Erik Torenberg+

Why AI Agents Can't Be Trusted Yet (And How to Fix It) | Moe Katib (One)

<p>Moe Katib is the founder and CEO of One (withone.ai), an enterprise-level infrastructure platform that gives AI agents authenticated, reliable access to hundreds of software applications and verified actions. Before One, he spent 12 years solving enterprise integration problems, building the knowledge base that became the foundation for what he&#39;s building today.</p><p>Village Global GP Anne Dwane sits down with Moe to trace the story behind One: from growing up in Damascus selling packaged chicken out of his uncle&#39;s factory, to building water-pump automation devices growing up, to i

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Recall Sessions: He Built the Software That Runs 1 in 6 Laundromats in America — Alex Jekowsky

<p>Alex Jekowsky is the co-founder and CEO of Cents, the all-in-one software, hardware, and payments platform for the laundry industry. A Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, he sold his first company at 23, and last month closed a $140 million Series C. Cents now powers more than 1 in 6 laundromats in the country and processes over $1 billion in payments a year.</p><p>Somrat Niyogi sits down with Alex to go from the very beginning: the aha moment that led him to laundromats, how he got his first customers through cold emails and contact forms, why he priced Cents at a flat $299 from day one, and wha

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LIVE: The Bull Case for SaaS in the Age of AI | Aaron Levie and Reid Hoffman

<p>In this episode of the Village Global Podcast, Box CEO Aaron Levie joins Village Global Chairman Reid Hoffman and host Ben Casnocha live on stage at a Village Global event. They get into what agents actually do to SaaS, where startups should go on offense, and what twenty years of building Box has taught Aaron about leveling up as a founder.</p><p>Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.</p><p>Check us out on the web at <a href="http://www.villageglobal.com">⁠www.villageglobal.com⁠</a> or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.</

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Recall Sessions: The PR Playbook Most Founders Get Wrong — Paul Loeffler & Kelly Boynton

<p>Somrat Niyogi sits down with two of the most experienced comms operators in tech: Kelly Boynton, Head of Communications at Gusto, and Paul Loeffler, former SVP of Communications and Brand at BILL.</p><p>Kelly spent 15 years across agency and in-house roles before Gusto, including at Facebook, Instagram, Intuit, Navan, and DocuSign. Before BILL, Paul led integrated communications at Gusto and was at Atlassian pre-IPO, helping scale it as a public company.</p><p>They cover what founders get wrong about launches and PR, when an agency is worth it (and when it is not), why your story should be

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Why Your Next Executive Assistant Will Be an AI — Deon Nicholas (Espa.ai)

<p>Deon is the co-founder and CEO of Espa Labs. His previous company, Forethought, was a TechCrunch Disrupt winner in 2018, scaled to roughly a billion customer interactions a month, and was recently acquired by Zendesk, where Deon now serves as advisor.</p><p>Village Global GP Anne Dwane sits down with Deon to talk about the launch and the journey that brought him here. They cover what he learned scaling Forethought through the GPT-1 to GPT-4 era, why the Iron Man Jarvis vision is finally within reach for everyone (not just Silicon Valley), the three pillars of Espa, why the model labs have p

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Recall Sessions: Most SaaS Companies Won't Survive This - Jake Saper (Emergence)

Jake Saper is General Partner at Emergence Capital, the firm that was the first institutional investor in Zoom and an early backer of Salesforce, Veeva, Bill.com, and Together.ai. Jake has been at Emergence for over a decade and has led investments in Assembled, Unify, and Ironclad.<br /><br />Jake has developed Emergence's thesis on AI-native services: why he believes this is the most important structural shift in enterprise software since the move to the cloud, why most SaaS companies built before AI won't survive it, and what founders have to build instead.<br /><br />Somrat Niyogi sits dow

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Announcing Monitoring The Situation

Thrilled to announce our investment in MTS.

Recall Sessions: Building a $1.1B Category That Didn't Exist | Nick Mehta (Gainsight)

Nick Mehta is the former CEO of Gainsight, the platform that helps companies drive durable growth through customer-led and product-led strategies. Vista Equity Partners acquired Gainsight for $1.1 billion.<br /><br />Nick ran the company as CEO for 13 years before stepping into a board role last year. Nick has also co-authored four books on customer success, was named Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California, and currently sits on the boards of F5 and PubMatic. Before Gainsight, he was CEO of LiveOffice, which he grew to $25 million in revenue and sold to Symantec. <br /><br />Somrat N

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Worldbuilders: Building Digital Minds and Why Humans Still Matter | Dara Ladjevardian (Delphi)

Dara Ladjevardian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Delphi, a platform that lets you create a digital version of your mind — an interactive, always-on presence that can share your knowledge, coach others, and represent you at scale.<br /><br />Delphi has raised $16 million in a Series A led by Sequoia, with earlier backing from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and others. Before Delphi, Dara founded Friday, a text-based commerce tool he built and sold within a year. He previously worked as a forward-deployed engineer at C3 AI and as a product engineer at OpenStore.<br /><br />Sumeet Singh sits down with

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Recall Sessions: AI-Native CRMs and What It Takes to Replace Salesforce | Doug Camplejohn & Patrick Thompson

Doug Camplejohn is the Founder &amp; CEO of Coffee, an AI-first CRM. Doug co-founded Fliptop (acquired by LinkedIn), led Sales Navigator at LinkedIn as VP of Product, then ran Sales Cloud at Salesforce as EVP and GM. He's also had exits with Mi5 Networks (acquired by Symantec) and MyPlay (acquired by Bertelsmann).<br /><br />Patrick Thompson is the Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Clarify, an AI-native CRM built for modern go-to-market teams. Clarify has raised $22.5 million. Before Clarify, Patrick co-founded Iteratively, a customer data platform acquired by Amplitude in 2021, where he served as Direc

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Worldbuilders: Why Most AI Startups Won't Survive | The Model Economy by Sumeet Singh

Sumeet Singh, Founder &amp; Managing Partner of Worldbuild, lays out his investing thesis for the AI era: The Model Economy.<br /><br />His argument is that most AI startups being built today are fighting a losing battle against the scaling laws. The models themselves will swallow the application layer. So where does durable value actually go?<br /><br />Sumeet walks through the Bitter Lesson (Richard Sutton's foundational insight on why brute-force scale always beats domain-specific cleverness), what the mobile era teaches us about what's coming, and the two types of companies he believes act

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AI's Oppenheimer Moment

A memorable scene in the 2023 best picture winner Oppenheimer involves a meeting between the eponymous scientist and President Truman in the wake of the atomic bombing of Japan.

Worldbuilders: The Largest Infrastructure Project in History with Evan Conrad (SF Compute)

This is the first episode of Worldbuilders, a new series on the Village Global Podcast guest-hosted by Sumeet Singh, Founder &amp; Managing Partner of Worldbuild.<br /><br />Sumeet sits down with Evan Conrad, Founder &amp; CEO of the San Francisco Compute Company, to talk about the real economics of GPU compute, how SF Compute went from an accidental GPU cloud to building supercomputers, where the actual AI bubble is, and why the future of supercomputing should be calm.<br /><br />Topics covered include: the origin story of SF Compute, why GPU contracts require multi-year commitments, the diff

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Recall Sessions: How Moveworks Went From First Customer to $2.85B with Bhavin Shah

Bhavin Shah spent years building Moveworks into the agentic AI platform behind employee support at Toyota, Siemens, Unilever, and hundreds more. In December 2025, ServiceNow acquired Moveworks for $2.85 billion.<br /><br />In this episode of Recall Sessions, Somrat Niyogi goes back to the beginning. How did four co-founders find each other? Why did Bhavin and his team run 34 CIO conversations to validate the idea before their first investor wrote a check? How did they close their first customer with nothing but a vision demo — and get contractor badges to work out of the customer's office? And

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Parth Patil on Coding Agents, Building Reid AI, and What It Takes to Operate at the Frontier

Parth Patil built Reid Hoffman's AI digital twin from scratch, without engineering team or a software background. Before that, he was a data scientist at Clubhouse. When GPT-4 came out, he cashed out his 401k and spent four months talking to the model every day. He came out of that running Reid's AI work. He now manages a fleet of coding agents for most of his waking hours.<br /><br />In this conversation with Village Global VP Sam Kirschner, Parth talks through everything AI: how coding agents have evolved since AutoGPT and BabyAGI, why data analysts tend to make better vibe coders than engin

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Recall Sessions: Tomer London on Building Gusto from ZenPayroll to 400,000 Customers

Welcome to Recall Sessions - a series on the Village Global Podcast hosted by Somrat Niyogi, Partner at Recall Capital. Each episode goes deep on how the world's most successful companies got their first customers. <br /><br />In this episode, Somrat sits down with Tomer London, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Gusto, to discuss how he and his co-founders built the leading payroll and HR platform for small businesses. Gusto serves over 400,000 businesses today and is valued at $9.5 billion - but it started as ZenPayroll, with a product scoped down to California-only, under five employee

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[Highlight] What Happens to Society When We Live to 100? with Celine Halioua

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Celine Halioua, Founder &amp; CEO of Loyal, which recently raised a $100M Series C, and Village Global GP Sam Kirschner.<br /><br />Celine discusses what's still non-consensus in longevity, how cognitive aging shapes our preferences and worldviews, and what society looks like when parents stay healthier longer — from socioeconomic mobility to financial planning.<br /><br />Listen to the full episode here: <a href="https://www.villageglobal.com/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.villageglobal.com/podcast</a><br

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Recall Sessions: Itai Damti on Embedded Finance and the Art of Getting Your First Customer

Welcome to Recall Sessions – a new series on the Village Global Podcast.<br /><br />Hosted by Somrat Niyogi, Partner at Recall Capital, each episode goes deep on go-to-market: how the world's most successful companies got their first customers. <br /><br />In this episode, Itai Damti, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Unit, joins Somrat to break down how Unit went from a year of stealth building with no committed customers to becoming the leading embedded finance platform – moving over $50 billion annually and powering programs at seven public companies.<br /><br />Itai talks about the bet he and co-fou

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[Highlight] Why Dog Longevity Drugs Are the Fastest Path to Human Longevity with Celine Halioua

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Celine Halioua, Founder &amp; CEO of Loyal, which recently raised a $100M Series C, and Village Global GP Sam Kirschner.<br /><br />Celine discusses Loyal's 10-year vision for expanding into cats and humans, why the pharmaceutical industry has been slow to treat aging as a drug category, and why the biological and economic case for going dogs-first is stronger than most people realize.<br /><br />Listen to the full episode here: <a href="https://www.villageglobal.com/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.villagegl

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[Highlight] Shishir Mehrotra on Big Tech vs. Startup Careers and Building a World-Class Hiring Process

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman (formerly Grammarly), and Village Global's Ben Casnocha.<br /><br />Shishir and Ben discuss the "Silicon Valley Inc. vs. Google Inc." framework for understanding career tradeoffs, when recruitment firms add value vs. when they don't, and how to design a hiring process that produces great outcomes — including the critical role of reference checking.<br /><br />Watch the full episode here: <a href="https://youtu.be/S7UO7AOLgBA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://youtu.be/S7UO7AOLgBA</a><br

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Celine Halioua On The Science and Business of Making Dogs Live Longer

Celine Halioua, Founder &amp; CEO of Loyal, joins Village Global VP Sam Kirschner to discuss her journey building a biotech company developing the first FDA-approved drugs for lifespan extension – going dogs first. <br /><br />Loyal has raised over $250M and recently closed its Series C after clearing major regulatory milestones on both efficacy and safety.<br /><br />In this conversation, Celine breaks down why you can't develop a human longevity drug today (and it's not because of biology – it's logistics and financial norms), why dogs are the fastest path to getting there, and how milestone

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[Highlight] Why Henry Shi Chose Anthropic Over Starting Another Company

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Henry Shi (Anthropic, co-founder of <a href="http://Super.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Super.com</a>) and Village Global GP Anne Dwane.<br /><br />Henry and Anne discuss the three paths available to successful founders, why traditional venture capital often becomes a sales job, the rise of "seed-strapping" as a new funding model, and what ultimately led Henry to join a frontier AI lab instead of starting another company or becoming an investor.<br /><br />Watch the full episode here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watc

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[Highlight] The Future of Coding and Work in the Age of AI with Henry Shi

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Henry Shi (Anthropic, co-founder of <a href="http://Super.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Super.com</a>) and Village Global GP Anne Dwane.<br /><br />Henry and Anne discuss how AI coding tools have evolved from autocomplete to junior engineers, what skills will matter when writing code becomes obsolete, and whether humans or AI will end up as the boss in the future of work.<br /><br />Listen to the full episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/village-global-podcast/id1316769266?i=1000746090022<br />Watch the ful

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[Highlight] Grammarly's Evolution into an AI Agent Platform with Shishir Mehrotra

This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman (formerly Grammarly).<br /><br />Shishir discusses why Grammarly is one of the most underestimated companies in Silicon Valley, how it's transforming from a grammar tool into an open platform for AI agents, and why "assist" AI—which meets you where you work—may be more powerful than chat or autonomous agents.<br /><br />Watch the full episode here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7UO7AOLgBA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7UO7AOLgBA</a><br /><br />Thanks

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[Highlight] Shishir Mehrotra (Superhuman CEO) on Careers at Big Tech vs. Startups

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman (formerly Grammarly).<br /><br />Shishir discusses the fundamental differences between working at big tech companies versus startups, why skills at large companies are less transferable than you think, and what separates world-class recruiting processes from mediocre ones.<br /><br />Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7UO7AOLgBA<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at

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From $200 Million Revenue Founder to Frontier Lab with Henry Shi

Henry Shi, founder of <a href="http://Super.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Super.com</a> (scaled to $200M+ annual revenue, 50 million users, profitable), joins Village Global GP Anne Dwane to discuss his unconventional path from founder to Anthropic.<br /><br />Henry shares why he stepped back from his company at its peak, what he learned during his gap year building AI resources in public, the patterns he discovered tracking lean AI companies, and why he ultimately chose a frontier lab over VC or starting another company. He also gives a candid look inside Anthropic's culture

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[Highlight] Eric Yuan & Reid Hoffman on Building Enduring Companies

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan and LinkedIn co-founder / Village Global Chairman Reid Hoffman.<br /><br />Eric and Reid discuss what separates companies that last from those that flame out, why hypergrowth can hide critical problems, and how founders should think about their "theory of the game" for the next ten years.<br /><br />Listen to the full episode here: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-work-with-zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-and-reid-hoffman/id1316769266?i=1000744325171" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">

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How To Build Your First Go-to-Market Team with Swing Search

Magnus Sandstrom and Debbie Wiss are senior partners at Swing Search, specializing in go-to-market roles at director, VP, and head levels for nearly 20 years. They joined Village Global partner Lindsay Pettingill to discuss the mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales and marketing talent, and how to get it right.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><ul><li>Don't go too senior too early. Look for someone who can see around corners, not over mountains. Senior hires want teams and foundations. You need someone doing outbound calls and chasing deals.</li><li>Don't try to solve product-market f

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[Highlight] Eric Yuan & Reid Hoffman on Startups vs. Big Tech in the AI Era

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.<br /><br />Eric and Reid discuss where startups can compete against big tech in the AI era, why enterprise adoption of AI tools remains surprisingly slow, and what founders should focus on when selling AI products to enterprise customers.<br /><br />Listen to the full episode here: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-work-with-zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-and-reid-hoffman/id1316769266?i=1000744325171" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://podca

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The Future of Work with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan and Reid Hoffman

Eric Yuan is the founder and CEO of Zoom. Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn. Both are luminary LPs at Village Global. They joined Village GP Ben Casnocha to discuss the future of AI agents, digital twins in the workplace, selling AI to enterprise, and what it takes to build companies that endure.<br /><br />Takeaways:<ul><li>Digital twins will handle meetings you're unsure about attending. Your AI can join internal meetings, summarize key points, and alert you only when your presence becomes critical. This frees you to focus on what truly matters.</li><li>External AI interactions are

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[Highlight] Airtable's Howie Liu on What Founders Get Wrong About Building Product

This is a short excerpt from our full conversation with Airtable founder and CEO Howie Liu. Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCR-zFXiXKA&amp;t=2s<br /><br />Howie spent 2.5 years building Airtable before launching – and only talked to about a dozen customers in that time.<br /><br />In this clip, he explains why that approach made sense for a platform company, and how founders can validate ideas without drowning in customer discovery.

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2026 Scheming

What I'm working on at the moment

My Art of Accomplishment Retreat

From dirty fuel to clean fuel

Power, Narrative, and Influence: Van Jones and Promise CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Van Jones is a political commentator, author, and former Obama White House advisor. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is founder and CEO of Promise, a software company transforming how governments deliver services to people in need. They joined the Village Global team to discuss what founders building in complex sectors need to know about power, narrative, and influence. <br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><ul><li>Political people often operate on emotion and relationships, rather than rationality. When selling to the government, demonstrating genuine care matters more than demonstrating expertise.</li><li>Relati

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Scaling in the AI Era with PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada

Jennifer Tejada is CEO of PagerDuty, a public company serving 30,000+ customers worldwide. She joined Village Global GP Ben Casnocha for a masterclass on scaling in the AI era, followed by live feedback sessions with four founders building AI-native companies.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><ul><li>Enterprise sentiment has shifted from “fear of missing out” to “fear of getting in.” Customers are anxious about security, resilience, and managing the people transition.</li><li>Know what gets your customer promoted and what gets them fired. Different personas care about different things. A CIO has dif

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Learning to Love Flounder Mode from Kevin Kelly (ft. Brie Wolfson)

How do I introduce ⁠Brie Wolfson⁠ (https://x.com/zebriez)? Brie's website – http://briewolfson.com⁠ – is a good place to start. It's a treasure trove. She launched Stripe Press. She started The Kool-Aid Factory. Today, she's the CMO of Positive Sum and Colossus. And there's so much more! She told a story on The Moth! She's written two novels. Everyone is now obsessed with "taste." Her essay, ⁠Notes on Taste (https://www.are.na/editorial/notes-on-taste)⁠, kicked off the craze. She even worked at Dandelion Chocolate just to make something with her hands. But I'm talking to her today becaus

The Untold Story of Peter Thiel and Founders Fund (ft. Mario Gabriele)

There is no venture capital firm like Founders Fund, and there is no writer who tells venture capital firms' stories like Mario Gabriele. In their respective crafts, both have No Rivals. That is the title of Mario's epic four-part series on how Peter Thiel turned Founders Fund into one of the world's top venture firms, and its most unique. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read them here: The Prophet: https://www.generalist.com/p/founders-fund-1 The Disciples: https://www.generalist.com/p/founders-fund-2 The Gospel: https://www.generalist.com/p/founders-fund-3 The Kingdom:

American Dynamism Meets the American Dream with Ambrook CEO Mackenzie Burnett

Mackenzie Burnett⁠ (https://x.com/ciaomack) is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Ambrook⁠ (https://ambrook.com/), an all-in-one bookkeeping, invoicing and payment tools that help family‑run businesses improve margins and stay independent. This week, Abrook announced that it's raised $29 million, including a $26.1 million Series A from Josh Kushner at Thrive Capital and Figma CEO Dylan Field at Field Capital. In our conversation, we talk about building a product at the intersection of American Dynamism and the American Dream, how farm economics work, how she's grown her business to over 2,500 custo

Vibe Coding and The Rise of AI Agents with Amjad Masad and Yohei Nakajima

Amjad Masad (@amasad), founder and CEO of Replit, and Yohei Nakajima (@yoheinakajima), Managing Partner at Untapped Capital, joined Village Global partner Ben Casnocha for a live masterclass with Village Global founders.<br /><br />Takeaways:<b><br /></b><ul><li>AI agents are rapidly evolving, with coding and deep research agents showing the most traction today. But general-purpose assistants are still brittle — trip-planning and high-context tasks remain hard.<br /><br /></li><li>Replit Agent shows how quickly full-stack applications can be built today, sometimes in under an hour — even by no

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Becoming unLLMable with Sari Azout (Hyperlegible 011)

⁠Sari Azout⁠ is a former VC, the founder of ⁠Sublime⁠, a friend, and a writer whose work I've long admired. We actually co-wrote the first piece I ever wrote on crypto about a company called Fairmint. Sari is one of the most thoughtful and tasteful people on the world wide web, something that comes across in her writing, in the product she's building at Sublime, and even her background in this video. While a lot of people are talking about what AI means for humans, Sari is one of the few people I actually want to talk to about that topic. A few weeks ago, she gave a talk she titled "Becomi

Executing as a Best-In-Class Firm: Operational Excellence From The Inside of Over 50 VC Firms with Kristen Ostro of Strut Consulting

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at <a href="https://www.villageglobal.vc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Village Global</a>, welcomes Kristen Ostro, founder and CEO of Strut Consulting, to discuss the foundational elements that set venture capital firms up for long-term success. Kristen shares how her career began under the mentorship of Dick Kramlich at NEA, where she was trained in the core values and operational excellence that have shaped her approach to supporting dozens of VC firms across Silicon Valley. Drawing on this experience, Kristen explains why establishing a clear mis

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The Secret to Startup M&A: How To Set Your Companies Up for Big Outcomes with Ezra Roizen of Advsr

Jacob Mullins, Venture Partner at <a href="https://www.villageglobal.vc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Village Global</a>, sits down with Ezra Roizen, General Manager of Advsr and author of "The Magic Box Paradigm," to demystify the world of startup mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A) on Jacob’s private podcast, <a href="https://www.vcmastermind.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VC Mastermind,</a> which we are cross-posting on the Village Global podcast. Drawing on decades of experience as both an entrepreneur and investment banker, Ezra shares his unique framework for

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Crossing the Cringe Minefield with Cate Hall (Hyperlegible 010)

If you've noticed the word "agency" popping up all over the place, you have Cate Hall (https://x.com/catehall) to thank. Cate is the CEO of Astera (https://astera.org/), one of my favorite organizations and the new home of my friend Eli Dourado (https://x.com/elidourado), and one hell of a writer. Her 2024 essay, How to be More Agentic (https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic) took the internet by storm and brought agency into the zeitgeist, where it has remained and grown. Now, she's even writing the Book on Agency, which you can pre-order here: https://mailchi.mp/445787

How Wander Went Asset-Light and 100x'ed its Locations: A Deeper Dive with John Andrew Entwistle

Wander raised $50+ million in a Series B led QED and Fifth Wall. The fun part is, Wander did it by throwing out a lot of what we discussed in the first Wander Deep Dive (https://www.notboring.co/p/wander-owning-happy-places) — which, at the time, I said was the absolute right way to do things — and growing insanely fast while maintaining its high quality bar. I started doing these Deeper Dives, following up on companies I’d written Deep Dives on in the past to understand what I got right, what I got wrong, and what we could learn from both, in March, with a Deeper Dive on Primer. I gotta a

A Tale of Two Vaticans (OpenAI & Rome) with Reggie James

Reggie James (https://x.com/HipCityReg) is a founder, the author of the Product Lost substack (https://hipcityreg.substack.com/), one of the most original thinkers I know, and one of my top choices to be the Creative Director of America. In this conversation, we discuss his latest piece, A tale of two Vaticans (or, OpenAI building an unholy spirit), which you should read before watching: https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-vaticans-or-openai No one but Reggie could have written this piece, which is the highest praise I can give to a writer. It combines his deep knowledge of the

E141: The Bronze Age Collapse and History's Selective Memory

Today on Upstream, we’re sharing Erik Torenberg conversation with Samo Burja where they discuss the Bronze Age collapse, technological advancements in ancient civilizations, and the nuanced history of the Roman Empire, along with a detailed analysis of contemporary geopolitical dynamics, particularly focusing on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and its implications for global power structures. — 📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess — RECOMMENDED PODCAST: 🎙️Live Players Samo Burja and Erik Torenberg provide analysis of the ne

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E140: Why Industrial Revolutions Stall

Today on Upstream, we’re sharing Erik Torenberg conversation with Samo Burja on this week’s Live Players. They discuss the potential industrial revolutions in history, particularly in the Roman Empire and Song Dynasty China, their technological advancements, economic factors, and the reasons these revolutions didn't reach full fruition.   — 📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess    — RECOMMENDED PODCASTS:  🎙️Live Players Samo Burja and Erik Torenberg provide analysis of the news and case studies of Live Players, as well as key i

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E139: America’s Tech Strategy w/ Qasar Younis, Sen. Jack Reed, and Josh Wolfe

This week, we’re featuring a panel discussion from the 2025 Hill and Valley Forum with Josh Wolfe (Lux Capital), Senator Jack Reed (RI), and Qasar Younis, Founder and CEO, Applied Intuition They address talent attraction and retention, China's espionage and surveillance state, immigration policies, dual-use technologies, and the challenges and strategies in defense innovation and data security in AI and autonomous vehicles. — 📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️‪The Hill & ValleyThe Hill & Valley pod

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Launching a Disney-Inspired Golden Age with Mike Solana

Mike Solana (https://x.com/micsolana) is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Pirate Wires (https://www.piratewires.com/), one of my favorite publications on the whole internet and the only one I read every day. You’ll hear this about a lot of our guests, because this is why I do Hyperlegible, but Mike is one of the best writers doing it today, one of the few whose name in my inbox gives me a little dopamine hit. His writing is unlike anything out there. He’s not afraid to tackle tricky subjects, not afraid to form his own opinion, not afraid to be earnest, and he writes the cover off the ball

50 Things Brian Potter Has Learned Writing Construction Physics (Hyperlegible 007)

Nobody on the internet writes about all of the complexity involved in actually building things -- from homes to jet engines -- better than Brian Potter (https://x.com/_brianpotter), the author of Construction Physics. https://www.construction-physics.com/ I am a huge fan of Brian's writing. I use it as a reference for a lot of my pieces. I once tweeted, "Construction Physics is a national treasure and the president should give Brian Potter a medal or czar job or something." So I was thrilled to get the excuse to talk to him about a bunch of his essays by talking to him about this one speci

E138: Palantir CEO Alex Karp & Rep. Ritchie Torres on Innovation & The West | Hill and Valley Forum 2024

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, and Congressman Richie Torres discuss higher education, Palantir's fearless culture, and the importance of contrarianism in driving innovation at the 2024 Hill and Valley Forum. — 📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess    — RECOMMENDED PODCASTS:  🎙️‪The Hill & Valley The Hill & Valley podcast gives you an insider's look into tech and government, hearing from founders and operators of generational tech companies, elected representatives and policymakers, and more.  Spotify: https://open.s

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E137: AI Safety vs Speed: Helen Toner Discusses OpenAI Board Experience, Regulatory Approaches, and Military AI [The Cognitive Revolution]

This week on Upstream, we’re releasing an episode of The Cognitive Revolution. Nathan Labenz interviews Helen Toner, director at CSET, about her experiences with OpenAI, the concept of adaptation buffers for AI integration, and AI's role in military decision-making. They discuss the implications of AI development, the need for regulatory policies, and the geopolitical dynamics involving AI competition with China.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️ ‪The Cognitive RevolutionThe Cognitive Revolution i

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Joining a16z

My Next Chapter

E136: Trump V2: Tariffs, American Dynamism, Higher Ed | Byrne Hobart

In this episode, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart discuss the economic consequences of Trump's tariffs, OpenAI's recent innovations, and their implications for white collar work. They also explore the potential market shifts, the resilience of the US dollar as a reserve currency, and the state of elite higher education institutions like Harvard in the current geopolitical climate.—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Investor and writer of the popular newsletter The Diff, Byrne Hobart, and co-host Erik

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E135: The Problem With Reserve Currencies and Switching to Crypto w/ Lyn Alden [From the Archives]

This week on Upstream, we’re sharing Erik Torenberg’s 2024 interview with Lyn Alden. Lyn discusses her book 'Broken Money', the impact of the global reserve currency, inflation, interest rates, and provides advice for navigating an uncertain economic future.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess —SPONSORS:☁️ Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds and offers one consistent price. Orac

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We Can't All Design iPhones: Conrad Bastable on the West's Industrial Future (Hyperlegible 006)

In this timely conversation, Conrad Bastable (https://x.com/ConradBastable) breaks down his epic essay "Forsaking Industrialism" and explores why the West has abandoned manufacturing while China built a world-beating industrial platform over decades. Read it here: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/forsaking-industrialism-the-most-expensive-thing-you-didnt-buy We dive into how EU regulations inadvertently benefited Chinese manufacturing, why tariffs alone can't solve America's industrial challenges, and what it would take to rebuild America's manufacturing capabilities. Conrad explains t

E134: Atheism’s Decline, Consciousness, and The New Right w/ Ross Douthat

Today on Upstream, Ross Douthat joins Erik Torenberg to discuss his new book 'Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious,' exploring the decline of new atheism, the intellectual defense of institutional religion, and the intersection between traditional Christianity, Silicon Valley, and modern materialism.This episode originally aired on Moment of Zen (April 12, 2025).—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Moment of ZenEvery week, Erik Torenberg, Dan Romero, Antonio Garcia Martinez and frequent special gu

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E133: China’s Energy Problem w/ Samo Burja

Today on Upstream, we’re releasing a 2024 conversation between Erik Torenberg and Samo Burja. They discuss China's approach to energy security, exploring why China isn't pursuing energy independence despite significant oil production capability and the potential for further development.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Live PlayersSamo Burja and Erik Torenberg provide analysis of the news and case studies of Live Players, as well as key institutions and technologies that make up the global power la

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Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization with Parakeet (Hyperlegible 005)

Pseudonymous writer Parakeet (https://x.com/parakeetnebula) joins me to discuss her viral essay "Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization." Read it here: https://parakeet.substack.com/p/skittle-factory-dementia-monkey-titty I first heard about Parakeet a couple weeks ago when I saw half of my Twitter feed and half of my Substack Notes feed sharing her essay, including a bunch of people I wouldn't expect to share an essay with "Monkey Titty" in the title. I read it immediately, and saw why. Parakeet describes universally applicable ideas with the color turned up to 11 so they stick

E132: AI Managers, US vs China Analysis, and AI Art w/ Byrne Hobart

Today on Upstream, we’re sharing an episode of The Riff (originally aired on April 1, 2025). Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart explore the shifting dynamics of global trade between China and the US, the potential for AI to replace senior rather than junior roles in the workplace, and the economic structure of live entertainment markets like StubHub.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Investor and writer of the popular newsletter The Diff, Byrne Hobart, and co-host Erik Torenberg discuss today’s major

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Scarcity and Abundance in 2025 with Alex Danco

On Episode 004 of Hyperlegible, I speak with Alex Danco. It was a treat. Alex is on my Mount Rushmore of internet writers. When I’m writing well, his writing has probably had an influence on mine. In this conversation, we talk about his new essay, which is an update to some of his older pieces, Scarcity and Abundance in 2025: https://alexdanco.com/2025/03/27/scarcity-and-abundance-in-2025/ If you want to understand how to think about everything that’s going on right now as a result of AI in a really thoughtful, grounded way, read the essay. There’s so much here. What did Clayton Christense

E131: Abundance Agenda, The New Right, and 2008 Retrospective w/ Noah Smith

Today on Upstream, Erik Torenberg and Noah Smith discuss the Abundance Agenda by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the impact of the 2008 recession, Obama's presidency, and shifts in political ideology, focusing on the 'New Right' and its cultural and economic implications, while also touching upon the economic recovery strategies post-2008.This episode originally aired on Econ102 (April 1, 2025)—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMM

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The Case Against Conversational Interfaces with Julian Lehr

In Episode 003 of Hyperlegible, host ⁠Packy McCormick⁠ talks with ⁠Julian Lehr⁠ about his recent essay ⁠The Case Against Conversational Interfaces and why natural language might not be the ideal way to interact with computers. Julian explains why conversational AI should complement rather than replace graphical user interfaces, and shares insights about his unique writing process. Read it here: https://julian.digital/2025/03/27/the-case-against-conversational-interfaces/ Julian is one of the most creative writers on the internet. Go read his work at https://julian.digital/. Hyperlegible is

Hyperlegible 002: Utsav Mamoria, How to live an intellectually rich life

Utsav Mamoria recently wrote How to Live an Intellectually Rich Life (https://utsavmamoria.substack.com/p/how-to-live-an-intellectually-rich?r=1ftlg&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true) on his Substack, Tumse Na Ho Paayega. It blew up, breaking out of containment in India and spanning the globe to the tune of 1,100 likes at the time of recording. For good reason: Utsav combines philosophy, mathematics, biographies, personal experience, and hand-drawn sketches to create a map – quite literally – for living an intellectually rich life. He takes us on a journey through Moradoom, Igamor, and Everm

E130: Elon Musk’s Network Effects and Checking in on Chinese AI w/ Byrne Hobart

This week on Upstream, we're releasing an episode of The Riff (originally aired on March 25, 2025) where Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart discuss Don Jr.'s leveraging of the Trump brand, Dustin Moskovitz's departure to address AI risks, economic impacts of various policies, and geopolitical considerations with a focus on AI and China's tech ambitions.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️ Investor and writer of

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E129: Dark Triad, Romantic Partner Selection, and Dating Advice w/ Rob Henderson

Today on Upstream, Erik Torenberg interviews author Rob Henderson about modern romance, discussing evolutionary psychology, the attraction to dark triad men, dating apps, and practical advice for men seeking romantic partners. —📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse —SPONSORS:☁️Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the ba

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Hyperlegible 001: Tina He, Jevons Paradox: A Personal perspective

For the first episode of Hyperlegible, I talked to my friend Tina He (@fkpxls on twitter) who writes the excellent Fakepixels, which she recently brought back to life after a four year hibernation and on which she’s dropped gems each week since. Last week, Tina wrote an essay called Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective about something surprising she’s noticed: AI is causing a lot of people to work more, not less. Since you can now do more with each hour, the opportunity cost of each hour not worked is higher! The treadmill spins faster and faster. Read it, and subscribe to Fakepixels whil

E128: US-Europe Relations, How Japan Can Strengthen The Yen, and Predicting AI’s Growth Effects w/ Noah Smith

Today on Upstream, Erik Torenberg and Noah Smith analyze America's European withdrawal, China's selective globalization strategy, and tempers expectations about AI's economic impact while considering GDP measurement challenges.—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Moment of ZenEvery week, Erik Torenbergand frequent special guests discuss what's happening in technology, business, politics, and beyond.Spotify: htt

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E127: The Tech Right and How The Left Can Fix Itself w/ Jon Askonas

Today on Upstream, we’re airing Erik Torenberg’s conversation with Jon Askonas. They explore the emerging coalition between MAGA supporters and Silicon Valley tech leaders, examines the underlying political realignment, the tensions and fault lines within this coalition, and the potential future conflicts surrounding issues like immigration and transhumanism.This episode originally aired on Moment Zen (February 22, 2025)—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit

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E126: Data Center Economics and AI Energy Requirements w/ Patrick McKenzie and Azeem Azhar

Today on Upstream, we’re releasing Patrick MacKenzie's interview with Azeem Azhar which originally aired in February 2025 on Complex Systems. They discuss the economics and infrastructure of data centers, comparing historical infrastructure rollouts to modern AI-driven data center needs, and explore the implications of exponential power demands, including innovations like small modular nuclear reactors and geothermal energy.—📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https:/

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E125: Palantir’s Politics, Elon’s Approach to DOGE, and AI’s Effects on Writing w/ Byrne Hobart

Today on Upstream, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg dive into the wide-ranging effects of technological change on media and society. They cover the AI debate, blogging's social impact, AI's influence on search and data, the changing news industry, foreign aid cuts, and the rise of new tech elites.This episode originally aired on The Riff (March 11, 2025).—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Investor and writer

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E124: How to Have A Philosophical Marriage w/ Agnes Callard and Arnold Brooks

Today on Upstream, we’re releasing an episode from Modern Relationships which originally aired on February 28, 2025 where Erik Torenberg interviews philosophy professors Agnes Callard and Arnold Brooks about their unconventional marriage, the role of philosophy in their relationship, the impact of their public profile, and how they balance personal and philosophical life together.—📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMMENDED PODCA

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E123: Trump & The Game of Populism w/ Samo Burja

Erik Torenberg and Samo Burja discuss the limitations of populist politics, the difficulty populists face in effecting change despite electoral wins, and the influence of digital democracy on modern governance. —📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse  —RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: 🎙️Live PlayersSamo Burja and Erik Torenberg provide analysis of the news and case studies of Live Players, as well as key institutions and technologies that make up t

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E122: Victor Davis Hanson on What Trump Thinks of Zelensky and Predicting Geopolitics

In this Upstream episode, Erik Torenberg sits down with military historian Victor Davis Hanson. They discuss the future of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, the evolution of the American left, and Donald Trump's potential future legacy. —📰 Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess 🙏 Help shape our show by taking our quick listener survey at https://bit.ly/TurpentinePulse —SPONSORS:☁️Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times t

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Abhay Parasnis on Creating Moats, AI Strategy, and Selling to Enterprise

Abhay Parasnis is founder and CEO of Typeface, is former CTO/CPO at Adobe, and sits on the board of Dropbox and Schneider Electric. He joined Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, for a live masterclass for Village Global founders.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><ul><li>If you can break into the top tier of the enterprise market, it’s hard to dislodge you.</li><li>Big platforms like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are eager to prove their tech's power. If you position your startup as a prime showcase for their platform, you become a strategic asset.</li><li>When selling to enterpri

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35

35 bits of advice for my younger self

Fundraising in AI with Aaron Harris

Aaron Harris was a partner at YC for 7.5 years where he funded Deel, OpenSea, Scale AI, Rappi, Lattice, and others. He also built YC's Series A program where he worked with founders on over 200 Series As and Bs that raised in excess of $3B in capital. He joined Sam Kirschner, VP at Village Global, to give Village Global founders helpful tips on fundraising.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><ul><li>Investors bet on stories, not just data. Your job? Tell a story of massive economic opportunity — not just how you fit into the future, but how you create it.</li><li>Hype lowers the barrier to turn attent

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Dispatches from the Group Chats, Inauguration Edition

Millennials vs Zoomers, Maga vs Tech, Meme Coins, Israel, Trump Nominees

Contra Paul Graham on Wokeness

PG focuses on the stylistic difference and misses the substantive one

Hiring Technical Talent with Kathy Copic and Lindsay Pettingill

Kathy Copic is founder of Fieldwork Partners, where she works closely with early stage companies on scoping technical projects, getting early ML models into production, and helping them hire. She was interviewed by Lindsay Pettingill, Investment Partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders. <br /><br />Takeaways:<ul><li>Maintain at least three interview touchpoints to thoroughly evaluate candidates — rushing the process means missing vital signals about how well candidates understand your business and culture.</li><li>Write job descriptions that focus on compa

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Dispatches from the Group Chats, Vol 5

Los Angeles, Canada, Immigration, Israel, China

Dispatches from the Group Chats, Vol 4

Tech Right vs Nationalist Right, Nerds vs Jocks, Tiger Mom Discourse Returns

Dispatches from the Group Chats, Vol 3

Trump vs Elon? Jews & Political Parties, Elon & Europe

Eynat Guez of Papaya Global on Mastering Enterprise Sales and Building Long-Term Partnerships

Eynat Guez, founder and CEO of Papaya Global, was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and partner at Village Global, during this masterclass for Village Global founders.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />Show up to key meetings as the founder or executive team — don’t just send the sales team. It signals to the client that you’re personally invested and committed to making the deal a success.<br /><br />Avoid being overly optimistic about where prospects stand. Serious signals include active texting, detailed questions about implementation, security questionnaires, and the involvement of ad

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Memes about Luigi Mangione

The Group Chats process the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter with jokes (RIP Brian Thompson)

Dispatches from the Group Chats vol. 1

DOGE, SF, Debanking, David Sacks, Epstein, Conservative & Liberal dating

Auren Hoffman and Ben Casnocha on Career Strategy, Undiscovered Talent, Networks, and more

Auren Hoffman, CEO of SafeGraph and GP of Flex Capital, interviewed Ben Casnocha, Village Global co-founder and partner, on Auren's World of DaaS podcast. They are longtime friends and had a wide-ranging discussion on career strategy, evaluating founders, serendipity, wealth, and much more. We've cross-posted that conversation here.<br /><br />Highlights:<br /><ul><li>The relevance of what you know vs. who you know has been a debate in the career strategy space for decades. Ben believes that the “what you know” is often dependent on the “who you know” because with the advent of the internet, p

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Howie Liu on Airtable's Early Days, Scaling, and AI

Howie Liu, founder and CEO of Airtable, was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha live in downtown San Francisco in front of an audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm.<br /><br />Highlights:<br /><br />- Embracing discomfort is part of the founder's journey. Learning to tolerate and even appreciate this discomfort is important. <br /><br />- Making decisions when you feel "almost ready" rather than waiting for perfect readiness is often necessary.<br /><br />- It's crucial to understand the underlying problems customers are trying to solve, not

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My Hoffman Process Experience

Reflections

Guillermo Rauch on AI, Scaling Vercel, and The Future of Web Apps

Guillermo Rauch is founder and CEO of Vercel, a company that provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. He was interviewed by Ben Casnocha, co-founder and general partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- Any modern cloud-native app is a nexus of services that all work together to create a coherent interface for the user. For example, Auth0 handles login, Stripe handles billing, React is used for the interfa

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How to Nail Product-Market Fit and Scale a B2B Company with Thejo Kote of Airbase

Thejo Kote (@thejo) talks to Village partner Ben Casnocha. Thejo is a two-time founder and CEO. His current company, Airbase, is a spend management platform serving companies with 100 and 5,000 employees like Coda, 15Five, Front, Marqueta, CaptivateIQ, Abnormal, and more. Airbase has raised over $200 million, has tens of millions in ARR, and is consistently ranked as a top spend management company by G2.<br /><br />Highlights:<br /><br />- Rather than jumping into building Airbase, he built high-fidelity mockups and went back to prospective customers and asked if they’d buy it to “pre-sell” it

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Encore: Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn’s Advice on Hiring, Fundraising, Scaling, and more

Michelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020.<br /> <br />They discussed:<br /> <br />- The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company.<br /> <br />- Her advice on fundraising after raising more than $300M for Cloudflare, including why you should keep the rest of the VC partnership in mind, and how to show rather than tell in your pitch.<br /> <br />- How they found the best talent

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Lessons from the Early Days at Uber and Advice for Founders with Kevin Novak

We're excited to launch a new EIR program for data science founders in partnership with Rackhouse Ventures, founded by Kevin Novak. Learn more about the program: https://www.villageglobal.vc/rackhouse-village-global-eir-program<br /><br />Kevin Novak (@novakkm), an early Uber employee, was instrumental in developing their data science program and was the creator of surge pricing.<br /><br />Highlights:<br /><br />- Kevin, originally a nuclear physicist, applied his analytical skills to develop Uber's first surge pricing model in three weeks—a task that would typically take six months in academ

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Reference Checking and Personality Assessments with Investor Graham Duncan

Graham Duncan (@GrahamDuncanNYC) is a longtime investor and author of a legendary essay on reference checking: https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/ He was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) during a special masterclass for Village Global founders and friends of the firm. <br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- Be aware of how your own mindset and mood affects your analysis of a candidate as well as how it impacts how the candidate shows up in the interview. For example, you might be anxious and stressed yourself and that makes the candidate n

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Insights on Capital Power Brokers from Hedge Funds to Venture Capital with Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Power Law

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of five books, including most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. He joined Olga Serhiyevich, head of investor relations, for this conversation.<br /><i> </i> <i></i><br />Takeaways:<br /> <br />- Sebastian wrote a book about hedge funds prior to The Power Law and he contrasts VCs and hedge fund managers by saying that VCs are much more extraverted. VCs and

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