Technology

Few can hold a candle to Brad Feld list of accolades in the startup, tech and venture world. As a multi-time founder of both startups and venture firms alike, Feld is widely known for having co-founded the Techstars accelerator — now a Silicon Valley and startup institution — as well as Foundry Group, the early and growth-stage venture fund that has raised nearly $2.5 billion over seven funds, in just over a decade.

Feld is equally, if not more, recognized outside of the investing world as a thought leader through both his widely followed blog &Feld Thoughts& and through authoring a number of books and guides to the startup and venture worlds. Feld recently published the fourth edition of his acclaimed and seemingly timeless book &Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer And Venture Capitalist& (which he co-authored with Foundry Group co-founder Jason Mendelson), which acts as a manual to raising venture capital by walking through tactical advice around negotiating a term sheet, what to consider when selling your business, arguments for and against convertible debt and much more.

TechCrunchSilicon Valley editorConnie Loizos will be sitting down with Brad for an exclusive conversation this Thursday, October 10th at 11:00 am PT on Extra Crunch. Brad, Connie and Extra Crunch members will be digging into the latest edition of &Venture Deals,& Bradadvice to founders and investors and his take on hot-button issues of the day (including dual-class shares, direct listings and what happened at WeWork).

Extra Crunch members will also have the opportunity to ask questions! We will pause during the call to take questions from Extra Crunch subscribers. Alternatively, you can email questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Tune in to join the conversation and for the opportunity to ask Brad and Connie any and all things venture.

To listen to this and all future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch.Learn more and try it for free.

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. Ita rare medium thatnearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut fromNPRstudios to USB Skype rigs.

We&ve asked some of our favorite podcast hosts and producers to highlight their workflows — the equipment and software they use to get the job done. The list so far includes:

Criminal/This Is LoveLauren SpohrerJeffrey Cranor of Welcome to Night ValeJesse Thorn of BullseyeBen Lindbergh of Effectively WildMy own podcast, RiYL

This week, we&ve got the producer and &fourth co-host& of Broken Record, Justin Richmond. Richmond actually does much of the talking for the popular music podcast, but you would probably bill yourself as number four if you were sharing mic time with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell and former New York Times editor Bruce Headlam.

The show aims to serve as aural linear notes in an era when musical context has gone the way of the 8-track and the original Ramones. The showguests have been a whowho of popular musicians, including recent guests Jack White, Tyler the Creator and Ezra Koenig. Season three of the show kicked off recently and is available for listening at Broken Record Podcast. Next week, Richmond will interview rapper, producer, actor and former Fugee, Wyclef Jean.

Most days I work out of the greatest podcast studio there is: Shangri La, perched above one of my favorite Malibu beaches. OK, it might not be apodcaststudio. Built by Bob Dylanband,TheBand, in the mid &70s, itwhere they recorded their last album as a group. They also taped the interview scenes from &The Last Waltz& there with Martin Scorsese. Bob Dylantour bus was marooned there and has since been turned into a recording space. Black Sabbath recorded their last record there. Neil Young has used it, Run the Jewels, Eric Clapton, Kendrick Lamar … everyone. Itone of the perks of working on a podcast with Rick Rubin.

There are two studios at Shangri La we typically use. One is in the main studio, with a beautiful API console and U87 microphones. Rick and a guest sit in the control room above the studio&live& room and overlook a beautiful green landscape and the ocean. Typically the windows are open so you can often hear helicopters flying by, motorcycles speeding down PCH or birds chirping. But it gives the recordings character. The other place we record is in what we call &The Chapel.& Ita small charming building that looks like, you guessed it, a chapel. We also use U87down there and the console is from the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama. It used to be at Rickold Laurel Canyon studio where he recorded the Red Hot Chili Peppers and countless other groups in the &90s and early 2000s. These bits of history are what make creating a music podcast from there so surreal and fun.

But some days my studio space is challenging (though, honestly, still very fun). Our first episode for Season 3, for example, is Malcolm and Rick talking with the Raconteurs — primarily Brendan Benson and Jack White. We taped the episode in Jack Whitesunroom at a home of his in the Detroit area. As you can tell from the picture, ita beautiful space, but therea lot going on … and we&re far from our usual Malibu digs. Luckily, Bill Skibbe, who does the mastering for JackThird Man Records stuff, was able to pull up with a wonderful mobile rig.

However, Rick wasn&t in Michigan — he was in Italy. We were initially going to have him FaceTime in and sync himself with an RE-20 on his end, but the internet on both ends was a little shoddy. So we ended up putting my iPhone in the middle of the room with Rick on speaker. It was a nightmare to reduce the bleed of any and every sound coming through the phone on Rickend, but we painstakingly got it done.

Because Rick, Malcolm and Bruce keep very busy schedules we have a bunch of other studios lined up across the country that provide wildly different environments. But somehow we&re managing to unify the Broken Record sound.

Maveron, Slow Ventures and Female Founders Fund have invested $10 million in a startup that claims itcarving a new path to sobriety.

Tempest offers a $647 eight-week virtual &sobriety school& to help people, particularly women and &historically oppressed individuals,& get sober. The program is led by the companyfounder and chief executive officer Holly Whitaker, who conducts weekly video lectures and Q+As for participants. Offering their expertise as part of the package is marriage and family therapist Kim Kokoska; Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John, the co-founder of Eight Step Recovery; and wellness coach Mary Vance, among others.

Tempest teaches the underlying causes of addiction and the &importance of purpose, meaning and creativity in breaking addiction,& as well as how to manage cravings, how to navigate social situations as a non-drinker, how to develop a mindfulness practice and more. At the end of the program, participants can pay a $127 fee for an annual membership to the Tempest online community, where one can communicate with others who&ve completed the program.

Tempest Syllabus Week 1: Recovery Maps + Toolkits Week 2: Addiction - The Brain Week 3: Habit and Night Ritual Week 4: Yoga, Meditation and Breath Week 5: Nutrition - Lifestyle Week 6: Relationships - Community Week7: Trauma - Therapy Week 8: Purpose - Creativity Week 8+ Wrapping Up + Next Steps

A snapshot of Tempestweekly coursework.

A holistic approach

Founded in 2014, New York-based Tempest has raised about $14.3 million in total VC funding. Whitaker previously spent five years at One Medical, where she was the director of revenue cycle operations. Since founding Tempest, which has enrolled 4,000 participants to date, Whitaker received a two-book deal from Random House to document her methodologies and path to sobriety. Her first book, ‘Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol,& will be released on December 31.

Today, her business has 28 employees and plans to build out its team, invest in marketing — where ithistorically had very low spend — and explore business opportunities within the enterprise using cash from the $10 million Series A.

The company is careful to clarify itnot a detox or 12-step program, like Alcoholics Anonymous, which is structured around the Twelve Steps to recovery. Rather, Tempest can be used in combination with other programs or therapies, or as a first step down the path to recovery. Whitaker explains Tempest isn&t only for the clinically addicted or those who consider themselves addicts or alcoholics. The company welcomes people who have rejected these labels or simply want to cut alcohol out of their life.

&Tempest grew out of my own experience,& Whitaker, who has previously struggled with alcoholism and an eating disorder, tells TechCrunch. &It was a response to the lack of desirable and accessible options to address problematic drinking, the lack of options available for people who don&t identify as alcoholics but struggle with alcohol and the lack of options that have been created for women and other individuals. Everything had been created for men.&

Tempest is tailored to the needs of women and historically oppressed individuals, says Whitaker, though all genders are welcome to complete its course. Taking a holistic approach to recovery, participants are encouraged to address the factors that led them to drink in the first place, including &love lives, poor nutrition, stress, anxiety, crap friendships, consumerism, lack of purpose, unresolved family of origin issues, disenfranchisement, poverty, tight or unmanageable finances, lack of connection, fear, shitty jobs we hate, depression, unprocessed trauma, lack of meaning, unfulfilled dreams, never-ending to-do lists, never-measuring-upness,& the company writes.

Tempestwebsite

But what about A.A.?

I had the same question.

Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), the most popular and accessible approach to recovery, is free and open to anyone willing to acknowledge they have a drinking problem. A nonprofit organization, A.A. has more than 115,000 groups worldwide. The 84-year-old program is built on peer-support groups that gather regularly for discussion meetings. Over time, more seasoned members can become &sponsors,& helping newer entrants work through the Twelve Steps.

Tempest, alternatively, is taking a for-profit approach, charging for its tech-infused method. And where A.A. emphasizes in-person support groups, Tempest relies on video streams. Increasingly, telemedicine startups are enticing customers with convenient options for health and wellness care but whether people will truly pivot to telemedicine, tele-therapy or virtual sobriety schools is still up for debate. As for Tempestsimilarities to A.A., Whitaker says: &The only thing they have in common is that they are working to help people quit alcohol.&

In selling its sobriety school, Tempest evokes a sense of coolness, with phrases like &Sober is the new black& and &Your hangover goes away. Your social life doesn&t,& plastered on its website. In providing a priced and more exclusive route to sobriety, one might question Tempestethics and motivations as it builds a business that capitalizes off of substance abuse. Whitaker, in defense, explains a virtual school fit for the historically powerless is a necessary addition to existing options: &Our program is centered on individuals who have been held out of power, who have been told to shut up and listen,& she said. &We aren&t looking at white, upper-class men. We are looking at a queer person from 2019.&

According to survey data published by Recovery.org, 89% of A.A. attendees are white, while 38% are female.

Refusing ‘alcogenic culture&

Tempestbranding takes a cue from the D2C playbook. The company, led by women, has the opportunity to become the brand that represents sobriety, and ittaking it. TempestSeries A, coupled with the influx of new-age non-alcoholic beverage brands backed by VCs, is representative of the perceived shift away from alcohol among the younger generations.

Millennials are drinking less alcohol and, according to the World Health Organization, there are 5% fewer alcohol drinkers in the world today than in 2000. Tempestschool seems to cater more to the cohort of people who view ditching alcohol as a lifestyle perk, not those who stop drinking due to addiction.

Tempest founder and CEO Holly Whitaker

Seedlip, a non-alcoholic spirits company, and IndiaCoolberg Beverages, which makes non-alcoholic beer, recently raised VC to cater to a similar demographic. Meanwhile, CBD-infused beverage brands like Sweet Reason, Cann and Recess are trendy and raising venture money. None of these, of course, are solutions for someone struggling with alcohol. Capital flowing into these brands merely indicates venture capitalists& belief that consumers are steering away from traditional liquor and toward new products fit for a generation that is drinking less alcohol.

&By just trying on sobriety or questioning our drink-centric culture, you are profoundly ahead of the pack and among good company,& Tempest writes on its website. &Remember: 70-80% of adults drink depending on where you live; drinking is basic. Sobriety, and the refusal to partake in alcogenic culture, is subversive, rebellious, and edgy.&

Tempest says it has completed an efficacy study performed in consultation with researchers affiliated with the University of Buffalo and Syracuse University. In several years& time, we&ll know whether the countless think pieces claiming millennials are done with alcohol were indeed true and whether the VC money into these upstarts was wasted or pure genius. As for Tempest, even if just providing a designated place on the internet for discussions around the struggles or benefits of sobriety, it has the potential to make a big impact on those in recovery or those seeking a lifestyle change.

&Alcohol is very similar to cigarettes,& Whitaker said. &We are in a time that we think drinking alcohol is natural, that we are supposed to do it. I thought that would change because to me, alcohol is entirely toxic. We are approaching this tipping point of realizing how toxic and unnecessary it is.&

Tempest is also backed by AlleyCorp, Refactor and Green D Ventures. MaveronAnarghya Vardhana has joined the startupboard of directors as part of the latest deal.