Sand Hill Road
by NBC Bay Area
What makes Silicon Valley the innovation capital of the world? It all starts on Sand Hill Road, considered the mecca of venture capital. Join us for insightful interviews from the heart of Silicon Valley with the VCs, start-ups and innovators behind the trending technologies of tomorrow. Hosted by NBC Bay Area business and technology reporter and host of Press:Here, Scott McGrew.
Episodes
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Jeremy Kaufmann: The AI Investments Silicon Valley Is Missing
Silicon Valley said software would eat the world. Now one venture capitalist thinks the biggest opportunities in artificial intelligence may involve something software companies once avoided: hardware. Jeremy Kaufmann, partner at Scale Venture Partners, is investing in companies that combine AI...
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Ben Freeman's Bet on the Next PayPal Mafia
Imagine telling your boss you want to quit and start your own company and your boss offers money to do it. That's exactly what Ben Freeman is promising employees at Omnea, the AI-powered procurement startup he founded. Backed by $75 million from investors including Accel and Khosla Ventures,...
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Sabrina Paseman: Why Manufacturers May Resist the AI They Need
Some of the most valuable knowledge in American manufacturing isn't stored in computers. It's in the heads of longtime factory workers who know exactly what to do when something goes wrong. And many of those workers are approaching retirement. Sabrina Paseman, a former Apple engineer who helped...
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SVLG's Ahmad Thomas: Beyond the Data Centers
Ahmad Thomas, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, joins Scott McGrew to unpack why seven in ten Americans oppose data centers and why he thinks that opposition is really about AI anxiety. Thomas argues data centers have become a physical stand-in for broader fears over jobs, energy costs,...
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Gradient Ventures Darian Shirazi on AI, Moats and China
Gradient Ventures' Darian Shirazi says the real winners of the AI era won't be the companies with the best models - it'll be whoever owns the data centers, the chips, and the compute underneath them. Fresh off spinning out of Google, Shirazi explains why Gradient has steered away from funding...
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2026 Venture Capital Reading List
Leah Solivan — Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston Alice Bentink — A Work in Progress by Rene Redzepi David Spreng — All Money Is Not Created Equal by David Spreng Caitlin Holloway — Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull Grant Lee — Seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer Vas Natarajan — Thinking in Bets by...
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Andy Chen: The Convenient Cofounder Penalty
Andy Chen of Outcast Ventures spent 15 years at Kleiner Perkins and Coatue studying what actually makes startups succeed — and the data surprised him. After analyzing every U.S. IPO and acquisition over $1 billion in the past two decades, Chen found that founders who didn't know each other...
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PR Yu: Ethical Capital at Speed
PR Yu is one of the largest solo GPs in the world — a sole decision-maker controlling hundreds of millions of dollars, with ~100 LPs heading into Fund IV who keep coming back. At Yu Galaxy, no partners means no committees, and deals can close in hours. His portfolio spans healthcare, robotics…
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David Spreng: Why Debt Isn't a Dirty Word
David Spreng has spent a career in the gap between venture capital and the bank down the street. As founder of Runway Growth Capital, he writes $40 million loans to companies that are too established to be called startups and too unconventional to get a traditional bank loan.
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Leah Solivan: Muscle of Conviction
Leah Solivan built TaskRabbit from scratch during the 2008 financial crisis, scaled it into a global platform, and sold it to IKEA — then crossed the table to become an investor. What she learned on both sides: venture capital is a system, it runs on incentives, and most founders don't understand...
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Jack Leeney of 7GC: Why IPOs Are Optional Now
Summary: Jack Leeney, partner at 7GC, shares insights from his career at Morgan Stanley — where he worked on IPOs for Tesla, LinkedIn, and Facebook — to his current role investing in AI. He breaks down how IPO pricing works, why the public markets have shrunk, and why smaller IPOs still matter.…
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Entrepreneurs First: Investing Before the Idea
Alice Bentinck discusses how Entrepreneurs First helps someone to go from “no team, no idea” to funded company. EF has helped create companies now collectively worth more than $10,000,000,000 and many participants go from zero to raising $2-15 million from top-tier VCs within months. Bentinck...
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Rudina Seseri Knew AI Was Cool Before You Did
AI may feel new to many investors, but Glasswing Ventures founder Rudina Seseri has been betting on it for more than a decade. In this episode, she breaks down how Glasswing evaluates AI startups, why workflow and productivity are key entry points, and what founders still get wrong. Plus, her...
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Adeo Ressi: Why the World Needs More Venture Capitalists
Adeo Ressi says his organization helps launch between 60 and 70 percent of new venture capital firms worldwide. In this episode, the Decile Group and VC Lab founder explains why starting a VC fund is far harder than most people expect, why big institutions rarely back first-time managers, and why...
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Who Wins When ChatGPT Does the Searching?
Alex Halliday made his first fortune at 15 building fan sites in the early web. Now he’s back at the center of another digital reset — helping brands survive AI-driven search. In this episode, he explains why “information gain” beats spam, why Google is under threat, and how AirOps grew from…
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Brewing Medicine: Christina Smolke and the Race to Reinvent Drug Manufacturing
Dr. Christina Smolke runs a brewery, except the yeast isn’t making alcohol. It’s making medicine. At Antheia, Smolke has turned a long-shot Stanford research project into a new way to manufacture critical pharmaceutical ingredients, using biology instead of traditional chemistry. The approach is...
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Dr. Ed Engleman: Vivo Capital’s Cancer Hacker
Legendary Stanford immunologist Dr. Ed Engleman helped create the foundations of modern cancer treatment. From early breakthroughs in immune-cell training to a brand-new discovery, Engleman explains how the immune system can now be switched on and off like circuitry, with implications for cancer,...
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The Fastest Startup in Tech: Maria Palma on Lovable
Scott's conversation with Freestyle Capital's Maria Palma ranges from venture capital hype cycles to ethics, engineering creativity, venture regret, and even the art of naming startups (“Cluster Fudge” stays). Palma also offers a personal take on her own journey—from GE supply chain to Harvard...
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Design First, Lean Always: The Gamma Playbook
Gamma co-founder and CEO Grant Lee and lead series A investor Vas Natarajan of Accel are building one of the fastest-growing creative-tools startups in tech. With 70 million users, 100M ARR and just 50 employees, Gamma has become the “anti-PowerPoint”—a visual communication platform for the AI...
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Physics & AI: N47’s TJ Rylander Is Reimagining Engineering
TJ Rylander, general partner at N47 is exploring the next frontier of artificial intelligence: the physical world. Rylander explains how companies like Luminary Cloud are revolutionizing engineering by merging AI with physics, enabling designers to test and refine aircraft or cars virtually in…
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Rewiring the Special Relationship with the UK's AI Minister
Kanishka Narayan isn’t your typical politician. A Stanford GSB grad, he’s now the United Kingdom’s Minister for Artificial Intelligence — a job that didn’t even exist a few years ago. In this episode, Narayan talks about how Britain is using AI to drive both prosperity and dignity, why the UK…
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Eugene Malobrodsky's Bet on Immigrant Founders
Eugene Malobrodsky came to the U.S. as a teenager and went on to co-found Hotspot Shield, the VPN that became a symbol of free speech during the Arab Spring. Now he’s a venture capitalist at One Way Ventures, backing immigrant founders building the next wave of AI companies. He joins Scott McGrew...
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Christina Farr: The Storyteller's Advantage
Startups need an interesting story. Not just for the media, but for investors and clients. Former CNBC reporter turned venture investor turned author Christina Farr explains what makes a great story and how being boring is the worst strategy of all.
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Abhinav Asthana: Building for Developers, Not Headlines
Postman began as a side project by Abhinav Asthana and his two co-founders, and turned into the most widely adopted API collaboration platform, used by millions of developers worldwide. In this conversation, Abhinav breaks down why developer feedback matters more than early paywalls, how “just...
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Katelin Holloway's Billion-Dollar Box Scores
Venture capitalist Katelin Holloway—founding partner at 776— unpacks the new math of sports investing. From incubating Angel City FC and LA Golf Club to why women’s sports offer the biggest upside, Holloway explains where value is created (media, sponsors, merch) and how pay equity should be…
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Ireland’s Big Bet on Silicon Valley
Ireland is making an aggressive play to strengthen its ties with the West Coast. IDA Ireland—the nation’s foreign investment agency—has launched a trade mission aimed at securing €250 billion (about $300 billion) in new capital and creating 75,000 jobs over the next five years. Already, a West...
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NEA's Aaron Jacobson on Robotics, AI Startups and Defense Innovation
NEA partner Aaron Jacobson joins Sand Hill Road to discuss the next wave of robotics and AI — from warehouse automation and drone manufacturing to autonomous construction and defense innovation. Jacobson explains why the future of robotics isn’t humanoids but specialized machines that perform one...
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Steven Lee: From Last Kid Picked Up to Earliest Money In
Steven Lee raised $40 million in five weeks to fund his own venture firm — with just his reputation, network, and a bet on AI. From being the last kid picked up at school to becoming one of Silicon Valley’s earliest investors in breakout companies, Lee shares his journey from his parents’…
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Rehan Jalil's Four Wins and a Vision
Rehan Jalil has sold three companies. His fourth, Securiti AI, might be his first to go public. A decade after we first met him as the founder of Elastica, Rehan returns to explain why protecting enterprise data is the gateway to unlocking AI’s full potential—and why building companies will…
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The Meme is the Message: Kanyi Maqubela on Crypto, Culture, and the Future of Value
Kanyi Maqubela’s journey is nothing short of extraordinary—from fleeing apartheid South Africa as an infant, to living in a homeless shelter in New York City, to becoming a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. As managing partner at Kindred Ventures, Maqubela sits at the intersection of culture,...
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Heavybit Announces Its Largest Raise Yet: $180m
Scott McGrew sits down with Tom Drummond, co-founder of developer-first VC firm Heavybit, fresh off the announcement of the firm’s fifth fund and second opportunity fund. Drummond explains why the traditional enterprise sales model is fading, and why developers now hold the keys to software...
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2025 Summer VC Reading List
It's our annual tradition—venture capitalists and startup founders share the books that shaped them. From sci-fi and civil rights to artificial intelligence and management, this year's reading list offers insight into the minds of Silicon Valley’s most thoughtful leaders. Highlights include…
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The Systems Leader vs The Lone Wolf with Robert Siegel
Stanford lecturer and venture investor Robert Siegel argues the lone-wolf CEO is not just outdated—but dangerous. In this episode, he joins Scott to explain why today's most effective leaders are those who can hold competing truths at once: acting with empathy and accountability, being tactical…
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From MySpace to Liquid Death: Mike Jones on Building Brands People Love
(Encore! Encore!) Mike Jones has helped launch some of the most unexpected breakout brands in consumer goods—from canned water with a death metal vibe to subscription underwear and a prayer app. The former CEO of MySpace and founder of Science Inc. joins Sand Hill Road to talk about why creating...
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Practicing Venture Not Performing It: Joseph Alalou’s Outsider Ethos
Joseph Alalou of Daring Ventures says too many VCs choose "performance" over discovery — prioritizing brand-building over finding overlooked talent. In this episode, he shares how his journey from washing cars at Enterprise to investing in underdog founders shaped his contrarian view of venture...
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Biotech and Bold Bets with Jessica Owens, Inititate Ventures
Jessica Owens of Initiate Ventures joins Scott McGrew to talk biotech, bold bets, and what happens when venture capital meets whiteboard-stage science. From her early days in a CDC biohazard lab to co-founding an $8 billion cancer detection company, Owens shares inside stories from the front…
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Masha Bucher Day One Ventures
This week on Sand Hill Road, a remarkable conversation at the kitchen table of Masha Bucher. Scott McGrew talks with the founder of Day One Ventures about her transformation from PR powerhouse to unicorn-spotting investor, the emotional toll of exile from her homeland, and what it means to align...
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Lori Rosenkopf's Unstoppable Entrepreneurs
Sand Hill Road Host Scott McGrew speaks with Wharton Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship Lori Rosenkopf, author of Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation. They talk about breaking the mold of the "typical" founder, why the median age…
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Entrepreneurship through the eyes of Navin Chaddha
Sand Hill Road Host Scott McGrew spoke with Navin Chaddha, managing partner at Mayfield Fund, to learn more about what the world of entrepreneurship really is. Chaddha has placed in the Top 10 of Forbes' Midas List four times and is hoping to make that list again. Sand Hill Road is hosted by…
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Larry Gadea's startup journey
Sand Hill Road Host Scott McGrew spoke with Larry Gadea, CEO and founder of Envoy, to learn more about his early days at Twitter, now known as X, and Google and what led him to make the entrepreneurial jump. Sand Hill Road is hosted by Scott McGrew. Sara Bueno manages NBC Bay Area's digital...
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Bobby Franklin’s unkillable movie monster
Just like Godzilla and Frankenstein were misunderstood, so is the case with tax breaks on carried interest, according to those who benefit from it. Some would characterize venture capital as a high-risk business, and the economic incentives of carried interest make it worthwhile.Congress has...
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How AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape
There's no shortage of cybersecurity companies, and artificial intelligence continues to help transform that competitive landscape. So, how do investors decide who's worth helping? Casber Wang, a partner at Sapphire Ventures, identifies what's hot in the market now and where there's promise. Sand...
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Diagnosing diseases and saving lives with AI
Dr. Joshua Reicher, co-founder and CEO of Imvaria, initially missed the opportunity to develop a company similar to DraftKings and instead decided to focus on saving lives. As a serial entrepreneur, he has been committed to using artificial intelligence to improve patient diagnostics since some…
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AI 's role in developing category killer therapeutics
Dr. Jim Tananbaum, founder and CEO of Foresite Capital, has always had two areas of interest: mathematics and computer algorithms, biology and healthcare. With his passions in mind, he has developed and managed a venture firm with close to $3.5 billion in assets under management. Sand Hill Road...
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Fungus among us? 'Canadian values' in the Bay Area VC market
Terry Doyle, managing partner and vice president of Telus Global Ventures, is vocal about spreading the firm's mission, from changing names to understanding how 'Canadian values' play a role in the venture capital market. Sand Hill Road Host Scott McGrew spoke with Doyle, the former senior…
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Why does Steve Vassallo of Foundation Capital choose to invest early?
Steve Vassallo, a general partner at Foundation Capital, has been known to invest at the intersection of design, technology, and business, but at a very early stage. He said much of it has to do with hearing the lessons of his "helicopter mom," the late Helen Guillette Vassallo, a well-known...
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A $40 Million Investment in Exploding Kittens
Exploding Kittens, a kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette, has become a household staple. The company launched on Kickstarter and has never lost its edge. However, despite much success, the company's founding team decided to accept a $40 million investment, which it has yet to use. Sand Hill...
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Bay Area Venture Market Remains King
The state of venture capital appears to be rocky at the moment. A report from PitchBook Data and the National Venture Capital Association highlights potential weakness ahead in the venture industry. The Pitchbook/NVCA Venture Monitor First Look report showed fewer active investors and high deal...
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San Francisco's Death is Greatly Exaggerated
Analysis by SignalFire shows the Bay Area still has more tech than 10 other cities combined.
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Mike Schroepfer is Saving the World, One Big Step at a Time
The Gigascale founder has big ideas on clean power and clean air.
About this show
What makes Silicon Valley the innovation capital of the world? It all starts on Sand Hill Road, considered the mecca of venture capital. Join us for insightful interviews from the heart of Silicon Valley with the VCs, start-ups and innovators behind the trending technologies of tomorrow. Hosted by NBC Bay Area business and technology reporter and host of Press:Here, Scott McGrew.
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