The Deep End by ODF
The Deep End by ODF is a podcast where visionary builders, creators, and experts discuss world-changing ideas. We skip the surface level and go in depth into ideas that matter including the futures of commerce, higher education, art, governance, longevity, and more with some of the most exciting figures in these fields. The Deep End is hosted by Julian Weisser and produced by ODF —where we help more people start the best companies. Visit ideas.beondeck.com for show notes and additional essays.
Fri, December 13, 2024
CEO of Cal.com Bailey Pumfleet: building an open source rocketship ("Stripe for Time") | ODF alum
Cal.com CEO Bailey Pumfleet turned a side project into one of the most ambitious infrastructure companies ever. His mission: powering a billion connections by 2031 Rather than just another Calendly alternative, they're building the "Stripe for Time" - scheduling infrastructure that powers everything from doctor's appointments to refugee services. We get into: [3:56] How startups get open source wrong [10:46] Launching the v0 of Cal (called Calendso) [24:32] Why open source is crucial for infrastructure companies [36:30] The journey from MVP to enterprise-grade platform [39:29] Building trust through radical transparency [46:46] How their "longevity guarantee" wins enterprise deals [47:15] Running a fully remote global team [53:00] Handling compliance and security at scale This is a must-watch for anyone building infrastructure, open source, or startups in general.. Enjoy! Links mentioned: ODF: explore starting a startup in SF and figure out co-founders, customers, and more at https://joinodf.com StampList: browse breakout companies with a track record of sponsoring visas for exceptional talent at https://landing.club/stamplist https://cal.com https://x.com/BaileyPumfleet https://x.com/peer_rich (Bailey's co-founder) https://x.com/julianweisser The Deep End is available on YouTube and other podcasting platforms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Pripb427E Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-end-by-odf/id1568752165 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TWOlf80GM1Pml8fGUO8KK
Mon, September 30, 2024
Eoghan McCabe: moving to America to build Intercom into a unicorn + the benefits of naivety, hard work, and rejection.
Eoghan McCabe is the CEO and co-founder of Intercom This was an incredible talk recorded live during the ODF22 cohort. Thanks again to Intercom for hosting. 10 important ideas (and timestamps) from this conversation: 1/ Innocence and Naivety Can Be a Superpower 7:58 - “There was a phenomenal amount of naivety that allowed people to do things that were kind of like conventionally the wrong thing to do.” 2/ Be Contrarian, but Not Recklessly So 10:05 - “If you talk to 100 funds right now and you can’t raise money, change the damn idea.” 3/ In-Person Work is Better 11:55 - “In person is better. And I think that the people who promote remote working are lazy and antisocial.” 4/ Find Your True Passion—or You'll Fail 17:55 - “Please follow your passion. Please do the thing that you love.” 5/ Great Companies Ride Multiple Waves 21:23 - “Great companies are built on successive waves… secular movements. They either create them themselves or they jump on ones that have started already.” 6/ Hard Work is Under Attack—But It's Essential 23:37 - “Most likely you’re going to want to need to work seven days a week and 12 hours a day to get your thing off the ground.” 7/ Extreme Homogeneity Early On Beats Diversity 25:03 - “In early-stage startups, you want extreme homogeneity. You want people who believe what you believe.” 8/ Customer Intimacy Over Everything 26:29 - “They’ll obsess about talking to customers… getting inside not just their heads but their hearts.” 9/ Early Failure and Rejection Strengthens You 29:08 - “The things that bruise our egos the most tend to eviscerate the parts of our ego that were making us so fragile in the first place.” 10/ Hiring Brilliant People is More Important than the Idea 41:51 - “The people who put that team together had an eye for that X factor.” -- If you're exploring starting a company apply for ODF - our 23rd cohort kicks off November 8th in San Francisco
Mon, February 12, 2024
Deep Dive: Find the right co-founder and idea with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd
Today we’re chatting with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd. Shepherd is all in one commercial insurance platform focused on high hazard industries. The company is on an absolute tear and this month they announced a $13.5M series A. Mo and I decided to sit down and record a conversation because the journey of Shepherd will resonate with many potential founders who are try to find those two key missing pieces: who might I start a company with and what might we build together? Right as the world was shutting down due to COVID, Mo joined ODF3 where he met one of his co-founders at Shepherd — Justin Levine. Mo and Justin soon embarked on a journey to determine what they could build together that had potential to solve a real customer problem. After pivoting through several ideas across a variety of sectors, they honed in on an area where one of them had a unique insight — construction insurance. This is an instructive story about how to find co-founders and how to build a great business together. Enjoy! Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that! ODF has helped 1k companies like Shepherd (ODF3) find their co-founders, get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com Mo on X/Twitter and his company Shepherd . beondeck.com On Deck on X/Twitter Julian on X/Twitter and blog Podcast episode archive and show notes
Tue, February 06, 2024
Deep Dive: Shutting down a startup, doing right by your team, and founder identity with Stevie Cline (VC at Vol. 1 Ventures)
Today’s conversation is rare but vital — we spend much of our time talking about the challenges around shutting down companies. While I spend most of my time writing about how to build towards success, the stark reality is that most companies fail. Shutting down your company is incredibly painful but it’s particularly lonely — you often feel like you have limited support and guidance. That’s why Stevie and I felt it was so important to record this episode. We hope this episode is a resource to every founder in the years ahead that makes the decision that it’s time to move on. It’s packed with personal stories from Stevie, tested tactics, and best practices. We also spend some time talking about startups, identity, and the long arc of ambition. Contrary to what you might expect, I found this to be an inspiring and entertaining conversation — I think you will as well. Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that! ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com Stevie on X/Twitter and her newsletter Highly Regulated beondeck.com On Deck on X/Twitter Julian on X/Twitter and blog Podcast episode archive and show notes
Fri, January 19, 2024
Control Your Financial Destiny: Runway, Metrics, and more with Puzzle's CEO Sasha Orloff
ODF is thrilled to announce its partnership with Puzzle — all ODF participants and alumni now save hundreds of dollars, To learn more go here . -- Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that! ODF has helped 1k companies—like Puzzle which was ODF8—get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com puzzle.io Sasha on X/Twitter beondeck.com On Deck on X/Twitter Podcast episode archive and show notes For this episode of the Deep End, Sasha dropped by On Deck co-founder Julian Weisser 's house in SF to talk about why he decided to decade his next decade to building better accounting software for startups. Sasha realized that building Puzzle was essential for startups to have the best chance at thriving in an increasingly complex world. Puzzle puts accounting on autopilot and enables founders to be able to zoom in on any area of their business, model out scenarios, and plan for the future. It also makes the diligence process during finance and acquisitions go smoother.
Thu, December 07, 2023
Augmenting people with AI and building the future featuring Matt Rastovac of Respell
Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that! ODF has helped 1k companies—like Respell which was ODF17—get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 20th cohort in San Francisco are now . Learn more and apply at beondeck.com respell.ai Matt on X/Twitter beondeck.com On Deck on X/Twitter Podcast episode archive and show notes For this episode of the Deep End, Matt Rastovac dropped by On Deck co-founder Julian Weisser 's house in SF to talk all things AI and his experience as a second-time founder. With his new company Respell , Matt is building AI-powered workflows and agents to assist on tasks enabling individuals and teams can be more effective than ever before. During our conversation Matt shares how he thought through building the first version of Respell, how to educate potential customers about breakthrough technology, and what he’s learned about sales. Prior to Respell, Matt was the co-founder and CTO of Atmos a vertically integrated solution for building a custom home. Matt shares what he learned at his first company, how he’s transitioned into the CEO role at his second one, his unique and compelling method of hiring and evaluating talent, and much more.
Bonus · Sat, December 02, 2023
"The most important milestone in the history of longevity biotech" — Archival Interview with Celine Halioua (Founder/CEO of Loyal)
Earlier this week Celine Halioua (ODF2), founder and CEO of Loyal — a dog longevity biotech startup — announced something truly groundbreaking. Loyal (ODF2) has earned what they believe to be the FDA’s first-ever formal acceptance that a drug can be developed and approved for lifespan extension. As Celine says in her announcement; “I started Loyal 4 years ago with the explicit goal to get the first drug FDA approved for lifespan extension itself - no disease, just healthy, longer"..."We can't start selling the drug yet - we need to complete the safety and manufacturing technical sections - but this represents the lions share of the 'existential risk' of both the drug program, and of Loyal AKA - we are doing it!!!” Laura Deming is a longevity biotech investor with an incredible batting average. 5 of 18 startups she’s backed so far have gone public. She was the first investor in Loyal and had this to say: "This just dropped - the most important milestone in the history of longevity biotech. put simply, this is the FDA’s first-ever formal acceptance that a drug can be developed and approved to extend lifespan. the longevity field is evolving quickly. No one I know in the field would have said this was possible 5 years ago. Celine got it done in 4. It’s a massive win for both biotech founders and regulators, in establishing a pathway by which drugs (initially for dogs) can get approved for lifespan" You’re about to listen to an archival interview with Celine just one and a half years into starting Loyal which is now 4 years old. It’s an incredible conversation with interviewer Marshall Kosloff and shows just how much can be accomplished in a few short years. Congrats to Celine and the entire Loyal team on what is truly an unparalleled milestone. Are you exploring starting a company we’ve got a program for that? ODF has helped 1k companies like Loyal which was ODF2 get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 20th cohort in San Francisco are now . Learn more and apply at beondeck.com loyalfordogs.com Celine's personal website Celine on X/Twitter beondeck.com On Deck on X/Twitter podcast episode archive and show notes
Sat, November 11, 2023
Defense Tech: Opportunities to support America and our allies with veteran Mike Slagh (founder/CEO of Shift)
Joining me in the deep end is US Navy veteran Mike Slagh — founder of Shift — an organization that has built the most significant bridge between the Department of Defense and the startup ecosystem. Defense Tech is a big deal. We’re just now starting to see it be thought of as a more feasible sector to build startups. Mike might be one of the best people in the world to learn about opportunities to build tech and services that support America and our allies. Before co-founding Shift, Mike felt a calling to serve and joined the United States Naval Academy and was a bomb disposal officer for half a decade. Mike’s first experiences with business go all the way back to when he was a kid helping his grandma Betty run her toy store. As a teenager he became an eBay power seller to generate an additional income stream for their business. In just under 10 days Mike is hosting the Defense Venture Summit, convening founders, operators, over 100 VC funds, and members of the US Military. It’s likely sold out as of publication. But if you are interested feel free to DM Mike on Twitter to see if you can be included. In this episode, Mike and I discuss opportunities in defense tech, a history of the sector, what he’s learned building a premier talent org, hiring veterans, and much more. Are you exploring starting a company we’ve got a program for that. ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. I’m actually recording this podcast intro at our partner Carta’s office as they are hosting us during the 19th cohort of ODF happening right now. The energy is incredible — I’m excited to see what this cohort builds. We’ve just started reviewing applications for our 20th cohort taking place in San Francisco in late January. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Mike Slagh
Fri, October 27, 2023
Lessons from the Journey to Building a Product Customers Want with Max Greenwald of Warmly
Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that. ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 19th cohort in San Francisco are due this week. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com -- Joining me in the deep end is Max Greenwald — co-founder of Warmly a startup that helps businesses turn warm leads into sales. The company recently announced their series A. I’ve known Max for years and watched the Warmly journey unfold — Max even met his co-founder Alan through ODF. Warmly’s path has not been a straight line. This conversation with Max is candid. He shares the mistakes and lessons learned on the journey towards building a product that customers love. This might be one of the most useful episodes we’ve recorded on the deep end in terms of giving actionable guidance for founders. In this episode, we discuss how to communicate changes in direction to investors and teammates, how to avoid the sunk cost fallacy, how to work with initial design partners, and much more.
Tue, October 24, 2023
Generative AI and deciding what to build first with Elaine Zelby of Tofu
Joining me in the deep end is Elaine Zelby — co-founder of Tofu ( https://www.tofuhq.com/ ) — a powerful generative AI platform that enables marketing teams to repurpose their content and run more successful campaigns. Tofu recently announced their $5M seed round led by Index Ventures. We’ve known Elaine for years — first as a friend, then as a participant in ODF2, then as an investor in On Deck during her time as a VC at SignalFire. She’s the first person we refer founders to when it comes to marketing, growth or go-to-market. In this episode, Elaine and On Deck co-founder Julian Weisser discuss how to decide what your startup should build first, what to consider when evaluating potential co-founders, how to think about fundraising in 2023, and the current capabilities of generative AI. Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that. ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 19th cohort in San Francisco are due this week. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com
Mon, October 23, 2023
Explore Starting a Company in San Francisco
On this episode of The Deep End, Julian Weisser – co-founder of On Deck – sits down with Marshall to discuss the latest from a program that has helped launch over 1,000 startups. Applications for the next cohort of On Deck Founders close on Tuesday, October 24th at 23:59 PST. If you’re exploring starting a company and want to figure out what to build and with whom, we’d love to chat. Apply today → beondeck.com
Wed, August 16, 2023
Raising $40M to Build Health Insurance for India with Amrit Singh
Joining us in The Deep End today is Amrit Singh. Amrit Singh is the co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India. Loop Health has raised over $40M, led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital. As we delve deeper into the meta-series of longevity, we engage in a captivating conversation with Amrit, exploring how Loop Health incentivizes health for its users. We'll also venture into the exciting frontiers of the longevity movement and the pivotal role health insurance plays in ensuring our well-being for the long term.
Thu, August 03, 2023
Combating the Autoimmune Epidemic with Wallace Torres
Joining us today in The Deep End is Wallace Torres. Wallace is the Co-Founder of WellTheory. WellTheory is an early-stage startup with a pretty powerful mission: combating the autoimmune epidemic through the use of food as medicine, community care, and personalized insights based on health data. During our conversation, we delve into the story behind WellTheory and the positive impact the startup has had on its customers: helping them decrease fatigue, minimize pain interference in their daily lives, and achieve higher overall life satisfaction. We also explore the various models present in the digital health space, take a closer look at WellTheory's recent pivot towards partnerships, explore the importance of community in the digital health space, and reflect on the challenges of implementing and sustaining community spaces effectively.
Thu, July 27, 2023
Raising $175M to Translate Nature Into Medicine with Viswa Colluru
Joining us today in The Deep End is Viswa Colluru, the CEO & Founder of Enveda Biosciences. Enveda has raised $175M in their quest to translate nature into medicine. Before founding Enveda, Viswa obtained a PhD in cellular and molecular biology, and started his career as a product manager at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. As our first guest in this series focusing on longevity and health, we speak to Viswa on why nature holds the great untapped potential for new drug discovery, why most drugs don’t work in human trials and what role artificial intelligence will play in unlocking biological and chemical data. We hope this conversation will give you a deep insight into nuances of the pharmaceutical industry, what the future holds for drug discovery and his advice for founders interested in this space.
Thu, July 27, 2023
Intro: How to Help People Live Longer and Healthier Lives
Welcome to a new mini-series of The Deep End! In these mini-series we explore some of the most complex, societal problems facing us at the moment - helping listeners gain a nuanced understanding of a complex topic - and then be inspired and equipped to build, invest or support startups and founders that are aiming to solve these challenges. In the last mini-series, we looked at the meta-problem of access to housing. We looked at the main bottlenecks holding us back from achieving more accessible and affordable housing, and we spoke to the founders creating a new reality in this field. If you missed any of those episodes, head to wherever you find your podcasts and have a listen. For this mini-series, we are focusing on longevity: the pursuit of longer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. The idea of living longer has captivated human imagination for centuries. While researching longevity, we identified eight bottlenecks holding us back from achieving longer and healthier lives, and we chatted with On Deck community members and founders to explore them.
Wed, July 19, 2023
AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda
Hey everyone, as we gear up for the launch of a new series on longevity next week, we wanted to re-publish this really timeley episode with Eugenia Kuyda, the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion company. Our conversation centers around the different use-cases of AI, from task-oriented chatbots to emotionally-supportive AI companionship. We delve into the current state of conversational tech, including how chatbots can become good listeners, and why Replika used a mixture of scripted retrievals and generative AI models for their product. We also discussed the past and future of AI and chatbots. Eugenia explains why task-oriented chatbots like a restaurant booking bot she had worked on previously didn’t catch on in the past, and the future she envisions where you can have an AI co-pilot of your life, like Jarvis from Iron Man, and how this can interact with her conception of the metaverse which she calls the “embodied internet”. This is a great episode for anyone who’s interested in possible futures of how AI can become a part of our lives, not only in helping us do things but in supporting our emotional and social lives. Let's dive in.
Wed, July 12, 2023
Fundraising and Venture Capital in 2023 with Julian Weisser
Joining us today in the Deep End is Julian Weisser. Julian is the co-founder of On Deck, and a prolific angel investor with over a hundred angel investments including Loyal, Level, Atmos, and more. Every few months, we invite Julian to the podcast to get a sense of what's going on in the world of venture, and this conversation is not different. We look at the growing importance of profitability and revenue generation for investors, as well as the importance of founders aligning their trajectory with investor expectations. We also look at alternative funding models, with Julian discussing Zapier and Bubble’s model of prioritizing revenue and profitability over heavy venture funding. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding the evolving venture capital landscape or thinking about fundraising.
Thu, June 29, 2023
From Personal Health Transformation to Magic AI with Varun Bhanot
Joining us today in the Deep End is Varun Bhanot. Varun is the co-founder and CEO of Magic AI, a home fitness system that uses AI to give you personalised training on a beautifully designed mirror. Prior to building Magic AI, Varun was the co-founder and CEO of Unhoused, a non-profit that leveraged technology to reduce homelessness. He also participated On Deck Founder’s third cohort. In this conversation, we discuss Varun’s approach to health & longevity. We cover his personal weight loss and gym journey, why European health tech startups have received less attention from the market and what the future holds for longevity companies.
Thu, June 15, 2023
Raising from Sam Altman to Build Land Valuation Models with Will Jarvis
Joining us in The Deep End today is Will Jarvis, co-founder and CEO of Valuebase. Valuebase is building land-centric models to improve property valuations and mass appraisal modeling. Valuebase recently secured $1.6 million in funding, with Sam Altman's Hydrazine leading the round and On Deck participating. Prior to Valuebase, Will served as a Researcher in Residence at On Deck, making today's conversation particularly noteworthy. As we continue our series on housing, we'll discuss the importance of land, Georgism and taxation, navigating the intricate world of ideas, and much more. Let's get started.
Thu, June 08, 2023
Navigating the Idea Maze to Reinvent Children Education with Ryan Delk
Joining us on The Deep End today is Ryan Delk. Ryan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Primer, a startup creating a new education system for children, centered around microschools. Last year, Primer announced that they’ve raised $15M in new capital. Ryan previously worked in Growth + Partnerships at Gumroad, and then joined another marketplace company, Omni, and became COO. In this conversation, we explore where the inspiration for Primer came from, how Primer is overcoming regulatory barriers in the space, and why Ryan believes the best education system is a world-class teacher in as small an environment as possible.
Wed, May 31, 2023
Raising $2.2M to Make Home Ownership Flexible with Lauren Self
Joining us today in the Deep End is Lauren Self. Lauren is the founder of Roots Homes, a fractional home ownership company, that allows you to build equity in your home while paying rent, which recently raised a $2.2M seed round. In this conversation we explore how Roots is finding the missing middle between renting and buying, helping ensure home-ownership comes with flexibility and how Roots is increasing access to the American dream. ---- View the full series on Housing: https://www.beondeck.com/deep-end/housing
Wed, May 24, 2023
Housing and Regulation with Kim-Mai Cutler from Initialized
Joining us in The Deep End today for our housing series is Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized who invests in proptech, real estate, and climate. Kim's background as a financial markets reporter and early-stage venture startup enthusiast, allowed her to broaden her reporting to include the intersection of the industry and public policy. In 2014, her essay on TechCrunch titled "How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained)" sparked almost a decade of public advocacy that changed a number of state laws in California around housing and zoning. As our first guest for this housing series, it’s only fitting that we invited Kim to help us understand why housing is a key problem worth solving, what are the implications around the current state of things, and what different bottlenecks founders can work on. We hope this conversation will give you a nuanced understanding of a complex market and practical tactics for building in housing.
Wed, May 24, 2023
Intro: How to Increase Access to Housing
Over the past two years, we've interviewed 100+ people for our podcast, The Deep End. Now we're relaunching The Deep End as a multi-media publication, focused on problems worth solving. In the first series, we are tackling an issue that affects us all: access to housing. Our house provides us with a sense of belonging and serves as a sanctuary where we can retreat from the chaos of the world. Once we accept the importance of housing, our focus needs to shift to how we can make it more accessible. We kick off the series with an introduction to housing as a problem. We look into why it's a problem worth solving and what are the bottlenecks to doing so – technology, culture, regulation, and more. Then, over the next few weeks, we talk to Lauren Lorraine Self from Roots Homes, Kim-Mai Cutler from Initialized, Will Jarvis from ValueBase, Peter Light from Lumen Energy and Riley Meik to understand the bottlenecks to housing, and explore possible solutions. Through this, we try to form a mental map of the problem: understanding its societal importance, the current bottlenecks to progress and setting out some of the most impactful solutions. In doing so, we hope to give the audience the tools and knowledge to build, invest or support some of the solutions to these challenges. Housing is not an easy problem to solve, but we believe it is a problem worth solving. So let’s get going. Episodes notes and more: https://beondeck.com/deep-end/housing
Wed, May 10, 2023
From Pivoting to Raising $180M to Build Stripe for Transportation with Vignan Velivela
Joining us in The Deep End today is Vignan Velivela. Vignan is the co-founder and CEO of AtoB, a fintech payments platform modernizing the trucking industry’s financial system, which raised a $155M Series B last year. He was also a part of the On Deck Founders’ third cohort. We are taking a short break from our series on access to housing, to talk to Vignan about one of the biggest challenges facing us at the moment: transportation and logistics. In this episode, we cover the central and essential role of trucking in America’s economy, why the trucking industry’s financial systems were ripe for disruption, how far away we are from self-driving trucks, and what the future of transportation looks like in the coming years.
Wed, May 03, 2023
Curiosity as an Ideation Mechanism with Tory Reiss
Joining us in The Deep End today is Tory Reiss. Tory is the CEO and co-Founder of Equi, an alternative investment hedge fund. Tory previously co-founded Archblock, a decentralized alternatives marketplace, and Harvest Money, an AI-driven debt management platform. We’re taking a quick break from our series on starting companies, to take a quick dive into the world of fintech. Our conversation with Tory today centers around how you can take control of your financial destiny and Tory’s journey from a Google Docs to starting Equi.
Thu, April 27, 2023
How Finch Navigated the Idea Maze to a $40 Million Raise with Ansel Parikh
Navigating the Idea Maze to The Unlikely Birth of Finch Finch, a platform providing a unified API for employment data, was born out of failure and uncertainty. Ansel Parikh and Jeremy Zhang, the co-founders, first met during On Deck's second cohort. Both were passionate about solving the plumbing behind big problems and gravitated towards challenging infrastructure issues. Finch was born out of failure. Initially, they attempted to launch an embedded lending platform, but the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their plans. Banks and customers began rejecting them as the future of lending became uncertain. Who was going to give a loan in such an uncertain environment? It wasn't until a small business lender they were potentially going to work with approached them with a request to help access employment data for the Payment Protection Program (PPP) that they discovered the opportunity that would eventually become Finch. Although the PPP was nearing its end when they built their solution, Ansel and Jeremy received enough positive feedback to continue pursuing the employment data problem. They embraced a "hard to get information made legible" business model, rather than following a thesis-driven approach. This allowed them to quickly pivot and adapt based on their unique founder-product fit: Ansel's background in fintech and infrastructure investments, combined with Jeremy's engineering and product experience, enabled them to quickly develop a product and secure their first customer. They emphasized the importance of failing quickly and focusing on the problem, rather than falling in love with a particular solution. Ansel also highlights that there is no “perfect moment” to get to conviction, you just need to make a decision. Finding the Right Co-Founder For Ansel and Jeremy, finding the right co-founder was critical to their success. On paper, they had a unique founder / product fit. Jeremy had a background on engineering and product, and had worked on API challenges before that transferred to employment data ecosystems and the work they were doing at Finch. Ansel had been a late-stage investor at Kleiner Perkins and had spent a considerable amount of time on fintech and infrastructure investments so he was deeply familiar with the space. That said, they had to test whether they actually worked well as a team. They recommend setting up a three-week sprint with a potential co-founder to work on a project together, setting daily goals, and discussing progress. On top of that, they found another co-founder team who were going through the same stage and became accountability buddies. In their case, On Deck played a crucial role in helping them meet and build a strong working relationship because it provided with the structure they needed throughout that period. Embracing Complexity and Turning Illegible Information into Legible Data Finch's business model re
Wed, April 05, 2023
Starting Companies Outside the US with Gina Gotthilf
Gina Gotthilf is the co-founder and COO at Latitud, a platform helping build the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through products, a dedicated fellowship and fund. Gina met her co-founder, Brian Requart, through On Deck. Before Latitud, Gina was the VP of Marketing and Growth at Duoloingo, helping scale the company from 3 to 200 million users, and worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. Continuing with our series on the meta-problem of helping people start companies, we talk to Gina about the bottlenecks to starting companies outside the United States.
Wed, March 29, 2023
Immigration as a Bottleneck to Starting Companies with Sophie Alcorn
Joining us in The Deep End today is Sophie Alcorn. Sophie is the founder of Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration law firm that helps tech talent immigrate to the US. She is also the host of the podcast Immigration Law for Tech Startups and author the TechCrunch weekly immigration advice column “Dear Sophie.” Continuing with our series on the meta-problem of helping people start more companies, we talk to Sophie to understand why immigration is a bottleneck to company creation, and what founders, investors, and policy-makers can do about it.
Wed, March 22, 2023
Navigating Fundraising and Financial Diligence with Sasha Orloff
On The Deep End today, we welcome Sasha Orloff, the Founder and CEO of Puzzle, a modern accounting software package for startups that recently raised $15 million in series A. Sasha joins us to discuss the use of accounting as a powerful decision-making tool and the creation of infrastructure to start and scale businesses, as part of our series on meta-problems to help founders start more companies. Despite advances in financial technology, Sasha believes that core accounting software remains outdated and does not take advantage of modern capabilities. He suggests that accounting could be a competitive advantage for businesses if it were reimagined as a tool for data-driven decision-making, empowering founders to build better businesses. During the episode, Sasha identifies three key areas that founders should focus on when fundraising: telling a compelling story, taking the process seriously, and planning for success: Founders must have a strong answer for what sets them apart from their competitors, and they should be intentional about raising venture capital. As the market returns to normal, Sasha advises founders to be aware of business compliance and financial diligence to avoid giving away a larger percentage of their company for less money. Throughout the episode, he emphasizes the importance of founders understanding their business numbers to make informed decisions and build successful companies. You can learn more about Puzzle at https://puzzle.io.
Wed, March 08, 2023
Minn Kim on Small Group Theory and the Gift of Global Talent
Joining us on the Deep End today is Minn Kim. Minn spent a few years as an investor at Ridge, Bloomberg Beta and On Deck, backing founders as early as possible and is now building Plymouth to help extraordinary talent immigrate to the US. In this conversation we go deep into Minn’s core belief – that technology enables step changes in human agency. We discuss navigating the idea maze, picking who to start a company with, why immigration is key to innovation and so much more.
Thu, March 02, 2023
Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World
Last week in The Deep End we spoke with David Booth, CEO of On Deck. Today we're continuing our mini-series on the meta problem of how to help more people start more companies by re-publishing an episode of the Solarpunk podcadst with Erik Torenberg, co-founder and Chairman of On Deck. Erik joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon discuss why startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems, how governments and startups need to work together, not against each other, the rising importance of story-telling and much more.
Wed, February 22, 2023
Why is Now the Time to Start a Company with David Booth
On the latest episode of The Deep End podcast by On Deck, we interview our very own David Booth, CEO of On Deck. Recently, David has announced one of the biggest updates to On Deck since the program went virtual in 2020, with the return of in-person programming and community space in San Francisco. In this conversation, we discuss why On Deck is doubling down on IRL programming, why he believes venture-backed founders need to be deeply connected to the Bay Area, why now is the best time to start a company and how startups help combat stagnation. The episode is for anyone interested in better what is needed for early-stage start-ups to succeed in the current economic climate, the Bay Area as a tech hub, and how startups are the best mechanism we have to solve complex societal problems.
Thu, December 15, 2022
Telling Your Professional Story with Heyo’s Vivian Chen
Vivian Chen is the CEO & Founder of Heyo, a bite-sized pitch platform for professional success. Before starting Heyo,Vivian was an operator who built products across categories from high-growth startups to global enterprises. Vivian is on a mission to build the future of work. Heyo enables users to build profiles online short-form content and video, offering a new way to tell your professional story. In this conversation, we discuss Vivian’s founder journey, how she maintained her vision in the face of setbacks, rapidly shifting market conditions, and the need to pivot in the face of experience. We also cover how short-form video can help anyone stand-out in crowded professionals spaces and offer new opportunities to the previously overlooked. Learn more about Heyo here: https://heyo.at/
Fri, November 18, 2022
Building Web3 Projects on the Frontiers of Emerging Markets with Ani Pai
Ani Pai is an investment partner at Dragonfly, where he focuses on highly technical Web3 projects in emerging markets. Ani believes that progress happens on the frontier. Whether it be outer space, the mind/body, and the oceans. He’s focused on using crypto to explore these frontiers and eventually merging crypto networks with analog industries in order to shepherd the next billions users into web3. We discuss the state of the crypto industry in the wake of FTX’s implosion, why he believes the next generation of founders will need to be “polymathic in their interests and skillsets, and whether web3’s promise will be fulfilled in the United States or emerging markets, or even a network state/new country. This episode is for anyone interested in how the marriage of crypto bits with the world of atoms could define the next era of tech. Learn more about Dragonfly here: https://www.dragonfly.xyz/
Thu, November 10, 2022
Building the Dream of Homeownership with Roots Homes’s Lauren Self
Lauren Self is the founder of Roots Homes, a platform that helps put the dream of homeownership within reach by allowing prospective buyers to effectively pay rent while building equity in their home with fractional ownership. In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey and life experiences that motivate her to build in this space, why the dream of owning a home feels increasingly out of reach, why she believes her model is superior to perma-renting, and how the concept of fractional ownership can expand to use-cases beyond the real estate market. This episode is for anyone interested in how new business models can open up previously gated opportunities to new generations. Learn more about Roots here: https://www.roots.homes/
Thu, November 03, 2022
Building Survivor-Centric Tools with Leda Health’s Madison Campbell
Madison Campbell is Co-Founder and CEO of Leda Health, which provides aftercare for sexual assault survivors. Leda Health approaches its space through a survivor-focused lens, developing self-administered DNA collection and testing, while also connecting survivors with professionals and resources. In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey since leaving school to pursue a startup, fundraising in a sensitive product category, and how the nimble approaches required to found and build an early startup can be the best means of addressing real-world problems. This episode is for anyone interested in the intersection of healthcare, technology, and seemingly intractable challenges. Learn more about Leda Health at: https://www.leda.co/
Thu, October 27, 2022
Democratizing Access to Public Education Dollars with Odyssey’s Joseph Connor
Joseph Connor is the CEO & founder of Odyssey, a platform that helps families access state microgrants for K-12 education. Prior to starting Odyssey, Joseph was a former teacher, school founder, and attorney. Joseph and his team at Odyssey are on a mission to empower everyday parents by enabling access to public education dollars. Odyssey’s technology provides states with a turnkey platform to manage microgrant programs. A growing number of policymakers view microgrant programs as a tool to bridge equity gaps between families in under-resourced communities and their more affluent peers. Yet implementation has been challenging and these funds have not achieved the desired impact or reached parents’ pockets at scale. Odyssey is partnering with states to help smooth implementation, and ensure all eligible families are able to benefit. In this conversation, we discuss Joseph’s founder journey in education over the last ten years, why government inefficiencies present such an interesting – but hard – problem to solve, and how a platform like Odyssey has the potential to address fundamental inequality across the US school system. This episode is for anyone interested in new possibilities at the intersection of edtech and public policy. Learn more about Odyssey here: https://www.withodyssey.com/ Keep up with Joseph Connor here: https://josephjconnor.com/
Thu, October 20, 2022
Starting New York Tech Week with Capital’s Andrew Rea
Andrew Rea is an angel investor and operator, who recently started and organized New York Tech Week. He leads go-to-market at Capital (formerly Party Round) and has invested in over 20 startups, including Motion and Cococart. Before he was at Capital, Andrew was vital in building the community at the On Deck Angels fellowship . Andrew also has founder experience, having co-founded an EV startup, raised $1M, and sold to PE within 2 years. In this conversation, we discuss how New York Tech Week came about, how to think about the advantages of the New York tech ecosystem compared to other tech hubs, and what Andrew is hearing from elite founders about gaining traction and building companies in the current climate. This episode is for anyone interested in better understanding the tech scene hubs and industry events and what it takes to pull off a tech week in less than two months. Learn more about Capital here , and watch the video Marshall and Andrew discuss here . Follow Andrew Rea on twitter. Learn more about New York Tech Week here.
Thu, October 13, 2022
Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World
Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and Executive Chairman of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Village Global’s Solarpunk is a podcast series about technology, space, and defense. Takeaways: Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems. Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth. Governments and startups need to work together, not against each other. China has the GDP per capita of Mexico but they have power because of how big their population is. Increasing population should be an aim of the US government. Humans are a naturally technological species and the only way out of our current problems is through technology, not without it. People in Silicon Valley need to invest in storytelling and capturing hearts and minds. They have a new appreciation for how important politics is. Ideas from Silicon Valley are being exported around the world —among them are giving without asking for anything in return, alignment via equity, and decoupling where you live from where you work.
Thu, October 06, 2022
Rewarding Social Curation with Rara’s Lawson Baker
Lawson Baker is the Founder of RARA, a social curation protocol for NFTs that revolutionizes how creators benefit from sharing their art, and how curators interact with and gain value from interacting with artists’ work. Our discussion centers around how web3 will forever change the dynamic between creators and curators. “Likes” and “heart” buttons are remnants of web2 — RARA creates tools to move away from centralized curation to decentralized curation, where fans can be rewarded for recognizing popular or viral art early. Users are tired of doing free labor for social media platforms. With RARA social, creators gain value from how much users interact with their art, and fans gain curation tokens for recognizing popular art early. The name of the company — Ra Ra — refers to a cheer, and in that vein, the protocol is powered by web3 reactions. Users burn reactions on NFTs that they like and receive curation tokens in exchange. The more that other people react to that NFT, the more the value of those curation tokens goes up. With this protocol, reactions are brought on-chain instead of being tied to a platform like Twitter or Instagram. This creates a permanent, portable reputation system for NFTs that benefits both creators and the fans who’ve invested in them. We also talk about the growth of web3 and how NFTs are entering the zeitgeist, and the history of the term “curator”: what does it mean to be a curator, both in-person and digitally, and how has this definition changed over time? Going beyond digital art, we talk about how RARA social could integrate with music platforms, rewarding creators and curators alike for generating popular music and engaging playlists. This is a great episode for fans of NFTs and all things web3, as well as any creators out there, or curators who love finding and spreading great content out to their network. Follow Lawson Baker at @lwsnbaker and RaRa at @rara_social
Thu, September 29, 2022
Deathtech: Loss Memorialization with Chptr’s Rehan Choudhry
Rehan is the Founder and CEO of Chptr, a startup fixing the way the world remembers people who have passed away. Prior to creating Chptr, he had a long career in music, founding the “Life is Beautiful” festival, and led marketing teams at high-profile Las Vegas hotels. Rehan and his team at Chptr are vying for the memorialization space, which up until now has been owned by legacy media obit pages and Facebook timelines. The broader death tech industry is estimated to reach over $128B this year and steadily growing, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rehan’s soulful vision for Chptr is a model for community building around death, based on user behaviors trained by precursor social networks built to chronicle lives. In this conversation, we discuss how Chptr can reimagine how we memorialize loved ones, the maturation of the social media space, and how On Deck helped him on his founder’s journey. This episode is for anyone interested in the future of social networks, identifying new problem areas in less-talked-about spaces like deathtech, or anyone, regardless of industry and age, who is interested in being a founder. Download and discover Chptr here Follow Rehan’s founder journey on Twitter
Thu, September 15, 2022
Momentum Capital: Founders and Angels with Julian Weisser
Julian Weisser is the co-founder of On Deck, partner at our Founders and Angels programs, and investor at Other Ventures. He is a prolific startup investor and has backed over 100 companies ranging from asteroid mining to dog longevity and decentralized museums. He’s often one of the first angels that founders seek out for guidance on how to construct their fundraise. Our discussion today covers how Julian started investing with just $1k in multiple companies, while building his investment philosophy and portfolio track record. We debate about the new evolution of how founders start companies, what is momentum capital in startups, and why Julian feels like now is the best time to start a company. We also get into details from Julian’s experience working with founders and how to align on the fundamentals when looking for a co-founder. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff. Show links: On Deck Founder Fellowship: https://www.beondeck.com/ Angel Fellowships: https://www.beondeck.com/angels Julian Weisser’s links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/julianweisser Personal Website: weisser.io Companies Mentioned Traba - Reliable on-demand staffing. Co-founders met via On Deck. Podcast episode with CEO with Mike Shebat Primer - Education for ambitious and curious kids. Co-founders met via On Deck. Podcast episode with CEO with Ryan Delk. People Mentioned Sander Daniels - Co-founder of Thumbtack and LP in Other Ventures Ryan Delk - Founder of Primer
Thu, September 08, 2022
The No-Code Revolution With Bubble’s Emmanuel Straschnov
Emmanuel Straschnov is the Co-CEO and Founder of Bubble, an online tool to build web applications without code. Our discussion is about the state of No Code: what it is, where it came from, and where it's going. The pandemic saw a huge growth of interest in No Code in mid-to-late 2020 as people everywhere began looking for cheap and fast ways they could start building from their own homes. We also talk about how and why Emmanuel chose to bootstrap when he was starting Bubble, and why a lot of Bubble users choose to bootstrap their own companies too: with the ability to build a web app cheaply and quickly at your fingertips, there isn’t as much of a need for fundraising or having a technical co-founder as there was before. With No Code tools like Bubble, will technical founders, or even coding itself, eventually become obsolete? This episode is for anyone interested in starting their own venture, or anyone, regardless of industry, who is looking for No Code tools to build their first product. Follow On Deck on Social Media for the latest on the future of work and education: https://twitter.com/beondeck/ https://linkedin.com/company/beondeck/ https://facebook.com/ondeckhq/ https://instagram.com/beondeck/
Fri, July 29, 2022
Venture Stories: How Royal is Transforming the Artist-Fan Relationship
JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of Venture Stories web3 series. Takeaways: - Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on. - Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on. - The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just need a laptop. - Royal is trying to enable the fan-artist relationship to be more of a partnership. - When fans own a part of an artist’s song, they are tied for life. - Justin has sold a ton of tickets in his career but he has zero idea of who those fans are and doesn’t have the ability to contact them. The data layer built into Royal helps artists connect with their fans. - In the future, music labels will become much more competitive for artists than they have been in the past.
Thu, July 21, 2022
AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda
Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion company. Our conversation today centers around the different use-cases of AI, from task-oriented chatbots to emotionally-supportive AI companionship. We delve into the current state of conversational tech, including how chatbots can become good listeners, and why Replika used a mixture of scripted retrievals and generative AI models for their product. We also talk about the differences between an AI companion, virtual assistant, and chatbots. We also discussed the past and future of AI and chatbots. Eugenia explains why task-oriented chatbots like a restaurant booking bot she had worked on previously didn’t catch on in the past, and the future she envisions where you can have an AI co-pilot of your life, like Jarvis from Iron Man, and how this can interact with her conception of the metaverse which she calls the “embodied internet”. This is a great episode for anyone who’s interested in possible futures of how AI can become a part of our lives, not only in helping us do things but in supporting our emotional and social lives. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, July 14, 2022
Venture Stories: Labor Marketplaces with Traba's Mike Shebat
Today, we’re syndicating an episode from the Village Global podcast hosted by On Deck co-CEO Erik Torenberg . The guest on the show is Mike Shebat - CEO & Co-founder of Traba and a member of Forbes 30 Under 30. Mike participated in the 8th cohort of our On Deck Founder fellowship. He and the team at traba recently closed a $20M to match contractors with events and warehouse work. He met one of his co-founders, Akshay, through On Deck. Prior to starting Traba, Mike was a founding member of the Uber Eats team. For more stories like Mike’s, check out beondeck.com/stories
Thu, July 07, 2022
The Network State Revisited with Balaji Srinivasan
A year ago, we launched The Deep End with Balaji Srinivasan as one of our first three guests. In the episode, he discussed the impending arrival of The Network State. Flash forward to this Monday on the fourth of July when Balaji released his book “The Network State: How to Start a New Country.” In a single sentence, a network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states. In this episode, Saagar Enjeti (another past guest of the show) and Marshall revisit some of the themes from last year’s Deep End episode and try to better understand Balaji’s frameworks for understanding the futures of tech and nation states. Let’s dive in to this syndicated episode from The Realignment, Marshall's other podcast.
Fri, July 01, 2022
Driving Better Health with Roundtrip's Mark Switaj
Mark Switaj is co-founder & CEO of Roundtrip Health. Roundtrip is driving better health by providing a full suite of non emergent transportation options to patients in different care settings across the country. After exploring the India and health tech market in India last week, we wanted to revisit healthcare in the US. Today’s conversation is about social determinants of health. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Roundtrip specifically is focusing on transportation - 4 million people miss appointments every year because of a transportation barrier. But Mark is able to speak to how organizations more broadly must lean on data insights in order to improve health outcomes. We also talk about how the pandemic has affected the domestic health tech and telehealth landscapes. Mark’s comments echo some of the observations that Nikhil Krishnan highlighted in our episode on overcoming the six stages of health tech grief that we released back in December. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, June 23, 2022
Building Health Tech in India with Loop Health's Amrit Singh
Amrit Singh is a co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India. Our discussion today is about what it’s like to be a founder in India, and what the startup ecosystem there looks like relative to the US. India is an interesting paradox because although it’s a massive country in terms of population which contains almost 1 in 5 living people, that doesn’t always equate to huge market sizes in terms of available spend. We also talk about the state of healthcare in India in a world where medical inflation is leading to the cost of care doubling every five years even though quality isn’t getting 2X better, and how the fee-for-service model perpetuates perverse incentives in healthcare all around the world. We discussed Loop’s mission to help change this with a philosophy around value-based healthcare that focuses on preventing sickness instead of reacting to it. This episode is for anyone interested in company-building in emerging markets like India, or for those just looking for valuable insights on being a founder and what it takes to succeed. Let’s dive in. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, June 16, 2022
Tokenizing Creator Communities with Crowdpad's Joel Alexander
Joel Alexander is the founder and CEO of Crowdpad, a tokenized community-building platform for creators whose goal is to help creators monetize on day one. Our conversation today centers around web3 and the future of the creator economy. We discuss how the path to monetization on traditional creator economy platforms like YouTube is so long and onerous that most people give up, and how allowing creators to launch their own token to distribute out to their fans and building token-gated communities might help resolve this. We also discuss the disparity of earnings between the average web3 creator and the average creator on a platform like Meta, the best way of empowering independent artists with recognition and remuneration, how funding creators via social tokens vs. cash donations aligns incentives and makes the “hundred true fans” thesis viable, and how TikTok is one of the most discovery-friendly mechanisms in the world right now for all kinds of creators Whether you’re a founder or investor interested in the next iteration of the creator economy, or you’re just an aspiring individual creator looking to understand the landscape and the best tools available to reach and monetize an audience in 2022, this is the episode for you. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, June 09, 2022
Mobile Money with Wave's CTO Ben Kuhn
Ben Kuhn is the CTO at Wave, a mobile payment company whose mission is to make Africa the first cashless continent by building ways for unbanked people to send and save money. Our discussion today covers a wide variety of topics — everything from how going cashless can help lift people out of poverty in sub-saharan Africa, to how social enterprises differ from tech companies. to why soccer balls don’t make good lamps. We also spend time diving deep on why startups should only spend their “innovation points” on things that directly impact the core business problem they’re trying to solve and use “boring” solutions for other things. Ben’s mental model for this is fascinating — the way he sees it, departures from the status quo are almost always more costly than people realize, and so it’s only worth doing when it’s mission critical. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, June 02, 2022
The Big Tech Narrative with Alex Kantrowitz
Alex Kantrowitz is a reporter who contributes to CNBC, hosts the "Big Technology" Podcast and writes the "Big Technology" newsletter, which includes reports & analysis of big tech firms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft Apple, and more. Alex is an independent reporter with a background working at media orgs like BuzzFeed. He's optimistic about the impact of tech on the world. As such - he occupies a unique vantage point as a member of both tech AND media (two groups that don't always get along). Our conversation explores this dynamic by diving into how the relationship between tech and media evolved over time and resurfacing some of the more overlooked reasons why media coverage of tech has soured. We also explore the state of tech media today in a world when many companies are attempting to tell their own stories, and why it's harder to do this than most companies realize. We also discuss the business of content creation. Alex is a big advocate of building quality relationships with audiences. He also questions the conventional wisdom of advertising being an inherently evil revenue model. Alex is a multifaceted person so we covered a lot of ground - Elon buying twitter, the state of the market, how Twitter destroyed Vine, and more. It's a great birds eye view episode for those looking to learn more about tech and media today. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, May 26, 2022
The Market for Solutions with On Deck's Charles Cushing
Our discussion today centers on the “market for solutions”, a mental model that guest Charles Cushing explored in a 2020 essay he wrote where he wondered if there was a way to improve the market for solutions in order to make all downstream problems easier to solve. In Charles' view, On Deck’s mission is to help improve the market for solutions by bringing together capital, talent, and customers all into one place to make company formation happen. We get into the evolution and history of On Deck’s Founder fellowship through its different phases and iterations, and how On Deck became the place to go for founders to develop conviction, find co-founders, and validate their idea. We also get a look into some future offerings including “belief checks” for talented people who are pre-conviction that will help would-be founders get off the sidelines and into the arena starting companies. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, May 19, 2022
The Indian Startup Ecosystem with Anand Chandrasekaran
Anand Chandrasekaran is a partner at General Catalyst with extensive executive experience at some of the biggest names in tech, including Five9, Facebook, and Yahoo. He has also started several of his own companies. Today’s episode is about the startup ecosystem in India, where Anand has invested in dozens of up-and-comers. We discuss first the phase-by-phase evolution of India’s startup ecosystem, followed by how users today have a different Internet starting point than those from 5 and 10 years ago, as well as what the Indian startup ecosystem can teach the world. We also touch on how web3 levels the playing field. You can read Anand’s thoughts in more detail @ anandc on Twitter. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, May 05, 2022
Solarpunk Tech with Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon
This week's guests are Ian Cinnamon and Lucas Bagno. Ian and Lucas are the co-hosts of Village Global’s new Solarpunk podcast, which focuses on space, technology, and defense. The theme of the conversation today is Solarpunk. It was interesting that, although they say they’re inspired by the aesthetic of Solarpunk, Ian and Lucas emphasize that they have their own interpretation of what Solarpunk means that isn’t tied to the online Solarpunk community. Instead, for them, it’s about technology as a force for progress and human thriving over the long term. Beyond the definition of Solarpunk, we discuss a wide range of topics including how there is more capital and talent flowing into space tech today than before, why time is short for defense innovation and we need to act now to address a changing geopolitical situation, why the CCP represents one of the biggest threats that America has ever faced, and why Lucas considers Anduril to be the most inspiring company name of all time. Our discussion today is an intriguing mashup of disparate topics like space, defense tech, and ideas that matter the most for a better, more secure, and more sustainable future for humanity. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, May 02, 2022
Embracing Hard Tech with Eli Dourado
This week's guest is Eli Dourado, an economist who says that all he wants is for GDP per capita to reach $200k in 2050. Marshall's conversation with Eli today centers around how to get economic growth back on track after the Great Stagnation, which was a slowdown of total factor productivity growth from 2% annually in the post WW2 period to .3% by 2005. We discuss the causes of economic stagnation and the way to get to faster growth, including genuine hard tech advances like the MRNA vaccines or faster air travel. We also talk about why institutional and regulatory changes — what Eli calls “social technologies” — are just as necessary as pure technological innovation. It’s a far-ranging discussion that covers everything from the details of what led to the mothballing of the Concorde project, to how it might be possible one day to travel to the other side of the earth on your lunch break. We also discuss why the “promiscuous distribution of veto powers” have slowed our ability to make decisions as a society, crippling our ability to innovate and achieve our economic growth potential as a result. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, April 28, 2022
Evolving Internet Culture with Default Friend
Today's guest is "Default Friend," an internet personality who writes about internet culture and digital communities. Our discussion starts by using the recent Taylor Lorenz controversy regarding her story on Libs of TikTok to launch into a broader discussion of how the internet and tech are reported on, and why there’s a one-dimensional focus on fear mongering or trend analysis in media coverage of internet culture and digital communities. We then broaden our conversation to the different eras of the internet and its evolution through time, including the cultural effects of digital communities migrating from one platform to the next, the reversal of the sex-positive movement online, and why big tech vs. crypto vs. luddites may soon replace the culture wars. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the past and the future of the internet which highlights the increasing convergence between the internet and “real life”. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, April 25, 2022
The Future of Focused Work with Freedom's Fred Stutzman
Fred Stutzman is founder and CEO of Freedom - a company developing a toolset for the future of focused work in a distraction-first world. Our discussion is about what the future of work will look like in a world where the things that enable remote collaboration, like Slack and email, are the very things which make it hardest to focus. We talk about fighting the negative externalities of social media with tools like Freedom, which blocks distracting websites and apps across your devices. We talk about how social media creates time displacement and how good work hygiene, creating guardrails, and pre-committing to take advantage of your best intentions can be used to create a better working environment. The conversation also gets into why high quality work is more mentally taxing in an era of what Fred calls “distraction machines," how knowledge work resembles an endurance sport, and how the next generation entering the labor force will relate to the technologies they use to work. It’s a sobering but eye-opening reminder of the perpetual battle for focus that defines modern work. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, April 18, 2022
Personalized Wellness with Rootine's Rachel Sanders
Rachel Sanders is co-founder and CEO at Rootine, a company focused on optimizing health and performance through precision nutrition. Rootine is focused on what they call precision health and nutrition, which involves looking at hundreds of data points to identify your nutritional deficiencies and sending you tailored supplements to optimize your health, along with a way to track if it's working. Our discussion focuses on why there’s no one-size-fits all solution to health and wellness, what cellular nutrition means and how it supports overall health, and what the future of health will look like now that consumers have access to more data than ever before. This conversation was especially energizing because it offers us a window into the way that tech-enabled health and nutrition is likely to progress over the next ten years: a future that is more data-driven, precise for every individual, and incorporating tight feedback loops to determine what really works and what doesn’t. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, April 14, 2022
Executive Coaching with Practice's Julien Smith
Julien Smith is co-founder and CEO at Practice. He's also a bestselling author and executive coach. Today’s discussion focuses on Julien’s journey from starting as an online author and creator and then turning into a multi-time startup founder, instead of vice versa. We discuss what it takes to make the leap from talking about something to actually doing it, how publishing has changed and why it remains the same, the evolution and trajectory of the executive coaching industry from Tony Robbins’ era until today, and how to avoid the pressures of shifting from small business clients to enterprise clients over time. The episode also touches on some interesting ground around the growth of executive coaching and the self-improvement industry, and how founders can now learn from each other directly in peer-to-peer networks more now than ever before. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, April 11, 2022
Evaluating Climate Risk with Climate X's Lukky Ahmed
Lukky Ahmed is the founder & CEO of Climate X. Today’s discussion is about understanding climate change from the standpoint of how it affects us and the world around us for generations to come, using data and machine learning. Our conversation covered topics like how climate change can be used to inform risk models for everyone from property holders to businesses to governments, and the variables involved in predicting physical events linked to climate change from flooding to coastal erosion to rainfall changes. Climate X’s mission is to combat or minimize the human suffering caused by climate change by phenomena such as climate migration, which exceeded war as a cause of migration last year for the first time. It’s a great discussion about climate that comes from a new and fresh angle that we don’t often hear. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, April 07, 2022
The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd
Paul Millerd is author of the Pathless Path, which is about his personal journey of leaving the traditional realm of work and finding something holistic and sustainable. In this conversation we discuss what Paul calls “the default path” — a cultural script we grow up with that tells us what to do in order to be a successful adult, like getting a “forever job”, versus what Paul calls the “pathless path”, a new, more flexible way of defining our relationship with work. The discussion centers around topics like how the pandemic has fractured the default path for many people, the so-called “great resignation” and how real the “anti-work” movement really is, why people are re-examining the centrality of work in their lives, why Paul recommends that most people should take one month away from work to reflect on their goals and aspirations, and the importance of shifting from “getting ahead” to “coming alive”. Paul’s perspective on this topic is unique, nuanced, and well-informed in a way that really stands out from most commentators on this issue. He balances a strong vision for how the future will be different with a pragmatic understanding rooted in the history of work. For anyone looking to understand how their working lives are likely to change over the coming years and decades, it’s a must listen. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, April 04, 2022
Execs: Systems for Blitzscaling with former Uber Chief Business Officer Emil Michael
Today you’ll hear On Deck CEO Erik Torenberg interview Emil Michael - Uber’s Chief Business Officer during their hypergrowth period from 2013 to 2017. While he was there, Uber grew from 250 employees to 15,000 and raised $15 billion. He shares the lessons he learned and systems he built during this blitzscaling with Erik. For more tactical episodes like this, you can listen to Execs wherever you get your podcasts.
Thu, March 31, 2022
Reimagining the News with Goodable's Muhammad Lila
Muhammad Lila is Founder and CEO of Goodable. He is also previously a Warzone Correspondent, leading global news coverage at CNN and ABC. He has been nominated for 2 Emmy awards. Today’s discussion is around Muhammad’s vision for fixing the news by changing it from one of the biggest drivers of anxiety and depression into a cure . This discussion includes topics like how and why more than 90% of news coverage is negative, what this does to our mental health, and how the current news environment would be the equivalent to our physical health of living in a town where McDonald’s was the only restaurant option. Goodable’s mission is to change this by offering the first “Whole Foods” alternative to the current fast-food-dominated news ecosystem. It’s a news platform designed to make you calmer and healthier by avoiding bias, politics, and negativity. Muhammad has a fascinating, ambitious underlying vision for this that we dig into in our conversation. We also discuss some powerful ideas about the news media’s place in our society and mental health. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, March 28, 2022
Getting 3D Printing Ready for Primetime with Ahead Wind's Rob Paddock
Rob Paddock is co-founder & CEO of Ahead Wind. Ahead Wind was one of the first companies admitted into ODX and is currently technology that reduces human involvement in 3D printing. Today’s conversation is about the future of 3D printing automation. Rob outlines how the general public is usually under the assumption that 3D printing is a push-button process. He underscores how it isn’t actually that simple in most commercial use cases - human involvement is often needed to calibrate printer settings. We discuss how 3D printers need their own kind of operating system in the same ways that personal computers do. Rob brings great examples to the table for us to digest. Our conversation spans 3D applications for wind turbines, rocket ships, and much more. For more information about what Rob & his team are building, visit aheadwind.com or follow Rob on Twitter @paddock_rob Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, March 24, 2022
Democratizing Venture Capital with WeFunder's Jonny Price
Jonny Price is VP of Fundraising at WeFunder. WeFunder describes themselves as Robinhood for pre-IPO startups. In May 2016, the Obama administration made it legal for everyday people to invest as little as $100 in startups or other businesses. On today’s show, Jonny and Marshall talk about how to level the investment playing field. They chat about why it’s a problem that 77% of venture capital has gone to just three states and brainstorm how to build wealth for some of a company's earliest cheerleaders. They also discuss what it means to raise a community round, which is a big part of what On Deck has done for ODX. As part of this movement to “fix capitalism,” WeFunder has also released an impact report on its website. Jonny talks about it during the episode but you can read the full thing for yourself at https://wefunder.com/pbc . You can also find Jonny on Twitter @JonnyCPrice Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, March 21, 2022
Writing the Code of Life with Trevor Martin
Trevor Martin is founder & CEO of Mammoth Biosciences. Mammoth is building the platform for CRISPR applications of the future. They currently have technologies built for diagnostics, genome editing, and protein discovery. CRISPR is a novel system that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence. Trevor joins the show to discuss real applications of this technology. He highlights the speed with which CRISPR has rivaled decades old technologies to diagnose COVID, despite being a much more nascent technology. He shares his excitement for other near-future applications to combat genetic disease. We also chat about the line between fantasy and reality - what kinds of CRISPR applications are too far towards science fiction, and which are grounded in reality. To learn more about Mammoth, visit https://mammoth.bio/ Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, March 17, 2022
Culture Centered Care with Spora’s Dan Miller
Dan Miller is Founder & CEO of Spora Health. Spora Health is a radically inclusive, virtual-first telemedicine provider focused on health equity and providing culturally competent care. Today’s conversation is about disparities in health care. Dan shares a little bit about his family’s experience with the healthcare system and outlines how technology can help alleviate some of the challenges that others in similar boats may experience. We also discuss social determinants of health, undiagnosed depression in black men, and health concern narratives shared by different cultures. To learn more about Spora, you can visit their website at http://sporahealth.com Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, March 14, 2022
Edupreneurship with Virtually's Ish Baid
Ish Baid is Founder & CEO of Virtually. He's also the host of the popular podcast "Reshaping Education. Virtually is building what it envisions as the Shopify for online schools. Ish and I spend the episode enthusiastically discussing the ongoing disruption of the higher education system. On Deck and Virtually have both built their businesses on the back of cohort-based courses. Ish outlines why they’re here to stay, highlighting how engaging it is for students when everyone else is on the same journey as you. To learn more about how Virtually can run the back office for your own online education business, you can head to tryvirtually.com or follow Ish on Twitter @IshBaid Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, March 10, 2022
3D Photo Studios with Colorful's Nik Redl
Nikolaus Redl is co founder and CEO of Colorful.app . Nikolaus and the Colorful team are changing how photos are created. Their virtual, drag & drop 3D photo studio allows creators to build stunning photos in minutes. We talk about why this is useful, the future of 3D modeling, and the European tech scene, among many other topics within the future of photography. For more on On Deck’s programs, visit www.beondeck.com Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Tue, March 08, 2022
Trends in Climate Tech with Dr. Clea Kolster of Lowercarbon Capital
Dr. Clea Kolster is a partner and Head of Science at Lowercarbon capital. Lowercarbon backs companies that make money slashing CO2 emissions and removing carbon out of the atmosphere. Clea leads the firm’s technical research, development, diligence, and scientific strategy efforts. She’s also a founding fellow of On Deck’s Climate Tech programs. Last July, On Deck’s climate director Candice Ammori gave us a sense of how climate tech has moved from a 1.0 era to its 2.0 moment on the heels of evolving policy, innovation, and cultural ambition. Today, Dr. Kolster elaborates on the science informing that quickening pace. She underscores the significance of cheaper renewables, lower battery storage costs, and other trends informing our ability to combat climate change. For more on how On Deck is enabling talented builders to address climate problems, visit beondeck.com/climate For more on On Deck’s programs, visit www.beondeck.com Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, March 03, 2022
ODX Fireside: Fixing the Supply Chain with Flexport's Ryan Petersen
This week, we figured we’d give you a peek under the hood of On Deck’s programs. Every week, dozens of amazing events take place in our programs across sectors (like climate tech, health tech, and longevity) as well as across professional verticals like business development engineering, and many more. Most of these events happen behind closed doors, but this week we’re releasing one of our favorite sessions from the past seven days to provide a taste of what one kind of On Deck event looks like. Listeners will remember that we syndicated an episode of Execs with Ben Braverman - who led revenue at Flexport during their hypergrowth years. Now, we’re joined in a fireside chat by Flexport’s CEO - Ryan Petersen. Ryan joined our ODX fellowship to share lessons learned fixing the global supply chain crisis. Ryan is a fascinating character. When California ports experienced a slowdown in port processing this October, he visited ports in long beach to better understand the bottlenecks at play. His twitter thread about the problems he noticed went viral and he was able to work with local leaders to more rapidly unload cargo ships. More recently, this week he was able to share observations he’d noticed in Flexport’s freighter process changes in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and educate other supply chain leaders on the changing landscape. Ryan’s grasp of how to use technology to solve complex, macro problems is impressive. He shares his insights, his reflections, and some favorite tactics in this episode. For more on On Deck’s programs, visit www.beondeck.com Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, February 28, 2022
The Future of Wallets with Phantom's Francesco Agosti
Francesco Agosti is an ODF alum and co-founder and CTO of Phantom - a wallet for the Solana blockchain. We’ve had many web3 guests on the show in the past year, but none have focused on the wallet. Wallet applications are one of the primary ways in which users interact with blockchains directly. They come in many different forms - some are custodial, meaning they are managed by third parties like Coinbase. Others are non-custodial, meaning nobody owns the public-private keys other than the wallet’s user. Because of how central these applications are to the user experience, we figured it was time to have a leader in this space come on the show. Phantom is the leading wallet on the Solana blockchain. The Solana ecosystem had its breakout moment last summer and builders like Francesco are continuing to develop infrastructure to create a consumer-friendly experience. In this episode, Francesco highlights how the current status quo requires users to not trust, but to verify. He talks about how to work towards shifting this mindset. Our discussion also touches on phishing hacks, security best practices, staking, and the challenge of onboarding new folks to web3. To learn more about Phantom, visit phantom.app Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, February 24, 2022
The PayPal Diaspora with Jimmy Soni
Jimmy Soni is author of "The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley." The book hit shelves yesterday. In 2022, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered one of the technology industry’s most powerful alumni networks. Since leaving PayPal, these players have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names are as controversial as they are admired. Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. In this episode, we discuss the key differences between a mafia and a diaspora, the psychologically jarring effects of the dotcom bubble burst, and the competitive work ethic that fuels the alums of PayPal to this day. You can find out more about The Founders, and some of Jimmy’s other books by visiting his website at jimmysoni.com Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, February 21, 2022
Venture-Backed Video Games with Anthony Geranio
Anthony Geranio is Founder & CEO of 1v1Me and an alum of the On Deck Founders Fellowship.. 1v1Me is an app to play video games for money. We haven’t had a pure e-sports episode yet, so it was great to chat with Anthony about the rise of video games, especially as it has coincided with the rise of regulation in sports betting. Anthony credits these changing macro conditions (as well as COVID shutting down sports leagues for awhile) for how companies like his have been able to quickly come on the scene and add a social element to video games. Our discussion also touches on the toxicity of video game culture, the advantages of bringing influencers onto the cap table, building content machines, and much more. For more on 1v1Me, you can check out 1v1me.com or follow Anthony on Twitter @AnthonyGeranio Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, February 17, 2022
Optimizing Portfolios for Global Economic Upheaval with Alexander Harmsen
Alexander Harmsen is Founder & CEO of Global Predictions. Global Predictions has created a wealth optimization platform to help make its users better investors. Alex leaned on his experience in both On Deck Founders and On Deck Investing to make the early product and has now grown a sophisticated Deep Tech company that has built a digital twin of the economy to make unbiased forecasts into the future using hyperconnected simulations, economic modeling, diverse data streams, and machine learning. We chat about how this platform can add an extra layer of analysis to investment making decisions, in addition to understanding what millennials really want and how to challenge assumptions you may be making with some subconscious bias. Alex also reflects on recent financial crises. Whether it’s the dot com bubble burst, the subprime mortgage crash, or the fallout from COVID, Alex emphasizes the learning opportunities that these moments provide. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger
Mon, February 14, 2022
Techno-Optimistic Investing with Minn Kim
Minn Kim is a Partner at ODX - the community back accelerator and fund that Erik & David previewed on the show back in October. ODX’s first cohort kicked off last month and we were excited to bring someone from the team on, though much of the episode focuses on Minn’s eclectic interests in the intersecting futures of work, fertility, community, and family. This is Minn’s second time on the show - she briefly joined our 2022 Tech Trends episode and underscored her excitement for spatial audio. We wanted to bring her back on because she’s an A+ player on On Deck’s team but also because we really appreciate her work towards a techno-optimistic future. Hosted by Marshall Kosloff Produced by Jackson Steger
Thu, February 10, 2022
When Does Fringe Tech Jump to the Mainstream? A Conversation with Mark Yusko
Mark Yusko is the founder, chief investment officer, and managing director of Morgan Creek Capital Management - an investment management firm that advises pension funds, endowments, and wealthy individuals. Today’s episode is far-ranging. We chat about network effects, virtual stages, legacy events like the Olympics, Disney, decentralized creative franchises, and much, much more. The one thread that ties everything together: technology becomes mainstream only after first being a fad. A quick reminder that nothing you hear on today’s episode (or any episode of The Deep End, for that matter) can be considered investment advice.
Mon, February 07, 2022
Execs: Hyperscaling to $1.3 Billion Revenue with Flexport's Ben Braverman
Last fall, On Deck CEOs Erik Torenberg and David Booth joined the show to announce ODX - a new $100M community fund that allows On Deck to invest in the next generation of founders. Shortly after, we announced "ODX Flexport" - our first vertical accelerator that we created in partnership with Flexport. Flexport is on a mission to make global trade easy for everyone. They're a worldwide leader in supply chain logistics and we're thrilled to be working with them. Today's episode is with Ben Braverman who joined the Flexport team early on and grew their annual revenue to $1.3 billion. This recording is a syndicated episode of On Deck's new show "Execs" which is hosted by Erik. This is the last time we'll be syndicating an episode for awhile, so if you like what you hear, be sure to check out "Execs" wherever you get your podcasts.
Thu, February 03, 2022
A Back Office for Creators with Passionfroot’s Jen Phan
Jen Phan is the co-founder and CEO of Passionfroot. She’s also an alum of On Deck No Code, which past Deep End guest KP runs. This conversation builds off of past creator economy tool discussions that we’ve had with other guests like Joe Albanese and Josh Kaplan. Passionfroot helps creators manage back-office operations so that creators can focus on their content. Our discussion today considers European creators - Passionfroot is based in Berlin and Jen is aware of how many creator tools to date have been US-centric. We also chat about helping creators think of themselves as startups, the disconnect between tech twitter and a creator’s day to day, and much, much more. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, January 31, 2022
Democratizing Hedge Funds with Composer's Ben Rollert
Joining Marshall this week in the Deep End is ODF alum Ben Rollert, CEO and Co-Founder of Composer. Composer allows its users to easily build a portfolio of hedge fund-like strategies. After we ended last year talking about DeFi and other blockchain innovations with cypher, it was refreshing to have a conversation about innovation in traditional finance, particularly in the retail investment space. The rise and sustained success of apps like Robinhood have enabled the manifestation of a legitimate counterculture among retail investors, including those like Ben, who work in finance. In this episode, we discuss that counterculture, the advantages of optionality created by something like Composer, nuance in regulation, and why Ben stays crypto aware even when he’s not a crypto evangelist. This was a good one. If you’d like to learn more about democratizing hedge fund strategy, check out composer.trade or follow Ben on Twitter @Benrollert
Thu, January 27, 2022
Introducing Execs: A Tactical Podcast for Founders in Hypergrowth
The Deep End returns in full on Monday. Until then: we're excited to announce Execs. Execs is a new On Deck show for founders who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks and tactics that leading technology companies today have used to scale. Guests are experienced, non-founding tech executives in key roles at top companies with firsthand experience solving hard and rare problems for a fast-growing business. On Execs, they share their hard-won ‘earned secrets’ to pass on their knowledge and help leaders at high-growth companies scale faster. Execs is hosted by Erik Torenberg and produced by On Deck - where top talent goes to start companies, find their next roles, or invest in their careers --- Our first guest on Execs is Jared Fliesler. Most recently, Jared was COO at Scribd. Prior to Scribd, Jared was a VP at Square, and director at Google, and a GM at Slide, where he worked closely with Keith Rabios and Max Levchin In this episode, we discuss symmetry in execs’ ability to hire and fire, how to build world-class onboarding experiences, what it means to be vulnerable as an exec, and much more. --- Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale. To engage further: Check out the On Deck job board Share your thoughts with us on Twitter: Hosted by: @eriktorenberg Produced by: @jacksonsteger Brought to you by: @beondeck
Mon, December 20, 2021
2022 Tech Trends
Today is the last episode of the year, and so we’re celebrating by doing something a little different. Rather than have a single guest on, we invited 11 senior On Deck employees to answer a single question: What trend do you expect to change, emerge, or accelerate in 2022? To help them answer honestly, we were very clear that these aren’t necessarily predictions. Instead, my colleagues were instructed to think about patterns they’ve noticed this past year and project how they might shift or continue in 2022. Next year, we’ll revisit this analysis and ask our colleagues where they were right, where they were wrong, and why. Here are the guests: First up is Andreas Klinger - On Deck’s CTO and a seed investor on the side. Andreas is based in Berlin. You can find him on Twitter @andreasklinger Minn Kim is a partner at ODX based in San Francisco. ODX is On Deck’s community-backed fund and accelerator program. In her role, Minn’s job is to help the best founders in the world by removing obstacles, opening doors, and creating customized programming for each startup in the program. She’s had some exposure to some incredible companies this year through her amazing work at On Deck. You can find her on twitter @minney_cat Eric Friedman is also an ODX Partner and has served as On Deck’s interim COO. He helps founders push rocks uphill and can be found in New York City and on Twitter @ericfriedman Anne Bosman just joined On Deck to be the General Manager of our Careers division. She joins us from Boston after 5 years leading operations at General Assembly and multiple COO/operations leadership roles at other organizations. She can be found on twitter at @anneolough We welcome back Atlanta-based KP to the show after he joined us in October to chat about building in public. We thought his perspective would be an interesting one to share immediately after Anne’s comments to provide that contrast. As a reminder, KP is Director of On Deck’s No Code program and can be found on twitter @thisiskp_ Julian Weisser is a cofounder of On Deck and has helped bring many functions of our company from 0 to 1, including this podcast. He is currently helping founders get involved with our ODX accelerator program. His Twitter DMs are open @julianweisser Shriya Nevatia is another return guest after joining us alongside Gaby Goldberg in our Citizens of the Metaverse episode. Shriya joins us from New York City and is the Director of On Deck Catalyst. Catalyst helps ambitious students and early-career people start their first company or break into venture capital. She is on Twitter @shriyanevatia One of On Deck’s two CEOs, David Booth, joins us from New Zealand. You can find David’s thoughts about how to organize the world’s ambition on Twitter @david__booth Katya Delaney is an Editoria
Wed, December 15, 2021
The Internet Salon with Interintellect's Anna Gát
Anna Gat is Founder and CEO of Interintellect. Interintellect describes itself as having reinventing the french salon for the 21st century. The salons of Early Modern Revolutionary France played an integral role in the cultural and intellectual development of France. The salons were seen by contemporary writers as a cultural hub, for the upper middle class and aristocracy, responsible for the dissemination of good manners and sociability. The interintellect team has built a curated marketplace for online salons to engage a now global audience. Trained hosts are able to monetize their talent and skills to curate conversation between well-meaning citizens in the public arena. Anna and I discuss how she has effectively built something that is half virtual city, and also half highly curated live conversation.Interintellect is a full-attention product - meaning participants are fully engaged, as opposed to something like a Twitch stream or a Twitter space, which would be more of a partial attention product. The community on interintellect is deeply engaged with their salons and with each other. This episode provides yet another example of how lines between the metaverse and reality continue to blur. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, December 13, 2021
Crypto & Tradfi with the Cypher Protocol Team
This is probably our most in-the-weeds web3 episode yet. If you’re newer to crypto, we recommend you scroll back through your feed and listen to any of our episodes with Patrick Riera, Cooper Turley, and several others to give yourself a background to enjoy this one fully. As a bonus, you can also listen to our episode with Stephen Sikes from Public to build a background in traditional finance. Joining Marshall this week in the Deep End is Barrett. Marshall introduces Barrett by first name only because, like past guest Bored Elon Musk, he is operating relatively pseudonymously. Barrett is one of the core contributors behind the Cypher Protocol. Cypher is a futures protocol built on the Solana blockchain that wants to bring a new set of traditional finance opportunities to decentralized finance. They are doing this at a time when crypto users are quickly acclimating to concepts and tools traditionally used by Wall Street We discuss this collision of crypto and “tradfi,” what a synthetic good is, the analogs for IDOs and pretoken markets, and end with discussion on culture differences between web2 and web 3 companies. A quick note: another core contributor to the Cypher Protocol named Izzy had originally planned to sit in on the episode recording just to listen. But after she chimed in with an interesting aside to Barrett, we decided to actually bring her fully on stage and into the conversation. So you may not hear her at the beginning, but we’re thrilled that she joined to provide the nuance that she did. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, December 08, 2021
Overcoming the Six Stages of Health Tech Grief with Nikhil Krishnan
A reminder that we’re still looking for a researcher in residence. If you want to be a personal trainer of the mind for On Deck’s CEOs, head over to beondeck.com/researcher Nikhil Krishnan is the author of the Out of Pocket newsletter. Out-of-Pocket is making the business of healthcare easy to understand. Nikhil writes in plain English and compliments industry analysis with memes and humor. We haven’t done a true digital health episode yet, and Nikhil was the perfect person to provide us with an overview of the space. The first question we asked was probably the hardest for Nikhil to answer. Marshall asked “What the is the problem?" in US healthcare right now, and Nikhil laughed. The American health system is uniquely complicated. Everyone thinks everyone else is the bad guy and an obtuse system means that nobody knows what the best direction to row in is. Nikhil points out how healthcare is more emotionally charged. The industry has a fundamentally different risk-reward dynamic when the stakes are quite literally life and death. Still, there is reason for hope, amid all the grief. Nikhil helps identify all the areas where health tech entrepreneurs might be able to create meaningful change in an industry that has been particularly ravaged by COVID during the past two years. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, December 06, 2021
Frictionless Generosity with Overflow's Vance Roush
Vance Roush is Founder of Overflow. Overflow is building the infrastructure to make generosity frictionless across every major asset class. Vance is on a mission to democratize philanthropy to the masses. Through his experience with churches and other non-profits, he has become keenly aware of how the top percentile has leveraged wealth management tricks and tips to donate stock (instead of cash) for decades. There are huge tax and savings benefits to doing this. Vance knows that that benefit can be extended to others via technology. This conversation is about why and how philanthropy can be diversified across asset classes. At On Deck, we have an obsession with access because we believe that talent is broadly distributed but opportunity is not. In 2020, we created the On Deck Access Fund to enable more people from around the world to participate in our programs by removing financial barriers. In 2021, we’ve awarded scholarships to more than 1,000 Fellows, totaling more than $1,000,000. And this is just the beginning. We recently announced “ODF Advance” a program to provide up to $25,000 in funding to would-be founders who are exploring a startup idea. Through our Access Initiatives we are unlocking opportunities for thousands of high potential entrepreneurs. If you’d like to learn more about our Access Initiative, visit www.beondeck.com/access-initiative For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, December 01, 2021
Resurrecting Extinct Species with Colossal's Ben Lamm
On Deck is hiring a Researcher in Residence to be a "personal trainer for the mind" for our two co-CEOs. To learn more, please visit beondeck.com/researcher Hot off last week’s episode about helping extend human life, this episode is about how to bring certain long-gone animals back to life. This week, Ben Lamm (Founder & CEO of Colossal Biosciences) joins The Deep End. Colossal describes itself as a genetic engineering company interested in extinct species restoration through radically new genomic technologies. They have landed a ton of press and attention for their ambitious goal to resurrect a woolly mammoth in the next few years by sequencing the genome of mammoths and editing genes of their closest living relatives - the Asian elephant. We spend a little time on the hard science of this and discuss how closely this resurrected proxy would be related to the original mammoth. But we also discuss the why, the when, and the bioethics. Ben is quick to say that there’s no silver bullet for climate change or ecosystem restoration. Still, there is a strong conservationist argument for at least learning how we could create genetic backups for species. The arctic tundra could also potentially see its grasslands return if large animals like the mammoth return to their ancestral home to eat the overgrown bushes and trees. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, November 29, 2021
Deep Tech 101 with James Sinka
This week, we are joined in the Deep End by James Sinka - cofounder of On Deck’s Deep Tech program. Some of our past Deep End guests (and many On Deck fellows) are working at the bleeding edge of technology. So far, we’ve talked to founders of biotech companies, space manufacturers, and more. Deep Tech is a category of innovation that exists at the intersection of many different fields under the technology umbrella. Modern advancements in computer infrastructure enable new sophisticated methods of tackling tough problems in the world of atoms. James Sinka joins the show to share how world-class scientists, card-carrying PHDs and engineers can commercialize their deep knowledge in hyper-specific fields to unlock vibrant futures for humanity. The sophistication of some of these tough technologies might sometimes be thought of as miraculous. If we can master protein folding, for example, we might be able to revolutionize drug design and otherwise heal cells with more ease than we might have ever imagined. Of course, common modern technologies like the iPhone or X-Rays were also deep tech miracles when they were first created. This conversation provides a broad overview of Deep Tech, and examples of how interdisciplinary application of advanced technology can go to market. To learn more about On Deck’s Deep Tech program, visit beondeck.com/deeptech
Wed, November 24, 2021
Making Lifespan Malleable with Dr. Kristen Fortney
Dr. Kristen Fortney is CEO & cofounder of BIOAGE - a company working on slowing aging and chronic disease. Figuring out how to live longer is an age-old problem. For as long as humans have studied medicine, we have tried to learn which remedies, habits, and environments best position us to have a chance of long life. Recent developments in the last few decades have, for the first time in human history, opened up the door for serious progress into understanding how humans and animals age. Last season, we had Celine on the show to talk about the work that her team is doing to improve the health of dogs. Lessons that might one day be applied to humans. Now, Kristen joins us to give us an overview of the aging field. She also shares how BIOAGE is using machine learning to develop a pipeline of therapeutic assets that increase healthspan & lifespan. Aging may be the core cause of many of the cancers and chronic diseases that wind up killing us. If we can leverage AI to help identify flawed genes, we can make lifespan truly malleable. Plenty of exciting discussions ensue - including what the differences are between healthspan and lifespan, what it would take for the healthcare industry & regulatory bodies to approve anti aging drugs, and how we might otherwise learn how to live as long as 200 year old whales or 1000 year old trees. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, November 22, 2021
Launching an Africa-Focused Venture Fund with Abe Choi
Abe Choi is a prolific angel investor and CEO of Simple Dealer. Abe has partnered with another high-profile angel investor named Olumide Soyombo to create Voltron Capital - a Pan African venture capital firm. This is our first pure VC episode in awhile and it was refreshing to hear about some of the dynamics on the venture side as opposed to the founder side. Africa is massive. One of our first questions that we ask Abe was about how his firm expects to develop a consistent thesis for the continent, given that Africa is so large, diverse, and spread out. He helps us learn how to think about the industries primed for growth and the regions that have developed innovative hubs throughout the region. We discuss different private & public sector partnership models that are emerging and why fin-tech startups are especially booming. Abe also contrasts investment from his firm with investment from Chinese firms or firms from Europe. This was a live episode recording and we had other angel investors in our live audience that were supplying questions in the chat. If you would like to be notified about future live episodes, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, November 17, 2021
Minimalist Entrepreneurship with Gumroad's Sahil Lavingia
Sahil Lavingia is CEO of Gumroad and author of The Minimalist Entrepreneur. Many of our recent guests are recently-forged pioneers in the creator economy space, but Sahil has been building the passion economy since before it was cool. In 2011, Sahil founded Gumroad to help creators sell content directly to consumers. He was 19 at the time. But this episode isn't strictly about the passion economy, though we do chat about ideas like gatekeepers and shifting creator incentives. Much of today's discussion is Sahil reflecting on his ambitions to build a billion dollar company. Though Gumroad today is widely used by creators of all different sizes, its success story is not without growing pains. A decade ago Sahil raised venture-backed money to try to scale Gumroad at light speed. He details the lessons he learned trying to keep up with the aggressive timeline of venture capital firms. For better or for worse, he found that Gumroad only grew as quickly as the market determined they would grow. Now, Sahil fancies himself a "minimalist entrepreneur." He elaborates on what that means in today's episode and in his new book. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, November 15, 2021
Mental Shifts from Web2 to Web 3 with Tina He
Tina He is an investor with Pace Capital and is also on the founding team at Station - which bills itself as building the rails for web 3. Her work with Pace & Station has helped her identify the myriad mental shifts that builders need to make when migrating from web 2 to web 3. Today's conversation is about those mental shifts. For example, the legal infrastructure that exists today has not caught up to technology's most recent community-organizing abilities. As DAOs gain more credibility and sophistication, there will also need to be clearer distinctions made between companies and communities. Contracts will look different too. Will employees and 1099 contractors have the same kind of benefits as community contributors? Tina also breaks down human-centric ideologies of web 3. The most talented builders are asking how we might redistribute value to the long-tail, as opposed to the FAANG behemoths who own so much of the overall value in web 2. The language we use in web 3 moving forward matters. This conversation with Tina helps us understand what some of these guiding rails can be. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, November 10, 2021
The Work-in-Progress Web with The.com's Clarke & Jeff McKinnon
Recently, many of our guests have been pioneers in the web3 space. Patrick Rivera provided a particularly helpful framework for understanding different eras of the web when he was on the show. From him, and other guests like Cooper Turley, we've learned that web3 is special because it enables users to have ownership of their different networks. Today's guests share the optimism of our past guests, but also note that the web3 is still in its infancy and is very much a work in progress. Those guests (Clarke & Jeff McKinnon) are building what they call "the reusable web." Like past guest Peer Richelsen, they believe that the internet works best when it's open-sourced and composable. To that end, yesterday they launched " The.com " to make it simple for website builders to create, 'remix,' and launch websites while getting paid and earning credit for their work. This is one of our favorite episodes we have ever done. We were struck by the balance that the McKinnon brothers are able to find between practicality and optimism. We'll be following along closely as they strive to live up to the ubiquity of their new domain. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, November 08, 2021
The Sanctity of the Inbox with Jake Singer & Jake Schonberger
A few weeks ago, our show carried a special announcement that On Deck had raised a $100 million fund to fuel the next generation of entrepreneurs. Swapstack, cofounded by Jake Singer & Jake Schonberger, is the first company to be accepted into an ODX cohort and receive a check for $125k check from the fund. Swapstack is positioned to be the premier newsletter advertising marketplace, connecting brands with writers to help the latter be able to become full time creators. The inbox, as the Jakes claim, is an intimate space. Newsletter creators want to make sure that they choose advertisers that align with their content so as to not pester their audience and risk losing carefully cultivated trust. This was a well timed conversation. It follows our discussion with Josh Kaplan about Creator Operators and builds off of last month’s discussion with Nathan, who runs a newsletter bundling company. We get into the nitty gritty of the newsletter business specifically. Swapstack wants to build the backbone for creator monetization and is well timed to assist a booming newsletter industry. We chat about the incentives of feed-based ads, how paywalls can lock creators into a restricting cadence, and about the metrics that matter most when writers are first getting started. In addition to sharing a first name, both Jakes also are former On Deck employees where they were working on Swapstack as part of On Deck's creator offerings. Through that lens, we chat about intrapreneurship as both Jakes are able to lean on past innovative experiences they have had at other tech companies, including Facebook and Amazon. For more information about ODX, please visit beondeck.com/x For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, November 03, 2021
Building Education Treadmills with Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko
Primer cofounders Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko join the Deep End after meeting through On Deck. They are currently building a community for curious and ambitious kids to find and explore their interests together. Education is deeply personal, and so our conversation begins on a personal note, with a discussion of Ryan's background growing up homeschooled & Maksim's experience with highly structured curriculum back home in Kyrgyzstan. Both of them look back on their own learning experience and lament an education system designed with the assumption that all children should move at the same pace. Kids' talents & interests vary wildly. Ryan and Maksim came to the realization with Primer that they could build educational treadmills for kids to run as fast or as slow as they would like towards their particular interests. Our conversation centers on how to augment the education system to create more Michaelangelos and Albert Einsteins. How might we enable self-guided homeschooling without total involvement from parents? How can we leverage the dynamics of popularity to make learning cool? The kids that Ryan & Maksim are working with so far are incredible. They have a huge sense of ownership of their online community and are naturally creating governance protocols that limit toxicity and bullying. They're making friends and collaborating on projects, all while learning at a clip that outpaces traditional K-12 school. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, November 01, 2021
Beyond the Meme Stocks with Stephen Sikes (COO of Public.com)
Today conversation with Stephen Sikes (COO of Public) is about how millions of Americans are entering the stock market for the first time with mindsets and behaviors unlike any generation that has come before. New investors, particularly those who have started recently via a mobile app, believe they're part of a movement that's making investing more inclusive and accessible. Public exists to help these people get started investing and become better, more thoughtful investors too. In that vein, we talked about how to build community through investing, how to build financial literacy especially in regard to meme stocks, and the benefits of fractionalization. Stephen labels the stock market as the greatest wealth creation engine ever known to humanity, but we also examine that statement through the lens of crypto markets over the last decade. Stephen's built much of his own success through good timing - he started investing when the market was at a low point during the financial crisis in '07-08. We draw parallels between that opportune moment and the one that many others found themselves in last year during the height of lockdown. One huge difference between those two moments? The number of folks who are empowered to invest has skyrocketed. The implications of that and more ahead in today's episode. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, October 27, 2021
Navigating the Founder Journey as a Creator with Nathan Baschez
Nathan Baschez joins the Deep End to discuss the passion economy, the realities of building a media business, and gets real with Marshall about the realities of embarking on the founder journey as a creator. The two also chat about Every, which Nathan describes as a writer collective for productivity, strategy, leadership, & culture. This conversation with Nathan blends a few different threads that we've covered on The Deep End. Nathan's background as a prolific writer & podcaster makes this a natural extension of the conversation that we covered when discussing Creator-Operators with Josh Kaplan two weeks ago. We chat about the wavering stability of media companies and the obvious upside of the substack economy to creators. We ruminate on questions like “Should writers try to become stars in their own right?” and “What did early millennial-centric media businesses get wrong?” while examining how ambitious people often are replicating their behavior based on the models that have proven to be successful. The episode also echoes some of what we chatted about with Saagar Enjeti when we discussed the challenges & benefits of going independent. Nathan thinks that the fact that creators can reach fans more directly than ever before is to the passion economy what the shift to mobile was for tech. Finally, right after having Dr. Anhalt on the show to discuss mental health, Nathan & Marshall do some therapizing of their own as we discuss the day to day realities of the creator journey and how it affects us on a personal level. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, October 25, 2021
The Smart Business Bundle with Doug Ludlow
Joining the Deep End is Doug Ludlow, CEO of Mainstreet. Today's conversation is about the unbundling and re-bundling of the smart bank and how the 35 million small businesses in the US can benefit from aggregating their business identity data in one place. We talk about helping small businesses navigate PPP loans during COVID, discuss how startups can earn tax credits easily for things like research & development and other ways that Mainstreet can help restore America's economy coming out of the pandemic. Doug was a particularly fascinating guest because he has spent his life between two worlds. There's the tech world, where he's been a senior employee at Google, AOL, and other iconic tech companies, and then there's the world of his upbringing: he grew up in a small, rural USA town t where farmers have been seeing their land get consolidated and sold off. His unique perspective led us to chat about the brain drain among US heartland cities and how the rise of remote work might enable talent to stay in more rural communities where they grew up. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Thu, October 21, 2021
Special Announcement: Funding the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs with David Booth & Erik Torenberg
At On Deck, we believe that startups are the building blocks of a better future. Startups drive global economic growth by creating jobs, improving quality of life, and making meaningful progress to solving society's biggest problems. We also believe that the the biggest constraint on startup creation is the number of founders - for each person starting a company today, there are hundreds more sitting on the sidelines. This is an enormous waste of human potential. That's why we are excited to announce ODX - a $100 million community-backed fund to put the next generation of founders in business. ODX backs founders with a check for $125,000 and unlimited access to the On Deck network, which includes thousands of companies, founders, operators, and investors that builders can tap into for talent, capital, and distribution. Many of those investors & operators are also participants in the community-backed fund, meaning that they are personally incentivized to help ODX participants succeed. ODF - our original founders fellowship - will continue to exist under the On Deck umbrella, but will now be free for those accepted. ODF and ODX are interlinked programs, separated by a key difference: conviction. ODF is for prospective founders who are in more of an exploratory phase. They are likely researching markets, validating an idea, hunting for a cofounder, or leveling up founder skills. ODX will be for those 100% ready to take the plunge and start a company. Both programs will exist as part of On Deck's global network of networks. Erik & David join the show to discuss their belief that Silicon Valley is no longer a physical location, but a mindset. On Deck captures the essence of Silicon Valley - an abundant system of talent, capital, & ideas, and makes it available for an internet-native era. Our conversation today speaks to these big ideas and dives into the exciting details of ODX and the many other programs & communities that make up the On Deck ecosystem. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, October 20, 2021
E-Commerce Engineering with Sara Du
Joining Marshall in the Deep End is Sara Du - cofounder & CEO of Alloy Automation, a no-code tool for automating e-commerce stores. The conversation begins by discussing how the line between commerce and e-commerce is blurring as e-commerce penetration continues to accelerate across the consumer economy. This trend was certainly accelerated by the pandemic, but Sara notes that Black Friday shopping patterns and other indicators suggest that such a shift was inevitable anyways. The discussion then moved to the power of no-code tools, and their potential applications to helping unlock value for small businesses without engineering teams. Sara thinks that Alloy can be for commerce what Zapier has been for tech. Finally, we discussed the implications of automation itself. Does it replace jobs or augment current ones? For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, October 18, 2021
Building in Public with Karthik Puvvada
Karthik Puvvada (known by his friends and online as "KP") is the Program Director for On Deck No-Code and is also a leader of the "build in public" movement that is taking the internet by storm. Today's conversation takes place at the intersection of those two tech trends. When KP thinks about building in public, he encourages his audience to use content as a lighthouse to attract other people to your circle. These content pieces help to signal that you're serious about a certain niche and help prevent you from being washed away by the "Internet Content Stream." Stories are how you stand out in a crowded digital world. KP's stories have elevated his no-code platform. He's excited about how the builders of today don't need coding skills to create tools because they can use drag & drop solutions. We talk about projects in the no-code space that are fresh and exciting, as well as classics that have proven real staying power. KP's enthusiasm, humility, and charisma all come oozing out in this conversation. It's hard to imagine walking away from this episode and not having fun creating something. He makes you excited to trust the process and to go out there and build. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, October 13, 2021
Creator-Operators with Josh Kaplan
Josh Kaplan was an early employee at Morning Brew and was a product manager during their meteoric rise as a media company. Now, he’s taken what he has learned as an operator in a creative space and applied it to his role as co-founder and CEO of Smooth Ops to help content creators scale their businesses. Today’s conversation is about the deeply challenging logistics involved in the creator economy. Josh contends that most creators find themselves thinking relatively short-term. While it’s important to focus on producing great content, it’s also crucial to plan for the future—not just the next podcast episode or newsletter. Creators need operators as partners to help them think about and build for the long term, even as they focus on the next project at hand. This core theme led us in all sorts of interesting directions. We discuss the competition for talented producers on the frontlines of creative markets, how the flow of social relationships has changed, and how to create optionality for content creators throughout their careers. Josh also gives his optimistic vision for the future and reminds content creators to have fun. This episode was a blast. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, October 11, 2021
The Pseudonymous Meritocracy with Bored Elon Musk
Bored Elon Musk (one of Twitter's largest pseudonyms with 1.7 million followers) joins us to discuss the nature of pseudonyms and his investment activity. We also chat about the metaverse, the pseudonymous tech stack, the future of deep fakes, and much more. Pseudonyms are interesting because they are inherently meritocratic. Bias isn't possible because nobody knows who you really are. As the internet becomes more crypto-native and employment becomes more fluid, pseudonyms will only continue to rise in popularity. Already, DAOs are full of contributors that use pseudonyms. It's worth noting that pseudonymity is not anonymity. A pseudonym can build reputation that persists through interactions. Bored Elon is trying to make sure that as one of the first major pseudonyms, he sets the right example with his online reputation. Besides posting memes or tweeting fake startup ideas, Bored Elon is spending a lot of time investing in real companies with the bored fund. Many founders are happy to take his money without knowing who he is - a future where we can interact based on the merits of our activity over our identity is one that will benefit many. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, October 06, 2021
Training Emotional Fitness with Dr. Emily Anhalt
This week's guest on The Deep End is Dr. Emily Anhalt. Dr. Anhalt is a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, which describes itself as building a gym for your mental health. Today's conversation is about how to train for emotional fitness. Just like trainers at a traditional gym might rotate clients between a leg day, chest day, and shoulder day, Dr. Anhalt and her colleagues have developed classes to train different traits of emotional fitness like resilience, empathy, and self-awareness. In addition to discussing what exactly goes into performing the equivalent of an emotional push-up, we dive into how the pandemic has influenced the mental health landscape, analyze the stigma around seeking help, and compare & contrast in-person therapy with virtual options. For the past twelve years, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees, and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness. She and Coa are also partnered with On Deck Health. She draws on her deep experience repeatedly throughout our time together. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
Mon, October 04, 2021
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) with Cooper Turley (AKA Coopahtroopa)
Cooper Turley leads a handful of online communities known as DAOs. "DAO" is an acronym that stands for a decentralized autonomous organization. In more colloquial terms, a DAO is an internet community with a shared cap table and bank account. They represent humanity's newest structure for cooperative decision making. Cooper joined us for a live episode last week to help explain why DAOs are exploding in popularity. In our discussion, he explained their governance structures, described the different types of DAOs, made some predictions for the future,, and answered some wide-ranging questions from our live audience. DAOs are a powerful new mechanism for coordinating humans at scale. If they work as intended, we could be seeing the rise of a new way of organizing people that might last for centuries. We hope you enjoy! For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, September 29, 2021
The Open-Source Renaissance with Peer Richelsen
It's a new season of the Deep End and we're moving to two episodes per week (Mondays + Wednesdays)! We lay the groundwork for all of our upcoming episodes by discussing the nature of the open-source web. Our guest, Cal.com Co-CEO Peer Richelsen, views the internet as a democratic, transparent, and open technology that is undergoing a renaissance. Open-source software development was the spiritual precursor to 2021's web 3 boom. Tinkerers like Peer are ecstatic that technologists are returning to the very fundamentals of the web that made it so inclusive and exciting in the early 2000s. In this episode, Peer explains how the Internet can finally return to its decentralized roots because of incentive structures that have developed over the last few years. We also dive into several fun other topics, including how to pick the right web domain, how to build a company with two CEOs, and what the differences in cultures of compensation transparency are between the US and Germany. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, September 22, 2021
Scaling Expertise with Dr. Hollis Robbins
Dean Hollis Robbins wears many hats: Administrator, teacher, scholar of black sonnets... but she's also an expert on expertise itself. Today's conversation is about frameworks for organizing knowledge. Dr. Robbins argues that our modern society suffers from mismanaged "self-secretarying" - most of us receive no formal training in how to process & sort the huge amounts of information that we have to process every day. She also straddles the line between higher education and tech. Her involvement in both communities helps her understand how these two different worlds might both be able to learn from each other. This interdisciplinary background of hers made this conversation a fascinating examination of the interplay between breadth and depth. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, September 15, 2021
The Next Crypto Cycle - web3, DAOs, and NFTs with Patrick Rivera
Patrick Rivera (Product Engineer at Mirror and alum of ODF + ODW) has a front seat on the edge of the crypto revolution. He details the evolution of the internet from Web 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0, discusses the crypto-native creator economy, paints a picture of the current crypto landscape (and challenges), and provides some predictions for the future. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, September 08, 2021
Reimagining Remote Work with Flo Crivello
Flo Crivello (CEO of Teamflow) believes that a new way of working calls for an entirely new set of tools. In this conversation, we explore how employers can curate a new kind of space that looks virtual, but feels intimate and collaborative in the same way a traditional office does. Our wide-ranging conversation covers text-based productivity vs. video-based work, the entrance of Facebook into the remote work space, the implications of visa immigrations in a borderless world, and much more. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, September 01, 2021
Mission-Driven Cities with Marc Lore
We sit down with Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur and self-described "moonshot seeker." He has successfully founded and sold three companies, including Jet.com, which sold to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Now, he's building a mission-driven city called, "Telosa," which comes from an Aristotle-coined word "Telos," meaning "a higher purpose.” For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, August 25, 2021
Citizens of the Metaverse with Gaby Goldberg and Shriya Nevatia
We sit down with Gaby Goldberg, investor at Bessemer and explorer of the metaverse. Also joining us is Shriya Nevatia, program director of On Deck Catalyst. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, August 18, 2021
Space 3.0 Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda Space Industries and principal at Founders Fund
We sit down with Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda Space Industries. He explains why Varda’s mission statement is to “expand the economic bounds of humanity” and how its success will do for space what the gold rush did for California. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Next Monday we're hosting a live podcast recording and Q&A about the metaverse and web3 with Gaby Goldberg, investor at Bessemer Venture Partners ( RSVP for free )
Wed, August 11, 2021
Creating New Categories: Metabolic Health with Sam Corcos & Andrew Conner, co-founders of Levels
We sit down with Sam and Andrew who, since meeting during On Deck, have gone on to co-found a startup called Levels together. Their goal is nothing short of changing the way the world interacts with food through the creation of a whole new product category centered around metabolic health. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Next Monday we're hosting a live podcast recording and Q&A with Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Varda Space industries on manufacturing in outer space ( RSVP for free )
Wed, August 04, 2021
On Ramps to Investing with Kyla Scanlon
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Coming up this month we're doing live recordings (free to attend) with... Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Varda Space industries on manufacturing in outer space ( RSVP ) Jack Carlson of Rowing Blazers on building iconic fashion brands from scratch ( RSVP )
Wed, July 28, 2021
Climate Technology with Candice Ammori
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, July 21, 2021
Internet Culture and Community with Fadeke Adegbuyi
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Wed, July 14, 2021
How Packy McCormick Plays The Great Online Game
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Fri, July 09, 2021
Thesis-Driven Investing with Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Rebecca Kaden on Twitter: @rebeccakaden
Wed, July 07, 2021
Ecommerce and the Vanishing Middle with Web Smith
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Web Smith on Twitter: @web
Wed, June 30, 2021
Web3 with Jarrod Dicker, investor at the Chernin Group
For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com Jarrod Dicker on Twitter: @jarroddicker
Wed, June 23, 2021
The Future of Cities with Bradley Tusk, Political Strategist and Venture Capitalist at Tusk Ventures
Two articles from Bradley Tusk: Jordan and Bradley debate the future of cities and WFH How will tech’s biggest policy fights play out in 2021?
Wed, June 16, 2021
Cracking Longevity with Celine Halioua, Founder and CEO of Loyal
Show Links Celine on Twitter: @celinehalioua Loyal’s website: Recent coverage of Loyal in Bloomberg by Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk’s biographer): If Dogs Live Longer With Anti-Aging Science, Humans Could, Too Why I Hope to Die at 75 What I Wanted to Build: Can Corporations Bring Socialized Healthcare to the United States? Laura Deming’s Longevity FAQ
Wed, June 09, 2021
Going Independent with Saagar Enjeti, Co-host of Breaking Points
Links: Breaking Points website Sagaar on Twitter: @esaagar Supercast Article: Howard Stern is Getting Ripped Off
Wed, June 02, 2021
Creator Tools with Joe Albanese, Co-founder and CEO of Stir
Joe's Twitter: @josephpalbanese Stir Li Jin — investor in Stir Nathan Bashez — co-founder of Every.to — a bundle of newsletters and podcasts Sidechannel — Discord for writers
Wed, May 26, 2021
Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and Founder of 1729
Links to resources mentioned in the episode: 1729 - Founding vs. Inheriting and the Network Union , 2021 Why Software Is Eating The World by Marc Andreessen, 2011 Software Is Reorganizing the World by Balaji Srinivasan, 2013 YCombinator Talk about Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit , 2013 The Deep End is produced by On Deck - where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit beondeck.com . For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End check out ideas.beondeck.com .
Wed, May 26, 2021
Civic Tech with Katherine Boyle, Partner at General Catalyst
The Deep End is produced by On Deck - where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit beondeck.com . For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End check out ideas.beondeck.com .
Wed, May 26, 2021
Higher Education with Erik Torenberg, co-founder of On Deck and Village Global
The Deep End is produced by On Deck - where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit beondeck.com . For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End check out ideas.beondeck.com.
Trailer · Fri, May 21, 2021
Trailer: Let’s dive in
Host Marshall Kosloff shares what’s “on deck” for The Deep End. Launching May 26th. Subscribe today!
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