Running Through Walls is a Venrock podcast featuring candid conversations between investors and entrepreneurs. Each episode, we offer a behind-the-scenes look at the breakthroughs, challenges and nuttiness associated with building and growing companies. Venture capital firm Venrock has been investing in entrepreneurs across technology and healthcare since 1969.
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Siobhan Nolan Mangini and Bob Kocher sit down with Patrick Nelli, founder and CEO of Aligned Marketplace, to discuss how rebuilding how we access advanced primary care can improve outcomes, lower costs, and better serve employees. Patrick shares his path from Health Catalyst executive to healthcare founder, why employer-sponsored primary care is ready for transformation, and how Aligned is…
The results of Venrock's 10th annual Healthcare Prognosis are in. This year's survey covers some of the biggest questions in healthcare, from AI in medical care and the future of GLP-1s to consumer peptides, IPOs, M&A, and what's ahead for healthcare policy. In this episode, Bryan Roberts, Bob Kocher, and Siobhan Nolan Mangini sit down to discuss the most interesting findings, share their…
As Arca launches with $64 million in funding and more than $1 billion in assets under management, founder and CEO Rron Rexha joins Nick Beim to share his vision for AI-native wealth management built around human-first advice. Rron reflects on his journey from Kosovo to fintech, his year as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venrock, and why he believes the next era of wealth management will be more…
Metsera CEO Whit Bernard joins Venrock's Nimish Shah to discuss how the company's ultra-long acting GLP-1 program helped position it as a strategic standout in the obesity market. The conversation covers the bidding war between major pharma players, lessons in first-principles company building, and why the next decade of biotech could reward high-volume, accessible innovation.
Nimish Shah sits down with Andy Robbins, CEO of Cogent Biosciences, for a candid conversation about building a targeted therapy company in oncology. Andy shares how Cogent made high-stakes decisions around bezuclastinib, why speed matters in biotech, and what it takes to build conviction years before clinical answers arrive. They also dig into what's overhyped, what's undervalued, and why the best…
SmithRx CEO and co-founder Jake Frenz joins Venrock's Siobhan Nolan Mangini to talk about the company's mission to fix the opaque and broken US drug ecosystem. SmithRx started by tearing down the existing misaligned model of PBMs with a per member model that is incentivized to deliver the lowest possible cost for patients. The two get into how his personal challenges with the US healthcare system…
Bob Kocher speaks with Brad Stulberg, on the many lessons in his newly-published book The Way of Excellence , including why we find excellence on the side of the mountain, not at its peak. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of Arete, Brad argues that you find true success in pursuit itself: the bidirectional process where chasing a goal, whether writing a book, building a company, or competing…
Leading AI researcher and Professor at the Santa Fe Institute Melanie Mitchell joins Ethan Batraski for a conversation on how our current generation of AI is powerful, promising, and still badly in need of transparency about how it actually "thinks." She gives advice on how to redesign our benchmarks as true measures instead of targets, and how we can incorporate dynamic testing and deeper…
Siobhan Nolan Mangini sat down with author and UCSF physician Bob Wachter for a fireside chat about his new book on AI in healthcare, A Giant Leap. In this special live-recorded episode, he reflects on what he learned from interviewing top leaders across healthcare and technology about the coming wave of AI in healthcare. The discussion unpacks how AI could ease clinician burnout and expand access…
Ethan Batraski speaks with Astronomer CEO Pete DeJoy several months into taking the helm at the company he cofounded over 8 years ago. They discuss the company's journey from their earliest days stewarding the Apache Airflow open-source project to how they're driving the renaissance of the data engineer in the age of AI today, and the team's remarkable authenticity and resilience when the Coldplay…
