This episode is an extension of the open source software conversations we’ve been having on Panic with guests like Chetan Puttagunta and Ross Mason. I brought on Glenn Solomon, a legend in the software community, to keep this conversation going. Glenn has been in the VC business for over 20 years, with most of that time spent at the venture firm GGV Capital. He has an impressive portfolio, investing in companies such as Slack, Airbnb and Square. Glenn is not only a strong investor but a strong writer — with his insights on the software industry featured in places like Forbes. Check out his podcast Founder Real Talk as well. In this episode, Glenn and I talk about his investing journey, how he thinks about trends, open source/software investing, public markets, mentorship, the value of MBA programs, founders, SPACs and more. Enjoy!

I was so psyched to chat with a living legend, great investor and I guess a pretty good football player – Ryan Nece. He’s had some big wins on and off the field, from winning a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to starting his own foundation. Ryan knows how to play the game with heart, determination and drive. His two decades worth of experience as a professional and disciplined athlete, entrepreneur and investor gave him the foundation to start Next Play. Ryan connects his passion and knowledge of sports and tech at Next Play; leveraging those relationships to provide investors with a diversified pool of venture funds and companies. In this episode, Ryan and I discuss the transition from football to investing, Next Play’s backstory, Ryan’s current role in his company, missed investments and ones he is excited about, the mindset that goes into being a founder and an athlete, a time he’s panicked, winning a Super Bowl, and supporting the next generation of investors and more.

Spoiler Alert: There’s no panic this episode. Why? Because I had Brett Wilson on, someone who doesn’t panic, but rather finds solutions and different ways of doing things. I first met Brett back in 2007 and quickly became a seed investor in his company, TubeMogul. He’s a special guest, and not just because he’s made me some money. Brett is an amazing investor, entrepreneur, board member and thought leader. No one has been at the center of video (specifically digital) quite like Brett. Since selling TubeMogul to Adobe and leading advertising efforts there for a bit, Brett is now an angel investor, partner at Swift Ventures, and board member at companies such as Tubi, WeTravel and, more recently, Arize AI. In this episode, Brett and I had a great discussion about being at the center of the video bomb, TikTok, Netflix, Tubi, life as a CEO and entrepreneur, company pivots, TubeMogul’s journey, resurfacing trends, AI and what excites him as an investor as of late. We talked about a lot of great companies, trends, industries and the types of people who make them great. Hope you all enjoy it!

I had the pleasure of catching up with my good friend Lewis Johnson on this episode of Panic. Lewis has a strong background, with titles like UPenn Wharton MBA grad, money manager, stock picker, researcher and entrepreneur. Lewis’ company, Fundamental Global, is an alternative asset management firm which advises on over $2 billion of assets through its affiliates and deals in research, portfolio diversification and investment experience. If you’re looking for advice about asset management – or just someone to go fishing with – he’s your guy. In this episode, Lewis and I had a wide-ranging conversation, discussing managing alternative assets, the value of research and data, his work at Fundamental Global and Capital Wealth Advisors, the markets, the industrialization of China, gold, the Next Big Thing, supply and demand, cycles, crypto, decentralization, SPACs, education, silver lines in COVID-19 and more. It was clearly a smörgåsbord of a discussion. Enjoy!

I had the joy of having not one, but TWO guests on for this episode of Panic. We brought on Invesco’s John Hoffman and the Nasdaq’s Sean Wasserman to talk about the ETF of all ETFs – QQQ. Invesco, a global asset management firm, is the father of the QQQ ETF, which launched with the Nasdaq over 20 years ago. John says the company now manages just north of $1.2 trillion (no big deal). Now, Invesco and Nasdaq are expanding their partnership to launch the Invesco QQQ Innovation Suite. This will offer investor access to the NASDAQ-100 and NASDAQ Next Gen 100 portfolios. In other words, the QQQ just outdid itself. I won’t go into too much detail because Sean and John are the real experts in this space. But I will say after listening to this episode, you will feel like an ETF and QQQ expert. In this episode, the three of us have a wide-ranging discussion about all things QQQ, ETFs, Invesco and Nasdaq’s new partnership product, investor relationships, managing & building portfolios, the democratization of investing, network effects, emerging tech companies, the next generation of young investors and more.

Troy Prince is a native New Yorker, first generation Carribean immigrant, world traveller, veteran trader and founder of the incredible nonprofit Wall Street Bound. No words can express how much I admire and respect the work Troy does. His nonprofit, Wall Street Bound, teaches the technical “hard” skills of finance and the “soft” skills of corporate culture to help get inner city youth into front office intern positions on Wall Street. In short, Troy is helping connect marginalized and underrepresented groups to capital markets. In this episode, Troy and I discuss all things Wall Street Bound: the 15 year journey of starting the company; what services, programs and curriculum is provided; their progress; where Troy sees the company in the next five years; their success and more. We also talk more holistically about onboarding the next generation of investors, leveling the playfield and the value of social capital. I hope you learn something new after listening to this episode.

This episode I interview Woodrow Levin, or Woody as I like to call him. He’s a great entrepreneur, good friend and founder and CEO of Extend. His company, which was founded a little over a year ago, builds and handles extended warranties on their products in an effort to remove roadblocks for smaller merchants. Extend already works with companies like Peloton, iRobot and some 150 others. Not to mention, Woody even invested in our first fund for Social Leverage. I’m grateful for his friendship and business partnership. Woody has had the entrepreneurial bug for a while and has even had previous roles such as Vice President of Growth at DocuSign. He is also currently a board member at DraftKings (shout out to our previous Panic guest Jason Robins). In this episode, Woody and I discuss what it's like growing a company, crypto, DraftKings, Extend, dealing with failure, Shopify, markets, AppleCare and more. Enjoy!

Savneet Singh is not only a great friend, but he’s also one of the most driven workers I’ve ever met, who offers such an interesting perspective on life, entrepreneurship and business. Overall, he’s just incredible at what he does. Savneet and I met through our mutual friend, Sonny Singh, and I’ve been a fan of his for a while now. Savneet is the CEO of PARTech, a provider of point of sale software to the retail and hospitality industry. I was so excited to have a CEO like Savneet on because his company is actually a publicly traded company, trading under $PAR on the NYSE. Savneet has accomplished quite a lot before even starting at PARTech. His investments range from real estate to Uber to cryptocurrencies to websites. Not to mention, he’s also a partner with Ali Hamed, a past guest on Panic, at the VC firm CoVenture. Savneet has so much vision around the software space, some of which he shares with me on the podcast. In this episode, Savneet and I also discuss his admiration of Warren Buffett, public companies, fintech, PARTech’s origin story, Saas businesses, COVID-19 impact on restaurants, SPACs, ecommerce, bitcoin and more.

Current CEO Stuart Sopp is doing some incredibly innovative things over at his company. So, I wanted to check back in with him since our last chat back in March to see if he can offer any new insights. Current is a digital, consumer-friendly banking company targeting groups of people typically overlooked at larger banks, including Millennials and Gen Z. And while big banks focus on lending and deposits, Current focuses on spending. Before starting Current, Stuart made a name for himself developing financial systems as a senior trader for banks like Morgan Stanley, Citi and Deutsche Bank. Now, Stuart’s company is basically the antithesis to these big banks. Current has seen incredible growth this year — surpassing over 1 million active users at the height of the pandemic. In this episode, Stuart and I discuss stocks, cryptocurrency, big banks, what neobanks like Current are and where they’re heading, fintech, his competitors, the wealth gap, stimulus and more. Enjoy!

This was a very exciting episode because not only did I have Stocktwits CEO RIshi Khanna on, but it was also his first podcast ever! We were initially introduced through our mutual friend Dave Moon, and I guess you could say the rest is history. He’s a great guy whom I’ve really enjoyed working with as part of our growing Stocktwits community. Before leading the team over at Stocktwits, Rishi has worn many hats ranging from engineering, product, sales, client service, finance and operations. On this episode, we discussed the markets, data, fintech, working in New York during COVID-19 (and what has surprised him most about the pandemic), how he got his start in fintech, the culture of media, ecommerce and what we can expect from Stocktwits in the future.

Chris Hulls is a good friend with an arsenal of interesting stories and life experiences, and apparently he’s also a TikTok celeb now. I had the pleasure of having the Life360 CEO on for an episode of Panic with Friends. Chris describes Life360 for families as what AAA is for drivers. It’s essentially Find My Friends on steroids (his words, not mine). While Life360 is currently ranked as the eighth most popular social networking app on IOS, it hasn’t ranked so high in the hearts of Gen Z. And in this episode, Chris explains why this was the case. I won’t spoil the whole story, but let’s just say it starts with basically all of Gen Z using TikTok to vocalize their desire to punch Chris in the face and sabotage Life360’s app store reviews. Beyond telling the story of how he got Gen Z’s respect, Chris also talks with me about IPO-ing on the Australian stock exchange, founders, SPACs, Life360’s origin story, COVID-19’s impact on the digital landscape and more. Enjoy!

Not many of my podcast guests can say they got (indirectly) yelled at by Steve Jobs, but luckily my guest on this episode, Steven Rosenblatt, can. Steven is a great friend, incredible venture capitalist and NYC tech legend. He built the company Quatro Wireless during the financial crisis in 2010, which pioneered WAP long before Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. By WAP of course I mean wireless application protocol. Apple eventually bought it and from there Steven even launched a product under Steve Job’s supervision. Steven has more than 20 years of experience scaling startups, building technology companies and supporting founders. Today, he is the co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Oceans. In this episode, Steven and I had a fun discussion about his new firm, how he looks in a black turtleneck, the culture of Apple, meeting founders, scaling businesses, his time as President of Foursquare, what it's like to transform a consumer app to an enterprise company, why he’s bullish on new york and more. He also gracefully snuck in a little humblebrag, but you’ll have to wait until the end of the episode to figure out who it is!

It was great to have my long-time friend, fellow Twitter fanatic and product builder extraordinaire Josh Elman on this episode to get some insights from the man who has a lot of experience at basically every social company imaginable. Josh is someone who is ahead of his time – he’s philosophical, creative and has seen growth on the ground floor of some amazing companies (in another time he was even an intern at Microsoft). Josh is a product leader who has been involved in the early stages of platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Robinhood. In his many years as General Partner at Greylock Partners, he has served on the boards of some of the most innovative social companies, including Discord, Musical.ly (currently TikTok), Medium, Mammoth Media and more. I wish Josh and I could have touched on even more topics during our conversation this episode. But, it was fun getting his unique perspective on everything from his time working at some of the biggest social product companies, what tech company he thinks is the most evil, his most fun job, TikTok, rocket ships and more.

There wasn’t any panic this episode, but more so a restrained enthusiasm from our guest Michael Porat. Michael is the VP of Strategy and Business Development at Cohesity, an innovative and modern data management company. Like a lot of my guests, I met Michael through the fintwit community, and he has now become a good friend. He’s been in the data game for awhile, spending over 6 years at Cisco before moving to Cohesity. What’s great about having someone like Michael on is that he brings this extensive knowledge of tech and data, but explains it in a way that can be understood by the average Joe Shmoe. I had a great conversation with Michael about his career path, his love of sports and gambling (shout out to DraftKings), the power of data, cybersecurity, the cloud, QQQ, the investor ecosystem and the future of data.

I was so appreciative of Patrick O'Shaughnessy for taking the time from hosting his widely successful investing podcast to join me on this episode of Panic. I’ve had the great pleasure of being a guest on Patrick’s podcast Invest Like the Best and now I have the opportunity to turn the tables on him. I guess you could call us podcast experts; although Patrick has been doing his since 2016 so he’s got a couple years on me. He had an unusual route that led him to finance, a success he attributes to his competitiveness and curiousness. As someone who talks to lots of investing and fintech people, it was great to pick Patrick’s brain on a number of topics, including what led him to start his podcast, the gaming market, advice for new investors and founders, the world of software and fintech and more. Of course, I had to end by asking the question he asks all his guests: “What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?” You’ll have to listen to the episode to hear his answer!

If my guest ends the episode saying they want to panic “more frequently,” then I think I’ve done my job as host. In this case, the guest in question is Kyle Samani. Kyle is the founder and managing partner at Multicoin Capital, a firm that invests in all things crypto. This industry can sometimes seem like an abstract thing people are either too tired of talking about or don’t want to understand. No one takes the time to truly slow down and explain it, but Kyle does just that in this episode. I had a fascinating conversation with Kyle on the past and present of crypto, decentralization, Web3, blockchains and his predictions for the future of crypto. I give Kyle major props for surviving in a bear market like the crypto space. Kyle has such an interesting point of view on an oftentime complex subject. I hope you learn something new (and maybe are less intimidated by crypto) by the end of this episode!

You know that line in Hamilton — “why do you write like you’re running out of time?” Well if anyone embodies that, it’s Barry Ritholtz. He's a Bloomberg columnist, podcast host, fanatic tweeter in the “FinTwit” community, blogger, author, and founder of a wealth management company. But to me, he’s my favorite wonk (you’ll see what I mean by that when you listen to the episode). While we did go off on some tangents, Barry and I hit a lot of fun topics, including: our dream “FinTwit” dinner guest list and menu, what he misses about recording in person, Mike Bloomberg’s “impish sense of humor,” APIs & open-source, the creator economy, Seinfeld, the art of the interview and more. Hope you have as much fun listening to this episode as we did recording it!

I had a great time sitting down to chat with my friend, great investor, human and NFL Athlete Kelvin Beachum

Inside the world of how a fund of funds work in the venture capital markets with Patrick O’Connor

Yoshi Yokokawa drops by to talk about the global growth in trading and investing, and about his company Alpaca which powers commission free stock trading in apps all over the world

Ross Mason (founder of Mulesoft - acquired by Salesforce) joins me to explain that we are still in the early innings of the software revolution.

Chetan Puttagunta of Benchmark Capital joins me to discuss the world of Open Source Software and its role in ‘software eating the world’

Richard Betts is a great entrepreneur focused on one-of-a kind Spirits and joins me on Panic with friends to talk about his new company CKBG (Casa Komos Beverage Group) which just launched the Tequilla Brand ‘Komos’ and Superbird, a canned Paloma cocktail.

Narvar founder Amit Sharma Joins me to discuss the continued eCommerce explosion. Narvar is a software company that helps retailers perfect the customer journey especially around returns.

Ali Hamed joins me to talk about building a Venture firm at a young age and about the future of New York City.