Geeks Of The Valley

Vinnie Lauria is the founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm launched in 2011. Before becoming an investor, he built two startups in Silicon Valley, including Lefora, a community platform acquired in 2010. A year backpacking through Asia introduced him to founders with ambitious ideas but limited access to capital, inspiring him to settle in Singapore and connect Silicon Valley’s experience with Southeast Asia’s emerging startup ecosystem. His investment experience includes Stripe, AngelList, Carro, and Carousell. Kauffman FellowsToday, Vinnie focuses on backing founders in emerging startup ecosystems across Southeast Asia and the Gulf. He explains how firsthand experience with painful problems informed his investments, why Carousell’s early traffic spikes revealed a retention problem, and what makes an ecosystem ready for venture capital. Drawing on his book, Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures, he explores why business models do not travel as easily as founders expect. The conversation also examines Singapore’s position as a base for international AI businesses, the cultural nuances behind regional language models, and why listening to feedback can matter as much as conviction.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentlauria/Website: https://www.goldengate.vc/

Lise Birikundavyi is the co-founder and managing partner of BKR Capital, Canada’s first institutionally backed Black-led venture capital firm. Her career spans hedge funds, impact investing, and startup leadership, with experience across North America, Asia, and Africa. Those experiences shaped her investment philosophy around a persistent mismatch between entrepreneurial talent and access to capital, and the opportunity to back founders other investors overlook.At BKR Capital, Lise backs Black-led technology companies and the global networks that help them grow. In this conversation, she reflects on the firm’s $22.3 million first fund, its investments in 15 companies, and how those lessons are shaping its second fund. She explains why diaspora connections can become a competitive advantage in finding customers, recruiting talent, and expanding between Canada, Africa, and the Caribbean. The discussion also explores choosing investors whose incentives fit the business, recognizing a founder’s ability to attract exceptional people, and the governance and operational demands of building an institutional venture firm. Through the BKR Catalyst Institute, Lise is also helping develop the next generation of investors and emerging fund managers.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisebiri/Website: https://www.bkrcapital.ca/

Rudy Burger is the founder and managing partner of Woodside Capital Partners, where he advises technology companies on mergers and acquisitions. Before becoming an advisor, he worked in digital imaging at IBM, helped take Visioneer public, held senior roles at Xerox and NEC Packard Bell, and served as the founding CEO of MIT Media Lab Europe. Leading the restructuring of a UK public company gave him a firsthand view of what founders need from an M&A advisor.Rudy explains why a deep-tech company’s sale price may bear little resemblance to its last venture valuation, the capital it has raised, or a standard revenue multiple. Across these shifts, his advice is to understand the market for a technology rather than assume its promise will determine its price.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudy-burger-925a71Website: https://woodsidecap.com

Brian Folmer is the founder of FirstLook and FirstLook Ventures, a consumer-focused investor network connecting emerging brands with a community of accredited investors. Through FirstLook’s product-driven investor experience, he has built a platform that helps founders put their brands directly in front of potential backers while creating a more hands-on way to discover the next generation of consumer companies.At FirstLook Ventures, Brian invests in Seed through Series B consumer brands and evaluates opportunities through more than early traction alone. He shares what makes a consumer business compelling to investors, how founders can frame a credible fundraising story, the signals behind product and brand-market fit, and why relationships, thoughtful positioning, and realistic capital plans matter in a competitive CPG market. The conversation is a practical look at how founders can stand out and how investors assess enduring consumer brands.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfolmerWebsite: https://firstlook.vc

Adam Grosser is the Chairman and Managing Partner of UP.Partners, an investment firm backing entrepreneurs building the technologies that help move people and goods faster, safer, and more efficiently. Before founding UP.Partners, Adam was a General Partner at Foundation Capital and a Managing Director at Silver Lake, where he led the Energy and Resources Fund. Shaped by early lessons from innovators including Steve Jobs and George Lucas. In this episode, learn why AI is moving from bits to atoms, how he evaluates high-conviction physical AI investments, why technical moats and supply-chain resilience matter, and why ambitious founders should seek meaningful problems.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamgrosserWebsite: https://up.partners/

Greg Selkoe is the Co-Founder and CEO of XSET, a gaming lifestyle and media brand operating at the intersection of gaming, music, sports, fashion, and culture. Before launching XSET, Greg founded the streetwear e-commerce company Karmaloop and later served as President and Co-Owner of FaZe Clan, giving him decades of experience building brands around emerging cultural movements.At XSET, Greg is developing a creator-led media platform designed for Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. In this episode, he discusses the lessons he learned from success and failure, the importance of resilience and choosing the right business partners, why gaming has become a defining force in popular culture, and how XSET is helping brands connect authentically with the next generation of consumers.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-selkoe-3b9964ab/Website: https://xset.com

Jonathan Hung is the Managing Partner of Entrepreneur Ventures, an early-stage signal fund investing in a broad portfolio of promising startups through fast, conviction-driven checks. Before launching the fund, Jonathan invested more than $10 million across 250 companies and 50 venture funds, building an extensive view of what separates durable founders from short-term momentum.He is also the author of Your Emergency Contact, which explores why trust, reliability, and strong professional relationships are essential to building successful companies and investment partnerships. Earlier in his career, Jonathan helped operate his family’s international textile business, an experience that shaped his practical approach to entrepreneurship, leadership, and capital allocation.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhung/Website: https://www.entrepreneur.vc

Tom ArrixTom Arrix is the founder and CEO of Get Joy, a Connecticut-based pet wellness company building what may be the first truly functional gut-health platform for dogs. Before pivoting to pet nutrition, he spent nearly three decades at the top of media, sports, and advertising — most notably at Facebook, where as VP of Global Marketing Solutions for North America he built and led the company's North American advertising business, growing it from roughly $18 million to over one billion dollars in revenue.Tom's career spans several of the defining media companies of the last 30 years. He began in banking before moving into media, holding senior roles at Turner Broadcasting and serving as SVP of Digital Sales & Marketing at CBS Sports, ahead of his landmark run at Facebook. In 2016 he co-founded Adjacency Partners, a business advisory firm helping early-stage companies scale faster — a bridge that kept him close to founders as he considered his own next chapter.That chapter became deeply personal. After his Golden Retriever, Cooper, was diagnosed with lymphoma, Tom immersed himself in canine nutrition, and the power of whole-food nutrition gave him and Cooper 18 more months together. That experience led him to found Get Joy, built on a gut-health thesis and its BellyBiotics line. Today the company has launched across 477 Sprouts Farmers Market doors nationwide, counts Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner as its wellness ambassador, is trusted by more than 30,000 pet parents, and runs much of its operations — from customer service to marketing analytics — on AI. Largely bootstrapped, Tom's vision is to make Get Joy for dog nutrition what AG1 has become for human health: a daily, foundational product pet parents never question.🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-arrix-668a7771

Sid Ramesh is founder of Centennial, a New York based advisory firm specializing in fractional cybersecurity, product strategy, and M&A support for companies building across crypto, fintech, and artificial intelligence. He has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of digital assets, financial infrastructure, product development, and venture investing.Sid began his crypto career building and advising early-stage blockchain companies before joining Dharma Labs, where he worked on go-to-market strategy and partnerships during the early development of decentralized lending. He later worked across product and go-to-market at dYdX, helping develop crypto-native derivatives infrastructure, and held product roles at Valiu. He joined Coinbase as a Lead Product Manager, helping build its DeFi-powered crypto borrowing product and contributing to Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin, or cbBTC. His work focused on connecting decentralized financial infrastructure with the security, compliance, and distribution requirements of a regulated global platform.Today, Sid is an active angel investor and advisor to founders across crypto, fintech, and AI. He works with companies on cybersecurity, product development, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, and the design of trusted financial products.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidrmshWebsite: https://www.centennial.systems

Jeff Zielinski is CFO of Hong Kong-based Buyandship, a leading cross-border e-commerce platform with operations across Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. He has spent his entire career working at the intersection of Asia, TMT, and finance.Jeff began his career in 2000 in Morgan Stanley's technology investment banking group in Hong Kong, working on transactions for many of Asia's largest technology companies. From 2005 to 2015, he was with Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies (GSPS) and Azentus Capital — the Asia GSPS spinoff — captaining investments in TMT and Greater China across the major technology verticals, including internet, e-commerce, semiconductors, and hardware. At Goldman Sachs, he also represented GSPS Asia on the firm's Asia Pacific Risk Committee, and was a founding partner at Azentus when it spun off from Goldman in 2011 under the Volcker Rule. Earlier in his career, he held technology-related roles at News Corporation.Today, alongside his work at Buyandship, Jeff is an active investor and advisor in the regional technology ecosystem and serves with education-focused nonprofits in the community.LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/jeff-zielinski