Tank Talks By Ripple Ventures Ripple Ventures

This episode is a milestone, Episode 100! And for that special occasion, we have a very special guest filled with unique insights from his time in the Canadian Special Forces. On today’s show, we welcome Glenn Cowan, Founder of ONE9. ONE9’s Special Mission Fund is Canada’s first and only national security and critical infrastructure security fund. The fund focuses on dual-use technologies validated in the military / special operations and intelligence community while scaling commercially. He is also the founder of ONE9 Capability Labs, Canada’s first defence and security focussed technology accelerator.

About Glenn Cowan:
Glenn Cowan is the Founder of ONE9, an ecosystem for national security and critical infrastructure technology innovation and integration. Anchored by Canada’s first security focussed venture capital fund, One 9 provides unparalleled access to proprietary deal flow emanating from compartmentalized programs in the Five-Eyes defence, security and intelligence communities. Harnessing years of operational military experience at the forefront of special operations and national security operations, One 9 has developed, implemented, and deployed cutting-edge technologies while working with industry leaders to deliver high-impact capabilities. With a deep understanding of end-user requirements, One 9 knows what is needed and what works. Leveraging a unique and agile ‘Task Force’ of subject matter experts (SMEs) One 9 provides clients and partners the requisite knowledge and advisory skills to navigate bringing products to market for defence and security end-users.

Prior to ONE9, Glenn was an officer in Canadian Special Forces for over 18 years.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:53 Glenn’s journey from Special Forces officer to Venture Investor
07:49 Moments from Glenn’s military career that have stuck with him as an investor
11:24 How special forces helped train Glenn’s decision-making in venture
16:02 What pushed Glenn to commit to investing fulltime
22:28 The impact of Glenn’s grandfather on him as a business operator
24:18 Disspelling the notion that Special Forces is a boys club
25:37 What Glenn means when he says Venture Capital is a special force
30:20 How ONE9 supports founders and helps with decision making to deploy resources
35:26 What risk-

Retaining talent is a superpower for successful companies and creating environments that support employees is often the foundation of retention. Our guest today is Cameron Yarbrough, Co-Founder and CEO of Torch, a platform that helps companies build professional growth through the power of trusted relationships. We are big believers in coaching and mentorship and Torch has really caught our eye with how they are able to measure ROI on these traditionally difficult-to-measure relationships. We also talk to Cameron about Torch’s recent $40 million Series C financing round right before the market downturn.

About Cameron Yarbrough:
Cameron is Co-Founder and CEO at Torch Leadership Labs, a leadership development company built on principles of psychology and management best practices. Prior to Torch, Cameron worked at the Stanford Graduate Business School as a facilitator to MBA students in Interpersonal Dynamics. He has a Masters in Counselling Psychology and a clinical background. He also was a CEO and founder of an e-commerce in the first dot-com wave in 1997.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:47 How Cameron’s career led him to Stanford Graduate Business School and ultimately Torch
05:28 Cameron’s journey of self-discovery after selling his first business
09:18 The final push that led Cameron to start Torch
13:09 Why companies should still invest in supporting employee's professional growth
15:55 How Founders can leverage their missions to find and retain great employees
17:11 How companies can better embody their missions
19:26 The most important leadership skills for founders to master
25:06 How Torch shows ROI on coaching and mentorship to leaders
27:01 How Torch devised their unique method of coaching and mentoring
29:11 Cameron’s advice to first-time founders
31:40 How founders should think about stress and how Cameron manages his own stressful times
34:33 Dealing with impostor syndrome
36:18 The importance of humility and authenticity in founders
37:36 Coaching high-calibre entrepreneurs
40:01 Cameron’s experience with M&A and the lessons he learned
42:14 Plans for their recent $40M Series C led by 137 Ventures, in addition to follow on capital from Initialized Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Obvious Ventures

Fast Favorites:

🎙- Favorite Podcast: Wow In The

Finding new and more efficient ways to reward creators for their efforts is one of the biggest challenges of the digital economy. Our guest today, Jared Nusinoff, is working to bring value to creators with Mash, a crpyto/web3 platform that helps get creators paid with a new “Pay-As-You-Enjoy” model. Mash recently received a $6M seed-round co-led by Castle Island Ventures & Whitecap Venture Partners.

About Jared Nusinoff:
Jared is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mash. His previous experience was starting a Travel Company, Out Here Travel, and he spent a long stint at Google. He began his career at Bain and did his undergrad at Ivey Business School at Western University.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:30 How Jared started as a canoe guide in Canada and got involved with technology
03:56 What Jared took from his time at Bain
04:53 Simplifying options can help people make decisions
06:13 Lessons he took from his time at Google
07:52 How he launched projects within Google
08:29 Google’s mindset around success and failure
09:23 Why revenue isn’t always the best success metric within companies like Google
11:17 Lessons he learned from founding his adventure travel company Out Here Travel
16:13 How Web 2.0 has failed creators to help them support themselves
20:23 Who is a creator today and why they are turning to Web3
22:50 How Mash helps creators
26:23 Problems he’s hearing from creators
28:40 What the BitCoin Lightning Network and why they chose to build Mash ontop of it
32:38 How Mash helps crypto curious creators dive into the Web3 world
34:42 Securtity on Mash to protect wallets from scams
36:55 Early use cases of Mash
39:41 How developers are using Mash
40:44 The competitive landscape for Mash
42:33 Plans for their seed-round Co-led by Castle Island Ventures & Whitecap Venture Partners
43:50 Being a remote-first company

Fast Favorites:

🎙- Favorite Podcast: 

On The Brink – best/smartest take on bitcoin + web3/blockchain

📰- Favorite Newsletter /Blog: 

Fred Wilson’s AVC

Ben Hunt’s Epsilon Theory 

Stratechery by Ben Thompson

📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: 

Coldcard Signing Device / Wallet

📈-  Favorite New Trend: 

Freedom Enabling Sound Money – Lightning Network + Bitcoin

Unbundling of the Internet

📚- Favorite Book: 

Bitcoin Standard b

Hiring is one of the toughest challenges startups face in today’s global economy. They are competing for talent not only against “name brand” companies, but also the incredibly rich and robust startups from around the world. Our guest today has seen that struggle both as an operator and now as an investor, Michele Delcambre, is the operations partner at Felicis Ventures, one of the greatest venture firms to form in the last decade. Prior to Felicis, she led HR and Talent divisions at some of the fastest-growing technology companies like Atlassian, Okta, Databricks, and Stripe.

This is a great conversation with a ton of insight for founders at all levels.

About Michelle Delcambre:
Michelle is an Operating Partner at Felicis and leads Talent and People focused initiatives. In this role, Michelle leverages over a decade of experience in high-growth companies to advise and assist companies across the portfolio on their People and Talent best practices.

Prior to joining Felicis, Michelle led Talent and People Operations functions for a number of successful technology companies building and scaling hiring practices, People strategy, and People technology solutions during incredible growth periods. Michelle has seen various stages of scale, as the first US-based recruiting leader for Atlassian scaling from a few dozen to a few hundred employees, and growing organizations from 500-2,000 as the Head of Talent at Okta through their IPO. Additionally, she helped Stripe to operationalize the People and Recruiting functions as they scaled from >2,000 to over 5,000 employees.

Michelle is a native of Louisiana and attended Michigan State University.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:41 Michelle’s journey into Talent/HR
04:20 How Michelle’s view on talent was shaped by her time at Atlassian
06:22 Lessons she learned from her time at Zenefits
09:56 How she helped Stripe transition to remote work during the pandemic
12:16 What resources needed to shift when Stripe went remote
12:59 How Stripe’s culture survived and thrived during the pandemic
14:31 Why remote work has increased the available talent pool and how startups can win the war for talent
18:40 Why good employees leave companies and how remote-only or in-office only is more complicated
20:31 Policies that founders should consi

How we organize our companies used to be a straightforward affair, pick a place, like a humble garage, have everyone show up at that place and build your widget, and grow from there. Even before the rise of the pandemic, that equation was being disrupted, and the question of do we even need a physical place to build together has been questioned. Our guest today, Eyal Lasker, Co-Founder and CEO of Flexspace is helping companies navigate questions around growth, community, and space. Flexspace is a platform that allows companies to discover, book, and manage on-demand workspaces with no commitment or upfront cost. 

About Eyal Lasker:
Eyal Lasker has been a founder and operator for the last decade. He Co-Founded a video compression startup in 2012 before moving to Klarna in 2013 as Lead Product Manager and founding member of Klarna's consumer domain. He then had jobs at Otto and Uber, before landing at WeWork. He has a BS from Tel Aviv University and his masters from Reichman University.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:37 Eyal’s journey to founding Flexspace
04:56 How the IDF helped shape his career
06:49 Making the jump to becoming a founder
08:09 What lessons he took from his first startup
09:16 Why team building is so important to startups
10:05 Lessons from Klarna, Uber, Otto, and WeWork
13:05 What working at hedge funds taught him to be successful at big-league startups
15:02 What made Eyal decide to pull the trigger to start Flexspace
17:26 How Flexspace actually works
18:51 Why Flexspace is different than other predecessors and competitors
20:14 How they coach landlords on how to use their spaces with data
23:09 How employers should think about leasing space and offices moving forward
26:02 Why other coworking spaces need a platform like Flexspace
27:06 How Flexspace is helping solve repurposing retail space
28:37 Data Flexspace is collecting
32:22 Plans for their recent funding round led by M13, with R-Squared Ventures, Magenta Venture Partners, and others

Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!

Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

Startups love to tackle big problems in entrenched industries, but when it comes to the biggest problems, like say the Global Climate Crisis, sometimes it can be hard to find a new way to solve the problem. Our guest today, Devon Wright, Founder and CEO of Lumo, a smart irrigation system that helps growers save water, improve crop quality, and reduce costs. We talk to Devon about what Lumo is doing and how other startups can help solve the climate crisis.

About Devon Wright:
Devon Wright founded Lumo. Our mission is to massively improve fresh water efficiency for humanity. Our focus is on helping growers optimize their irrigation to continue to meet our growing food demand with an increasingly volatile water supply.

Prior to this, he co-founded Turnstyle Solutions and grew it to one of the largest local marketing platforms of its kind before being acquired by Yelp in 2017. He helped build and run the Yelp Restaurants division until 2022.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. 

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.

Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.

Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.

In this episode we discuss:

02:44 Devon’s background and how he got here
05:47 How capitalizing on opportunities has helped his career
07:14 Challenges he’s faced as a non-technical founder
11:05 The perils of outsourcing versus trying to make it work yourself
13:26 How Devon found himself living on a farm
17:10 Why the pandemic helped spur his interest in sustainable farming
21:02 How Lumo came to be from Devon’s person need for a better solution to irrigation
26:08 The prevalence of manual watering in 2022
27:35 Building the early prototypes
32:38 How Lumo actually works
33:54 Where Devon found his co-founders
38:48 Why speed to market is so important to founding a company
40:24 Lumo’s recent fundraising round led by Fallline Capital
42:53 The longterm vision of Lumo
Fast Favorites:

🎙- Podcast: My Climate Journey (MCJ) 

📰- Favourite Newsletter/Blog: Wine Industry Advisor

📲- Favourite Tech Gadget: Arduino

📈-  Favourite New Trend: Substack and direct content monetization

📚- Favourite Book: “Dreamt Land” by Mark Arax and “The Water Paradox” by Ed Barbier

🤔- Favourite Life Lesson: Follow your heart. Do what you care most about. Your passion is your biggest asset

Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!

Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency

This is a public episode. If you wou