Hercules Capital
40 episodes listed below
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Join Hercules Capital in conversations with today’s top CEOs, CFOs, and investors in venture and private equity-backed companies. Learn about their strategies for financing rapid growth and scaling their businesses, as well as their unique interests and life stories that have shaped their paths to success.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Senior operators and investors make the financial machinery of scaling companies unusually concrete.
Ventured Growth with Hercules Capital treats growth as a set of operating decisions, with Katie Sagan and her colleagues asking senior executives and investors how companies finance expansion, manage risk, and turn strategy into execution.
From kitchen square footage to biotech dealmaking, your business curiosity gets a practical workout.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded CFO conversation about community, judgment, and the realities of operating in venture-backed tech.
M.G. Thibault comes across as a former CFO at Strava, DroneDeploy, and Copper who has moved from investment banking and startup operating roles into advisory work through Coterie CFO.
A steady look at venture relationships and life sciences, shaped by Terry McGuire's long experience.
Janice Bork guides a conversation with Terry McGuire, a founding partner of Polaris Partners with 35-plus years of early-stage investing in medical and information technology companies.
A practical look at AI compliance inside regulated finance.
Ventured Growth treats Erkin Adelov's path from hedge funds to Behavox as a practical route into AI compliance, not a grand origin story. The episode is strongest when it stays on the ground: risk management in financial services, vendor boundaries, and what LLM-based compliance…
A clear look at how biotech wins, setbacks, and public judgment keep unfolding long after the science begins.
The discussion follows Rich Aldrich's path through biotech, where the real interest is not just the companies he helped start, but the way he looks back at what happened when strong science, patent choices, and market timing did or did not line up.
A clear venture debt discussion centered on risk, precedent, and negotiation.
Ventured Growth with Hercules Capital zeroes in on venture debt through the lens of loan documents, covenants, risk allocation, and the pressure that builds in negotiation.
A sharp argument for balancing access and innovation.
Peter Kolchinsky makes a clear case that drug affordability is not a price-only problem. Coverage, incentives, and the value placed on biotech innovation all sit in the same frame here, and the episode keeps returning to that tension without losing the thread.
John Carroll tracks biotech's hype cycle, GLP-1 momentum, and the questions shaping 2023 to 2024 with a veteran biopharma reporter's eye.
John Carroll frames biotechnology through its familiar boom-and-bust rhythm, using the 2023 to 2024 window to sort what looks durable from what still feels overheated.
A practical look at how operators handle runway pressure, hiring, and community when capital gets tight.
Catherine Jung's conversation with Casey Wu stays centered on the day-to-day strain of venture-backed companies: runway pressure, extension rounds, softer hiring, and the constant need to remain investable when capital turns selective. Casey fits that frame well.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
Naval Ravikant on epistemology, startups, and crypto, from David Deutsch to Vitalik Buterin.
Alex Theuma interviews SaaS founders and investors on scaling to $10M-plus ARR.
Guy Raz traces founders' origin stories and fields live advice-line calls from entrepreneurs.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Janice Bork speaks with John Carroll about the biopharma year that just ended.
Stephen Sands, 35-year Lazard veteran, traces biotech M&A evolution from 1990s pharma consolidation through modern investor selectivity.
Ventured Growth Podcast with Hercules Capital features CFO Ed Liu discussing his 23-year career spanning the gaming and platform industries.
Casey Woo traces Operators Guild from a nine-person lunch group of COOs, CFOs, and biz ops leaders to an 814-member community with 95% organic growth and no sales or marketing budget.
Rich Aldrich, co-founder and partner of Longwood Fund and a founder of RA Capital, traces how his work at Biogen and Vertex shaped his investing style.
Janice Bork speaks with Vijay Patel, Managing Director at CVS Ventures.
Terry McGuire brings a long view.
Janice Bork speaks with David Ephraim.
Eddie Lopez talks with M.G.
Paula Sotteropoulos traces a career through Genzyme, Moderna, and Axia Therapeutics.
Rushika Fernandopulle says Iora Health began with a Boston day of 32 patients, a broken electronic health record, and a colleague saying, “Every day I lose a little piece of my soul.” He explains why he rejected incremental fixes and used a Skunk Works-style approach to build a new primary care model from scratch, starting in Arlington, Massachusetts, and growing to about 50 practices and 50,000 patients.
Peter Kolchinski joins Ventured Growth to talk about how society and health insurance value innovation in life sciences.
Nick, 8sleep’s CFO, sits down with Katherine Jung to talk about how the company has grown and changed.
Kelly Murrell walks through Wunder's push to become a super app for mealtime.
The interview starts with Erkin Adelov's move from hedge funds into compliance technology.