Ian Hathaway is co-author of the new book The Startup Community Way, on entrepreneurial ecosystems published in July 2020 and has published for prominent research institutions, universities, businesses, and periodicals. He is a frequent contributor for outlets such as the Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal.

Currently, he leads product development for ecosystem advisory at Techstars, where he works with entrepreneurs and community leaders around the world to support their path towards building better ecosystems. Ian is a startup advisor, mentor, and investor, including at The Fund. He is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, co-founder and board member at the Center for American Entrepreneurship, and a research fellow at Boston University.

On this episode you'll learn:

1. How do think tanks affect policy on entrepreneurship and venture capital [5:39]
2. How did Ian end up co-authoring The Startup Community Way with Brad Feld? [14:35]
3. Has COVID-19 accelerated Ian's thesis on startup ecosystem development or has it altered his framework? [21:12]

Bill Ottman is an American Internet entrepreneur and freedom of information activist based in New York City best known as the CEO and co-founder of Minds. Minds is a free and open source distributed social networking service that uses the blockchain to reward the community with ERC20 tokens.

On this episode you'll learn:

1. A comparison between the geopolitical implications of Google investing large amounts in a country versus Huawei investing [7:01]
2. How did India's banning of Chinese apps affect consumer behavior of the average Indian? [15:20]
3. Why data privacy issues can have serious geopolitical consequences[21:12]

Host Andrew Berkowitz breaks down the recent drama surrounding the rapid rise and fall of Chinese coffee startup Luckin Coffee from it's founding 3.5 years ago through it's widely successful IPO and eventual collapse on April 2, 2020 when Luckin disclosed that an internal probe found that its chief operating officer had fabricated 2019 sales by about 2.2 billion yuan ($310 million). Additionally, Andrew discusses the next in line to become Asia's coffee unicorn and most serious competitor to Starbucks in the region, Indonesia's Kopi Kenangan.

On this episode you'll learn:

1. Luckin Coffee's initial rapid growth and expansion throughout Middle East and Asia [2:00]
2. What were the fraud allegations made by Muddy Waters Research again Luckin?[3:59]
3. Who is Asia's next coffee startup most likely to become a regional powerhouse and compete with Starbucks?[9:55]

Ashish Singal is the Founder and CEO at CoinSwitch.co and Sequoia-backed CRUXPay, an open protocol simplifying the way people use crypto. It enables users to create a human readable CRUX ID which can be used to send and receive payment request, connect to dApps with a single click while ensuring an experience matching that of online fiat payments platforms like Paypal/Venmo or ApplePay. Ashish is a former Amazon developer and a leader of the team that built Amazon Prime's 1-hour delivery model. Ashish is a well-known figure in India's cryptocurrency space and an expert on the issue of the cryptocurrency ban in India.

On this episode you'll learn:

1. What was the effect of India's Supreme Court reserving their ban on crypto trading in March of this year? [4:22]

2. What's been the relationship dynamic between India's cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and regulators? [9:00] 

3. Where are the different cryptocurrency startup hubs emerging in India? [14:10]