On this week's episode of Silicon Valley Impact we speak with Shashi Tripathi, Managing Partner at Nurture Growth Fund; Leah Houston, MD, Founder and Product Owner of Evercred; and Dave Scott is the CEO of Evil Genius Games.
Shashi brings over 25 years of global experience in operational leadership, venture capital, and product-driven innovation. He has built, scaled, and advised businesses across enterprise technologies, AI, healthcare, FinTech, and SaaS—delivering measurable value to shareholders, customers, and teams. Shashi currently serves as a board member, investor, and advisor to high-growth companies across the U.S., Europe, India, and APAC. He launched and fully deployed a top-performing venture fund, investing in 42+ companies with a zero-failure record to date. Recognized for his ability to navigate complexity, scale innovation, and unlock enterprise value, Shashi is known as a trusted leader in both boardrooms and executive teams worldwide. He also serves as Chairman for the IIT 2026 Conference in Long Beach, taking place April 22–25, 2026.
Dr. Houston, Founder and Product Owner of Evercred, an AI-powered credential data wallet transforming how healthcare credentials are managed. After nearly a decade practicing emergency medicine across the U.S., she experienced the inefficiencies of onboarding and credentialing firsthand. This led her to pursue advanced training in AI and health technology at MIT and launch Evercred, which empowers physicians to own and control their verified credentials while streamlining workforce mobility. Evercred’s beta version is already revenue-generating, with enterprise solutions in development to deliver seamless, perpetual primary source verification across the healthcare ecosystem.
Dave, CEO of Evil Genius Games, a leading publisher of tabletop roleplaying games including the flagship Everyday Heroes TTRPG and licensed campaign settings such as Pacific Rim, Kong: Skull Island, Highlander, Escape from New York, Total Recall, Rambo, Universal Soldier, and The Crow. With over 20 years of senior marketing leadership, he has served as Global Head of Marketing Strategy & Operations at AWS and held executive roles at top software companies. Recognized as both “CMO of the Year” and “Marketer of the Year,” Dave is also the author of The New Rules of Lead Generation and The Essentials of Small Business Marketing, both published by Harper Collins. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees from The College of William and Mary and an MBA from the Wharton School, and currently serves on the boards of his alma mater, Goodwill, and Powerful Schools, as well as being an active member of Rotary International.
This and much more on Silicon Valley Impact!
Follow us on and listen to all our episodes on:
🎙️Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/68L4RPfMizjxnKBsmcFb1J
🍎Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-valley-impact/id1776876823
📺 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@siliconvalleyimpact
Silicon Valley Venture, LLC, the parent company of Silicon Valley Impact, is a proud global venture partner to great companies, like TheAgentic, and STAK Ventures, and 1900 Broadway Tower - Oakland. Check out https://www.theagentic.ai/ and https://stakspace.com/ to gain access to the worlds largest full stack venture ecosystem. It's over 1.2 million square feet of Live, Work, Play, Go; everything innovators, investors, ecosystem influencers, institutional partners, and global talent needs to gain a global advantage, access, alignment, and accelerate your venture.
Event Partnerships:
Join us in Napa, October 22nd-24th for the Opal Group Family Office & Private Wealth Management Forum. Register here: https://lnkd.in/gjeSSHTP.
Join us in San Francisco October 27th-29th, for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. Get your tickets here (use promo code: siliconvalley25 to get 25% off your ticket purchase): https://tcrn.ch/41JLNgv
Join us October 27th, following Day 1 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, for the "Venture Partner 'Unofficial TechCrunch Disrupt 2025' Afterparty: Silicon Valley's Best!" Get your tickets here while they last: https://luma.com/3w4qt0r2
Join us in Long Beach, April 22-25th for
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.