Ventured

Start-up fundraising is hard, unpredictable, and often very difficult to navigate. To shed some light on best practices for successful startup fundraising, Aviv Gilboa sat down with his partners Eric Feng and Randy Komisar to ask and answer the most frequently asked questions entrepreneurs have about fundraising today.

Over the last decade, the early-stage funding environment has dramatically changed. There are now myriad financing options that founders can consider as they look to build their companies. Nearly 70,000 companies received funding through angel networks and 3,000 through venture capital firms annually, according to CB Insights. On the most recent episode of Ventured, we spoke with Qasar Younis, Chief Operating Officer of Y Combinator (YC), about the early-stage funding landscape and how...

The 2016 Design In Tech Report revealed that all of the top ten U.S. business schools have design clubs led by students. The trend was remarkable, so we set out to interview student leaders at three business school clubs: Yale School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Respectively, those schools are represented by Wilma Lam, Anita Wu, and Jeremy Fish in this episode of Ventured.

This week on the Ventured podcast, Randy Komisar sat down with Tony Fadell, father of the iPod and co-founder of Nest. Tony recently announced he was leaving Nest and Alphabet to pursue other opportunities. Before letting Tony off the hook to focus on the future, Randy wanted him to sit down and share the insights he gained from his work at General Magic, Apple, Nest, and Alphabet. He didn’t disappoint.

As part of our Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) engineering meet-up series, Eric Feng had the opportunity to host a panel of leaders of various functions at top tech companies to discuss best practices in cross group teamwork and collaboration -- Jessica Verrili, director of corporate development at Twitter; Eugene Wei, head of video at Oculus and previously head of product at Flipboard and Hulu; and Wendy Owen, product design lead for the Facebook ads platform.

As part of our Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) Leadership Salon series, we hosted a panel of cybersecurity entrepreneurs who have spent years working for the government before starting their own companies. They all have a perspective on these trends affecting both the private sector and the public sector. The panelists included Oren Falkowitz, CEO and founder of Area 1 Security; Nathaniel Fick, CEO and founder of Endgame; Jay Kaplan, CEO and founder of Synack. They offered their...

How can we collectively work to improve women’s participation in the tech industry at each key stage of their careers? In this episode of Ventured, KPCB Partner Swati MylavarapuI spoke to two leaders on this topic -- Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, and Merline Santil, who heads operations in the CTO’s office at Intuit.

Three powerful trends – electrification, sharing and autonomous drive – are reshaping the future of transportation, with huge implications for the ecosystem. In just the past few weeks, there have been significant developments on all three fronts: the success of Tesla’s Model 3 pre-sales, GM’s $500M investment in Lyft, and more recently, GM’s acquisition of Cruise, a billion dollar exit that could be transportation’s Instagram moment.

When people think about company building, they often think about high-performing management teams and hard-charging founder-CEOs who are assembling the business brick by brick. But when disaster hits or scandal strikes and organizational challenges come to light, it’s the board of directors which ultimately come under fire. In the world of venture capital, there is nothing more fundamentally important for an entrepreneur than building a strong board of directors.

For years now, wearable devices have promised to help us lead healthier lives, experience life in new ways, and become less dependent on our smartphones. 2015 was a very important year for wearables as the market took several important steps towards delivering on these promises. This podcast conversation covers the challenges and opportunities facing the future of wearable technology.

More than 100 million Americans have a criminal history, according to a Department of Justice survey. In this episode of Ventured, Randy Komisar interviewed Catherine Hoke about how former inmates turn their experience running illegitimate business operations into the startup American dream. They deviate from the traditional view of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur by shining a light on the efforts of these former inmates.

KPCB partner Brook Byers interviews General Keith Alexander about cybersecurity, terrorism, and corporate security. In the discussion, we learn that Alexander founded IronNet to fight cyber threats through technology as well as hear stories about his time during the Edward Snowden and 9/11 eras.

KPCB partner Swati Mylavarapu spoke to Matt Rogers, founder and VP of Engineering at Nest Labs, about how he helped scale the company from a garage startup to a significantly larger organization today. Reflecting back on the founding story of Nest, Matt shares some lessons about leadership and how early product decisions shaped the company’s long-term success.

In this episode of ventured, KPCB partners Swati Mylavarapu and Mike Abbott had a discussion with KPCB Entrepreneur in Residence Ryan Panchadsaram about the intersection of government and technology. They discuss how Healthcare.gov was fixed, how to uncover opportunities for startups to work with government, and how government can adopt the latest technological advances.

In this episode of Ventured, Aviv Gilboa deconstructs venture capital for entrepreneurs raising a round of financing. Aviv spoke with KPCB partners Randy Komisar and Eric Feng about how they evaluate startup pitches and entrepreneurs who walk through the door. Throughout the discussion, they discussed the number of factors, both quantitative and qualitative, that go into each funding decision such as: what to include in the slide deck, why business models might not matter, and how venture...

In this episode of Ventured, KPCB partner Randy Komisar talks to his longtime friend and colleague Bill Campbell about coaching tech CEOs in Silicon Valley. Having been a mentor to Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, Campbell draws on decades of experience and openly shares his (usually behind closed doors) coaching methodology with Komisar. Campbell describes his personal journey from football coach to tech executive to coach to CEOs. In hearing the details of his coaching...

In this episode of Ventured, KPCB partner Beth Seidenberg, MD speaks to Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room, and Angie Chang, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Hackbright Academy and co-founder of Women 2.0. By discussing the challenges facing women in STEM (and revealing their own personal experience), they highlight the practical ways to make education and the workforce more inclusive for women. Tactics such as changing course names can attract more women to study...

KPCB Partner John Doerr hosts a behind the scenes conversation with Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google, on Work Rules!, which Doerr calls “the Best Business Book of the Year.” They cover topics ranging from the secret to Google's success, to why you should take power away from your managers and pay less, and how work really can “suck less” for everyone.

In this episode of ventured, KPCB design partner John Maeda and partner Lynne Chou discuss with designers and healthcare entrepreneurs the product decisions that led to the rise acquisition of Misfit, how designing good constraints can improve design decisions in fitness products, and how consumer healthcare apps are "ethically" gamified to make chronic illnesses more manageable.

In this episode of Ventured, KPCB partner Randy Komisar speaks with Jerry Kaplan, author of Humans Need Not Apply, and John Markoff, author of Machines of Loving Grace. They discussed the impact of artificial intelligence and its effect on society, job security, and the future of the human race. How do we welcome the growing field of artificial intelligence as it makes its way into our lives through advancements in self-driving cars, companions to the elderly, automated machines used to kill...