StrictlyVC Download

In this episode, Connie and Alex talk with Goodwater Capital co-founder Chi-Hua Chien, whose career spans some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology shifts, from helping source Accel’s investment in Facebook as a young associate to backing a new generation of consumer and AI startups. While much of the venture world is focused on models, chips, and infrastructure, Chi-Hua argues that history suggests the biggest long-term winners of the AI era may be the application companies built on top of them.

They talk about why AI startups are reaching unprecedented revenue levels with remarkably small teams, what’s driving today’s soaring valuations, and why he believes many infrastructure businesses will eventually face the same commoditization pressures seen in previous technology cycles. He also shares what he’s seeing inside consumer AI, from hyper-personalized entertainment and women’s health platforms to new products built around voice, agents, and individualized experiences. And they discuss the increasingly public tensions between founders and VCs, why some of the most interesting fintech innovation is happening outside the U.S., and why Chi-Hua believes one of the biggest opportunities in consumer technology may be helping people reconnect in the real world.
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This week on StrictlyVC Download, we're bringing you a conversation from our recent event in Athens. Connie Loizos spoke with Anastasis Germanidis: Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Runway and Anatolii Kasianov: Co-Founder & Co-CEO, HOLYWATER TECH.

Runway began within art school, with a sparse network and little investor insight into AI video. HOLYWATER TECH started in Kyiv with no venture capital, and a mandate to be profitable from day one.

Seven years later, both have succeeded in disrupting, and putting some level of fear in, creative industries worldwide. At this StrictlyVC Athens 2026 discussion, host and TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos brought both on stage to get the inside story of how these two breakout companies actually broke out.
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For this episode of StrictlyVC Download, we're bringing you a conversation from the StrictlyVC Athens event. Connie Loizos sat down with three seasoned investors to break down the state of venture capital, the hunt for white space, and what it actually takes to back a breakout company in 2026.

Featuring:

Ben Blume: Partner, Atomico

Andreas Stavropoulos: Partner, Threshold Ventures

Niko Bonatsos: Founder & General Partner, Verdict Capital

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This week on StrictlyVC Download, we're sharing and interview from our 2026 event in San Francisco with TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin and Lior Susan who is dresh off raising a $1.3 billion fund. Eclipse Ventures is doubling down on what it calls physical AI. Temkin and Susan discuss robotics, manufacturing, autonomous systems, and what it takes to build enduring companies where AI meets the physical world. Plus, you can get a peek into Susan's perspective about the SpaceX IPO.
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In this episode, we talk with Theo Baker, a soon-to-be Stanford graduate and author of How to Rule the World, about what he found when he traded his coding ambitions for student journalism. Within his first semester, Theo broke the story that led to Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation, a months-long investigation into manipulated research images that put him in the crosshairs of one of the world’s largest law firms. But that was just the beginning.

Baker walks us through what he calls the “Stanford inside Stanford”: a parallel world of yacht parties, slush funds, secret seminars, and VC scouts hunting for teenage talent as soon as freshmen hit campus. We also get into the secret class literally called “How to Rule the World,” why he thinks the same system that built Silicon Valley is also what corrupts it, and what the SBF saga and the overnight pivot to AI looked like from the inside.
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