Latest Interviews
Showing 481–495 of 809 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Goldman Sachs23 min
George Kurtz CEO/Co-founder, CrowdStrike
George Kurtz guided CrowdStrike from its 2011 cloud-only founding to a successful IPO by rejecting on-premises demands and deploying patent-protected, non-rebooting technology that halted 77,000 active intrusion attempts annually. Following the public offering, Kurtz prioritized sustained momentum through a "100 days, 100 customers" initiative that secured over $100 million in new ARR and converted skeptical financial giants into major clients. This mission-centric strategy, driven by a "hatred to lose" philosophy and a hand-picked workforce, established a new benchmark for post-IPO customer engagement while scaling the organization to over 6,500 employees focused on preventing breaches.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
Navigating Macro Headwinds: A Conversation With the Founders of Brex and Chief
Kim Posnett, Henrique Dubugras, Carolyn Childers, Allison Nathan
At Goldman Sachs' 11th Annual Builders and Innovators Summit, Allison Nathan moderated a dialogue between Carolyn Childers, CEO of the women's executive network CHIEF, and Enrique Dubagras, Co-CEO of fintech firm Brex, to discuss their strategic pivots during a macroeconomic downturn. Childers detailed CHIEF's billion-dollar valuation and UK expansion as a response to the "Great Resignation," while Dubagras outlined Brex's shift from long-term bets to immediate profitability and opportunistic M&A to navigate reduced corporate spend. The conversation concluded with actionable guidance for founders to balance high-trust cultures and scalable processes against the bureaucratic risks of extreme outlier management.
- Y Combinator25 min
The Two Mindsets That Can KILL Your Startup
Dalton Caldwell, Michael Seibel
Successful founders must navigate a precarious balance between pessimism and optimism, as excessive negativity causes teams to quit while unchecked optimism erodes trust through "magical thinking." The event defines this equilibrium as cognitive dissonance, where leaders simultaneously acknowledge immediate crises and maintain a long-term vision rooted in tangible data rather than hope. By avoiding these extremes, entrepreneurs can thrive in high-risk environments and prevent the loss of credibility that leads to startup failure.
- Goldman Sachs21 min
Investing with Oaktree Capital Management’s Howard Marks
Howard Marks, Katie Koch, Alison Nathan
Howard Marks characterizes the mid-2022 market environment as a corrected balance where significant public equity markdowns have created attractively valued opportunities absent from private markets. Rejecting macroeconomic forecasts, Marks outlines Oaktree's crisis strategy of deploying capital when others retreat, a methodology built on historical conditioning and the principle that price matters more than asset quality. His 35-year partnership with Bruce Karsh further reinforces this discipline through complementary governance, ensuring joint conviction remains high during market dislocations.
- Goldman Sachs26 min
Angus Thirlwell, CEO and Co-Founder, Hotel Chocolat
Angus Thirlwell, Cameron Alley
Founded by CEO Angus Thirwell in 1993, Hotel Chocolat has evolved from an early e-commerce pioneer into a multi-channel empire that controls its supply chain through direct ownership of farms in St. Lucia and Ghana. The company recently achieved a 500% surge in digital sales during the pandemic while simultaneously implementing the Gentle Farming initiative to guarantee living wages for thousands of African producers. Moving forward, the brand plans to deepen its footprint in the USA and Japan by leveraging a large proprietary customer database to compete in the broader global gift market rather than relying solely on traditional retail expansion.
- Goldman Sachs31 min
A ‘Seismic’ Shift in Private Markets
Goldman Sachs co-president Mike Kester outlines a private market sector growing to $10 trillion that is undergoing a seismic shift toward individual investor participation while navigating a fundraising slowdown driven by the denominator effect. Despite regulatory pressures and a transition away from financial engineering toward active operational management, the industry continues to deliver consistent excess returns and is prioritizing sectors like infrastructure and life sciences. Kester projects that while capital raising will decelerate and valuation reporting standards will tighten, systemic risk remains low due to the pre-syndication of risk to long-term limited partners.
- All-In Podcast29 min
#AIS: Joe Lonsdale on the problem with higher education
Joe Lonsdale, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg
Joe Lonsdale critiques the decline of American institutions caused by ideological dogma in housing, education, and university systems, citing specific failures in Austin's "housing first" policies and the corruption of higher education by enforced conformity. In response to these systemic issues, he announced the immediate launch of a new non-profit university in Austin with $100 million in funding to prioritize intellectual freedom and merit-based accountability over the current "woke" orthodoxy. The initiative aims to address profound educational inequality by recruiting thousands of students and faculty who seek a curriculum centered on the history of free civilizations rather than enforced ideological silos.
- All-In Podcast23 min
#AIS: The Lanby's Tandice Urban on solving healthcare's customer service problem
Tandice Urban, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg
The speaker identifies systemic inefficiencies in US healthcare caused by a fee-for-service model that prioritizes volume over patient experience, resulting in an average Net Promoter Score of just 3 for primary care providers. To address this dysfunction, the presentation advocates for a shift toward direct-to-consumer and value-based models, exemplified by Lanby, a New York-based membership service utilizing a three-person care team to treat patients as customers rather than cases. This approach aims to align financial incentives with health outcomes, potentially preventing 40% of top-cause annual deaths through improved access to preventive care and hospitality-style service standards.
- All-In Podcast29 min
#AIS: MP Materials CEO James Litinsky on rare earths, supply chain, and energy independence
Jim Latinsky's fund orchestrated a transformative turnaround of the distressed Mountain Pass rare earth mine, evolving it from a bankrupt asset into a $6.5 billion public company that now supplies critical magnet materials to General Motors. This revival addresses a global supply chain deficit where China controls the vast majority of production, creating a strategic imperative for U.S. domestic manufacturing in the face of a predicted five-year shortage of essential minerals for electrification. Concurrently, the speaker warns that downstream automotive OEMs face a "musical chairs" collapse due to these resource gaps, urging a bipartisan regulatory shift to accelerate domestic mining projects while balancing environmental standards with national security needs.
- All-In Podcast38 min
#AIS: Pear VC’s Mar Hershenson on making successful founders
Mar Hershenson, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg
PairVC founder Mara Hershenson argues that while some entrepreneurial success is innate, high-performing peer environments act as catalysts capable of transforming character and ambition to accelerate startup outcomes. Her educational experiments, including the Stanford Startup Simulation and a specialized female founders program, demonstrate that structured exposure to failure and peer friction can replicate the "PayPal Mafia" effect, yielding billions in raised capital and multiple unicorns. Consequently, Hershenson advocates for early interventions and robust founder networks to desensitize individuals to risk and cultivate the resilience required for high-stakes entrepreneurship.
- All-In Podcast40 min
#AIS: FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver on how gamblers think
Nate Silver, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg, Zach
FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver explores the intersection of gambling, venture capital, and risk management in an in-progress book featuring insights from elite poker players and founders. The work analyzes how high-stakes decision-makers leverage probabilistic thinking, structured processes, and disciplined intuition to navigate uncertainty and extract value in volatile environments. Beyond his research, Silver addresses critical political challenges, including the risks of constitutional crisis in the 2024 election and the broader societal impacts of polarization on government capacity.
- All-In Podcast32 min
#AIS: Divvy Homes CEO Adena Hefets breaks down the state of the US housing market
Adena Hefets, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg, Adina
Divi Homes addresses the stark wealth inequality driven by asset appreciation and restrictive lending standards by offering a non-traditional homeownership model that allows customers with limited down payments to build equity. Operating across sixteen major markets with a customer base comprising 50% people of color and 80% female-led households, the company has achieved a 51% purchase success rate among participants who complete its three-year term. Funded by a recent $200 million Series investment from Tiger Global, Divi projects a path to profitability with an all-in margin near 25% while navigating a supply-constrained housing market.
- All-In Podcast39 min
#AIS: Glenn Greenwald & Matt Taibbi discuss the new political divide, moderated by David Sacks
Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, David Sacks, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg
Formerly prominent journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi argue that mainstream liberalism has devolved into a coercive orthodoxy that reclassifies dissenters as enemies, a shift driven by Donald Trump and the Democratic establishment's adoption of authoritarian narratives. This ideological fracture has realigned American politics along class and educational lines, leaving the working class alienated by a neoliberal consensus shared by both major parties while media outlets prioritize partisan outrage over objective reporting. The result is a stagnant political system where bipartisan elites protect ruling-class interests, effectively silencing class-based debate and creating conditions for potential systemic instability.
- All-In Podcast34 min
#AIS: Antonio Garcia Martinez & Glenn Greenwald debate Ukraine, moderated by David Sacks
Antonio Garcia Martinez, Glenn Greenwald, David Sacks, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg
Antonio Garcia-Martinez and Glenn Greenwald, moderated by David Sack, engaged in a contentious debate regarding U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war, contrasting reports of overwhelming Ukrainian societal mobilization with skepticism about American motives and global consensus. Garcia-Martinez argued that U.S. policy should support Kyiv's territorial integrity without direct intervention to avoid nuclear escalation, while Greenwald contended that Washington is weaponizing the conflict to weaken Russia as a great power, citing NATO expansion and historical U.S. hypocrisy as evidence. The discussion highlighted a fundamental divide over whether the war is a legitimate defense of democracy or a geopolitical maneuver that risks World War III, leaving the definitions of victory and moral credibility heavily contested.
- Goldman Sachs41 min
Ryan Watts, CEO and Co-Founder of Denali Therapeutics
Founded by CEO Dr. Ryan Watts in 2015, Denali Therapeutics is leveraging proprietary blood-brain barrier technologies and genetic insights to accelerate clinical-stage programs for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS. The company is currently initiating pivotal late-stage trials for Parkinson's and Hunter syndrome while prioritizing preventative strategies and shorter-term milestones in lysosomal storage diseases to validate its pipeline. By combining this technical approach with a culture that accepts failure as part of discovery, Denali aims to shift neurodegenerative treatment from late-stage intervention to early disease prevention within the next decade.