Dream Machine’s Alexia Bonatsos makes a surprisingly good case for an Airbnb for horses

Converge with Casey Newton

Alexia Bonatsos has watched countless startups come and go. First as the editor in chief of TechCrunch, and now in her current role as the founder of venture capital firm Dream Machine, Bontasos’ job has been to understand what makes a tech company succeed. “A lot of it’s gut, but gut’s not magical woo-woo dust,” she says. “It’s taking in data and information, and eventually making a decision based on that.” Bonatsos has seen thousands of companies, and so on today’s episode of Converge, we turned the tables. Using two decks of cards — one with a set of famous companies, and the other with a set of random nouns — we invited Bonatsos to draw two cards, and pitch us the resulting company.

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