Village Global Podcast (Village Global)

Ryan Hoover, CEO and founder of Product Hunt and David Spinks, CEO and founder of CMX Media talk all things community with Village co-founder and partner, host Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg). They talk about creating a business around a community, the differences between communities online and in real life, the pitfalls that have befallen some online communities and how to keep a company focused on its community as it expands.

Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) is founder of Product Hunt (sold to AngelList) and investor at Weekend Fund. He was formerly an EIR at Tradecraft and has also written over 150 essays, many of which have been featured in TechCrunch, Forbes, Pando, Fast Company and The Next Web.

David Spinks (@davidspinks) is founder and CEO of CMX Media and above all else, seeks to help and empower community builders. He's been studying and building online communities since he was 13 years old. Before CMX, David co-founded an online cooking school called Feast (part of 500 Startups) and BlogDash, a platform to help businesses with blogger outreach.

In this episode, Erik interviews Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) on cryptocurrencies, the web, building a company, identity, government, and the future in general. They explore the implications of cryptocurrencies on a variety of industries and talk about how society and the world of work might be transformed.

Balaji Srinivasan is CEO and co-founder of Earn.com and Board Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He has two Master's degrees and a PhD from Stanford, where he occasionally teaches.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc/podcast.

This episode is all about the future of music. Erik sat down with Parker Thompson, Aston Motes and Ed Aten to discuss how music has been regulated in the past and how that might change in the future, the argument for why copyright is a good thing for music, how blockchain might change the industry, why streaming music is a terrible business and what the music industry might look like ten years from now. Ed is CEO of Merchbar, Parker is partner at AngelList and 500 Startups and Aston was the first employee at Dropbox and is now part of UnitedMasters, Steve Stoute’s new company.

Erik talks with Malay Gandhi and Christine Lemke about the state of innovation in healthcare today, why it’s so difficult to build a company in the space, the blind spots that entrepreneurs and investors from outside the sector have, how to truly change behavior and what opportunities in healthcare Malay and Christine see.

Malay Gandhi is an active angel investor in early stage, health-focused startups and advises a number of leading health tech companies. He serves as an EIR at Greylock Partners and is partner with Christine at Ensemble Labs.

Christine Lemke is co-founder and President at Evidation Health, a company that helps individuals and healthcare companies understand and influence the behaviors that create better health outcomes using data. She is also partner with Malay at Ensemble Labs.

This episode is all about the state of biotech, with Dylan Morris of Charles River Ventures and Cain McClary of KdT Ventures. They discuss the difference in incentives when investing in biotech compared to more traditional venture capital investments and why the timelines for investments in biotech are so different compared to when most venture capitalists expect a return. They explain their respective investing theses and talk about what kinds of opportunities there are for startups in the space. Plus, they speculate on what the future might hold based on what’s happening in biotech today.

Erik (@eriktorenberg) sits down with Donnie Dinch (@donnie), Michael Galpert (@msg) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg) to discuss the state of consumer social today. They talk about why people call them crazy to try to build something in this sector today and why it’s like “walking up a downward escalator.” They dissect the uneasy relationship between the big players and the smaller companies in the space and why you need to “build with one eye over your shoulder.” They also discuss the emerging trends in consumer social, particularly as they relate to young people.

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Erik and his co-host for this episode, Abie Katz of August Capital, interview Amitt Mahajan (@amittm) of Presence Capital. He talks about the future of both VR and AR, what kinds of companies he’s been investing in and the many novel applications of VR in the enterprise setting. He tells us whether he thinks AR or VR will have a bigger impact on the world and tells us about some of the more interesting advances in the technology as well as what might be coming in the future. He also discusses the possible social implications of VR and AR.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast.

Erik interviews Ash Fontana (@ashfontana) of Zetta Venture Partners with his co-host for this episode, Abie Katz of August Capital. They talk about how Ash got his fund started and how and why he structured it the way he did. They discuss how to manage growth in a venture fund and the relative importance of being a recognizable brand in the space. They ask Ash what he looks for in a machine learning startup and Ash explains why sometimes it’s better to stay small. He also talks about how and why to be intellectually honest about your investing decisions.

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Erik and his co-host for this episode, Abie Katz of August Capital, interview Josh Elman (@joshelman), partner at Greylock Partners. Josh recounts the twists and turns of his career and how they led to him becoming a venture capitalist. He talks about the unique approach he takes when working with founders and how that has impacted the outcome of his investments. He tells us why you so infrequently find truly visionary founders and how Greylock thinks about their seed stage Discovery Fund. Josh also explains the candid candid career advice he would give to his younger self.

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Erik talks to Tom McLeod (@tmcleod3) and Ryan Delk (@delk) of Omni about the future of access. Omni provides physical storage but is also a marketplace, allowing you to rent what you need on-demand or make extra money renting out the things you’re not using. Tom and Ryan recount their entrepreneurial journey so far and what their plans are for the company in the future. They talk about the changing patterns of consumption by millennials and how those may change consumer goods in the future. Tom explains his theory of the three types of entrepreneurs and why he says in the world of work and entrepreneurship, “everything is like selling t-shirts.”

Disclosure: Erik is an investor in Omni.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast.

Erik talks to Sara Mauskopf (@sm) and Anne Halsall (@annekate) about Winnie, the “companion app for parents” which Erik calls the “most slept-on consumer social company today.” Sara and Anne tell us about Winnie’s unique combination of a community and a utility. They talk about how they bootstrapped the company to where it is today and their unique approach to company culture. They also discuss how they approach social media and play Long-Short, where Erik names a company and Sara and Anne say whether they’re long or short and why. They end with the advice Sara and Anne have for new founders.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast.

Selina Tobaccowala (@selinato) of Gixo and Holly Shelton (@hlshelton) of MoveWith join Erik for a discussion of the state of consumer fitness apps. The Gixo and MoveWith apps bring fitness to you. Selina and Holly break down the successes of a few other companies in the space and talk about what the business models look like for both online and offline fitness. Erik asks why it’s been so difficult to build a business in this space and they discuss the difficulty of behavior change and how to make fitness something you want to come back to again and again. Selina and Holly also talk about how VR/AR might affect fitness and why competition feels so good — even for non-competitive people.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast.

Kyle (@kylenakatsuji) talks to Erik about his company, Clearcover, which plans to offer a new way to buy insurance. Kyle has extensive experience in the insurance industry as an employee, investor and founder, and describes the ins and outs of the insurance industry to us. He explains why insurance companies spend such a big percentage of their revenue on advertising and the antiquated way that most insurance is sold these days. That leads to a discussion of how insurance companies and the industry in general might be disrupted. He tells us what a new kind of insurance company might look like and which companies he’s long or short on.

If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks!

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik talks to Keith Rabois (@rabois), Managing Director at Khosla Ventures and Jack Altman (@jaltma), CEO and co-founder of Lattice. Keith and Jack draw on their experience working at high-growth start-ups to explain how to attract the best people to your startup. They discuss how and when to hire and fire when you’re running an early stage company, the parallels between sports and work, and how to pick a co-founder. Jack says that he can tell a lot about a startup just by walking around the office and Keith tells us why a change in floor plan was the beginning of the end for his former company, Slide. Keith and Jack also discuss why “the best way to retain people is to win as a company.”

If you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform. Thanks!

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or on Twitter @villageglobal.

Rebecca Kaden (@rebeccak46) recently joined Union Square Ventures in in her hometown of New York City as a partner. She and Erik (@eriktorenberg) talk about why she joined USV and the three “waves” of investment theses for the firm. They discuss the unique dynamics in a partnership versus a company. She talks about her recent investment in Nurx, a company that specializes in delivery of birth control to women who might otherwise not be able to access it. Rebecca also talks about why network effects apply to more than just social networks and what opportunities are opening up in the consumer healthcare space. They also discuss potential opportunities in fintech and insurance and why now, in the age of Amazon, it’s still a great time to create a consumer brand.

If you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform. Thanks!

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik talks to Shilpi Kumar (@_shilpikumar), who helps Village Global find hardware investments and Seth Winterroth (@sethwinterroth), partner at Eclipse Venture Capital. They explain how hardware has been changing over the past several years and where they think it's going. They also explain why hardware devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are being sold at a loss and what might be enabled when machines are able to speak to each other more efficiently. They also talk about some of the coolest companies they've seen recently and how automation will change different industries.

We apologize for the quality of audio in this interview.

If you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform. Thanks!

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik is joined by Will Houghteling (@willhoughteling), founder of Strive, a competency-based marketplace, and Kara Nortman (@karanortman), the first investor in Strive and partner at Upfront Ventures. Will explains why he started Strive and how the educational needs of the middle 50% of American post-secondary students aren’t being met at the moment. Kara and Will discuss the merits of new forms of career-oriented education that have emerged in the past decade, like bootcamps, income-sharing agreements and employer-paid training. They also take a look at what other companies in the space are doing. Finally, they talk about why Will says "the future of work is emotional labor" and discuss the changes to meaning and identity coming with the advent of AI and universal basic income. And of course, "it's not a tech podcast without blockchain!"

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik talks to Adam Bry (@adampbry), co-founder and CEO of Skydio, a company that designs and manufactures autonomous drones. Adam gives us a rundown on where the company is at right now, how it got there and what we should be expecting in the drone space in the future. Erik asks where Adam would be investing if he was running a venture firm focused on the space and what potential roadblocks to the rise of the drones could be. Adam explains what some of the other companies in the space are working on and how an ordinary consumer’s life might change once autonomous drones become more prevalent.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Host Erik Torenberg talks to Jo Varshney, founder of VeriSIM Life, a Village portfolio company, and Eric Stefanich, director and senior scientist at Genentech.

They explain how VeriSIM is changing drug discovery and development and why more and more drugs are being developed "in silico." They also discuss how startups can work in harmony with big companies and how big pharma has become much more forward-thinking than it is usually given credit for. Erik asks what opportunities they would be looking at if they were a VC in the space right now and how software-as-a-service (SaaS) in pharmaceuticals has evolved. They also discuss dealing with different types of investors when you're starting a biotech company.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik talks to Polly Rodriguez (@polly_claire), co-founder of Unbound, Andrea Barrica (@abarrica), founder of O.school, and Gina Gutierrez (@Gina__Gutierrez), founder of Dipsea Stories, about the state of sexual wellness startups.

Just a heads-up — due to the topic of the discussion, there is some adult language in this episode.

These founders are on a mission to serve the half of the population that is currently not well served when it comes to sexual wellness. They explain the quirks of the unique market they’ve chosen to tackle, including little availability of data about the market and the hesitance of investors or partners to work with any company even marginally involved in sexuality.

They discuss how the youth of today are growing up in a very different environment when it comes to sexuality and why more and more have to turn to the private sector for sex-ed when the school system fails them.

The three explain how they reach their customers despite the limitations placed on them by traditional marketing channels, swap fundraising horror stories and explain how they plan to create disruption.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik talks to Carolyn Witte (@carolynwitte), co-founder and CEO of asktia.com and Hans Gangeskar (@hansois), co-founder and CEO of Nurx.

Carolyn and Hans explain how their companies are creating a new way for women to find healthcare. They recount how a new way of getting care has changed how women feel about their health.

The two founders explain why their business models are different from one another, even though they are in similar verticals. They also talk about what their future roadmap might look like and where the opportunities are for founders and investors alike in this space.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Kendrick Nguyen (@kendrickesq), CEO of Republic and Andy Bromberg (@andy_bromberg), CEO and co-founder of CoinList join Erik to talk about the changing landscape of investing in crypto.

They explain how their companies will allow more people to invest in cryptocurrencies, will change how startups are funded, and will impact the broader securities markets.

They discuss some of the challenges of securities regulation and how conventional investing will change with the rise of cryptocurrencies.

They also make some bold predictions about how the form of cryptocurrencies will change in the future and how individuals, companies, and governments might be involved.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Tammy Sun (@tammysun), CEO and co-founder of Carrot Fertility and Afton Vechery (@aaffttoonn), CEO and co-founder of Modern Fertility talk with Erik about this rapidly emerging space.

They explain how they got started in the fertility space, give us a rundown of the corporate landscape as it stands at the moment and explain why the market is changing so quickly. They also give us some insight into why it's difficult to build a business in this space and what kinds of opportunities they would be looking for if they were investors or prospective founders.

Erik also asks what the future might hold for their companies, how they aim to change how women think about their health, and what kinds of implications a new perspective on fertility might have for society in general.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik is joined by Eric Klein, partner at Lemnos VC, and Sankarshan Murthy (@sancartion), CEO and co-founder of Bumblebee Homes.

They talk about trends in urbanization, housing and storage in America and why changing attitudes towards consumption present a huge opportunity for investors and founders alike.

Sankarshan explains how what his team is working on at Bumblebee Homes will change how and where people choose to live. Eric talks about why he invested in Bumblebee, the other companies he’s invested in so far, and other investment opportunities he's looking for.

They explain why now is a good time to start a hardware startup and how changes in the market have enabled anyone to build a prototype in their garage with off-the-shelf components and free software publicly available on GitHub.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik is joined by Nicole Quinn (@Nik_Quinn), Investing Partner at Lightspeed and Lee Edwards (@terronk), former CTO of Teespring and active angel investor.

They explain why they’re bullish on consumer packaged goods startups and which industries they see startups disrupting in the future. They also discuss why they think there will be so much growth in the space, especially in e-commerce.

They debate the relative importance of having a technically sophisticated founder in a CPG startup and whether a new CPG startup needs to have a strong brand from Day 1. They also talk about the new forms of marketing that CPG startups are taking advantage of.

Erik asks what kind of advice they would give to new CPG founders and what kinds of pitfalls new founders need to avoid.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favourite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Joining Erik on this episode are Maia Bittner (@maiab), co-founder of Pinch, and Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi), FinTech partner at 500 Startups.

They go over the variety of sectors being disrupted by FinTech companies these days, including insurance, credit reporting, personal financial management, capital markets, financial planning, international finance and even banking in the developing world.

Erik asks what kinds of opportunities Sheel and Maia see for founders and entrepreneurs as well as the pitfalls faced by different types of companies in the space. Sheel explains how he subdivides his fund and explains the difference between an “enabler” and a “disruptor.”

They talk about why FinTech startups often have an advantage in distribution as opposed to product, contrasting with the competitive advantage a startup typically has. Of course, they also cover crypto and the opportunities in FinTech that blockchain and tokenization provide — as well as where the crypto hype might be overblown.

This is a special live episode that was recorded at Village HQ in San Francisco on June 14 2018. The event was put on in partnership with Xoogler, a network of former Googlers who have come together to help each other with their startup ambitions.

Village Global co-founder Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) chatted with Jo Varshney (@jo_getter), founder and CEO of VeriSIM Life and Kiran Bellubbi (@smalldozes), founder of Keyo, about their experience with the Village Network Catalyst program.

Jo and Kiran explain what it was like to be a founder in the Network Catalyst program, including how the team at Village helped them with their business model, leveraged Village's unique structure as a network to their advantage and guided them through the fundraising process.

This special live episode was recorded at the Atrium offices in San Francisco on June 20 2018. Village Global co-founder Erik Torenberg hosted a fireside chat with Daniel Kan, co-founder and COO of Cruise Automation and Qasar Younis, former COO of YCombinator.

They discussed all things fundraising, providing an inside look into the world of VC funding and exposing some of the subtler points of fundraising for seed and Series A rounds. They discuss topics like dealing with VCs, refining your pitch and the importance of metrics in a Series A round. They also talked about prepping for meetings with VCs, what motivates VCs, how to efficiently backchannel via your network and transitioning from a seed round to a Series A round.

They finished with an enlightening Q&A session, taking questions from the live audience at Atrium.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Joining Erik for this interview are Joey Krug (@joeykrug) of Augur and Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) of Decentraland. Erik and Tony interview Joey about the process of building Augur, his new startup that launched on July 9 2018.

Joey explains what he envisions for Augur, why it’s “the future of forecasting” and how the process of building it has unfolded over the past two years.

He talks about the wide array of possible uses for prediction markets and why he thinks markets in general are the biggest opportunity in crypto. Joey also explains some common misconceptions about crypto and why he thinks we are not yet in a bubble.

He explains how open source blockchain technology is like NASA giving out the code to control the space shuttle and allowing anyone to write commands for it, and why security and privacy are so important in cryptocurrency. They also have a round of underrated vs. overhyped.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, joins Erik for a primer on prediction markets. He explains how prediction markets work and why they are one of the best methods of forecasting the future that we have.
 Robin explains how useful prediction markets can be in a wide variety of fields, including some unexpected ones.

Robin and Erik speculate on why prediction markets haven’t seen widespread adoption yet and what barriers still stand in their way. They also discuss how to mitigate some of the potential pitfalls of prediction markets and how decision-making based on prediction markets can benefit society in general.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Simon de la Rouviere (@simondlr), crypto developer and thought leader, and Trent McConaghy (@trentmc0), founder of Ocean Protocol, join Erik for an enlightening discussion of crypto.

They explain the vast societal transformation that will be brought by blockchain, sometimes in ways that are hard to imagine today. They tell us why we are just at the beginning of a new revolution and how it compares to the rise of the web in the 90s.

They promise that “things are going to get weird.” For example, the future your kids inhabit might be one where they earn money as “meme traders” and where cars are not only self-driving but self-owning as well.

They also explain why in the future “if it’s not on the blockchain, it didn’t happen” and why it might become very difficult for us to discern what reality in fact actually is.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik is joined by Tim Swift and Ariel Poler on this episode of the podcast. Tim Swift is founder and CEO of Roam Robotics and Ariel Poler (@ariel) is an angel investor.

They discuss how the human body could be engineered for the better and discuss a number of ways to do that, including exoskeletons, brain-computer interfaces and nootropics. They fill us in on who the founders and companies are who are currently working on those difficult problems. Erik asks what those companies promise to do and what obstacles they are facing.

Ethics is an important topic when it comes to bioengineering and the trio discuss some of the more important ethical considerations around these issues and how society’s view of what is ethical or not has evolved over time as new inventions have come about.

They also discuss some of the unique challenges when it comes to building a business in an area where it might take ten years for one’s work to come to fruition. They talk about the type of investor who is interested in the space, plans to invest for the long-term and is willing to be patient to see a return.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc/podcast or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Erik and guest co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) of Decentraland interview managing partners of Multicoin Capital Tushar Jain (@TusharJain_) and Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani). They explain why many people are underestimating the potential impact of blockchain on the web and on the world in general. In their words, “tokenizing shares of Apple stock and putting it on the blockchain will be akin to PDF’ing a newspaper and putting it online in 1995 — and thinking this is how the internet will change news as an industry.”

They discuss a number of other topics within the crypto universe and cover some of the more interesting recent developments in the crypto world. Tushar and Kyle also break down their recent blog post about the Web3 Stack and discuss the obstacles that crypto and the blockchain are facing and how they can be overcome.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Josh Stein, CEO of Harbor, Stephen McKeon (@sbmckeon), finance professor at the University of Oregon, and Parker Thompson (@pt), seed-stage investor, partner at AngelList and token skeptic.

The guests give an overview of all things tokenized securities. Josh tells us why he’s so enthusiastic about the rise of the blockchain and recounts the origin story of Harbor. They talk about why it can be so complex to manage compliance with securities rules and regulations that vary around the world and how the blockchain can solve a big part of that problem.

They discuss why liquidity is so important when it comes to any type of security and how the blockchain can turn illiquid assets into liquid ones. For example, in the future, you might be able to own part of a sports team or part of a famous Monet if the owner decides to tokenize those assets.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

With Erik for this episode are:

- Aaron Batalion (@abatalion), formerly partner at Lightspeed and founder of LivingSocial
- Vinny Lingham (@VinnyLingham), CEO of Civic and GP at Multicoin Capital and Newtown Partners
- David King (@dksf), angel investor and crypto curator

They have a wide-ranging and lively discussion about a number of topics around the state of crypto in 2018 and make some bold predictions for the future. The three cover the geopolitics of cryptocurrency, talk about how digital currency interacts with governments around the world, and the impact of large platforms like Facebook on cryptocurrency.

They debate the merits of various cryptocurrencies and predict which might be able to achieve scale first. They also talk about privacycoins, stablecoins, and the hurdles that each of those forms face. The trio also cover the recent wave of ICOs and speculate on how many of those companies will still be viable years from now.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode, Erik talks to Ryan King (@frothcity), co-founder of FOAM protocol, and Jehan Tremback (@jtremback), founder of Althea Mesh.

They explain how the blockchain makes it possible to know for certain where exactly somebody is at a given time and how that enables new technologies. For example, in the area of smart contracts, if someone bought a train ticket and the train is late, they can prove where they are to request a refund. Ryan has been working at FOAM protocol to make things like this a reality.

Jehan’s work at Althea Mesh allows individuals to create their own decentralized access to the internet, which is also newly enabled by the blockchain. He explains how he hopes to create a platform in the spirit of Airbnb to enable people to become suppliers of internet to others.

Ryan and Jehan discuss how their companies are complimentary to each other and how their respective technologies might work together in the future. They also cover the positive impacts of decentralization, the effects of incumbents, and what they would like to see happen in the space in the future.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Trent McConaghy (@trentmc0) returns for another interview with Erik. He’s the founder of Ocean Protocol and BigchainDB.

In this episode, he starts by explaining Ocean Protocol’s mission and gives us a history of how the overall philosophy of the web has changed over the years, going from what could be called Web 1 to Web 2.0 to the yet-to-be-written story of Web 3. He explains how the web started out as a tool for democratizing access and how Web 2.0 created some undesirable effects when it comes to the siloing of information, questions about privacy, and the prevalence of advertising. Trent is hopeful though that Web 3 will be a return to the roots of Web 1.

He lays out a compelling case for why several of the web’s biggest names should be tokenized and how that will remedy the current case of misaligned incentives between company and users.

Trent also helps us imagine a world where AI and blockchain are working to amplify each other and what kinds of changes for society that might portend. He explains a number of scenarios related to digitally autonomous organizations, self-driving cars, road infrastructure, medicine and art.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Amitt Mahajan (@amittm), co-founder and CTO of Rare Bits and investor at Presence Capital, joins Erik and his guest co-host Tony Sheng of Decentraland for this episode.

They dive into all things non-fungible tokens, explaining how they work, why they matter, and why they have so much potential. They explain why you you really only have tenuous ownership of the virtual goods that you purchase online and how the company that sold it to you can unilaterally take it back. Amitt and Tony get you to imagine the potential use cases if you could take virtual goods purchased in one game and take them to another game, re-sell them, or tokenize them.

The three carry on to discuss the issues around the discussion of crypto more generally and how to get a broader audience to use crypto by ending the fixation on the technology itself and instead focusing on the value to the end-user. They talk about how to solve the supply and distribution problems when it comes to digital goods and discuss how marketing of crypto projects might evolve in the future.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Alan Curtis of Radar Relay, a Village portfolio company, joins Erik to talk about what Radar Relay is working on and to discuss what is needed to get bring the world into the token economy. Alan explains the four main categories of tokens: utility, security, collectible and currency. He then compares and contrasts centralized and decentralized exchanges for those tokens.

Alan gets into what a relay is, why it matters, and what the future of Radar Relay will be. He explains market makers in crypto, why he decided to build on top of 0x and discusses the pros and cons of a business built on another company’s platform.

They also discuss what the bottlenecks to widespread adoption of crypto are, what kinds of moats he hopes to build as well as what kinds of moats the incumbents in the traditional finance have.

Quotable lines from this episode:

“The ethos around blockchain is about self-agency — it’s about efficacy.”

“Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not.”

“For any cool project online there will always be those 1000 true fans, but if you’re not thinking deeply about how this crosses the chasm and how you get your next users, your project is probably going nowhere fast.”

“I think most people underestimate the power of brand in the long term and overestimate it in the short term.”

“A decentralized exchange is an imprecise term that people have been using as a noun when in fact it is a verb.”

“We’re moving a world where the centralized exchanges become fiat brokerages.”

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Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik for this episode are Felix Feng (‪@felix2feng)‬, founder of Set Protocol and Nadav Hollander (@NadavAHollander), founder of Dharma Protocol.

Felix and Nadav explain their respective companies and what they are looking to do for the open financial system. They talk about how the coming wave of decentralization in financial services will bring the same accessibility and ease of use that individuals are accustomed to with Web 2.0 services to financial services as well.

They discuss the opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrency to scale given that as big as it has gotten over the past few years, they still account for only a minuscule portion of the value of the entire financial system. A lot of attention is focused on venture capital and how that could be disrupted by blockchain, but they talk about how debt financing is many orders of magnitude larger than VC.

Felix and Nadav explore what the implications of everything being tokenized might be and Erik also asks about what they are excited about in terms of products and protocols in the space as well as what they would love to see built in the future.

Quotable lines from this episode:

“If the cost of issuing an asset goes to zero, what happens when everything is traded? Then things get really interesting when you add derivatives and loans on top of that.”

“Imagine you’re in a virtual reality world and you’ve made a virtual piece of art that’s hanging in a digital museum and you get revenue from people visiting it every so often. Now imagine you tokenize it or draw a loan against it, and pay off your mortgage in the real world.”

“If you look back on this podcast in 20 years, it’s probably not going to age well because everything [that will be tokenized] is going to be even weirder because we have had no idea what these things are going to look like.”

“I think that blockchain is going to create new asset classes that will be tremendously more valuable and will look like almost nothing we’ve seen in the traditional world.”

“If there are going to be monoliths that emerge from this in some capacity, they’re going to have to capitalize on some irredeemably scarce resource that can’t be traded or commoditized, and I think it’s likely that resource will be trust.”

“The high end estimate for the value of all derivative contracts is 1.2 quadrillion. I didn’t even know that was the number after a trillion.”

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Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In a first-ever two-hour episode for Venture Stories by Village Global, Erik talks to two of the most interesting crypto thinkers around: Arjun Balaji (@arjunblj), crypto investor, trader and incubator, and Murad Mahmudov (@MustStopMurad), crypto analyst and angel investor.

In this wide-ranging and mind-expanding interview, the three discuss a number of topics relating to cryptocurrencies, effects on government, economic history, and predictions for the future, among many other things including:

- The arguments for Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies and whether Bitcoin can be toppled
- Why Bitcoin is less like digital gold and more like “digital nuclear weapons”
- Whether Bitcoin will be “the MySpace of money”
- A history of the Austrian school of economics
- The impacts of hard forks on a community
- How competition between monies accelerates capitalism
- Whether blockchain as a technology is overrated or underrated
- The parallels between cryptocurrency and the Asian construction bubble
- Institutional movement into cryptocurrencies
- The psyche of crypto hedge fund managers
- How crypto changes how countries compete for tax revenues

Quotable lines from this episode:

“The creation of a non-sovereign sound money system has the potential to be one of the most significant events in our lifetime.” - AB

“I view money as a good, just like anything else, and I don’t believe we have pure capitalism until we have competition among currencies.” - MM

“Cryptocurrencies in general and in particular Bitcoin are a higher quality form of money.” - MM

“Through the fat money lens, all tokens are cryptocurrencies.” - AB

“The whole market is like a prediction market for which one or few coins will be the long term money winner.” - MM

“Bitcoin is the Schelling point of the market”. - MM

“Despite all the fancy bells and whistles that blockchains enable, the fact that nobody can print more Bitcoin is the greatest innovation here.” - MM

“The idea that money has to be continuously in circulation is completely non-sensical.” -MM

“We’re not trying to build another PayPal here, we’re trying to disrupt central banking.” -MM

“Miners don’t control Bitcoin, businesses don’t control bitcoin, users and full nodes control Bitcoin.” - AB

“As time goes on, everyone is going to become a Bitcoin maximalist whether they like it or not.” - MM

“The number one thing that we can learn from economic history is that if there is an actor that can create more money, they will.” - AB

“If there’s free competition around money then the market would never naturally converge around something [the US Dollar] that is expanding at 6% a year. It’s totally irrational.”

“Just as we witnessed the separation of church and state, in the next 20-30 years we are going to witness the separation of money and state.” - MM

“People who say capitalism is dead or that we are entering the end of capitalism don’t know what they are talking about, because capitalism is going to go into overdrive.” -AB

“What previously took a 200-person team in 2000, took a 100-person team in 2007 and takes a 5- or 10-person team now.” - AB

“We’re entering an era where businesses will be able to be built and run on the internet by one person.” - AB

“These tokens suck as money or are absolutely and utterly useless.” -MM

“Almost all of these tokens were unethical fundraising scams by the founders.” - MM

“This whole thing [the ICO boom] was a form of IQ arbitrage, where people took advantage of these overvalued shit tokens… Do you want to walk around New York and use a different form of currency at each store?” - MM

“Erik, if you’re looking to hold your wealth in the equivalent of gift cards to the Gap, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.” - AB

“The hype around blockchain is nothing more than an indicator that Silicon Valley is largely oriented less around the original counterculture movement and much moreso positioned as a form of opportunistic greed behaviours.” - AB

“The monetary premium that is embedded inside [altcoins] is purely psychosocial, it’s purely cognitive. It’s almost like an ongoing hallucination of our collective unconsciousness.” - MM

“The recurring selling of narratives that Murad mentioned is the core business of most crypto hedge funds. They’re not active traders, they’re just early investors that then sell the dream and then sell their bags on many retail investors.” - AB

“One of my favourite things that Murad has ever said is that blockchains don’t create revenues, they destroy revenues.” - AB

“If your product is open source and your rent is too high, you risk getting forked or re-architected by someone else charging less, and it becomes a race to the bottom.” - MM

“Let’s be honest, on-chain governance is essentially the rule of the rich.” - MM

“No governance is the best governance, or at least for neo-gold.” - MM

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Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), CTO of Coinbase, joined Erik on stage in San Francisco at the Founders Embassy Borderless Summit in June 2018 for a fascinating conversation about the coming impact of blockchain technology. They discuss how the world will change as work and entertainment — but especially finance — become virtual. Balaji explains why governments will need to compete for the best individuals and explains the new role of government in a “borderless” world.

He also discusses his recent exits and his new role as CTO of Coinbase. Balaji gives his surprising advice for new grads looking to start a company and explains why your “personal burn rate” is one of the most important metrics to track. Erik talks to Balaji about Balaji's lesser known history buff side and they discuss world finance, world history, and China.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Today’s guest is Jimmy Song (@jimmysong), crypto developer and teacher. He is a venture partner at Blockchain Capital and creator of the Programming Blockchain course.

Jimmy has been a crypto developer for a long time now (in crypto terms), teaches programming blockchain, and has written a number of influential posts on crypto. He talks about how he got into crypto and what about it was so appealing to him. He explains how an economic lens, rather than a technical lens, is what brought him to blockchain.

Jimmy and Erik discuss the merits of Bitcoin versus other coins, why Jimmy believes Bitcoin will win, and what misconceptions VCs have about blockchain. They discuss what makes a good store of value, the biological impulse humans have to hoard that which is scarce and the potential impact of Bitcoin 30 years from now. They also discuss a good amount of economic history, what makes a true “hard money” as well as why war led to the gold standard going away.

To apply for a scholarship for Jimmy’s Programming Blockchain course, visit www.programmingblockchain.com.

Quotable lines from this episode:

“Money is strengthened when it doesn’t change whereas tech is strengthened when you iterate and try different things and see what works for the market.”

“The big thing that Bitcoin brings to the market is hard money, which is what disappeared when Roosevelt seized gold and all that other stuff.”

“It’s not just armies against armies, it’s entire countries against entire countries now, very literally speaking, because the government can take away all the money and wealth away from the populace and use that for their war effort.”

“You don’t have to believe that it has value, it’s enough that other people value it. I might not value Bitcoin but as long as other people value Bitcoin I will value Bitcoin.”

“The things that make it a good medium of exchange are totally different than what makes it a store of value.”

-

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) of Decentraland interview Nic Carter (@nic__carter), partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coinmetrics.io.

Nic explains why Bitcoin might end up like gold, where everyday people have little day-to-day interaction with it but it has a big influence on the monetary system, and how Bitcoin can be a check on the behavior of central banks.

He explains why he started Castle Island Ventures, explains its philosophy and how they plan to invest. He also explains his take on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and whether any of the altcoins will turn out to be worth anything.

He explains why he is bearish on DAOs in the short-term but in the long-term is very bullish. Nic also talks about how projects can improve their governance structures and how users can spot potential governance problems within projects.

Quotable lines from this episode:

“You don’t need the ‘gold standard’ to be the day to day currency, just like in the era of the gold standard people didn’t transact in units of gold.”

“I eventually think we’ll get to this world where we have the advantages of the cryptocurrency capital raise mechanisms together with the guarantees of equity — we just need to marry those concepts.”

“I’m kind of heretical in that I think there is a really big role for financial institutions to play in the crypto asset story.”

“I think that voting makes people feel more comfortable being governed because they think they have buy-in into the governance system.”

“The highest ROI on these projects is transparency — to be so transparent that it hurts.”

-

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by two very exciting guests for this episode — Bill Tai, venture capitalist and director at Bitfury, and Derek Hsue (@derek_hsue), investor at Blockchain Capital.

The three have a very engaging discussion about the mining landscape in cryptocurrencies, the similarities and differences between now and the early growth of the semiconductor industry, as well as the issues, obstacles and misconceptions standing in the way of new entrants to the mining sector.

They get into the details on mining operations, how the architecture of certain coins impacts the equipment that mining can be done on, and how the underlying math is different between Ethereum and Bitcoin.

There are also a number of impromptu history lessons courtesy of Bill, including how Wall Street got its name and went from a place to trade furs to the NYSE of today.

They also discuss the future of exchanges, why buying into an ICO means buying into a community and a belief rather than something immediately valuable, and why we are headed for a massive reset of capitalism.

Quotable lines from this episode:

“In the start it’s kind of like riding a little bicycle and you see a pothole, you just go around it, but pretty soon you’re driving a freight train on a track and you can’t get off.” - BT

“You’re going to have to come up with a check for 50-100 million dollars to be noticed by a semiconductor fab.” - BT

“An upstart two years from now is probably going to have to take down 1000 megawatts just to start.” - BT

“It’s really hard to get a venture type return from a mining operation, unless you’re really early on in a chain, or just extremely, much better than everyone else at producing hardware.” - DH

“It all boiled down to, can you bribe a politician with an empty city in China to give you his power plant for a bit of money every month? …It turns out that Ethereum is a more concentrated mining ecosystem than Bitcoin.” - BT

“Programming in Bitcoin is a bit like programming in assembly or DOS, where Ethereum is like programming in a high-level language that anyone that has done an iPhone app can work with.” - BT

“If you look at the largest asset managers in the world, they don’t have a huge incentive to trade in a peer-to-peer manner.” - DH

“It’s not about creating a product that is tailored to the world’s current behavior, it’s about providing that option for non-custodial and a trustless financial interaction.” - DH

“We’re at that point today where we’re all standing under that buttonwood tree with our virtual assets, trying to figure out where to go.” - BT

“The total of all debt in the world is 275 trillion, which is 3.18 times world GDP, it’s growing at 25 trillion a year, and is growing way faster than world GDP is growing.” - BT

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Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Vijay Boyapati (@real_vijay), software engineer, crypto thinker and proponent of Austrian economics, joins Erik on this episode to talk about a number of interesting topics.

They start with a primer on Austrian economics, what makes it different from other schools of economics, and why economics is a unique science with different schools of thought — “there isn’t a Chicago school of physics or a Marxist school of chemistry.”

Vijay speculates on why Austrian economics has become a niche school of economics and analyzes Bitcoin and current economic policy through the lens of Austrian economics. He gives his opinion on the fed, fractional reserve banking and debunks some misconceptions that people have about Bitcoin.

They finish with a lightning round discussing what famous economists like Hayek or Friedman would think about Bitcoin. Vijay also discusses the Bitmain IPO and what Facebook entering the cryptocurrency space might mean for the “incumbents.”

Quotable lines from this episode:

“You look at academia and there’s probably 10 Keynesian economists for every Chicago economist and there’s probably 10 Chicago economists for every Austrian economist.”

“It’s sad that political expediency has trumped the pursuit of truth.”

“There isn’t like a Chicago school of physics or a Marxist school of chemistry.”

“Austrians really believe that an economy grows through investment, capital formation and entrepreneurial activities [rather than through consumption].”

“The monetary premium is the value and purchasing power that it has that isn’t explained by its use value.”

“All monies throughout history are bubbles and the bubbles don’t necessarily need to pop.”

“I think it’s [Bitcoin] the most important innovation in money in a thousand years.”

“The thing that’s exciting about Bitcoin is that it gives you a property right but doesn’t require anyone to enforce that property right.”

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Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean), the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, joins Erik for a very interesting and highly quotable interview.

He expands on a number of topics from his book but also gets into a lot that isn’t in the book. He recounts the story of money from an Austrian perspective and describes why the world never really had a complete gold standard. Saif explains how government became addicted to printing money, how Bitcoin could turn out to be a better version of gold and how it might replace central banks entirely.

Saif talks about why Silicon Valley has been and may still be mistaken about Bitcoin and blockchain, and why the analogies of the early days of the internet don’t really apply. He also talks about why the blockchain as a concept has been overhyped and why Bitcoin won’t be as instantaneous and low-fee as you might think.

He also talks about what kinds of threats Bitcoin might face, how the world will change when Bitcoin becomes the new standard, and how personal finance and capitalism might evolve in a Bitcoin world.

(Murray Rothbard is the economist that Saif references early in the episode).

Quotable lines from this episode:

“You can’t omit the fact that you took a sledgehammer to the laptop before complaining that it doesn’t work.”

“Ever since then it’s been a wild ride of governments having discovered this addiction to printing money to finance themselves to do everything.”

“It’s a choice for people to opt-out of the modern nation state with all of its hefty bill that it sends you every year in the form of inflation.”

“Gold’s emergence as a money happens on the market, not because of government decree.”

“You can’t systematize human action and behavior into mathematical equations that allow you do calculations to predict an outcome.”

“The real problem is the fascination with all the buzzwords around all these projects that hang around Bitcoin pretending to be the next big thing, which we’ve been seeing since the beginning of Bitcoin. It’s the same story always and always ends in the same sad way.”

“Everybody wants everything to do everything they’ve ever read in a sci-fi novel.”

“Everybody is not capable of reasoning just beyond an analogy.”

“People think of Bitcoin as a brand… and it’s only natural to think that if it’s Pepsi, it’s going to have its Coca-Cola — but we have the internet, and we don’t have another competitor, because it’s a protocol.”

“All of these other uses that people want to attach to blockchain, I humbly submit the thesis that none of them actually matter.”

“I don’t conduct criminal activity but if I did I would definitely make sure I would not record it on a ledger accessible to millions of people instantaneously around the world.”

“Without a lender of last resort, fractional reserve banking is not going to work.”

“Every cent of investment will have to come from a cent of saving and people think that’s a horrible thing, but that’s a great thing, it’s how any society thrives.”

“The laws of economics don’t stop functioning just because government just said they should stop functioning in that sector.”

“Capital is just a market good like any other, there’s supply and there’s demand.”

“The amount of gold today that is held in global central banks is many times larger than what was held in central banks during the time of the gold standard.”

“If governments want to kill Bitcoin I think the best strategy would be to return to the gold standard and to offer everybody free markets in banking.”

“I know it’s cool to go around on college campuses and talk about destroying capitalism and all of that stuff but really it makes no sense. It’s an insane kind of suicidal death wish.”

-

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Shawn Xu is our researcher, Colin Campbell is our audio engineer, and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

This episode of Venture Stories is co-hosted by Dani Grant (@thedanigrant), analyst at USV.

She talks with three leaders in the distributed computing space:

- Dan Desjardins, CEO of Distributed Compute Labs
- Chandler Song (@chandlersyf), founder and CEO of Ankr Network
- Greg Osuri (@GregOsuri), founder of Akash Network and CEO of Overclock Labs

They talk about what distributed computing is, why it has so much potential and why this is an exciting time to be involved in the space.

The guests talk about what kinds of applications are enabled by distributed computing and how for example, a hospital can leverage the computing power of all of its computers that are sitting idle at night to do medical research.

They discuss the different ways to compensate users for the use of their computer resources and the different approaches to distributing problems and tasks to distributed resources.

They also discuss the challenges facing their companies and how to think about competing or not competing with incumbents like Amazon and Google.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik's co-host for this episode is Myles Snider (@myles_snider), research associate at Multicoin Capital. They talk to Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb) who is a GP at MetaStable Capital.

They discuss where stablecoins are now and envision what they could be in the future. They compare and contrast stablecoins and fiat and explain why someone would hold a stablecoin that's indexed to fiat.

They talk about some of the applications for stablecoins and the different kinds of stablecoins. The trio also discuss why you would want to invest in a stablecoin, what the Oracle Problem is and how it could be solved, as well as what kinds of hurdles stand in the way of widespread usage of stablecoins.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Elena Nadolinski (@leanthebean), an engineer interested in the privacy space, and Avichal Garg (@avichal), Managing Partner at Electric Capital, join Erik on this episode to discuss privacy coins. They break down what a privacy coin is and why privacy is important in crypto.

They talk about the three main privacy coins: Monero, Zcash and Grin — and discuss why it's important or not to have an auditable record of transactions, whether people will pay taxes, and whether the government will be able to penetrate a privacy coin.

They discuss whether people will care about privacy given that less than 3% of all cryptocurrency transactions are done with a privacy coin. Avichal points out that perhaps not a lot of people will care about privacy but a large amount of dollars will.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Arianna Simpson (@AriannaSimpson), VC and managing director at Autonomous Partners and Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) of Ikigai Asset Management join Erik on this episode.

Arianna starts by explaining her post about false precision and why you don't want to be "very precisely wrong." They talk various models and calculations and how to value different crypto assets.

They also talk about Bitcoin maximalists, what the landscape of crypto networks looks like, and whether the huge trades made in the past few years on crypto merit the creation of a fund to try to replicate those returns in the future.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Michael Goldstein (@bitstein), president of the Nakamoto Institute and co-host of the Noded Podcast, joins Erik on this episode. Between him and Erik they break down some of the basic concepts around Bitcoin and explain why it's important in general.

Michael explains why he's keen to feast on the tears of nocoiners and breaks down a number of the common misconceptions about Bitcoin. He also talks Austrian economics and potential roadblocks for Bitcoin.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik's guests for this episode are:

- Andrew Cronk (@ajcronk), partner at Figment
- Meher Roy (@MeherRoy), co-founder of Chorus One
- Jake Brukhman (@jbrukh), founder of CoinFund

They talk about a number of interesting topics, including the unique way that an investment firm participates in the growth of a company in the crypto world and why it's more important to be a network participant than just a funder.

The four of them go through what a validator is and what being one entails. They talk about the big differences in people composition of a crypto fund versus a typical VC fund and they explain what kind of expertise the people at a crypto fund need to have.

The group also discusses evaluating crypto networks, the relative importance of "user experience" vs. "developer experience" and what it means to have LPs and institutional investors paying attention to the space.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Elena Nadolinski (@leanthebean), an engineer interested in the privacy space, and Howard Wu (@1HowardWu), co-founder of Dekrypt Capital, talk to Erik on this episode about zero-knowledge proofs and privacy.

They talk about why privacy is important in general and the benefits of privacy in the crypto world. They explain what a zero-knowledge proof is and Howard talks about some of the more recent developments in cryptography.

They get into how ZKPs are being used today and the promise they hold for future applications.
Elena and Howard also get into the differences between privacy coins.

Quotable lines from this episode:

"Privacy is one of those things where people don’t appreciate it until they don’t have it."
-HW

"Just because a friend of mine and I shared a coffee, doesn’t mean I get to have the right to see all of their transactions. If we were to live in a world where all we used were cryptocurrency blockchains to do all our computations, I would basically be able to see all the transactions of all time from all the people I’ve ever interacted with." -EN

"How do you ensure the integrity of a computation, especially one you outsource to a server elsewhere?" - HW

"Zero-knowledge proofs basically allow you to say 'I can’t tell you the secret but I can prove to you that I know the secret.'" - HW

"Scalability is like the offense on a football team and privacy is like the defense on the football team. They’re both equally important but the quarterback is much more sexy than the defense." -HW

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Nik Bhatia (@timevalueofbtc), writer and Bitcoin thinker, joins Erik and co-host Myles Snider of Multicoin Capital on this episode to talk layers of Bitcoin and the Lightning network.

Nik explains how he got his start in the Bitcoin world from traditional finance. They explain the various layers of money and Bitcoin.

They also talk about whether there will be fractional reserve ownership of Bitcoin, whether Bitcoin banks might exist someday and when a Bitcoin ETF might make an appearance.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode Erik talks to Aparna Krishnan (@aparnalocked), co-founder of Mechanism Labs and Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb), GP at MetaStable Capital.

They discuss a number of themes around Aparna's research paper, talk about what it means to find consensus, and they go through the various protocols that exist now to try and do that. They also talk about what kinds of applications these various protocols could have.

They explain what a block is, what proof of work and proof of stake mean, and why the longest chain rule could be a potential pitfall for Bitcoin.

Reading List For This Episode:

Non- Technical:
- MultiChain's blog
- Ashley Lannquist’s blog
- https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/centres/alternative-finance/downloads/2018-08-20-conceptualising-dlt-systems.pdf
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf

Technical (new to the space):
- cryptoeconomics.study
- Vitalik’s blog posts
- Mechanism Labs blog, GitHub
- Blockchain at Berkeley blog and educational content

Looking to get into research:
- Consensus: https://github.com/Mechanism-Labs/MetaAnalysis-of-Alternative-Consensus-Protocols/blob/master/MetaAnalysis.pdf, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.03936.pdf
- Privacy/ Security: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.00916.pdf
- Smart Contracts: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/192.pdf
- IC3!

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode Erik and co-host Miles Snyder of Multicoin Capital talk to Ameen Soleimani (@ameensol), CEO at SpankChain, and Jehan Tremback (@JTremback), founder of Althea Mesh.

Ameen is one of the inventors of a token-curated registry. He discusses what a token-curated registry is, what the current use cases for them are and what they could possibly be in the future.

They talk about AdChain and the problem of advertising fraud online. The three of them discuss the "chicken and egg" problem that TCRs face. They also get into what kinds of uses Jehan could have for TCRs for the physical world at his company, Althea.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Dandelion Mane (@decentralion), founder of SourceCred, joins Erik on this mind-expanding episode about identity. Dandelion explains how they came upon the idea for a decentralized reputation system and how it could change how people live — both online and in the real world.

Dandelion explains some potential improvements that could be made to online communities to improve the level of discourse and avoid the outrage mobs that are currently too prevalent in those communities.

They also talk about a number of other topics around identity in general, like how one's name affects how you think, the many sides of any given person, and why you should choose your own name.

Mentioned In This Episode:

- Seeing Like A State by James Scott

- Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1: Nosedive

- Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

- Accelerando by Charles Stross

- Homesteading in the Noosphere by Eric Raymond

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Andrew Cronk (@ajcronk), partner at Figment, joins Erik again for this bonus episode going into generalized mining. Andrew contrasts sending someone money via PayPal with sending someone money via a decentralized network.

He talks about whether firms with different approaches in the space can co-exist and what it means to be a validator. He discusses why it's important for a firm to be an active participant in a network.

Andrew also explains how and why they've set up Figment to be itself a decentralized firm with no office and individuals working around the world.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Nicholas Chirls (@nchirls), partner at Notation Capital, and Joe Lallouz (@JoeLallouz), entrepreneur, angel, and founder of Grand St.

They explain how they got their start in the space and the genesis of their respective firms. They talk about generalized mining and how a firm might get into mining.

They discuss the various crypto networks and talk about how the way an investment firm provides value to a crypto company has changed. Nicholas and Joe also talk about traditional VC firms and how theymight get into the mining space.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik for this episode are Robert Mittendorff (@doctorrem), partner at Norwest Venture Partners, and Ambar Bhattacharyya (@AmbarBh), managing director at Maverick Ventures.

In a continuation of the Requests for Startups series, Erik asks Robert and Ambar what they would like to see built in the digital health space.

They discuss which spaces are underdeveloped and are ripe for opportunities versus which spaces don't have room for new entrants. The unique nature of the regulatory environment in health can be a roadblock to new firms so they discuss topics around that and how it impacts startups in the space.

They talk about why AI is actually under-hyped in the health space why they say it's "first half of the first inning" when it comes to digital therapeutics.

The two also discuss former podcast guest Malay Ghandi's article about whether it's better to work within the system or outside of it when building a company in healthcare and explain why "you want to act like a wolf but look like a sheep."

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik and co-host for this episode Ash Fontana (@ashfontana) of Zetta Venture Partners interview Ali Hamed (@AliBHamed), investor at CoVenture.

Ali gives us a primer on the online lending space and compares and contrasts it to offline lending. He explains why payday lenders with astronomical APRs actually have small margins. He also talks about how government can improve the regulatory environment to allow for more disruption of traditional lending and help new companies get a foothold.

They talk about crypto and whether people will be making loans against Bitcoin anytime soon as well as the idea of personal ICOs and why Ali thinks they are a bad idea.

The trio finish with a rapid-fire round where Erik names a venture firm and Ali talks about what he thinks that company should do in the future.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode Erik talks to Jonathan Cheeseman (@JonathanCheesm4), Chief Market Strategist at Distributed Global and Herve Bizira (@hibizira), CTO of Distributed Global.

They talk about crypto markets and the funds that have been created to take advantage of a new investment opportunity. John and Herve explain what they are trying to do at Distributed Global and the unique combination of tech and finance they use to evaluate crypto assets at the micro and macro level.

They explain what reflexivity means in markets in general and how price and momentum have an outsized impact on crypto assets. They discuss the problem of liquidity in crypto markets and the large percentage of retail investors involved in crypto and the unique forces those factors create in the crypto markets.

They also discuss how traditional finance may or may not be displaced by crypto, why decentralization can be over-hyped and the international crypto landscape.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

The guests on today’s episode are Spencer Noon (@spencernoon), an investor at Doggie Tail Crypto Capital and Cyrus Younessi (@cyounessi1), Director of Research and Trading at Scalar Capital.

Co-hosting today’s episode is Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) who leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.

Spencer and Cyrus start out by laying out the theses underlying their bullishness on Ethereum. They give some context on Ethereum through a historical lens and discuss the properties that lend it to scaling well. They also debunk some of the common misconceptions about Ethereum.

The four talk about where they would like to see development focused within the Ethereum ecosystem, what obstacles Ethereum faces, and what an Ethereum-killer might look like.

They also discuss smart contracts and where Spencer and Cyrus disagree with the fat money crowd on the relative merits of Ethereum vs. Bitcoin as a store of value or as working capital.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Three exciting guests join Erik to reveal what having been in the healthcare ecosystem has taught them that the average tech investor doesn't know:

- Liz Rockett (@liz_rockett), investor at Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
- Ryan Panchadsaram (@rypan), investor at Kleiner Perkins and former US deputy CTO.
- Jared Seehafer (@seehafer), co-founder of Enzyme and Village Network Leader

Erik starts by asking each of them to describe their view on the healthcare industry from their unique individual backgrounds as an investor, a former White House staffer, and an entrepreneur.

They play a game of overrated vs. underrated where they name a technology, sub-sector (or even a piece of legislation!) and discuss whether it's over- or underrated.

The three guests explain why in healthcare "if you build it, they may not come" and why brilliant technology that solves a clinical problem may still fail. They talk about how healthcare is "multivariate complex interactions of people" and why upstarts need to keep in mind how their technology fits into a current workflow, whether it will be used, and who's going to reimburse for it.

They also talk about their "requests for products" that they would like to see built in the space and why "the people who have done the best [in healthcare] have found a way to steep themselves in it before they build too much." They tell prospective founders that they need to build a team that has seen every side of the problem and come to the space with humility and an open, "beginner's mind."

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Mahmoud "Rusty" Abdelkader (@mahmoudimus), CEO of Very Good Security and Ross Fubini (@fubini), partner at Village Global, join Erik on this episode to talk security on the web and Mahmoud's company Very Good Security.

Mahmoud explains what he and his team is trying to do at Very Good Security and how they hope to transform the way web apps are secured.

Ross has known Mahmoud for a while now and explains why he decided to invest in Mahmoud and his company. They run through the unique aspects of the business that Mahmoud describes as “an infrastructure business disguised as SaaS.” The three also talk about the opportunities in the space and candidly discuss the challenges that VGS and Mahmoud as CEO see ahead of them.

For example, Mahmoud asks “how do you hire someone to do a job you don’t know how to do yourself?” They discuss going into the trenches to do the job yourself first so you can understand it. Mahmoud also gets into some of the engineering behind VGS and why he had to give up his motorcycle.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng are joined by two special guests for this episode. Lily Liu (@calilyliu) is co-founder of Earn.com which was sold to Coinbase. Jillian Carlson (@_jillruth) is a consultant to projects both big and small in the space.

Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.

Erik starts by asking what each of Lily and Jillian are thinking about these days and what's been top of mind for the last while for them. Lily's been thinking about how the blockchain can be used internationally and Jillian has been thinking about how to make blockchain and crypto actually useful to end users.

They have a discussion of Venezuela and its effort to create a state-sponsored cryptocurrency. They discuss the idea of getting blockchain to scale by adding blockchain tech to existing projects that already have scale instead of creating something entirely new.

They have an enlightening discussion about business model innovation compared to protocol innovation. They say that much of the protocol innovation will happen in the US and the business model innovation is likely to happen in Asia. There is discussion of the risks of creating projects on top of Ethereum as well as of the risks of creating your own coin and holding your funds in that coin.

They also talk about why the sharing economy is well-positioned to have blockchain integrated into it and Lily explains why she thinks that despite the correction in prices we're still not in a bear market yet. Finally, they discuss personal ICOs and the rise of crypto hedge funds.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode, Erik is joined by two very smart minds in the health space. He talks to Rachel Craig (@RPCraig), founder and CEO of MotionHall, which a Village Global portfolio company that is building a global platform for biopharma dealmaking, and Ed Saltzman, President and founder of Defined Health, which is a business development strategy consultancy in the life sciences space.

Erik asks why now is such an exciting time to be involved in the life sciences field and how it has evolved over time to this point. Rachel and Ed explain to us why they’re excited and why they also have concerns and describe where they would be investing if they were running a venture capital fund.

They talk about the continuing crossover of life sciences and technology tools, especially in software, and how the two worlds (one almost entirely regulated, the other entirely un-regulated) can better understand each other.

They also talk about what their “requests for products” are and give their advice for founders in the space, including this nugget from Rachel — “run towards hard things and love complexity.”

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

It's double the Sriram Krishnan for the price of one! Sriram Krishnan (@sriramk) of Twitter and Sriram Krishnan (@sriramkri) of HeadSpin join Erik to talk about dating apps, streaming music, the online advertising business, as well as the hilarious stories about people mixing up the two of them.

They start off by recounting some of the times their identical names have gotten one or the other in trouble for something the other Sriram Krishnan did, as well as the hilarious story of them both showing up to the same meeting where the host only expected one.

The crew talks about Tinder and whether someone else might come along to dethrone the app that's created a whole new way to date. They also talk about the digitization of everything and what else in the relationships space might end up online as well.

They move on to Spotify and streaming music in general, breaking down why Spotify emerged from the other side of the world to take on and beat (for now) huge companies like Apple and Amazon, including all of the music labels.

Next, they talk about India and the unique dynamics inside the country for entrepreneurs and consumers. In many ways consumer tech is more advanced in India than in the USA and entrepreneurs are often looking up to the Chinese companies and founders rather than American ones.

They discuss advertising online with Sriram giving a crash course on how advertising online has evolved from the beginning to now. They also discuss how Facebook was able to lock down the mobile ad market and the path forward for Snap when it comes to ads.

At the end there is some bonus discussion of Lebron and some other basketball-related predictions.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Myles Snider (@myles_snider), CEO of Aurora EOS and advisor to Multicoin Capital, joins Erik and co-host Tony Sheng to discuss his new role as head of a block producer for EOS.

Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at www.tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.

Myles explains how he ended up in that position after working at Multicoin Capital. He gives us an overview of EOS and talks about how it compares and contrasts to Ethereum. He also gives a history of the protocol.

Myles explains what it means to be “decentralized enough” and why he doesn’t think of EOS as either a cryptocurrency or sound money.

They talk about the role of block producers and how the governance structure of EOS is set up, including how financial incentives might lead more people to become involved in governance. Myles explains why he decided to become a block producer as opposed to a number of other things he might have done within the ecosystem. He also talks about why he sees himself as a “usability maximalist.”

Why Decentralization Matters by Myles Snider: https://medium.com/multicoin-capital/why-decentralization-matters-a-response-6b4b9a31367f

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Nick Reber of Oscar Health and Kareem Zaki (@KareemZaki_) of Thrive Capital join Erik in this fascinating episode exploring the ins and outs of the health insurance industry.

They talk about the misaligned incentives in healthcare and why it maybe shouldn’t be the case that “most people trust their doctor and hate their insurance company.”

Nick and Kareem break down why it’s difficult for new entrants to get a foothold in the market and talk about the barriers to competition created by legislation that dates back to World War II.

They discuss why there is such a difference between the healthcare plans that people get through their employers versus the ones people opt for when they are selecting a plan on their own.

They predict a transition ahead in the health insurance industry that is analogous to the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans.

They also talk about why insurance "is one of the worst ways to pay for anything" and their requests for startups in the space.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Glen Weyl (@glenweyl) and Riva Melissa-Tez (@rivatez) join Erik for this episode. They discuss Glen’s book, Radical Markets, and a number of topics related to it, including:

- The similarities between Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco when it comes to wealth distribution
- Why Glen has received blame and praise on different issues from both sides of the political spectrum
- Why the book appeals primarily not to the right or the left, but to the open-minded
- The reason that Glen calls himself a social technologist
- How Glen came to meet Vitalik Buterin and how they ended up writing a paper together, which Glen calls “the single thing I’m most proud of intellectually”
- Skeptical perspectives on blockchain and cryptocurrency, and why Glen calls them “a society of absolute private property governed by plutocracy”
- “The problem of funding public goods without having to pre-suppose that it’s all going to be done by some particular democratic government somewhere.”
- Why Glen thinks the news media is the best opportunity for decentralized funding
- The idea that “economics is a disguise for the interests of a narrow part of society.”
- Glen’s relationship with Jaron Lanier and his admiration of Jaron as a thinker
- Glen and Riva’s requests for startups
- Evolving the idea of human capital

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner Erik Torenberg, and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Aleksandr Bulkin (@coinfund_al), co-founder of CoinFund and creator of ADAPT (adaptk.it) joins Erik on this episode to discuss:

- How Alex got involved in crypto and why the Ethereum white paper and Augur white paper contributed so much to his interest.
- His time working at Goldman Sachs on human-computer interaction and how he transitioned from Goldman to the crypto world, as well his predictions on where Goldman will be disrupted and where it will stick around in a new crypto-oriented world.
- How he got started on ADAPT, how it works, and what the promise of ADAPT is.
- What an "initial witness offering" is and how it compares to other initial offerings in crypto.
- Why he's skeptical of value capture via TCRs and governance in crypto.
- The reason that he thinks a decentralized, paid Wikipedia will fail.
- What "cost of attack" means and how it affects crypto projects.
- The idea of UX security, and why it is equally as important as technical security.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

Quantifying Decentralization by Balaji Srinivasan: https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c28e

Scalability of value in decentralized networks by Aleksandr Bulkin: https://blog.coinfund.io/scalability-of-value-in-decentralized-networks-795ed9c91eee

Can Tokens Save Lives? by Aleksandr Bulkin: https://blog.coinfund.io/can-tokens-save-lives-8c0f1cf5dfa9

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner Erik Torenberg, and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik talks to David Vorick (@DavidVorick) of Sia.

David explains why a fork of Sia became necessary, even though doing so was not ideal or their preferred option.

He talks about what precipitated the fork and how they came to the decision. He recounts his outreach to ASIC manufacturers and why their actions were problematic. They move on to a more general discussion of the philosophy on when to fork or not and how to manage doing so.

David also gives an overview of what it takes to manufacture chips, which incumbent chipmakers might be able to move into ASICs and why a manufacturer might produce $300M worth of wafers before even knowing whether they will be functional.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner Erik Torenberg, and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Kelsey Mellard (@KelseyMellard), co-founder of Sitka (trustsitka.com) and Kristin Spohn (@kbakes), partner at Social Capital, join Erik for this enlightening episode of Health Stories.

In it they talk about a number of topics related to go-to-market for startups in the health industry. Kelsey explains what Sitka is trying to do in the musculoskeletal space, which is the #1 cause of disability in the US.

They discuss the misaligned incentives in healthcare and the interplay of the various stakeholders that have an input into an individual's care. They explain why cost of care varies so much based on your ZIP code.

Kristin and Kelsey talk about the types of startups they'd like to see in the healthcare space and where the opportunities are at this point in time. They also talk about some of the potential pitfalls and what founders can do to succeed.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) is an investor at Greylock and one of the most expansive and intriguing minds around. In this episode Kevin and Erik talk about... basically everything, from the org chart of the future to the history of religion.

Along the way they discuss a number of topics, including:

- Why the stock market exists and why after the crash of 2008 no one said that we should shut it down.
- Why Amazon is starting to look like Berkshire Hathaway and whether it could be broken up and still run effectively.
- The ideas of "loops and funnels" and "constraints and compounding" — and how Kevin thinks about those mental models.
- The history of corporate structures and what they might look like in the future.
- What might be possible with crypto that was previously impossible without crypto, and why people seem to be only trying to replicate already-existing tech using crypto.
- Twitter, and why it's like being "on chain."
- How to think about your career and how the Valley's unique work culture has contributed to its success.
- The idea of personal ICOs.
- Why most companies think about the impact of PR on consumers when in reality they should think about PR's impact on recruiting.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode Erik is joined by Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) of Mythos Capital and Dan Zuller (@danzuller) of Vision Hill Advisors.

They talk about their backgrounds, how they became interested in crypto, and how that has informed what they are doing now with their companies in the space. Ryan explains why he’s structured Mythos as a holding company rather than a hedge fund or venture fund. Dan talks about how to bridge traditional finance and crypto and takes us through the current “money stack” that is worth an estimated 80-90 trillion dollars.

Ryan talks about what he calls “maximalist hubris” and why he believes both Ethereum and Bitcoin can co-exist and both have massive upside. He explains why he believes that Ethereum is about 30% finished, Bitcoin is about 80% finished, and why in judging their probabilities of success, one should look at the finished end state and discount from there based on the probability of executing.

They also talk about Web3 and why digital scarcity is the key innovation contained within it. They explain why people tend to overestimate the extent to which Web3 will disrupt Web 2.0 and why Web3 will instead disrupt the industries and companies that weren’t disrupted by Web 2.0 in the first place.

The three discuss why one should think about work or utility tokens as analogous to taxicab medallions, which are similar to money — but that no coffee shop in NYC would accept in exchange for a coffee.

They also talk about what other protocols still have a chance to be the “winning money,” tokenized securities, and the potential drawbacks of stablecoins.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Jay Desai (@jdesai01) of PatientPing (patientping.com) and Joe Kahn (@josephwandile) of Karuna Health (meetkaruna.com).

Both Joe and Jay are working on how to make sure that patient care is coordinated across multiple providers. When patients visit different providers, their care information is not shared between them and Jay and Joe are working to change that.

The two companies are taking different approaches to the problem and the two founders explain why they’ve chosen to attack the problem the way they have and how they got started down this path.

Joe and Jay explain how they are helping some of the most vulnerable individuals in the healthcare system and why this is nevertheless a good business to be in and why optimizing their care is good for providers.

They give their recommendations on where they would be investing if they were running a fund in the healthcare space as well as what opportunities exist in the industry. They also explain why healthcare is not like e-commerce or ridesharing and instead more like advertising, in that we are in general trying to spend less, not more, on healthcare and are trying to get more value while reducing spend.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

This episode of Venture Stories was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October 2018. Keith was interviewed by Village Global partner and co-founder, Erik Torenberg.

In the episode they cover a number of topics, and Keith (as usual) is very insightful.

Keith breaks down some of the successes that mentees of his have had over the past few years. Many of them came from non-technical backgrounds and non-elite schools. He talks about their career trajectory and which inflection points led to their advancement and how young people in similar situations can model their careers after them.

Erik explains the four dimensions over which he thinks about career building and where he thinks young people are over-optimizing.

Keith shares what Peter Thiel told him about hiring while the two were on a run around the Stanford campus shortly after Keith joined PayPal. He talks about how as a manager he challenges the people working for him, and why as an employee you should always want to feel like you’re pushing the boundaries of what you’re capable of.

They move on to what makes a good startup idea and the three factors that Keith uses to evaluate business ideas.

They also take questions from the audience where Keith addresses work-life balance and why creating a startup is like casting and creating a movie.


Quotable lines from this episode:

“You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one that does what you do.”

“If you’re going to start a company and if you believe that the team you build is the company you build — you want to have unfair advantage in evaluating people.”

“VC is one of the best jobs in the world if you’re intellectually curious.”

“[Working in VC] is like learning to play basketball with NBA all-stars.”

“When you want to make a decision, optimize on one variable. Don't make a pros and cons list.”


Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik and his co-host Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe), author of The End of Jobs, are joined by Dhruv Bansal (@dhruvbansal), co-founder of Unchained Capital.

On this episode they discuss a number of interesting topics, getting progressively “weirder” as they go along. In the beginning they get Dhruv’s take on the contrasts between Bitcoin and Ethereum and how the prevailing narrative around each of them affects how people perceive their strengths and weaknesses.

By the end, they’re discussing if it’s possible to have money if humans are an interstellar species and whether it’s possible that Satoshi is a time-traveller from the future.

In between, they cover a number of (equally) interesting topics, like Dhruv’s idea that blockchains are technologies for building political system” and why blockchain and Bitcoin are not actually a continuation of the internet, as they are commonly portrayed. Dhruv also explains what the “Nakamoto Point” is, where he would be investing, and what his “requests for products” are in the space.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik for this episode are Brianne Kimmel (@briannekimmel), investor, advisor and Village Global Network Leader as well as Josh Stein (@dfjjosh), partner at DFJ.

They start off by discussing the "consumerization of enterprise SaaS." More and more frequently new software is implemented at enterprises because ordinary employees use a service as a consumer and advocate for its use within the company. Brianne and Josh talk about why the enterprise is such a different animal compared to consumer SaaS and the challenges that fact presents for young founders. Josh tells the story of Aaron Levie, who was only 20 when Josh backed him at Box and had not only not sold to the enterprise but had never worked in a big company.

They discuss how the SaaS landscape has changed, including why $50-100M in revenue isn't enough to go public and why investors are now looking for companies doing at least $1B in revenue. Brianne and Josh also point out the uniqueness of Silicon Valley, and caution that founders from the Bay Area both underestimate the amount of Microsoft lock-in outside the Bay and overrate the impact of the traction they can get by selling to other startups within Silicon Valley.

Erik asks where the opportunities are in SaaS and enterprise, whether it's better to have a vertical or horizontal SaaS company, and where the market is oversaturated. Josh also explains why he says that AI is actually underhyped.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Adrian Aoun (@adrianaoun), founder of Forward, a company that is trying to reinvent how primary healthcare is delivered. His previous company Wavii, was acquired by Google — where Adrian led AI efforts as well as working on special projects for Google’s CEO.

Adrian explains the personal reason for his desire to found a healthcare company. He talks about why he is trying to build something completely outside the traditional healthcare system and gives a rundown of the amazing tech that Forward has been working on.

The two of them also discuss why no healthcare company has achieved the scale that tech companies have — and how Forward might be one of the first companies to achieve that scale.

Erik asks Adrian about his lessons learned when it comes to scaling and Adrian has a number of great tips about how to identify talent.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode Alex Danco (@alex_danco) of Social Capital joins Erik to talk about Silicon Valley, economics, innovation, crypto, software and more. He is a very unique thinker with interesting opinions about the tech space.

Alex explains the influence of Peter Thiel and Rene Girard on his thinking. He explains what he means when he says the key to understanding the world is asking, "what is everyone is compelled to lie about?"

He gives a history of how innovation has traditionally proceeded in the world and explains how Silicon Valley — via software specifically — has changed the mechanism of innovation. He talks about how this has resulted in disproportionate gains accruing to the huge tech companies.

This new model of innovation has also changed how companies are valued. Alex breaks down the new metrics that are being used by VCs and founders to value their firms — and why this could be contributing to a new tech bubble.

Alex also talks about the economics of the Valley and why gains in productivity from technology have not resulted in increased leisure for the Valley's inhabitants.

He also talks about crypto, career strategy, cost disease, scooters, and much more.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Sunny Aggarwal (@sunnya97) of Cosmos and Tendermint joins Erik and co-host Haseeb Qureshi (@hosseeb), GP at MetaStable Capital, for this episode of Crypto Stories.

They discuss how blockchains could be made to be interoperable with one another. Sunny explains why this is an important problem and what he is doing about it with Cosmos. He talks about why different types of tokens cannot yet be exchanged confidently.

Sunny uses the analogy of a multithreaded CPU that we all use these days to explain how interoperable blockchains might work. They compare it to sharding and talk about how it would affect payments.

Haseeb also asks what Sunny would like the crypto world to look like if he is successful with Cosmos and what the potential pitfalls might be.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this episode of Health Stories, Erik is talking to Othman Laraki (@othman) and Alicia Zhou (@ay_zhou) of Color. Othman is co-founder and CEO and Alicia Zhou is Head of Research.

Othman explains the personal reason that he started Color and why he got involved in the healthcare space after previously working at Google and running a company that was acquired by Twitter.

Alicia and Othman explain the advances Color has made in genomics and how the approach they’re taking is different from that of other companies in the space. You might not have known that 30% of your health is related to your genome. There are also a number of new types of care that can be unlocked by having your genome sequenced.

Othman explains how at Color they are hoping to follow the model of Google or Amazon where early in the company’s life they focus on doing one thing really well, then expand into other areas. He also talks about where he would be building a company in the space if he wasn't working at Color as well as where he might look to invest.

They also discuss the time Othman wore a glucose monitor full-time and how it changed how he thinks about health, why he is hoping for an “iPhone moment” in the healthcare space, and why the future of cancer treatment will be much more about prevention than treatment.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

This is a deep dive into the mind of Eugene Wei. Erik and Eugene discuss all kinds of topics, including the unique state of ambition in Silicon Valley, “apprenticeships” for white collar jobs, Eugene’s favorite fiction books, what he would do if he was running the New York Knicks, and much more.

They start by talking about the differences in extent and type of ambition between Silicon Valley and other places like New York or LA, as well as how you might spread the spirit of entrepreneurship that lives in the Valley further afield.

Eugene talks about the progression of his career and what kind of advice he would have for others. He talks about the twists and turns in his career and describes what it was like going back to film school after having worked at Amazon.

They talk about Eugene’s reading habits and the fact that he reads 20 non-fiction books at a time simultaneously. He also gives his recommendations on his favorite fiction books.

Eugene says that Jeff Bezos had a different young executive shadow him for a period of time and explains his idea of an “apprenticeship” for white collar jobs and the value of learning by observing.

They also have a round of underrated vs. overrated and Erik asks Eugene what he would do if he was running Medium, Spotify and the New York Knicks.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Gabe Bassin (@gabebassin) and Taylor Pearson (@TaylorPearsonMe) join Erik for this episode.

They cover a lot of ground in this episode where they explore some of the coming financial challenges that the US faces and how crypto might impact the markets and the economy in general.

Gabe gives an overview of the current state of public debt and future government obligations. He explains how the fed ended up with four trillion dollars on its balance sheet.

He says that “the market’s been programmed to be saved” and talks about the impacts of quantitative easing, or printing more money. Gabe and Taylor discuss volatility in the markets and potential looming financial crises.

Gabe points out that public pension funds are underfunded and that fund managers need to make a 7% annualized return to meet their obligations. Given that these funds are the biggest players in the markets, this has a number of implications both for the market and society in general.

They close out by talking about crypto and Bitcoin specifically, and how it might have an impact on all of this.

Charts mentioned in this episode:

Inflation as it relates to quantitative easing: https://twitter.com/gabebassin/status/1032259327745253376

VIX Futures: http://vixcentral.com/

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Gabriel Otte (@gabeotte), CEO and co-founder of Freenome, joins Erik on this episode of Venture Stories to talk about cancer screening.

Gabriel starts out by talking about why he got into the cancer screening space and how Freenome got started.

He lays out the different methods of cancer detection and why Freenome has chosen their specific approach to the problem. Erik asks how it compares to other companies working on similar problems and Gabriel helps create a market map of the space.

Gabriel points out that 93 million people in the United States were instructed by their doctor to be screened for colorectal cancer last year but 70 million of them did nothing at all. He talks about why Freenome has chosen to hone in on this specific type of cancer screening and why it lends itself to an improved UX.

They move on to a discussion of the uniqueness of building a product and company in the health space and why the dynamics are so different than those of other tech companies. Gabriel talks about the FDA approval process and why it pays to engage with them early, as well as how a company should go about ensuring that their tests will be reimbursed by payers.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by James Currier (@JamesCurrier) and Pete Flint (@peteflint), of NFX. NFX is a great venture capital firm founded on the concept of network effects. Erik, James and Pete cover a bunch of fascinating topics in the interview.

Pete and James explain why network effects make such good businesses — so good in fact, that they don’t have to even be run particularly well to still have great revenue, as James found out when he sold to a big incumbent.

Erik asks whether it’s possible to add network effects to an existing business or whether they have to be baked into the business model from the beginning. He also runs through a variety of verticals like healthcare, real estate, education, travel and others, asking his guests to talk about where the opportunities are to build businesses that leverage network effects in those spaces.

James explains what he means by the phrase “the best entrepreneurs are going to be the best historians” and they talk about why “timing is everything” and why a startup like Airbnb can be founded based on an economic impetus rather than a technological catalyst.

They also talk about why network effects are so important within Silicon Valley and why NFX believes that the best startups will come from inside the Valley, despite efforts to spread the “secret sauce” to other geographies. James says that there might be a lot of failed startups outside of the Valley.

They also talk about distributed teams and whether it’s possible to build a really big business with a distributed team, as well as the often overlooked importance of the name of a company.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik and his co-host Tony Sheng are joined by Jacob Arluck (@JacobArluck) of Tezos and Peter Czaban of Polkadot and the Web3 Foundation.

The four of them get into the details of the mechanisms of governance, including voting, councils, and other methods of governance.

They discuss hard forks and why they are not ideal but sometimes necessary. The group also discusses common misconceptions around on-chain governance and their requests for products or startups in the space.

They explain what it means to get to the decentralized ideal without re-centralizing when it comes to governance as well as why the best case scenario for crypto users is that they are not thinking about governance at all as it recedes into the background.

Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by James Hardiman (@hardimanjames) and Scott Barclay (@SABarclay) of Data Collective, a deep tech and AI venture fund.

Scott and James are live in-studio with Erik to discuss a number of interesting topics around the health space.

Scott and James explain what they mean when they say innovation in the last 50 years was driven by the semiconductor but the next 50 years will be driven by biotechnology.

The three of them discuss the state of the healthcare in the US and how entrepreneurs and investors can “take a crowbar to the health system.”

They discuss the misaligned incentives in the US healthcare system and how payers might be incentivized to pay for preventative care. They mention that the US pays about 18% of GDP for healthcare while still having poorer health outcomes than countries in Northern Europe that pay about 9% of GDP.

They explain why they are predicting a contraction in the number of hospitals in the US and why there are double to triple the number of hospitals per capita in the US than there are in a country like Denmark.

They also talk about a number of interesting developments in health tech these days, including a company that can verify the integrity of a supply chain by analyzing the microbiome of the resultant products and a company that is using computer vision to detect falls.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik was interviewed by Jacob Evan Smith (@jacobsmith88) at Venture For America in Detroit, which is where Erik attended the University of Michigan before he started his live rap battle app, rapt.fm.

In this episode he talks about founding and running rapt.fm, why it didn’t work out, and how he ended up joining Product Hunt before co-founding Village Global.

Erik explains why it’s not important that entrepreneurs get it right the first time, but instead that they don’t stop trying.

He talks about why lifestyle businesses are unfairly looked down upon in startup world, the usefulness of failing, and why you need to keep your identity separate from your company.

He also talks about why you want to do things that seem hard to other people but easy to you and why when building a network you should give without taking, without thought of what you might get in return.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

This is a special episode of Venture Stories recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, featuring Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen), professor of economics at George Mason University and Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt), former executive chairman and CEO at Google/Alphabet.

Cowen talks to Schmidt about a wide range of topics, from Schmidt’s college years, to his time as an intern at Bell Labs, to working for Scott McNealy at Sun Microsystems, to the early days of Google, to today.

Cowen asks about Schmidt’s formative intellectual experiences as a young person and we hear the story of Schmidt studying as an architect prior to entering into a computer science program. After graduation, Schmidt interned at both Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. He recounts stories of his time at the research labs and discusses to what extent the lab model does or doesn’t work today. Cowen astutely points out that Schmidt is one of the few people around whose career spans several significant eras in the history of computing.

They move on to talking about the early days at Google, where it turns out that Schmidt was hired to run the company after a skiing trip with Larry and Sergey, whose first concern in hiring “adult supervision” was to find someone they enjoyed hanging out with. Schmidt says that he initially assumed that search wasn't very important and that Google’s ads didn’t work. He reveals that during his first year he was so terrified that their "ruse would unravel" that he made anyone who wanted to spend money come to him personally on Fridays at 10am to justify the expense.

Cowen asks about Schmidt’s insights on hiring and managing talent. Schmidt explains that in the beginning Larry and Sergey primarily hired their classmates and friends, but over time Google’s hiring became highly structured. He tells the story of interviewing a single candidate 16 times and explains the logic of why initially they were so focused on school and GPA, rather than industry experience.

Cowen and Schmidt also talk about in which areas even Schmidt himself has been surprised at the extent of technological progress and where he'd like to see more innovation. They discuss social media and why Schmidt says that it amplifies human weaknesses rather than strengths. The two of them also talk about transforming cities, including Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto and the Bay Area's housing crisis.

They of course also have a round of rapid-fire “overrated vs. underrated,” covering subjects like Antarctica, Picasso, effective altruism, Yellowstone and North Korea. Cowen also asks his signature question about the Eric Schmidt "production function" and how Schmidt is able to be so productive.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Patri Friedman joins Erik on this episode of Venture Stories. He founded The Seasteading Institute in 2008 with funding from Peter Thiel. His father is political theorist David Friedman and his grandfather is Nobel Laureate in economics, Milton Friedman.

Over the course of their nearly two-hour conversation they cover a lot of ground, including crypto, physical (and virtual) governance, the current state of politics, Silicon Valley, and much more.

Patri starts by explaining why he is both skeptical and optimistic about crypto — and why that position is not incompatible. He says that the tech boom around 2000 had “a lot of junk” but a lot of innovation came out of it at the same time.

He talks about starting The Seasteading Institute, the impetus behind the project and the successes and challenges they have had. He enumerates the issues with the structures of current countries, governments, and legal systems around the world and why by the logic of the market, one would expect countries and legal systems not to be very innovative. With experiments underway involving special economic zones incorporating novel legal systems, that might change.

Patri explains what he means by the phrase “markets eating the world” and points out that platforms and sharing economy companies form half of of all current unicorns. He talks about how in the same fashion as software has been “eating the world,” he expects the same to happen with markets. He points out that the determination of resource allocation involves economics and trade-offs, whether done by a central figure or markets. He explains some of the novel uses of markets in unexpected areas and the two discuss some of the drawbacks and challenges with markets in delicate areas such as healthcare or education.

He talks about some of the flaws present in democracy, including the idea that it provides citizens the illusion of control without providing any actual control and contrasts the potential distorted incentives of a central trusted authority figure versus a more decentralized market-driven approach of distributing resources. Patri says that he views the problem of figuring out the best kind of governance as an engineering problem requiring experimentation rather than a philosophical problem requiring deep thought and persuasion.

They also talk about why he says in areas as varied as food, education and computing, our “desires are being hijacked” by profit-driven entities and why in the future it would be wise to return to more historically-proven strategies in those areas. He also talks about why he expects the pace of changes in the world to continue to increase, why it will take even more skill for someone to eke out a basic living, the past and present culture of Silicon Valley, and what he expects the world will look like when his kids are grown up.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

In this special live episode of Venture Stories, Erik Torenberg interviews two special guests about the present and future of crypto: Naval Ravikant (@naval), CEO and co-founder of AngelList, and Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), CTO of Coinbase.

They start with an overview of the history of organizing societies and the role of centralized decision-makers from kings to democracies and why decentralization — where no one in particular is in charge but everybody follows the rules — has so much potential. They talk about how this could be disruptive to a wide swath of society today, including areas like money, electricity, social networks, storage, and more. They explain why decentralization will "fulfill the original promise of the internet."

Erik asks how each of them got into the space after having had success in other areas. It’s pointed out that it’s very rare that something comes along that is “technologically interesting, socially revolutionary, and that can also make you very rich.” They move on to a discussion of the history of money, the three key functions that money provides (store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange) and how good a job current cryptocurrencies are doing at fulfilling those three functions. They also point out that VCs typically didn’t buy Ether, but it has provided a 700X return in just a few years, which is better than VCs returned on Google or Facebook.

They move on to what they see in the future for crypto and how it will change society at large. They paint a picture of a world where there might be virtual “instant jobs” available on-demand in a feed akin to the feeds in current social networks and where the “99%” will be investors, as opposed to the present where only 1% of individuals are investors. There might also exist in the future “instant companies” that can be created as easily as someone can create an account on a social network today and that programmable smart contracts might spread opportunity far and wide without the need for armies of lawyers and judges.

They explain what it means when they say that blockchain will create “an open financial system” and what they mean when they say it will be to the current financial system what Linux was to Windows. They also talk about what kinds of facts would change their mind about blockchain, the role of identity and anonymity in a crypto world, and the concept of a “personal burn rate.”

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by Mike Merrill (@kmikeym), the world’s first and only publicly traded person, along with Mike’s friend, co-founder and shareholder, Marcus Estes (@marcusestes), co-founder and CEO of Chroma.

We hear the backstory on how Mike became the world’s first “publicly traded person” and hear a funny story about an early 2000s arts group turned their group into a corporation in order to thwart an attempt by an e-commerce company to take over their domain name.

They run through the ins and outs of what life is like for Mike and how having a live market where anyone can buy or sell “shares” in him distinguishes this from other experiments. He says that he originally set up the arrangement to give people input into his side projects but over time their decision-making power has expanded to his personal life. He explains how this has influenced how he thinks about the idea of owning “shares” in other people more generally.

Mike talks about the element of satire present in the project and how it has poked fun at the idea in society that worth in general is tied to financial factors. He talks about how this project has revealed warped incentives for his investors.

They describe the regulatory environment in America, how it has evolved to make things like this possible, and the unique way that Mike has structured this to make it legal. They talk about whether it would make sense for more people to do this, about income-share agreements more broadly and how Marcus and Chroma might get involved.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik’s co-host for this episode is Ali Hamed (@AliBHamed) of CoVenture. They are interviewing Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education.

They talk about the history of income-sharing agreements, including that Milton Friedman had once proposed the idea and that Yale University had experimented with them at one point.

Tonio talks about starting Vemo and how he has brought income-sharing agreements to more and more educational institutions. They discuss the fact that 88% of students entering college are doing so to improve their early career path but that most institutions would say that providing a career path is not the primary value they provide. Tonio explains that Vemo has helped students find the right institution for them by publishing outcomes from the income-sharing agreements. He says that this transparency of outcomes has in and of itself changed how colleges look at the service they provide.

They move on to talking about the future of higher education in general, why there doesn’t yet exist a Kickstarter for education (and what some of the pitfalls of that model would be) and in which other industries something similar to income-share (or “value-share”) agreements might make sense. Tonio also talks about how Vemo plans to scale and where they go from here.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined in this episode by co-host Tonio DeSorrento (@TonioDeSo), CEO and co-founder of Vemo Education, and Dave Girouard (@davegirouard), CEO and founder of Upstart.

They have a lively discussion about the history of income-sharing agreements, the forms in which they exist presently, and how the agreements might change or expand in the future.

Dave gives us an overview of Upstart and why he says they are like “Kickstarter meets LendingClub.” Although Upstart is thriving now, it wasn’t always that way. In the early days of the company, they tried to pioneer the idea of a generalized income-sharing agreement. Dave runs through why that didn’t work out and how they got to where Upstart is today.

Dave and Tonio share some stories about their early work on income-sharing agreements and compare theories on how these agreements might evolve and spread to different areas in the future. They talk about how income-sharing agreements align incentives between two parties and help quantify the value that one party provides another. They lay out a map for how something like an income-sharing agreement could be of assistance to a manual laborer deciding on a hospital in which to have a knee surgery.

They also contemplate the future of higher education, which Tonio points out is a $500 billion dollar industry that has 19 million students enrolled in any given year, and whether disruption will come from outside or from within the institutions themselves. Tonio also explains why income-sharing agreements and the data they produce are so helpful to people trying to decide which education institution to attend.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Venture Stories, Erik is joined by co-host Tony Sheng to interview John Backus (@backus), founder of Bloom and Cognito, two companies working on decentralized lending and identity.

Co-host Tony Sheng (@tonysheng) leads product at Decentraland. He also publishes analyses on the business and strategy of crypto at tonysheng.com and is one of Village’s Network Leaders.

John recently wrote a popular post about the history of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He joins Erik and Tony to expand on the post and talk about what that history can teach us about decentralization today.

He takes us through the history of file sharing apps from Napster to Kazaa to BitTorrent. He explains why the way BitTorrent is architected “doesn’t make sense” from a technical point of view and why the legal system has had such an impact on the way BitTorrent works.

John explains some of the legal challenges to peer-to-peer sharing and how they’ve adjusted. The push to decentralize is often considered a recent phenomenon but he describes a number of projects from many years ago that are actually pretty similar to what people are attempting to build today. He even talks about an early version of a token that was created by a decentralized file sharing service back in the early 2000s.

He concludes with why a number of these projects didn’t succeed and what lessons they have for decentralized projects today. He explains that the UX of decentralized services is often very poor, which makes it “an order of magnitude harder to find product-market fit.”

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode of Health Stories, Erik is joined by Nikhil Krishnan (@nikillinit), of CB Insights and Nick Soman (@nicksoman), of Decent.

Today they're talking about “the combination of two insanely complex topics.” They start out by discussing the potential applications of blockchain technology in the healthcare space and why it might not be ready for primetime just yet.

They dive into some of the applications, including unique patient identifiers and why the lack of a system to transfer records between health providers results in a “ludicrously high number of medical errors.” They also talk about the fact that anonymized health data is often sold without the consent of the patient and that there are billion-dollar companies that advertise on the front page of their websites that they can provide anonymized health data for 500M patients.

As with any Health Stories episode, they discuss the distortion of incentives in the healthcare industry. On this episode they discuss the “medical loss ratio” and why it means that “everybody other than the patient makes more money when costs go up.” They point out that healthcare problems aren’t technology problems and are instead distribution and incentives problems. They also tell us that the health industry is the single largest public employer and the single largest lobbyist in the country.

They also talk about the possibility of using cryptocurrency in driving behavior change in patients, what the “remember blockchain?” eulogy for the tech might look like in 2030 if it doesn’t pan out, how Apple, Amazon and Google getting involved in the space might change thing, and why days are (hopefully) numbered for companies whose business models are predicated on a lack of trust and transparency.

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Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.