Running Through Walls

Hosted by Venrock, a venture capital firm

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Episodes

100

Latest episode

Jun 2026

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About the show

Running Through Walls is a Venrock podcast featuring candid conversations between investors and entrepreneurs. Each episode, we offer a behind-the-scenes look at the breakthroughs, challenges and nuttiness associated with building and growing companies. Venture capital firm Venrock has been investing in entrepreneurs across technology and healthcare since 1969.

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60 recent

June 2, 202626 min

The Long Game of Building Breakthrough Biotech

Nimish Shah sits down with Andy Robbins, CEO of Cogent Biosciences, for a candid conversation about building a targeted therapy company in oncology. Andy shares how Cogent made high-stakes decisions around bezuclastinib, why speed matters in biotech, and what it takes to build conviction years before clinical answers arrive. They also dig into what's overhyped, what's undervalued, and why the best biotech leaders stay humble, fast-moving, and relentlessly focused on patients.

May 6, 202627 min

SmithRx's Mission to Break the Drug Pricing Black Box

SmithRx CEO and co-founder Jake Frenz joins Venrock's Siobhan Nolan Mangini to talk about the company's mission to fix the opaque and broken US drug ecosystem. SmithRx started by tearing down the existing misaligned model of PBMs with a per member model that is incentivized to deliver the lowest possible cost for patients. The two get into how his personal challenges with the US healthcare system and his grit and tenacity as a Marine have informed where SmithRx is today and why it's unrelenting in capitalizing on the tidal wave of enterprises and policymakers who are ready for a better drug solution.

April 9, 202626 min

Pursuit over Podium: Rethinking Excellence with Brad Stulberg

Bob Kocher speaks with Brad Stulberg, on the many lessons in his newly-published book The Way of Excellence, including why we find excellence on the side of the mountain, not at its peak. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of Arete, Brad argues that you find true success in pursuit itself: the bidirectional process where chasing a goal, whether writing a book, building a company, or competing in sport, shapes your character as much as you shape the outcome. They go deeper on the optimistic lessons from his book, including why joy is life's true renewable energy source.

April 1, 202628 min

AI: Smart/Stupid

Leading AI researcher and Professor at the Santa Fe Institute Melanie Mitchell joins Ethan Batraski for a conversation on how our current generation of AI is powerful, promising, and still badly in need of transparency about how it actually "thinks." She gives advice on how to redesign our benchmarks as true measures instead of targets, and how we can incorporate dynamic testing and deeper interpretability to close the gap between today's AI systems and true intelligence.

March 18, 202626 min

A Giant Leap: Bob Wachter on AI's Inflection Point in Healthcare

Siobhan Nolan Mangini sat down with author and UCSF physician Bob Wachter for a fireside chat about his new book on AI in healthcare, A Giant Leap. In this special live-recorded episode, he reflects on what he learned from interviewing top leaders across healthcare and technology about the coming wave of AI in healthcare. The discussion unpacks how AI could ease clinician burnout and expand access to care, while raising deeper questions about incentives, cost, and what role humans should ultimately play in the delivery of healthcare.

February 25, 202634 min

Empowering Data Engineers

Ethan Batraski speaks with Astronomer CEO Pete DeJoy several months into taking the helm at the company he cofounded over 8 years ago. They discuss the company's journey from their earliest days stewarding the Apache Airflow open-source project to how they're driving the renaissance of the data engineer in the age of AI today, and the team's remarkable authenticity and resilience when the Coldplay kiss cam put the company on the the national stage.

February 19, 202627 min

Fix the System, Save Hearts

Farzad Mostashari, CEO and founder of Aledade, and Sunny Kishore, Associate Professor at UCSF, join Bob Kocher for a conversation about why U.S. blood pressure control has stalled for two decades despite having the tools to do far better. Sunny and Bob recently co-authored a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine about this paradox, and Farzad launched the Million Hearts campaign to prevent heart attacks so they are uniquely positioned to break down the problem and identify solutions. The episode offers practical guidance for clinicians and patients alike: combine focused lifestyle changes with timely treatment intensification, make blood pressure visible and urgent, and treat prevention as both lifesaving and economically smart care.

February 11, 202623 min

How to Hackathon

Bryan Mistele, co-founder and CEO of INRIX, joins Venrock's Brian Ascher to deep dive on the company's use of their Innovation Week to maintain startup-style innovation two decades into their journey. Their conversation serves as a master class for how to foster new ideas from within, from geographic and departmental diversity, to encouraging junior team members to lead, to how they've accelerated implementation with AI. And it's not just morale boosting, they've seen over 70% of projects turn into active deployments and operational improvements for INRIX.

February 5, 202622 min

Beyond the Battlefield Deep Dive with Navy CTO Justin Fanelli

One of the critical questions in our first annual Beyond the Battlefield survey was how we more effectively get technology from the private sector to the battlefield. Who better to discuss that than the man responsible for making those decisions for the US Department of Navy, Chief Technology Officer Justin Fanelli. He joins Morgan Hitzig for a deep dive on the results and what they mean for the future of our warfighters.

January 28, 202632 min

Don't be a Schmuck (& other lessons for a great life)

Ezekiel Emanuel joins Venrock's Bob Kocher to talk about his newest book, Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life and dive deeper on what surprised him and how his own life changed through his research. From the magnitude of the impact of social relationships to how to build new neural pathways and expand your mind to fiber becoming the new protein supplement, their conversation is a fun ride through his New York Times bestseller.

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