Innovation with Mark Peter Davis
Welcome to Innovation with Mark Peter Davis, a podcast dedicated to innovation, truth, and education. Through fireside chats with entrepreneurs, industry leading executives, and creative minded business folk, I'll highlight the society altering transformations that are happening all around us while providing crucial entrepreneurial advice. Pickup tips from founders who sold their company for hundreds of millions of dollars. Discover how everyday materials and goods are being reinvented by science. Learn about the current state of space exploration and the space industry from the CEO of a rocket company. Join him on this expedition to learn about the innovations that...
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Inside Lykos Industries: Reinventing Defense Repair & Sustainment
<p>What does it take to keep critical systems running? Building them is only part of the equation. Repair and sustainment are just as crucial.</p><p>In this episode, I sit down with J. Kaempf, CEO of Lykos Industries, an Interplay Studio company rethinking how repair and sustainment work across regulated industries, starting with defense and aerospace.</p><p>We discuss the often-overlooked infrastructure behind industrial readiness, from supply chains and logistics to advanced manufacturing and point-of-need repair. Jake explains Lykos's approach to connecting manufacturing capabilities, intake hubs, and digital infrastructure, as well as the company's work with Selective...
Fixing Immigration With AI: How Alma Is Making Legal Services Faster, Smarter, and More Human
<p>Immigration status shouldn’t depend on a paperwork nightmare.</p><p>But for many immigrants, navigating the US immigration system means months of uncertainty, complicated filings, and life-changing consequences when something goes wrong.</p><p>Aizada Marat knows this firsthand. After experiencing the system’s challenges herself, she founded Alma to transform how immigration legal services are delivered.</p><p>Aizada joins me on the pod to discuss how Alma combines AI, technology, and experienced attorneys to make immigration law more efficient, transparent, and predictable.</p><p>We explore:</p><p>→ Why AI could make legal services more human</p><p>→...
Building How I Invest: Podcasting, Venture Deal Flow, and the Long Game with David Weisburd
<p>Building something great is hard. The question is: which hard are you willing to choose?</p><p>That’s something David Weisburd and I dug into on the latest episode.</p><p>David chose podcasting as his hard.</p><p>Three years ago, he committed to building How I Invest for at least a decade - before he knew whether it would work. There were no guarantees. Just the grind of booking guests, navigating compliance, building credibility, and showing up episode after episode. That commitment eventually turned the podcast into something much bigger: a network of investors, entrepreneurs, relationships, an...
Rewiring Fintech: How Knot Is Transforming Financial Connectivity
<p>Most people only see the front end of fintech. The app. The card. The payment. But underneath that experience is an enormous amount of infrastructure and some of fintech’s biggest opportunities are hiding there.</p><p>Rory O’Reilly, cofounder and CEO of Knot, joined me on the pod to talk about how Knot is rewiring fintech and transforming financial connectivity.</p><p>We dive into:</p>Why keeping a card “top of wallet” is harder than it sounds.The infrastructure required to connect financial institutions with thousands of merchants.Why security and compliance are foundational, not afterthoughts, in finte...
A Framework for Implementing AI Across Your Company
<p>Every founder I know is asking the same question: "How should we actually implement AI across our company?"</p><p>The reality is that every playbook will require customization, but there are clear patterns beginning to emerge.</p><p>In this episode, Chetan Narain, Cofounder of Pepper, joins me and my colleague, Interplay Senior Partner Kevin Tung, to share how Pepper is integrating AI across its products and organization - and the lessons they've learned along the way.</p><p>We discuss:</p><p>• Where vertical SaaS ends and vertical AI begins</p><p>• AI agents and guardrails</p><p>•...
The Future of Venture in the Age of AI with Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures
<p>What happens when technology evolves faster than the venture capital model built to fund it?</p><p>In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Jenny Fielding, Cofounder and General Partner of Everywhere Ventures, to explore how venture capital is adapting to a world where competitive advantages can disappear faster than ever.</p><p>We discuss what it takes to raise a pre-seed round in today’s market, why traditional assumptions around defensibility are being challenged, and how AI is reshaping the economics of software companies.</p><p>Jenny also shares lessons from her time as a Ma...
Building Bombas: Dave Heath on Mission, Product, and Brand Discipline
<p>Socks are the #1 most requested item at homeless shelters. Dave Heath turned that single fact into Bombas — a one-for-one apparel brand that's donated over 200 million items of clothing and built a billion-dollar business along the way. What makes Dave a builder worth studying isn't just the scale; it's the discipline behind it: reverse-engineering an exceptional product from a mission, learning to test before betting, and protecting a brand as it grows.</p><p>In this episode, I sit down with Dave to break down:</p><p>• How he reverse-engineered an "exceptional product" from a donation mission — and brought athletic-sock innova...
Overlooked No More: How Smalls Is Building The Brand Cats Deserve
<p>Cats are 40% of the pet market, but are somehow still chronically overlooked. Every innovation goes to dogs first. Even your vet's office is built for dogs first. Matt Michaelson, cofounder and CEO of Smalls, and his team have built an incredible cat-first brand precisely because of that blind spot.</p><p>In this episode, I sit down with Matt to break down:</p><p>• Why the cat industry is structurally underinvested (which includes VCs simply saying "I don't really like cats")</p><p>• What "human-grade" actually means for pet food — and the sustainability trade-offs nobody talks about</p><p>• Ingredie...
Building Companies From Scratch: Inside Interplay’s Studio
<p>Venture studios are quietly becoming one of the most effective models for company creation, but most people still don't understand what happens inside one.</p><p>For this podcast episode I sat down with Andy Bilinsky, Partner at Interplay leading our Studio, to break down exactly how we build companies from the ground up. </p><p>During our conversation, we covered:</p>What a venture studio actually is and how it differs from traditional VCWhy do we research industries deeply before ever writing a business planThe role of operating partners as true co-foundersWhy second- and third-time founders are choosing...
The Rise of Private Credit: How $1T in Capital Is Reshaping Finance
<p>Private credit has exploded into a trillion-dollar asset class, but most people outside finance still don’t understand how it works.</p><p>I sat down with Ivan Zinn, founder of Atalaya Capital Management and now part of Blue Owl Capital, to unpack the real mechanics behind the private credit market. Few people have a clearer view of how capital flows through the economy.</p><p>During our chat we unpack:</p>What private credit actually isWhy banks pulled back after the Global Financial CrisisHow private lenders stepped in to finance everything from consumer loans to equipment, infrastructure, and fi...
