4thly

For startup founders and investors, term sheets are the Rosetta Stone for each financing transaction. Unlike the Rosetta Stone, terms that are considered ordinary and customary change a little every year, as economic tides flow and the startup ecosystem evolves. On this episode, two expert attorneys and I discuss term sheets for venture financings including SAFE side-letters and more. 

In this episode, I talk with two attorneys who handle many startup financing transactions on both coasts. Louis Lehot operates in the heart of Silicon Valley, while Julie-Anne Lutfi practices in Boston. They both have deep experience representing both startup founders and venture capital funds. We discuss current trends as we approach the new year (2021 ain't coming back), and the things investors and founders should be aware of in 2024 (and we even re-visit some perennial topics like SAFE's vs Convertible Notes). Also, my new book is available now!

On this episode I talk with one of my favorite social entrepreneurs in the whole world. Diana Sierra is originally from Colombia, ended up getting a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, was an industrial designer developing products for global companies, and then founded BeGirl, a social venture startup focused on menstrual health for women in Africa. I met her originally through my work with Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. She’s amazing, and I think you’ll enjoy our discussion. 

On this episode, a panel of US-China experts discuss President Biden's recent executive order which subjects private US investments into China to screening. This obviously has a pretty big impact on venture capital and private equity firms, but in the discussion we got into the larger picture of the US-China relationship, and the "conscious uncoupling" that is going on. The panel includes Ker Gibbs, noted US-China scholar, Christopher Swift, lawyer specializing in national security regulations, H.K. Park, who runs the national security practice at Crumpton Global and specializes in outbound investments, and Louis Lehot, Silicon Valley lawyer who represents many VC and PE clients. This was a great conversation, co-hosted by 4thly and Foley & Lardner. You can also view video of the conversation.

On this episode I talk with Alice Bosley, Co-founder and CEO of Five One Labs. She and her cofounder met in grad school at Columbia and decided to create a startup focused on solving a really big problem - getting refugee populations back up on their feet. The UNHRC estimates the number of people in the world who have been forcibly displaced is now almost 110 million - the highest in history. I think you’ll enjoy this conversation with Alice about how her organization is tackling this problem, and what she’s learned in her six year journey as a social entrepreneur. I met her originally through my work with Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

On this episode I talk with Sylvana Quader Sinha. With a master’s degree from Columbia plus a law degree from Harvard, she was a high-achieving international lawyer, a foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama, special consultant to the World Bank, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Then in her 30’s she decided to pivot to a real challenge -  being an entrepreneur focused on fixing health care in Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Her startup, Praava Health, is now the fastest-growing healthcare brand in Bangladesh, serving a half-million people, and has been featured in Forbes, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She’s amazing, and I think you’ll enjoy my conversation with her. 

Christopher Zaw runs Warc Africa - a social enterprise based in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Their goal is to get smallholder farmers out of poverty and address food insecurity across Africa. They design and sell regenerative farming input packages while providing access to training, mechanized services, and markets. I met Chris as part of my work with Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and Warc Africa is a great example of a successful social enterprise, treating poor populations as customers and partners rather than charity cases.

Jeff Bradley was working with Large Language Models long before most of us had heard of them. He's now CEO of Phrasia, a startup with a deep learning platform that helps companies to get actionable insights by going through all the natural language information (app reviews, survey comments, customer comments, social media, customer service transcripts, etc). On this episode Jeff talks about his own journey as an entrepreneur, and the future of AI and Large Language Models.

Biotech remains a red-hot area for startup founders and investors. Next-generation gene therapies, precision medicine, using AI and ML for speeding discovery and development of new drugs, and entire new delivery methods. What does the future look like, and how should investors and founders parse the opportunities in this sector? On this episode I talk with Marguerite Hutchison, Kent Hawryluk, and Louis Lehot about these topics and more.

Climate is a threat to the planet, and an area of great opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors to be part of the solution. Last year saw over $70 billion in venture capital invested in Climate Tech ventures. There are huge opportunities for founders and investors in this sector, as climate resilience becomes a growing imperative worldwide. I hosted this panel along with Louis Lehot and Jeffery Atkin of Foley & Lardner, and our expert guests included Kathleen Egan, CEO of ecomedes, Kristin Wegner Guilfoyle of the National Renewable Energy Lab, Gopal Erinjippurath, CTO of Sust Global, and Charlie Crocker, Co-founder of Zonehaven.

2023 is certainly the year of generative AI. New software such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Bard have collectively created one of those “This is going to change everything!” moments in Silicon Valley and beyond. Startup founders and investors are all-in on what appears to be a new gold rush. On this episode, I have a lively discussion with a panel of experts including venture capital investors, startup founders, and Louis Lehot from Foley & Lardner.

There is plenty of seed financing activity going on in the startup world, but it’s a different economic environment with a variety of different structures being used. In this episode a panel of experts discusses early stage startup financings in the new economy. Co-hosted by ⁠Foley & Lardner, LLP,⁠ the panel includes Benjamin Heywood of SkyRiver Ventures, Igor Taber of Cortical Ventures, Taylor Oliver of Tenacity Venture Capital, as well as Natasha Allen ad Louis Lehot, two attorneys who handle many Silicon Valley startup financings.

On this episode I talk with Charlene Platon. She’s a registered nurse, and she’s in a leadership position at Stanford Health Care, which includes Stanford Hospital. She’s now launched a startup on the side, called Fifth Window. It’s a digital platform with a mission of revolutionizing the well-being of nurses worldwide. She talks about her journey as a startup founder, and also thoughts on how startup founders can optimize their time in order to achieve their goals.

Brazil is not only the largest economy in Latin America, it’s also a hotbed of entrepreneurship and innovation. Brazil has generated several unicorns - startups with a valuation more than a billion dollars - including Nubank, 99, Brex, Neon, Loft, and more. A small island in the south of Brazil, Florianópolis is often called “The Silicon Valley of Brazil” because it's become a thriving ecosystem of tech and startups. Joining me on this episode are two important people in that Florianópolis startup ecosystem - Leandro Piazza and JP Schneider. They run a startup school called “49 Education”, and they talk about the extraordinary startup activity in Brazil today.

On this episode I talk with Kyle Connors, co-founder of Candidate.fyi, an early-stage venture with a software product that helps companies transform their job candidate interview process into a world-class experience.  Kyle talks about the importance of doing customer development simultaneous to product development, about running a successful startup fundraising process, and about the mindset of successful entrepreneurs. 

On this episode I talk with Roger Lang, venerable entrepreneur and venture capitalist. By the age of 36 he had two IPO's under his belt, and more money than he knew what to do with. So he decided to dedicate himself to impact investing - investing in new startups that could help solve the world's pressing problems. His new venture capital fund is called "The Smart Society Fund".

Vera Maslova grew up in Moscow with two world-class scientists as parents, and then she went on to a PhD program in which she studied the intersection of art and philosophy. Then the war in Ukraine hit and she fled, ending up in Silicon Valley. An accidental refugee from unexpected world events, she now runs a startup named Science.Me, with a mission of giving more people exposure to brilliant scientists and philosophers from around the world. On this episode we talk about her new startup, but we also talk more broadly about facing adversity and how each of us can learn to develop a mindset of resilience.

TikTok, headquartered in China, is a hugely-successful app platform today. Last week the Biden Administration issued an ultimatum that the company either be sold to new owners or face the prospect of having the app banned in the US. It's an extraordinary thing, that a social media app popular with young people has been declared a national security threat. And this is happening, of course, against the background of a very tense unique relationship between the US and China. Joining me on this episode, to talk through this, is Ker Gibbs, an expert on US-China business relationships.

On this episode I talk with Darren Powderly about his journey from having an early startup idea to founding and building a company that today is a market leader, with over $4 billion in investor transactions processed. Crowdstreet has transformed the way that commercial real estate is funded, democratizing the process and making it much more efficient. 

On this episode we talk with four experts about some new Federal regulations being called “Reverse CFIUS” that will have a big impact on venture capital and private equity funds with investing activities in China and certain other countries. Investments from China into US companies and operations have long been subject to Federal review by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (commonly called CFIUS) and now the Biden administration is looking to make investments going the other way also subject to review.  According to many sources, a new executive order is being drafted and will be issued soon - it’s being called “Reverse CFIUS”. The Biden administration’s purpose is to check Chinese ambitions in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, with the clear aim of slowing the development of China’s military capabilities. But what do the new expected regulations mean for US investors? Today there are many outbound transactions conducted by venture capital, private equity, and other US investors into Chinese investment opportunities,  and by some accounts nearly half of these transactions will be subject to this new set of regulations. The experts on this episode include Louis Lehot, Christopher Swift, PhD, HK Park, and Ker Gibbs.