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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If you’re a founder building a company you’re going to eventually have to start hiring executives to help you scale. The people you bring into your leadership team can make or break your startup. In each episode we’ll be speaking with a founder or expert, as we discuss the art & science of hiring leaders, why it matters, and how you can keep up.
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11: How one of Arian Ghashghai’s virtual reality companies is on track to hit $20M in revenue after one round of funding
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Have you ever played with an Oculus VR headset? You probably owe thanks to Arian Ghashghai. The former founder was working at Meta when someone in his network introduced him to an opportunity to invest in gummies. Yes, gummies. That’s far and away from Arian’s machine learning roots, it’s now one of his best investments to date. Arian has since gon…
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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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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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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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It’s been a whole year of invaluable conversations with some of the brightest minds in the startup community. At The Gradience, a podcast by Build Talent, we’ve had the opportunity to speak with founders, talent partners, venture partners, visionaries and experts of all different backgrounds, and we’re incredibly grateful for their contributions. O…
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Team Building and Work Culture with Andrei Papancea, CEO and Chief Product Officer at NLX
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Start-ups cannot function and grow on the enthusiasm and hard work of just one person, it takes a team of committed professionals to create a healthy corporate culture and drive expansion. To keep your team's curiosity and competitive spirit alive, you need a work environment that fosters success and advancement. In this episode of The Gradience Po…
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Knowing the Right Time to Hire as a Startup with Aamir Virani, Advisor, Explorer, and President of VSHAD Holdings
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Building a startup from scratch involves testing the feasibility of your ideas, checking whether they work, raising funds, scaling and getting proof of concept. All these require your utmost concentration, and you can focus on what matters when there is no internal turmoil in the company. As a result, you must hire and work with people who are not …
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The Importance of Hiring Employees with High EQ, with Tim Tully, Partner at Menlo Ventures
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Hiring smart and empathetic people is a great way to boost your business and surround yourself with effective colleagues. Employees shouldn't be motivated by money to work and should be excited about the prospect of working for the company, as the company's growth should be their aim. A company needs to hire these sorts of people and include them i…
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Celebrating the First 20 Episodes of The Gradience Podcast
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To celebrate this milestone, we will look back on some of the best moments of our podcast conversations, which feature: Adrien Treuille Co-Founder & CEO of Streamlit Evan Walden Co-Founder & CEO of Getro Derek Lo Founder & CEO of Medallion Tammy Han Head of Talent of Emergence Capital Brent Goldman Engineering Leader and Angel Investor Dan Chen Vis…
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The Early Stages of Discovery with Robin Choy, Co-founder & CEO at HireSweet and Host at A-Players
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Your biggest step and where you should spend the most time is discovery. This involves you "setting up the scene". Ask yourself; who am I looking for, where will I find them, what's interesting for them, what will they do in their first few weeks and a few months? Answering these increases clarity, and with clarity comes the conviction necessary to…
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The Craft of Recruiting with Paula Judge, VP Talent at Accel
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Great interviews are built on your capacity to learn a lot about a prospect and the applicant's ability to show you who they are, what they have done, and how they are the greatest match for the position. Interviews are about making your time with the candidate effective, getting the knowledge and information you need, and giving the candidate the …
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The Benefit of Hiring Highly Experienced People in a StartUp with Martin Siniawski, Co-Founder & CEO at Podcast App
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At the start of your company's journey, you must be resourceful. You will have to wear many hats. And when your company grows, you will need to hire additional people to fill the roles. You will need to scale down your recruitment ambitions for an early-stage business. It will be challenging for your company to recruit a senior-level employee from …
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How to Hire the Best Talents as a Start-up Founder with Jennifer Smith, Co-Founder of Scribe
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Most early-stage startup hiring processes take up fifty percent of the founder's time if you want to be more efficient, having a procedure already established and a team taking care of recruiting can drastically minimize the time you spend on it. People with previous experience working in early-stage organizations are an attractive candidate pool f…
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The Importance of Hiring an In-house Recruitment Team with Jeff Winter, VP of Talent Acquisition at Chime
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In recruiting, "never ask somebody to do the job that you wouldn't do yourself". When hiring recruiters, you should look for people who have a good attitude and can pick themselves up and keep going. The right attitude is the first thing every good recruiter brings to work. Ensure you build a team's architecture before recruiting a team The best ti…
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Hiring Recruiters for an Early-Stage Startup Company with Amanda Daering, CEO of Newance
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Most founders of early-stage startups look to recruit generalists. These individuals are agile, and experienced, and do not mind if things are frequently altered. To employ a recruiter, you must be upfront about what you seek. Ask yourself the following questions: what are you searching for? And who is responsible for assessing the candidate’s suit…
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The New World of Work, with Jay Fulcher, Operating Partner at Cheyenne Ventures
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Millennials, Generation Z, and others are reinventing what it means to be a working professional in today's modern economy. One may summarize this sentiment by saying, "they don't want to be managed; they want to be led." People of all ages, but especially Millennials and Generation Z, want to have a sense of meaning and purpose in their jobs. The …
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The Key to Hiring Great Executives in Early Stage Companies with Chandan Lodha, Co-founder of CoinTracker
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Since it enables limitless dissemination at very little cost, the internet has upended almost every major sector predicated on distribution routes. At least half of the founders' time should be spent on recruitment to develop the best possible workforce. Spending quality time answering the following questions is essential if you want to make the be…
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The Impact of First Hires on Seed Stage Companies, with Matt Birnbaum, Talent Partner at Pear VC
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Those first critical hires are the biggest lever that accelerates a company's growth at the seed stage. To make your initial hiring, you must consider the company's mission, vision, and product roadmap. However, to fill your first positions, you must know what you need to get there, How will the next five to ten hires shape the company, and what is…
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The Role of Data Science in Early Stage Companies, with Kevin Novak, Managing Partner & Founder at Rackhouse Venture Capital
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If you want to be successful with data, you need to have a fairly solid grasp of statistics and probability, in addition to the mathematics behind them. The decision to work as a data scientist in venture capital should be motivated by excitement rather than family history; the fact that your father was a data scientist does not automatically quali…
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Prioritizing Culture with Riley Ennis, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Freenome
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Many founders speak to specific actions that enabled the growth of their companies in their respective industries. Some tips might apply in all sectors, while others are specific to certain industries. Here, Riley Ennis of Freenome shares actionable steps that have worked for him in healthcare. In the healthcare system, within a space like oncology…
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The Recruiter's Journey with Gia Scinto, Partner at Launch Search Partners and Growth Advisor/Expert at Y Combinator
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Most founders would rather focus entirely on the product, ignoring the importance of the development team and network that will make this product achievable, which is influenced during the hiring process. According to Gia, a few things have been missing in the current ways companies and agencies carry out their sourcing mechanism. She did emphasize…
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Building an Organic Culture with Jordan Fisher, Founder & CEO of Standard AI
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While being a solo founder is all well and good, having a team of co-founders with your projected team culture, a wide range of skill sets, and experiences you do not possess is even much better. Adding to the team is a delicate process as your choices can push your startup in the direction you envisioned or cripple it. If you decide to make your d…
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Into the Talent Industry with Jose Guardado & Brian Bocchino, Co-Founders at Build Talent
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In an industry where there are a thousand and one search firms, choosing the right executive search partner for your startup might be a challenge. Considering many of these search firms don’t even have the expertise or qualifications to hire top talents, recruiting might pose an even bigger challenge as a wrong partnership might result in the loss …
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Technical Recruiting with Daniel Chen, Multi-time Founder & Visiting Fellow at Sequoia Capital
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The crypto industry is rapidly expanding as interest in the ethos and space increases. As such, the demand for crypto talent in crypto-inclined startups is also increasing and getting competitive. Founders are painfully aware of this and the fact that the early stage of a company is its most delicate. Therefore, to deliver on the company’s goals, a…
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Raising the Hiring Bar with Brent Goldman, Engineering Leader and Angel Investor
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Any company’s greatest asset is the employees. They represent the company as ambassadors, determine the public’s perception of the business, are handlers of intangible assets, and are the biggest contributors to an organization’s worth. As such, recruiters and hiring managers need to bring people into the fold, develop a strong recruitment strategy…
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The Art of Recruitment with Tammy Han, Head of Talent at Emergence Capital
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You can maximize your chances of adding a gem to your team by partnering with search firms and venture capital firms to leverage the talent network, thereby rendering the recruitment process and its outcome a success. In this episode of The Gradience Podcast, Nigel is joined by Tammy Han, Head of Talent at Emergence Capital. They cover: 👉 Tammy’s j…
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Hiring as a Solo Founder with Derek Lo, Founder & CEO at Medallion
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The first set of hires at any startup is very crucial to the growth and success of that business. Therefore, to avoid the death of a company in its infancy, one of the first and most crucial steps in hiring is to develop a solid recruitment strategy. Afterwards, many things, from sifting through applicants and interviewing them to running backgroun…
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Acquiring Your Dream Team with Evan Walden, Co-Founder & CEO of Getro
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During the hiring process, the best thing for start-ups is to employ people who buy into the company's visions and values and are just as passionate about the goal as the founder(s). This simple common ground helps in shared motivations, faster integration, and increased productivity. Once the organization expands, it becomes more difficult to "con…
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Hiring Your Tribe with Adrien Treuille, Co-Founder & CEO of Streamlit
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In this episode of The Gradience Podcast, Nigel is joined by Adrien Treuille, Co-Founder & CEO of Streamlit. They cover: 👉 The conception of Streamlit 👉 Streamlit’s recruitment process 👉 Key considerations in Streamlit’s early hiring process 👉 Recruitment of company executives 👉 Investor influence and motivation on the Streamlit team 👉 Adrien’s hir…
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