AngelList Radio

Keith Rabois knows a bit about building successful teams. As a member of the famous “PayPal Mafia,” the list of companies he's helped build includes Square, Yelp, LinkedIn, Opendoor, and Khosla Ventures, where he is currently a managing director. That's the short version. We interviewed Keith about business management. Over the course of the interview, he broke down how he puts together such world-class teams. Summary: https://angel.co/blog/how-keith-rabois-builds-billion-dollar-businesses-radical-simplicity

We wanted to give you an update on a story we brought to you a couple years ago. In 2016, Drew Wilson had just raised money to grow Plasso (angel.co/plasso), a payment subscription business that he founded. We're happy to report that a few months ago, in September 2018, Plasso was acquired by GoDaddy The host of AngelList Radio, Tyler Willis, recently spoke with Drew for nearly two hours. Drew speaks frankly about his learnings starting Plasso, scaling the company, and getting acquired.     

We interviewed Steve Newcomb and learned how he hires and manages top talent.  Steve has founded several companies, including Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft and ultimately became the underlying technology behind Microsoft Bing.  Powerset was one of the most-respected startups in the late 2000s. It launched with the mission of building a better search engine than Google, attracted top investors like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, and built an exceptionally talented team with employees that ultimately went on to found other important startups like Github, Serious Business (acquired by Zynga), and Crowdflower.  In 2010, after having sold Powerset to Microsoft, Steve wrote Cult Creation—one of the best guides to hiring and management at startups. Today, he's releasing an updated version of Cult Creation with all the lessons he's learned from running his current company, Famous.  In this episode, Steve shares his favorite advice to founders from Cult Creation and talks about what additional lessons he's learned over last six years. 

We interview Dr. Jenny Rooke and learn how to invest in life sciences startups.  Dr. Rooke is a founder of 5 Prime Ventures and has invested in companies like Caribou Biosciences, Zymergen, and Zephyrus Biosciences (acquired by Bio-Techne).

We interview Parker Thompson and learn from his attempt to raise a new venture fund and how he wants to support more professional investors on AngelList. Parker recently joined AngelList as a Partner and previously ran the San Francisco office for 500 Startups. Some of Parker's investments at 500 included AirPair, Breather, and Mayvenn.

We interview Dustin Dolginow and learn how he picks which investors to back on AngelList. Dustin is a General Partner at Maiden Lane and previously worked in venture capital at Accomplice. Maiden Lane invests in syndicate deals and has invested in over a hundred companies since 2014. Some of Maiden Lane's existing investments include Beepi, Checkr, Cruise Automation (acquired by GM), and Luxe.

In our fourth episode, we interview Kirill Makharinsky and learn what factors can statistically predict a company's future success.Kirill is the CEO and Co-founder of Enki and previously co-founded Ostrovok and Quid. He is an early investor in fifteen startups, including TokBox (acquired by Telefonica), AngelList, and RoboteX.  

In our third episode, we interview Jason Calacanis and learn the best way to allocate capital at the seed-stage and how to use syndicates to improve your odds as a new investor. Jason was the first scout at Sequoia Capital and is an investor in Uber, Thumbtack, and over 100 other startups.

In the second episode of AngelList Radio, we interviewed Sumon Sadhu and learned how to improve as an angel investor and why he thinks “national empires” are good investment opportunities.  Sumon explains why he’s excited about investing in international startups like Mobius Motors (an African car company), Chaldal (a Bangladeshi delivery company), and ClearTax (a Indian electronic tax filing company).

Rick Marini has founded and sold three companies, and is an investor in Snapchat, Reddit, and over 40 other companies. In this hour long interview, we learn in-depth how Rick got started angel investing and what you can learn from his experience as a very successful entrepreneur and angel investor.

Our host, Tyler Willis, talks about the goals for season 1 of AngelList radio.