Tonya J. Long is the managing partner of Daymaker Ventures, which works alongside early-stage founders to raise their first million through deal-by-deal SPVs (special purpose vehicles) and builds a community of investors who want a say in each deal. She wrote a best-selling book on AI when generative AI first reached consumers, has advised boards and startups on AI strategy since, and has led technical teams of several hundred people. Through her project Beyond Work, she writes about what work and identity look like as AI takes over the tasks careers were built on.

In this episode, Tonya joins Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft to ask what happens to who we are when the job title stops doing the work of an introduction. They cover why we learned to measure people like factory equipment, the C.A.R.E. traits Tonya looks for in founders, the accountability gap in distributed teams, the HAY Index (Human Agency Yield) she is developing to measure judgment and cross-functional work, and why venture capital may need to rethink what counts as a serious business.

Guest: Tonya J. Long, Managing Partner of Daymaker Ventures

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyajlong/

Daymaker Ventures: https://daymaker.vc/

Beyond Work (website and Substack): https://beyondwork.world/

Ops or Die is the ScaleSpark podcast, hosted by Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft. When your team runs across partners, contractors, and AI agents and the handoffs keep slipping, we build the operating systems that hold it together. Come talk to us at https://scalespark.ai.