The Operators

Many founders and investors talk about being mission-driven, but Eren Bali truly walks the walk. He's created two separate companies that have had a dramatic impact on increasing access to vital services. He co-founded and served as the CEO of Udemy, a $3B+ online education company, before creating Carbon Health. Carbon Health makes world-class healthcare personal and accessible by bringing technology into the workflow of digital and in-person primary care.

Carbon Health just recently closed on a Series C funding of $100 million after expanding from seven states to twenty-seven states in under twelve months. In this episode, Eren shares his journey from an underprivileged upbringing in the mountains of Turkey to creating leading Silicon Valley companies expanding access to education with Udemy and healthcare with Carbon Health. Don't miss it!

One week before the presidential election, Expensify founder and CEO David Barrett made a decision that ultimately landed him in the headlines of Bloomberg, CBS News, Business Insider, etc. He sent an email urging all Expensify customers to vote for Joe Biden, stating directly that a vote against Biden is a 'vote against democracy.' 

Given that Expensify sells expense management software, it was a shock for customers and investors alike when 10 million people received emails with such an overtly political message. On election day last week, Neil sat down with David to talk over this bold decision, the creation of his company, and the complex relationship between business and politics. 

On this week's episode of The Operators, Neil sits down with Founder & CEO of Tempest Holly Whitaker. Holly never planned on starting her own company, but out of her battle with addiction came her calling to create Tempest. Breaking the typical rules of both entrepreneurship and sober living, Holly details her complex journey of raising almost $20M in venture capital for Tempest, ultimately helping so many in their battles with addiction.

Shivani Siroya built her first career as a strong performer in high-end finance job, but some part of her was craving a more impactful path. In an industry that errs on the side of caution - especially when it comes to lending to low-income borrowers - Shivani began asking,  "how can we better extend trust to more people?"

With almost half of the global population unable to participate in the formal financial system, Shivani realized that so many people were left behind simply because of where they were born. She came up with a brilliant solution to a seemingly impossible problem: lending to users who lacked a meaningful credit history or involvement in the formal financial system. All that's needed is a mobile phone to underwrite, originate, and collect on microloans. 

These microloans, which range from $100 to $500, drive massive impact for borrowers by enabling them to start new businesses, attain new educational opportunities, and have a stopgap for emergencies. With offices in India, Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya, Tala now serves millions of borrowers with life-changing loans every single day. 

Take a listen to Shivani's fascinating journey to hear about her experiences in starting and building Tala.

Adam Jackson has founded multiple successful companies, including Doctor On Demand with Jay McGraw (the Executive Producer and Creator of The Doctors) and Phil McGraw aka Dr. Phil. He's also a successful investor with investments like SuperHuman, Zenefits, and Bolt. 

Despite all his success and experience, Adam believes that how we work is broken. Current structures inhibit employees from having enough control over their own work. Adam shares with us his journeys through entrepreneurship and how his company Braintrust is giving control back to workers. Take a listen to hear about how Adam created the world’s first user-controlled talent platform, his early days as a startup founder, and his passion for meaningful entrepreneurship.

Mondaire Jones is not your typical politician. Despite being raised in Section 8 housing and on food stamps by a single mother working multiple, Mondaire made it to Stanford for college and Harvard for law school before working for President Obama and the Legal Aid Society. Since then, he's decided to run for Congress, winning his party's nomination as a young, gay, black progressive in a mostly white and wealthy district in New York. As he heads toward the general election next month, Mondaire sat down with Neil to talk about his "dialing for dollars" fundraising, winning endorsements from Bernie Sanders, the New York Times, and Elizabeth Warren, and his goal of becoming the first black, LGBTQ+ member of congress.

In this episode, we’re talking about hiring and recruiting, including why people take the risk of working at early-stage startups, when and how to work with recruiters, and how to make your first hires. 

A company’s first hires are often the hardest. Money is usually too tight to pay competitive salaries. There’s no recognizable brand or reputation yet, and people more often want to work at a company that their friends and family have heard of before. There’s also fair presumption of risk and unviability. Who wants to take a job that might not be around in a year?

Startup founders overcome these odds on a regular basis. To figure out how, we spoke with two experts, Farah and Kelly. Farah Sharghi-Dolatabadi began her career as a software developer and a financial advisor before moving into recruiting. She’s been a recruiter at startups in addition to companies like Google and Lyft. She’s currently a senior technical recruiter at Uber and an active career coach at HireClub. Kelly Kinnard is the Vice President of Talent at Battery Ventures, where she’s worked with startups like Wag, Coupa, Fastly, and Gainsight. She also has experience at top recruiting firms and in executive search at Oracle.

If you're going to be doing any hiring in the near future, you can't miss this episode!

In this episode, we’re talking about the vast world of communications. Early on, most founders and investors focus on driving positive coverage in the press. If they’re unfortunate or mess up, mitigating negative coverage may end being a goal too. But communications also includes more broadly considering how and what information to share what inside and outside of the company. It touches on domains like management, recruiting, marketing, and business development. It’s basically everywhere. It’s also a highly optimizable domain in that the difference between using the right words and the wrong words can be the difference between dramatic success and catastrophic failure. We spoke with three communications experts to learn more:

Sean Garrett was the first VP of Communications at Twitter. He previously worked for Governor Pete Wilson of California and has also co-founded two separate communications firms, with clients including Slack, Cisco, and Disney. He’s currently the Managing Partner at Pramana Collective.

Faryl Ury is a former reporter, with experience at NPR and the Associated Press. Her communications experience also began in government, working for a US Senator, before moving to Square, Uber, and then Dropbox for a marketing role. She’s now the Director of Communications at Aurora, a leading autonomous vehicle company, with investors including Sequoia Capital, Amazon, and Hyundai.

Adi Raval served as a journalist at both ABC News and the BBC, covering 9/11, the Iraq War, and the White House before moving into government. He was first a diplomat for the State Department, serving in Afghanistan, and then a spokesperson and Director of Communications at USAID. After leaving government, Adi was the top communications executive for the Bechtel Corporation, and most recently Head of Comms and PR for TaskRabbit. He’s also a term member for the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week’s episode features AirBnB's Global Product Director of Customer and Community Support Platform Products, Andy Yasutake, and Carta's Head of Enterprise Relationship Management, Jared Thomas.

AirBnB, one of the most valuable private tech companies in the world, has millions of hosts who trust strangers (guests) to come into their homes and hundreds of millions of guests who trust strangers (hosts) to provide a roof over their head.  

Carta, a $1 Billion+ company formerly known as eShares, is the leading provider of cap table management and valuation software, with thousands of customers and almost a million individual shareholders as users. Customers and users entrust Carta to manage their investments, a very serious responsibility requiring trust and security.