Hosted by Shaherose Charania · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 25 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
How first checks get written. What it takes to earn them.First Funders goes inside the minds of the investors who back founders before anyone else believes in them, and the founders bold enough to make that pitch.Each episode, host Shaherose Charania, Partner at Unshackled Ventures and a 20-year veteran of the startup ecosystem, sits down with angels, pre-seed investors, and operators-turned-VCs for candid, tactical conversations. Guests include partners from First Round Capital, Accel, Precursor Ventures, Climate Capital, Hustle Fund, and beyond.We cover how investors are building conviction in an era where AI is reshaping every sector, what they look for before traction exists, and the frameworks behind their best bets. Whether you're writing first checks or trying to earn one, this is your inside track.
Shaherose Charania hosts First Funders, a business show with 25 episodes published.
This episode of First Funders is a little different… It's a conversation between two friends who made the leap from to VC from two shared and unique paths. Shaherose is joined by Mel Strong, an operator-turned investor,
Shahram Seyedin-Noor isn’t a physician. Nor is he a chemist. And he’s not a software engineer, either. But you wouldn’t know by the way he commands all of these spaces to invest in some truly cutting edge bio technology
What could you do with a free weekend and a few subscriptions to some AI tools? Probably start a billion dollar company. This is the reality for so many startups and tech companies that can suddenly ship projects that pr
Some investors are motivated by the thought of multiplying their fund, securing a bigger slice of the cap table, or, of course, successfully filing for a coveted IPO. But for Tahira Dosani, all she has to do is remember
We’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
Canadians 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 na
You 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 i
We’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 i
One 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 proud
Elizabeth 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 ab
An 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
Have 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, g
Armed 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 G
What 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
Join 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 cas
Hailing 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 becom
Eric 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 exch
Rajiv 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, t
Meka 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 get
Amit 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 h
Sheel Mohnot
Co-Founder and General Partner · Better Tomorrow Ventures
1 appearance on this show
Vitalik Buterin
co-founder · Ethereum
1 appearance on this show
Dylan Field
Figma
1 appearance on this show
Clara
skeptical assistant · Harrison Youth
1 appearance on this show
Julie
health advocate · Our Water Our World
1 appearance on this show
Amit Garg
co-founder and managing partner · Tau Ventures
1 appearance on this show
Charles Hudson
Managing Partner and Founder · Precursor Ventures
2 appearances on this show
Eric Ries
creator of the Lean Startup method, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, author of Incorruptible · Long-Term Stock Exchange
1 appearance on this show
Amit Kumar
Chairman, President and CEO · National Cancer Institute
1 appearance on this show
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First Funders is hosted by Shaherose Charania. The show is categorised under business (investing) and has published 25 episodes.
First Funders has published 25 episodes.
First Funders regularly covers business, investing, entrepreneurship. It sits in the business category, with a investing focus.
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Episodes of First Funders average 61 minutes, giving guests a long-form format with plenty of time to expand on their expertise.
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