Smart Venture Podcast

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01/08/2026

Vignesh Ravikumar is a Partner at Sierra Ventures. Vignesh Ravikumar joined Sierra Ventures in 2013 and focuses on investments in Enterprise SaaS, Vertical SaaS, and Digital Health/Healthcare IT. Vignesh has a background in M&A transactions for enterprise software companies, having worked at AGC Partners, a Boston-based investment bank. Vignesh holds a BS in Management Science (cum laude) and a Minor in Math from UC San Diego.

Topics:
- Underwriting AI-heavy SaaS when infra, pricing, and competition shift
- Pricing and packaging playbooks for AI-native SaaS at seed/Series A
- Vertical SaaS 2.0: deep workflow, compound products, and moats

Week 99 of Venture with Grace — Holiday ScheduleClosing out the year with conversations on AI scale, data, hiring, SaaS,...
12/26/2025

Week 99 of Venture with Grace — Holiday Schedule

Closing out the year with conversations on AI scale, data, hiring, SaaS, and growth equity — thoughtfully spaced across the holidays.

Week 99 lineup:

Or Lenchner, Founder & CEO of Bright Data: Web data, AI scale & the open internet

Ali Ansari, Founder & CEO of micro1: AI hiring, global talent & vetting

Paul Jun, Managing Partner at Depth Ventures: B2B SaaS, finance & AI ops

Lance Matthews, Partner at DTCP: Growth equity & digital infrastructure

Jeremiah Owyang, General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures: AI, scale & network effects

A strong, reflective close to the year — with plenty of momentum heading into what’s next.

See you live

12/25/2025

🚨 Perfect timing. 🚨

Yesterday: Lance Matthews from DTCP on Venture with Grace discussing Groq's AI infrastructure play.

Today: NVIDIA acquires Groq for $20 BILLION (Nvidia's largest deal ever).

This is what happens when you're having the right conversations with the right investors.

Groq was founded by the creators of Google's TPU chip. They raised at a $6.9B valuation in September. Now they're joining Nvidia in what's being framed as a "non-exclusive licensing agreement."

The AI infrastructure wars just changed overnight.

Episode with Lance live now - even more relevant than when we recorded it. Link in bio.

12/23/2025

Lance Matthews is a partner at DTCP and is responsible for sourcing investment opportunities and making investment recommendations in the US. Lance’s DTCP investments include: Arctic wolf networks, Innovid (NYSE: CTV), StreetlightData (acquired by Jacobs), and Cohere. Lance joined from Touchdown Ventures, a SF based Corporate Venture firm, where he worked on company sourcing, investment analysis and diligence, and portfolio management. Prior to that, he spent time at Illuminate Ventures, a seed stage Enterprise SaaS firm and at Twitter (now X) holding a position in the finance department. Lance holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, a master’s degree in History from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from CSU Fresno.

Topics:
- Groq's $750M round boosts AI inference via DTCP Growth.
- Arctic Wolf, Innovid IPO, Cohere AI successes.
- How enterprise AI and security investing is evolving

12/23/2025

Paul serves as the Managing Partner at Depth Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm focused on backing B2B SaaS founders at the intersection of finance and AI operations, leveraging his extensive operator experience as former CFO of AI-powered accounting platform Pilot and VP of Corporate Finance & Strategy at Dropbox to guide teams in building scalable business models and data-driven operating rhythms. Prior to launching Depth Ventures, he was a Partner at Index Ventures, where he led investments in category-defining B2B SaaS and fintech leaders including Datadog, Built, Confluent, and Slack, honing his expertise in high-growth software scaling and market creation. With a track record spanning operational leadership at tech unicorns and venture investing, Paul bridges finance, AI ops, and enterprise software to empower founders navigating complex GTM challenges in today's competitive landscape.

Topics:
- AI Revolutionizing Fintech Operations
- AI-Resilient SaaS Models for Founders
- Operator to VC: Index to Depth Shift

12/22/2025

Ali Ansari is the Founder and CEO of micro1, an AI-powered recruitment platform he launched in 2022 to help companies vet and hire top global engineering and domain talent using advanced screening models. A Bay Area-based entrepreneur, he previously built a successful software development agency and other ventures, experiences that directly informed micro1’s focus on scalable, AI-led talent assessment. Ali studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in three years to concentrate on growing micro1, and now also conducts AI research at Stanford on the efficacy and bias of AI-assisted recruitment systems, positioning him at the intersection of cutting-edge research and practical company-building in the future of work.

Topics:

- AI Hiring Revolution: micro1's Global Talent Edge
- Fixing Tech Recruiting with AI Screening Magic
- Future of Hiring: AI Agents Take Over in 2030

12/22/2025

Or Lenchner is the CEO of Bright Data, a market-leading web data collection platform he has led since 2018, where he has driven the company’s expansion and innovation to well over $300 million in annual revenue while serving thousands of customers, including Fortune 500 enterprises, leading businesses, universities, and public sector organizations. A former founder and operator of several web-based businesses, he first joined Bright Data on the product side before rising to CEO, a trajectory that reflects his deep focus on building transparent, compliance-driven data infrastructure. Recognized as a thought leader on AI, data ethics, and public web data, Lenchner is an advocate for keeping public web data open and accessible, viewing it as a core driver of innovation and better decision-making across society.

Topics:

- Scaling a data infrastructure company to $300M in annual revenue
- The future of public web data in the age of AI and regulation
- Turning compliance, transparency, and trust into a durable competitive moat

12/19/2025

Omar Haroun is the founder and CEO of Eudia, a next‑generation augmented intelligence platform for legal teams that has rapidly scaled into a nine‑figure venture‑backed business, attracting over $100M in capital from top‑tier investors on the back of triple‑digit annual growth and adoption across dozens of Fortune 500 legal departments. A second‑time legal‑AI founder, he previously co‑founded Text IQ, whose AI for e‑discovery and privacy was used by Global 2000 enterprises and ultimately acquired by Relativity, cementing his track record for building category‑defining platforms in conservative, high‑stakes markets. With a background spanning law, ethics, and AI from institutions such as UC Berkeley and Oxford, Haroun positions Eudia as the “AI‑augmented law firm” that helps GCs reclaim thousands of hours of high‑value legal work, compress outside counsel spend, and turn legal from cost center to measurable strategic advantage.

Topics:
- How Eudia is killing the billable hour: what an “AI‑augmented law firm” actually looks like inside a Fortune 500 legal team.
- Playbook for selling deep tech into conservative, high‑stakes buyers (GCs, CCOs, regulators) and why legal is the hardest but best AI beachhead.
- Turning legal from cost center to KPI‑driven strategic function: measuring hours reclaimed, outside counsel savings, and risk avoided with AI.

12/17/2025

Bob Rosin is the Managing Partner at Antler US, a global early-stage venture capital firm with over $1B in assets under management and investments in more than 1,500 companies. A three-time startup founder who raised over $130M from top investors like Sequoia and Marc Andreessen, he led his third venture, Qik, to a $150M acquisition by Skype, followed by roles as VP of Business Development at Skype and VP & GM at Microsoft after its $8.5B sale. Rosin later drove partnerships at LinkedIn for 4.5 years as part of the product leadership team, headed partnerships at Stripe, served as Partner at Defy.vc from 2020-2025, and joined Antler in 2025 to focus on pre-seed investments, co-founder matching, and scaling ideation-stage startups. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Cornell University.

Topics:
- From repeat founder to investor: lessons from building and exiting multiple startups
- How Antler finds, matches, and backs founders at the idea stage
- What pre-seed investors actually look for before there’s a product or traction

12/17/2025

Hemal Shah is a seasoned product leader currently serving as Product lead at OpenAI, where he focuses on integrating ChatGPT into workplace tools like Slack and developing features such as company knowledge powered by GPT-5. Previously, he was VP of Product, Head of Growth, Monetization & Expansion at Atlassian, Chief Product Officer at Root Inc. (NASDAQ: ROOT), and held product roles at Instagram (co-creator of Threads and DMs), Meta (consumer wallet & identity), and Twitter (Developer Tools like Crashlytics).

- From consumer social products to enterprise AI: lessons building at Instagram, Atlassian, and OpenAI
- How ChatGPT is becoming a core workplace tool—and what “AI-native productivity” really means
- Product leadership at scale: monetization, growth, and decision-making inside category-defining companies

12/16/2025

Jim Tananbaum is the founder and CEO of Foresite Capital, a U.S.-focused healthcare investment firm he launched in 2011 that manages approximately $3.5 billion in assets. With a career spanning three decades, Jim has partnered with some of the fastest-growing and most influential healthcare companies of their generation, including 10x Genomics, Amerigroup, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. A lifelong student of both data science and medicine, his vision for Foresite Capital is to sit at the intersection of biology, technology, and data to support entrepreneurs building transformative healthcare solutions. Earlier in his career, he co-founded GelTex Pharmaceuticals and Theravance, companies that together delivered blockbuster drugs and multibillion-dollar market capitalizations. Jim holds a BS and BSEE from Yale, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was also part of the Harvard/MIT HST Program.

Topics:
- Recent $900M fundraise and bets on Alumis, Latigo Biotherapeutics, Xaira Therapeutics
- 50+ IPOs, 47 public listings, 58 FDA approvals across portfolio
- Foresite Labs incubating ML-powered healthcare startups

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