Silicon Valley insider Kent Lindstrom explores the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as he sits down with the established venture capital and founder veterans and up-and-comers who are shaping the way we view the world online and beyond. Conversations include prominent venture capitalists and famous startup founders. Current hot topics: The state of the venture capital industry, AI startups, artificial general intelligence, venture capital investing in AI, and the societal risks of AI…
Sheel Mohnot is co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, a venture firm that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage fintech companies. It is one of the most active fintech investors in the world. Sheel has spent the last decade in fintech — first as an operator and angel, then as a founder of his own firm. In this conversation, he walks me through the unconventional path that led him into venture,…
In this episode of Something Ventured , Kent Lindstrom sits down with Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and one of Los Angeles' most prominent venture capitalists. Mark shares his unconventional journey from early computer programming in the 1980s, building and selling software companies, to becoming a VC — including the surprising challenges of the transition and why he created…
Andy McLoughlin is Managing Partner at Uncork Capital (formerly SoftTech VC). We discuss Andy's journey from co-founding Huddle -- racking servers in the Docklands and building their own payment system before Stripe -- to Silicon Valley. He was an early angel investor in companies like Postmates, eventually joining Jeff Clavier's venture firm SoftTech, now Uncork Capital. We dive into the golden…
In this episode of Something Ventured I dive into the explosive controversy shaking Silicon Valley: California's proposed one-time 5% "Billionaires Tax" ballot initiative. Filed by the powerful healthcare workers union SEIU-UHW, the measure would impose a retroactive 5% levy on the net worth of individuals worth $1 billion or more (as of January 1, 2026), aiming to raise around $100 billion to…
In this episode of the Something Ventured podcast, I talk with Sam Shank, the founder of HotelTonight—the groundbreaking last-minute hotel booking app that was acquired by Airbnb in a deal reportedly valued at nearly half a billion dollars. Sam takes us on an incredible journey: from his early days in Hollywood as a production assistant on Wes Craven's iconic horror film Scream (yes, he has an…
Lee Edwards is a General Partner at Root VC, a San Francisco-based deep tech seed fund. They recently raised their 4 th fund of $190 million. But before he became a venture capitalist, Lee was an engineer. He was most recently CTO at Teespring. Previously, Lee was a mechanical engineer at iRobot, a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, Lead Engineer at SideTour (acquired by Groupon in 2013), and…
In this episode of the Something Ventured podcast, I spend time with Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson, the people behind 1517 Fund. 1517 is a venture capital firm that defies Silicon Valley's fixation on elite credentials from Stanford, Harvard and the like. Their paths to venture capital are anything but typical. Danielle shares how her 20 years in alternative education, from founding a…
In this episode I talk with Frank Rotman, Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer of QED Investors, a leading fintech-focused venture capital firm managing $4.3 billion that has backed over 200 companies. A seven-time Forbes Midas List honoree, Frank shares his remarkable journey—from shaping Capital One's groundbreaking, data-driven strategy during his 13 years there, to co-founding QED…
Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book "The Lean Startup," ignited a movement that reshaped how founders and corporations build and scale businesses worldwide. Drawing from his experiences in Silicon Valley startups, Ries introduced a methodology centered on rapid experimentation and iterative development that encouraged entrepreneurs to create minimum viable products (MVPs),…
Kobie Fuller is a partner at Upfront Ventures. He came to the firm after investing at Accel and leading marketing efforts at EVOLVE, the large global fashion ecommerce platform. Highlights from our conversation. -- we covered a lot of ground, so this is just a small part: Kobie's Athletic Background and Vision for Track and Field: Kobie, a former track and field athlete who competed in the 400m…
