Latest Interviews
Showing 481–495 of 1,549 transcripts.
Clear all filters- a16z36 min
The Top 100 GenAI Products, Ranked and Explained
The latest Gen AI 100 report reveals a rapidly evolving ecosystem where 17 new companies have entered the web rankings and consumer adoption lags model development by six to twelve months, creating a dynamic transition from infrastructure to application. Distinct performance metrics highlight that high-traffic apps do not always correlate with revenue, while Chinese models and Deep Seek's rapid rise illustrate how shifting copyright landscapes and reasoning capabilities disrupt established players like ChatGPT and Runway. Success in this fragmented market increasingly relies on solving specific pain points and prioritizing user stability over technical novelty as low-code tools enable non-technical founders to launch disposable software at scale.
- Y Combinator32 min
DoorDash CEO: Customer Obsession, Surviving Startup Death & Creating A New Market
DoorDash was founded on the principle of empowering physical businesses after observing a macaroon store owner's inability to fulfill delivery requests, leading to a validated strategy that prioritized suburban markets and a diverse driver workforce over traditional high-density city centers. The company weathered critical operational crises, such as the 2013 Stanford delivery delays and persistent investor skepticism, by establishing a customer-obsessed culture that later enabled it to surpass competitors during the 2020 pandemic through strategic commission cuts and industry-wide support. Today, DoorDash employs over seven million drivers and commands approximately 60% of the U.S. food delivery market share while maintaining its long-term mission to grow the GDP of every city.
- Goldman Sachs40 min
Medal of Honor Recipients share their stories of courage and leadership
Command Master Chief Britt Slabinski, Captain Florent Groberg, Matt Gibson, Britt Slabinski, Florent Groberg
Goldman Sachs hosted a special session featuring Medal of Honor recipients Britt Slabinski and Flo Groberg to discuss how military principles of courage, resilience, and teamwork apply to high-performing corporate environments. Drawing from their combat experiences in Afghanistan and subsequent careers, the speakers emphasized that exceptional leadership requires prioritizing team success over individual glory and maintaining human connection even as AI integrates into operations. Their insights provided a framework for organizational culture by advocating for leaders to operate with conviction and compassion, ensuring employees feel valued and aligned with a clear mission.
- Goldman Sachs29 min
AI Exchanges: CIO Marco Argenti on the future of AI in the workplace
Marco Argenti, George Lee, Allison Nathan
A Goldman Sachs-led panel analyzes the rapid acceleration of AI reasoning models against the persistent "value gap" created by legacy systems and the behavioral friction of retraining human workflows. While "de novo" enterprises advance faster due to agile structures, the firm is actively cultivating "mindful disruptors" and embedding specific cultural judgment into agents to manage risks like hallucinations and data exfiltration. The dialogue concludes that future success relies on a hybrid workforce where AI agents provide elastic capacity and mechanical execution, leaving high-level creativity and professional oversight to human leaders.
- Sequoia Capital43 min
From Software Engineers to AI Word Artisans: Filip Kozera of Wordware
Philip Kizera, co-founder of WordWare, positions his platform as a programmable document system that enables analytical creatives to encode human intent and structured logic into AI agents, treating English as the assembly language for Large Language Models. The company distinguishes its approach by moving beyond simple chat interfaces to offer deployment as an API, an AI-native workflow engine, and a collaborative ecosystem for sharing agent components, thereby targeting a user base of 500 million to 1 billion by democratizing complex AI deployment. By framing the future human role as setting strategic taste while AI executes operational details, WordWare aims to replace raw prompting with repeatable, structured workflows capable of handling massive document ingestion and deep reflection loops.
- Goldman Sachs28 min
Dame Sarah Storey on winning her 19th Paralympic gold medal
Britain's most decorated Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey secured her 19th Paris 2024 gold medal, extending her career total to 30 golds while reflecting on her unique transition from swimming to cycling and the erosion of government funding since 2008. She advocates for increased sponsorship and infrastructure investment to support the "speculate to accumulate" reality of Paralympic cycling and emphasizes innovation in physiological management as she considers a potential 10th Paralympic appearance in 2028. Storey attributes her longevity to a multidisciplinary team approach and the aggregation of marginal gains, rejecting traditional sports hierarchies in favor of holistic strategies that accommodate perimenopausal needs and family motivations.
- a16z44 min
Automating Developer Email with MCP and AI Agents
Resend and other industry leaders are reimagining product architecture to treat autonomous agents as first-class citizens, prioritizing instant execution workflows over traditional human-centric interactions. The organization leverages emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and plain-text "Agent Experience" formats to enable seamless communication between AI systems and critical data sources such as Linear and Notion. This shift transforms development and marketing processes into high-velocity loops where services like email delivery and domain provisioning operate automatically, allowing founders to launch side projects that solve immediate, high-friction problems.
- Goldman Sachs45 min
The future of real estate investing: Pretium’s Don Mullen on the rapidly changing asset class
Founded by former Goldman Sachs executive Don Mullen in 2012, Pretium has evolved into the largest private owner-operator of single-family homes in the United States by capitalizing on a projected long-term shift from homeownership to renting. The firm leverages its status as a leading non-qualified mortgage lender and distressed asset manager to address systemic housing shortages while expanding its operations into international markets like the UK and Canada. By integrating asset ownership with active management across approximately 150,000 units, Pretium aims to bridge the gap between institutional capital and the needs of self-employed borrowers and families seeking single-family rentals.
- Milken Institute31 min
Global Debt Levels: Opportunity to Innovate | Finance Forum 2025
Matthew Aleshire, Avinash Persaud, Stacy Swann, Heiko Thoms
A panel of international economists and policymakers convened to address the critical intersection of record-high global public debt and the urgent need for climate resilience financing, highlighting how current debt frameworks stifle essential green investments. The discussion examined structural reforms in Germany, such as new debt rules exempting defense spending, alongside the growing dominance of private creditors in developing nations which complicates traditional resolution mechanisms like the Paris Club. Experts concluded that effective solutions require MDBs to expand capital bases, greater Chinese creditor participation, and the design of shock-absorbing debt instruments that capture long-term fiscal savings from climate adaptation.
- Goldman Sachs39 min
Resilience and Change: Giles Duley & The Legacy of War Foundation
Former rock photographer Giles Dooley pivoted to humanitarian work in 2004 and became a triple amputee following a 2011 IED attack in Afghanistan. He subsequently founded the Legacy of War Foundation, which transitions from documentary photography to tangible aid projects such as the "Land for Women" initiative in Rwanda that transfers land ownership to female farmers. Dooley advocates for resilience as a gift born from suffering and critiques modern over-protection, emphasizing that sustainable peace requires removing barriers rather than simply telling stories.
- a16z26 min
The Future of Digital Workers
Level Next distinguishes itself in the AI sector by prioritizing customer outcomes over technology, recently re-architecting its Alice and Mike agents from basic prompting to fully agentic frameworks capable of planning and reasoning. The company supports this technical shift with a unique go-to-market strategy that offers free product access for validation and employs a vendor-agnostic architecture to rapidly swap model providers based on performance metrics. Underpinned by a "zero-to-one" pod structure and a hiring focus on chaos tolerance, Level Next aims to deliver anti-fragile revenue motions while educating clients on data-driven optimization over subjective perception.
- a16z32 min
Scaling Medicaid Innovation with Rajaie Batniji, Sanjay Basu, and Afia Asamoah
Rajaie Batniji, Sanjay Basu, Afia Asamoah, Vineeta Agarwala
Waymark, co-founded by Sanjay Rajagopal to address the under-resourced Medicaid population, operates as a Public Benefit Corporation that combines machine learning with community-based care to improve health outcomes. A 2023 study involving over 60,000 patients demonstrated a nearly 25% reduction in emergency room visits and hospitalizations by deploying a "Signal" risk model and intervention teams of community health workers. The company now seeks to scale its grant-funded model to health plans and primary care systems while navigating contract barriers that historically limit access to new care delivery resources.
- The Economist26 min
Not so delightful: Erdogan arrests rival
Erdogan, Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, Piotr Zalewski, Matt Yuki, Annie Crable, Kevin Torregrossa
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu and over 100 allies on politically motivated charges, a move that triggered a 12% collapse in the Turkish lira and a 9% drop in the BIST 100 index. Simultaneously, the Trump administration pressured Panama into accepting US immigration demands and infrastructure projects to safeguard the Panama Canal, while the US government faces a critical gap in exotic snake antivenom supplies that has turned the Bronx Zoo into a vital emergency medical hub for bite victims. These distinct geopolitical and domestic crises highlight the immediate economic fallout in Turkey, the strained sovereignty dynamics in Central America, and the systemic regulatory failures regarding exotic animal imports in the United States.
- a16z41 min
Why AI Voice Feels More Human Than Ever
The rapid advancement of AI voice technology has enabled near real-time, emotionally nuanced interactions that are replacing human agents in high-volume sectors such as customer service, recruiting, and logistics. Market dynamics are shifting toward specialized vertical SaaS products that leverage proprietary data moats to offer opinionated, culturally adapted conversational experiences while moving beyond simple per-minute pricing models. As latency drops and capabilities expand, voice is predicted to become the primary consumer AI interface within the next year, driving a transition from labor substitution to augmented efficiency across financial, healthcare, and operational domains.
- Y Combinator26 min
From A Pivot To Building A $9.6 Billion Payroll Company
Harj Taggar, Joshua Reeves, Hodge Tagger
Founded by three co-founders who pivoted from a failed expert advice marketplace, Gusto revolutionized the fragmented U.S. payroll industry by delivering a cloud-based, design-driven solution that replaced outdated manual processes used by major incumbents like ADP. The company initially targeted California startups with bare-bones tax filings before leveraging a landmark seed round from prominent tech founders to scale into benefits and compliance, ultimately positioning itself as an AI-powered back-office partner for small businesses. Today, Gusto continues to drive market growth by expanding its self-serve platform and launching a comprehensive compliance hub, aiming to increase the survival rate of new employers through proactive, pattern-matched operational guidance.