People often ask me how I manage to accomplish so much while leading such a rich, passionate life as illustrated by my 2023 year in review. In this episode I share all my secrets. I will cover everything from general productivity tips to how and what you can outsource in your professional and personal life.

I had the pleasure of receiving Julio Vasconcellos on the show. Julio is the Founder and Managing Partner of Atlantico, a leading early-stage venture fund in Latin America. It was Julio's role as the inaugural Facebook employee for Latin America that initiated his path in the startup world in the region after starting his career in Silicon Valley. He later co-founded Peixe Urbano, scaling it to over 1,200 employees and $100M+ in revenue. After a startup rollercoaster ride with multiple near-death experiences, Julio sold the company to Baidu, and went on to join Benchmark Capital as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. There, he met Scott Belsky and the two went on to co-found Prefer in San Francisco which Benchmark backed, as they had with Peixe Urbano. Alongside his entrepreneurial journey, Julio has been investing for over a decade. Starting as a seed investor, he co-founded Graph Ventures with fellow colleagues from Facebook and Stanford. Later, he helped co-found Canary (https://canary.com.br/), the leading seed-stage fund in Latin America. In 2020, Julio returned to Brazil to found Atlantico and focus on early-stage venture investing. We covered: His history and path into tech. His transition from entrepreneur to investor. Why he built Atlantico to focus on Series A investing in Latin America. The significant investment potential within Latin America today.

I had the pleasure of being joined by my good friend Kevin Ryan. He’s often been called the “Godfather of NYC tech.” Kevin is one of the leading internet entrepreneurs and investors in New York. He is a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Nomad Health, and founds new companies with AlleyCorp every year. Earlier in his career, Kevin helped to grow DoubleClick first as President and then as CEO, leading their growth from a 20-person startup to a publicly traded global leader with over 1,500 employees, through IPO in 1998 and acquisition by Google in 2007. Kevin is also on the Board of Tech:NYC, Vice Chairman of The Partnership for New York City, a member of the CFR Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Director Emeritus for Human Rights Watch. Kevin previously served on the boards of the Yale Corporation and INSEAD. It's also worth mentioning Kevin is the one who convinced me to go to Antarctica with him. We covered: · His history and path into tech. · How he built so many successful companies with Alley Corp. · Lessons learned along the way. · His general life philosophy and perspective on Antarctica, Burning Man, psychedelics and much more.

It had been over a year since we did the last Ask Me Anything (AMA) so the time had come. As requested by the audience, my son François joined us for the first part of the show. He was his usual epic self: calm, poised, and playing along cutely. His presence clearly played a part in the success of the episode which was one of the most watched ever across all the platforms and was by far the most interactive episode ever with 137 live comments in addition to dozens of questions submitted ahead of time! The audience’s questions fell into 5 categories: Antarctica, Marketplaces, Startups, Macro, and Other (life decisions, books, etc.) which I covered in turn.

This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with my good friend Oskar Hartmann. He’s had the most incredible unicorn experience: He was part of 10% of all German unicorns Made a $300M mistake on Ozon Managed to make money on Fab.com despite it going from $1.5B in value to $0 in 6 months Why selling at the point of maximum secondary liquidity is probably a bad time to sell Much more!

On this week’s episode I had the pleasure of welcoming Nitya Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Simpl, to conclude our mini-series on the Indian tech scene. We had a fascinating conversation on the state of Indian Fintech, which in many ways is more advanced than the US. I am beyond impressed by the free C2C / B2B / B2C instantaneous real time payments allowed by UPI and the business models that emerge when you can do free microtransactions. I wish the West had the equivalent of India’s UPI (or Brazil’s Pix). I am also beyond impressed by what Nitya has built with Simpl, which I hope will be a Unicorn soon!

This week we are covering the state of the Indian tech ecosystem. We are joined by Luke Skertich, senior associate at FJ Labs, who is leading the charge with our Indian investments. In this episode, we cover: The history of India’s tech ecosystem and the recent explosion in unicorns Why we are short term pessimistic, but medium and long term super bullish Why we are focusing on Picks and Shovels, Financial Infrastructure, and B2B Marketplaces

In this episode, we cover: Niraj’s path to creating Spinny, including creating two much less successful startups right out of college The differences between the US & Indian car markets Spinny’s unique solution to the market considering the specifics of the market Spinny’s ambitions on a go forward basis The impact, if any, of the massive global multiple compression in comps like Carvana and Cazoo The state of Indian tech market

Lorien Gabel is the Co-Founder of Figment Network. He holds an LLB from Toronto’s Osgoode Hall Law School and is a member in good standing with the Ontario Bar. In 1994, at the age of 24, 6 months into practicing law, Lorien quit to help his brother Matt run a bourgeoning internet company, Interlog. Over the next four years, they managed the growth of Interlog to over 150 employees, 65,000 customers and profitability. It was later acquired by a large multinational telecommunications company.

These days every meeting seems to start with a conversation on market conditions. In the next episode, I am sharing my perspective on what has been happening in the public, crypto, and private markets, and what it means for investors and founders.

Playing with unicorns is a new weekly show on startups, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. I cover everything I learned as an entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist during the last 22 years, focusing on everything I wished I knew when I first got started as a tech entrepreneur.

Mark Lurie is the CEO and co-founder of Shipyard Software. Shipyard Software builds decentralized exchanges (DEX) for specific types of trades, traders, and instruments, starting with Clipper, a DEX with the best prices anywhere on retail trades

Laura Behrens Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Shippo. Shippo is an API-first company focused on building shipping for 21st-century e-commerce. Top takeaways Build something that’s a pain killer, not a vitamin. This means finding a true pain point and solving it. Constantly seek new customer acquisition channels. Keep in mind that people who succeed at corporations are not always successful at early-stage companies. 0-1 team members are not always the ones who will drive the company to 100x.

Alisa Cohn (@AlisaCohn) is a prominent startup coach who has advised founders and executives at Venmo, Etsy, DraftKings, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Bloomberg. She’s one-time startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she was named the number one “Global Guru”. Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been featured as an expert on Bloomberg TV, the BBC World News and in the New York Times. A recovering CPA, she is also a Broadway investor in productions which have won two Tony Awards and is prone to burst into song at the slightest provocation.

Thomas Plantenga is the CEO of Vinted. He was born and raised in the Netherlands. Thomas was previously a Venture Partner at FJ Labs and an early member of OLX. Thomas never intended to join Vinted. He flew from New York to Vilnius for 5 weeks to simply to have a deeper look at Vinted’s metrics. At the end of the 5th week, Thomas proposed an aggressive plan to the team, and to his surprise the team accepted. It was here Thomas knew that the Vinted team was committed to succeeding no matter what. Over the past decade, Thomas has lived in: Amsterdam, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Nairobi, Cabarete, Barcelona, and New York.

In episode 27, I took a stab at which categories investors and entrepreneurs should focus on for the coming 5 years. In today’s episode, I wanted to cover the themes and trends that emerged in the last 12 months. Ten trends clearly emerged as we saw them time and time again with a plethora of competitors in every geography. There was no unifying theme across all of them, but four of the trends cover startups that help SMBs and micro-entrepreneurs run their businesses better allowing their owners to focus on what they do best.

When Satoshi Nakamoto famously wrote the Bitcoin white paper on November 13, 2008 it proposed to solve the Byzantine Generals problem. The Byzantine Generals Problem is solving the puzzle of how multiple, separated generals can achieve consensus on the time to attack a particular city. 13 years later the world of crypto is starting to see wider adoption. In 2021 every major media outlet at one point was talking about the rise of crypto, especially NFTs.

In a way I live in your future. By virtue of receiving 150 startup pitches per week, I have a good sense of what founders are trying to build for the coming decade. At the same time, as a student of history, penetration and cost trends, I can make calculated guesses for when things go from being fringe to mainstream. In today’s episode, I take a stab at which categories investors and entrepreneurs should focus on for the coming 5 years. This time horizon is relevant because for an idea to be investable by a VC today, it means the company needs to hit its stride in 3-5 years, which in turn implies the market must be ready for the idea.

Jeff’s newest book, The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Wokers and Agile Corporations, provides a look into the future of work by looking into the past. In human history, there have been three monumental technological revolutions: mechanization, electrification, and computerization. These revolutions shaped the future of humanity. Jeff shows the end of work will be a good thing for humanity because it will free up time and allow humans to do creative work.

As most of you know, I want to empower people to work on the things they love. As a result, I am excited that FJ Labs invested early in Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), now valued at $2 billion, which is helping entrepreneurs all around the world to live out their dream. In this episode, I chat with Andrew D’Souza and Michele Romanow, Clearco’s founders, to learn about how they started, some of the challenges they faced along the way, and advice they have for founders.