Meet Zal Bilimoria, founder & solo GP at Refactor Capital, a seed-stage fund focused on bio, climate, energy, aerospace, and other hard-but-world-changing industries.

We discuss his 10-year journey building Refactor, how his product years at Google/Netflix/LinkedIn shaped his investing lens, and what he learned from launching A16Z’s first bio fund. We talk portfolio construction, ownership discipline, navigating follow-ons in an AI-inflated market, and how he supports founders in the fast, messy early days.

Zal also discusses setbacks, down rounds, pay-to-plays, and the moments that shaped his perspective as an investor and partner to founders.

Meet Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry Group and longtime venture investor. He shares the story behind building a $4B platform, why the firm chose not to raise future funds, and how he’s thinking about the next chapter of his life and work.

We dig into his fund-to-fund strategy, the value of broad exposure across the venture ecosystem, and how asymmetric information shapes better decision-making. Seth also reflects on scaling culture, avoiding dogma, and staying grounded in a non-scalable craft.

Finally, we explore the ideas behind his new book, Capital Evolution, from capitalism as a social compact to declining mobility to how regulation, opportunity, and community shape the future.

Meet Jessica McKellar, CEO and co-founder of Pilot. In this episode, she shares how she built three successful startups, including exits to Oracle and Dropbox, and breaks down why staying close to customers is a must for shaping strategy and culture.

Jessica explains why founders should keep selling long after scaling begins—and how great teams come from values alignment, not titles.

She also reflects on the lessons of being uncool and how empathy, integrity, and curiosity became her biggest superpowers as a leader.