Welcome back to Trailblazers by Park Rangers Capital!

In this week’s solo episode, host Erica Wenger breaks down 10 pieces of advice for ambitious twenty somethings!

Drawing from her personal experiences in the business world, Erica covers topics like building a strong personal brand, making smart career choices, and other key strategies for growth and success.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up, these insights will help you approach your professional journey with confidence and clarity.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by Rocketreach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo (formerly OpenPhone): Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

Shomik is a longtime venture investor who most recently was a partner at boldstart ventures, an inception-focused fund backing technical founders at day zero. While at boldstart, he supported companies like Cloudquery, Kiln AI, and Ask-Y, and played a role in many other early investments.

Before boldstart, Shomik was an investor at Top Tier Capital, where he focused on growth-stage companies including CircleCI, Anaplan, Remitly, Shape Security, and Snyk. His path into venture was anything but traditional, with early experience spanning tech M&A, venture debt, a failed startup, and fixed income sales and trading.

Originally from New Jersey and a Pittsburgh alum, Shomik is an avid hiker, an aspiring guitarist—progress very much still in flight—and the proud dad of a one-and-a-half-year-old son who now takes up all of his spare time.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Shomik Ghosh: @shomikghosh21

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

This week we chat with Haseeb Qureshi!

Haseeb is the Managing Partner at Dragonfly, a multibillion-dollar leading crypto VC firm, and is a longtime technology-focused crypto investor.

He was previously a General Partner at Metastable Capital (now acquired by Dragonfly). Earlier in his career, Haseeb founded a stablecoin startup, worked as a blockchain engineer at Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), and served as an anti-fraud engineer at Airbnb. Before entering tech, he was among the top heads-up no-limit Hold’em poker players in the world, becoming a sponsored professional and self-made millionaire by age 19. He later authored a best-selling poker book, donated the bulk of his poker earnings—about half a million dollars—to charity, and pursued an earn-to-give path that led him into software engineering and eventually blockchain.

Haseeb has taught a Web3 Entrepreneurship course at UC Berkeley and is widely followed for his technical expertise in crypto. Today, he continues to write, invest, and contribute to the ecosystem while committing a third of his pre-tax income to charitable causes.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Haseeb Qureshi: @hosseeb

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

This week, we chat with Nicolas Cary!

Nic is the Co-Founder and Vice Chairman at Blockchain.com! He is responsible for bringing new adopters into the crypto ecosystem.

A fascination with tech, money and politics led Nic to become deeply passionate about helping people reinvent their relationship with money.

After an international upbringing, Nic worked as a teacher in India before becoming a founding team member at SaaS company PipelineCRM.com, where he focused on product development and management.

A trilingual communicator, Nic is the Founding Commissioner of the Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development and co-author of The Future is Decentralised. Deeply passionate about entrepreneurship, Nic is also co-founder and chairman of SkysTheLimit.org, the leading non-profit digital business accelerator. Regularly cited in the global press as one of the earliest crypto industry experts, Nic was named the European Digital Leader of the year in 2015 and honored with a Professional Achievement Award in 2017 by his alma mater, the University of Puget Sound.

A proven leader, investor, public speaker, and brand ambassador, Nic focuses on designing performant cultures that persevere in adverse markets.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Nicolas Cary: @niccary

Sky's The Limit: https://www.skysthelimit.org/

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

This week we chat with Paige Finn Doherty!

Paige is the Founding Partner of Behind Genius Ventures, an early-stage venture firm managing nearly $14 million in AUM. Behind Genius makes concentrated investments in pre-seed and seed-stage companies led by technical storytellers across applied AI, frontier tech, and what’s next.

A writer and former engineer, Paige first broke into venture capital in a truly unconventional way by writing a best-selling “children’s book for adults” about how venture capital works, Seed to Harvest. At the time, she was working as a Developer Success Engineer at WorkOS, a role she actually landed through Twitter!

Paige’s impact and storytelling have earned her widespread recognition: she was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Cover in Venture Capital (2022), named a Rising SDSU Aztec Awardee, and most recently, inducted into the Rancho Bernardo High School Hall of Fame.

Originally from San Diego and now based in San Francisco, Paige continues to bring transparency, creativity, and heart to the world of venture through storytelling and curio

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Paige Finn Doherty: @paigedoherty

Behind Genius Substack: @behindgenius.substack.com

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

This week we chat with Claire Hughes Johnson!

Claire is the former COO of Stripe, where she played a critical role in scaling the company from 160 employees to more than 7,000 during its period of rapid global expansion. Before Stripe, she spent over a decade at Google, leading large international teams across multiple high-growth products and operations.

She now serves on the boards of HubSpot, The Atlantic, Aurora, and several other organizations, is an active angel investor, and is the bestselling author of Scaling People, widely regarded as a modern classic on leadership, management, and organizational design.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Claire Hughes Johnson: @chughesjohnson

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

Welcome back to Trailblazers by Park Rangers Capital!

In this week’s solo episode, host Erica Wenger breaks down 7 things she wishes every founder knew before raising their first check. The honest, unfiltered truths that can dramatically change the way you approach fundraising.

Drawing from the countless lessons she’s learned while raising for her own firm, Erica unpacks the realities behind investor conversations, what actually moves a deal forward, and the common mistakes first-time founders don’t even realize they’re making.

From understanding how investors really make decisions to setting expectations, building genuine momentum, and crafting a narrative that sticks, Erica shares the tactical learning nuggets she had to earn the hard way.

If you’re preparing for your first raise or simply want a clearer look at how fundraising really works behind the scenes. This episode is your grounded, practical guide to entering the capital-raising arena with confidence.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by Rocketreach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo (formerly OpenPhone): Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!

This week, we chat with Nikhil Basu Trivedi!

Nikhil is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm in San Francisco. Footwork leads Seed and Series A rounds in companies with early signs of product-market fit, across both consumer technology and the consumerization of enterprise technology.

The firm was founded in 2021 and is investing its second fund, with $400M of AUM. Footwork’s portfolio companies include Elicit, Felt, GPTZero, Tracksuit, Watershed, and WindBorne.

Nikhil was previously a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he led the firm's investments in Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, and The Farmer's Dog. He started his career on the investing team at Insight Partners and on the founding team at Artsy. Nikhil graduated from Princeton University with a degree in molecular biology and finance.

✨ This episode is presented by Brex.

Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspod

This episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.

RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazers

Gusto: gusto.com/trailblazers

Quo: Quo.com/trailblazers

Athena: athenago.me/Erica-Wenger

Follow Us!

Nikhil Basu Trivedi: x.com/nbt

@thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

🐘 Learn more about Park Rangers Capital!