The Brandon White Show (EDGE for peak performance)

Ali talks about what he and other early stage investors look for in companies who are raising money for their early stage companies.

ABOUT ALI JAMAL
Ali Jamal is a Venture Investor, Product Leader, Growth Expert, Data Scientist, and Corporate Strategist. He is the Founder of First Check Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage startups across the globe. First Check Ventures has supported and invested in more than 130 startups from more than 30 countries including the US, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, Peru and Colombia.


Before starting First Check Ventures, he was the Director of Growth and Performance Marketing at PayClip, Mexico's First FinTech Unicorn.  Previously, Ali was the Head of Performance Marketing at Rappi, leading 80+ people on 7 teams across 8 international offices and responsible for generating over $1 billion in total transaction value per year globally. Prior to joining Rappi, he was the Head of Marketing Innovation at Agoda, where he led 3 teams across 3 international offices and was responsible for expansion into the China market. Ali also held Product and Analytical leadership roles at RockYou, Zynga, and Maxim Integrated Products. He began his career as an investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions in the software and internet sectors. Ali has a Bachelors in Economics and a Masters in Statistics from Stanford University.

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Learn how Alexandra got into urban hiking, started a company, wrote two books on urban hiking and some cool things to see on San Francisco's urban trails.

ABOUT ALEXANDRA KENIN

Alexandra is a Studio Chief at Wordsmithie, Inc., a content and design agency that serves clients in the tech, finance, healthcare, and other industries.

She also runs Urban Hiker SF, a San Francisco-based tour company that explores the city’s stairways, hills, and trails.

Through her experience building her company, she has hiked with thousands of guests and published two hiking guidebooks for the Bay Area, Urban Trails: San Francisco and Urban Trails: East Bay, which have sold a combined 25,000 copies.

A third hiking guidebook, Urban Trails: San Jose, South Bay, and Peninsula is coming out in 2025.

Alexandra has a BS in French from Georgetown, an MBA from the Wharton School, and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

She lives in San Francisco with her partner Brett, their daughter Dylan, and their dog Jodie.

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Poker strategy isn't just for winning the World Series of Poker, a back room high stakes poker game in Macau, or a big online poker tournament. 

The game of poker mimics life in the sense that it forces you to make decisions without having complete information. 

After playing millions of hands over the past 14 years, and mastering the art of taking calculated risks, Alec has developed an unparalleled ability to apply the skills he learned in poker to evaluate situations in life and business.

Learn how to use a combination of logic, intuition and self-awareness to make better, more informed choices, and determine the optimal course of action when you can’t ‘see all the cards’.

ABOUT ALEX TORELLI
With over $2,200,000 in poker tournament winnings and millions more in both live and online cash games, Alec Torelli is one of the most respected poker players in the industry today.

He is the founder of the popular poker training site Conscious Poker, and his YouTube channel has over 10,000,000 views.

For the past decade, he has taken the principles he’s learned in poker, from risk management to decision making, and applied them to making investments.

Alec has been investing in cryptocurrency since 2017, and also has helped syndicate deals for mobile home parks and early stage start ups. He writes a newsletter, WHealthier, to 25,000+ investors.

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Jim visited our studio to talk about how he, his team and the Synapse School community built a school from the ground up with an innovate approach to education.

The best way to describe what Synapse is doing is educating Change Makers by focusing keenly on Social-Emotional Learning, innovation and leading edge academics.

Their teachers, who are as committed as they are remarkable, build classroom communities and relationships based on trust, an essential ingredient in teaching and learning, while they cultivate in their students curiosity, creativity and risk-taking.

Most importantly, they are about helping human beings be better human beings.

Listen in for this fun, "educational" conversation.

ABOUT JIM EAGEN
Jim Eagen believes that when schools and their leaders focus less on what to change and more importantly, embrace constant change in order to develop the critical skills of implementing change, transformation in education is possible. Jim has enjoyed a wonderful 35 year career in independent schools, first as a student, then as classroom teacher, coach, and administrator, and now, in his 11th year, as the Head of School at Synapse, a one-of-kind K-8 lab school in Menlo Park with a signature project based curriculum and brain-based framework.

Synapse has grown exponentially in size and impact under his leadership and has earned a reputation for being a place where students, teachers and families thrive in large part due to Jim’s vision and energy.

When not at Synapse, presenting about Synapse, or talking to just about anyone who
will listen to him about Synapse, he can often be found on a ride, on a run, or laughing and learning with his wife, dog, and their two kids, a college senior and a high school senior.

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