HeyJaredA VC, a Headhunter, and a Trainer Walk into a Bar
VHTB is your guide to the talent, culture, and capital forces shaping the hard tech startup ecosystem.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
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- Sep 2, 2026
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- Jul 8, 2026
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Where will hard tech find the skilled manufacturing talent it needs? (opens the original)
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America wants to re-industrialize. But where are all the people needed to actually build everything going to come from? For decades, college and university were pushed as the first-class path while trade schools and skilled manufacturing careers weren't looked at in the same light. Now some of the people with the deepest machining and manufacturing expertise are getting closer to retirement, while demand for those skills is growing. The challenge isn't simply finding more people. It's figuring o
Is SpaceX's dominance good or bad for the hard tech ecosystem? (opens the original)
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What happens when one company gets so far ahead that an entire ecosystem starts depending on it? SpaceX has transformed access to orbit, but that success creates a new problem. If rideshare capacity becomes more limited and SpaceX increasingly prioritizes its own satellites, what happens to all of the companies that built their businesses around that access? And this isn't just a launch problem. TSMC shows what can happen when a dominant infrastructure provider chooses not to compete with its cu
Can too much discipline hurt a hard tech startup? (opens the original)
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How do you know when discipline has gone too far? There are good reasons to be careful with capital, hiring, and big decisions. But when the market is moving quickly, waiting too long can create its own problems. The people who want to move fast and make a difference can leave, opportunities can pass you by, and the money you raised can sit there instead of helping you get to the next milestone. In this episode, we get into the other side of discipline: what happens when founders become too rest
Is capital discipline a competitive advantage? (opens the original)
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There’s a lot of money flowing into hard tech right now. Rounds are getting bigger, companies are scaling faster, and founders have more resources to work with. But abundance creates a different set of problems. When capital is scarce, constraints force creativity. When capital is abundant, the pressure shifts toward speed. You’re expected to hire faster, secure more physical space, build more hardware, and show that the resources you raised are translating into progress. In this episode, we tal
Is burnout a leadership failure or an inevitable cost of building frontier tech? (opens the original)
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Can burnout ever be a good thing? Or is it always a sign that something's broken? When people talk about burnout, the conversation usually goes straight to long hours and impossible workloads. But is that actually what's causing it? Or is burnout sometimes a symptom of something much deeper? In this episode of VHTB, Matt Gjertsen (Built), Justus Kilian (Space Capital), and Brian Mejeur (Ad Astra Talent Advisors) continue the conversation around startup culture by asking whether burnout is actual
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