The MedTech Founder Backing Surgical AI | Garrett Smith, ReefHaven Ventures

Supply Chains Don't Just Fail Companies — They Fail Nations | J.P. Keating, ProChain Ventures

J.P. Keating spent 25 years inside five Fortune 500 supply chains — Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, Allstate — before deciding insiders needed to be the ones writing the check. Now, as founder of ProChain Ventures, he's backing pre-seed and seed stage founders building the technology that makes global supply chains faster, more resilient, and harder to break. In this episode, JP and Connor dig into why supply chain is less about efficiency and more about survivability, how ProChain finds the right LPs (spoiler: industry operators first), and why a self-propelled autonomous rail car might be the most exciting investment in the portfolio.

Betting on LatAm's Biodiversity Advantage | Galit Flasterstein, Danta Fund

Galit Flasterstein sold a travel company she ran in Costa Rica for a decade, then built a marketplace connecting LatAm artisans to global buyers, and concluded the real gap wasn't commerce but early-stage capital. Now she runs Danta Fund, a pre-seed vehicle backing ag tech, biotech, food tech, and climate tech founders across Latin America with a thesis built on the region's biodiversity. We get into why LatAm's biodiversity creates a scientific moat that's hard to replicate anywhere else, how a Danta portfolio company is predicting farm diseases two weeks in advance using aerial pathogen filters and AI, and why the best founders have stopped looking for generalist VCs.

The VC Fund That Sees Opportunity in Red Tape | Walid Aradi & Wes Schwalje, Red Tape Ventures

Walid Aradi and Wes Schwalje spent over 15 years at Tahseen Consulting advising heads of state, ministries, and 11 unicorns on navigating the regulatory and political realities of the MENA region, including structuring two of the region's biggest exits, Uber's acquisition of Careem and the Dubizzle-EMPG merger. Together they launched Red Tape Ventures, a Dubai-based seed fund backing marketplace and enablement technology startups across 22 countries where regulation isn't the risk — it's the unfair advantage. We get into why founders who align with government national visions end up co-creating regulation rather than fighting it, and how Red Tape made its first close during an active war (and why that's less surprising than it sounds).

Backing the Founders that Ate Glass | Nathan Maton, Basal Capital

Nathan Maton built his career at the intersection of design, technology, and human behavior, with stints at Google, Khan Academy, and Omada. He became an angel investor and ran The Clearing, a workshop for founders navigating life after a significant exit. That work crystallized his debut pre-seed and seed fund thesis: repeat founders in FinTech and AI are systematically underserved at the earliest stage. We get into why Nathan looks for founders who have "eaten the glass and signed up to do it again," how he got into a YC deal that was way oversubscribed by building five-year conviction on a founder before the round even existed, and why he believes stablecoin infrastructure is only in the third inning of a transition bigger than the internet.

Finite to Infinite: Why Energy Innovation Needs Operators, Not Observers | Vineet Shah, 8 Clockwise

Vineet Shah spent 18 years inside the energy industry. From a 4.6 gigawatt power plant through CurtissWright and Caltrol to co-founding Honeywell's lithium-ion battery business, where he created the industry's first-ever performance guarantee product. He launched 8 Clockwise as both a venture studio and seed fund backing founders in energy access, decarbonization, and advanced materials, guided by a single organizing principle: finite to infinite. We get into why most climate tech and industrial startups fail, how a venture studio model lets 8Clockwise roll up its sleeves on high-conviction portfolio companies rather than spray and pray across 20 bets, and why senior energy executives are the ideal LP for a fund that requires patience, domain fluency, and a belief that the next wave of industrial innovation belongs in venture capital.