Village Global's Venture Stories Village Global

Jon Korngold joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Jon is the Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) and Co-Head of Technology Investing at Blackstone. Prior to joining Blackstone, Jon was Head of General Atlantic’s Global Financial Services and Healthcare sectors.

Takeaways:

- The vast reach of Blackstone, as one of the biggest asset managers in the world, allows them to apply their huge base of operational infrastructure to “make the winning company, not just find the winning company.”

- Entrepreneurs have accepted that we are not going back to 2021 valuations. There will be many casualties on the road ahead. Jon worries that VCs are doing certain complex deals to protect their marks and that there will be a number of zombie portfolios coming out in the next few years.

- The correction has a silver lining: lots of tech transformation comes out of a downturn. This is a healthy thing, like a brush fire in a forest. Also, startups have more and more talent available to them as the cost of leaving an existing job has never been lower.

- When Jon meets founders he pays attention to how often they let the people around them speak. Great founders are humble and surround themselves with people who challenge their thinking.

- Jon recommends that people spend time working and living abroad if they can. He says that his time spent overseas has informed his thinking on markets and given him a competitive advantage at work.

- The sign of a good board member is that they never show up to a board meeting and learn something they didn’t already know. They sit on a low number of boards, are actively keeping up to date on the company, and are deeply involved with the company.

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Marc Iserlis is a film/TV producer and documentary filmmaker joins Village Global's Head of Investor Relations Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi). Marc is currently building tokenized film financing at Republic, an alternative fundraising platform.

Takeaways:

- Marc’s ambition is at Republic is to allow individuals to join in the success of film production through an equity "fan raise" that allows fans of a particular project to invest directly in its production and share in the project’s success.

- The rise of streaming platforms and recent changes in how films are financed has resulted in commoditization.

- China and India’s film industries are rising stars but the US is still the global leader in big films.

- Telling a good story is perhaps the hardest thing in the world to do.

- An audience appreciates subtlety in storytelling. Writers know the right things to withhold from an audience to make it satisfying.

- Stage is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s medium, and TV is a writer’s medium.

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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Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com.

This episode of the Village Global podcast shares a few select segments from the Startup of You podcast relevant to founders, investors, and anyone working in tech.

They discuss:

- Hustle, and investor Chris Sacca's creative way of getting his foot in the door when he was first starting out in his career.


- Name dropping. Your network is a key part of your career. If you have a powerful person in your network you might be eager to let others know that, but they talk about how to let others know about your network thoughtfully and with tact.



- Navigating status. Like it or not, status matters. We talk about how status dynamics play out in the workplace and how you can skillfully navigate them.

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.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) and Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) are co-authors of The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. In the book, they look at the best of Silicon Valley startups and derive entrepreneurial principles that can transform the career of any professional across all industries. They revised and updated the book for the new world of work in 2022 and released a podcast series about it which you can listen to at thestartupofyou.com.

This episode of the Village Global podcast shares a few select segments from the Startup of You podcast relevant to founders, investors, and anyone working in tech.

They discuss:

- How the founders of Airbnb were relentlessly resourceful and hustled to overcome hundreds of rejections when they first conceived of the business that today is worth tens of billions of dollars.

- Reference checking — why it’s important and how to do it well.

- Risk — why we're evolutionarily wired to overestimate the risks involved in a given decision, why it's important to take smart risks, and a few frameworks for thinking more rationally about them.

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.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Louise Story (@louisestory) most recently was the Chief News Strategist and Chief Product & Technology Officer at The Wall Street Journal. Louise also spent more than a decade at the New York Times. She joins Olga Serhiyevich on this episode to discuss:
Her unique role at the Wall Street Journal and some of the products that she built, including AI/ML models to alert reporters when stocks were moving in certain ways that let them get ahead of emerging stories, as well as an early version of ChatGPT that let a user ask a question about what a political candidate thought on a given issue which pulled an answer from transcripts of their interviews and speeches.The shift to following people rather than news outlets.The importance of a strong legal department at a news outlet that protects journalists and stands up for freedom of the press.Her forthcoming book on the black-white wealth gap and the fact that at the median, black individuals in America have 12 cents in wealth for every one dollar that a white person has.Why telling stories through people is the best way to keep an audience’s attention.
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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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.

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.

Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup