Startup Project

• Over long term YouTube will win over TikTok, Instagram & other video apps.
• Check out the video to see why.

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Nataraj interviewed veteran VC Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group on Startup Project podcast. Matt shared his insights into the state of venture capital and the impacts of AI, drawn from his 20+ years of experience. Some key takeaways: 1. Venture is a "tale of two cities" now - later stage startups are struggling, earlier stage companies embracing AI are thriving 2. Seattle has unmatched talent but lacks local capital - still over-reliant on Silicon Valley VCs 3. Incumbents have the edge currently in leveraging AI due to data, customers, ability to integrate via APIs - but long term, AI-native startups will win out 4. Partnerships forming between big tech and AI startups provide startups with computing resources while allowing tech giants to take an open, marketplace approach to AI I highly recommend tuning in to hear Matt's take on venture capital, AI, and building an enduring company. Available on all major podcast platforms - link in comments!

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In this episode, Nataraj spoke with John Staenberg, a veteran of the tech and venture capital world.

• John took Nataraj through his early days growing up in Omaha and attending Stanford University, where he was inspired by the culture of creativity and trying new things.
• After graduating, John worked in real estate and then got his MBA, also at Stanford. He became fascinated by the nascent world of venture capital and startups in Silicon Valley.
• John landed a job at Microsoft in the late 1980s, when the company was still small and growing fast. He described the exciting “change the world” energy there, where people worked tirelessly to spread personal computers.
• After Microsoft, John started his own venture funds focused on bridging Seattle and Silicon Valley. He's been involved with around 200 startups over his venture career.
• John reflected on missing out early on companies like Google and Amazon that became huge wins. But he's also had some big successes, like Seagate. He emphasized that surprise and timing are always at play in VC investing.
• Nataraj and John also discussed how venture capital has matured and become overcrowded, making it hard to generate outsized returns. So John has pulled back on direct startup investing.
• Pivoting gears, they talked about John's passion project - starting a wine business in Argentina 17 years ago. He saw it as a way to pursue his interests and bring people together.
• John then explained his latest venture to Nataraj - launching a search fund to invest in other funds that acquire small businesses for entrepreneurs. He believes this model can provide great returns and opportunities.
• Throughout his wide-ranging career, John has stayed focused on connecting people and giving back, including through the many events he has hosted.

Follow Jon at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonstaenberg/

Follow Nataraj at https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam/

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In this episode of the podcast, we feature Ashmeet Sidana, the founder and Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital. Ashmeet has an extensive background in engineering and venture capital, with experience as the Director of Product Management at VMWare and as a venture capitalist.

During the conversation, Ashmeet discusses various topics, including his experience developing the ESx Server at VMWare and leading seed rounds of companies like Azure Power and Tubi. He also shares insights into why venture capitalists prefer startups to stay private and the importance of investing in technical insights.

Ashmeet also talks about his approach to getting in front of future founders and explains why he chooses not to invest in blockchain. He discusses the significance of large funding rounds in the AI seed stage and the value of investing in open-source companies.

To learn more about Ashmeet Sidana and his perspectives on investing in startups with technical risks, you can listen to the full episode on platforms like YouTube, Spotify & Apple.

Full conversation includes:

- Being Director of PM at VMware & Venture Capitalist

- Developing ESx Server at VMWare

- Leading seed rounds of azure power (public & valued at $2B)

- Leading seed investment at Tubi

- Starting Engineering capital

- Why vcs want startups to stay private

- What it means to invest in technical insights

- Getting infront of future founders

- Not investing in blockchain?

- Large funding rounds in AI seed stage

- Investing in opensource companies

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To stay up to date checkout ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thestartupproject.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@natarajsindam⁠ and on LinkedIn at ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam⁠

Join us in this captivating episode as we sit down with Joe Heitzeberg, a multifaceted entrepreneur who has navigated the world of technology and business with remarkable success. From his early days in the tech industry to founding his acclaimed venture Crowd Cow, Joe shares his incredible journey and valuable insights on various topics.

1. Joe's Entry to Technology 2. Working for Paul Allen 3. Import Furniture Business 4. Opportunity Cost of MBA 5. Building Viral VoIP App for MySpace 6. Selling Media Piston to Upwork 7. Starting Crowd Cow 8. Problems with Chicken in the U.S 9. Fundamental Shifts from AI 10. AI Tinkerers

Follow Joe on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeheitzeberg

To stay up to date checkout ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thestartupproject.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter ⁠⁠⁠@natarajsindam and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam

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Tim Chen is the Managing Partner at Essence VC, an early-stage fund focused on data infrastructure and developer tool companies. He has over a decade of experience leading engineering in enterprise infrastructure and open source communities and companies. Prior to Essence, Tim was the SVP of Engineering at Cosmos, a popular open source blockchain SDK. Prior to Cosmos, Tim co-founded Hyperpilot with Stanford Professor Christos Kozyrakis, leveraging decades of research to disrupt the enterprise infrastructure space, which later exited to Cloudera. Prior to Hyperpilot, Tim was an early employee at Mesosphere and CloudFoundry. He is also active in the open source space as an Apache Software Foundation core member, maintainer of Apache Drill and Apache Mesos, and CNCF TOC contributor.

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Aseem joined Madrona in 2021 after spending almost twenty years as an operating executive. He works alongside founders building the future of next-generation infrastructure (core, security, DevOps), intelligent applications, robotics, and automation.

Full conversation includes:

• From Intern at Windows to GM at Microsoft Azure
• GM at Azure to Investing at Madrona
• Investing at Madrona
• Startups vs Big Tech in AI
• Commoditization of LLMs
• Difference between LLMs & Human Brains

Follow Aseem on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aseemdatar/

To stay up to date checkout ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thestartupproject.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@natarajsindam

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To stay up to date checkout ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thestartupproject.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@natarajsindam⁠⁠

T.A. McCann is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive track record. He has founded and served as CEO of several successful companies. Some notable ventures include Senosis (acquired by Google), Gist (acquired by Blackberry), and Rival IQ, a leading company in marketing analytics.

McCann's expertise extends beyond founding companies. He has also held senior roles at Microsoft, where he led divisions such as Exchange and the Mobile Services divisions. Additionally, he has worked as an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) at Polaris Venture Partners and Vulcan Capital.

Full conversation includes:

• Becoming a professional sailor

• Working at microsoft exchange
• Starting 5+ companies (3 exits)
• Working for Paul Allen & building Startup Studio Vulcan Labs
• Selling Gist to Blackberry
• Rival IQ
• Synosis (acq by Google)
• Pioneer Square Labs
• Systematic customer discovery & customer development process
• Advice to entrepreneurs raising capital
• Is AI a step change?
• Who will capture value in AI? Big tech or startups?
• 
  

Follow TA on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamccann/

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To stay up to date checkout ⁠⁠⁠⁠thestartupproject.io⁠⁠⁠⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: ⁠⁠@natarajsindam⁠⁠

In this episode Nataraj spoke to Taylor Black who co-founded Fizzy Inc. Post Fizzy Taylor worked at Innovation Science Fund & currently works as a Principal Product Manager at the Office of the CTO Incubator at Microsoft.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Nataraj: I looked at the portfolio there then it's completely deep tech, uh, and sort of like invention based, uh, ideas.

[00:00:08] Nataraj: Uh, so what was the process of like capturing and invention and taking and productizing it and, you know, making a return out of it? Like what was the thinking process there?

[00:00:20] Taylor: So the, uh, and you can read Malcolm Gladwell's take on this in a, in an article where he described our invention sessions. Um, a and the invention sessions are a bit of a riff on like an innovation session or an envisioning session or things along those lines where you, you come up with wild ideas within a particular problem space, um, in a very unfettered sort of, Um, and the whole goal of this session is to generate as many ideas as possible.

[00:00:52] Taylor: That's the sole ROI you're looking for in those sessions. Um, but there's certain conditions you set for success in those [00:01:00] sessions. And so the way that we ran those sessions, and I, and I, I ran, uh, a number of them, um, is that we would prepare for months ahead of time in gathering all of the materials that related to the problem.

[00:01:14] Taylor: and by materials I mean the scientific research in a particular problem space, the, uh, market, uh, and startup landscapes of that particular problem space. Um, uh, things that people had written about it. Books, articles, um, you know, YouTube videos, everything, uh, along those lines. And the goal was to, um, inform.

[00:01:43] Taylor: Kind of the fermentation moment of when you're thinking about a problem, all of these things w wouldn't themselves, um, not be a solution necessarily, but there are all the things that someone who wanted to be completely informed or as, as, as informed and possible as possible about a set of [00:02:00] problems. Um, Had all of the raw material there.

[00:02:03] Taylor: We'd also do customer discovery, we'd do customer interviews to understand those pain points. We'd bring people in, um, uh, and run sessions with them where they would, you know, get deep into their own, um, the problems they were encountering so that everybody who is, and everybody who's part of the sessions had to.

[00:02:22] Taylor: Understand those materials, uh, deeply. We'd even quiz them on occasion. Um, it also helped that, uh, bill Gates, um, uh, whenever he came to those sessions, he would have all of those materials like completely groced. And so you, you know, you needed to have them groced too so that you didn't, you know, uh, lose face in front of Bill.

[00:02:44] Taylor: But, um, Uh, but the key, so we'd, we'd get everybody, all of those materials and have them go through them, uh, a good month or so before the actual sessions happened. Um, that gave everybody an, an even playing [00:03:00] field in terms of, you know, I may be a physicist, I may be a biz dev person, I may be, um, an attorney.

[00:03:06] Taylor: I may be, uh, you know, a program manager, but I have all of the same raw material. Uh, and my own perspective on it that I can bring to these sessions. The sessions themselves, them, um, were set around particular problem spaces and we'd start, we'd start each, um, session and then there's a variety of different kinds of sessions that we ram.

[00:03:28] Taylor: Um, Uh, with a lot of provocations, a lot of conversation, a lot of like wild thinking and post-it notes and whiteboards of just dumping ideas out, uh, that had occurred to people or occurred in conversation or happened in the, in the hallway outside. Um, and we get all those ideas down, documenting everything.

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#56: Why Wordpress dominates internet?

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