PODCAST · technology
We The Builders
by Suffiyan Malik
Conversations with practitioners at the edge of their craft across business, media, startups, frontier technologies, investing. wethebuilders.us
Episodes
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The Investment Thesis for Rebuilding America | Chris Buskirk (Cofounder of 1789 Capital)
Intro This is my first conversation with Chris Buskirk, Cofounder and Chief Investment Officer at 1789 Capital and author of America and the Art of the Possible. We explore his investment thesis for American renewal: backing technological innovation, rebuilding industry, and creating the…
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What Billion Dollar Founders Have in Common | Ali Tamaseb of DCVC
Intro This is my first conversation with Ali Tamaseb, General Partner at DCVC, a $5B AUM fund and author of Super Founders. Ali spent years studying billion dollar startups to understand what separates their founders from the rest. We discuss the myths around age, education, cofounders, and...
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In Conversation with Bryon Hargis, Cofounder & CEO of Castelion ($13B defense technology company)
Intro My first conversation with Bryon Hargis, Cofounder and CEO of Castelion. This is a special edition of our show recorded at Reindustrialize. Since then, Castelion has announced a $1 billion Series C funding valuing the company at $13 billion making it one of the most valuable defense...
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Michael Thompson, Board Member at Oklo & Joby on Betting on The Future
Intro My first conversation with Michael Thompson who is on the board of Joby Aviation ($JOBY) and Oklo ($OKLO). He previously started Reinvent Capital with Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman where he was Managing Partner and made early investments in the physical economy through Joby, SpaceX, Nimble...
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Somesh Dash on IVP, Firm Building, Venture Investing, The AI Era and Immigration
Intro Somesh Dash has been investing in startups for over 20 years at IVP where he is a General Partner. IVP is one of the most prominent venture firms in growth stage investing founded in 1980. In the last almost five decades, they have invested in over 400 companies, with over 135 of them going...
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Adam Grosser, The Renaissance Man behind UP.Partners on 40 Years of Investing & Building in Silicon Valley
Intro This is my first conversation with Adam Grosser, a Silicon Valley OG. Adam has had a front row seat to what Silicon Valley is today from being at the centre of personal computing in the early days of Apple in the 1980s as Director of Engineering to directing products at LucasFilm in 1990s…
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Evan Burns on Building State Affairs, Backed by Khosla Ventures & Founders Fund, The Business of Policy Markets and State of Media
Intro This is my first conversation with Evan Burns, CEO of State Affairs. I think Evan is building one of the most interesting companies at the intersection of politics and capitalism, with the ambitious goal of creating the category of “policy markets” which he says is more important than...
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Mike Solana of Founders Fund on Creating Celebrity Mafia featuring Tech Elite
Intro Mike Solana is the CMO of Founders Fund and Founder of Pirate Wires. Marketing and media teams in technology and venture seem to be in this competition of capturing attention of the right people. The consensus strategy is covering entrepreneurs and investors on a podcast. All that has its…
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Justin Lopas on the Business of Base Power and Lessons from SpaceX & Anduril
Intro I had a conversation with Justin Lopas on building Base Power a few months back, last week they announced $1B in new funding at a $13B valuation. Justin cofounded Base Power with Zach Dell in 2023. I first met him at one of the deeptech dinners I was hosting in Austin back when they were...
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Scott Kupor on A16Z Origin Story, White House Role and Office of Personnel Management
Intro Scott Kupor was the first employee at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture capital firms in the arena today with over $90B in AUM. The firm started with the ambition to build a product to serve founders and with Michael Ovitz joining the board, it took inspiration from how talent...
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Ian Cinnamon on Building a $2.3B Satellite Manufacturing Campus, Palantir Alumni & The Apex Space Thesis
Intro Ian Cinnamon is the Cofounder and CEO of Apex Space. He was previously at Zynga and Palantir (after selling his company). He joined Palantir after selling his weapon detection company to them which had gotten impacted by covid since all live events came to a halt for ~1 year. Interestingly,...
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E41: Austen Allred on X Posting, Lambda School, Getting Sued, ISAs, Lobbying & Future of Education
Intro Austen Allred is the Cofounder and CEO of Gauntlet AI which is running an AI training school which through its intensive bootcamp makes engineers AI-first operators. Austen originally founded Lambda School as a coding bootcamp, which later became Bloom Institute of Technology - backed by...
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Brian Hooks, CEO of Stand Together & President of Charles Koch Foundation on Venture Philanthropy
Intro Brian Hooks is the CEO of Stand Together, President of Charles Koch Foundation and co-author of “Believe in People” with Charles Koch. He has scaled Stand Together to a network of 1,000 partner organizations and has deployed over $1B using a framework he called “venture philanthropy”. They...
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In Conversation with Dan Wright, Cofounder & CEO of Armada ($2B neo-hyperscaler for the edge)
Intro This is a special edition of our show from Reagan National Economic Forum where I interviewed Dan Wright, Cofounder and CEO of Armada, a decentralized cloud for the edge. They are valued at $2B according to their last round and are funded by some of the friends of the show at Founders Fund,...
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E33: Elon Musk's Most Useful Ideas, The Alpha in Long Form Writing and Investing with Eric Jorgenson
Intro Eric Jorgenson started a nights and weekends projects compiling the most useful ideas Naval Ravikant had publicly shared, this has sold five million copies so far. He has since doubled down on this niche of curating the best ideas from the best thinkers and entrepreneurs in the technology...
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E32: Chauncey Hamilton, GP at XYZ on Media, Apprenticeship, Conviction and Founder Networks
Intro Chauncey Hamilton is a General Partner at XYZ, a firm which was started with the thesis of backing Palantir alumni. I met Chauncey earlier in the year and had the chance to hang out a few times at Chapter’s office in NYC. I know founders who camp at their investor’s office, I don’t know…
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E31: David Ulevitch on Creating the $1.776B A16Z American Dynamism Practice
Intro David Ulevitch is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture firms by AUM with $90B. He cofounded the American Dynamism practice with Katherine Boyle about 4 years ago. Since then, it has taken over the timeline and become the language many use to describe…
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E30: Sunil Dhaliwal, Founder of Amplify Partners on Lessons from 27 Years in VC
Intro Sunil Dhaliwal has been in investing for 27 years, he was a General Partner at Battery Ventures for 14 years before starting Amplify Partners. He founded Amplify 13 years ago with the thesis of backing technical founders. Interestingly, the “business guy” was more investable back in the...
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E29: Todd Klein, Managing Partner at Revolution Growth on VC, AI, Board Meetings and Hollywood
Intro Todd Klein is a currently a Managing Partner at Revolution Growth, a VC firm founded by Steve Case. He has been in venture investing for over 25 years, his notable investments include companies like AirBnB, CAVA, Square, Pinterest, CustomInk. Watch on YouTube: Timestamps: 00:00…
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E28: Christian Keil, Partner at A16Z on Lessons from Scaling Astranis and Traits of Elite Operators
Intro I first met Christian Keil over Twitter/X DMs probably 3 years ago or so. He started building the Astranis media function in public, he was the face of it as he figured out Twitter and video in real time. When he joined, they were a team of 50 and by the time he left they were about 500...
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E27: Jonathan Lacoste, Founder of SpaceVC on Building & Investing in Frontier Tech & His Own Founder Journey
Intro Jonathan Lacoste, is the founder of SpaceVC, a pre-seed frontier tech fund with at least a 20% unicorn hit rate, this is my observation based on publicly reported valuations of the companies listed on their website. Before starting his fund, Jonathan was an entrepreneur, he dropped out of...
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E26: Matt Ocko, Cofounder DCVC on Lessons from 30+ Years in DeepTech Venture Capital
Intro Matt Ocko is the Cofounder and Co-Managing Partner of DCVC, a firm he started with Zachary Bogue 16 years ago. Matt started his career at Oracle and then went on to join a $1B AUM fund called Helix Investments in the 90s where he learnt the lesson that venture is 90% people from Ben…
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In conversation with Billy Thalheimer, Cofounder & CEO of Regent
This is a special edition of We The Builders recorded at The Hill & Valley Forum 2026. Billy cofounded Regent, building all-electric Seaglider vessels for fast, safe, and low-cost coastal transportation. The company is backed by Founders Fund, Lockheed Martin, Mark Cuban, Caffeinated Capital…
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E25: Seth Winterroth, Partner at Eclipse: Investing $10B in the Physical Economy
Intro Seth Winterroth is a Partner at Eclipse where he has been investing in the physical world for over a decade. They now have fresh $1.3B in funds taking their AUM (Assets Under Management) to ~$10B to build and invest in critical technologies in the physical world. His portfolio alone is...
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In Conversation with Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz, Cofounder & CEO of Chapter ($3B retirement company)
Intro Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz cofounded Chapter with Vivek Ramaswamy. This is his second appearance on the show and is a special format we recorded at the Hill & Valley Forum. The company is backed by Narya Capital, Generation (Al Gore), XYZ Capital, Addition (Lee Fixel), Peter Thiel, Kivu Ventures...
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E24: Rob Leclerc on Building AgFunder, the Biggest Media Platform & Venture Fund focused on Food & Ag
Intro Rob Leclerc is the Cofounder and General Partner of AgFunder which is $300m AUM venture fund focused on food and agriculture. He also started AgFunder News which has over 100,000 subscribers and is the largest publication and source of news for the world of venture and startups focused on...
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E23: Leland Miller Breaks Down the China Threat. IP Theft, GDP Fabrication, Taiwan Takeover. What is Really Going On?
Intro: Leland Miller is the Cofounder of China Beige Book, which according to some media reports has been labelled as a firm having more data on China than even the CIA. He is also a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission. He has advised Fortune 50 CEOs and top...
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In Conversation with Shahin Farshchi at Lux Capital, $7B Fund Accelerating SciFi
Special conversation with Shahin Farshchi at Hill & Valley Forum 2026 now available wherever you get your podcasts. Lux Capital has deployed over $7B in deeptech and have been accelerating us towards SciFi future for over 20 years. Shahin has invested in companies manufacturing in space (Varda),...
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E22: Colin Greenspon on Private Boards, Business Model Innovation, Competent Founders and Narya
WTB Intro Narya keeps a low profile so perhaps you might not see them pop up on your Twitter or Linkedin but they have quietly worked their way to having what is probably the best unicorn hit rate of any active fund that I know of since 2020. Now, I haven’t checked with the firm but from our last...
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In Conversation with Dmitri Alperovitch, Cofounder of CrowdStrike, a $100B company
Special episode from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: A conversation with Dmitri Alperovitch Cofounder of CrowdStrike (a $100B company), Silverado Policy Accelerator and Author of World on the Brink Dmitri has correctly predicted three wars including the Russia-Ukraine war and has a prediction for China...
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In Conversation with David Friedberg, Cohost of All-In Podcast
Special Episode of We The Builders from Hill & Valley Forum 2026: Conversation with David Friedberg on rise and fall of empires, the state of US economy, robots as an economic platform, what has changed since the Winning AI Race Summit featuring President Trump, reindustrialization, the end of...
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E21: Jason Carman on Building Story and Inspiring The Next Generation of Technologists through SciFi
Intro New SciFi writing and film started declining at the end of the 20th century and we have seen a continued decline in the first quarter of the 21st century. Sci-fi is and always has been the source of inspiration for a better future. It is where the greatest builders of our time got inspired…
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E20: Seth Berman, Cofounder of Susa and Kivu Ventures on History and State of Early Stage Venture Capital
Intro Seth Berman is the cofounder of Susa Ventures and Kivu Ventures. He started angel investing at Y Combinator demo days back when there used to be twenty companies and a handful of investors looking at them. He then went on to start one of the early few seed funds funding 10 unicorns across...
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E19: Ali Jehangir Siddiqui, The Renaissance Man behind the Multibillion Dollar House of Jahangir Siddiqui
Who is Ali Jehangir Siddiqui and why I was interested in having a conversation with him? Ali is an entrepreneur, investor, diplomat and industrialist. When I first met Ali in 2017, he was the Special Assistant to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of Pakistan. For my friends in the US, that…
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E18: Jonathan Levin on Building Chainalysis, a $8.6B Company
I had a conversation with Jonathan about choosing what to work on, getting the government as a customer, fundraising and how too much money can hurt the culture, favorite interview questions and more. Check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts or right here on Substack. Sharing…
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E17: Bharat Vasan on Lessons from Raising $1B, Multiple Startup Exits and Hero's Journey for Founders
Of all the guests I have had on the show, Bharat has probably had the most dynamic career. He has been an executive at public companies, been a venture capitalist, an investment banker and a founder. Our story goes back to when I got David Friedberg (Cohost All-In Podcast, Cofounder Ohalo, The...
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E16: Mike Solana, architect of new media on building Pirate Wires
Twitter/X is a battleground where you defend your ideas and murder the ones you don’t stand for (as you will hear in Mike’s own words). There is little room for nuance as I too have observed and so the Twitter/X persona of people you see often wouldn’t be the right way to categorize the person.…
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E15: Mike Maples of Floodgate on Pattern Breaking Founders, Investing and Seeding Twitter, Lyft & Digg
I first found Mike Maples when I came across his podcast with Osman Rashid, (Cofounder of Chegg) about 6 years ago. I have since admired Mike’s philosophy on startups and investing. Mike is an early investor in category defining companies like Twitter, Okta, Chegg, Twitch, Clover Health and…
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E14: Packy McCormick on Writing, Investing, Media and Creative Process
If you’ve spent any time in tech over the past few years, you’ve probably read Not Boring or at least seen a screenshot of it on X/Twitter. Packy built it from a Substack assignment during David Perell’s Write of Passage course into one of the most-read newsletters in technology, now at over...
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E12: Dropping out of MIT to Thiel Fellowship, Founders Fund and Space Factories w/ Delian Asparouhov
New Year’s Eve special: I recorded this one at the Founders Fund office on Nov 6, 2024, right after election day. It was originally scheduled to be over zoom but I read Delian’s blog post called “Thirty Observations at Thirty” where one of the things he talked about was prioritizing in-person...
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E11: Glenn Fogel, CEO Booking Holdings, the world's largest travel company
I got to sit down with Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, the largest travel company in the world. $BK NG market cap was $160B as of Dec 3, when I am publishing this. For context, it’s market cap is ~2x that of Marriott and AirBnB, which are 2 and 3. Here is a chart of the rest on the list: I...
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E10: Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz on Building Chapter with Vivek Ramaswamy, a $1.5B company redefining retirement
Around 11,000 Americans are retiring every single day, ~60m people in the US are retired. Medicare is one of the biggest problems among this community, there are 100s of providers and choosing the wrong one could either mean losing thousands of dollars or your life (I think Cobi quoted a report...
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E9: Working w/ VP JD Vance, Peter Thiel & Thesis Driven Investing w/ Colin Greenspon
Colin Greenspon is the co-founder of Narya Capital, a venture capital fund he cofounded with Vice President JD Vance and Falon Donohue (also cofounder of Reindustrialize). Before Narya, Colin was on the investment team at Mithril Capital, working alongside Peter Thiel.As a technologist if you go...
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E8: Auren Hoffman: Founder of LiveRamp ($RAMP, $1.85B), SafeGraph and Flex Capital and NQB8
Intro Today’s episode features Auren Hoffman founder of LiveRamp ($RAMP), Flex Capital, Dialog, Safegraph and NQB8. This is one of the most interesting conversations I have had on the show so far and probably the best. He grew LiveRamp to a $300m exit, has invested in 180+ companies through Flex...
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E7: Building a Mach 5 Jet backed by Sam Altman, Founders Fund & Khosla Ventures
Hi all, This was happening week, I was in NYC and recorded 3 really fun episodes with Packy McCormick (Not Boring), Colin Greenspon (Cofounder of Narya Capital with VP JD Vance and Peter Thiel) and Abe Murray (AlleyCorp - firm that incubated MongoDB and Business Insider) - stay tuned for those to...
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E6: Vivas Kumar: Building Mitra Chem & Securing America's Energy Supply Chain
I sat down with Vivas Kumar, founder & CEO of Mitra Chem, a company commercializing iron-based cathode battery materials. They have raised $100M in equity but more interestingly they have secured $150M+ in grants from the Department of Energy and the state of Michigan. Backers include bestie...
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E5: Karan Talati: SpaceX engineer to raising $30 million for First Resonance
This is another one from the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit. I got to sit down with Karan Talati, CEO and co-founder of First Resonance, the factory operating system used by companies like Astranis, Radiant and now nearly 60 companies across mission-critical industries—think aerospace,...
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E4: The future of home robotics with Mehul Nariyawala, Cofounder & CEO Matic Robots
Hi all, I was traveling for work the last couple of weeks which pushed back some of our episodes but excited to get back on schedule. This is one of the Lex Fridman-like long form ones, there will be 3-4 of these. I am still experimenting with the format and would love to hear your feedback. I am...
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E3: Christian Garrett: Investing at 137 Ventures (founded by former Thiel Associates) and Connecting Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley
Shoutout to my friends at Reindustrialize who put together an incredible event in Detroit mid-July. On the sides of the conference, I interviewed Christian Garrett, Partner at 137 Ventures, a $6B+ AUM growth-stage venture fund known for backing generational cateogory defining technology…
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E2: Omri Amirav-Drory: Investing at NFX, TechBio and Race To 160
I got to sit down in San Francisco with Omri Amirav-Drory, General Partner at NFX, a $1.4B AUM pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm that invests in tech startups across various sectors, focusing on fostering network effects and defensible competitive advantages. They seek out companies in...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Conversations with practitioners at the edge of their craft across business, media, startups, frontier technologies, investing.
wethebuilders.us
HOSTED BY
Suffiyan Malik
CATEGORIES
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We The Builders currently has 51 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Conversations with practitioners at the edge of their craft across business, media, startups, frontier technologies, investing. wethebuilders.us
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We The Builders is created and hosted by Suffiyan Malik.
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