Episodes
Brendon Cassidy is one of the OG of enterprise sales of the last decade, having advised the likes of Gong.io, Pipedrive, Showpad. Previously Brendon was first Head of Sales at LinkedIn and VP of Sales at Talkdesk. In Today's Episode with Brendon Cassidy We Discuss: 1. From Recruiter to Sales OG and Linkedin's First Head of Sales: How did recruiting prepare Brendon for a career in sales? What impact did the dot-com bubble burst have on his early career? What does Brendon know now...
Published 03/08/24
Peter Wagner is a Founding Partner of Wing. Peter has led investments in dozens of early-stage companies including Snowflake, Gong, Pinecone, and many others which have gone on to complete IPO's or successful acquisitions. Prior to founding Wing, Peter spent an incredible 14 years at Accel, starting as an associate in 1996 and scaling to Managing Partner, before leaving to start Wing. In Today's Episode with Peter Wagner We Discuss: 1. From Associate to Managing Partner to Founding...
Published 03/06/24
Nicolai Tangen is the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world with $1.55 Trn in assets, owning on average, 1.5% of every listed company. Tangen was previously Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer in AKO Capital, which he founded in 2005. Prior to this, Tangen was a partner and senior analyst at Egerton Capital and an equity analyst at Cazenove & Co. In Today's Episode with Nicolai Tangen We Discuss: From Religious...
Published 03/04/24
Frank Quattrone is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Qatalyst and served as its CEO from the Firm’s founding until January 2016. Over more than four decades, Frank and the teams he has led have advised on more than 600 mergers and acquisitions with an aggregate transaction value over $1 trillion and on more than 350 financings that raised over $65 billion for technology companies worldwide. Frank led the IPOs of Amazon.com, Cisco, Intuit, Netscape, among many others. He advised Apple on...
Published 03/01/24
Sami Inkinen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Virta Health, the company reversing type 2 diabetes. Before Virta, Sami was the Co-Founder of Trulia, steering the company to a successful IPO and its eventual sale to Zillow Group. Outside of the boardroom, he launched Fat Chance Row, a daring venture to row 2,750 miles across the Pacific, unsupported with his wife, rowing 18 hours straight per day. In Today's Episode with Sami Inkinen: 1. From Farm in Finland to IPO Founder: Relationship to...
Published 02/28/24
Justin is the Founder and Managing Partner of one of the nation’s best-performing private equity firms, Shore Capital Partners (“Shore”). Since the firm’s inception in 2009, Shore has grown from 4 to over 140 team members managing over $6 billion in AUM, representing 900+ acquired companies and more than 33,000 employees. Shore is also one of the most active private equity firm in the world by deal volume according to PitchBook while continuing to achieve return profiles that rank Shore among...
Published 02/26/24
Scott Williamson was most recently Chief Product Officer for GitLab, where he led a team of 65 in Product Management, Product Operations, Growth, Pricing, and Corporate Development functions.  Before GitLab, Scott was VP of Product for SendGrid for over six years, where helped lead the company to a successful IPO and $3B acquisition by Twilio.  In Today's Episode with Scott Williamson We Discuss:  1. From Sales to Product Leader: Why does Scott believe sales is a great starting...
Published 02/21/24
Roger Ehrenberg is a legend of the venture industry as the Founder of IA Ventures, among the most successful seed-stage venture firms of this generation, having seeded companies including Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG), Digital Ocean (NYSE: DOCN), The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) and Wise (LSE: WISE.L). Today Roger is the Founder and Managing Partner of Eberg Capital, a pioneer in bridging the gap among sports franchises, sports betting, media and entertainment. Roger’s current sports investments include...
Published 02/19/24
Christian Hecker is the Founder and CEO of Trade Republic, the company making it easy and inexpensive for everyone with a smartphone to invest. To date, Christian has raised over $1.3BN for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Founders Fund, Accel and Creandum to name a few. Previously, Christian worked in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Investment Banking department. Johan Brenner is a General Partner at Creandum. Johan has led Creandum’s investments in iZettle (acquired by PayPal for...
Published 02/16/24
Martin Gontovnikas, a.k.a Gonto, is a software engineer at heart who moved to the “dark side” to focus on Marketing. With this career transition, he found a way to combine his 2 passions by applying his “engineering thinking” model to Marketing. He is now a B2B SaaS Advisor to Vercel and Airbyte among others and Co-Founder & GP of Hypergrowth Partners. Previously, he was SVP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0. In Today's Episode with Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto) We Discuss: 1. From No...
Published 02/14/24
Thomas Plantenga is the CEO @ Vinted, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world with a valuation of $4.5BN. Prior to becoming CEO, Thomas worked with a range of organisations including Bookaboat, OLX, Sellit/Wallapop and FJLabs. Alex Taussig is a General Partner @ Lightspeed and co-leads the fund's Consumer investment team. Alex's portfolio includes the likes of All Day Kitchens, Archive Resale, Daily Harvest, Faire, Found, Frubana, Keychain, Kikoff, Vinted, YaySay, and Zola. ...
Published 02/12/24
Doug Leone is the Global Managing Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s most renowned and successful venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Google, Airbnb, Whatsapp, Stripe, Zoom and many more. Marcelo Claure is the Founder & CEO of Claure Group, a multi-billion-dollar global investment firm. He is the Executive Chairman and Managing Partner of Bicycle Capital, a $500M Latin America-focused growth equity fund, and was appointed Chairman in Latin America of...
Published 02/09/24
Erik Allebest is the CEO @ Chess.com, the #1 online chess service on the planet with more than 150+ million members and 15+ million games played each day. Erik has scaled the company to over 700 people and $100M+ in revenue with no venture funding. In Today's Episode with Erik Allebest: 1. From Unemployable to $100M+ Revenue Founder: How did Erik make his way into the world of tech and startups? Was his MBA worth it? How does he advise others on whether to get one or not? What...
Published 02/07/24
David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, one of the leading seed-stage investment firms of the last decade having invested in over 500 seed-stage startups, including Plaid, Ro, Ramp, PillPack, Amplitude, Stripe, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Flexport, Classpass, Airtable and more. Terrence Rohan is the Managing Director @ Otherwise Fund, a fund that discretely empowers a network of today's top founders to make multi-stage venture investments. Terrence has invested in the likes of Figma,...
Published 02/05/24
Will Wu is the CTO @ Match Group, the owner and operator of the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, and Hinge to name a few. Prior to Match, Will was VP of Product at Snap Inc. As the 35th employee, Will spearheaded the creation of Snapchat’s “Discover” content platform. He also led the creation and growth of the “Chat” messaging feature, which today is a primary Snapchat engagement driver that connects hundreds of millions of...
Published 02/02/24
Dave Kellogg is one of the OGs of Saas. Among his many accomplishments, Dave was the CMO of Business Objects where he helped scale the business from $30M to $1BN in revenue. Dave has also been a CEO twice, once scaling the business from $0 to $80M and the other business from $8M to $50M before selling it. Dave is also an advisor to some of the best including GainSight, Logickull, MongoDB, Pigment, Recorded Future, and Tableau. In Today's Episode with Dave Kellogg We Discuss: 1. What...
Published 01/31/24
Ryan Akkina is a member of the Global Investment Team at the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo), which is responsible for managing MIT's endowment and pension plans. Ryan has invested in the likes of Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, a16z, Greenoaks and Initialized to name a few. Ryan also leads many of MITIMCo's direct co-investments including most notably into Coupang and Rippling. Prior to joining MITIMCo, Ryan was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. In Today's Episode with Ryan...
Published 01/29/24
Dave Ripley is the CEO @ Kraken, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, valued in 2022 at a whopping $10.8BN. Prior to Kraken, Dave was the Co-Founder of Glidera, a market-leading Blockchain technology company that Kraken acquired in 2016. In Today's Episode with Dave Ripley: 1. From Boston Consulting Group to CEO of Kraken: How did Dave first make his way into the world of crypto? What are the single hardest elements of a CEO transition? What does Dave know now...
Published 01/26/24
Sean Murray is the CRO @ Greenhouse which is the fourth company Sean has scaled successfully into the enterprise. Sean's prior roles include revenue leadership positions at Saleloft (CRO), Xactly (VP Sales), and CEB, now Gartner (Head of MID Global Sales). In Today's Episode with Sean Murray 1. The Origin Story: Is a Love of Sales Born: How did Sean first fall in love with Sales? What does Sean know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career in sales? What is...
Published 01/24/24
Adam Fisher is a Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners and one of the most successful investors in Israel over the last two decades with seed investments in Fiverr, Wix, Melio, HiBob and more. Adam has now made over 60 investments and has had an incredible 23 successful exits. Adam has now been in venture for over 27 years having started his career at Jerusalem Venture Partners in 1996. In Today's Episode with Adam Fisher We Discuss: 1. Lessons from 27 Years in Venture Capital: How...
Published 01/22/24
Zaria Parvez is Duolingo’s Senior Global Social Media Manager where she is famed for scaling Duolingo's TikTok from 50K followers in September 2021 to 8M followers today. The Duolingo TikTok has 143 viral videos (view counts of 1M or higher) due to Zaria’s creativity. What started as a test-and-learn initiative has become Duolingo's most successful social buzz and word-of-mouth initiative to date – all because of Zaria's insights, instincts, and expertise. In Today's Episode with Zaria...
Published 01/19/24
Shyam Sankar is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Palantir Technologies in addition to the Chairman of Ginkgo Bioworks. Shyam holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and a M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. In Today's Episode with Shyam Sankar: 1. Journey to the Top of Defence: How did Shyam make his way into the world of startups and get a role with Kevin Hartz at Xoom? How did seeing...
Published 01/17/24
Brian Halligan is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairperson of HubSpot. Brian led the business as CEO for 15 years from Day 1 to a $30BN public company with 7,000 employees. Among Brian numerous achievements, Brian is famed for coining the term "inbound marketing", he is a globally recognised author, he is also an incredible teacher having developed MIT’s popular Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures class. In addition to all of this, he is also the Co-Founder of Propeller Ventures, a $100 million...
Published 01/15/24
Keith Rabois is a Managing Director @ Khosla Ventures and one of the most respected venture investors of the last decade. Keith has led investments in Stripe, Faire, Ramp, Affirm and many more. Just last week, Keith announced he would be rejoining Khosla from Founders Fund, where he spent an immensely successful 5 years as a General Partner. Prior to Founders Fund, Keith started his career at Khosla where he spent 6 years and led investments in DoorDash, Opendoor, Webflow and more. In...
Published 01/12/24
Jamin Ball is a Partner @ Altimeter Capital where he sits on the board of Airbyte, Clickhouse, dbt Labs, Prisma, Tabular. Jamin has also led investments in Deel, MotherDuck, Personio and Starburst. Prior to Altimeter, Jamin spent 5 years at Redpoint where he led investments in Workato, Monte Carlo, Cityblock Health, Root Insurance. Ed Sim is one of the best seed round investors in venture as the Founder and Managing Partner @ Boldstart, Ed focuses specifically on developer, infra and SaaS...
Published 01/10/24