at First Round Capital. In this podcast:-Phin explains why First Round focuses on seed investments, what they look for, and how they structure their deals. -He also explains the concept of “diversity debt” and why it’s important to focus on building a diverse team from the beg…
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The 25-year overnight success of Oatly, with co-founder Bjorn Oste
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Bjorn Oste the co-founder of Oatly, the popular brand of oat milk, discusses his 25 year "overnight success." The first patent related to oatmilk was filed in 1994. Bjorn and his brother cataloged the genome of 2800 varieties of oats in Sweden. They shared their creation with the head of the Swedish dairy association—who spit it out. The brothers h…
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Binti - Reinventing foster care and adoption with Felicia Curcuru
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27:25
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Hi Everyone! In this episode of the Female Founders and Funders podcast I speak with Felicia Curcuru, the founder and CEO of Binti, a company that is reinventing the foster care and adoption process. She started the company in 2014 after seeing firsthand how hard it was for her sister to adopt and has experienced the ups and downs of building a com…
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The Mom Project - Connecting moms with flexible work
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27:24
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In this interview, Elaine speaks with Allison Robinson, founder and CEO of The Mom Project. After having her son Asher in 2015, Allison identified how universally challenging it can be for American mothers to juggle the demands of motherhood with a full-time career and decided to tackle the issue on a national scale. Prior to founding The Mom Proje…
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