Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Anthropic researcher's assertion that there's a 15% chance Claude is conscious 2) What happens if people believe AI is sentient? 3) Why consciousness and intelligence are different 4) Hey, is this all just marketing? 5) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's push for AI model interpretability 6) China's robot half-marathon 7) Tesla's wild earnings week 8) Why Google is thriving despite the ChatGPT threat 9) Are we going to shop directly within ChatGPT? 10) Kevin Systrom's flawed testimony against Facebook 11) Washington DC thinks Big Tech is getting broken up.
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Episode overview:
In this conversation, David Ogundeko shares the journey of Funema, an impact-focused alternative investment firm operating for nine years across Nigeria, South Africa, and the US. He discusses his approach to venture building for early-stage founders, why Africa needs a unique investment approach, and how his firm addresses the "chicken and egg" challenge that idea-stage founders face: needing traction to raise funds while needing the right talent to gain that traction.
Andile Masuku engages Ogundeko on the evolution of venture building in Africa, from being "mocked" five to six years ago to now becoming an essential element in the ecosystem. Throughout the conversation, Ogundeko makes a compelling case for why Africa's tech ecosystem requires patient capital with 15-25 year horizons rather than traditional 10-year VC fund lifecycles.
Key topics:
- The evolution of Funema's venture building model over nine years
- Why service-based businesses can evolve into stronger tech companies
- Misalignment between traditional VC timelines and African market realities
- The importance of founder emotional connection to problems they're solving
- How AI is democratising education and knowledge across the continent
- Funema's ambitious plans to scale venture building across Africa
Notable points:
1. Ogundeko developed his venture building thesis after working at Seedstars in 2016, flipping their model to focus on founders with their own ideas
2. Funema has a portfolio of 20+ companies built over nine years of operation
The firm prefers working with founders who start with service models to develop deeper market understanding before scaling with technology
3. Traditional 10-year VC timelines are insufficient for African tech development, with Ogundeko advocating for 15-25 year investment horizons
4. Funema is planning to reach 1,000 founders over the next two years and train 100,000 venture builders over five years
What makes Funema's approach distinctive is his patience and belief in deep market understanding: "We didn't exactly start out with a very sexy business model. But the learnings that we've been able to get from the market, which we've automated into a platform, is becoming a product that you can call a pure tech business."
South Africa's finance minister drops plan to increase value-added tax (VAT), in a major climbdown to prevent the collapse of the coalition government.
10,000 illegal settlers reportedly removed from Ghana's largest forest reserve.
And why is Uganda’s treasured shea butter becoming harder to harvest ?
Presenter: Charles Gitonga
Producers: Frenny Jowi in Nairobi with Bella Hassan and Yvette Twagiramariya in London
Technical Producer: Craig Kingham
Senior Producer: Paul Bakibinga
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi.
COMMENTARY's tech columnist, James B. Meigs, joins the podcast today to talk about the important lawsuit lost by Greenpeace and what it means for leftist activism going forward, and about new developments and needed developments when it comes to the exploration of space. Give a listen.
The Trump administration hopes that tariffs will encourage more products to be made in America. But a new report out this week also says the president's tariffs will be an effective tax increase, with low-income consumers hit the hardest. We'll unpack. Plus, by one analysis, California's economy is now the fourth largest in the world. And later: how the Trump administration is pushing the limits of authority over independent agencies.
Senior Russian general killed. Meanwhile US envoy arrives for talks with President Putin on how to end the war in Ukraine. The Russian foreign minister, in a US interview, said peace negotiations were progressing.
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Welcome to The Mining Pod! In this episode, the team discusses recent Bitcoin mining trends including a projected 8% difficulty decrease, fee revenue rebounding to 3.3% of block rewards, and major loans from Coinbase and Matrixport to miners amid ATM market hesitancy. They analyze the curious case of $2.7M in stolen Bitcoin miners (many outdated S9s) intercepted at LAX, customs control gaming allegations, and tariff implications for ASIC importation. The highlight is a lively debate on the top 5 moments in Bitcoin mining history, with strong disagreements about whether mining pools deserve a spot!
• Bitcoin hash rate down ~100 EH/s from April peak
• Transaction fees rebounding to 3.3% of block rewards
• $2.7M in stolen ASIC miners intercepted at LAX
• AnAlpha IPO filing with 1.63B in outstanding loans
• ASIC miners classified under tariff code 8543
• AnAlpha's US customer base dropped from 25% to 6.9%
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:13 Luxor Difficulty Report
06:21 LAPD Finds Millions in Stolen S9s
08:37 Sneaking ASICs into the US?
12:19 Tariffs again....
15:35 Fractal Bitcoin
16:11 Top 5 Bitcoin Mining Moments in History
31:26 Antalpha’s IPO
Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!
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Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the
Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews
