Shaherose Charania - Podcast Details

Shows

First FundersS2E03: Atoms over bits: Investing in hardware and innovative founders to solve climate challenges - Sundeep Ahuja, Climate CapitalWe’ve welcomed investors with unique backgrounds to First Funders before, but Sundeep Ahuja is our first operator-turned-actor-turned-investor. Sundeep is all in on all things climate tech. He’s backing founders leading the way in cleaning up our water, purifying our air, and keeping our planet the way it should be: livable. Today, his micro fund and syndicate platform Climate Capital, has over 400 climate-focused companies in its portfolio. Sundeep shares why he thinks real-world, physical tech has the edge over software, how the words we use matter when it comes...2025-05-2741 min

First FundersS2E02: Before Clay Was a Unicorn: The First Check, the Thesis, and the Long Game - Andre Charoo, Maple VCCanadians have been the lifeblood behind some of the biggest unicorn startups of the past few years (think Open AI, Uber, Slack, Instacart, Notion, Databricks, CloudFlare, Roblox, Ethereum, Moderna Health, and Clay to name a few), and yet no one talks about them, except for Andre Charoo. And he’s not just talking – he’s putting his money behind Canadian founders through his fund, Maple VC. Andre shares why he thinks Canadian founders are always a strong bet (and bonus points if they’re immigrants, too), what it’s like to wait over 7 years to see a pr...2025-04-221h 14

First FundersS2E01: Lessons on AI, PM, and LLMs from founder, investor, and operator Shalin MantriYou can be a founder. You can be an investor. You can be an operator. Or, you can be Shalin Mantri and be all three. This respected product leader got his start by founding a mobile app startup in the early iPhone days in 2011 and followed it up with product leadership in the early days of Uber, Skip and more recently, Google. He angel invests with $5k – $50k checks as a true first believer, usually in companies where he has a personal connection with the founder. He shares his tiered angel investment system, where he...2025-03-271h 17

First Funders15: Founder to fintech evangelist to Internet personality and always a Taco Bell enthusiast – Sheel Mohnot, Better Tomorrow VenturesWe’ve had a lot of cool people on the pod, but Sheel Mohnot is our first guest to achieve this trifecta: 100X an investment, have a founder in his portfolio go to prison, and have his wedding sponsored by Taco Bell. He invests at the pre-seed and seed stages into startups in the financial technology (fintech) space, and he’s quick to tell you that just about everything is fintech. Through his fund, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Sheel writes $500k to $3M pre-seed and seed checks into fintech companies. He came by to talk about that time he got defr...2024-11-2053 min

First Funders14: First checks for dropouts, students, and deep tech sci-fi founders - Danielle Strachman, 1517 FundOne day soon when you see a robot squirrel on a 10-foot unicycle, think of Danielle Strachman. These are the types of ideas Danielle Strachman sees and backs on a regular basis at her VC fund, 1517. The fund, which proudly backs “dropouts, students, and sci-fi,” has had several fund multipliers in their portfolio, including Loom (Acquired by Atlassian) and Luminar Technologies (IPO 2020). Plus, her star-studded community includes Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Laura Deming of The Longevity Fund, and Dylan Field of Figma – all of whom she first met when they were teenagers. 2024-10-161h 04

First Funders13: Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund has seen over 50,000 companies and made 800 investments – usually in just 30 minutesElizabeth Yin realized she had a problem. She wanted to be a founder, but couldn’t think of a problem she wanted to spend decades of her life working on. After soul searching, she remembered the one thing she did care about: helping other founders.She took that passion and turned it into Hustle Fund, which focuses on offering capital, knowledge, and networks to “hilariously early-stage” software startups. She also angels invests in non-software D2C companies. She’s invested in over 800 startups, with two of her most notable being Webflow and Mejuri. 2024-10-081h 00

First Funders12: First checks building the future of cities since 2012 led to unicorn investments and $215M in AUM - Julie & Clara, Urban Innovation FundAn ill-fated business school fashion show led to a venture capital fund with $215 million AUM. The duo met in 2010 at the MIT Sloan School of Management and soon after became research partners investigating why VCs were shunning startups in highly regulated spaces even though AirBnB and Uber were starting to reach venture scale very quickly. Tech-enabled startups impacting how we live in the real world were new (back then). Their research sparked Tumml in 2012, an early-stage accelerator, and culminated with the Urban Innovation Fund I in 2016. Now on their third fund with $215M in A...2024-09-241h 18

First Funders11: How one of Arian Ghashghai’s virtual reality companies is on track to hit $20M in revenue after one round of fundingHave you ever played with an Oculus VR headset? You probably owe thanks to Arian Ghashghai. The former founder was working at Meta when someone in his network introduced him to an opportunity to invest in gummies. Yes, gummies. That’s far and away from Arian’s machine learning roots, it’s now one of his best investments to date. Arian has since gone full-time into investing as the founder and managing partner at his own fund, Earthling VC, which specializes exclusively in making pre-seed investments into companies in the AR/VR and robotics domain...2024-09-101h 30

First Funders10: How Amit Garg co-founded an AI-first seed fund before AI took offArmed with an educational background in computer science and biomedical informatics, Amit Garg switched to venture capital after a long, successful career in the corporate world, which included stints at companies like Google and Samsung.And that’s just the way he never planned it. That’s right, the almost-doctor didn’t intend to get into venture capital, and he certainly never planned on starting his own fund. He was drawn in by his innate need to build things, including relationships with people. He partnered up with his officemate from No...2024-08-271h 11

First Funders09: Angels of Shopify investing collectively and lessons on following your gut - Atlee Clark, AngelWhat do you get when you mix U.S. national security, angel investing, and kids’ pajamas? Atlee Clark. Proud Canadian Atlee took a hard pivot from the public sector to the tech world, first through a nonprofit called the C100, which supports entrepreneurs, and later at Shopify, focusing on 0 - 1 initiatives. Similar to other angel collectives emerging at the time like Hashtag Angels and Operator Collective, Atlee tapped into her executive network at Shopify to connect with other female leaders who were looking to invest on the side. What began as informal conversations about inv...2024-07-2358 min

First Funders08 Takeaways: Charles Hudson, Precursor Ventures: macro, team vs market, fund size vs. outcomesJoin Shaherose & Aamir as we reflect on our conversation with Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures. Highlights: Don’t forget the macro: Government regulations can lead to massive opportunities or failures. We discuss case studies of companies like Samsara, Movtive (fka KeepTrucking), Republic, and Zum, showing how regulatory shifts led to category-creating opportunities. Charles’ worst investment was wiped out due to changes in government regulation. Team vs market: We discussed the interplay between having the right team, idea, and timing for startup success. Charles evaluates opportunities 70% team and 30% idea. Both Aamir and I take a more balance...2024-07-0920 min

First Funders08: From the CIA to Google to 400+ pre-seed investments, first and early to define pre-seed - Charles Hudson, PrecursorHailing from Michigan, Charles developed an early obsession with the public markets in high school. Charles Hudson is now the Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures, a pre-seed venture fund that has defined and has become synonymous with “pre-seed”. Charles is known for his ability to identify and mentor early-stage companies that have the potential to disrupt their industries - first and early - including companies like the Athletic (acquired by the NY Times for $550M), Bobbie (recently raised a $70M Series C), Carrot Fertility (recently raised $75M Series C) and Pair Eyewear (recently raised $75M Series C).Char...2024-07-0259 min

First Funders07: Angel in 100+ startups, focused on learning and catalyzing mission-first startups - Eric Ries, Creator Lean Startup, Founder, LTSEEric Ries has invested in over 100+ early-stage startups. He is best known as the author of The Lean Startup, a must-read for entrepreneurs worldwide. He also founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), a new stock exchange designed to support companies with long-term goals. He recently launched a new podcast discussing ways to re-think corporate governance to be mission-first.In Part 1 of our interview, he shared insights from angel investing. In Part 2, Eric shares his new ethos for startups rooted in long-term thinking, putting a company’s mission at the center of everything and aligning all stakeholders. This mi...2024-06-121h 10

First Funders06: Finding Alpha in Texas - Rajiv Bala, Clutch VCRajiv Bala, GP of Clutch VC, a pre-seed and seed-stage fund exclusively investing in Texas. Rajiv is committed and bullish on the region with a hands-on approach to investing, working with founders on product feedback, team building, and more to see initial customer validation before investing. Rajiv also embraces sub $500 million outcomes to drive fund multiples rather than relying on Unicorn outcomes only. This episode pushed our thinking on what we know and practice here in Silicon Valley, reminding us that there is more than one way to achieve Alpha.Highlights from our discussion:Starting startups...2024-05-221h 12

First Funders05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech - Meka Asonye, First Round CapitalMeka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital, started angel investing in 2018 while working at Stripe and joined First Round in 2021. He has made dozens of Angel investments and 13 Venture investments, and he's just getting started! While he focuses on B2B SAAS, he has not shied away from investing in audacious founders, from modernizing 911 call centers to putting the biggest satellites in space. Meka shares his approach to finding true outliers, a practice he began while uncovering hidden talent for the Cleveland Guardians. Meka writes checks of $2M to $5M as the lead a...2024-04-021h 08

First Funders04: 3x tech founder turned seed VC brings a founder mindset to startup investing - Amit Kumar, AccelAmit Kumar, former founder and angel investor, is a generalist venture capitalist at Accel focused on dev tools, healthcare, and fintech startups. Twitter acquired Amit’s third company, and it was then that he realized his true purpose was supporting startup founders, and he shifted to venture capital. Amit shares insightful stories and lessons learned from 8 years of early-stage investing out of a large, top-tier VC fund.Amit writes checks of $2M to $4M as the lead and first institutional seed investor. Highlights from our discussion:How Amit fra...2024-03-121h 01

First Funders03: Angel vs VC, finding purpose and community in startup investing - Rachel SheinbeinRachel Sheinbein is an angel investor with over 250 startup investments. She shares her insights on angel investing and how it allows her to work with founders “even before the seed stage,” writing $25k checks into technology startups through her vehicle Very Serious Ventures. Later, Rachel discusses how building a community drives her investing strategy and lessons from memorable startup investments. Shaherose and Aamir kick off the show with a special message for founders who like to argue and end with their personal takeaways from the conversation with Rachel.Highlights from our discussion:Why Rachel...2024-02-271h 03

First Funders02: 300 startup investments, 500 LPs, sharp elbows - Jenny Fielding, Everywhere VenturesJenny Fielding, a pre-seed investor and angel with 300 early-stage startup investments, discusses investing in FinTech, hard tech, and consumer spaces over the past decade. From studying law to working in finance to leaving it all to found not just one but two startups, Jenny brings a founder-operator mindset to her fund, Everywhere Ventures. She writes pre-seed and seed-stage checks for $50k to $250k.Highlights from our discussion:Jenny’s first seed investment and its fast, huge outcomeHer simple evaluation framework for startup companies and their foundersThe way larger funds can screw early angel investorsEverywhere Ventures’ late...2024-02-141h 07

First Funders01: State of Venture Capital 2024 with Arjun AroraWe're all discussing current market conditions - valuations, AI hype, fundraising challenges... Before we kick off our planned interview series on First Funders, we sat down with our friend Arjun Arora to discuss the Trends in Venture Capital 2024. As investors, we always look ahead, making this a great way to start 2024.Highlights from our discussion:What to expect in round sizes and valuationsAnticipated returns from the AI hypeThe significance of data-driven decision-making for VCsThe rise of hyper-specialized fundsYou can read the full report here: https://www.arjundarora.com/trends-reportThis is...2024-01-2543 min

First FundersAbout the Hosts: How they got into Seed and Angel InvestingBefore you dive into our archives or the next episode, learn about First Funders and its hosts, Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani. You'll hear about Shaherose's background as a startup builder turned VC who started as a product marketer and how she started Women 2.0, a startup ecosystem, and Founder Labs, a tech incubator. She also reviews her time at Nike, where she built their first incubator, and her role as an angel investor and now Venture Partner at Cake Ventures.Aamir then shares his experience as an engineer turned product management leader at Dropcam, which wa...2024-01-2306 min

First FundersComing Soon - a podcast for Angels and Venture Capitalists who write first checksComing soon. First Funders is a podcast for the Angels and Venture Capitalists who write first checks. Co-hosted by Shaherose Charania, startup builder turned VC. And Aamir Virani, founder turned angel investor.In each episode, you'll hear from angel and seed-stage VCs who wrote the first checks into startups that made it. How did these investors find these opportunities? How did they gain conviction? How did they decide to make a bet? And what can you learn from their journey? Sharpen your theses and make better investments by hearing from...2024-01-1200 min $Women\'s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan$ Women's Media Center Live with Robin MorganWMC Live #45: Susan Dworkin, Shaherose Charania, Diann Rust-Tierney, Natalia Oberti Noguera. (Original Airdate 6/29/2013)Robin comments on the Supreme Court rulings, and celebrates the end of DOMA but mourns the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Guests include Natalia Oberti Noguera, Founder and CEO of the Pipeline Fellowship, discussing diversity philanthropy; Diann Rust-Tierney discussing the end of the death penalty; author and playwright Susan Dworkin talking about whither agriculture; and Shaherose Charania of Women 2.0 discussing the future of women innovators in technology.2013-06-2958 min

emprendela (Podcast) - www.poderato.com/emprendela052. Shaherose Charania. Women 2.0Nuestra invitada de esta ocasión necesita muy poca presentación, ya que es una apasionada de la innovación y de la tecnología de mucho renombre en Silicon Valley.2011-05-1335 min