Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Every major technology wave looks obvious in hindsight and ridiculous at the start.
Michael Hochberg, Semiconductor Entrepreneur and Caltech-Trained Physicist, spent his undergrad years making fun of friends going into e-commerce. He's been more careful about dismissing new ideas since.
Listen to Michael on the Village Global Podcast.
#tech #AI #venturecapital
Every major technology wave looks obvious in hindsight and ridiculous at the start.
Michael Hochberg, Semiconductor Entrepreneur and Caltech-Trained Physicist, spent his undergrad years making fun of friends going into e-commerce. He's been more careful about dismissing new ideas since.
Listen to Michael on the Village Global Podcast.
#tech #AI #venturecapital







![The Lesson Every Engineer Learns Too Late | Moe Katib (One)
Moe Katib is the founder and CEO of One (withone.ai), an enterprise-level infrastructure platform that gives AI agents authenticated, reliable access to hundreds of software applications and verified actions.
Moe Katib and Village Global GP Anne Dwane go back to the stories that shaped him as a founder and builder. They cover growing up in Damascus in an entrepreneurial family, the chicken factory side business he ran as a kid that taught him his first lesson about finding a problem and solving it, the water pump automation device he built as a teenager that got stolen by a government-connected company, and the moment at a Canadian school where he cut off a colleagues old system entirely and watched her go from screaming at him to taking her first vacation in two years.
[00:00] Growing up in Damascus in an entrepreneurial family
[00:49] The chicken factory job his dad scripted to be as hard as possible
[02:55] Selling pre-cut packaged chicken before it was a thing
[04:16] Building a water pump automation device as a teenager
[06:55] His design gets stolen by a government-connected company
[08:56] Why he left Syria and immigrated to Canada
[09:21] His first software product: building a school management system from scratch
[10:37] The woman who worked 7 days a week and refused to use the new system
[11:41] The day he cut off the old system entirely
[12:20] She came in screaming. Two months later she took her first vacation.
[12:41] The lesson: people dont distrust the system, they distrust an unproven system
This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Moe Katib. Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/WzCh5PxDkEs The Lesson Every Engineer Learns Too Late | Moe Katib (One)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lyA2mA8DHVc/mqdefault.jpg)


![Building the Company Behind 1 Million Therapy Visits a Month | Jake Cooper (Grow Therapy)
JakeCooper is co-founder and CEO of Grow Therapy, a technology platform that helps mental health providers launch and scale independent, insurance-accepted practices. Since starting the company in the middle of COVID, Jake and his co-founders have scaled Grow Therapy to around a million patient visits a month across 26,000 providers, surpassing $1 billion in annual revenue while operating profitably since year two.
Ben Casnocha sits down with Jake to trace Grow Therapys founding story, from the friction he and his co-founders saw across patients, providers, and payers to the systems-level model that let them scale where others couldnt. They get into how Jake and his co-founders have divided responsibilities and built trust as the company has grown past 600 employees, his contrarian read on hiring and what most CEOs get wrong about spotting high-agency talent, and the deeply personal reason the mission matters to him. The conversation turns to AI, including where Grow Therapy is finding real leverage in matching and provider coaching tools, and Jakes frank take on whether human therapists still have a role as more people turn to LLMs for support between sessions. He also opens up about why hes deliberately stayed out of the public eye, and why thats starting to change.
[00:00] Cold open
[00:50] Welcome to the Village Global Podcast
[01:40] The origin story of Grow Therapy
[04:00] The business model insight behind Grow Therapy
[06:10] Grow Therapys scale today: $1B+ revenue, 26,000 providers
[06:40] What a college cleaning business taught Jake about entrepreneurship
[08:30] Why the mission is personal to Jake
[10:10] Dividing responsibilities with his co-founders
[12:20] Building trust with his co-founders
[15:40] What Jake believes about hiring that most CEOs dont
[18:20] Communication and alignment across 600+ employees
[19:50] Manager effectiveness and the cannon vs. cannonball problem
[20:50] How Jake interviews for high-agency talent
[25:40] Where AI is actually helping inside Grow Therapy
[28:10] Will therapists still have jobs in 10 years?
[32:30] AI as a copilot for human therapists
[33:40] Entrepreneurs Jake admires
[36:20] Why Jake doesnt have an executive assistant
[38:00] Why Jake has stayed out of the public eye
[40:40] Audience Q&A: Grow Therapys day-zero go-to-market
[42:10] Audience Q&A: how AI has shaped the mission
[45:50] Closing thoughts Building the Company Behind 1 Million Therapy Visits a Month | Jake Cooper (Grow Therapy)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/n4yQ_f7HJyY/mqdefault.jpg)