Episode 223 features Mike Smerklo, an entrepreneur and professional investor in early-stage technology companies. He is the co-founder of a venture capital firm in Austin, Texas called Next Coast Ventures.

Find Mike Online:

Website: https://www.mikesmerklo.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikesmerklo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikesmerklo/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikesmerklo

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC61Mtr5kAat0Wu6RCFE_9iQ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smerklo.mike/

About Mike:

Michael Smerklo is an entrepreneur and professional investor in early-stage technology companies. He is the co-founder of a venture capital firm in Austin, Texas called Next Coast Ventures. Prior to this, he bought a small technology services company, ServiceSource, and ran it for twelve years, taking it from a small startup to a public company with over 3,000 employees worldwide. Michael was also one of the first employees at a pioneer cloud services company called Opsware (then Loudcloud), which also went public. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he had (and thoroughly hated) jobs in investment banking and public accounting. Mike splits his time between Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area and is married with four children.

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Episode 197 features Rob Chesnut, Author, Investor, and Former General Counsel at Airbnb. His book, “Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution” was published with St Martin’s Press and can be found here – https://www.intentionalintegrity.com/ 

Find Rob Online:

Website: www.intentionalintegrity.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robchesnut/

About Rob:

Rob Chesnut works with companies to help them develop strategies to drive integrity into their culture.

He was most recently the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, Inc., a role he took on in late 2019 after almost four years as Airbnb’s General Counsel.

Rob is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. He worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, where he prosecuted bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, and espionage cases, including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He joined eBay in 1999 as its third lawyer, where he led eBay’s North America legal team and later founded the Internet’s first e-commerce person-to-person Trust and Safety operation. 

Rob subsequently spent nearly 6 years as the General Counsel and first attorney at digital education leader Chegg, where he helped take the company public in 2013. He joined Airbnb in 2016, where he grew the legal team from 30 to over 150 legal professionals in 20 offices around the world. His team led initiatives to promote home-sharing and address regulatory issues with local governments and landlords around the world. Rob developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company.

On July 28, he published Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution with St Martin’s Press. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

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If you enjoyed this interview you may also like my Just Get Started Podcast Interview with Seth Godin, Author, Founder and Speaker