Top Decile Podcast

Decile Group
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship

Most VCs talk about the future. New and emerging VC fund managers are actually funding it. Top Decile goes inside the minds of the new wave of venture capital. Three times per week, we sit down with the emerging managers writing first checks into the startups and technologies reshaping the world around us. Learn how they think, what they're betting on, and what they're seeing before everyone else catches on. For VCs, founders, and anyone who wants to understand where the world is going before it gets there.

  1. 14h ago

    Science Fair Winners Are Founding Unicorns at 3x the YC Rate | Anthony Atlas, Science Fair Fund

    Anthony Atlas won first place at the International Science and Engineering Fair at 17, earning himself a minor planet in the process. He spent years noticing that science fair alumni kept turning up as exceptional startup founders, then built the data to prove it: finalists who go on to start companies do so at a 15 percent unicorn rate, with over two-thirds making it through Series A. We get into how he built a 55,000-person alumni database to backtest the thesis before ever pitching an LP, what the science fair experience actually trains that translates to founding, and why the 2,000-plus alumni who volunteered to help may be the fund's most underrated edge.

    24 min

  2. 2d ago

    The VC Finding Latin American Founders Before US Funds Do | Lorenzo De Leo, Enya Ventures

    Lorenzo De Leo spent more than a decade as managing director at Rocker, one of Miami's leading venture studios, where he helped build over 40 companies across the US and Latin America. That operator background is now the foundation of Enya Ventures, his pre-seed AI fund targeting Latin American founders at the moment before US capital starts paying attention. We get into why Latin America is at a tipping point for founder quality, what it means to back an AI native team versus one that just bolts AI onto the product, and why in the current environment distribution and data matter more than the model itself.

    24 min

  3. 5d ago

    Betting on AI and Blockchain Before Anyone Else | Radhika Iyengar & Jorden Woods, StarChain Ventures

    Radhika Iyengar was named one of the Top 100 Women of the Future and has advised startups that generated $4 billion in shareholder value. Her co-founder Jorden Woods is a Caltech astrophysicist with her own exits and $50 million raised for portfolio companies. Together they wrote a book in 2019 predicting enterprise AI and blockchain would converge. Then, they spent six years building the track record to invest in it. We get into why they treat trust as a literal architectural requirement rather than a feature, how a portfolio company is extending hyper-personalized lending to small businesses with under a 0.2% default rate, and why micro VC math produces better returns at every performance percentile than mega funds chasing hectacorns.

    30 min

  4. Jun 23

    Supply Chains Don't Just Fail Companies — They Fail Nations | J.P. Keating, ProChain Ventures

    J.P. Keating spent 25 years inside five Fortune 500 supply chains — Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, Allstate — before deciding insiders needed to be the ones writing the check. Now, as founder of ProChain Ventures, he's backing pre-seed and seed stage founders building the technology that makes global supply chains faster, more resilient, and harder to break. In this episode, JP and Connor dig into why supply chain is less about efficiency and more about survivability, how ProChain finds the right LPs (spoiler: industry operators first), and why a self-propelled autonomous rail car might be the most exciting investment in the portfolio.

    26 min

  5. Jun 18

    Betting on LatAm's Biodiversity Advantage | Galit Flasterstein, Danta Fund

    Galit Flasterstein sold a travel company she ran in Costa Rica for a decade, then built a marketplace connecting LatAm artisans to global buyers, and concluded the real gap wasn't commerce but early-stage capital. Now she runs Danta Fund, a pre-seed vehicle backing ag tech, biotech, food tech, and climate tech founders across Latin America with a thesis built on the region's biodiversity. We get into why LatAm's biodiversity creates a scientific moat that's hard to replicate anywhere else, how a Danta portfolio company is predicting farm diseases two weeks in advance using aerial pathogen filters and AI, and why the best founders have stopped looking for generalist VCs.

    24 min

  6. Jun 15

    The VC Fund That Sees Opportunity in Red Tape | Walid Aradi & Wes Schwalje, Red Tape Ventures

    Walid Aradi and Wes Schwalje spent over 15 years at Tahseen Consulting advising heads of state, ministries, and 11 unicorns on navigating the regulatory and political realities of the MENA region, including structuring two of the region's biggest exits, Uber's acquisition of Careem and the Dubizzle-EMPG merger. Together they launched Red Tape Ventures, a Dubai-based seed fund backing marketplace and enablement technology startups across 22 countries where regulation isn't the risk — it's the unfair advantage. We get into why founders who align with government national visions end up co-creating regulation rather than fighting it, and how Red Tape made its first close during an active war (and why that's less surprising than it sounds).

    28 min

  7. Jun 12

    Backing the Founders that Ate Glass | Nathan Maton, Basal Capital

    Nathan Maton built his career at the intersection of design, technology, and human behavior, with stints at Google, Khan Academy, and Omada. He became an angel investor and ran The Clearing, a workshop for founders navigating life after a significant exit. That work crystallized his debut pre-seed and seed fund thesis: repeat founders in FinTech and AI are systematically underserved at the earliest stage. We get into why Nathan looks for founders who have "eaten the glass and signed up to do it again," how he got into a YC deal that was way oversubscribed by building five-year conviction on a founder before the round even existed, and why he believes stablecoin infrastructure is only in the third inning of a transition bigger than the internet.

    24 min

  8. Jun 11

    Finite to Infinite: Why Energy Innovation Needs Operators, Not Observers | Vineet Shah, 8 Clockwise

    Vineet Shah spent 18 years inside the energy industry. From a 4.6 gigawatt power plant through CurtissWright and Caltrol to co-founding Honeywell's lithium-ion battery business, where he created the industry's first-ever performance guarantee product. He launched 8 Clockwise as both a venture studio and seed fund backing founders in energy access, decarbonization, and advanced materials, guided by a single organizing principle: finite to infinite. We get into why most climate tech and industrial startups fail, how a venture studio model lets 8Clockwise roll up its sleeves on high-conviction portfolio companies rather than spray and pray across 20 bets, and why senior energy executives are the ideal LP for a fund that requires patience, domain fluency, and a belief that the next wave of industrial innovation belongs in venture capital.

    23 min
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About

Most VCs talk about the future. New and emerging VC fund managers are actually funding it. Top Decile goes inside the minds of the new wave of venture capital. Three times per week, we sit down with the emerging managers writing first checks into the startups and technologies reshaping the world around us. Learn how they think, what they're betting on, and what they're seeing before everyone else catches on. For VCs, founders, and anyone who wants to understand where the world is going before it gets there.

Information

  • Creator
    Decile Group
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Decile Group
  • Show Website
    Top Decile Podcast