Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. We’re joined by Stephanie Palmeri and Melody Koh, Partners at NextView Ventures. Nextview was founded in 2010 and recently raised $200MM for their new set of funds. Located in SF, NY, and Boston, the firm invests all across the US and has invested in over 170 companies at the seed-stage since its founding, including Devoted Health, Thread up, and Attentive. We had a great conversation about how NextView thinks about firm partnerships, what seed and pre-seed investing lo ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. This week we’re joined by Scott Kupor, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Scott was the first employee of the firm alongside Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. He has been instrumental in the firm’s growth to now having north of $35B in AUM. Scott also authored a Wall Street Journal bestselling book called Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It, and previously also served as chairman of the board of the NVCA.  Scott goes through the history of ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. This week on the show we’re joined by Meghan Reynolds, partner and head of capital formation at Altimeter. Founded by Brad Gerstner in 2008, Altimeter has backed companies such as Snowflake, Unity, Gusto, and Modern Treasury. Prior to joining Altimer, Meghan worked in a variety of investor relations roles including TPG, Goldman Sachs, and JAZZ Ventures partners. She’s also quite prolific on Twitter with her insights on the LP world. This conversation was great as she went th ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. On this week’s show we’re fortunate to be joined by Hunter Walk and Satya Patel, founders of Homebrew, a seed-stage firm founded over a decade ago that’s backed companies such as Chime, AngelList, and Gusto. Just over a year ago, Homebrew announced that it was moving away from a seed-focused traditional LP-backed fund to an open-ended evergreen structure that is funded from the proceeds of prior investments. Additionally, they are also leading up efforts of Screendoor ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. I started Venture Unlocked to bring more transparency to firm building by bringing on guests whose unique insights and experts could help venture fund managers, limited partners, and founders with their journeys. This week, we have a special guest in Anubhav Srivastava, Founder and CEO of Tactyc, who saw the pain point managers were having in portfolio construction. Prior to Tactyc, managers often used excel spreadsheets and other methods for forecasting models. Tactyc is a ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. This week on the show we’re joined by Dana Settle, Co-Founder of Greycroft. Founded in 2006, Greycroft began with a mission to invest in areas outside of Silicon Valley and specifically in NY and LA. The firm currently has over $2B in Assets Under Management, over 60 employees, and has invested in companies such as Bumble, Scopely, Plated, and Maker Studios among many others.  This was a special episode where we unpacked all of the components of firm-building including ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. This week we are re-joined by friend of the pod Ryan Hoover who is the Managing Partner of Weekend Fund and Jordan Gonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Compound, a fintech platform that provides wealth management and advisory services to founders and employees of startups.  This was a special episode covering the growing intersection of the private wealth sector and venture capital investing, and what trends we are all seeing.  We hope you enjoy my conversation with Ryan a ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. This week we are joined by Eddy Chan, founding partner of Intudo Ventures, which employs a hyper-local strategy by backing entrepreneurs in Indonesia. With over $230M in AUM, the firm has become one of the largest Indonesia-only based firms. Eddy and I had a fun conversation on the reasons why hyper-local strategies can work, what these regions need to scale, and some of the interesting ways they leverage their LP base to help with portfolio building.   Frank, Rime ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. We are officially 100 episodes in! For our 100th episode, we are joined by the founders of Better Tomorrow Ventures, also known as BTV, Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot. BTV is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2019. BTV focuses on early investing in FinTech companies, and has $300M+ in AUM. Jake and Sheel initially met at 500 startups, where Sheel worked. They are both seasoned fintech founders and angel investors: Sheel built and sold two fintech companies before start ..read more

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape. We are joined by Jonathan Abrams, Co-Founder and General Partner at 8-Bit Capital. Jonathan previously was an angel investor and entrepreneur founding both Nuzzel and Friendster, the latter of which he helped grow to over 100MM users and where he met his current partner at 8-Bit, Kent Lindstrom.  Jonathan also co-founded Founders Den with Zack Bogue of DCVC in 2011, which quickly became one of San Francisco’s earliest and most popular startup work and event spaces. We t ..read more