4thly

On this episode I talk with Sylvana Quader Sinha. With a master’s degree from Columbia plus a law degree from Harvard, she was a high-achieving international lawyer, a foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama, special consultant to the World Bank, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Then in her 30’s she decided to pivot to a real challenge -  being an entrepreneur focused on fixing health care in Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Her startup, Praava Health, is now the fastest-growing healthcare brand in Bangladesh, serving a half-million people, and has been featured in Forbes, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She’s amazing, and I think you’ll enjoy my conversation with her. 

Jeff Bradley was working with Large Language Models long before most of us had heard of them. He's now CEO of Phrasia, a startup with a deep learning platform that helps companies to get actionable insights by going through all the natural language information (app reviews, survey comments, customer comments, social media, customer service transcripts, etc). On this episode Jeff talks about his own journey as an entrepreneur, and the future of AI and Large Language Models.

Biotech remains a red-hot area for startup founders and investors. Next-generation gene therapies, precision medicine, using AI and ML for speeding discovery and development of new drugs, and entire new delivery methods. What does the future look like, and how should investors and founders parse the opportunities in this sector? On this episode I talk with Marguerite Hutchison, Kent Hawryluk, and Louis Lehot about these topics and more.

2023 is certainly the year of generative AI. New software such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Bard have collectively created one of those “This is going to change everything!” moments in Silicon Valley and beyond. Startup founders and investors are all-in on what appears to be a new gold rush. On this episode, I have a lively discussion with a panel of experts including venture capital investors, startup founders, and Louis Lehot from Foley & Lardner.

On this episode I talk with Charlene Platon. She’s a registered nurse, and she’s in a leadership position at Stanford Health Care, which includes Stanford Hospital. She’s now launched a startup on the side, called Fifth Window. It’s a digital platform with a mission of revolutionizing the well-being of nurses worldwide. She talks about her journey as a startup founder, and also thoughts on how startup founders can optimize their time in order to achieve their goals.

Brazil is not only the largest economy in Latin America, it’s also a hotbed of entrepreneurship and innovation. Brazil has generated several unicorns - startups with a valuation more than a billion dollars - including Nubank, 99, Brex, Neon, Loft, and more. A small island in the south of Brazil, Florianópolis is often called “The Silicon Valley of Brazil” because it's become a thriving ecosystem of tech and startups. Joining me on this episode are two important people in that Florianópolis startup ecosystem - Leandro Piazza and JP Schneider. They run a startup school called “49 Education”, and they talk about the extraordinary startup activity in Brazil today.

On this episode I talk with Kyle Connors, co-founder of Candidate.fyi, an early-stage venture with a software product that helps companies transform their job candidate interview process into a world-class experience.  Kyle talks about the importance of doing customer development simultaneous to product development, about running a successful startup fundraising process, and about the mindset of successful entrepreneurs. 

On this episode I talk with Roger Lang, venerable entrepreneur and venture capitalist. By the age of 36 he had two IPO's under his belt, and more money than he knew what to do with. So he decided to dedicate himself to impact investing - investing in new startups that could help solve the world's pressing problems. His new venture capital fund is called "The Smart Society Fund".

Vera Maslova grew up in Moscow with two world-class scientists as parents, and then she went on to a PhD program in which she studied the intersection of art and philosophy. Then the war in Ukraine hit and she fled, ending up in Silicon Valley. An accidental refugee from unexpected world events, she now runs a startup named Science.Me, with a mission of giving more people exposure to brilliant scientists and philosophers from around the world. On this episode we talk about her new startup, but we also talk more broadly about facing adversity and how each of us can learn to develop a mindset of resilience.

TikTok, headquartered in China, is a hugely-successful app platform today. Last week the Biden Administration issued an ultimatum that the company either be sold to new owners or face the prospect of having the app banned in the US. It's an extraordinary thing, that a social media app popular with young people has been declared a national security threat. And this is happening, of course, against the background of a very tense unique relationship between the US and China. Joining me on this episode, to talk through this, is Ker Gibbs, an expert on US-China business relationships.

On this episode I talk with Amelia Goodman, founder of Bookworm, a new app for passionate readers. Amelia has been a software engineer at Google, Apple, and Stanford, built the app as a side project for her friends, and now Bookworm has taken off and is turning into a real business. Many great startups have begun as side projects, and Amelia talks about her journey turning her side hustle into a fast-growing venture. 

On this episode I talk with Asher Weiss, Co-founder and CEO of Tixologi. He was a digital product manager for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors who saw an opportunity to build a next-generation ticketing platform for sports and other events, using blockchain as an underlying technology.

On this episode I talk with Jesse Link, Co-Founder of Rella, a digital platform for wedding planning. He talks about his journey from being a Vice President at Goldman Sachs to founding a new startup focused on making wedding planning more efficient, effective, and accessible. 

This is the time of year when all the pundits begin to issue their predictions for the new year, so on this episode I give you mine. Except that mine aren't really predictions for 2023, per se. Instead, I give you ten big trends that I think are worth paying attention to. Some of these will play out in 2023, and some of them play out over the next several years. But all of them are salient vectors that entrepreneurs and innovators should be paying attention to  today. Have a missed some? Send me an email at bret@4thly.com - I'd love to hear from you. 

On this episode, my guest is Diana Gamzina, PhD - she's the Founder & CEO of Elve, a new startup developing the next generation of wireless data. In today’s hyper-connected society, broadband access is no longer a luxury, but, for many, those kinds of speeds are still unavailable. Providing the needed infrastructure in rural and remote areas is often difficult and expensive. Elve’s millimeter-wave amplifiers, manufactured at scale, can remove those barriers and unlock access to fiber-like speeds in a wireless network. Diana talks about her personal journey from being a researcher at Stanford to raising capital and being a startup CEO. 

On this episode we’ll talk with an entrepreneur who is designing and building new, sustainable cities. Alberto Scherb is co-founder and CEO of 100 Thousand Million, a startup focused on building new cities that are human-centered, nature-focused, and sustainable at the core. Alberto spent a decade at Apple, then followed Tony Fadell to Nest, and now is taking on the biggest challenge of all - saving the planet via new, better cities. The fact is that we’re at an inflection point for the planet right now - last week the UN said the world’s population has surpassed 8 billion, and meanwhile we’re worried about how we’re going to deal with climate change as well as feed all these people.

Typically, Venture Capital financings are structured as equity. But recent years have seen the emergence of Venture Debt - sometimes used standalone and sometimes used alongside an equity financing. How does this work? What are the pros and cons? Joining me on this episode are expert attorneys Lisa Conmy and Alidad Vakili from Foley & Lardner, along with Pete Petitt, a managing director with Aon.

On this episode I discuss privacy regulations with two expert attorneys, Stephanie Webb and Steve Millendorf, both of Foley & Lardner. For startups today, there is a labyrinth of privacy regulations to comply with – and the consequences of being out of compliance can be expensive. If your product will be used in the EU, you’ll need to be GDPR-compliant. In California, it’s CCPA. And, if children under 13 might access your product, there are Federal laws to comply with. How do startup founders with limited resources navigate privacy regulations and stay compliant as they thrive and grow?

Many startup founders will want to create a stock option plan in order to recruit and retain top talent. How do you create and manage an effective stock option plan? What are the legal considerations, and how do startups use stock option plans to align the interests of founders, employees, and investors? On this episode I discuss all this with two expert attorneys from Foley & Lardner, Casey Knapp and Andre Thiollier. 

All startup ventures begin with high expectations, but things don’t always go to plan, especially during challenging economic environments. So how do you navigate venture capital term sheets that may contain down-round valuations, pay-to-play, management carveouts, or the dreaded full-ratchet? On this episode I discuss these topics with venture capitalist Danielle D’Agostaro and startup attorney Louis Lehot from Foley & Lardner's Silicon Valley office. 

As a startup founder grows a venture, there are complex employment law issues to comply with. On this episode I discuss this with two expert lawyers from Foley and Lardner - Krista Cabrera and Louis Lehot. Adding employees is a crucial step for startup founders and you want to make sure you do it right. What are the correct employment documents? How do you make sure that confidentiality and IP are protected as you add employees? We discuss all this, and more. 

I've lived in Silicon Valley my entire life. On this episode I discuss how the sleepy valley I grew up in became a global hub of innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship with an economic output larger than most countries in the world - and why it happened. 

My introduction to this podcast. I've been in Silicon Valley my entire life. I’ve been a startup founder several times, I’ve been a tech CEO, an investor, and an academic. Today my main focus is helping other entrepreneurs to thrive and succeed  - I teach entrepreneurship at Stanford University, I coach startup CEO’s at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and I run the 4thly Startup Accelerator. Here's what we'll talk about on this podcast.