4thly

For startup founders and investors, term sheets are the Rosetta Stone for each financing transaction. Unlike the Rosetta Stone, terms that are considered ordinary and customary change a little every year, as economic tides flow and the startup ecosystem evolves. On this episode, two expert attorneys and I discuss term sheets for venture financings including SAFE side-letters and mo

In this episode, I talk with two attorneys who handle many startup financing transactions on both coasts. Louis Lehot operates in the heart of Silicon Valley, while Julie-Anne Lutfi practices in Boston. They both have deep experience representing both startup founders and venture capital funds. We discuss current trends as we approach the new year (2021 ain't coming back), and

On this episode I talk with one of my favorite social entrepreneurs in the whole world. Diana Sierra is originally from Colombia, ended up getting a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, was an industrial designer developing products for global companies, and then founded BeGirl, a social venture startup focused on menstrual health for women in Africa. I met her o

On this episode, a panel of US-China experts discuss President Biden's recent executive order which subjects private US investments into China to screening. This obviously has a pretty big impact on venture capital and private equity firms, but in the discussion we got into the larger picture of the US-China relationship, and the "conscious uncoupling" that is going o

On this episode I talk with Alice Bosley, Co-founder and CEO of Five One Labs. She and her cofounder met in grad school at Columbia and decided to create a startup focused on solving a really big problem - getting refugee populations back up on their feet. The UNHRC estimates the number of people in the world who have been forcibly displaced is now almost 110 million - the highest

On this episode I talk with Sylvana Quader Sinha. With a master’s degree from Columbia plus a law degree from Harvard, she was a high-achieving international lawyer, a foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama, special consultant to the World Bank, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Then in her 30’s she decided to pivot to a real challenge - being an entrepreneur foc

Christopher Zaw runs Warc Africa - a social enterprise based in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Their goal is to get smallholder farmers out of poverty and address food insecurity across Africa. They design and sell regenerative farming input packages while providing access to training, mechanized services, and markets. I met Chris as part of my work with Miller Center for Social Entrepren

Jeff Bradley was working with Large Language Models long before most of us had heard of them. He's now CEO of Phrasia, a startup with a deep learning platform that helps companies to get actionable insights by going through all the natural language information (app reviews, survey comments, customer comments, social media, customer service transcripts, etc). On this episode Jef

Biotech remains a red-hot area for startup founders and investors. Next-generation gene therapies, precision medicine, using AI and ML for speeding discovery and development of new drugs, and entire new delivery methods. What does the future look like, and how should investors and founders parse the opportunities in this sector? On this episode I talk with Marguerite Hutchison, Ken

Climate is a threat to the planet, and an area of great opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors to be part of the solution. Last year saw over $70 billion in venture capital invested in Climate Tech ventures. There are huge opportunities for founders and investors in this sector, as climate resilience becomes a growing imperative worldwide. I hosted this panel along with Louis