Latest Interviews
Showing 211–225 of 892 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Milken Institute31 min
Private Equity's Next Move in Latin America | Global Investors' Symposium Mexico City 2025
Michael Milken, Martín Escobari, José E. Feliciano
Investment firms General Atlantic and Clear Lake are leveraging Mexico's young demographic, surplus of STEM graduates, and geopolitical decoupling from China to position the nation as a high-growth hub for nearshoring and capital deployment. With local valuations trading at a 50% discount to the U.S. and the entry of President Claudia Sheinbaum signaling reduced corruption, these organizations aim to scale operations by directing Mexican pension funds toward private equity and expanding supply chain infrastructure. This strategy seeks to transform Mexico into a $12 trillion economic zone by 2040, capitalizing on reshoring trends and a maturing financial ecosystem to double or triple employment within their portfolio companies.
- Goldman Sachs25 min
Navigating Year-End Risks: Tariffs, Credit, AI and More
Dominic Wilson, Josh Schifrin, Tom
Panelists Josh Schifrin and Dominic Wilson assessed that U.S. economic stability remains intact despite a peaked credit cycle, projecting Federal Reserve rate cuts to 3% or lower by the end of the year driven by soft labor indicators and benign inflation. While equity valuations for AI leaders and corporate debt levels warrant monitoring, the consensus holds that strong balance sheets prevent a bubble scenario and that market volatility remains largely idiosyncratic rather than systemic. The discussion further noted that fiscal sustainability concerns are currently offset by tariff revenue expectations, allowing the bond market to continue its drift toward lower yields.
- Goldman Sachs34 min
‘Culture is Everything’: Sixth Street’s Alan Waxman on Flexibility and Alpha
In the September 2025 Goldman Sachs Exchange "Great Investors" episode, 6th Street Co-CEO Alan Waxman details how the firm's $115 billion assets under management operate through a unified "one team" culture that avoids silos and prioritizes liquidity management over credit exposure. Waxman outlines strategic advantages including the $30 billion TAL cross-platform vehicle and major investments in affordable housing recapitalization, AI business model dispersion, and the global sports ecosystem. The discussion further emphasizes a rigorous hiring standard that removes high-performing individualists to maintain collective responsibility, ensuring the firm can "face the tiger" during crises while systematically identifying relative risk-reward across asset classes.
- Y Combinator39 min
Startup Advice: AI GTM, Pivoting & How To Hire
Founders entering legacy industries must select a go-to-market model—typically software-first, full-stack, or acquisition-based—while rigorously tracking automation trajectories to secure software valuations from investors. Strategic execution requires prioritizing mid-market segments for faster feedback loops and securing empowered early adopters, as AI sales tools and high-level marketing hires only succeed after founders have personally mastered their own product-market fit. Ultimately, successful scaling depends on treating hiring as a failure-prevention necessity, leveraging open-source components to build enterprise trust, and maintaining the conviction to pivot when customer conviction indicates a "great" idea is absent.
- Goldman Sachs30 min
Sixth Street CEO Alan Waxman on Sports Investing and Identifying Opportunities
Founded by former Goldman Sachs leaders to eliminate internal silos, Sixth Street operates as a $115 billion multi-strategy private capital firm utilizing its unique "TAO" vehicle to deploy bespoke solutions across 16 sector teams. The firm distinguishes itself by securing early-entry stakes in high-growth sectors like sports through rapid execution, while rigorously filtering personnel based on a culture of total collaboration rather than individual ego. This organizational model, which prioritizes long-term relationship building and agile risk assessment, allows the firm to navigate complex markets ranging from affordable housing to artificial intelligence without relying on traditional deployment factories.
- Sequoia Capital44 min
Securing the AI Frontier: Irregular Co-founder Dan Lahav
Dan Lahav, Omer Nevo, Sonya Huang, Dean Meyer
Dan Lahav, founder of Irregular, warns that the transition to autonomous agentic AI will fundamentally reshape organizational security by rendering traditional anomaly detection ineffective against probabilistic, self-evolving threats. Through high-fidelity simulations demonstrating agents evading Windows Defender and executing autonomous social engineering, Irregular advocates for an "outside-in" research strategy that integrates defenses directly into foundation models while governments treat sovereign AI risks as critical national security issues. This approach aims to proactively prevent offensive AI capabilities from becoming viable within enterprises over the next one to three years before legacy security paradigms become obsolete.
Incubating Brain Co: Elad Gil’s AI Bet with Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners
Elad Gil, Jared Kushner, Eric Wu, Molly O'Shea
Elad Gil announces a new AI venture co-led by Affinity and his own fund, securing $30 million in Series A backing from investors including Jared Kushner and Andrej Karpathy to target large enterprises with bespoke vertical solutions. Building on Gil's philosophy that market success drives culture, the initiative deploys engineering talent from top foundation labs to bypass traditional startup cycles and implement AI directly into complex sectors like healthcare. The project also introduces a new corporate structure and incubation strategy designed to navigate distinct market dynamics while prioritizing strategic clarity over founder passion.
- Y Combinator38 min
Billion-Dollar Unpopular Startup Ideas
Amidst a saturated AI landscape, successful founders are shifting focus from greenfield ideas to contrarian strategies that leverage first-principles thinking and navigate regulatory gray areas to outmaneuver crowded verticals. This approach is exemplified by companies like GigaML, Campfire, and Flock Safety, which defy conventional venture capital metrics by replacing human-intensive services with autonomous AI agents, building full-stack enterprise suites, and pivoting hardware models toward high-impact public safety markets. Ultimately, achieving outlier success requires ignoring market noise and consensus to solve non-obvious human needs, a methodology that has historically turned skeptically received concepts into billion-dollar valuations.
Elad Gil of Gil Capital, Gil & Co. & Enigma Global
A seasoned investor with a career spanning Google and Twitter outlines a strategy to fund 150 to 225 companies by combining thesis-driven AI investments with energy-focused roll-ups to address infrastructure bottlenecks. The speaker warns that while current AI valuations carry a 30% premium, the sector's long-term growth is strictly limited by nuclear energy availability and suggests that structural shifts may allow successful firms like SpaceX to remain perpetually private. Complementing this financial analysis, the investor is launching a Monument Project to erect 15-to-20-foot public art installations in major US cities designed to inspire future generations for centuries.
- All-In Podcast29 min
Inside Orlando Bravo’s Private Equity Playbook: How to Build a Top Firm
Orlando Bravo, David, Chamath, Jason
Toma Bravo, a $179 billion asset manager founded by Orlando Bravo, executes a specialized software buyout strategy that targets high-growth leaders to improve EBITDA margins from 25% to over 50% through immediate operational overhauls and disciplined add-on acquisitions. The firm leverages a lean 230-person team to manage a portfolio of roughly 500 companies, recently executing major transactions like the $12.5 billion Dayforce deal while navigating AI-driven market shifts that are reshaping enterprise software valuation models. By maintaining a private structure focused on deep portfolio involvement rather than public liquidity, Bravo aims to counter traditional private equity criticisms and consistently deliver returns by transforming first-in-class innovators into scalable, highly profitable enterprises.
- Sequoia Capital45 min
Why AI Will Transform Customer Experience: Cresta CEO Ping Wu and Sequoia’s Doug Leone
Ping Wu, Doug Leone, Sonya Huang
Cresta addresses the high attrition and fragmented experience of the global contact center industry by deploying a hybrid model of human agent assistance and autonomous digital agents that operate on legacy systems with under 800-millisecond latency. This approach leverages twenty simultaneously orchestrated AI models to capture the $75 billion in revenue-generating interactions historically lost to inefficiency, while Sequoia's Doug Leone anticipates the application layer becoming the primary locus of value in an "Industrial Revolution 2.0." The company aims to render the distinction between human and AI agents indistinguishable within 20 to 30 years, ultimately creating continuous, personalized customer journeys that span the entire lifecycle.
- All-In Podcast28 min
Sequoia’s Roelof Botha: Why Venture Capital is Broken & How Great Companies Are Built
Sequoia Capital, led by a third generation of partners, sustains its legacy by prioritizing long-term value creation and consensus decision-making over aggressive fee maximization. The firm counters industry capital overhang by deploying proprietary AI tools and maintaining a selective investment strategy that has historically generated trillions in public market value through companies like Apple and Nvidia. While navigating geopolitical shifts by separating its Chinese operations and adapting to a regulatory landscape that has drastically reduced startup formation there, Sequoia continues to back founders with exceptional curiosity despite unconventional profiles.
- Milken Institute22 min
Actress Shefali Shah: Stories that Move; Strength that Inspires | Asia Summit 2025
Shefali Shah, Teresa Whang, Curtis S. Chin
Acclaimed actress Shefali Shah, known for her Emmy-winning role as DCP Shreya Sharma in Netflix's *Delhi Crime*, discusses the industry's shift from limiting stereotypical roles to complex character portrayals. She details the upcoming third season of the series, which tackles human trafficking and bride sales through a narrative blending multiple true cases, while highlighting her work in *The Three of Us* and *Adolescence* to explore dementia and social media's impact on children. Shah further emphasizes her advocacy for women's and children's safety, urging audiences to view her award-winning projects to understand these critical social issues.
- All-In Podcast28 min
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on AI, Censorship & the Future of Creators
Neal Mohan, Chamath, Jason, Friedberg, Ari
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan outlined the platform's dominance with 2 billion monthly active users and over $70 billion paid to creators, while addressing tensions between its 55/45 revenue model and high-profile creators who opt for direct monetization. Mohan defended YouTube's algorithmic fragmentation as a driver of niche engagement while highlighting new AI initiatives that prioritize creator likeness rights and transparency labels over blanket bans. The discussion further detailed strategies to balance global moderation complexities with evolving regulations and a renewed focus on YouTube Premium and TV to reinvent the viewer experience.
Base Power Raises $1B led by Addition, with Trust Ventures, Lightspeed, a16z, Altimeter, Elad Gil
Elad Gil, Zach Dell, Justin Lopas, Molly O'Shea
Base secured an oversubscribed $1 billion Series C led by Addition, accelerating from its previous $200 million round to fund its "Speed to Power" product designed to bypass traditional grid interconnection delays for data centers. Backed by strategic investors like Lennar and Starwood alongside founders from SpaceX and Tesla, the company is deploying gigawatt-scale battery capacity from its Austin "Factory One" at a target rate of 100 megawatts per month. This capital infusion supports a strategic pivot to replace fossil fuels with cost-efficient solar and storage, aiming to solve critical energy bottlenecks for AI development while expanding operations into high-solar states like California and Florida.