He Built the Software That Runs 1 in 6 Laundromats in America — Alex Jekowsky | Recall Sessions Village Global 2026-09-25 | He Built the Software That Runs 1 in 6 Laundromats in America — Alex Jekowsky | Recall Sessions
Builder, Inventor, or Operator? The 0-1-2 Framework for Evaluating Founders| Andre Charoo (Maple VC) Village Global 2026-09-24 | Andre Charoo is Founding Partner of Maple VC, a first-check venture firm, and an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. Before venture, he was employee number 25 at Uber and an early employee at Hired.com, and built or joined four seed-stage startups between 2009 and 2016.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Andre to unpack the framework he's developed for evaluating founders: builders, inventors, and operators, and how he uses it to make sense of teams when there's little else to underwrite at the earliest stages. Andre traces the framework back to studying Uber's early team and the founders of Clay, walking through how he identifies which archetype he's actually talking to, why the most enduring companies almost always attract all three types eventually, and why founders with illegible, non-obvious backgrounds are often the ones VCs miss. He shares his personal test for conviction, deliberately seeking out smart people who disagree with a founder's vision, and breaks down real examples from his portfolio, including Clay, Stadium Live, and Inference.ai. The conversation closes with Andre's reflections on bringing new partners Jane Lee and John Edgar into Maple, the firm's newly codified investment philosophy, and the personal and professional moments where he felt truly seen at a time he least expected it.Timestamps:[00:00] Cold open[00:52] Welcome to the Village Global Podcast[02:09] Andre's journey from Canada to Silicon Valley[03:18] Landing in San Francisco in 2007, and the day Lehman collapsed[06:01] Joining early-stage startups, including Uber and Hired.com[08:31] The builders, inventors, and operators framework[13:11] Can a founder be more than one archetype?[16:06] Meeting Clay's founders 10 years ago[19:29] Why builders are illegible to early-stage capital[30:53] Assessing a founder's "right to win"[36:07] The difference between a vision and a dream[40:26] Why Andre knew he was a "builder" for Maple[43:29] Fund 4: expanding beyond backing Canadian founders[45:00] Breakout wins: Stadium Live and Inference.ai[49:39] Why Andre seeks out investors who disagree with him[55:04] The "hybrid" founders that break the framework[56:41] Bringing on partners Jane Lee and John Edgar[1:05:31] How the three partners communicate and work together[1:08:42] Mapping Jane and John onto the builder/inventor/operator framework[1:10:54] Advice for founders on when to bring in an operator[1:19:07] The moments Andre felt most seen, personally and professionally[1:26:17] Closing thoughts
Mark Pincus on Why Confidence Without Product-Market Fit Is a Red Flag Village Global 2026-09-22 | Mark Pincus says the doctors who were most confident in their diagnosis were consistently the ones who were wrong. He applies the same filter to founders who are certain they have product-market fit before they can prove it.#markpincus #founders #startups
What Eric Schmidt Wishes He Had Access to in His 20s Village Global 2026-09-21 | Eric Schmidt grew up with a handful of TV channels and no internet. He says anyone starting out today with access to AI has a knowledge advantage his generation simply didn't have.#ericschmidt #AI #founders
Why Eric Schmidt Says Establishing Values Early Is Non-Negotiable Village Global 2026-09-20 | Eric Schmidt says one of the most important things a founding team can do is to build rules before you need them. Companies that wait until something goes wrong to define what's acceptable are already too late.#ericschmidt #founders #leadership
The Reason AI Cracked Code Before It Cracked Everything Else Village Global 2026-09-19 | Eric Schmidt says AI cracking code first wasn't a surprise. Programming is scale-free, has a limited language set, and a clear objective function. The conditions were perfect before anyone started building.#ericschmidt #AI #tech
Reid Hoffmans Simple Ritual for Getting Your Team to Actually Learn AI Village Global 2026-09-18 | Reid Hoffman says the worst AI you'll ever use is the one you're using today. What seems useless now might not be in six months, which is why the teams that keep experimenting and tracking results will be ahead of the ones that stopped too soon.#reidhoffman #AI #leadership
The Phrase Silicon Valley Uses That Reid Hoffman Actually Believes In Village Global 2026-09-17 | The world needs more people who think too big.Village Global Chairman Reid Hoffman has spent his career betting on exactly those people.#reidhoffman #founders #startups
Mark Zuckerberg on the AI That Will See and Hear Everything You Do Village Global 2026-09-16 | What does the future look like when a computer has full context on your entire day?Mark Zuckerberg thinks we're close to answering that question.#markzuckerberg #AI #tech
Doubling Your Team Doesnt Double Your Output. Heres Why | Tanay Kothari (Wispr Flow) Village Global 2026-09-16 | Tanay Kothari is co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice AI company that's chosen to run everything in the cloud instead of on small edge models, a bet aimed at making the product work on decades-old hardware, not just the latest devices. He breaks down how Wispr balances privacy with model improvement, why only a small fraction of users opt in to sharing data, and how the company builds personalization without needing a custom model for every individual.Anne Dwane sits down with Tanay to unpack why he thinks edge models fail most users, using his own uncle's GPU-less Dell laptop and his grandfather's aging Samsung phone as the test case for what "built for everybody" actually means. Tanay also gets into a pet peeve of his: why doubling a team's size rarely doubles its output, the specific organizational fixes Wispr has built to fight communication overhead as the company scales 7x, and his predictions for a future where people run multiple specialized AI agents the same way they compartmentalize their notes and apps today.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Tanay Kothari. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/vXi4EdrFj9sTimestamps:[00:00] Why he's against small edge models[00:58] Making the product work on his uncle's decade-old laptop[01:41] How Wispr balances privacy with training data[03:09] Why bigger teams don't produce proportionally more output[04:28] The organizational fixes that keep Wispr's Slack channels small[06:50] Predictions: multiple AI agents and personal compartmentalization[08:32] Closing thoughts
The Startup Metric Tanay Kothari Created That Scientific Benchmarks Miss Village Global 2026-09-15 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, invented his own metric because standard benchmarks didn't capture what actually made users stay. Listen to Tanay's framework for finding the right startup metrics on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #productmanagement
The Startup Marketing Stunt That Used a Porsche Nobody Could Actually Win Village Global 2026-09-14 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, launched on Android with a video where five contestants tried to break the product to win a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Tanay had confidence that the product was so good, nobody was going to win.Listen to Tanay's startup marketing story on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #marketing
The Marketing Stunt That Pulled in 100 Million Views | Tanay Kothari (Wispr Flow) Village Global 2026-09-14 | Tanay Kothari is co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice AI company built around a simple long-term bet: technology should fade into the background so people can be more present, not more glued to their screens. He introduces "zero edit rate," a stricter and more user-centered way to measure voice accuracy than the industry-standard word error rate, and explains why he'd rather stack multiple thin moats than rely on a single technical edge that competitors could close in months.Anne Dwane sits down with Tanay to unpack what it actually takes to build toward a Jarvis-like assistant one step at a time, starting with reliable voice input before tackling actions, proactive assistance, and the trust problems that sank products like Clippy and Siri. Tanay also walks through the viral, MrBeast-style Porsche giveaway stunt that pulled in tens of millions of views, why he personally sat in on the company's first 500 onboarding calls and still hasn't stopped, and how Wispr thinks about competing with frontier labs entering voice AI after raising a quarter-billion-dollar round.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Tanay Kothari. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/vXi4EdrFj9sTimestamps:[00:00] The vision: technology that fades into the background[01:26] Why agentic AI assistants still don't work[02:49] The "zero edit rate" metric and why it beats word error rate[04:22] The viral Porsche giveaway marketing stunt[06:16] Personally running the first 500 onboarding calls[08:18] Competing with OpenAI and other frontier labs on voice[09:52] Why moats need to stack, not stand alone
Tanay Kothari on Why Edge AI Models Are the Wrong Bet for Most Startups Village Global 2026-09-13 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, says building for edge AI models means cutting out everyone without the newest hardware. His uncle uses the product on an old Dell with no GPU. His grandfather on an old Samsung.Listen to Tanay's views on building AI for everyone on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #founders #startups
The AI Tool Michael Dell Says Has Genius-Level Knowledge No Single Human Can Match Village Global 2026-09-12 | The best use of AI at work isn't replacing people. It's giving everyone on your team access to the best answer.Village Global Luminary LP Michael Dell is already seeing this at scale. The knowledge that used to live in one expert's head is now available to everyone on the team, every time.#michaeldell #AI #enterprise
The Scaling Problem Every Founder Hits and Almost Nobody Talks About Honestly Village Global 2026-09-12 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, says doubling your team doesn't double your output. A 1,000-person company rarely produces anywhere close to 100 times the work of a 10-person one.Listen to Tanay's take on scaling a startup on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #leadership
How Wispr Flow Discovered Its Real Product by Accident Village Global 2026-09-11 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, built a team of 40 PhDs to create the world's first silent speech device. The product users fell in love with was built by one intern hacking software together on the side.Listen to Tanay's founding story on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #AI
She Built a Spreadsheet to Choose a Life Partner | Jade Q. Wang, Artist & Investor Village Global 2026-09-11 | Jade Q. Wang is an artist, investor, scientist, and founder with a PhD in neuroscience. In this excerpt, she talks about what "founder mode" feels like when applied to art, currently still in the exploratory phase of her work, and shares her longer-term goal: not just finishing her own art projects, but starting an entire artistic movement, the way Impressionism became a movement rather than staying the work of one painter.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Jade to unpack a guest lecture she's planning at UT Austin, where she's noticed the same pattern show up again and again: a class of 100 students ends up building 40 dating apps and 40 planning apps because they're copying what already seems to work, the same inefficient clustering she sees across the startup ecosystem and the way VCs tend to invest. Jade also opens up about the spreadsheet she built to choose a life partner, a 12-parameter model she originally created to compensate for difficulty accessing her own intuition, and reveals what she actually looks for when evaluating founders as an angel investor, and why it has almost nothing to do with a checklist.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Jade Q. Wang. Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=EhrH-4TPlfQ[00:00] Is this "founder mode" for her art?[00:27] The exploratory phase of a three-part art project[01:36] Her real goal: starting an artistic movement[02:16] The UT Austin guest lecture on avoiding duplicate startup ideas[04:29] Teaching students the "pain point conversation" script[06:09] What she looks for as an angel investor[07:38] The spreadsheet she built to choose a life partner[10:37] Why a childhood spent hiding from immigration police shaped her intuition[11:52] What she actually looks for in founders[13:53] Introducing the strangest industry newsletter she's ever received
Why the Conviction That Makes Founders Great Can Also Make Them Wrong Village Global 2026-09-10 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, cut hardware from his product roadmap after years of building toward it. The vision stayed the same. What changed was his willingness to act on what users were actually telling him.Most founders treat conviction and truth-seeking as opposites. He thinks you need both at the same time. Listen to Tanay Kothari on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #productmanagement
The Human Behavior Pattern That Shapes How AI Agents Will Actually Be Used Village Global 2026-09-09 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, thinks the assumption that one AI agent will handle everything underestimates how humans actually organize their lives.Listen to Tanay's take on the future of AI agents on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #founders #startups
She Writes Poetry Structured Like a Codebase | Jade Q. Wang, Artist & Investor Village Global 2026-09-09 | Jade Q. Wang is an artist, investor, scientist, and founder with a PhD in neuroscience. In this excerpt, she walks through the first phase of her three-part art project, an interactive poetry collection structured like a codebase, meant to be uploaded to Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and experienced differently depending on the model.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Jade to unpack her theory that a poem only truly exists once a mind, human or machine, connects its pieces together, and why she believes different AI models have developed genuinely distinct taste in poetry. She shares how Gemini and Claude gravitated toward completely different favorite poems in her collection for reasons rooted in how each model processes structure and meaning, and previews the second phase of her project: a collaborative puzzle-solving experience built for a human and an AI to work through together.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Jade Q. Wang. Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=EhrH-4TPlfQ[00:00] Introducing the three-part art experiment[00:19] Phase 1: "Spaces Left Blank," a poetry collection built for AI[01:52] Why Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini have different taste in poetry[03:44] Her general theory of poetry: where a poem actually "lives"[05:32] Making poetry meant to be appreciated by machines[05:45] Why Gemini and Claude picked completely different favorite poems[07:39] The trilogy as a collaborative human-AI experience[08:44] Phase 2: a puzzle game built for a human and AI to solve together[10:03] Phase 2: capturing autism and the gaps in AI's training data
The Mirror That Roasts You and the One That Compliments You Are Now a Real Product Village Global 2026-09-08 | What happens when the art talks back?Jade Q. Wang is building a museum installation where mirrors argue with each other, objects talk back, and every visitor gets a different reaction depending on how the room reads them.Listen to Jade Q. Wang's vision for AI and art on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI
Jade Q. Wang on Which Poem Gemini Loved and Which One Claude Chose Village Global 2026-09-07 | Jade Q. Wang asked Gemini and Claude to pick their favorite poem from her collection. They disagreed completely.Listen to Jade Q. Wang's experiment in AI taste on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI #founders
She Left a Tech Career to Find Out If AI Can Make Art | Jade Q. Wang, Artist & Investor Village Global 2026-09-07 | Jade Q. Wang is an artist, investor, scientist, and founder with a PhD in neuroscience. In this excerpt, she traces her path from a childhood spent training to become a concert pianist in Shanghai, through a hard pivot into computer science and neuroscience, to eventually retiring from a career in tech about a year ago to pursue art full time.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Jade to unpack how a poetry collection she originally intended as a paper book evolved into an interactive AI experience, and why she draws a direct parallel between the invention of photography and the current moment in AI. Jade argues that just as photography didn't destroy art but instead unlocked entirely new movements like Impressionism, Surrealism, and Cubism, the same kind of transformation, not destruction, may be coming for literature and poetry in the age of AI.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Jade Q. Wang. Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=EhrH-4TPlfQ[00:00] Origin story: from concert pianist to neuroscience PhD[02:00] How she became an artist[03:06] From writing poems to building an interactive AI experience[04:07] What photography's invention can teach us about AI and art[06:20] "It commodified realism, but not all of art"[07:02] Photography and filmmaking unlocked as new art forms
Tanay Kothari on Why the First 500 Wispr Flow Users Were Onboarded Personally Village Global 2026-09-06 | Product analytics allow you to track what users do during onboarding. Tanay Kothari, founder of Wispr Flow, tracked how they emote.Tanay shares more product insights on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #productmanagement
Jade Q. Wang on Applying Startup Thinking to Finding a Life Partner Village Global 2026-09-06 | Most people approach major life decisions with intuition and hope for the best. Jade Q. Wang applies the same frameworks she uses as a founder and investor to one of the most personal decisions a person can make: finding a life partner.Listen to Jade Q. Wang's dating methodologies on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #science #art
The Moat Strategy That Actually Works in the AI Era Village Global 2026-09-05 | Tanay Kothari, Co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, says a single AI advantage used to be worth years of runway. Now it might last three months.Listen to Tanay's insights on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #founders #startups
The Circuit Diagram Theory of Art That Jade Q. Wang Applies to AI Village Global 2026-09-05 | Does art exist if a mind isn't around to process it?Listen to Jade Q. Wang on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI #founders
Do VCs incentivize bad ideas? Village Global 2026-09-04 | Jade Q. Wang says the way founders pick ideas and the way VCs fund them tend to reinforce the same blind spots.Listen to Jade's views on building new companies on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #venturecapital #founders
Inside the Math That Decides Which VCs Write Billion-Dollar Checks | Michael Hochberg (Periplous) Village Global 2026-09-04 | Michael Hochberg is a semiconductor entrepreneur, Caltech-trained physicist, and network investor with Village Global. He's founder and president of Periplous LLC, and has built and scaled hardware and deep tech companies through multiple market cycles. Max Kilberg is an Investment Partner at Village Global.In this excerpt, Michael breaks down the bifurcation happening in venture right now, mega funds like Thrive, Andreessen, and Sequoia raising massive quantums of capital to chase billion-dollar checks, while early-stage investing stays as artisanal and relationship-driven as ever. He and Max dig into why every stage of investing has effectively compressed into seed-style decision-making, how mega funds justify writing both billion-dollar and hundred-million-dollar checks inside the same firm, and why the exit math VCs are chasing has shifted from a few-hundred-X outcome to hunting for hundred-billion-dollar companies. The conversation closes on Michael's contrarian belief that most traditional startup moats, like customer lock-in and data flywheels, are eroding fast, and that speed and talent are becoming the only defensibility that still holds up.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Max Kilberg and Michael Hochberg. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/LTfrV4tEdms[00:00] What's happening in venture that isn't obvious from outside[01:22] The compression of every stage into seed investing[02:13] How mega funds bridge billion-dollar and early-stage deals[03:19] The exodus of young investors into operating roles[04:29] Why founders used to avoid capital-intensive ideas[05:21] Why capital intensity has become the dominant narrative[06:57] From hundred-X outcomes to hundred-billion-dollar hunting[08:17] Why bigger funds need bigger outcomes[09:59] "I'm a no-moats-exist believer"[10:41] Do brand, scale, and network-effect moats still exist?[11:54] Closing thoughts
Jade Q. Wang on the Day She Found Her Own Fan Fiction With 100 Million Views Village Global 2026-09-03 | Being an angel investor gives you an earl look at new trends. Jade Q. Wang opened an investor newsletter to learn about AI-generated microdramas, only to find out one had been made about her.Listen to Jade Q. Wang's surreal stories on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI #founders
Building Jarvis: A Voice AI Startup Making Computer Interaction Invisible |Tanay Kothari (WisprFlow) Village Global 2026-09-03 | Tanay Kothari is co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice AI company he started with co-founder Sahaj Garg in 2021, building toward a Jarvis-like assistant that lets people interact with computers through natural speech instead of keyboards and screens. His younger brother, Jaisal Kothari, is co-founder and CEO of Gallium and was Wispr's first software engineer, joining as a Stanford freshman to help build the company's earliest voice dictation technology.Anne Dwane sits down with Tanay and Jaisal at a Village Global event to trace Tanay's path from building and shipping nearly 50 apps in secret as a teenager, including one that hit 2.5 million users before Google sent him a cease and desist, to founding Wispr as a hardware company and pivoting entirely to software after watching users ignore the physical device in favor of the app alone. Tanay breaks down Wispr's "zero edit rate" metric, a stricter and more user-centered standard than the industry's typical word error rate, walks through the viral Porsche-giveaway marketing stunt that pulled in tens of millions of views, and explains why he personally sat in on the company's first 500 onboarding calls. The conversation also covers how Wispr thinks about competing with frontier AI labs entering voice, why the company stacks multiple layers of defensibility instead of relying on one moat, and Tanay's approach to keeping teams small and communication overhead low as the company scales. Jaisal opens the conversation with the story of growing up alongside Tanay's secretive late-night coding sessions and how that early exposure shaped his own path into tech.[00:00] Cold open[00:29] Welcome to the event; introducing Jaisal[00:53] Growing up with a 7-year age gap[01:42] The app that hit 2.5 million users and got a cease and desist from Google[02:12] What their parents thought about the secrecy[03:00] The movie that inspired Tanay: Iron Man and the dream of building Jarvis[03:47] Jaisal's own path into tech[04:59] Joining Wispr as its first software engineer[06:15] Tanay arrives; the origin story of Wispr[06:39] Starting the company with co-founder Sahaj Garg in 2021[07:59] Building a wearable hardware device for silent speech[08:54] The pivot: realizing users only wanted the software[09:06] "Sometimes the best product decisions come from humility, not conviction"[10:20] The long-term vision: technology that fades into the background[11:41] Why agentic AI assistants still don't work yet[13:03] Building toward Jarvis, one step at a time[13:08] The "zero edit rate" metric and why it beats word error rate[14:27] The viral Porsche giveaway marketing stunt[16:32] Personally running the first 500 onboarding calls[18:33] Competing with OpenAI and other frontier labs on voice[20:07] Why moats need to stack, not stand alone[21:21] Growing the ML team and hiring Amazon and Meta's former voice AI leads[21:22] Why Wispr avoids small edge models[22:35] How Wispr trains on individual user data and privacy tradeoffs[24:25] Scaling the team without losing efficiency[25:56] Why bigger teams don't mean proportionally more output[28:22] Predictions: multiple AI agents, personal compartmentalization, and the future of Apple's role
The Historical Pattern That Changes How You Should Think About AI and Art Village Global 2026-09-02 | Most major technology shifts tend to arrive with the same three predictions: it will destroy the craft, it will put everyone out of work, and it will never match what humans can do.Jade Q. Wang has studied what actually happened the last time those predictions were made about art.Listen to Jade Q. Wang on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI #founders
Will AI Make Commercial Software Obsolete? | Michael Hochberg (Periplous) Village Global 2026-09-02 | Michael Hochberg is a semiconductor entrepreneur, Caltech-trained physicist, and network investor with Village Global. He's founder and president of Periplous LLC, and has built and scaled hardware and deep tech companies through multiple market cycles. Max Kilberg is an Investment Partner at Village Global.In this excerpt, Max and Michael dig into the state of venture and AI right now, starting with why Michael calls Series A the "bloodbath" of the current ecosystem and how infrastructure companies are pulling in outsized capital while everyone else struggles. Max lays out his contrarian take that building software in-house has always been technically possible but rarely gets chosen, and debates with Michael whether foundation models eventually make commercial SaaS obsolete or whether branding and accountability keep it alive. They close on the CapEx buildout already locked in for AI infrastructure, why white-collar expertise is harder to extract than a codebase, and Michael's comparison of the current AI moment to alchemy before the periodic table, empirical, chaotic, and still producing massive results despite no unifying theory.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Max Kilberg and Michael Hochberg. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/LTfrV4tEdms[00:00] Series A as the "bloodbath" of venture right now[00:36] What counts as "infrastructure" in today's VC land[01:14] Why building software yourself isn't always the smart move[03:32] A future where AI replaces the dashboard entirely[05:14] Why specifying what you want will remain the hard part[05:58] Will foundation models make commercial SaaS obsolete?[07:03] Two different kinds of AI competition: "good enough" vs. quality races[09:14] Why AI infrastructure is so hot among VCs right now[09:36] Is hypergrowth in token demand sustainable?[10:32] Scaling laws, the harness, and the limits of LLMs[12:37] Comparing this AI moment to alchemy before chemistry[13:59] Why the "last mile" is where the real value is[14:42] What chemistry's history says about empirical progress[15:18] Closing thoughts
The Artistic Process Jade Q. Wang Says Looks a Lot Like Finding a Startup Idea Village Global 2026-09-01 | Jade Q. Wang's creative process starts with asking AI to say something that stings.She says finding a startup idea works the same way: the discomfort points you toward where to dig. Listen to Jade Q. Wang on the Village Global Podcast.#art #AI #founders
What a Childhood Poem Taught Jade Q. Wang About How AI Actually Works Village Global 2026-08-31 | Jade Q. Wang wrote the same poem twice, decades apart, with no memory of the first time.The question she couldn't shake: did she arrive there through the same underlying memory? Listen to Jade Q. Wang on the Village Global Podcast.#art #founders #creativity
Why Patents Rarely Matter for Early-Stage Founders | Michael Hochberg (Periplous) Village Global 2026-08-31 | Michael Hochberg is a semiconductor entrepreneur, Caltech-trained physicist, and network investor with Village Global. He's founder and president of Periplous LLC, and has built and scaled hardware and deep tech companies through multiple market cycles. Max Kilberg is an Investment Partner at Village Global.In this excerpt, Max and Michael dig into two very different sides of building a company: what actually protects a business (and what doesn't). Michael breaks down why he thinks patents rarely matter for early-stage founders, when a data flywheel is a real moat versus a fragile one, and why "moving fast" beats almost every other form of defensibility. Max then shifts into blunt, practical advice on fundraising, walking through his rule that founders are really pitching an individual person with only a handful of bets to make each year, and the three-part framework he coaches founders on, that VCs are stupid, scared, and reductive, and why understanding that changes how you should pitch.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Max Kilberg and Michael Hochberg. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/LTfrV4tEdms[00:00] Do training-data flywheels still count as moats?[00:38] Why moats become domain-dependent[01:16] Why patents rarely matter for early-stage founders[01:55] What makes a patent actually enforceable[03:28] The most valuable advice for early founders[03:42] "We can do anything, but we can't do everything"[04:03] Playing games you actually have a right to win[04:46] What founders really mean by "determinism" in fundraising[05:50] "VCs are stupid, VCs are scared, VCs are reductive"[07:07] Why understanding investors' limited "shots on goal" changes your pitch[08:19] How to leave investors with the right takeaway[09:13] Why a term sheet is the only real yes[09:54] Reading the shades of no in a VC meeting[10:36] The cruel reality behind a "great meeting, no term sheet"[12:07] Closing thoughts
Michael Dell on What the AI Skeptics Are Getting Wrong Village Global 2026-08-30 | The biggest question around AI is: "Does it work?"Village Global Luminary LP Michael Dell thinks the results answer that question.#michaeldell #AI #enterprise
Jade Q. Wang on Why Your Intuition Is a Billion Parameter Model You Cant Fully Access Village Global 2026-08-30 | Your intuition is a finely tuned model. The problem is you can't always access it consciously.The challenge isn't learning to trust it, It's finding ways to surface what it already knows.Listen to Jade Q. Wang on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #founders #science
Michael Dell on Why Austin Became a Startup Hub Village Global 2026-08-29 | Where a company chooses to be is one of the most underrated strategic decisions it makes.Village Global Luminary LP Michael Dell has a simple filter for spotting cities before they become hubs. Austin didn't happen by accident, and neither will the next one.#michaeldell #startups #venturecapital
The Three Things Every Founder Should Know Before Walking Into a VC Meeting Village Global 2026-08-29 | Founders who struggle to raise are often pitching to investors the way they wish investors thought, not the way they actually do.VCs tend to be less informed than the founders pitching them on any given subject, uncomfortable with what they don't understand, and always trying to pattern match to something familiar. Meeting them where they are is a skill worth developing. Listen to Max Kilberg on the Village Global Podcast.#venturecapital #founders #startups
Max Kilberg on Why Series A Is the Hardest Round to Raise Right Now Village Global 2026-08-28 | Where you sit in the stack has rarely mattered more for your ability to raise.Max Kilberg, General Partner at Village Global, shares what he's seeing at Series A right now and why the gap between infrastructure and application layer companies keeps widening. Listen to Max Kilberg on the Village Global Podcast.#venturecapital #startups #AI
She Pivoted Her Entire Company in a Single Day | Aizada Marat (Alma) Village Global 2026-08-28 | Aizada Marat is co-founder and CEO of Alma, an AI immigration law firm. She breaks down the exact moment she decided to pivot the company from selling immigration software to law firms to becoming a law firm itself, and makes the case for why Alma believes traditional immigration firms won't survive the shift to AI.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Aizada to unpack the conference that convinced her the pivot was necessary, the trade-offs of walking away from early traction with five law firm clients, and a case study of how Alma's speed and 100% approval rate changed how one company handles immigration internally. Aizada draws a clear line between what should and shouldn't be automated in legal work, argues that top engineering and legal talent will keep flowing toward AI-native firms over traditional ones, and closes with a candid look at what it's like being married to fellow founder and Village Global portfolio founder Chyngyz.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Aizada Marat. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/gKd06kskB8s?si=I1dUOpxEe1JaRp_k[00:00] The conference that convinced her to pivot[00:47] Deciding to become a law firm the same day[01:27] The trade-offs of walking away from early traction[02:29] Why customers didn't know they needed Alma[02:53] Case study: how Alma changed immigration for Rundu[04:44] Why speed is Alma's biggest differentiator[05:44] What should and shouldn't be automated in immigration law[06:56] Why traditional law firms won't be able to compete[09:31] What it's like being married to a fellow founder
Why Chasing the Hot Deal Is the Wrong Game for Most Investors Village Global 2026-08-27 | The best edge in early-stage investing is rarely access. It tends to be conviction before everyone else gets there.Being 6 to 12 months pre-consensus and backing founders you believe in more than anyone else does. That's the game worth playing, according to Max Kilberg. Chasing the hot deal rarely works out.Listen to Max Kilberg on the Village Global Podcast.#venturecapital #startups #investing
Why This Moment in AI is Similar to the Invention of the Camera | Jade Q. Wang, Artist & Investor Village Global 2026-08-27 | Jade Q. Wang is an artist, investor, scientist, and founder. A Stanford grad with a PhD in neuroscience, she retired roughly a year ago from a career in tech to pursue art and angel investing full time.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Jade to trace her path from a childhood spent training to be a concert pianist in Shanghai, through a hard pivot into computer science and neuroscience, to her current work building interactive, AI-native poetry that treats Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini as collaborators rather than tools. Jade draws a striking parallel between the invention of photography and the current moment in AI, arguing that just as photography didn't destroy art but unlocked entirely new movements like Impressionism, AI may do the same for literature and poetry. She walks through her multi-phase art project, from a poetry collection structured like a codebase to a planned museum installation involving AI mirrors that roast and compliment visitors and a "computerized confessional," and explains why different AI models have developed distinct, consistent taste in which of her poems they find most powerful. The conversation also gets into her approach to angel investing and what she actually looks for in founders, plus the surreal story of discovering she'd become the unwitting subject of a viral AI-generated fan fiction universe.[00:00] Cold open[00:35] Welcome to the Village Global Podcast[01:24] Showing her parents her poetry[03:12] How a poem "executes in the mind of the reader"[05:20] Un-geoblocking her own art so her parents could experience it[06:25] Origin story: from concert pianist to neuroscience PhD[08:28] How she became an artist[09:43] Hosting Austin's startup community[10:57] What photography's invention can teach us about AI and art[14:41] Predictions for the future of art in the age of AI[15:13] The three-phase art experiment[16:43] Why Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini have different taste in poetry[18:40] Her general theory of poetry[20:22] Making art that's meant for machines too[22:46] Why the trilogy is a collaborative human-AI experience[24:04] Phase 2: a puzzle game built with AI[25:39] Phase 2: capturing autism and gaps in AI's training data[27:28] The checklist poem[28:00] Phase 3: designing a museum exhibit[29:51] "Mirror Mirror": AI mirrors that compliment and roast you[30:46] The "Computerized Confessional"[31:34] Letting AI prompt the human, not just the reverse[32:29] Is this founder mode?[33:52] What's next: building an artistic movement[34:44] Teaching students to find real pain points, not clone ideas[39:23] What she looks for as an angel investor[40:36] Her 12-parameter spreadsheet for choosing a life partner[45:59] What she actually looks for in founders[48:13] The strangest newsletter she's ever gotten[50:51] Why AI models refuse to reveal her secret[53:58] Designing a museum exhibit around confession and empathy[57:57] Closing thoughts
She Built a Law Firm With Zero Engineers on the Team | Aizada Marat (Alma) Village Global 2026-08-26 | Aizada Marat is co-founder and CEO of Alma, an AI immigration law firm. Before landing on her co-founders, she "interviewed" three now-famous tech leaders, Richard Socher, Arvind Jain, and Dario Amodei, in her own backyard while weighing whether to become a chief of staff instead of starting her own company. She breaks down what actually made her choose Assel and Shuo, and why she now believes AI can outperform the outsourced manual labor traditional immigration law firms rely on.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Aizada to unpack how she picked her co-founders, the shared background and stubbornness that bonded her with Asel, and the direct, no-nonsense conversation with Shuo that convinced her he was the right technical co-founder despite investor skepticism about two non-technical founders leading the company. Aizada also walks through Alma's early pivot from selling immigration software to law firms to becoming a law firm itself, and makes the case for why large language models, which have already passed the California Bar, can outperform the offshored manual labor that traditional immigration firms depend on.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Aizada Marat. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/gKd06kskB8s?si=y5AiPpphxyN0ecEy[00:00] Weighing chief of staff roles vs. starting her own company[00:19] "Interviewing" Richard Socher, Arvind Jain, and Dario Amodei[00:47] Hosting them in her backyard[01:50] Why she abandoned a promising legal career[03:01] Choosing immigration as her focus[03:19] The path to meeting co-founders Assel and Shuo[04:32] Growing up rebellious in a patriarchal society[05:19] Two non-technical founders. One law firm.[06:39] Committing to build something big with Shuo[08:28] The pivot: from B2B SaaS to becoming a law firm[09:59] Why immigration law was fundamentally broken[11:18] Why AI can outperform outsourced immigration work[12:26] Turning attorneys into "10x attorneys" with AI
From a Village in Kyrgyzstan to Founding a Law Firm | Aizada Marat (Alma) Village Global 2026-08-25 | Aizada Marat is co-founder and CEO of Alma, an AI immigration law firm. Before building a company, she lived a story that reads almost like fiction: growing up in a small village in Kyrgyzstan, learning English by transcribing Britney Spears lyrics, and eventually finding herself twice locked out of the country she'd dreamed about since childhood, once by visa rules and once by a botched immigration case that left her unable to work for over a year.Amrit Rao, General Partner at Village Global, sits down with Aizada to trace that path in detail, from her childhood in rural Kyrgyzstan and the US Senate-backed exchange program that first brought her to America, through law school, a corporate law career she never wanted, and the personal immigration crisis that reshaped how she thought about her own future. She also shares the story of how she "interviewed" three now-famous tech leaders, Richard Socher, Arvind Jain, and Dario Amodei, in her backyard before deciding she'd rather build her own company than work for any of them.This is an excerpt from our full conversation with Aizada Marat. Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/gKd06kskB8s?si=I1dUOpxEe1JaRp_k[00:00] Growing up in rural Kyrgyzstan[01:20] Wanting to go to the US[02:23] The Future Leaders Exchange Program[03:27] Arriving in the US at 17[04:25] What Alma does today[05:49] Departing the US twice[06:57] The year she couldn't work[08:00] Solving her own pain point[08:37] From Cooley to McKinsey[09:44] Discovering AI in 2023[10:54] The leap to start Alma[12:05] "Interviewing" Richard Socher, Arvind Jain, and Dario Amodei[12:42] Hosting them in her backyard[12:53] Deciding to build her own company
The New Insurance Category Nobody Has Figured Out How to Underwrite Yet Village Global 2026-08-25 | Every major technology wave tends to create new categories of risk that the existing insurance industry doesn't know how to price.Max Kilberg and Michael Hochberg say AI liability for enterprise chatbots handling sensitive data is one of those categories. Most carriers don't know how to underwrite it yet. Someone will build a business around that gap. Listen to Max Kilberg and Michael Hochberg on the Village Global Podcast.#AI #venturecapital #startups
What Its Like When Both Spouses Are Founders Village Global 2026-08-25 | The best life partner for a founder might just be another founder.Aizada Marat, CEO at Alma, and her husband Chingiz are both building companies. The shared drive isn't a tension in their relationship. They both know exactly what it takes, and neither one has to explain it to the other. Listen to Aizada Marat on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #startups #womenfounder
The Fundraising Reality Most First-Time Founders Learn Too Late Village Global 2026-08-24 | A friendly VC meeting is not a signal. It's just a meeting.Michael Hochberg, says anything short of a term sheet is a no. The shades of no are what first-time founders spend too long trying to decode. Listen to Michael Hochberg on the Village Global Podcast.#venturecapital #startups #founders
The Personal Cost Behind Alma That Aizada Marat Never Takes for Granted Village Global 2026-08-24 | Building something meaningful costs something personal.Aizada Marat, CEO at Alma, is thousands of miles from her family, building in a country that is not her own. She understands the weight of that trade-off and carries it as fuel, not burden. Listen to Aizada Marat on the Village Global Podcast.#founders #immigration #startups
