Village Global Podcast

Hosted by Village Global

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698

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Jun 2026

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About the show

The Village Global podcast takes you inside the world of venture capital and technology, featuring enlightening interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and tech industry leaders. Learn more at www.villageglobal.vc.

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60 recent

June 11, 20261 hr 4 min

Why AI Agents Can't Be Trusted Yet (And How to Fix It) | Moe Katib (One)

Moe Katib is the founder and CEO of One (withone.ai), an enterprise-level infrastructure platform that gives AI agents authenticated, reliable access to hundreds of software applications and verified actions. Before One, he spent 12 years solving enterprise integration problems, building the knowledge base that became the foundation for what he's building today.Village Global GP Anne Dwane sits down with Moe to trace the story behind One: from growing up in Damascus selling packaged chicken out of his uncle's factory, to building water-pump automation devices growing up, to immigrating to Canada after his invention was stolen by a government-connected company. They cover what a decade of enterprise integration work taught him about agent infrastructure, why he made the counterintuitive decision to open source all the integrations he had assembled, and why trust, not speed or scale, is the real unlock for agentic AI adoption. Moe also shares his own experience running his email entirely through an agent, including the moment his AI sent a rude message to a major VC on his behalf, and what that revealed about the identity problem at the heart of agentic software.Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley.www.villageglobal.com/signup

May 21, 20261 hr 2 min

Recall Sessions: He Built the Software That Runs 1 in 6 Laundromats in America — Alex Jekowsky

Alex Jekowsky is the co-founder and CEO of Cents, the all-in-one software, hardware, and payments platform for the laundry industry. A Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, he sold his first company at 23, and last month closed a $140 million Series C. Cents now powers more than 1 in 6 laundromats in the country and processes over $1 billion in payments a year.Somrat Niyogi sits down with Alex to go from the very beginning: the aha moment that led him to laundromats, how he got his first customers through cold emails and contact forms, why he priced Cents at a flat $299 from day one, and what it actually took to build a durable go-to-market motion in a market most investors wrote off. They also cover the distributor strategy that unlocked scale, how the Laundry Works acquisition changed everything, what Alex gets right about hiring slow, and why he thinks agentic AI is the only version of AI that actually matters for SMB operators.Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley.www.villageglobal.com/signup

May 20, 202658 min

LIVE: The Bull Case for SaaS in the Age of AI | Aaron Levie and Reid Hoffman

In this episode of the Village Global Podcast, Box CEO Aaron Levie joins Village Global Chairman Reid Hoffman and host Ben Casnocha live on stage at a Village Global event. They get into what agents actually do to SaaS, where startups should go on offense, and what twenty years of building Box has taught Aaron about leveling up as a founder.Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at ⁠www.villageglobal.com⁠ or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. ⁠www.villageglobal.com/signup⁠

May 14, 202652 min

Recall Sessions: The PR Playbook Most Founders Get Wrong — Paul Loeffler & Kelly Boynton

Somrat Niyogi sits down with two of the most experienced comms operators in tech: Kelly Boynton, Head of Communications at Gusto, and Paul Loeffler, former SVP of Communications and Brand at BILL.Kelly spent 15 years across agency and in-house roles before Gusto, including at Facebook, Instagram, Intuit, Navan, and DocuSign. Before BILL, Paul led integrated communications at Gusto and was at Atlassian pre-IPO, helping scale it as a public company.They cover what founders get wrong about launches and PR, when an agency is worth it (and when it is not), why your story should be about value rather than valuation, why reporters write about trends rather than companies, why 95% of stealth companies should not be in stealth, and the comms playbook for breaking through the noise.Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

May 7, 202641 min

Why Your Next Executive Assistant Will Be an AI — Deon Nicholas (Espa.ai)

Deon is the co-founder and CEO of Espa Labs. His previous company, Forethought, was a TechCrunch Disrupt winner in 2018, scaled to roughly a billion customer interactions a month, and was recently acquired by Zendesk, where Deon now serves as advisor.Village Global GP Anne Dwane sits down with Deon to talk about the launch and the journey that brought him here. They cover what he learned scaling Forethought through the GPT-1 to GPT-4 era, why the Iron Man Jarvis vision is finally within reach for everyone (not just Silicon Valley), the three pillars of Espa, why the model labs have perverse incentives that leave the door open for a new app-layer winner, the surprising network effect that emerges when one Espa starts talking to another, and where personal productivity AI is heading over the next five to ten years.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

April 23, 20261 hr 8 min

Recall Sessions: Most SaaS Companies Won't Survive This - Jake Saper (Emergence)

Jake Saper is General Partner at Emergence Capital, the firm that was the first institutional investor in Zoom and an early backer of Salesforce, Veeva, Bill.com, and Together.ai. Jake has been at Emergence for over a decade and has led investments in Assembled, Unify, and Ironclad.Jake has developed Emergence's thesis on AI-native services: why he believes this is the most important structural shift in enterprise software since the move to the cloud, why most SaaS companies built before AI won't survive it, and what founders have to build instead.Somrat Niyogi sits down with Jake to unpack his thesis, the moats disappearing and rising, the risk Jake calls Mirage Product Market Fit, the three metrics every AINS founder should track, and where the biggest opportunities are playing out.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

April 9, 202642 min

Recall Sessions: Building a $1.1B Category That Didn't Exist | Nick Mehta (Gainsight)

Nick Mehta is the former CEO of Gainsight, the platform that helps companies drive durable growth through customer-led and product-led strategies. Vista Equity Partners acquired Gainsight for $1.1 billion.Nick ran the company as CEO for 13 years before stepping into a board role last year. Nick has also co-authored four books on customer success, was named Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California, and currently sits on the boards of F5 and PubMatic. Before Gainsight, he was CEO of LiveOffice, which he grew to $25 million in revenue and sold to Symantec. Somrat Niyogi and Nick cover how a meetup with cheap wine and a cheese tray on a ping pong table became the seed of a category, why community mattered more than product in the beginning, what it was like selling software into a role that barely existed, the Box deal that involved a music video parody and memorizing the lobby Wi-Fi password, what happened when Salesforce announced they were the "customer success platform," how to think about category creation vs. joining an existing one, and why Nick got on stage at Pulse coming off pneumonia to talk about being lonely as a kid.In loving memory of Summer Devi Mehta (2008–2026). Support The Trevor Project in Summer's honor: https://give.thetrevorproject.org/fundraiser/6961929Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

April 3, 202637 min

Worldbuilders: Building Digital Minds and Why Humans Still Matter | Dara Ladjevardian (Delphi)

Dara Ladjevardian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Delphi, a platform that lets you create a digital version of your mind — an interactive, always-on presence that can share your knowledge, coach others, and represent you at scale.Delphi has raised $16 million in a Series A led by Sequoia, with earlier backing from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and others. Before Delphi, Dara founded Friday, a text-based commerce tool he built and sold within a year. He previously worked as a forward-deployed engineer at C3 AI and as a product engineer at OpenStore.Sumeet Singh sits down with Dara to talk about the moment he knew he had to build Delphi, which started with trying to recreate his grandfather's mind using GPT-3. They cover why he chose LLMs over crypto and American dynamism, what it was like selling his first startup and joining OpenStore to find a mentor and co-founder, why human connection still matters when information is commoditized, how Delphi solved the trust problem that makes or breaks the entire platform, the micro-pivots that shaped the company, and what world Dara is trying to build.If you have any questions about Delphi, you can talk to Dara's digital mind here: delphi.ai/daraDelphi: https://delphi.aiThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

March 26, 202654 min

Recall Sessions: AI-Native CRMs and What It Takes to Replace Salesforce | Doug Camplejohn & Patrick Thompson

Doug Camplejohn is the Founder & CEO of Coffee, an AI-first CRM. Doug co-founded Fliptop (acquired by LinkedIn), led Sales Navigator at LinkedIn as VP of Product, then ran Sales Cloud at Salesforce as EVP and GM. He's also had exits with Mi5 Networks (acquired by Symantec) and MyPlay (acquired by Bertelsmann).Patrick Thompson is the Co-Founder & CEO of Clarify, an AI-native CRM built for modern go-to-market teams. Clarify has raised $22.5 million. Before Clarify, Patrick co-founded Iteratively, a customer data platform acquired by Amplitude in 2021, where he served as Director of Product and GM for Amplitude CDP. Earlier in his career, he led design for Jira Software at Atlassian.Two founders building competing AI-native CRMs sit down together for the first time. They talk with Somrat Niyogi about why this is the moment for CRM disruption, why you can't just slap an LLM on a legacy database, what it actually takes to build table stakes in CRM, why the term "CRM" has always been a misnomer, how AI changes the business model from per-seat to work-output pricing, what Salesforce and HubSpot are doing behind the scenes, and what they'd tell founders considering the category.Clarify: https://clarify.aiCoffee: https://coffee.ai Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

March 18, 202612 min

Worldbuilders: Why Most AI Startups Won't Survive | The Model Economy by Sumeet Singh

Sumeet Singh, Founder & Managing Partner of Worldbuild, lays out his investing thesis for the AI era: The Model Economy.His argument is that most AI startups being built today are fighting a losing battle against the scaling laws. The models themselves will swallow the application layer. So where does durable value actually go?Sumeet walks through the Bitter Lesson (Richard Sutton's foundational insight on why brute-force scale always beats domain-specific cleverness), what the mobile era teaches us about what's coming, and the two types of companies he believes actually win: infrastructure that keeps models alive and growing, and post-skeuomorphic applications that build workflows only possible with AI.This is the second episode of Worldbuilders — a series on the Village Global Podcast hosted by Sumeet Singh, exploring the people and ideas shaping what comes next.Watch the first episode with Evan Conrad (SF Compute): https://youtu.be/pteKdEGYRjUThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

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