Episodes

This week's episode of Turpentine VC features Benchmark GPs Sarah Tavel and Eric Vishria. We discuss ideas that are central to Benchmark's beliefs in firm-building, including why platform teams exist to help the general partners more so than founders themselves.

Erik is joined by Alfred Lin, partner at Sequoia Capital for over 13 years, and investor in Airbnb, Doordash, Houzz, and more legendary Silicon Valley companies.

On episode eleven of Turpentine VC, Ann Miura-Ko—co-founding partner at Floodgate— sits down with Erik Torenberg to dive deep into the core fundamentals of VC partners talk about behind close doors, including how to identify inflection points to give you an edge when starting a fund, muscles Floodg…

Trae Stephens, General Partner at Founders Fund, joins Erik Torenberg to chat through how the firm's focus on independent thinking and debate culture, and counterintuitive lack of true process, has been key in helping them build an enduring fund.

Sam Lessin, General Partner at Slow Ventures, and Seth Rosenberg, General Partner at Greylock, debate what the effects of AI on incumbents and the next wave of AI-first products will look like.

Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures joins Erik on episode 8 of Turpentine VC to talk about his contrarian and opinionated view of how seed funds should operate, and how that's allowed him to generate 10x fund returns.

This week, Erik is joined by Mike Maples, Jr, co-founder of Floodgate, a storied seed firm that's invested in Lyft, Okta, Twitch, and Twitter, to name a few unicorn portcos. In this episode, Mike and Erik dive into why it's so important to force a choice and not a comparison when differentiating, w…

In just under a decade, Susa has become one of the best seed firms in the industry: their $25M Fund I famously invested in Flexport and Robinhood. Now, ten years later, they’re taking all their learnings and relaunching the firm with a new vision and strategy, which Susa General Partner, Chad Byers…

Hemant Taneja is the CEO of General Catalyst, and runs the firm like a true business: defining its mission and values, approaching the product from a problem-solving perspective, and more—all the things that apply to enduring businesses, Hemant applies to General Catalyst. In this episode, Hemant a…

This week Erik is joined by Sam Lessin, General Partner at the early-stage VC firm Slow Ventures, essayist, and former VP of Product at Facebook.

Aydin Senkut and Erik Torenberg examine the generalist approach to VC that Felicis pioneered, and discuss why that approach allows you to generate more hits, why virtually all of Felicis’ investments are narrative-driven, and the secret ingredients that have steered the firm to repeat success over …

This week on Turpentine VC, Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman of Kleiner Perkins join Erik to discuss how they’ve seized the torch and helped drive the next chapter of the firm’s iconic history. We go into the nitty-gritty KP’s strategies behind decision-making, fund size, recruiting talent, and more.

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and one of the most influential venture capitalists of the last decade, joins Erik for the inaugural episode of Turpentine VC.

On Turpentine VC, host and venture capitalist Erik Torenberg delves deep into the art and science of building successful venture firms through conversations with the world’s best investors and operators.