The Deep End by ODF

The Deep End by ODF

On Deck

The Deep End by ODF is a podcast where visionary builders, creators, and experts discuss world-changing ideas. We skip the surface level and go in depth into ideas that matter including the futures of commerce, higher education, art, governance, longevity, and more with some of the most exciting figures in these fields. The Deep End is hosted by Julian Weisser and produced by ODF —where we help more people start the best companies. Visit ideas.beondeck.com for show notes and additional essays.

CEO of Cal.com Bailey Pumfleet: building an open source rocketship ("Stripe for Time") | ODF alum

CEO of Cal.com Bailey Pumfleet: building an open source rocketship ("Stripe for Time") | ODF alum

Cal.com CEO Bailey Pumfleet turned a side project into one of the most ambitious infrastructure companies ever.His mission: powering a billion connections by 2031Rather than just another Calendly alternative, they're building the "Stripe for Time" - scheduling infrastructure that powers everything from doctor's appointments to refugee services.We get into:[3:56] How startups get open source wrong[10:46] Launching the v0 of Cal (called Calendso)[24:32] Why open source is crucial for infrastructur

Dec 13, 2024 • 1:09:25

Eoghan McCabe: moving to America to build Intercom into a unicorn + the benefits of naivety, hard work, and rejection.

Eoghan McCabe: moving to America to build Intercom into a unicorn + the benefits of naivety, hard work, and rejection.

Eoghan McCabe is the CEO and co-founder of IntercomThis was an incredible talk recorded live during the ODF22 cohort. Thanks again to Intercom for hosting.10 important ideas (and timestamps) from this conversation:1/ Innocence and Naivety Can Be a Superpower7:58 - “There was a phenomenal amount of naivety that allowed people to do things that were kind of like conventionally the wrong thing to do.”2/ Be Contrarian, but Not Recklessly So10:05 - “If you talk to 100 funds right now and you can’t ra

Sep 30, 2024 • 1:18:38

Deep Dive: Find the right co-founder and idea with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd

Deep Dive: Find the right co-founder and idea with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd

Today we’re chatting with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd.Shepherd is all in one commercial insurance platform focused on high hazard industries. The company is on an absolute tear and this month they announced a $13.5M series A.Mo and I decided to sit down and record a conversation because the journey of Shepherd will resonate with many potential founders who are try to find those two key missing pieces: who might I start a company with and what might we build together?Right as

Feb 12, 2024 • 53:38

Deep Dive: Shutting down a startup, doing right by your team, and founder identity with Stevie Cline (VC at Vol. 1 Ventures)

Deep Dive: Shutting down a startup, doing right by your team, and founder identity with Stevie Cline (VC at Vol. 1 Ventures)

Today’s conversation is rare but vital — we spend much of our time talking about the challenges around shutting down companies. While I spend most of my time writing about how to build towards success, the stark reality is that most companies fail. Shutting down your company is incredibly painful but it’s particularly lonely — you often feel like you have limited support and guidance.That’s why Stevie and I felt it was so important to record this episode. We hope this episode is a resource to ev

Feb 6, 2024 • 55:16

Control Your Financial Destiny: Runway, Metrics, and more with Puzzle's CEO Sasha Orloff

Control Your Financial Destiny: Runway, Metrics, and more with Puzzle's CEO Sasha Orloff

ODF is thrilled to announce its partnership with Puzzle — all ODF participants and alumni now save hundreds of dollars, To learn more go here.--Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that!ODF has helped 1k companies—like Puzzle which was ODF8—get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.compuzzle.ioSasha on X/Twitterbeondeck.comOn Deck on X/TwitterPodcast episode archive and show n

Jan 19, 2024 • 50:02

Augmenting people with AI and building the future featuring Matt Rastovac of Respell

Augmenting people with AI and building the future featuring Matt Rastovac of Respell

Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that!ODF has helped 1k companies—like Respell which was ODF17—get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 20th cohort in San Francisco are now . Learn more and apply at beondeck.comrespell.aiMatt on X/Twitterbeondeck.comOn Deck on X/TwitterPodcast episode archive and show notesFor this episode of the Deep End, Matt Rastovac dropped by On Deck co-founder Julian Weisser's house in SF to talk all things AI and his exper

Dec 7, 2023 • 1:04:39

"The most important milestone in the history of longevity biotech" — Archival Interview with Celine Halioua (Founder/CEO of Loyal)

"The most important milestone in the history of longevity biotech" — Archival Interview with Celine Halioua (Founder/CEO of Loyal)

Earlier this week Celine Halioua (ODF2), founder and CEO of Loyal — a dog longevity biotech startup — announced something truly groundbreaking.Loyal (ODF2) has earned what they believe to be the FDA’s first-ever formal acceptance that a drug can be developed and approved for lifespan extension. As Celine says in her announcement; “I started Loyal 4 years ago with the explicit goal to get the first drug FDA approved for lifespan extension itself - no disease, just healthy, longer"..."We can't sta

Dec 2, 2023 • 1:08:00

Defense Tech: Opportunities to support America and our allies with veteran Mike Slagh (founder/CEO of Shift)

Defense Tech: Opportunities to support America and our allies with veteran Mike Slagh (founder/CEO of Shift)

Joining me in the deep end is US Navy veteran Mike Slagh — founder of Shift — an organization that has built the most significant bridge between the Department of Defense and the startup ecosystem.Defense Tech is a big deal. We’re just now starting to see it be thought of as a more feasible sector to build startups. Mike might be one of the best people in the world to learn about opportunities to build tech and services that support America and our allies.Before co-founding Shift, Mike felt a ca

Nov 11, 2023 • 55:03

Lessons from the Journey to Building a Product Customers Want with Max Greenwald of Warmly

Lessons from the Journey to Building a Product Customers Want with Max Greenwald of Warmly

Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that.ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 19th cohort in San Francisco are due this week. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com--Joining me in the deep end is Max Greenwald — co-founder of Warmly a startup that helps businesses turn warm leads into sales. The company recently announced their series A.I’ve known Max for years and watched the Warmly journey unfold — Max even met his co

Oct 27, 2023 • 21:46

Generative AI and deciding what to build first with Elaine Zelby of Tofu

Generative AI and deciding what to build first with Elaine Zelby of Tofu

Joining me in the deep end is Elaine Zelby — co-founder of Tofu (https://www.tofuhq.com/) — a powerful generative AI platform that enables marketing teams to repurpose their content and run more successful campaigns. Tofu recently announced their $5M seed round led by Index Ventures.We’ve known Elaine for years — first as a friend, then as a participant in ODF2, then as an investor in On Deck during her time as a VC at SignalFire. She’s the first person we refer founders to when it comes to mark

Oct 24, 2023 • 39:28

Explore Starting a Company in San Francisco

Explore Starting a Company in San Francisco

On this episode of The Deep End, Julian Weisser – co-founder of On Deck – sits down with Marshall to discuss the latest from a program that has helped launch over 1,000 startups.Applications for the next cohort of On Deck Founders close on Tuesday, October 24th at 23:59 PST. If you’re exploring starting a company and want to figure out what to build and with whom, we’d love to chat.Apply today → beondeck.com

Oct 23, 2023 • 22:09

Raising $40M to Build Health Insurance for India with Amrit Singh

Raising $40M to Build Health Insurance for India with Amrit Singh

Joining us in The Deep End today is Amrit Singh. Amrit Singh is the co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India. Loop Health has raised over $40M, led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital. As we delve deeper into the meta-series of longevity, we engage in a captivating conversation with Amrit, exploring how Loop Health incentivizes health for its users. We'll also venture into the exciting frontiers of the longevity movement and the pivotal role hea

Aug 16, 2023 • 30:11

Combating the Autoimmune Epidemic with Wallace Torres

Combating the Autoimmune Epidemic with Wallace Torres

Joining us today in The Deep End is Wallace Torres. Wallace is the Co-Founder of WellTheory. WellTheory is an early-stage startup with a pretty powerful mission: combating the autoimmune epidemic through the use of food as medicine, community care, and personalized insights based on health data. During our conversation, we delve into the story behind WellTheory and the positive impact the startup has had on its customers: helping them decrease fatigue, minimize pain interference in their daily

Aug 3, 2023 • 45:57

Raising $175M to Translate Nature Into Medicine with Viswa Colluru

Raising $175M to Translate Nature Into Medicine with Viswa Colluru

Joining us today in The Deep End is Viswa Colluru, the CEO & Founder of Enveda Biosciences. Enveda has raised $175M in their quest to translate nature into medicine. Before founding Enveda, Viswa obtained a PhD in cellular and molecular biology, and started his career as a product manager at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. As our first guest in this series focusing on longevity and health, we speak to Viswa on why nature holds the great untapped potential for new drug discovery, why most drugs don

Jul 27, 2023 • 44:29

Intro: How to Help People Live Longer and Healthier Lives

Intro: How to Help People Live Longer and Healthier Lives

Welcome to a new mini-series of The Deep End! In these mini-series we explore some of the most complex, societal problems facing us at the moment - helping listeners gain a nuanced understanding of a complex topic - and then be inspired and equipped to build, invest or support startups and founders that are aiming to solve these challenges. In the last mini-series, we looked at the meta-problem of access to housing. We looked at the main bottlenecks holding us back from achieving more accessi

Jul 27, 2023 • 9:12

AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda

AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda

Hey everyone, as we gear up for the launch of a new series on longevity next week, we wanted to re-publish this really timeley episode with Eugenia Kuyda, the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion company. Our conversation centers around the different use-cases of AI, from task-oriented chatbots to emotionally-supportive AI companionship. We delve into the current state of conversational tech, including how chatbots can become good listeners, and why Replika used a mixture of scripted re

Jul 19, 2023 • 45:01

Fundraising and Venture Capital in 2023 with Julian Weisser

Fundraising and Venture Capital in 2023 with Julian Weisser

Joining us today in the Deep End is Julian Weisser. Julian is the co-founder of On Deck, and a prolific angel investor with over a hundred angel investments including Loyal, Level, Atmos, and more. Every few months, we invite Julian to the podcast to get a sense of what's going on in the world of venture, and this conversation is not different. We look at the growing importance of profitability and revenue generation for investors, as well as the importance of founders aligning their trajecto

Jul 12, 2023 • 24:08

From Personal Health Transformation to Magic AI with Varun Bhanot

From Personal Health Transformation to Magic AI with Varun Bhanot

Joining us today in the Deep End is Varun Bhanot. Varun is the co-founder and CEO of Magic AI, a home fitness system that uses AI to give you personalised training on a beautifully designed mirror. Prior to building Magic AI, Varun was the co-founder and CEO of Unhoused, a non-profit that leveraged technology to reduce homelessness. He also participated On Deck Founder’s third cohort. In this conversation, we discuss Varun’s approach to health & longevity. We cover his personal weight loss and g

Jun 29, 2023 • 35:54

Raising from Sam Altman to Build Land Valuation Models with Will Jarvis

Raising from Sam Altman to Build Land Valuation Models with Will Jarvis

Joining us in The Deep End today is Will Jarvis, co-founder and CEO of Valuebase. Valuebase is building land-centric models to improve property valuations and mass appraisal modeling. Valuebase recently secured $1.6 million in funding, with Sam Altman's Hydrazine leading the round and On Deck participating. Prior to Valuebase, Will served as a Researcher in Residence at On Deck, making today's conversation particularly noteworthy. As we continue our series on housing, we'll discuss the importa

Jun 15, 2023 • 41:24

Navigating the Idea Maze to Reinvent Children Education with Ryan Delk

Navigating the Idea Maze to Reinvent Children Education with Ryan Delk

Joining us on The Deep End today is Ryan Delk. Ryan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Primer, a startup creating a new education system for children, centered around microschools. Last year, Primer announced that they’ve raised $15M in new capital. Ryan previously worked in Growth + Partnerships at Gumroad, and then joined another marketplace company, Omni, and became COO. In this conversation, we explore where the inspiration for Primer came from, how Primer is overcoming regulatory barriers in the

Jun 8, 2023 • 38:57

Raising $2.2M to Make Home Ownership Flexible with Lauren Self

Raising $2.2M to Make Home Ownership Flexible with Lauren Self

Joining us today in the Deep End is Lauren Self. Lauren is the founder of Roots Homes, a fractional home ownership company, that allows you to build equity in your home while paying rent, which recently raised a $2.2M seed round. In this conversation we explore how Roots is finding the missing middle between renting and buying, helping ensure home-ownership comes with flexibility and how Roots is increasing access to the American dream. ---- View the full series on Housing: https://www.beo

May 31, 2023 • 35:56

Housing and Regulation with Kim-Mai Cutler from Initialized

Housing and Regulation with Kim-Mai Cutler from Initialized

Joining us in The Deep End today for our housing series is Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized who invests in proptech, real estate, and climate. Kim's background as a financial markets reporter and early-stage venture startup enthusiast, allowed her to broaden her reporting to include the intersection of the industry and public policy. In 2014, her essay on TechCrunch titled "How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained)" sparked almost a decade of publ

May 24, 2023 • 40:50

Intro: How to Increase Access to Housing

Intro: How to Increase Access to Housing

Over the past two years, we've interviewed 100+ people for our podcast, The Deep End. Now we're relaunching The Deep End as a multi-media publication, focused on problems worth solving. In the first series, we are tackling an issue that affects us all: access to housing. Our house provides us with a sense of belonging and serves as a sanctuary where we can retreat from the chaos of the world. Once we accept the importance of housing, our focus needs to shift to how we can make it more accessib

May 24, 2023 • 10:19

From Pivoting to Raising $180M to Build Stripe for Transportation with Vignan Velivela

From Pivoting to Raising $180M to Build Stripe for Transportation with Vignan Velivela

Joining us in The Deep End today is Vignan Velivela. Vignan is the co-founder and CEO of AtoB, a fintech payments platform modernizing the trucking industry’s financial system, which raised a $155M Series B last year. He was also a part of the On Deck Founders’ third cohort. We are taking a short break from our series on access to housing, to talk to Vignan about one of the biggest challenges facing us at the moment: transportation and logistics. In this episode, we cover the central and essen

May 10, 2023 • 50:04

Curiosity as an Ideation Mechanism with Tory Reiss

Curiosity as an Ideation Mechanism with Tory Reiss

Joining us in The Deep End today is Tory Reiss. Tory is the CEO and co-Founder of Equi, an alternative investment hedge fund. Tory previously co-founded Archblock, a decentralized alternatives marketplace, and Harvest Money, an AI-driven debt management platform. We’re taking a quick break from our series on starting companies, to take a quick dive into the world of fintech. Our conversation with Tory today centers around how you can take control of your financial destiny and Tory’s journey fro

May 3, 2023 • 48:13

How Finch Navigated the Idea Maze to a $40 Million Raise with Ansel Parikh

How Finch Navigated the Idea Maze to a $40 Million Raise with Ansel Parikh

Navigating the Idea Maze to The Unlikely Birth of FinchFinch, a platform providing a unified API for employment data, was born out of failure and uncertainty. Ansel Parikh and Jeremy Zhang, the co-founders, first met during On Deck's second cohort. Both were passionate about solving the plumbing behind big problems and gravitated towards challenging infrastructure issues.Finch was born out of failure. Initially, they attempted to launch an embedded lending platform, but the COVID-19 pandemic dis

Apr 27, 2023 • 44:27

Starting Companies Outside the US with Gina Gotthilf

Starting Companies Outside the US with Gina Gotthilf

Gina Gotthilf is the co-founder and COO at Latitud, a platform helping build the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through products, a dedicated fellowship and fund. Gina met her co-founder, Brian Requart, through On Deck. Before Latitud, Gina was the VP of Marketing and Growth at Duoloingo, helping scale the company from 3 to 200 million users, and worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. Continuing with our series on the meta-problem of helping people start

Apr 5, 2023 • 44:34

Immigration as a Bottleneck to Starting Companies with Sophie Alcorn

Immigration as a Bottleneck to Starting Companies with Sophie Alcorn

Joining us in The Deep End today is Sophie Alcorn. Sophie is the founder of Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration law firm that helps tech talent immigrate to the US. She is also the host of the podcast Immigration Law for Tech Startups and author the TechCrunch weekly immigration advice column “Dear Sophie.” Continuing with our series on the meta-problem of helping people start more companies, we talk to Sophie to understand why immigration is a bottleneck to company creation, and what founder

Mar 29, 2023 • 40:31

Navigating Fundraising and Financial Diligence with Sasha Orloff

Navigating Fundraising and Financial Diligence with Sasha Orloff

On The Deep End today, we welcome Sasha Orloff, the Founder and CEO of Puzzle, a modern accounting software package for startups that recently raised $15 million in series A. Sasha joins us to discuss the use of accounting as a powerful decision-making tool and the creation of infrastructure to start and scale businesses, as part of our series on meta-problems to help founders start more companies. Despite advances in financial technology, Sasha believes that core accounting software remains ou

Mar 22, 2023 • 40:14

Minn Kim on Small Group Theory and the Gift of Global Talent

Minn Kim on Small Group Theory and the Gift of Global Talent

Joining us on the Deep End today is Minn Kim. Minn spent a few years as an investor at Ridge, Bloomberg Beta and On Deck, backing founders as early as possible and is now building Plymouth to help extraordinary talent immigrate to the US. In this conversation we go deep into Minn’s core belief – that technology enables step changes in human agency. We discuss navigating the idea maze, picking who to start a company with, why immigration is key to innovation and so much more.

Mar 8, 2023 • 39:35

Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World

Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World

Last week in The Deep End we spoke with David Booth, CEO of On Deck. Today we're continuing our mini-series on the meta problem of how to help more people start more companies by re-publishing an episode of the Solarpunk podcadst with Erik Torenberg, co-founder and Chairman of On Deck. Erik joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon discuss why startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems, how governments and startups need to work together, not against each other, the

Mar 2, 2023 • 47:06

Why is Now the Time to Start a Company with David Booth

Why is Now the Time to Start a Company with David Booth

On the latest episode of The Deep End podcast by On Deck, we interview our very own David Booth, CEO of On Deck.Recently, David has announced one of the biggest updates to On Deck since the program went virtual in 2020, with the return of in-person programming and community space in San Francisco.In this conversation, we discuss why On Deck is doubling down on IRL programming, why he believes venture-backed founders need to be deeply connected to the Bay Area, why now is the best time to start a

Feb 22, 2023 • 53:27

Telling Your Professional Story with Heyo’s Vivian Chen

Telling Your Professional Story with Heyo’s Vivian Chen

Vivian Chen is the CEO & Founder of Heyo, a bite-sized pitch platform for professional success. Before starting Heyo,Vivian was an operator who built products across categories from high-growth startups to global enterprises.Vivian is on a mission to build the future of work. Heyo enables users to build profiles online short-form content and video, offering a new way to tell your professional story. In this conversation, we discuss Vivian’s founder journey, how she maintained her vision in the f

Dec 15, 2022 • 24:23

Building Web3 Projects on the Frontiers of Emerging Markets with Ani Pai

Building Web3 Projects on the Frontiers of Emerging Markets with Ani Pai

Ani Pai is an investment partner at Dragonfly, where he focuses on highly technical Web3 projects in emerging markets.Ani believes that progress happens on the frontier. Whether it be outer space, the mind/body, and the oceans. He’s focused on using crypto to explore these frontiers and eventually merging crypto networks with analog industries in order to shepherd the next billions users into web3.We discuss the state of the crypto industry in the wake of FTX’s implosion, why he believes the nex

Nov 18, 2022 • 36:54

Building the Dream of Homeownership with Roots Homes’s Lauren Self

Building the Dream of Homeownership with Roots Homes’s Lauren Self

Lauren Self is the founder of Roots Homes, a platform that helps put the dream of homeownership within reach by allowing prospective buyers to effectively pay rent while building equity in their home with fractional ownership. In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey and life experiences that motivate her to build in this space, why the dream of owning a home feels increasingly out of reach, why she believes her model is superior to perma-renting, and how the concept of fractional ow

Nov 10, 2022 • 24:42

Building Survivor-Centric Tools with Leda Health’s Madison Campbell

Building Survivor-Centric Tools with Leda Health’s Madison Campbell

Madison Campbell is Co-Founder and CEO of Leda Health, which provides aftercare for sexual assault survivors.Leda Health approaches its space through a survivor-focused lens, developing self-administered DNA collection and testing, while also connecting survivors with professionals and resources. In this conversation, we discuss her founder journey since leaving school to pursue a startup, fundraising in a sensitive product category, and how the nimble approaches required to found and build an e

Nov 3, 2022 • 33:50

Democratizing Access to Public Education Dollars with Odyssey’s Joseph Connor

Democratizing Access to Public Education Dollars with Odyssey’s Joseph Connor

Joseph Connor is the CEO & founder of Odyssey, a platform that helps families access state microgrants for K-12 education. Prior to starting Odyssey, Joseph was a former teacher, school founder, and attorney. Joseph and his team at Odyssey are on a mission to empower everyday parents by enabling access to public education dollars. Odyssey’s technology provides states with a turnkey platform to manage microgrant programs. A growing number of policymakers view microgrant programs as a tool to brid

Oct 27, 2022 • 38:42

Starting New York Tech Week with Capital’s Andrew Rea

Starting New York Tech Week with Capital’s Andrew Rea

Andrew Rea is an angel investor and operator, who recently started and organized New York Tech Week. He leads go-to-market at Capital (formerly Party Round) and has invested in over 20 startups, including Motion and Cococart. Before he was at Capital, Andrew was vital in building the community at the On Deck Angels fellowship. Andrew also has founder experience, having co-founded an EV startup, raised $1M, and sold to PE within 2 years.In this conversation, we discuss how New York Tech Week came

Oct 20, 2022 • 32:26

Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World

Village Global’s Solarpunk: Erik Torenberg on How Startups Can Help Save The World

Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg), co-founder and Executive Chairman of On Deck join Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Village Global’s Solarpunk is a podcast series about technology, space, and defense.Takeaways:Startups are the most effective organizations for solving our biggest problems.Startups disproportionately contribute to economic growth.Governments and startups need to work together, not against each other.China has the GDP per capita of Mexico but they have pow

Oct 13, 2022 • 46:53

Rewarding Social Curation with Rara’s Lawson Baker

Rewarding Social Curation with Rara’s Lawson Baker

Lawson Baker is the Founder of RARA, a social curation protocol for NFTs that revolutionizes how creators benefit from sharing their art, and how curators interact with and gain value from interacting with artists’ work. Our discussion centers around how web3 will forever change the dynamic between creators and curators. “Likes” and “heart” buttons are remnants of web2 — RARA creates tools to move away from centralized curation to decentralized curation, where fans can be rewarded for recognizin

Oct 6, 2022 • 51:23

Deathtech: Loss Memorialization with Chptr’s Rehan Choudhry

Deathtech: Loss Memorialization with Chptr’s Rehan Choudhry

Rehan is the Founder and CEO of Chptr, a startup fixing the way the world remembers people who have passed away. Prior to creating Chptr, he had a long career in music, founding the “Life is Beautiful” festival, and led marketing teams at high-profile Las Vegas hotels. Rehan and his team at Chptr are vying for the memorialization space, which up until now has been owned by legacy media obit pages and Facebook timelines. The broader death tech industry is estimated to reach over $128B this year a

Sep 29, 2022 • 39:45

Momentum Capital: Founders and Angels with Julian Weisser

Momentum Capital: Founders and Angels with Julian Weisser

Julian Weisser is the co-founder of On Deck, partner at our Founders and Angels programs, and investor at Other Ventures. He is a prolific startup investor and has backed over 100 companies ranging from asteroid mining to dog longevity and decentralized museums. He’s often one of the first angels that founders seek out for guidance on how to construct their fundraise.Our discussion today covers how Julian started investing with just $1k in multiple companies, while building his investment philos

Sep 15, 2022 • 47:26

The No-Code Revolution With Bubble’s Emmanuel Straschnov

The No-Code Revolution With Bubble’s Emmanuel Straschnov

Emmanuel Straschnov is the Co-CEO and Founder of Bubble, an online tool to build web applications without code.Our discussion is about the state of No Code: what it is, where it came from, and where it's going. The pandemic saw a huge growth of interest in No Code in mid-to-late 2020 as people everywhere began looking for cheap and fast ways they could start building from their own homes.We also talk about how and why Emmanuel chose to bootstrap when he was starting Bubble, and why a lot of Bubb

Sep 8, 2022 • 38:43

Venture Stories: How Royal is Transforming the Artist-Fan Relationship

Venture Stories: How Royal is Transforming the Artist-Fan Relationship

JD Ross (@justindross) and Justin Blau (@3LAU), co-founders of Royal, join Erik Torenberg and co-host Ian Cinnamon for this episode of Venture Stories web3 series. Takeaways: - Royal stems from their vision to invest in talent early on. - Streaming increased by 60-70x in about 5 years from 2015 on. - The barrier to entry for artists is much lower — they no longer need a studio, they just need a laptop. - Royal is trying to enable the fan-artist relationship to be more of a partnership. - When fa

Jul 29, 2022 • 48:05

AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda

AI Companionship with Replika's Eugenia Kuyda

Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion company.Our conversation today centers around the different use-cases of AI, from task-oriented chatbots to emotionally-supportive AI companionship. We delve into the current state of conversational tech, including how chatbots can become good listeners, and why Replika used a mixture of scripted retrievals and generative AI models for their product. We also talk about the differences between an AI companion, virtual assistant, and

Jul 21, 2022 • 45:27

Venture Stories: Labor Marketplaces with Traba's Mike Shebat

Venture Stories: Labor Marketplaces with Traba's Mike Shebat

Today, we’re syndicating an episode from the Village Global podcast hosted by On Deck co-CEO Erik Torenberg. The guest on the show is Mike Shebat  - CEO & Co-founder of Traba and a member of Forbes 30 Under 30. Mike participated in the 8th cohort of our On Deck Founder fellowship. He and the team at traba recently closed a $20M to match contractors with events and warehouse work. He met one of his co-founders, Akshay, through On Deck. Prior to starting Traba, Mike was a founding member of the Ub

Jul 14, 2022 • 32:28

The Network State Revisited with Balaji Srinivasan

The Network State Revisited with Balaji Srinivasan

A year ago, we launched The Deep End with Balaji Srinivasan as one of our first three guests. In the episode, he discussed the impending arrival of The Network State. Flash forward to this Monday on the fourth of July when Balaji released his book “The Network State: How to Start a New Country.”In a single sentence, a network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from

Jul 7, 2022 • 1:42:20

Driving Better Health with Roundtrip's Mark Switaj

Driving Better Health with Roundtrip's Mark Switaj

Mark Switaj is co-founder & CEO of Roundtrip Health. Roundtrip is driving better health by providing a full suite of non emergent transportation options to patients in different care settings across the country. After exploring the India and health tech market in India last week, we wanted to revisit  healthcare in the US.  Today’s conversation is about social determinants of health. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, w

Jul 1, 2022 • 43:30

Building Health Tech in India with Loop Health's Amrit Singh

Building Health Tech in India with Loop Health's Amrit Singh

Amrit Singh is a co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India. Our discussion today is about what it’s like to be a founder in India, and what the startup ecosystem there looks like relative to the US. India is an interesting paradox because although it’s a massive country in terms of population which contains almost 1 in 5 living people, that doesn’t always equate to huge market sizes in terms of available spend. We also talk about the state of healthcare in

Jun 23, 2022 • 41:02

Tokenizing Creator Communities with Crowdpad's Joel Alexander

Tokenizing Creator Communities with Crowdpad's Joel Alexander

Joel Alexander is the founder and CEO of Crowdpad, a tokenized community-building platform for creators whose goal is to help creators monetize on day one. Our conversation today centers around web3 and the future of the creator economy. We discuss how the path to monetization on traditional creator economy platforms like YouTube is so long and onerous that most people give up, and how allowing creators to launch their own token to distribute out to their fans and building token-gated communitie

Jun 16, 2022 • 45:51

Mobile Money with Wave's CTO Ben Kuhn

Mobile Money with Wave's CTO Ben Kuhn

Ben Kuhn is the CTO at Wave, a mobile payment company whose mission is to make Africa the first cashless continent by building ways for unbanked people to send and save money.Our discussion today covers a wide variety of topics — everything from how going cashless can help lift people out of poverty in sub-saharan Africa, to how social enterprises differ from tech companies. to why soccer balls don’t make good lamps. We also spend time diving deep on why startups should only spend their “innovat

Jun 9, 2022 • 36:37

The Big Tech Narrative with Alex Kantrowitz

The Big Tech Narrative with Alex Kantrowitz

Alex Kantrowitz is a reporter who contributes to CNBC, hosts the "Big Technology" Podcast and writes the "Big Technology" newsletter, which includes reports & analysis of big tech firms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft Apple, and more. Alex is an independent reporter with a background working at media orgs like BuzzFeed. He's optimistic about the impact of tech on the world. As such - he occupies a unique vantage point as a member of both tech AND media (two groups that don't always get along). Ou

Jun 2, 2022 • 49:44

The Market for Solutions with On Deck's Charles Cushing

The Market for Solutions with On Deck's Charles Cushing

Our discussion today centers on the “market for solutions”, a mental model that guest Charles Cushing explored in a 2020 essay he wrote where he wondered if there was a way to improve the market for solutions in order to make all downstream problems easier to solve.In Charles' view, On Deck’s mission is to help improve the market for solutions by bringing together capital, talent, and customers all into one place to make company formation happen.We get into the evolution and history of On Deck’s

May 26, 2022 • 35:36

The Indian Startup Ecosystem with Anand Chandrasekaran

The Indian Startup Ecosystem with Anand Chandrasekaran

Anand Chandrasekaran is a partner at General Catalyst with extensive executive experience at some of the biggest names in tech, including Five9, Facebook, and Yahoo. He has also started several of his own companies. Today’s episode is about the startup ecosystem in India, where Anand has invested in dozens of up-and-comers. We discuss first the phase-by-phase evolution of India’s startup ecosystem, followed by how users today have a different Internet starting point than those from 5 and 10 year

May 19, 2022 • 37:41

Solarpunk Tech with Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon

Solarpunk Tech with Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon

This week's guests are Ian Cinnamon and Lucas Bagno. Ian and Lucas are the co-hosts of Village Global’s new Solarpunk podcast, which focuses on space, technology, and defense. The theme of the conversation today is Solarpunk. It was interesting that, although they say they’re inspired by the aesthetic of Solarpunk, Ian and Lucas emphasize that they have their own interpretation of what Solarpunk means that isn’t tied to the online Solarpunk community. Instead, for them, it’s about technology as

May 5, 2022 • 49:31

Embracing Hard Tech with Eli Dourado

Embracing Hard Tech with Eli Dourado

This week's guest is Eli Dourado, an economist who says that all he wants is for GDP per capita to reach $200k in 2050. Marshall's conversation with Eli today centers around how to get economic growth back on track after the Great Stagnation, which was a slowdown of total factor productivity growth from 2% annually in the post WW2 period to .3% by 2005. We discuss the causes of economic stagnation and the way to get to faster growth, including genuine hard tech advances like the MRNA vaccines or

May 2, 2022 • 44:44

Evolving Internet Culture with Default Friend

Evolving Internet Culture with Default Friend

Today's guest is "Default Friend," an internet personality who writes about internet culture and digital communities.  Our discussion starts by using the recent Taylor Lorenz controversy regarding her story on Libs of TikTok to launch into a broader discussion of how the internet and tech are reported on, and why there’s a one-dimensional focus on fear mongering or trend analysis in media coverage of internet culture and digital communities.  We then broaden our conversation to the different era

Apr 28, 2022 • 51:07

The Future of Focused Work with Freedom's Fred Stutzman

The Future of Focused Work with Freedom's Fred Stutzman

Fred Stutzman is founder and CEO of Freedom - a company developing a toolset for the future of focused work in a distraction-first world. Our discussion is about what the future of work will look like in a world where the things that enable remote collaboration, like Slack and email, are the very things which make it hardest to focus. We talk about fighting the negative externalities of social media with tools like Freedom, which blocks distracting websites and apps across your devices. We talk

Apr 25, 2022 • 47:06

Personalized Wellness with Rootine's Rachel Sanders

Personalized Wellness with Rootine's Rachel Sanders

Rachel Sanders is co-founder and CEO at Rootine, a company focused on optimizing health and performance through precision nutrition.Rootine is focused on what they call precision health and nutrition, which involves looking at hundreds of data points to identify your nutritional deficiencies and sending you tailored supplements to optimize your health, along with a way to track if it's working. Our discussion focuses on why there’s no one-size-fits all solution to health and wellness, what cell

Apr 18, 2022 • 35:06

Executive Coaching with Practice's Julien Smith

Executive Coaching with Practice's Julien Smith

Julien Smith is co-founder and CEO at Practice. He's also a bestselling author  and executive coach. Today’s discussion focuses on Julien’s journey from starting as an online author and creator and then turning into a multi-time startup founder, instead of vice versa. We discuss what it takes to make the leap from talking about something to actually doing it, how publishing has changed and why it remains the same, the evolution and trajectory of the executive coaching industry from Tony Robbins’

Apr 14, 2022 • 55:55

Evaluating Climate Risk with Climate X's Lukky Ahmed

Evaluating Climate Risk with Climate X's Lukky Ahmed

Lukky Ahmed is the founder & CEO of Climate X. Today’s discussion is about understanding climate change from the standpoint of how it affects us and the world around us for generations to come, using data and machine learning.  Our conversation covered topics like how climate change can be used to inform risk models for everyone from property holders to businesses to governments, and the variables involved in predicting physical events linked to climate change from flooding to coastal erosion to

Apr 11, 2022 • 48:50

The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

Paul Millerd is author of the Pathless Path, which is about his personal journey of leaving the traditional realm of work and finding something holistic and sustainable. In this conversation we discuss what Paul calls “the default path” — a cultural script we grow up with that tells us what to do in order to be a successful adult, like getting a “forever job”, versus what Paul calls the “pathless path”, a new, more flexible way of defining our relationship with work.  The discussion centers arou

Apr 7, 2022 • 45:49

Execs: Systems for Blitzscaling with former Uber Chief Business Officer Emil Michael

Execs: Systems for Blitzscaling with former Uber Chief Business Officer Emil Michael

Today you’ll hear On Deck CEO Erik Torenberg interview Emil Michael - Uber’s Chief Business Officer during their hypergrowth period from 2013 to 2017. While he was there, Uber grew from 250 employees to 15,000 and raised $15 billion. He shares the lessons he learned and systems he built during this blitzscaling with Erik. For more tactical episodes like this, you can listen to Execs wherever you get your podcasts.

Apr 4, 2022 • 55:13

Reimagining the News with Goodable's Muhammad Lila

Reimagining the News with Goodable's Muhammad Lila

Muhammad Lila is Founder and CEO of Goodable. He is also previously a Warzone Correspondent, leading global news coverage at CNN and ABC. He has been nominated for 2 Emmy awards. Today’s discussion is around Muhammad’s vision for fixing the news by changing it from one of the biggest drivers of anxiety and depression into a cure. This discussion includes topics like how and why more than 90% of news coverage is negative, what this does to our mental health, and how the current news environment w

Mar 31, 2022 • 56:18

Getting 3D Printing Ready for Primetime with Ahead Wind's Rob Paddock

Getting 3D Printing Ready for Primetime with Ahead Wind's Rob Paddock

Rob Paddock is co-founder & CEO of Ahead Wind. Ahead Wind was one of the first companies admitted into ODX and is currently technology that reduces human involvement in 3D printing. Today’s conversation is about the future of 3D printing automation. Rob outlines how the general public is usually under the assumption that 3D printing is a push-button process. He underscores how it isn’t actually that simple in most commercial use cases - human involvement is often needed to calibrate printer sett

Mar 28, 2022 • 39:02

Democratizing Venture Capital with WeFunder's Jonny Price

Democratizing Venture Capital with WeFunder's Jonny Price

Jonny Price is VP of Fundraising at WeFunder. WeFunder describes themselves as Robinhood for pre-IPO startups. In May 2016, the Obama administration made it legal for everyday people to invest as little as $100 in startups or other businesses.On today’s show, Jonny and Marshall talk about how to level the investment playing field. They chat about why it’s a problem that 77% of venture capital has gone to just three states and brainstorm how to build wealth for some of a company's earliest cheerl

Mar 24, 2022 • 40:31

Writing the Code of Life with Trevor Martin

Writing the Code of Life with Trevor Martin

Trevor Martin is founder & CEO of Mammoth Biosciences. Mammoth is  building the platform for CRISPR applications of the future. They currently have technologies built for diagnostics, genome editing, and protein discovery.CRISPR is a novel system that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence. Trevor joins the show to discuss real applications of this technology. He highlights the speed with which CRISPR h

Mar 21, 2022 • 35:31

Culture Centered Care with Spora’s Dan Miller

Culture Centered Care with Spora’s Dan Miller

Dan Miller is Founder & CEO of Spora Health. Spora Health is a radically inclusive, virtual-first telemedicine provider focused on health equity and providing culturally competent care. Today’s conversation is about disparities in health care. Dan shares a little bit about his family’s experience with the healthcare system and outlines how technology can help alleviate some of the challenges that others in similar boats may experience. We also discuss social determinants of health, undiagnosed d

Mar 17, 2022 • 47:17

Edupreneurship with Virtually's Ish Baid

Edupreneurship with Virtually's Ish Baid

Ish Baid is Founder & CEO of Virtually. He's also the host of the popular podcast "Reshaping Education. Virtually is building what it envisions as the Shopify for online schools. Ish and I spend the episode enthusiastically discussing the ongoing disruption of the higher education system. On Deck and Virtually have both built their businesses on the back of cohort-based courses. Ish outlines why they’re here to stay, highlighting how engaging it is for students when everyone else is on the same

Mar 14, 2022 • 52:39

3D Photo Studios with Colorful's Nik Redl

3D Photo Studios with Colorful's Nik Redl

Nikolaus Redl is co founder and CEO of Colorful.app . Nikolaus and the Colorful team are changing how photos are created.Their virtual, drag & drop 3D photo studio allows creators to build stunning photos in minutes. We talk about why this is useful, the future of 3D modeling, and the European tech scene, among many other topics within the future of photography.For more on On Deck’s programs, visit www.beondeck.comHosted by Marshall Kosloff and produced by Jackson Steger

Mar 10, 2022 • 41:29

Trends in Climate Tech with Dr. Clea Kolster of Lowercarbon Capital

Trends in Climate Tech with Dr. Clea Kolster of Lowercarbon Capital

Dr. Clea Kolster is a partner and Head of Science at Lowercarbon capital. Lowercarbon backs companies that make money slashing CO2 emissions and removing carbon out of the atmosphere. Clea leads the firm’s technical research, development, diligence, and scientific strategy efforts. She’s also a founding fellow of On Deck’s Climate Tech programs.Last July, On Deck’s climate director Candice Ammori gave us a sense of how climate tech has moved from a 1.0 era to its 2.0 moment on the heels of evolv

Mar 8, 2022 • 48:48

ODX Fireside: Fixing the Supply Chain with Flexport's Ryan Petersen

ODX Fireside: Fixing the Supply Chain with Flexport's Ryan Petersen

This week, we figured we’d give you a peek under the hood of On Deck’s programs. Every week, dozens of amazing events take place in our programs across sectors (like climate tech, health tech, and longevity) as well as across professional verticals like business development engineering, and many more. Most of these events happen behind closed doors, but this week we’re releasing one of our favorite sessions from the past seven days to provide a taste of what one kind of On Deck event looks like.

Mar 3, 2022 • 1:00:56

The Future of Wallets with Phantom's Francesco Agosti

The Future of Wallets with Phantom's Francesco Agosti

Francesco Agosti is an ODF alum and  co-founder and CTO of Phantom - a wallet for the Solana blockchain.We’ve had many web3 guests on the show in the past year, but none have focused on the wallet. Wallet applications are one of the primary ways in which users interact with blockchains directly. They come in many different forms - some are custodial, meaning they are managed by third parties like Coinbase. Others are non-custodial, meaning nobody owns the public-private keys other than the walle

Feb 28, 2022 • 36:22

The PayPal Diaspora with Jimmy Soni

The PayPal Diaspora with Jimmy Soni

Jimmy Soni  is author of "The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley." The book hit shelves yesterday. In 2022, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered one of the technology industry’s most powerful alumni networks. Since leaving PayPal, these players have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twen

Feb 24, 2022 • 1:00:33

Venture-Backed Video Games with Anthony Geranio

Venture-Backed Video Games with Anthony Geranio

Anthony Geranio is Founder & CEO of 1v1Me and an alum of the On Deck Founders Fellowship.. 1v1Me is an app to play video games for money.We haven’t had a pure e-sports episode yet, so it was great to chat with Anthony about the rise of video games, especially as it has coincided with the rise of regulation in sports betting. Anthony credits these changing macro conditions (as well as COVID shutting down sports leagues for awhile) for how companies like his have been able to quickly come on the s

Feb 21, 2022 • 49:16

Optimizing Portfolios for Global Economic Upheaval with Alexander Harmsen

Optimizing Portfolios for Global Economic Upheaval with Alexander Harmsen

Alexander Harmsen  is Founder & CEO of Global Predictions. Global Predictions has created a wealth optimization platform to help make its users better investors. Alex leaned on his experience in both On Deck Founders and On Deck Investing to make the early product and has now grown a sophisticated Deep Tech company that has built a digital twin of the economy to make unbiased forecasts into the future using hyperconnected simulations, economic modeling, diverse data streams, and machine learning

Feb 17, 2022 • 54:28

Techno-Optimistic Investing with Minn Kim

Techno-Optimistic Investing with Minn Kim

Minn Kim is a Partner at ODX - the community back accelerator and fund that Erik & David previewed on the show back in October. ODX’s first cohort kicked off last month and we were excited to bring someone from the team on, though much of the episode focuses on Minn’s eclectic interests in the intersecting futures of work, fertility, community, and family.This is Minn’s second time on the show - she briefly joined our 2022 Tech Trends episode and underscored her excitement for spatial audio. We

Feb 14, 2022 • 42:53

When Does Fringe Tech Jump to the Mainstream? A Conversation with Mark Yusko

When Does Fringe Tech Jump to the Mainstream? A Conversation with Mark Yusko

Mark Yusko is the founder, chief investment officer, and managing director of Morgan Creek Capital Management - an investment management firm that advises pension funds, endowments, and wealthy individuals.Today’s episode is far-ranging. We chat about network effects, virtual stages, legacy events like the Olympics, Disney, decentralized creative franchises, and much, much more. The one thread that ties everything together: technology becomes mainstream only after first being a fad. A quick remi

Feb 10, 2022 • 1:06:32

Execs: Hyperscaling to $1.3 Billion Revenue with Flexport's Ben Braverman

Execs: Hyperscaling to $1.3 Billion Revenue with Flexport's Ben Braverman

Last fall, On Deck CEOs Erik Torenberg and David Booth joined the show to announce ODX - a new $100M community fund that allows On Deck to invest in the next generation of founders. Shortly after, we announced "ODX Flexport" - our first vertical accelerator that we created in partnership with Flexport. Flexport is on a mission to make global trade easy for everyone. They're a worldwide leader in supply chain logistics and we're thrilled to be working with them.  Today's episode is with Ben Brave

Feb 7, 2022 • 53:34

A Back Office for Creators with Passionfroot’s Jen Phan

A Back Office for Creators with Passionfroot’s Jen Phan

Jen Phan is the co-founder and CEO of Passionfroot. She’s also an alum of On Deck No Code, which past Deep End guest KP runs.This conversation builds off of past creator economy tool discussions that we’ve had with other guests like Joe Albanese and Josh Kaplan.Passionfroot helps creators manage back-office operations so that creators can focus on their content.Our discussion today considers European creators - Passionfroot is based in Berlin and Jen is aware of how many creator tools to date ha

Feb 3, 2022 • 48:44

Democratizing Hedge Funds with Composer's Ben Rollert

Democratizing Hedge Funds with Composer's Ben Rollert

Joining Marshall this week in the Deep End is ODF alum Ben Rollert, CEO and Co-Founder of Composer. Composer allows its users to easily build a portfolio of hedge fund-like strategies.After we ended last year talking about DeFi and other blockchain innovations with cypher, it was refreshing to have a conversation about innovation in traditional finance, particularly in the retail investment space.The rise and sustained success of apps like Robinhood have enabled the manifestation of a legitimate

Jan 31, 2022 • 44:27

Introducing Execs: A Tactical Podcast for Founders in Hypergrowth

Introducing Execs: A Tactical Podcast for Founders in Hypergrowth

The Deep End returns in full on Monday. Until then: we're excited to announce Execs.Execs is a new On Deck show for founders who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks and tactics that leading technology companies today have used to scale.Guests are experienced, non-founding tech executives in key roles at top companies with firsthand experience solving hard and rare problems for a fast-growing business.On Execs, they share their hard-won ‘earned secrets’  to pass on their knowledge and he

Jan 27, 2022 • 1:24:47

2022 Tech Trends

2022 Tech Trends

Today is the last episode of the year, and so we’re celebrating by doing something a little different. Rather than have a single guest on, we invited 11 senior On Deck employees to answer a single question: What trend do you expect to change, emerge, or accelerate in 2022? To help them answer honestly, we were very clear that these aren’t necessarily predictions. Instead, my colleagues were instructed to think about patterns they’ve noticed this past year and project how they might shift or cont

Dec 20, 2021 • 57:22

The Internet Salon with Interintellect's Anna Gát

The Internet Salon with Interintellect's Anna Gát

Anna Gat is Founder and CEO of Interintellect. Interintellect describes itself as having reinventing the french salon for the 21st century.The salons of Early Modern Revolutionary France played an integral role in the cultural and intellectual development of France. The salons were seen by contemporary writers as a cultural hub, for the upper middle class and aristocracy, responsible for the dissemination of good manners and sociability.The interintellect team has built a curated marketplace for

Dec 15, 2021 • 58:18

Crypto & Tradfi with the Cypher Protocol Team

Crypto & Tradfi with the Cypher Protocol Team

This is probably our most in-the-weeds web3 episode yet. If you’re newer to crypto, we recommend you scroll back through your feed and listen to any of our episodes with Patrick Riera, Cooper Turley, and several others to give yourself a background to enjoy this one fully. As a bonus, you can also listen to our episode with Stephen Sikes from Public to build a background in traditional finance.Joining Marshall this week in the Deep End is Barrett. Marshall introduces Barrett by first name only b

Dec 13, 2021 • 55:54

Overcoming the Six Stages of Health Tech Grief with Nikhil Krishnan

Overcoming the Six Stages of Health Tech Grief with Nikhil Krishnan

A reminder that we’re still looking for a researcher in residence. If you want to be a personal trainer of the mind for On Deck’s CEOs, head over to beondeck.com/researcher Nikhil Krishnan is the author of the Out of Pocket newsletter. Out-of-Pocket is making the business of healthcare easy to understand. Nikhil writes in plain English and compliments industry analysis with memes and humor.We haven’t done a true digital health episode yet, and Nikhil was the perfect person to provide us with an

Dec 8, 2021 • 53:29

Frictionless Generosity with Overflow's Vance Roush

Frictionless Generosity with Overflow's Vance Roush

Vance Roush is Founder of Overflow. Overflow is building the infrastructure to make generosity frictionless across every major asset class. Vance is on a mission to democratize philanthropy to the masses. Through his experience with churches and other non-profits, he has become keenly aware of how the top percentile has leveraged wealth management tricks and tips to donate stock (instead of cash) for decades. There are huge tax and savings benefits to doing this. Vance knows that that benefit ca

Dec 6, 2021 • 51:20

Resurrecting Extinct Species with Colossal's Ben Lamm

Resurrecting Extinct Species with Colossal's Ben Lamm

On Deck is hiring a Researcher in Residence to be a "personal trainer for the mind" for our two co-CEOs. To learn more, please visit beondeck.com/researcher Hot off last week’s episode about helping extend human life, this episode is about how to bring certain long-gone animals back to life. This week, Ben Lamm (Founder & CEO of Colossal Biosciences) joins The Deep End. Colossal describes itself as a genetic engineering company interested in extinct species restoration through radically new geno

Dec 1, 2021 • 56:38

Deep Tech 101 with James Sinka

Deep Tech 101 with James Sinka

This week, we are joined in the Deep End by James Sinka - cofounder of On Deck’s Deep Tech program. Some of our past Deep End guests (and many On Deck fellows) are working at the bleeding edge of technology. So far, we’ve talked to founders of biotech companies, space manufacturers, and more.Deep Tech is a category of innovation that exists at the intersection of many different fields under the technology umbrella. Modern advancements in computer infrastructure enable new sophisticated methods o

Nov 29, 2021 • 53:22

Making Lifespan Malleable with Dr. Kristen Fortney

Making Lifespan Malleable with Dr. Kristen Fortney

Dr. Kristen Fortney is CEO & cofounder of BIOAGE - a company working on slowing aging and chronic disease.Figuring out how to live longer is an age-old problem. For as long as humans have studied medicine, we have tried to learn which remedies, habits, and environments best position us to have a chance of long life.Recent developments in the last few decades have, for the first time in human history, opened up the door for serious progress into understanding how humans and animals age. Last seas

Nov 24, 2021 • 42:05

Launching an Africa-Focused Venture Fund with Abe Choi

Launching an Africa-Focused Venture Fund with Abe Choi

Abe Choi is a prolific angel investor and CEO of Simple Dealer. Abe has partnered with another high-profile angel investor named Olumide Soyombo to create Voltron Capital - a Pan African venture capital firm. This is our first pure VC episode in awhile and it was refreshing to hear about some of the dynamics on the venture side as opposed to the founder side.Africa is massive. One of our first questions that we ask Abe was about how his firm expects to develop a consistent thesis for the contine

Nov 22, 2021 • 46:23

Minimalist Entrepreneurship with Gumroad's Sahil Lavingia

Minimalist Entrepreneurship with Gumroad's Sahil Lavingia

Sahil Lavingia is CEO of Gumroad and author of The Minimalist Entrepreneur. Many of our recent guests are recently-forged pioneers in the creator economy space, but Sahil has been building the passion economy since before it was cool. In 2011, Sahil founded Gumroad to help creators sell content directly to consumers. He was 19 at the time.But this episode isn't strictly about the passion economy, though we do chat about ideas like gatekeepers and shifting creator incentives. Much of today's disc

Nov 17, 2021 • 57:44

Mental Shifts from Web2 to Web 3 with Tina He

Mental Shifts from Web2 to Web 3 with Tina He

Tina He is an investor with Pace Capital and is also on the founding team at Station - which bills itself as building the rails for web 3. Her work with Pace & Station has helped her identify the myriad mental shifts that builders need to make when migrating from web 2 to web 3.Today's conversation is about those mental shifts. For example, the legal infrastructure that exists today has not caught up to technology's most recent community-organizing abilities. As DAOs gain more credibility and so

Nov 15, 2021 • 59:50

The Work-in-Progress Web with The.com's Clarke & Jeff McKinnon

The Work-in-Progress Web with The.com's Clarke & Jeff McKinnon

Recently, many of our guests have been pioneers in the web3 space. Patrick Rivera provided a particularly helpful framework for understanding different eras of the web when he was on the show. From him, and other guests like Cooper Turley, we've learned that web3 is special because it enables users to have ownership of their different networks. Today's guests share the optimism of our past guests, but also note that the web3 is still in its infancy and is very much a work in progress.Those guest

Nov 10, 2021 • 54:04

The Sanctity of the Inbox with Jake Singer & Jake Schonberger

The Sanctity of the Inbox with Jake Singer & Jake Schonberger

A few weeks ago, our show carried a special announcement that On Deck had raised a $100 million fund to fuel the next generation of entrepreneurs. Swapstack, cofounded by Jake Singer & Jake Schonberger, is the first company to be accepted into an ODX cohort and receive a check for $125k check from the fund.Swapstack is positioned to be the premier newsletter advertising marketplace, connecting brands with writers to help the latter be able to become full time creators. The inbox, as the Jakes cl

Nov 8, 2021 • 50:38

Building Education Treadmills with Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko

Building Education Treadmills with Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko

Primer cofounders Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko join the Deep End after meeting through On Deck. They are currently building a community for curious and ambitious kids to find and explore their interests together.Education is deeply personal, and so our conversation begins on a personal note, with a discussion of Ryan's background growing up homeschooled & Maksim's experience with highly structured curriculum back home in Kyrgyzstan.Both of them look back on their own learning experience and lam

Nov 3, 2021 • 56:25

Beyond the Meme Stocks with Stephen Sikes (COO of Public.com)

Beyond the Meme Stocks with Stephen Sikes (COO of Public.com)

Today conversation with Stephen Sikes (COO of Public) is about how millions of Americans are entering the stock market for the first time with mindsets and behaviors unlike any generation that has come before. New investors, particularly those who have started recently via a mobile app, believe they're part of a movement that's making investing more inclusive and accessible.Public exists to help these people get started investing and become better, more thoughtful investors too. In that vein, we

Nov 1, 2021 • 45:43

Navigating the Founder Journey as a Creator with Nathan Baschez

Navigating the Founder Journey as a Creator with Nathan Baschez

Nathan Baschez joins the Deep End to discuss the passion economy, the realities of building a media business, and gets real with Marshall about  the realities of embarking on the founder journey as a creator. The two also chat about Every, which Nathan describes as a writer collective for productivity, strategy, leadership, & culture.This conversation with Nathan blends a few different threads that we've covered on The Deep End. Nathan's background as a prolific writer & podcaster makes this a n

Oct 27, 2021 • 1:01:43

The Smart Business Bundle with Doug Ludlow

The Smart Business Bundle with Doug Ludlow

Joining the Deep End is Doug Ludlow, CEO of Mainstreet. Today's conversation is about the unbundling and re-bundling of the smart bank and how the 35 million small businesses in the US can benefit from aggregating their business identity data in one place.We talk about helping small businesses navigate PPP loans during COVID, discuss how startups can earn tax credits easily for things like research & development and other ways that  Mainstreet can help restore America's economy coming out of the

Oct 25, 2021 • 50:10

Special Announcement: Funding the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs with David Booth & Erik Torenberg

Special Announcement: Funding the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs with David Booth & Erik Torenberg

At On Deck, we believe that startups are the building blocks of a better future. Startups drive global economic growth by creating jobs, improving quality of life, and making meaningful progress to solving society's biggest problems. We also believe that the the biggest constraint on startup creation is the number of founders - for each person starting a company today, there are hundreds more sitting on the sidelines. This is an enormous waste of human potential.That's why we are excited to anno

Oct 21, 2021 • 41:29

E-Commerce Engineering with Sara Du

E-Commerce Engineering with Sara Du

Joining Marshall in the Deep End is Sara Du - cofounder & CEO of Alloy Automation,  a no-code tool for automating e-commerce stores.The conversation begins by discussing how the line between commerce and e-commerce is blurring as e-commerce penetration continues to accelerate across the consumer economy.  This trend was certainly accelerated by the pandemic, but Sara notes that Black Friday shopping patterns and other indicators suggest that such a shift was inevitable anyways.The discussion the

Oct 20, 2021 • 50:26

Building in Public with Karthik Puvvada

Building in Public with Karthik Puvvada

Karthik Puvvada (known by his friends and online as "KP") is the Program Director for On Deck No-Code and is also a leader of the "build in public" movement that is taking the internet by storm. Today's conversation takes place at the intersection of those two tech trends.When KP thinks about building in public, he encourages his audience to use content as a lighthouse to attract other people to your circle. These content pieces help to signal that you're serious about a certain niche and help p

Oct 18, 2021 • 1:02:10

Creator-Operators with Josh Kaplan

Creator-Operators with Josh Kaplan

Josh Kaplan was an early employee at Morning Brew and was a product manager during their meteoric rise as a media company. Now, he’s taken what he has learned as an operator in a creative space and applied it to his role as co-founder and CEO of Smooth Ops to help content creators scale their businesses.Today’s conversation is about the deeply challenging logistics involved in the creator economy. Josh contends that most creators find themselves thinking relatively short-term. While it’s importa

Oct 13, 2021 • 1:06:58

The Pseudonymous Meritocracy with Bored Elon Musk

The Pseudonymous Meritocracy with Bored Elon Musk

Bored Elon Musk  (one of Twitter's largest pseudonyms with 1.7 million followers) joins us to discuss the nature of pseudonyms and his investment activity. We also chat about the metaverse, the pseudonymous tech stack, the future of deep fakes, and much more.Pseudonyms are interesting because they are inherently meritocratic. Bias isn't possible because nobody knows who you really are. As the internet becomes more crypto-native and employment becomes more fluid, pseudonyms will only continue to

Oct 11, 2021 • 52:56

Training Emotional Fitness with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Training Emotional Fitness with Dr. Emily Anhalt

This week's guest on The Deep End is Dr. Emily Anhalt. Dr. Anhalt is a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, which describes itself as building a gym for your mental health.Today's conversation is about how to train for emotional fitness. Just like trainers at a traditional gym might rotate clients between a leg day, chest day, and shoulder day, Dr. Anhalt and her colleagues have developed classes to train different traits of emotional

Oct 6, 2021 • 53:54

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) with Cooper Turley (AKA Coopahtroopa)

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) with Cooper Turley (AKA Coopahtroopa)

Cooper Turley leads a handful of online communities known as DAOs. "DAO" is an acronym that stands for a decentralized autonomous organization. In more colloquial terms, a DAO is an internet community with a shared cap table and bank account. They represent humanity's newest structure for cooperative decision making.Cooper joined us for a live episode last week to help explain why DAOs are exploding in popularity. In our discussion, he explained their governance structures, described the differe

Oct 4, 2021 • 57:16

The Open-Source Renaissance with Peer Richelsen

The Open-Source Renaissance with Peer Richelsen

It's a new season of the Deep End and we're moving to two episodes per week (Mondays + Wednesdays)!We lay the groundwork for all of our upcoming episodes by discussing the nature of the open-source web. Our guest, Cal.com Co-CEO Peer Richelsen, views the internet as a democratic, transparent, and open technology that is undergoing a renaissance. Open-source software development was the spiritual precursor to 2021's web 3 boom. Tinkerers like Peer are ecstatic that technologists are returning to

Sep 29, 2021 • 58:11

Scaling Expertise with Dr. Hollis Robbins

Scaling Expertise with Dr. Hollis Robbins

Dean Hollis Robbins wears many hats: Administrator, teacher, scholar of black sonnets... but she's also an expert on expertise itself. Today's conversation is about frameworks for organizing knowledge. Dr. Robbins argues that our modern society suffers from mismanaged "self-secretarying" - most of us receive no formal training in how to process & sort the huge amounts of information that we have to process every day. She also straddles the line between higher education and tech. Her involvement

Sep 22, 2021 • 57:33

The Next Crypto Cycle - web3, DAOs, and NFTs with Patrick Rivera

The Next Crypto Cycle - web3, DAOs, and NFTs with Patrick Rivera

Patrick Rivera (Product Engineer at Mirror and alum of ODF + ODW) has a front seat on the edge of the crypto revolution. He details the evolution of the internet from Web 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0, discusses the crypto-native creator economy, paints a picture of the current crypto landscape (and challenges), and provides some predictions for the future. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Sep 15, 2021 • 1:00:09

Reimagining Remote Work with Flo Crivello

Reimagining Remote Work with Flo Crivello

Flo Crivello (CEO of Teamflow) believes that a new way of working calls for an entirely new set of tools. In this conversation, we explore how employers can curate a new kind of space that looks virtual, but feels intimate and collaborative in the same way a traditional office does. Our wide-ranging conversation covers text-based productivity vs. video-based work, the entrance of Facebook into the remote work space, the implications of visa immigrations in a borderless world, and much more. For

Sep 8, 2021 • 49:41

Mission-Driven Cities with Marc Lore

Mission-Driven Cities with Marc Lore

We sit down with Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur and self-described "moonshot seeker." He has successfully founded and sold three companies, including Jet.com, which sold to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Now, he's building a mission-driven city called, "Telosa," which comes from an Aristotle-coined word "Telos," meaning "a higher purpose.”For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Sep 1, 2021 • 49:08

Citizens of the Metaverse with Gaby Goldberg and Shriya Nevatia

Citizens of the Metaverse with Gaby Goldberg and Shriya Nevatia

We sit down with Gaby Goldberg, investor at Bessemer and explorer of the metaverse. Also joining us is Shriya Nevatia, program director of On Deck Catalyst.For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Aug 25, 2021 • 1:00:31

Space 3.0 Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda Space Industries and principal at Founders Fund

Space 3.0 Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda Space Industries and principal at Founders Fund

We sit down with Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda Space Industries. He explains why Varda’s mission statement is to “expand the economic bounds of humanity” and how its success will do for space what the gold rush did for California.For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comNext Monday we're hosting a live podcast recording and Q&A about the metaverse and web3 with Gaby Goldberg, investor at Bessemer Venture Partners (RSVP for free)

Aug 18, 2021 • 59:27

Creating New Categories: Metabolic Health with Sam Corcos & Andrew Conner, co-founders of Levels

Creating New Categories: Metabolic Health with Sam Corcos & Andrew Conner, co-founders of Levels

We sit down with Sam and Andrew who, since meeting during On Deck, have gone on to co-found a startup called Levels together. Their goal is nothing short of changing the way the world interacts with food through the creation of a whole new product category centered around metabolic health. For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comNext Monday we're hosting a live podcast recording and Q&A with Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Varda S

Aug 11, 2021 • 1:00:01

On Ramps to Investing with Kyla Scanlon

On Ramps to Investing with Kyla Scanlon

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comComing up this month we're doing live recordings (free to attend) with...Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Varda Space industries on manufacturing in outer space (RSVP)Jack Carlson of Rowing Blazers on building iconic fashion brands from scratch (RSVP)

Aug 4, 2021 • 1:01:19

Climate Technology with Candice Ammori

Climate Technology with Candice Ammori

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Jul 28, 2021 • 54:10

Internet Culture and Community with Fadeke Adegbuyi

Internet Culture and Community with Fadeke Adegbuyi

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Jul 21, 2021 • 53:01

How Packy McCormick Plays The Great Online Game

How Packy McCormick Plays The Great Online Game

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com

Jul 14, 2021 • 1:01:39

Thesis-Driven Investing with Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures

Thesis-Driven Investing with Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comRebecca Kaden on Twitter: @rebeccakaden

Jul 9, 2021 • 25:41

Ecommerce and the Vanishing Middle with Web Smith

Ecommerce and the Vanishing Middle with Web Smith

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comWeb Smith on Twitter: @web

Jul 7, 2021 • 36:11

Web3 with Jarrod Dicker, investor at the Chernin Group

Web3 with Jarrod Dicker, investor at the Chernin Group

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.comJarrod Dicker on Twitter: @jarroddicker

Jun 30, 2021 • 57:59

The Future of Cities with Bradley Tusk, Political Strategist and Venture Capitalist at Tusk Ventures

The Future of Cities with Bradley Tusk, Political Strategist and Venture Capitalist at Tusk Ventures

Two articles from Bradley Tusk:Jordan and Bradley debate the future of cities and WFHHow will tech’s biggest policy fights play out in 2021?

Jun 23, 2021 • 53:02

Cracking Longevity with Celine Halioua, Founder and CEO of Loyal

Cracking Longevity with Celine Halioua, Founder and CEO of Loyal

Show LinksCeline on Twitter: @celinehaliouaLoyal’s website: Recent coverage of Loyal in Bloomberg by Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk’s biographer): If Dogs Live Longer With Anti-Aging Science, Humans Could, TooWhy I Hope to Die at 75What I Wanted to Build: Can Corporations Bring Socialized Healthcare to the United States?Laura Deming’s Longevity FAQ

Jun 16, 2021 • 1:03:58

Going Independent with Saagar Enjeti, Co-host of Breaking Points

Going Independent with Saagar Enjeti, Co-host of Breaking Points

Links:Breaking Points websiteSagaar on Twitter: @esaagarSupercastArticle: Howard Stern is Getting Ripped Off

Jun 9, 2021 • 56:19

Creator Tools with Joe Albanese, Co-founder and CEO of Stir

Creator Tools with Joe Albanese, Co-founder and CEO of Stir

Joe's Twitter: @josephpalbaneseStirLi Jin — investor in StirNathan Bashez — co-founder of Every.to — a bundle of newsletters and podcastsSidechannel — Discord for writers

Jun 2, 2021 • 51:53

Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and Founder of 1729

Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and Founder of 1729

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:1729 - Founding vs. Inheriting and the Network Union, 2021Why Software Is Eating The World by Marc Andreessen, 2011Software Is Reorganizing the World by Balaji Srinivasan, 2013YCombinator Talk about Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit, 2013The Deep End is produced by On Deck -  where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit be

May 26, 2021 • 1:53:00

Civic Tech with Katherine Boyle, Partner at General Catalyst

Civic Tech with Katherine Boyle, Partner at General Catalyst

The Deep End is produced by On Deck -  where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit beondeck.com. For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End check out ideas.beondeck.com.

May 26, 2021 • 52:18

Higher Education with Erik Torenberg, co-founder of On Deck and Village Global

Higher Education with Erik Torenberg, co-founder of On Deck and Village Global

The Deep End is produced by On Deck -  where top talent goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs visit beondeck.com. For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End check out ideas.beondeck.com.

May 26, 2021 • 46:31

Trailer: Let’s dive in

Trailer: Let’s dive in

Host Marshall Kosloff shares what’s “on deck” for The Deep End. Launching May 26th. Subscribe today!

May 21, 2021 • 1:06

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