Future Ventures: Scaling with Clarity
Future Ventures: Scaling with Clarity is a podcast for founders, operators, and investors building long-term companies. Hosted by Maxim Atanassov, a four-time founder and managing partner of Future Ventures Corp., each episode covers capital, structure, strategy, and growth. The show aims to help listeners make high-stakes decisions that compound in value. New episodes are released weekly.
Episodes
Jan Poetsch — Turning Power Into Profitability | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 45
Send us Fan MailJan Poetsch spent almost twenty years working on some of the world's most complicated energy projects. He then realized that the biggest hidden opportunity in industrial energy was right on the income statement: the power bill. His career took him from a small town in Germany to offshore platforms with Shell, the Sakhalin II project in Russia, and the LNG Canada supply chain.
Jeremy Funk — The New Rules of Growth in the AI Era | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 44
Send us Fan MailJeremy Funk has spent more than two decades doing the one thing most people in tech were told to stop prioritizing: building real relationships. As founder and CEO of Funk Futures — a fractional sales, recruiting, and marketing firm rooted in the energy sector — he's earned a reputation as one of the industry's premier "super connectors." His value, as he puts i
Emilia De Stasio - The Democratization of Wealth Through Art | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 43
Send us Fan MailEmilia de Stasio spent years working in finance at places like the European Central Bank and Moody's, but she later turned her focus to a market that has very little data. As a long-time art collector, she often found it hard to get reliable information to decide if a piece was a good buy. Frustrated by this, she co-founded Artscapy, a platform that aims to bring clarity, orga
Dave Guttman — From Terminal Diagnosis to 9-Figure Exits | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 42
Send us Fan MailDave Guttman has spent more than three decades building, scaling, acquiring, and exiting businesses — racking up multiple 8- and 9-figure outcomes along the way. But the thing that shaped how he operates wasn't a deal. At 24, fresh off an acceptance to Wharton, three doctors misdiagnosed him and told him he had six months to live. He survived, and the experience rewired his de
Samir Musayev — How Inmigrants Drive Canada's Entrepreneurial Future | FV Podcast Ep. 41
Send us Fan MailDr. Samir Musayev has built a career helping businesses think well beyond their home turf. As Commercial Account Director at Export Development Canada (EDC), he works hands-on with Canadian companies navigating the messy reality of global trade — financing, risk, and the practical mechanics most founders badly underestimate. Originally from Baku, Azerbaijan, and now based in Calgar
Nicola Redi — Why Europe’s Deep Tech Moment Is Just Beginning | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 40
Send us Fan MailItaly is known for sun, food, and culture. What it isn't known for — and should be — is being one of the top research nations on the planet. Nicola Redi has built his career on closing that gap. As Managing Partner at Obloo Ventures, one of Italy's leading deep tech VC firms, he spends his days translating breakthroughs in AI, quantum, aerospace, and computational science
Tom Milar — Turning Waste into Capital Building Circular Systems That Scale | FV Podcast Ep. 39
Send us Fan MailTom Milar has spent over a decade building infrastructure for private companies — first through incorporation services out of Hong Kong and Las Vegas, and now through Eqvista, a valuation and equity management platform serving 23,000 startups. After a successful acquisition, Tom took five of his most important team members and set out to fix a problem he kept running into himself:
Mathew Jackson — Building Circular Systems That Scale | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 12
Send us Fan MailMatthew Jackson is the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Alimentary Systems, a New Zealand company rethinking how the world handles organic waste and sewage. An Edmund Hillary Fellow with a track record of building and scaling high-growth ventures across global markets, Matthew has helped drive billions in market value creation — including bringing Netflix to New Zealand a
Stanley Wei — AI That Actually Gets Things Done: The Future of Autonomous Agents | FV Podcast E. 37
Send us Fan MailStanley Wei is the Founder and CEO of Pine AI, an autonomous agent platform that doesn't just answer questions — it picks up the phone, fills out the forms, and gets things done on behalf of consumers. Pine negotiates bills, cancels subscriptions, files complaints, resolves disputes, and navigates insurance claims autonomously. Before launching Pine, Stanley held leadership ro
Stan Christiaens — The Billion-Dollar Problem Behind AI | Future Ventures Podcast Episode 37
Send us Fan MailStan Christiaens is the Cofounder and Chief Data Citizen of Collibra, one of the companies that helped define the modern data governance category. What began in 2008 as a spinoff from a semantics research lab at the Free University of Brussels has grown into a global platform used by some of the world's largest enterprises to manage data trust, lineage, governance, and increas
Neeraj Singh — Building Sustainable Software in the Age of AI | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 36
Send us Fan MailWhile most of Silicon Valley argues over whether SaaS is dead, Neeraj Singh is quietly running the experiment that might answer the question. He's the founder and CEO of BigBinary, a 15-year-old remote-first software consultancy, and Neeto, a growing suite of affordable alternatives to the bloated enterprise tools founders begrudgingly pay for every month. NeetoCal goes head-t
Hubertus Hofkirchner — The Future of Money and Trade Infraestructure | FV Podcast Ep. 35
Send us Fan MailHubertus Hofkirchner has spent four decades operating at the intersection of trade finance, technology, and monetary theory. He started his career at Citibank International in Vienna, designed a securities system that rolled out across smaller city banks throughout Europe, and later served as Director at Kreditanstalt Investment Bank. As a serial entrepreneur, he built one of the f
Dave Hertig — High Tech, High Touch: The Future of CEO Performance | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 34
Send us Fan MailDave Hertig has spent his career watching CEOs up close — first as a business journalist who interviewed more than 100 of them for UBS alone, then as the founder of Boom, where he now focuses on CEO performance under pressure. Along the way, he developed a conviction that became the spine of his work: the people the rest of the company looks up to have blind spots like everyone els
Omar Sahyoun — AI-Powered Commerce and the Reinvention of Main Street | FV Podcast Ep. 33
Send us Fan MailOmar Sahyoun has spent two decades building at the edge of where consumers, technology, and physical commerce meet. He co-founded TeamBuy and DealFind, two of Canada's earliest daily-deal platforms that collectively scaled past 4 million members. He moved into fintech as a senior operator at Ariel and Purpose Financial, helping bring same-day digital lending into the mainstrea
Andrew Ackerman — Where Venture Capital is actually Betting | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 32
Send us Fan MailAndrew Ackerman has sat in nearly every chair around the startup table. He's a serial entrepreneur, an angel investor, a venture capitalist, an accelerator operator at Dream Adventures and Reach Labs (the venture arm of the National Association of Realtors), an adjunct professor at NYU, and the author of The Entrepreneur's Odyssey — a story-driven guide to building startu
John Cowan — Founder-Aligned Capital in the Era of Autonomy | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 031
Send us Fan MailJohn Cowan was about to do what he'd done a hundred times before — make the calls, set the meetings, walk a young founder into the venture capital fundraising process. In a split second, he backed out. He couldn't morally send another kid into a system he knew was rigged against him: four cycles of dilution, ratchets, protective provisions, career death. Six or seven mont
Sam Hasty — Building Venture-Scale Returns While Solving Planet-Scale Problems | FV Podcast Ep. 030
Send us Fan MailSam Hasty, partner at Active Impact Investments — Canada's top climate tech seed fund — has supported early entrepreneurs in energy, logistics, farming, materials, and resilience over eight years. He started as a Memphis math teacher, helped launch a nonprofit accelerator funded by the Steve Jobs family, and studied rural entrepreneurship in Poland with a Fulbright before his
Joyce Shin— Why AI Will Make Leadership More Human, Not Less | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 29
Send us Fan MailJoyce Shin, founder of The Human Edge and ex-head of design operations at Dropbox, helped scale teams and systems there. Trained in neuroscience and raised across Texas, Ohio, Seoul, and Tokyo, she studied resilience and effectiveness, first after a traumatic brain injury and later professionally in tech. She left Dropbox to ask: in AI everywhere, what makes us human? She created t
Shahin Nabavian — The Future of Mobility, Operations & Intelligent Infrastructure | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 028
Send us Fan MailShahin Nabavian, a computer scientist turned venture builder, has worked across operations, infrastructure, and transformation for the past decade. His experience includes a London-based financial startup, venture-building at Shell's maritime division, work at The Economist Group, and founding edtech startup Super Savvy Education. Now, he leads Team CMV (CentricMind Ventures),
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois — Inflation, Supply Chains, and the Reinvention of Grocery | FV Podcast Ep 27
Send us Fan MailDr. Sylvain Charlebois, the "Food Professor," is the Senior Director of Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, lead author of Canada's Food Price Report, and a prominent researcher in food supply chain management. He’s the go-to expert for food inflation stories and provides data that guides grocery executives. With 20 years studying Canada's rising food costs, he
Tim Fung — Why Human Skills Still Win in an AI World | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 025
Send us Fan MailTim Fung, Founder and CEO of Airtasker, leads one of the world's top local services marketplaces. Since launching in Sydney in 2012, it’s now a publicly listed company operating across Australia, the UK, and the US, facilitating over a billion dollars in jobs for flexible income. Tim is a prominent voice on the future of work and the gig economy. He experienced what most found
Michael Allen Feinman — Selling the American Dream | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 026
Send us Fan MailMike Feinman is the Managing Partner at Texas Business Brokers, a top M&A advisory firm for the lower mid-market and main street. His career began at PepsiCo's Taco Bell division and includes leadership at Yum! Brands across 16 countries. He has facilitated millions in sales across manufacturing, restaurants, services, and tech. He entered brokerage unexpectedly—an ex-Pizz
Sarah Romanko — How Grit, Brand, and Deal Flow Win | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 024
Send us Fan MailSarah Romanko, an investor at Geek Ventures, backs immigrant-founded AI and robotics startups. She entered venture without traditional credentials, relying on persistence like cold outreach, online events, and paying it forward. Her approach shapes how she evaluates and supports founders. This conversation reveals how an early-stage investor thinks—what prompts a "yes" or
Nikola Borisov — Why the Real AI Battle Isn’t Training—It’s Deployment | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 023
Send us Fan MailNikola Borisov is CEO and co-founder of DeepInfra, offering open-source models like DeepSeek, Llama, Kimi, GLM, and GPT-OSS via APIs. He previously scaled IMO Messenger to over 200 million users, handling up to a million new users daily with cheaper self-built infrastructure. A Northwestern CS grad and Bulgarian programming veteran, he learned that distributed systems succeed at th
Grant Blaisdell — Turning Space into an Investable Asset Class | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 022
Send us Fan MailGrant Blaisdell, CEO of Copernic Space, is developing space's financial infrastructure by tokenizing payloads, satellite data, computing, and lunar rights, turning space into a liquid market. A serial entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer, he cofounded Coinfirm, the first AML platform for crypto, and created the first AML solution for ERC tokens during the ICO era. His grandfath
Kurt Winter and Kevin Salquist — Why Essential Businesses Win in a Volatile World | FV Podcast Ep. 021
Send us Fan MailWhile most of private equity is chasing the same overheated deals with the same recycled playbook, Kurt Winter and Kevin Salquist are doing the opposite. As Partners at Big 7 Partners, they buy the industrial businesses nobody talks about at conferences — fasteners, gaskets, threaded rod, the components that quietly hold American infrastructure together. The companies are usually 3
Juho Risku— From Founder to VC: How to Win at the Seed Stage | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 020
Send us Fan MailJuho Risku, after 30 years across different roles, founded Butterfly Ventures, a unique venture capital firm. Previously, he was a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, raising capital and nearly going bankrupt. Now, he leads a leading Nordics investor in deep tech and hardware with over 100 portfolio companies and multiple funding rounds since 2012.This conversation reveals Juho’
Scott Finkelstein — Why Personalized Sales Will Kill the Sales Playbook | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 019
Send us Fan MailMost founders try to scale revenue by adding tools. Scott Finkelstein argues they're solving the wrong problem. After four decades in sales, $6 billion in career deals, and a stint as Chief Revenue Officer at PeopleFax, Scott has seen the same pattern destroy growth-stage companies again and again: founders hit a million in revenue, panic, and hire a VP of Sales to fix what&ap
Stan Sirakov — From Underdog to Alpha | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 018
Send us Fan MailStan Sirakov, a General Partner at LAUNCHub Ventures with 15+ years of venture experience, has invested in 150+ startups since 2012, mainly in regions with limited institutional VC. He founded a fintech marketplace in 2007 and helped launch Bulgaria's first incubator in 2009. His expertise covers Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Poland, and more. This conversation
Ivar Skårset — The Rise of Renewable Fuels | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 017
Send us Fan MailIvar Skårset, CTO of ENEnergy, is tackling the overlooked challenge of replacing fossil fuels in sectors that can't run on electricity. Coming from the Norwegian oil industry, he sought renewable fuels for heavy industry. Twenty years later, the issue persists: electricity makes up 20% of global energy, while 80% involves industries and vehicles that don't electrify quick
Mike Solow — Rethinking How Beverage Brands Scale | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 016
Send us Fan MailMike Solow is the co-founder of 99 Proof, a boutique investment firm supporting and scaling emerging beverage alcohol brands. With over two decades of experience, he has advised more than 200 entrepreneurs in business development, sales leadership, and capital strategy. Mike works at the intersection of operators and investors within one of the most competitive and often misunderst
Simon Zadek — Why Climate Risk Is the Next Trillion-Dollar Market | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 015
Send us Fan MailSimon Zadek has over four decades shaping sustainability in capital, policy, and markets, from the 1992 Rio Summit to ethical businesses like Ben & Jerry's and The Body Shop, battles over global supply chains, advising Chinese regulators, and senior roles at the UN and G20. He founded AccountAbility and NatureFinance to measure corporate accountability and how markets view
Ben Klepacki — The Business Case for Fixing Methane at Scale | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 014
Send us Fan MailBen Klepacki is the co-founder and CEO of WestGen Technologies, a Calgary-based hybrid power company that reduces up to 99% of methane venting at oil and gas sites while improving economics. A professional engineer, he started on Canada's largest wind farm but shifted focus from alternative energy to oil and gas after realizing fixing the existing system could have a greater c
Amit Jain — Building Startups That Survive the Global Market | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 013
Send us Fan MailAmit Jain has 20 years of experience building and scaling companies across Europe, Southeast Asia, India, and beyond. As Managing Partner at StartupBay, a Singapore-based accelerator with a presence in the Czech Republic, he has helped many founders enter global markets. He previously held leadership roles at Vodafone, developing SME and global strategies and founding ventures. His
Vincent Kuiper— Scaling Foodtech Beyond the Pilot | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 011
Send us Fan MailAt 16, Vincent Kuiper received a €50 brokerage account from his father for his birthday. He become interested in finance, studying quantitative finance and accounting. He then became an equity analyst at a private bank in Amsterdam, spent three years at H2 Equity Partners, where he explored 35 to 40 niche industries and managed a buy-and-build program. After earning an MBA at IE Bu
Ankit Anand — Investing Before the Market Understands It | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 010
Send us Fan MailAnkit Anand doesn't fit the typical venture capital mold. He started his career as a physics teacher in India, moved to Europe to work on gravitational wave research at ETH Zurich, co-founded a medical technology company, and only then — after years of operating and angel investing — ended up as Founding Partner at Riceberg Ventures. Today, Riceberg backs breakthrough deep tec
Debneel Mukherjee — Inside a Global VC Playbook | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 009
Send us Fan MailDebneel Mukherjee is the kind of investor most founders never get access to — a former CPA turned self-taught coder turned operator turned venture capitalist, now running Decacorn.VC from Singapore, with roughly 85% of his portfolio deployed in the United States. His career spans nearly three decades across banking, fintech operations, and global private tech investing, and he&apos
Robin Smith — Moving from B2B SaaS to Tech Enabled Services | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 008
Send us Fan MailRobin Smith, a 20-year enterprise software veteran, has worked through all ownership models—bootstrapped, venture-backed, private equity, and public. Most recently, as COO of a PE-backed portco with 1,000+ employees, he led over €200 million in acquisitions during an 18-month roll-up. Now in his mid-40s, he left that world to pursue entrepreneurship through acquisition and found th
Kim Anders Odhner — Where the Smart Money in Food-Tech Is Going | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 007
Send us Fan MailKim Anders Odhner is the Managing Partner for Europe and Asia at Unovis Asset Management, a leading alternative protein investment fund. Before relocating to Amsterdam, Kim spent 25 years in Southeast Asia, developing expertise in emerging-markets private equity — backing early-stage companies, staying involved post-investment, and understanding food systems across diverse economie
Dr. Henry Erdley — Turning "Undruggable" Cancer Targets into Precision Therapies | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 006
Send us Fan MailDr. Henry Erdlei is a physician-scientist pushing the boundaries of cancer immunotherapy. An alumnus of Charité Medical School and a researcher at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Henry has dedicated years to engineering immune cells to hunt and destroy tumors — and he is now applying that expertise to GoCART Therapeutics, a biotech startup developing a mod
Oded Agam — The NextLeap Ventures Model for Deep Tech Investing | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 005
Send us Fan MailOded Agam | NextLeap Ventures — Deep Tech Investing, the Intel AI Miss, and Building Innovation EcosystemsOded Agam is one of those rare investors who has actually built what he now funds. With 35 years spanning Israeli startups, Fortune 50 strategic planning at Intel, and early-stage deep tech investing through NextLeap Ventures, Oded brings an operator's lens to every deal.
Charles Cormier — Inside the New Founder Playbook | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 004
Send us Fan MailEP004 — Charles Cormier on Systems, Cold Email, and Why Most Founders Get Fundraising Wrong Charles Cormier is a founder who doesn’t wait for permission. As CEO of RaasRocket and founder of GTM Ventures and the Podbuyer podcast network, he’s learned that fundraising today is just as much about the systems you build as the people you know. In this episode, he sits down with Maxim At
Paul Claxton — From Combat Tours to Term Sheets: Paul Claxton on Founders, Capital, and AI | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 003
Send us Fan MailFrom Combat Tours to Term Sheets: Paul Claxton on Founders, Capital, and AIGuest: Paul Anthony Claxton, Managing Partner, Digerati InvestmentsAbout This EpisodePaul Anthony Claxton didn't follow the usual route into venture capital. He served four combat tours in Iraq as a United States Marine — including leading a command intelligence center where he observed the early days o
Ray Fitzpatrick — Why Most Startups Don't Get Funded (And What to Do About It) | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 002
Send us Fan MailRay Fitzpatrick, Founder & CEO, Profitual Ray Fitzpatrick spent ten years writing checks to startups as Director of Investments at NBIF — New Brunswick's pre-seed venture capital fund — and observed the same issue recurring across hundreds of companies. Founders excelled at developing products but struggled to grasp their own finances. This wasn’t due to laziness, but beca
David Kofoed Wind- From EdTech Exit to AI Agents: Scaling on Your Own Terms | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 001
Send us Fan MailFrom EdTech Exit to AI Agents: Scaling on Your Own Terms with David Kofoed Wind Guest: David Kofoed Wind ·(Founder of Agentwork) David Kofoed Wind has accomplished what most founders only talk about — building two companies from scratch, taking them through Y Combinator, scaling them responsibly without overextending on headcount, and selling one of them. He's a mathematician
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