Smart Venture Podcast

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09/24/2025

Joanne Chen is a General Partner at Foundation Capital, where she invests in AI-first B2B applications and data platforms that power the automated enterprise. A technologist at heart who built her first webpage business at age nine, she launched her career as an engineer at Cisco before co-founding a mobile gaming company and later advising tech companies on IPOs and M&A at Jefferies, as well as venture firms on fundraising at Probitas Partners. Prior to joining Foundation in 2014, she was an active angel investor with Hyde Park Angels. Joanne has invested in and served on the boards of companies including Jasper.AI, SafelyYou, Tonkean, Tennr, Arcade, CaptivateIQ, and previously TubiTV (acquired by Fox), Mya (acquired by Stepstone), and EraDB (acquired by ServiceNow). A recognized thought leader on the societal and enterprise impact of AI, she has spoken at TED, CES, SXSW, and WebSummit. Joanne earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley and her MBA from Chicago Booth.

Topics:
- Building AI-First B2B Companies: Trends and Challenges
- No-Code Automation for Enterprises:
- Key Lessons from Successful AI Startup Exits

09/23/2025

Wen Sang is the Co-Founder and COO of Genspark.ai, a Palo Alto-based AI company building agents for knowledge workers, which reached 2 million users and $36M in ARR within 45 days of launching in April 2025, securing $160M in funding and partnering with top AI labs to advance agentic work solutions. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of Smarking Inc., a Y Combinator and Khosla Ventures-backed SaaS company for parking analytics, which was acquired by JustPark in 2022. Wen holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and has received industry recognition for both technical innovation and entrepreneurial leadership.

Topics:
- From 0 to $36M ARR in 45 days: Hypergrowth playbook for AI startups
- Second-time founder lessons: From parking analytics acquisition to AI unicorn
- Raising $160M in a tough funding market: What AI investors really want

09/23/2025

Nick Evans is the Co-Founder and CEO of Avocado, a restaurant point-of-sale system integrated with an AI assistant designed to transform restaurant operations. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Tile, a leading consumer technology company specializing in Bluetooth tracking devices, which was successfully acquired by Life360. Nick has deep technical expertise across hardware and software engineering, including embedded systems, real-time operating systems, machine vision, and web development. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and is an alumnus of Y Combinator. Nick is passionate about building impactful products that solve real-world problems and has over a decade of entrepreneurial experience leading hardware-software tech startups.

Topics:
- How AI is revolutionizing restaurant operations beyond just ordering
- The unique challenges of hardware vs. software startup scaling
- Competing with established POS systems as a startup

09/22/2025

Ganesh Bell joined Insight Partners as a Managing Director to invest in and help entrepreneurs build great software & data companies that will define modern enterprise and digital business. He is a profound student of the enterprise software market and industries reimagined by data. Ganesh has over 25+ years of rare experience as a builder and operating executive across startups, high-growth scaleups, global conglomerates, unicorns, successful exits, IPO, and M&A.

Before joining Insight Partners, he ran Uptake, an AI/ML platform & applications company, was Corporate Officer at General Electric, and CEO of its largest IoT & Analytics software business. Previously he held senior leadership roles at market-defining enterprise software companies including SAP, PeopleSoft, and J.D.Edwards. He started as a developer and has led corporate strategy, engineering, product management, marketing, and sales teams over his career. He has keynoted large conferences, been featured in business books, leading media, and recognized for his work, including being named #11 in Fast Company’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business World. Ganesh Bell holds a B.S in Mathematics from the University of Madras, India, and an M.S in Computer Science from North Dakota State University.

Topics:

- Leveraging AI and data to transform traditional industries
- Identifying durable software and data companies
- Scaling enterprise software from startup to IPO

✨ The recap updates are back!Week 83 of Venture with Grace — Recap (earlier this month)We had an incredible lineup of vo...
09/22/2025

✨ The recap updates are back!
Week 83 of Venture with Grace — Recap (earlier this month)
We had an incredible lineup of voices across venture, AI, and product:
💡 Lars Leckie (Aspenwood Ventures) — what defines great early-stage enterprise software founders.�🤖 Umesh Sachdev (CEO, Uniphore) — lessons from scaling enterprise AI into a $2.5B company.�📊 Lauri Moore (Partner, Bessemer) — where AI, data, and dev tools are headed next.�🎯 Jiaona Zhang (CPO, Laurel) — building products customers can trust in the AI era.�📞 Dan O’Connell (CEO, Front) — why AI-powered customer operations are a growth engine.
Reflection: The throughline was clear — AI isn’t just a feature, it’s becoming infrastructure for workflows where trust and ROI decide the winners.
👉 Replays are on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes — just search Venture with Grace.

09/19/2025

Caroline Duffy is a Partner at Cowboy Ventures. She thrives partnering with ambitious builders reimagining existing categories or creating entirely new ones. She focuses on B2B software and AI, with a particular passion for teams modernizing overlooked, unglamorous industries burdened by outdated tech stacks. It’s never too early to reach out - she’s excited to collaborate with founders from idea inception onwards. Before Cowboy, Caroline was at Construct Capital, where she led investments in a range of technologies transforming real-world industries including supply chain and logistics, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure. Prior, she was building and investing in AI companies with AI pioneer Andrew Ng. Before becoming an investor, Caroline was a management consultant and started her career as an AI researcher at Harvard. Caroline holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Dartmouth. She works closely with organizations advancing education opportunities for women and girls in AI and serves on the Board of Access Institute, which increases access to mental health services for under-resourced communities in SF.

Topics:
- Why target the most 'boring' companies everyone else ignores
- Most common mistakes B2B AI startups making when targeting legacy industries
- Fintech, healthcare, logistics: Why these 3 verticals are ripe for AI disruption

09/19/2025

Akankshu Dhawan is Senior Vice President of Product Management and Executive General Manager at Xero, where he leads product strategy and AI-driven innovation for small businesses. He previously held leadership roles at Uber, AppDynamics, and Microsoft, and co-founded ImaZing. With an MBA from Chicago Booth, an MS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from UMass Dartmouth, and a B.Tech. from DAIICT, Akankshu brings deep product and engineering expertise to driving digital transformation.

Topics:
- How AI is transforming small business accounting and finance
- Building product teams that can execute on both innovation and reliability
- The biggest AI opportunities he sees for SMBs vs. enterprise

09/18/2025

Alex Mashrabov is the Founder and CEO of Higgsfield AI, a leading generative video company whose personalized storytelling app quickly reached #1 in graphics on the App Store and debuted a state-of-the-art video world model in 2025. Previously, he served as Director of Generative AI at Snap Inc., leading MyAI chatbot development and GenAI AR effects for hundreds of millions of users, after Snap acquired his startup AI Factory for $166M. Alex holds master’s degrees from MIPT and Innopolis, is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and angel investor in AI startups like Scale AI, Anthropic, and Brex, with a reputation for building world-class teams and innovative consumer products at scale.

Topics:
- Scaling generative video AI startups: challenges and strategies
- AI-powered content creation for media and marketing
- Leadership lessons from building breakthrough AI products at Snap and beyond

09/16/2025

Kate Berardo is the Vice President of Executive Development at Meta, where she leads the company’s most strategic coaching, team, and leadership initiatives. Trusted by senior leaders to navigate their most pressing challenges, she has designed and delivered some of Meta’s most impactful leadership programs and learning products. With a proven track record of building and scaling teams, practice areas, and centers of excellence, Kate is recognized for driving transformative leadership development that enables executives and organizations to perform at their highest level.

Topics:
- Managing executive teams through major strategic shifts
- The biggest leadership gaps in fast-growing startups
- How to identify and develop high-potential leaders before they're ready

09/12/2025

Andrew Chau is the co-founder and CEO of Boba Guys Inc., the revolutionary bubble tea company that has fundamentally changed how people view boba and tea culture in America. Starting from a shared passion for quality milk tea and a mission to elevate the boba experience with fresh, premium ingredients, Andrew and co-founder Bin Chen launched Boba Guys in 2011. What began as a single San Francisco location has grown to 24+ locations, making Boba Guys one of the most recognizable premium bubble tea brands in the United States.

Topics:

- How to build a premium brand in a commoditized market
- Maintaining brand authenticity while scaling
- Technology integration in traditional retail

09/11/2025

James Flynn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital focused on post-Series A investments across the tech landscape. Prior to that he was a growth equity investor at General Atlantic. Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most valuable and enduring businesses. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey. Our expertise comes from 50 years of working with legendary founders like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Adi Tatarko, Brian Chesky, Jensen Huang, Anne Wojcicki, Eric Yuan, Patrick Collison, Julia Hartz, and Sebastian Siemiatkowski. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 25% of NASDAQ's total value. Since our inception, the vast majority of the money we invest has been on behalf of nonprofits and schools like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT, which means most of the returns we generate benefit these great causes.

Topics:
- How Sequoia identifies "outliers" - what specific signals or patterns indicate a company could become truly legendary
- How AI is reshaping investment thesis across different verticals beyond just AI companies
- The evolution of founder needs from Series A to IPO - how support requirements change at each stage

09/11/2025

Vikram Chatterji is the co-founder and CEO of Galileo, an enterprise AI reliability and evaluation company focused on generative AI solutions for developers and enterprises. He has led cross-functional teams and built products used by over 100 million users globally, with notable career achievements at Google, where he helped launch and grow Google Pay in India and led product and AI initiatives for major financial institutions.

Topics:
- Making generative AI reliable for enterprise adoption and trust
- Diagnosing and reducing hallucination in large language models
- Measuring and improving generative model performance at scale

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