Geeks of the Valley connects with some of the brightest minds globally, who are leading their respective industries today. We discuss the hottest upcoming industry trends and how their work is affecting the global economy.
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August 17, 2026Episode 1554 min
How Gaming Drives a Global Cultural Force with XSET’s Greg Selkoe
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
August 3, 2026Episode 1436 min
Building Trust and Finding Venture Signals with Entrepreneur Ventures’ Jonathan Hung
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
July 20, 2026Episode 1335 min
#130: From Building Facebook's Billion-Dollar Ad Business to Dog Food, with Get Joy Food's Tom Arrix
Tom Arrix Tom 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
July 6, 2026Episode 1236 min
#129 Designing Trust in Digital Money with Centennial’s Sid Ramesh
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/sidrmsh Website: https://www.centennial.systems
June 22, 2026Episode 1129 min
#128: The Quiet Engine Powering Cross-Border Shopping Across Asia, with Buy&Ship's Jeff Zielinski
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
June 8, 2026Episode 1042 min
#127: The AI Investment Terminal Putting a Private Bank in Your Pocket with Barebone's Brian Tam
Brian is the Hong Kong-born founder of Barebone (barebone.ai), an AI finance research app. He grew up in Hong Kong (Diocesan Boys' School) and studied Economics at the London School of Economics. Before founding Barebone he came up through elite finance: a summer analyst stint at Warburg Pincus (2019), then Goldman Sachs — starting as an IB summer analyst (2020) and spending roughly three years on the Hybrid Capital team. He left that institutional track to build a consumer fintech company, splitting time between Hong Kong and San Francisco. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-yu-fung-tam/
April 6, 2026Episode 929 min
#126: Bringing Wall Street's AI Trading Brain to Main Street with Veyra's Peter Ashton
Peter Ashton is the Founder and CEO of Veyra, a trading technology company focused on redefining the future of financial intelligence and portfolio management through advanced predictive analytics, algorithmic systems, and next-generation financial software. A former Division I and professional football player, Peter has evolved into a visionary entrepreneur and investor operating at the intersection of finance, technology, and global impact. Throughout his career, he has advised, built, or invested in more than 60 ventures across multiple industries, including over 25 disruptive technology companies. He went on to consult for and strategically advise numerous companies, helping them secure more than $350 million in capital. In 2025, Peter launched Veyra with a mission to democratize institutional-grade AI trading technology for retail investors. The platform features a Multi-Agentic Trading Brain consisting of seven AI specialist agents that collaborate through a mathematical voting protocol on every potential trade. Veyra has begun integrating with Apex Trader Funding, the largest prop trading firm in the U.S. with 700,000+ traders, and is running a pilot with Equitable Advisors, a $1.82 trillion asset management firm. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-ashton-veyra/
April 6, 2026Episode 839 min
#125: From Tsinghua to Wall Street, Building a Six-Layer AI Investment Thesis with Quartus Capital's Afzal Tarar
Afzal M. Tarar, Chairman and Managing Partner of Quartus Capital Partners, joins us to share his extraordinary journey from studying AI at Tsinghua University in the 1980s to becoming a pioneer in AI-focused growth equity investing. We dive into Quartus's unique six-layer AI investment framework that separnfrastructure plays from vertical AI solutions in healthcare, logistics, and beyond. Afzal discusses why companies with $5M+ in revenue and defensible technology stacks are the sweet spot, what he learned from deploying Fund I across nine investments, and how 14 years living in China shaped his crossborder investing lens. We also explore the potential bubble dynamics in AI infrastructure, the most compelling opportunities in healthcare AI, and his hard-won lesson on building with people you know and trust. Afzal M. Tarar is the Chairman and Managing Partner of Quartus Capital Partners, an AI and technology growth equity firm based in New York with offices in Miami, Silicon Valley, and Asia. A former Head of AI at KeyBank (1991) and veteran of 25+ years in management consulting at firms including Deloitte, IBM, KPMG, and PwC, Afzal brings a rare crossborder lens shaped by studying AI at Tsinghua University in Beijing and 14 years of living and working in China.
November 10, 2025Episode 736 min
#124: Crypto’s Maturity and the Rise of Private Equity with Maelstrom's Akshat Vaidya & Adam Schlegel
Akshat Vaidya – Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Maelstrom Akshat Vaidya is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Maelstrom , the family office founded by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes. In this role, Akshat leads Maelstrom’s investment strategy across its multiple verticals, including venture investments, liquid markets, and private equity deals. He oversees the recently launched Maelstrom Equity Fund I (a US$250 million fund) which focuses on acquiring mid-sized, profitable companies in the crypto-infrastructure space. Akshat’s journey into digital assets began over a decade ago. He first started buying Bitcoin in 2013 while still working in traditional finance. Before co-founding Maelstrom, he served as Head of Corporate Development and M&A at BitMEX , where he led the exchange’s expansion through acquisitions and strategic partnerships. Earlier in his career, Akshat was an investor at Granite Creek Capital Partners , executing leveraged buyouts and growth investments in U.S. middle-market companies. He holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, combining a classic finance education with a forward-looking tech perspective. Under Akshat’s leadership, Maelstrom has grown from a two-person family office into a multi-strategy investment platform. The firm now operates across venture capital, liquidity provisioning, and private equity initiatives. Akshat remains a champion of long-term value creation in a market often driven by hype and short cycles. He strives to bridge traditional financial rigor with digital-asset innovation, ensuring Maelstrom’s portfolio is built on strong fundamentals and sustainable growth. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshatvaidya/ Adam Schlegel – Partner & Head of Private Equity, Maelstrom Adam Schlegel is a Partner at Maelstrom, where he leads the firm’s private equity strategy and heads its debut buyout vehicle, Maelstrom Equity Fund I . With over a decade of experience in traditional private equity and cross-border transactions, Adam brings institutional discipline to the evolving crypto-infrastructure space. He joined Maelstrom to expand its reach into buyouts of established crypto-industry companies, applying proven investment frameworks to this emerging sector. In his previous roles, Adam built a strong foundation in global finance. He was an Investor at Haveli Investments – the Austin-based private equity firm founded by Brian Sheth (co-founder of Vista Equity Partners) – focusing on enterprise SaaS buyouts and growth-equity deals. Prior to Haveli, he served as an Associate at Baring Private Equity Asia , executing large cross-border transactions across the Asia-Pacific region. Adam began his career as an Investment Banking Analyst in Morgan Stanley’s Global Energy Group , where he gained experience in capital markets and corporate finance. He holds a Master of Arts in International Finance from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (with a minor in Chinese) from Swarthmore College. At Maelstrom, Adam is driving the firm’s expansion into private equity by identifying and acquiring crypto-infrastructure and data analytics companies that meet specific criteria. Adam’s approach blends traditional buyout expertise with a deep understanding of how digital assets, stablecoins, and decentralized finance are transforming financial infrastructure worldwide. By applying classic private equity frameworks (e.g. rigorous due diligence, operational improvements, and long-term value creation plans) to crypto-enabled businesses, he aims to bridge the gap between conventional finance and the crypto economy. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-schlegel-2b5247b/
November 10, 2025Episode 635 min
#123: Sandbox to Scale The MENA Fintech Playbook with VentureSouq's Sonia Gokhale
Sonia Gokhale , Co-Founder and General Partner at VentureSouq , breaks down how founders can build and scale fintech across the Gulf. We unpack why Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the first markets to crack, how government sandboxes and clear licensing paths reduce friction, and why B2B fintech often delivers the strongest unit economics. Sonia also walks through lessons from recent exits like Tabby, fundraising dynamics for seed through Series B, and the infrastructure opportunities in payments, credit, and compliance. If you are a founder aiming to land your first enterprise customers in the region or an investor mapping the next wave of MENA fintech, this conversation delivers a practical playbook. What you’ll learn How to navigate sandboxes and licensing in KSA and the UAE, Pricing and unit economics that work for B2B fintech in the Gulf, and Fundraising expectations and how global capital views MENA today. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonia-seth-gokhale-b0906014 Website : http://venturesouq.com
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