slice podcast

About slice podcast

behind the slice of venture built to last: emerging managers and the art of small founder-led funds

Publisher

slice

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Jan 2026

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

51 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   sean engelking & suraj mehta / humanrace capital

   sean and suraj are building humanrace capital to help founders navigate regulation early, before it becomes a Series B problem. they've learned that building starship, a mobile HSA for gig workers, inside a market controlled by Fidelity, Optum, HealthEquity, and HSA Bank where even small changes meant going through a banking partner, an industry operator, or a congressional office. starship was bought by optum financial (united health group) in 2022, with a firsthand understanding of how Washington actually moves, and that access sits alongside them, available to founders while the rules are still being written.

2. 

   15 Sept 2026

   jakob diepenbrock / discipulus ventures

   Jakob Diepenbrock is the front door to the young talent building hard tech in El Segundo. The exclusive Demo Days he runs are hard to get into for both investors and founders. Now with more than 1,000+ applications per cohort, they’re bringing together the youngest technical talent in hard tech and the investors backing companies of American interest. He landed in the Gundo before any GP had set up shop, after noticing the gap between the builders already there and the early-stage capital that had not followed them into town. He started building the community, which became cohorts of young engineers building for the American interest. That convening became a nonprofit. The nonprofit became a $9M Fund I. Fund I became an oversubscribed $30M Fund II. What has not changed is Jakob’s discipline around getting in extremely early, and the early pricing is a byproduct of spotting talent before anyone else is in the room. Jakob writes $175K checks across 13 companies per cohort.

3. 

   5 Aug 2026

   top lessons from slice podcast season 4

   the layer underneath this season was the managers who won deals by arranging their whole world so the right founder couldn't not call them, before that founder was even looking for money. brand is the most misunderstood word in the business, and it's not the logo or the colors on your deck but what people say about you when you're not in the room. if you're a different thing to everyone, you're nothing to anyone. building is the cheapest it's ever been, and the leverage that used to take ten people is a stack of agents now, everyone is networked in, and none of it separates anyone anymore. everyone runs with their army of agents, and what's left is being irreplaceably good at one narrow thing. perhaps that's gadi and daniel finding the most talented young engineers across latam who have the ability but never had the rails. helena and teddy running the pac heights victorian as a landing spot for european founders in sf. suds holding next year's breakout before anyone knows its name. if a manager has to ask how they stand out, they've probably already lost it. standing out isn't a marketing problem but a focus decision. the last piece is one we've never talked about publicly, which is how you ever give money back to your lps. companies stay private forever now, so dpi is the conversation everyone is having. we think that conversation belongs to the funds between $50m and $500m that got caught mid cycle with great markups and no liquidity. it was never about the emerging managers with sub-$20m funds. four seasons in, it only keeps getting sharper that the smallest funds win by compounding into the one thing they're irreplaceably good at, sized small enough to finish the job and return the money. thank you to ryan, molly, arkady, somrat, ramzi, drew, matt, gadi, daniel, helena, teddy, suds, and carmen. and to the folks who attended our events in los angeles and new york. this one was fabri's last, and season five picks up this fall with a familiar and fresh new face :)

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