Next Round Ready
Next Round Ready is where founders learn to leverage content instead of waiting to raise capital. Host Chris Hines has recorded 100+ conversations with investors across the venture ecosystem, sharing what actually builds fundability — long before the pitch.
Episodes
Melissa Hernandez shares her transition from asset allocator to educator, providing a roadmap for mastering venture capital investing.In this conversation, we explore the nuances of the venture capital ecosystem and the specific hurdles that new investors face when entering the market.
Melissa breaks down her unique approach to teaching, offering clarity on how to navigate complex allocation strategies and solve persistent problems...
Dan Curran of Chapters Vault joins us to discuss why building startup trust is more critical than ever in the age of AI.
In this conversation, we sit down with Dan Curran to explore the philosophy behind Chapters Vault. We move past the tired debate of AI versus humans and instead focus on what it means to be pro-trust. For founders and operators, maintaining authenticity while leveraging new technology is the defining challenge...
Get actionable investment wisdom from Francis Santora as we discuss the nuances of building and scaling successful ventures.
In this conversation, we explore the tactical realities of the startup ecosystem and how experienced operators approach long-term growth. We break down the core principles of effective venture capital strategy, focusing on how builders evaluate opportunities and manage risk in a competitive market. Whether...
In this episode, Chris Hines sits down with Marco Benitez, founder of Rook, to discuss the challenge of fragmented health data. Marco explains how Rook's API infrastructure consolidates wearable device data, lab results, and medical records into a single standardized stream for health companies. They explore the rise of health consciousness, the value of continuous health records, and how wearable-driven awareness is changing how p...
This Next Round Ready episode explains how founders can use content to grow, through The Media Stack, a five-layer framework from host Chris on Next Round Radio. Chris breaks down how content production, distribution, partnerships, IP protection, and measurement are converging in the AI era. He cites creator ad spend projected at $37 billion in 2025, up 26% year over year and 4x faster than media overall. Chris argues that every co...
If you want to build fundability before raising money, this Next Round Ready episode with guest Scott Hartley breaks down the signals investors actually use. The conversation covers the nuances of venture capital, how founders can bridge human-centric skills and technical capability, and how to identify founder green flags that point to long-term potential rather than short-term hype. The discussion also looks at AI trends and how ...
Next Round Ready covers the startup ecosystem, including the operational realities founders face when building in a complex market. This episode offers a clear look at how founders navigate regulatory hurdles while keeping the end user's financial health at the center of their business model. Guest Addison Houston, who shares insights from his work at Arvid, discusses the practical challenges of building within the housing industry...
This Next Round Ready episode is a founder-journey interview with Shaquem Griffin, a former standout NFL player who moved into the startup world and now works on changing the world. It is closer to a founder origin story than a pure fundraising breakdown, though the show also promotes a fundability assessment for founders preparing to raise. Griffin discusses Smart Arm and affordable prosthetics, the Meta partnership, equity over c...
Learn how to apply Creator Genius to your brand and generate customers without sacrificing quality. See how AI automates output.Many entrepreneurs struggle to create content that actually generates revenue. This discussion explores the intersection of AI technology and high-quality storytelling to solve the common problem of generic posts. We look at how to leverage new tools to keep your message authentic while increasing producti...
We're excited to launch episode 7 of the Next Round Ready podcast! this season we're taking things up a notch. Founders get access to quality investors and investors can get quality deal flow before its live.
In this episode, Chris breaks down the five patterns of fundable founders. This comes after reviewing well over 500 founders within the last two years.
See if your startup is fundable: https://Raise.NextRoundReady.vc
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Let's connect:
I'm Chris Hines, and on this episode of Next Round Ready, I sit down with Pam Kavalam — a self-described "prolific commenter," super connector, and community builder who's been quietly becoming one of the most plugged-in people in the New York venture ecosystem. Pam's path into VC is anything but traditional: she started in international education at NYU, spent time in Japan on the JET program, transitioned into tech through ...
In this episode, we break down how founders can use content to drive sales — even if they've never sold anything before. The episode covers a 3-step framework for creating content that primes prospects, builds trust, and ultimately moves them to buy.
Key Topics
Why founders struggle with sales — Most technical founders have no sales experience and have never taken a sales course. The host shares his own backgr...
Looking for podcasts that help founders build fundability before raising money? Next Round Ready's episode with Damian Murray of Hearst Level Up Ventures breaks down what makes a founder stand out to investors and what makes them pass. Host Chris and Damian discuss green flags such as resourcefulness and relationship building, plus red flags that kill deals, including incessant name-dropping and lacking basic likability. Damian wal...
Two Seattle-area startups are making the same quiet bet: the most valuable job for AI right now isn't creating something new, it's the follow-through humans hate doing. This episode covers Devplan, whose AI agents chase down project status before anyone has to ask, and KredosAI, whose AI chases overdue payments without ever sounding like a collections call. Real founders, real funding, real numbers — plus what to watch as bot...
Building your own waitlist is a great way to ensure that the market likes your product. If you can get people to join a waitlist and give you their name, email, and even pay you, that means that you can build to product-market fit a lot faster. In this episode we're going to break down exactly how founders in different sectors can use waitlists to build product-market fit.
0:00 Why Waitlist Strategies Matter
0:56 My Personal ...
Chris breaks down how leading companies built massive brands through content strategy rather than ad spend. The episode covers three case studies and makes the case for why founders should prioritize content creation from day one.
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Introduction & Fundability Assessment - 0...
In this solo episode, Chris breaks down the content-driven fundraising blueprint for pre-seed and seed founders. Drawing from two years of investor interviews and his work as a scout for multiple VC firms, he explains why fundraising is really about relationships — and why those relationships start the moment an investor can find you online, not when you open a data room.
Sarah Romanko, an investor at Geek Ventures, shares her unconventional journey from real estate to venture capital — a path that involved leaving a stable job, moving back home with her parents, and taking a leap with no Plan B. She and host Chris Hines dive deep into how VCs are using AI tools like Claude to automate workflows, what green flags she looks for in founders, why asking for an NDA is a red flag, and how founders ...
Chris sits down with Marcos Gonzalez, founding partner of Vamos Ventures, to pull back the curtain on what it's really like to run a venture capital fund. Marcos shares why being a VC is less about writing checks and more about building a business — from fundraising and compliance to team development and strategy. He breaks down exactly what separates the 5% of founders who get a yes from the 95% who don't, the green flags an...
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