Finding Genius Series: Recent Episodes
Kunal Mehta
The Finding Genius Series focuses on expanding Kunal Mehta’s Book: Finding Genius.
Here you will find interviews with Kunal and distinct contributors to venture capital.
You will hear their perspective on the future of industries that they are investing in.
Additionally, you will hear from CEOs, politicians, and other highly sophisticated individuals from the industry.
To keep up to date, subscribe to Kunal’s Substack Channel.
Trinet works with some of the most exciting small businesses in the country by providing exceptional medical benefits and world-class technology – web-based, mobile, and internal systems/processes, that positively impacts clients and their employees. Please reach out to RaeEllen Zekas (raeellen.zekas@trinet.com) to learn more. First Republic has extensive experience working with PE and VC firms. We understand the complex nature of this business and the sense of urgency that accompanies it. Through our skilled team of industry experts and a suite of specialized products, we can quickly meet your firm’s goals. Please reach out to Kyle Gross (kgross@firstrepublic.com) to learn more
For several years, Delian has invested alongside Keith Rabois, first at Khosla Ventures and now at Founders Fund. In our discussion, we spoke about Varda, a company with a bold mission to build factories in space where novel products can be developed in a zero-gravity environment. Beyond venture capital, Asparouhov’s ambitions and fascinations lie in the commercialization of space.
Delian partnered with Will Bruey, a former Space-X engineer to found Varda. Bruey’s background is deeply technical with experience in building and operating spacecraft for over a decade. Bruey was a hardware engineer on the Crew Dragon, head of mission control on 8 of the ISS missions, and has dealt with the design and construction of spacecraft for Space-X.
The concept of a space factory may seem futuristic, but Delian breaks down the research that reveals the immense potential of space manufacturing and how he and Bruey are de-risking this endeavor. Research projects have shown the benefits of manufacturing in zero gravity across drug discovery, semiconductors, and fiber optic cables. In one example, human organ 3D-Printing on Earth is complex and costly. Organs are printed with thin walls and gravity makes the walls collapse. In Space, this technical challenge is lifted by operating in a microgravity environment. Varda aims to build factories where the laws of physics are entirely different than factories on Earth, where every manufacturing process is predicated on operating in a gravity field.
When Varda factories are operational, Delian envisions a future of a low orbit economy in space with Gas Depots, Space Taxis/Tugs, Space Tourism, and Varda supporting the development and manufacturing of cancer drugs, 3D Organs, semiconductors, and more.
Varda raised a $9m round with Josh Wolf of Lux Capital, Trae Stephens of Founders Fund, and Naval Ravikant.
For more Finding Genius Content:https://findinggenius.substack.com/
In the past six months, Miami has rapidly become the tech hub of tomorrow with startups and venture funds booking one-way tickets left and right. Kunal Mehta sat down with Mayor Suarez for the Finding Genius series. Suarez shared that no overnight success is truly overnight, his advice for NYC Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, musings from his conversation with Elon Musk, and the importance of environmental tech. Listen in to hear how he has been integrating tech into Miami over the past ten years and how he is supporting the tech community for the next ten years to come.
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Commonstock is a platform for investors to coordinate their stock trades, follow the investments of friends and family, and engage in communities for greater knowledge of stock market sharing and transparency.
David McDonough, the founder, and CEO of Commonstock, shares more on the origin story of the company for the Finding Genius series sponsored by Trinet. Commonstock raised a $10 million seed round with Floodgate and QED in 2020. This interview took place at an interesting time in the public markets where retail investors are a driving force in the stock market. In the week before this interview, heavily shorted companies, such as Gamestop and AMC, saw their stock prices grow exponentially through coordinated trades made by retail investors. David shares his thoughts on these events and the future of the company.
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K Health allows patients to chat with a board-certified doctor on demand who can diagnose, prescribe medication, handle refills, and more for $9/month. K Health now has 4 million users across the United States and is unbundling primary medicine through data-driven healthcare.
Allon Bloch is the former CEO of Wix and the founder of Vroom. With K Health, Bloch launched in 2018 and is now active across 48 states.
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Kunal interviews Florian Otto, founder, and CEO of Cedar. In June 2020, Cedar raised a $102 million Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz. In this episode, Florian discusses his learnings from ZocDoc, the U.S. Healthcare System, and building a healthcare technology company.
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Prior to this conversation, Kelvin Beachum signed his 5th NFL contract with the Arizona Cardinals. Kelvin has been in the NFL for over 9-years with teams including the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets, and Jacksonville Jaguars. Outside of being an offensive lineman, Kelvin has established himself as a prolific angel investor, investing in companies including Flexport, WHOOP, FreightWaves, Future Fit, Porter Road, and more.
In this conversation, Kelvin walks us through the qualities of genius that he admires in founders and how those compare to the athletes he respects. He discusses how sports-tech companies should take a bottoms-up approach of selling directly to players and other strategies sports tech CEOs can learn from.
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This interview was sponsored by Trinet, Anchin, and First Republic Bank. For support on HR Services and Payroll, please reach out to raeellen.zekas@trinet.com. For accounting, tax, and advisory services including R&D Tax Credits, please reach out to chris.noble@anchin.com. For banking for startups and venture funds of all stages, please reach out to kgross@firstrepublic.com.
Laura Chau was recently promoted to Partner at Canaan, a fund that has previously invested in companies such as The Real Real, Instacart, Turo, and Ro. Laura shares more about her path through venture capital and working with the inimitable Marie Kondo to support the launch of the Marie Kondo brand and media business. Shortly after this conversation, Laura announced an investment in the Canadian Autotech startup, Clutch.
In our conversation, Laura discusses her investments in Ollie, Coterie, MSCHF, Mira, and more. Reflecting on her seven-year venture career, Laura discusses the shifts consumer and commerce-focused entrepreneurs have had to manage as acquisition channels have become more saturated. She shares how standout companies, such as MSCHF, successfully build communities or fandoms with zero to low acquisition costs. On new compelling areas of interest to her and Canaan, Laura discusses the metaverse and the economy that is being built around that.
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Shiv Gaglani, founder of Osmosis - Knowledge Diffusion, With major healthcare worker shortages expected, Osmosis has built an online learning platform focused on healthcare to train anyone who wants to learn how to provide care in a high-quality way. Osmosis is backed by Greycroft and Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures. In our conversation, Shiv Gaglani talks about online learning, healthcare, growth hacks, working with Rishi Desai, MD, MPH (formerly of Khan Academy), and partnerships with universities and health systems such as Kaiser Permanente.
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Yury Yakubchyk of Sprout Therapy discusses how Sprout is making autism care more accessible through ABA therapy and shares thoughts on their Series A with General Catalyst
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Nancy Brown is an investor with Oak HC/FT where she focuses primarily on growth-equity and early-stage investments within Healthcare. In this conversation for Finding Genius, Nancy shares the trends within the U.S. Healthcare system that are important for founders and VCs to take note of and where she sees further investment opportunities
For more Finding Genius content: https://findinggenius.substack.com
For more videos such as this one, follow along on Substack (https://findinggenius.substack.com/) This interview was sponsored by Trinet and Anchin. For accounting, tax, and advisory services including R&D Tax Credits, please reach out to chris.noble@anchin.com.
Finding Genius with Misha Esipov, co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit (https://www.novacredit.com/). Nova Credit was founded 5-years ago to help immigrants integrate into the U.S. economy by democratizing access to credit. Nova Credit raised a $50m Series B in early 2020 led by Ilya Fushman at Kleiner Perkins with participation from General Catalyst, Canapi Ventures, Index Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, and Alex Rodriguez.
Per Misha, Immigration today drives 50-60% of U.S. Population growth, and every year more people move to the United States than those turning 18 in the United States becoming eligible for financial services for the first time. Over 50 million immigrants in the United States have experienced a similar challenge when they first come to the U.S. and apply for an auto loan, apartment lease, financial loan, or a financial product that requires a credit history. U.S. credit bureaus typically don't recognize immigrants and credit history needs to be built from scratch. As a result, well-educated/high-potential immigrants that are here for the American dream of education, opportunity, or love, are effectively shut out with their financial identity left in their home country. Nova Credit seeks to solve this issue.
In our conversation, Misha walks us through the data problem Nova Credit is solving and how it is creating systemic change for immigrants to access a country's services, establishing the standards of data through a Credit Passport (R), and building partnerships with U.S. Financial institutions and international credit agencies. In this conversation, Misha discusses growth-at-all-costs often prescribed by VCs and the worst advice he was given from a venture capitalist who compelled them to grow quickly and find their hockey stick. Misha discusses the anxiety this created for their team early on when the company was dealing with a marketplace that had highly regulated financial institutions on one side and slow-moving credit agencies on the other. On top of other advice shared in this session, Misha stresses to early founders to understand their business and understand that hockey sticks are not one size fits all.
Stephen Sikes is Public.com’s, Chief Operating Officer. He oversees the investing, operations, legal, compliance, and risk functions of Public Holdings, Inc, focusing on providing an intuitive and responsible investing experience for Public.com’s community. He was previously VP and Businsess Lead of SoFi Invest, SoFi’s core investing product. As part of the founding team for SoFi Invest, he drove the long-term strategy and business plan; built and launched five ETFs; launched SoFi Crypto; and grew the customer base to hundreds of thousands of accounts. Previously, Sikes was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and served as an officer in the U.S. Army.
Packy McCormick is the founder of Not Boring, a newsletter that has attracted over 30,000 subscribers for its weekly deep-dives into small and large tech companies. Packy discusses the newsletter + influencer economy, syndicating investments through Angellist, and the companies he is most excited about.
Highlight quote from this episode:
“You either sell tickets or you don’t. You create a trailer and people either buy tickets or they don’t. If they don’t, go and create a better trailer, change the price of a ticket, or re-think the entire concept of the movie. The concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) is stupid. More people need to emulate Apple. You ship a finished product. As Jack at Square says often, ‘the customers are not Guinea pigs’. People who treat customers like Guinea Pigs have incredibly poor net promoter scores.”
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