W talks: founders counsel Withers

For family offices, individuals and families, cyber and physical security preparedness is often overlooked or less emphasized than it is at companies.  But the threats are real and growing, including to founders and senior executives, and in some cases are greater to the individual or family than to a corporation.  What are the biggest and most common cyber and physical security threats to individuals and families? What steps can you take to best protect yourself and your family or family office from such threats?  What lessons can be drawn from a corporate perspective and applied to founders and other high profile people personally?  What is a security audit, who is well suited to do this for families, and why do it?  

In this episode, ‘Keeping founders and families secure: Issues with cyber and physical security,’ host Doug Mandell draws on his own experience guiding companies through privacy and data security audits, and is joined by experts Sabrina Ross, Bill Dixon and Matt Bogaard to discuss taking lessons from the corporate perspective related to cyber and physical security and how you can apply these best practices to protect yourself and your family.  Each guest shares tips and insight on mindset and specific actions individuals and families can take to reduce vulnerabilities before a security threat happens, and on incident response, or what to do when there is an incident.  For insight on cyber and physical security issues relevant for individuals and families, listen to the discussion in this episode of our podcast.  

William (Bill) Dixon – Managing Director, Cyber at Prescient.  Bill serves as Managing Director in the cyber practice of the global risk management and intelligence firm, Prescient.  His team works with individuals, families, family offices and corporations on cyber security issues and cyber threat awareness.  Over his career, he has served as a CISO and Board of Directors advisor relating to cybersecurity and cyber threat awareness. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), and is Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC).

Matthew Bogaard – Founder and CEO at Bogaard Group International. Matt has over twenty-five years of experience in government and the private sector, in crisis management, disaster planning and response, business continuity, intellectual property protection, workplace violence prevention, high-risk travel, threat assessment, security design, special event planning, and investigations. His consulting covers clients in entertainment, video gaming, financial services, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and retail industries around the globe in a variety of locations. He is Certified Business Continuity Planning Professional and an Infrastructure Liaison Officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Sabrina Ross – Privacy and Public Policy Director at Facebook. Sabrina’s expertise includes counseling on all aspects of ethical technology, privacy and consumer protection, ranging from crafting algorithmic auditing frameworks to shaping complex product privacy standards, developing privacy compliance processes, responding to regulatory inquiries, and anticipating the state/federal/international privacy law landscape. At Facebook, she collaborates with product teams, legal, policymakers, and other key stakeholders to help build their core commitments to transparency, control, and accountability into every aspect of Facebook. 

The fourth episode of the Founders Counsel podcast, “How can VCs best help founders?,” is out now. This episode examines what it means to be considered a “founder-friendly” venture capitalist and how VCs can best help founders. Host Doug Mandell is joined by two successful Silicon Valley VCs, David Hornik of August Capital and Jim Scheinman of Maven Ventures, who are both known for building strong relationships with founders and helping their companies scale. Jim and David share their advice to founders of early-stage companies, their unexpected career paths into venture capital, what characteristics and qualities they look for in new founders, and much more.
Hear examples of entrepreneurs that our guests worked with from the early stages as their company successfully scaled up. What made these founders stand out? What led to their eventual success?
We hope you enjoy and learn from episode 4 of the Founders Counsel. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment or rating the podcast!
Guests

David Hornik – General Partner at August Capital. For the last 20 years, David has worked closely with technology companies to help them grow and prosper. Since then, has invested in dozens of companies across the software spectrum, including a number of enterprise software and SaaS (Splunk, Fastly, GitLab), consumer services (Evite, Ebates, Drop), and financial technology companies (WePay, Bill.com, PayNearMe). David has also served as the Tech Curator for the TED Conference in Vancouver and is the co-creator and host of TEDxStanford. He received Deloitte’s 2013 Venture Capitalist of the Year award and has been honored by Forbes Magazine as a member of its Midas List of top Venture Capitalists.

Jim Scheinman – Founding Managing Partner at Maven Ventures, a leading seed stage venture firm for emerging consumer software and autonomous technology startups. Jim has been fortunate to have achieved five unicorn exits ($1B+ exits/valuations) in his career in roles ranging from founder, executive, and investor. His top performers include Zoom, Cruise and Bebo. Jim is one of the leading growth experts in Silicon Valley and has a TED talk. He’s now most well-known for naming Zoom.

The third episode of Founders Counsel explores the relevance of age when founding a company.  It has been posited by some that one is over the hill in Silicon Valley at 35.  From our experience representing founders, we know that this certainly is not the case.  We explored this topic with three active founders at different stages of their lives to hear their stories, perspectives and advice.  What we discovered was a fascinating conversation more about what motivates founders to create companies than about age.  
In addition, we found that all three of our guests on this episode are socially motivated in trying to make a positive impact, which has taken them on different paths.  Our guests include a founder who has started several companies and has also taken a company public, a founder who is just now launching a company she first thought of ten years ago and a young founder still in his 20s who also has the perspective of being a VC. 

Hear their tips on balancing their time between their day job and side project, what made them conclude that “now is the time” to move forward, on developing external mentor relationships and essential qualities for success at any age. 

Guests
Ruma Bose – Founder, Former president at Chobani Ventures and Chobani Foundation. Ruma’s newest venture, coming soon, is a media tech play to empower young girls. Her prior experience includes executive roles with numerous early stage companies in the consumer industry, including President and co-CEO of Sprayology, an innovative wellness company selling vitamin and homeopathic oral sprays. Prior to that she was President at Vincent Longo Cosmetics and she also successfully co-founded and grew Finish Line Floors, a national floor care company. Her investment experience includes being a partner at Zuci Capital and a senior director at Roseworth Capital.  Ruma is an active philanthropist and has raised awareness and significant capital for non-profit organizations. She authored the book, “Mother Theresa, CEO.”
Gregory Fischbach – Founder and managing partner, Accelerate Games. He is former chairman of the board at Rabbit a venture-backed technology company he founded, founder & former CEO of Acclaim Entertainment which he took public, former president at RCA Records International, and former president at Activision International. Before getting into video games, Greg was a leading entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles.  
David Pickerell – Founder and early stage investor at Yes VC who is also currently launching Para: a suite of tools to empower gig economy workers. Prior to Yes VC, David was business operations lead at Nauto and was an early employee at Uber where he helped launch Uber in Las Vegas.

For the second episode of Founders Counsel, three dynamic and successful operators (Silicon Valley speak for executives) who became venture capitalists discuss how they broke into the Silicon Valley VC world, what their experiences were like as outsiders, and how they faced and overcame barriers as they progressed in Silicon Valley. These guests also share their experiences as founders and senior executives.
 
In a particularly timely discussion, host Doug Mandell also explores with the guests, who are all female and also represent diverse backgrounds, their views on the lack of diversity in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, including ways forward to achieve a more diverse environment, how it personally felt and feels to them, and the opportunity that must be seized now.
 
How can you pivot from being an executive to an investor?  What do these top VCs advise that you do to make a move into venture?  When is the right time? What does it mean to have a “personal board of directors,” who should be on it, and why everyone should have their own personal board.  Listen as our guests share their best advice for operators and VCs.

Guests

Richelle Parham – Managing director at WestRiver Group, a Seattle-based venture, debt, and equity company with $2B in assets under management (AUM). Prior to WRG, Richelle was a partner at private equity firm Camden Partners and served as chief marketing officer of eBay. Richelle also served in numerous executive leadership positions at Visa Inc., Rapp, and Digitas.  Richelle also currently serves on the board of directors of Shyn, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Best Buy, and LabCorp.

Tina Sharkey – Serial entrepreneur, advisor, and former VC partner at Sherpa Capital (now Acme).  Tina has driven innovation in media, commerce, and community for more than two decades, pioneering the development and adoption of pivotal consumer brands and platforms that bring data and technology together. A C-suite executive, entrepreneur, investor, and change agent, she has created, led, and scaled global brands and businesses that have transformed the way we communicate, shop, and share.  Tina is currently on the board of directors of PBS and IPSY.

Mallun Yen - Founder and partner of Operator Collective, a venture fund and community that pioneered a disruptive new approach to venture capital. Operator Collective brings together as limited partners (LPs) a group critical to a startup’s success but largely absent from the venture ecosystem -- senior operating leaders from diverse backgrounds. Operator Collective launched its debut $50M+ fund in December 2019 with 100+ operator LPs (90% women, 40% people of color) and was joined by notable institutional LPs as well. Mallun previously built and scaled three other successful, category-creating startups. She was previously vice president of Worldwide IP at Cisco and COO of SaaStr.  She currently serves on the board of directors for KQED, Northern California’s public media organization. 

How can founders use their entrepreneurial skills for good?


In this first episode of Founders Counsel, we explore this question by examining how five top founders have responded to Covid-19 by launching their entrepreneurial initiatives. Each guest was compelled to step away from their jobs and families to join the fight against this virus. Why did they do this? How did they draw on their backgrounds to create options for others that didn’t exist before? How can you make a difference like this in your own life? Where did they find the courage to “just show up” and help?


In this illuminating episode, our guests share their inspiring stories and shine a light on what drives them – whether they are building companies or helping to save lives. All of our guests on this episode know each other well from the Silicon Valley eco-system and are friends, something which contributes to the unique vibe of this show.

Guests


Robin Chan – General Partner at Goat Capital, Special Advisor at Bird, Angel Investor in Alibaba, Bird, Twitter, Square and Xiaomi, Advisor at Flipboard, Uber and Expa.  Co-Founder and CEO of Operation Masks, a group of entrepreneurs in the US and China working to bring urgent PPE to the medical frontline of Covid-19 and inventing a new health care supply chain to get supplies to those in need.


Jyri Engeström - Co-Founder and General Partner at Yes VC, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco who has founded and sold companies to Google and Groupon. Led an initiative in Bolinas, California to test all residents for Covid-19 antibodies and interrupt local transmission.


Raj Kapoor – Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Self Driving Business at Lyft, prior VC at Mayfield and founder of several companies including Snapfish and Fitmob (now ClassPass).  Shared publicly that he contracted the virus and launched World Without Covid, a nonprofit public health initiative based in a free registry that matches volunteers with opportunities to participate in clinical trials for vaccines, treatments, testing and blood plasma transfusion.


Raina Kumra – CEO of Juggernaut, Partner at The Fund LA and co-founder of Mavin, Inc.  Launched text hotline initiative to get domestically available masks and supplies to front line healthcare workers that is going national through a partnership with GetUsPPE, and working on similar supply delivery to seniors, homeless shelters, and foster care.


DJ Patil – The nation’s first White House Chief Data Scientist and regarded as one of the top data scientists in the world, Head of Technology at Devoted Health, a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former senior executive at RelateIQ and LinkedIn. Working with the state of California and governors across the country to model the potential impact of COVID-19 for scenario planning.


Episode Notes:
World Without Covid: www.worldwithoutcovid.org
Mental Health & Covid-19: www.crisistextline.org
Project N95: www.projectn95.org