Brom Rector is the founder of XEIA Venture Partners (formerly Empath Ventures), a venture capital firm focused on the intersection of neuroscience, mental health, and emerging technologies.

In this episode we discuss:

- The evolution from Empath's psychedelics focus to XEIA's broader "Human 3.0" vision

- The current state of psychedelic medicine after recent FDA setbacks

- Revolutionary brain-computer interfaces like Motif Neurotech and their potential to treat depression

- Genetic medicine innovations including RNA therapeutics

- The fertility crisis and hearing damage epidemic as underexplored health frontiers

- How VCs evaluate founders and what makes a compelling pitch

- AI's role in investment decision-making and its future impact on various industries

Recorded in San Francisco in early 2025, this conversation explores the cutting edge of human health technology and the venture capital ecosystem supporting it.

#venturecapital #Biotech #Neuroscience #HumanHealth #Psychedelics #BrainComputerInterfaces #GeneMedicine #AI

Ollie Allen Fox speaks to Hugo Lu, founder of Orchestra, about his journey from investment banking to revolutionizing data engineering. Hugo offers valuable insights on data stack architecture, the importance of clean and modular systems, and how Orchestra is helping data engineers streamline their workflows. Whether you're a data professional or a tech entrepreneur, this podcast provides a wealth of knowledge on building and scaling a successful SaaS startup in the data space. In this conversation, Ollie & Hugo discuss: 00:00:00 - Hugo's background and experience at Juul 00:04:00 - The skills needed to start a tech company 00:08:00 - The power of curiosity and learning in entrepreneurship 00:13:00 - What Orchestra does and the data problems it solves 00:23:00 - Building a founding team and the importance of incentives 00:29:00 - The future of SaaS and AI in enterprise software 00:37:00 - Orchestra's marketing strategies and programmatic SEO 00:47:00 - Early customers and the value Orchestra provides 00:54:00- The challenges of data engineering and work-life balance Ollie Allen Fox is the founder of Weboaf, a creative agency specialising in designing brands for companies in the deep tech industry. Hugo Lu is the CEO and Founder of Orchestra, a SaaS startup offering best in class data orchestration for data teams.

Molly O’Shea is an investor & founder of Sourcery.vc. A weekly newsletter on top weekly VC deals & tech signals. After posting top quality content for 4 years, whilst working at a variety of VC firms, Molly has built an audience of 6,000 people from the industry.

In this conversation we talked about:

00:59 Sourcery.vc

03:29 Consistency and discipline in content creation

05:41 Networking and building connections through content

12:16 Molly's personal background and journey into venture capital

18:18 Taking a multi-disciplinary to life

20:06 Whats the difference between those who are active in online communities and those who aren't?

23:24 Being a pirate

27:31 The hidden challenges of a 9-5

29:56 Alcohol

31:17 Go outside

35:42 Standing out in the age of AI

45:43 Content Advertising

55:56 Where does Molly get her information?

57:08 Morgan Housel Same As Ever

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