Village Global's Venture Stories Village Global

David Boehmer (@DavBoehmer) speaks to Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi) about the talent intermediation industry, the evolution of business models in the sector, and creating a talent marketplace at Banff.

Takeaways:

- Chance often has a significant impact on a person’s career but David says that a life’s impact is too important to be left to chance.

- David likes to think of a career as a river. You can be swept downstream by momentum and wake up 20-30 years later without realizing that there might have been a different river that could have been better suited to you.

- It’s important to manage your career proactively, the same way that you save for retirement before you need the money.

- You should give the people around you explicit permission to give you direct feedback.

- Sometimes his clients convince themselves that they want a job because they are in demand for it but they should instead think hard about what they really want and not just take a job because they are wanted.

- Some people say that if you put your head down and work hard you will get discovered by the right types of people. David says “throw that out.” Your LinkedIn profile, your reputation, and your network matter immensely.

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Rohit Krishnan (@krishnanrohit), venture capitalist and author of the blog Strange Loop Cannon, joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways:

- Many of the people at the top of their fields today say they would never get hired if they were just starting out today. Today’s selection process at elite institutions has become more stringent but has dropped the interesting variance that exists at the top of the pyramid. Plenty of people have gamified the selection process. If you’re hiring, you want to find the interesting misfits.

- Higher ed used to be fantastic but now it is groaning under its scale. There should be more of a focus on job training rather than general liberal education.

- Billionaires should be more eccentric and experimental. There aren’t enough idiosyncratic billionaires in the world.

- It’s easier than ever for information to get from one place to another with the rise of the internet but it also means that it’s easier than ever for ways to use that information to make money to get from one place to another. This has resulted in the barbell distribution of outcomes that we see these days.

- Clustering has important benefits. There’s something about bouncing ideas off of other people and egging them on in person that is special, despite the connectivity that the internet has brought.

- Hierarchies make it easy to get things done in general, but hard to get any one thing done.

- There are many more areas where we are not polarized than where we are polarized these days. Changing someone’s mind is a function of time and encouragement and repeated explanations, rather than forcefully convincing someone you are right and they are wrong.

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Lorin Gu, founding partner of Recharge Capital, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global to discuss:

- Why Recharge structures its investing thematically, rather than by asset class.

- The three themes that they believe have multi-decade headwinds behind them: semiconductors, women’s health, and fintech/crypto.

- What Lorin learned from working with David Swensen, including the importance of the qualitative measurement of the people running the fund alongside any quantitative analysis of fund strategy.

- How asking fund managers about their motivations and how they make decisions can determine the outcome of an investment.

- The current wave of technonationalism around the globe.

- Lorin's media diet and his interest in art.


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Alex Chalunkal is Chief Investment Officer at a family office where he manages a $1B+ portfolio focused on impact, venture, and climate tech investing. He was interviewed by Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global.

Takeaways:

- Alex says that the consensus is that there will be a mild recession in 2023.

- He says that the energy transition, health, and climate are key sectors he is focusing on.

- Technology is an important tool to help improve the labor shortage in the US because tech creates more productive workers who can get more done with less.

- Structured equity can be an important tool for companies with stable revenue and cash flow. There are many covenants that are often added to a debt product so it’s not necessarily the right tool for a company that has lots of potential volatility in revenue, product, or pricing.

- Alex is excited about climate tech investing. He says that in the US we have the raw materials but not necessarily the policies in place to combat climate change so investing in areas that are aligned with policy is key.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

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Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer), president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global for a conversation about global geopolitical trends and their impact on technology.

Takeaways:

- Ian has been in the room with world leaders as they make decisions about how to prepare for potential wars. He says that it’s easy to criticize their decisions afterwards but having been there has given him an appreciation for just how difficult it is to make those decisions under constraints and how little ideology plays into those decisions.

- The US is no longer willing to act as global policeman, architect of global trade, or cheerleader for values the way it has in the past. No other country is wiling or able to fill that void, which leads us to a “GZERO” world where there is no clear leadership.

- Tech companies like Microsoft and Starlink acting as sovereigns in Ukraine helped the country stay independent and likely kept Zelensky in power.

- Ian says that the US and China are not in a Cold War and are not headed for a Cold War. He says that the leadership of both countries isn’t interested in a Cold War from a political perspective and that there is too much interdependence between the two nations for tensions to be ratcheted up.

- Ian says that AI and algorithms have become deeply political without us realizing it. Tech companies have been A/B testing not for what makes for a better society but for what leads to more addiction. He says this is the most disturbing and destabilizing trend in tech today.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

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Mo Islam (@itsmoislam), co-founder of Payload Space, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode. Takeaways:

- There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of the space economy, Mo says.

- The cost to go to Mars will be paid many times over by the young engineers who will be inspired by the mission.

- There are three main buckets in the space economy: space for earth (companies creating products for humans on earth via their space endeavors), space for space (companies serving other companies in space) and beyond earth (“science fiction”-type activities like colonization, mining, and exploration).

- The International Space Station cost $100B to build.

- SpaceX built the Falcon 9 at 1/10th the cost that NASA estimated.

- In the 1960s there were only two space programs but now there are 80+ and they are all trying to get an economic return on investment.

- Mo’s contrarian take is that launch is actually underhyped. Very few companies have a launch vehicle that has made it to orbit with a significant payload capacity.

Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

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