Welcome to Square One. This week we took a turn on the normal type of episode we have - I chatted with the author of one of the most influential books I’ve read over the past year - it’s called Wanting and the author is Luke Burgis. We all "want" things in life, but it's hard to pinpoint where those desires necessarily come from. Luke took a deep d…

This week’s guest is Danielle Strachman. Danielle co-founded the Thiel Fellowship & 1517 Fund. She and I talk about the fellowship and what she would do differently if starting today, philanthropic vs. capitalist approaches to investing, and much more. Follow Spencer Kier on Twitter: @SP1NS1R

One of the most enjoyable and educational types of conversations we have on this show is with individuals that have operated and invested at the highest levels. It’s a unique blended perspective which provides insight and empathy for founders on their journey to build generational companies. This week I was thrilled to be joined by Ravi Gupta, Part…

Today we went deep into the world of barbershops - small business tech historically has been an underserved segment of the tech industry but over the last decade a number of interesting businesses have been built serving this cohort which has inspired a variety of applications. I talked to Songe Laron about building Squire - an all in one platform …

This week, I was thrilled to chat with Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. Gainsight is a particularly interesting company and story to unpack - they are the "category creators" of customer success. CS is a common place role and function in tech today, but creating software for CS was less than obvious 10 years ago. Since joining in 2013, Nick has led Ga…

Today, I was thrilled to chat with Sherwin Gandhi, Co-Founder and President of Jeeves. Since launching two years ago, Jeeves raised just about 100 million dollars in equity to develop a new type of financial platform that can lend, ensure, and underwrite capital to global companies. In this conversation, we dug into how Sherwin thinks about the pay…

This week, we go deep into what in the world is going in China. I was joined by Jacob Helberg, Co-Chair of the China Strategy Initiative at The Brookings Institution. Jacob is one of the most respected policy minds on this issue, and I wanted to have him on the program because he has a unique background in policy and technology, previously serving …

Today I was thrilled to be joined by Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO of Social Capital. Chamath is best known as an early member of Facebook’s Senior Executive Team where he played an instrumental role in the company’s exponential growth. Over the last decade, he has been investing actively in the private and public markets. Some of Chamath’s…

Today we dove into the world of checkout. Everybody is familiar with check-out - it’s the last step in the purchase process when you’re buying something whether in person or online. A less known fact is that purchase process drop-off is a $10 trillion problem for businesses worldwide. And checkout software is not nearly as easy of a problem as meet…

The Indian startup ecosystem has been on an absolute tear over the last decade. With the increased success of founders, ever more capital flowing into the ecosystem and structural and cultural changes taking place across the entire country, India has never been more ripe for a promising technology future. Today we chatted with one of India’s most a…

E-commerce and online brands have absolutely exploded post-COVID-19, and with it, a number of interesting platforms have been developed to help e-commerce businesses and brands take advantage of scale. Today I chatted with Helen Vaid, CEO of Foundry - a brand platform that acquires and grows enduring digital brands. Foundry recently launched with $…

Today was a treat on the show - we had one of the most successful and thoughtful entrepreneurs in the tech ecosystem join us: Brad Feld. Brad has been an early-stage investor and founder for the last 30 years - most notably, he co-founded Techstars, was an early-stage investor in companies like Zynga, Fitbit, Harmonix, and Makerbot, and for the las…

Today we once again dove into the messy world of healthcare and specifically focused on innovation in consumer healthcare. Healthcare, as we’ve discussed before on the show - especially in the US - is complex, convoluted, and perplexing. While we spend anywhere from 50-200% more money than other developed nations, our quality of care here in the US…

You can’t go anywhere today without hearing the term “artificial intelligence” - governments, industry, and startups are thinking through how to build, leverage and harness AI on a daily basis. But what really is AI and how do you build an AI first company? What’s overhyped about AI and what’s underhyped and not nearly talked about enough. We answe…

Today we dove into the messy world of healthcare. Over the last 20 years, hospital services have become more expensive by over 200% in the United States. An oddity of sorts given that most costs have gone down - technology comes in, unleashes innovation and has a deflationary effect on price. Healthcare has been the opposite - it’s complex from a r…

Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen an incredible amount of progress and innovation in harnessing large data sets. Social graphs, payments platforms, e-commerce - the world is becoming smarter, more efficient and more is becoming possible because of our ability to derive insights from data. But innovation in the earth’s data has been nascent - today…

Today we’re joined by Gary Hoberman, Founder & CEO of Unqork. One of the hottest topics in software today is low code / no code - and with good reason. Low code / no code empower anybody with an idea to build without the constraints of technical knowledge. Prior to founding Unqork, Gary was the CIO of MetLife where he managed a $1B+ budget and a te…

We’ve all heard of “big data”, but the lesser-known is “big code.” This is an emerging challenge and opportunity for companies today - a challenge because the amount and complexity of code is growing; opportunity because its value is also growing. Most tools and practices for code management were not built for an era of Big Code - the implication i…

Today we’re joined by Russ Heddleston, Founder & CEO of Docsend. DocSend is one of the most ubiquitous document-sharing products in the tech industry today. What started out as a simple product to send links has turned into a holistic and robust suite of workflows, privacy settings, and analytics for documents. So much so that large software compan…

Today we’re thrilled to welcome Founder and Investor, Justin Kan. Justin has founded a number of companies over the past 2 decades but the one he’s most well known for is Justin.TV. Justin.TV was one of the early pioneers of live video streaming. After rebranding to Twitch, the company later sold to Amazon in 2014 for $970M. After Twitch Justin spe…

Today I’m thrilled to have 8x Olympic Champion Apolo Ohno on the show. Apolo is one of the most decorated Winter Olympians in United States history. In this episode, we unpacked what it takes to be a champion – dedication, sacrifice, and, most importantly, mental fitness. Apolo walked us through how his mindset matured over the years, how he applie…

The world of private fundraising is going through a generational moment - meme stocks, NFTs and Robinhood. Everybody is looking to become an investor and with the right reason - the vast majority of wealth creation in the world has come from private assets, not public assets. The challenge historically, though, has been a lack of connectivity and a…

This week we had David Sacks back on the podcast for round 2. There are few individuals in the world that have seen, built, and led multiple of the world’s iconic companies. David is one of them. He was a core member of PayPal and served as the company’s first product leader and COO. David went on to found enterprise collaboration company Yammer, o…

This week’s guest is Brian Flynn, co-founder & CEO of Rabbithole. Rabbithole helps people navigate the crypto Rabbithole and earn tokens & build reputation while doing it. Brian and I talk about how crypto is redefining learning & work, how to sift through the noise, Rabbithole’s new Pathfinder program, & more. Follow Spencer Kier on Twitter: @SP1N…

This week’s guest is Romeen Sheth. Romeen is President of Metasys, which helps organizations with attracting, engaging, & retaining top talent. Romeen & I talk about shifts towards flexible work, using first principles & incentive alignment to fix education, angel investing, and the future of learning & work in India. Follow Spencer Kier on Twitter…

This week’s guest is Tess Manning, Principal Investor at GSV Ventures. GSV Ventures is multi-stage fund investing in “PreK - Gray”. Tess and I talk about GSV’s theses & the state of venture capital in the space, opportunities in workforce development, and more. Follow Spencer Kier on Twitter: twitter.com/SP1NS1R…

This week's guest is Megan O'Connor, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Chegg. We talk about Chegg's efforts around up-skilling & re-skilling, high level questions about the future of education & work, & more. Follow Spencer on Twitter: twitter.com/SP1NS1R

This week we dove into the world of performance management - the last decade has seen significant change across virtually every function in business; the evolution of marketing, sales, customer success, product and operations departments has been tremendous. HR on the other hand, has been a laggard; historically a back office cost-center, typical H…