We The Builders

Suffiyan Malik

Conversations with practitioners at the edge of their craft across business, media, startups, frontier technologies, investing. wethebuilders.us

  1. 3D AGO

    E24: Rob Leclerc on Building AgFunder, the Biggest Media Platform & Venture Fund focused on Food & Ag

    Intro Rob Leclerc is the Cofounder and General Partner of AgFunder which is $300m AUM venture fund focused on food and agriculture. He also started AgFunder News which has over 100,000 subscribers and is the largest publication and source of news for the world of venture and startups focused on food & ag. In this conversation we discuss how media and venture have always gone together and how Rob was able to use that as a platform to build the venture business. We also dive into his personal story of why and how he got started in venture capital having no experience in the space. What people might not know is that AgFunder actually started out as a crowdfunding platform for food & ag startups and was part of the 500 Global accelerator. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:55 - From being un-hirable to a PhD and starting a VC Fund 04:03 - The 2008 financial crisis and exposure to the Agriculture space 07:47 - Going from computer science and philosophy to food and bio 13:36 - The “Miserable Failure” of Rob’s first startup 16:40 - Building the TechCrunch for AgTech 22:28 - Going from media to venture and finding your own voice 27:44 - 500 Global and the million-dollar demo day 31:19 - Transitioning from Broker to Principal 37:50 - “Trust can’t be rushed”, how that applies to fundraising 42:21 - AgFunder’s business model and keeping storytelling alive 51:35 - The evolution of AgFunder’s thesis 1:00:26 - Managing customer relationships 1:04:55 - What builds founder resilience 1:08:58 - The true definition of agency and how do you inculcate that in kids 1:13:48 - What’s more important agency or intelligence? 1:14:56 - Rob’s vision for 2050 1:21:42 - Humanoid Robotics and the “Specialized vs. General” debate 1:26:08 - Rob’s lessons in storytelling 1:30:51 - Reputation through Reps: The intentional practice of the pitch 1:38:04 - Closing questions, how does Rob build relationships This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    1h 40m

  2. 5D AGO

    E23: Leland Miller Breaks Down the China Threat. IP Theft, GDP Fabrication, Taiwan Takeover. What is Really Going On?

    Intro: Leland Miller is the Cofounder of China Beige Book, which according to some media reports has been labelled as a firm having more data on China than even the CIA. He is also a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission. He has advised Fortune 50 CEOs and top government officials including the Congress on China. In this conversation we talk about: —> The espionage in the tech industry from universities to companies —> Why China has long-term strategy for Taiwan where they expect the West to self-implode —> How U.S banks including JP Morgan were partially responsible for covering up China’s real economic condition —> How China fabricated their GDP —> What happened to the great China opportunity? —> China’s military readiness And more. Full episode now available wherever you get your podcasts. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction01:26 - China 101: The death of the “China Dream” 09:26 - Surveillance, residency permits, and the reality of internal environment 11:04 - Supply chain leverage: Why critical minerals are national security 13:50 - The pharmaceutical threat: Chinese control of U.S. medication supply chains 16:34 - Strategic decoupling: Reshoring and friendshoring national security nexuses 19:45 - Dependence on Chinese foundational materials 24:21 - The military balance in the Pacific: Why everyone thinks they would lose 27:56 - Command readiness: Xi Jinping’s military purges and wartime memory loss 31:13 - Geostrategy in the neighborhood: Japan, Philippines, and missile distance 35:20 - Made in China 2025: The fourth industrial revolution playbook 37:46 - Reindustrialization hurdles: Shipbuilding, chips, and bipartisan focus 39:50 - Breaking the rare earth processing monopoly 43:54 - An Economic Security Strategy: A 5-point master plan for the US 49:19 - IP theft and clones: The deep-rooted issue of technological espionage 52:01 - The STEM dilemma: Training talent in the U.S. and letting them go back55:27 - China’s compute disadvantage and U.S incentives 01:00:23 - The Food and Energy problem01:06:12 - Xi Jinping’s psyche: Paranoia, time horizons, and the Taiwan ticking clock 01:10:56 - Economic sensibilities: Global frustration with the imbalanced trade model 01:16:35 - Why China doesn’t drive global growth 01:19:02 - GDP Fabrication: Trillon-Yuan exaggeration 01:28:41 - Tracking credit and stimulus in a “non-commercial” system 01:33:59 - AI, Quantum, and Biotech integration 01:45:18 - Counterbalancing industrial policy01:58:19 - Why China uses 12x more robots than prediction 02:08:52 - Why Xi doesn’t care about consumers 02:14:35 - Closing thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    2h 19m

  3. 6D AGO

    In Conversation with Shahin Farshchi at Lux Capital, $7B Fund Accelerating SciFi

    Special conversation with Shahin Farshchi at Hill & Valley Forum 2026 now available wherever you get your podcasts. Lux Capital has deployed over $7B in deeptech and have been accelerating us towards SciFi future for over 20 years. Shahin has invested in companies manufacturing in space (Varda), building autonomous transportation systems (Zoox), providing robots as a service (Formic), automating industries (Covariant), using space to revolutionize the Earth observation industry (Planet), 3D printing rockets (Relativity Space) and many more. Watch on YouTube This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    30 min

  4. APR 2

    E22: Colin Greenspon on Private Boards, Business Model Innovation, Competent Founders and Narya

    WTB Intro Narya keeps a low profile so perhaps you might not see them pop up on your Twitter or Linkedin but they have quietly worked their way to having what is probably the best unicorn hit rate of any active fund that I know of since 2020. Now, I haven’t checked with the firm but from our last conversation I know they make 2-3 investments a year, if you go and check out their website and see the list of featured companies, a simple Google search on those companies and their publicly reported valuations reveals that at least 7 of them are likely unicorns, i.e have at least or close to a $1 billion valuation or have achieved a billion dollar market cap at least once if public. Some of this is based on public reporting and the rest is an estimate based on funding rounds. Lets say they averaged 3 investments a year since founding in 2020 and maybe went over the average in a couple of years, assuming they have made around 18-20 investments, that is an insane ~35% unicorn hit rate. It is hard to know without knowing the total amount of investments made and private valuations are hardly reported on with the exception of any press releases from the company itself or a credible source like TechCrunch officially reporting on a round but based on publicly available information, it is safe to assume it is somewhere around that mark. These companies include: * Chapter * Kriya Therapeutics * True Anomaly * Branch Insurance * Hallow * Strive Asset Management (public) * Rumble (public) For reference check out this graph below that Ilya Strebulaev posted 7 months ago on unicorn hit rates of venture firms since 2020, this is based on research from Stanford GSB (Link here). This graph only counts pre-unicorn investments in unicorns. Firebolt Ventures had the best hit rate at 10% (13 unicorns in 129 investments), Greenoaks is at number two with a hit rate of 9.4% (11 unicorns in 117 investments), IVP is number 3 with 9.2% (11 in 120 investments). Narya is notably not in the list but it is perhaps because they lay low and quietly go about funding the next best companies. Perhaps why Colin had not done a long form podcast before I got him on the show last year but I am convinced other firms, LPs and founders can learn from their strategy and way of doing business. This episode is a deep dive into topics I wanted to cover more from Episode 9 of We The Builders where he gave a masterclass on Thesis Driven Investing. Narya is unique in the sense that it is very concentrated for an early stage fund, their focus is Seed to Series A, they only do 2-3 high conviction investments in a year. Colin brought up in our last conversation that the most interesting ideas die because of lack of business model innovation. In this episode we cover some examples of business model innovation and how the firm supports on that front, we cover framework for effective private company board meetings, what competent founders look like, Narya’s masterplan and more. They are relatively new, with what is an elite team (easy to say in hindsight) but at the time it was a group of people making contrarian unpopular bets of their era. Whether that is investing outside Silicon Valley, betting on reindustrialization as a category in 2021, investing in religion as category when it was taboo, going against ESG before Blackrock followed or betting on a new free speech social platform before the Twitter acquisition by Elon. Narya has been what friend of the show Mike Maples would describe as contrarian and right. In case you didn’t check out our last episode, I will do a reintroduction. Colin Greenspon cofounded Narya with JD Vance, now Vice President of the United States. The firm was founded with the thesis of addressing America’s most acute problems by investing in the frontiers of science & technology solving for the future. He now runs the firm with Falon Donohue (Cofounder of Reindustrialize) and Peter Thiel. Watch On Youtube: Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 02:58 - Mimeticism in venture 05:05 - Why Narya stays lean and nimble 08:26 - The apprenticeship model and changing team dynamics 13:32 - The best founders figure it out 16:35 - Diversity of thought on the cap table 24:19 - The true purpose of a board seat 27:18 - Conviction-based capital allocation 31:02 - Business model innovation 36:16 - Bespoke customer engagement 42:51 - How design partners prove product-market fit 47:42 - Discovering the exact problem 53:10 - Why showing up in person still matters 55:35 - Investing in need-to-solve problems 01:01:30 - The holding company structure 01:04:47 - Defining ambition 01:10:37 - Identifying competent founders 01:19:57 - True business leadership 01:29:11 - Building in public 01:35:20 - The right way to run a productive board meeting 01:52:49 - Network effects in enterprise 02:01:08 - The Narya Master Plan 02:08:17 - Closing thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    2h 5m

  5. MAR 31

    In Conversation with Dmitri Alperovitch, Cofounder of CrowdStrike, a $100B company

    Special episode from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: A conversation with Dmitri Alperovitch Cofounder of CrowdStrike (a $100B company), Silverado Policy Accelerator and Author of World on the Brink Dmitri has correctly predicted three wars including the Russia-Ukraine war and has a prediction for China going after Taiwan. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction00:53 - The mission of Silverado Policy Accelerator 02:00 - Predictions of war and the state of Ukraine - Russia conflict02:31 - Timeline for conflict in Taiwan and the 2028 elections04:15 - Operation Causeway: Why Taiwan is a complex military feat 06:40 - High stakes of failure for Xi Jinping08:21 - The evolving relationship between Silicon “Valley” and “Hill” 09:19 - Building in defense tech 10:56 - Military-grade vs. Consumer-grade12:38 - System integration over “widgets”: Lessons from the front 15:03 - New Defense Tech and Old Primes 16:44 - Mapping the Next American Century and neutralizing threats 19:40 - The American industrial base compared to Russia22:50 - The need to reindustrialize America24:39 - Advice to founders This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    25 min

  6. MAR 27

    In Conversation with David Friedberg, Cohost of All-In Podcast

    Special Episode of We The Builders from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: Conversation with David Friedberg on rise and fall of empires, the state of US economy, robots as an economic platform, what has changed since the Winning AI Race Summit featuring President Trump, reindustrialization, the end of institutional education and of course the California bankruptcy. Watch on Youtube: Timestamps: 01:21 - Shifting landscape between Silicon Valley and DC 02:51 - AI has become a political attack vector 04:46 - Late-stage empires and the impact of national debt 07:03 - Potential for AI to rewrite the story of US economy 08:26 - AI’s recent performance and productivity gains 10:03 - Bullish outlook on humanoid robots 11:16 - Robots as a platform for economic mobility 13:41 - Reindustrialization and energy production challenges 15:15 - The “functionally bankrupt” status of California 16:50 - The declining value of institutional education 18:46 - Personalized AI-driven tutoring as the future 20:01 - Emerging private sector models for education This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    21 min

  7. MAR 26

    E21: Jason Carman on Building Story and Inspiring The Next Generation of Technologists through SciFi

    Intro New SciFi writing and film started declining at the end of the 20th century and we have seen a continued decline in the first quarter of the 21st century. Sci-fi is and always has been the source of inspiration for a better future. It is where the greatest builders of our time got inspired to work on the hardest problems of their era. Whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars or the Foundation Series, if you talk to entrepreneurs building frontier technologies or products; people like Elon Musk, Brett Adcock, Peter Beck, Blake Scholl, Sam Altman, you will likely hear about one of these series as a childhood inspiration. Friend of the show, Packy McCormick (Episode 14) did a post called the SciFi Idea Bank which lists about 3,000 ideas that haven’t been brought to life. I think one of the biggest reasons nobody is talking about those ideas or listing them as inspiration is because they haven’t become part of the culture. Series like Harry Potter or Star Wars became cultural movements for generations, something people from different age groups could connect on. It has been 49 years since the first Star Wars movie came out. Half a century later, over Christmas break or summer holidays, I know of families who still binge watch the entire series together as an activity. It has been 25 years since the first Harry Potter movie came out, it has had a similar impact on culture. We are living in the age of shorts and reels. Majority of the new creators have flocked to engagement baiting reels that are usually under five minutes. The purpose is getting eyeballs for advertisers. I am probably guilty of this, that is one of the ways we promote our podcast. Taking out the time to write the script for a film, recruiting a cast, iterating through the creative process, discarding hundreds of ideas, finding a way to finance it with your own money or from your profits would be kind of the antithesis of what you would do as a revenue strategy. Well, not if you have the right masterplan. Jason has been doing film and media for 15 years. This is his life’s work. He is one of the most long-term oriented, focused and mission driven entrepreneurs I have met. Before this he was Head of Content Strategy at Astranis where he got to see the science make story real. He has a deep understanding and realization of the depth of the crisis we are in when it comes to SciFi film and television and the role it plays in inspiring the future generation. You can see the decline of new SciFi ideas in the chart below: Someone had to raise their hand and say I am going to change this. That is how we got every great invention in the history of science, tech and culture. Jason is leading the SciFi renaissance and is on a mission to make SciFi great again. Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did recording it. Their 2nd SciFi film, The Greatest Lie is going to be in theatre April 2nd. You can get your tickets here. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction02:15 - The making of "Planet" and relearning fiction 06:53 - Why good stories start with novel prose 11:31 - How Astranis gave Jason permission to build a sci-fi studio 15:18 - Why sci-fi writing dropped in the 1970s and why we need it back 21:15 - Sci-fi as the 21st century's latest addition to human philosophy 25:19 - Creation of safeguards for a spacefaring civilization 29:58 - Space Warfare and realistic combat rabbit hole 34:04 - Why bureaucracies fail and the magic of Bell Labs 41:05 - Lessons in leadership46:58 - The biggest risk of hiring all your friends 52:02 - Bootstrapping the company and using the profits to fund movies59:39 - Inspiring the next generation through sci-fi books 1:05:11 - YouTube Strategy1:11:36 - Lessons on marketing1:15:34 - The launch video bubble1:22:15 - Closing thoughts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    1h 26m

  8. MAR 21

    E20: Seth Berman, Cofounder of Susa and Kivu Ventures on History and State of Early Stage Venture Capital

    Intro Seth Berman is the cofounder of Susa Ventures and Kivu Ventures. He started angel investing at Y Combinator demo days back when there used to be twenty companies and a handful of investors looking at them. He then went on to start one of the early few seed funds funding 10 unicorns across ~100 investments. Some of these include companies like Robinhood, Flexport and Chapter (Cofounded by Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz, who has also been on the show). See link below to the original episode. Special thanks to Cobi for the intro. We filmed this in Aspen CO on my first trip there. Since I don’t ski, the only reason I had heard of the city was Aspen Institute and their events. Highlights Sharing below some of the topics we covered in the episode. You can also check out the Full Episode on YouTube. The Early Days of Seed Investing [02:03 - 04:31] * “I was angel investing starting in 2010 and I was fortunate enough to be one of the first people that would go to Y Combinator’s demo days.” * “When I started going, it was probably 12 founders that were presenting and 12 investors in the audience.” * “I think we invested in five or six companies that became unicorn businesses in a fairly small portfolio.” The Explosion of the Seed Ecosystem [05:34 - 09:00] * “There’s now 900 plus seed funds out there in the ecosystem.” * “Any great company that’s running a competitive process, if they’re talking to 20 funds, 19 of them are going to lose and one of them is going to win.” * “What used to be seed is now series A and what used to be pre-seed is now seed.” * “It’s very challenging for them to let other large seed funds in or multi-stage funds. So it becomes a winner take all round.” The Series A Opportunity [09:00 - 10:30] * “I felt like there’s a tsunami of seed-stage deals coming to series A.” * “I graduated from doing seed to series A and B now.” * “I’m more focused on companies that have some sort of product market fit.” * “Series A funds, there’s probably 30 super high quality funds, but there’s not 900.” Missing Out on Pinterest [10:30 - 12:40] * “One of my biggest misses was Pinterest. I remember meeting with the founders outside at TechCrunch Disrupt.” * “The number that I remember seeing was they are over 20 minutes time on site per day. And that was a similar number to what Facebook had.” * “I should have known that with that much engagement, they were going to build something really special.” The Era of the “No-Deck” Fundraise [12:50 - 13:47] * “Any founder that has really strong experience can go out and fundraise with no product.” * “They can literally just have an idea and pitch it and raise funding and not even a deck.” * “A creative can come in with no technical expertise really and build a sizable business.” * “The gates are down. And if you’re a creative person or entrepreneurial person and you have an idea... it’s easier ever to build a product.” Vertical AI and the Super Cycle [13:34 - 14:43] * “What we’re seeing in AI... it’s changing everybody’s workflow on a daily basis.” * “A lot of these models whether they’re vertical specific or they’re horizontal is they’re breaking the benchmarks way faster than anybody could imagine.” * “I see adoption of them at my much higher rates than I’ve seen other super cycles in the past.” AI 2.0: Physical Intelligence [14:43 - 16:15] * “We call it physical intelligence... we think AI 2.0 is really when intelligence starts affecting physical objects.” * “There’s going to be so many different things that are going to happen over the next 5 to 10 years that bring intelligence into every person’s life on a daily basis.” * “Bring intelligence into every person’s life... on the manufacturing floor in agriculture and in construction.” * “We’re trying to find kind of the picks and shovels that invest in those models and in those businesses to allow this new ecosystem to be built.” Starting a Company vs. Solving a Problem [22:28 - 23:25] * “I think there’s two types of entrepreneurs. I think there’s an entrepreneur that wants to start a company and there’s an entrepreneur that wants to solve a problem.” * “We tend to want to invest in entrepreneurs that are trying to solve a problem.” * “Experience that problem before... have some domain expertise to understand why the problem exists and how to solve it.” The AI Scientist [32:10 - 34:01] * “Instead of having a few thousand researchers you can have billions and you can replicate them over and over and over again.” * “An AI agent can have access to everything and be able to analyze it constantly.” * “I think there’s going to be profound discoveries over the next decade from these AI scientists.” * “They’re going to hit prime human sometime in the next two to five years. Prime human being, Albert Einstein level intellect.” Vertical vs. Horizontal Models [35:51 - 37:21] * “A startup raised like $50 million to build this model... they tested it against ChatGpt and ChatGpt was better.” * “They just spent $50 million for nothing... you just don’t have the same sort of resources as these horizontal models and access to compute.” * “These models might just be so powerful that you don’t need a lot of these vertical specific companies out there today.” Why Founders Don’t Care About Your VC “Platform” [39:19 - 41:12] * “If they get multiple term sheets from the tier one funds, they tend not to care so much about the platform and the services.” * “They care more about the partner that they’re going to be working with.” * “What we found is it’s very hard to have specialists in every single vertical.” * “Unless you’re kind of within the sweet spot of the individuals that they hired at that fund... they tend not to be that helpful.” Investing is Harder Than Tweeting [48:04 - 48:53] * “I think that investing is incredibly difficult. You only have so much time during the day.” * “It’s very hard to have the time to kind of build up an online presence.” * “My focus has always been on do the best deals possible, support those founders, and have those founders speak highly about you.” Identifying Talent: Broken Resumes and Persistence [01:10:48 - 01:15:00] * “Sometimes the most talented people have broken resumes. They don’t check the boxes... the credentials aren’t there.” * “You want somebody that is extremely persistent that is going to run through walls to make things happen.” * “It’s a very different skill set building a product and building a team and making that team successful.” * “A lot of founders... they don’t put the resources or the time into go to market at the early stages.” Timing: Catching the Wave [01:32:00 - 01:35:50] * “Sometimes as investors, we’re so far in front of the wave and the wave isn’t coming for 10 more years that, you know, we’re just never going to catch it.” * “Catching it too late... you invested in a social network in 2012 or 2014, you’re probably too late.” * “Understanding what potential outcomes can be is like absolutely critical to being a great investor.” The Future of Public Markets and AI Analysts [01:38:16 - 01:43:12] * “You could go public when you’re doing like 150 million of revenue 10 years ago... in the next two years it might be you have to be doing a billion of revenue.” * “AI might change that... you might not need those public market analysts anymore and then a lot of these businesses could start going public much earlier.” The Robinhood Story [01:45:00 - 01:48:00] * “We met them... and they kind of told us their vision of fee free trading.” * “We were the only investor that was willing to kind of open up our our books and be like the the investor of record for FINRA.” * “My feeling on why they were so successful was it was really intuitive UI and it was just a great user experience.” * “I kept 80% of my stock. So, I still own a lot of Robinhood stock.” Exceptional Go-To-Market is Now Required [02:00:04 - 02:01:08] * “Go to market has just become so much more challenging and the go to market motion... needs to be so more highly refined.” * “If you have the resources, your go to market team should be equal to your product and engineering team.” * “Build a world-class team around whatever channel you want to focus on and find people that have done this before.” Watch On YouTube This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethebuilders.us

    2h 15m
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About

Conversations with practitioners at the edge of their craft across business, media, startups, frontier technologies, investing. wethebuilders.us

Information

  • Creator
    Suffiyan Malik
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Suffiyan Malik
  • Show Website
    We The Builders

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