Latest Interviews
Showing 1141–1155 of 1,932 interview transcripts.
Clear all filtersHow I Bought 12% of Google for $12M; How VC is Fixing Climate Change | John Doerr Full Interview
John Doerr, Tom Perkins, Larry, Serge
Kleiner Perkins validated its strategic bet on climate technology by investing over $1 billion across 70 companies, a portfolio now valued at $3 billion despite initial market volatility. The discussion highlights how specific successes like Enphase offset losses in broader solar ventures while reinforcing an investment philosophy that favors being early on transformative ideas like Google. Concurrently, the analysis calls for urgent global decarbonization through measurable objectives and private sector leadership to address the escalating climate crisis.
- Milken Institute26 min
Inclusive Capitalism Fireside Chats: A Conversation With John Rogers and Blair Smith
Jared Rogers, chairman of Ariel Investments and a descendant of Tulsa's historic Black business legacy, addresses the two-decade collapse of Chicago's Black corporate sector by leveraging his thirty-year tenure on major corporate boards to enforce accountability and diversity. To reverse this erasure, he spearheads strategic initiatives like Project Black, a private equity fund for scalable Black enterprises, alongside educational programs in the stock market and university endowments designed to cultivate the next generation of financial leaders. These efforts, supported by a sustained post-2020 shift in institutional commitment, aim to reconstruct the high-value economic ecosystem that once defined the city's Black business community.
- Y Combinator26 min
Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel
Dalton Caldwell, Michael Seibel, Paul Buchheit
The presentation details how pioneers like Paul Buhite of Gmail, early Facebook, and Twitch engineers achieved rapid validation by intentionally deploying non-scalable, "ugly" workarounds to solve immediate problems rather than perfecting architecture beforehand. Specific tactics included hardcoding university-specific server instances, converting popular streams to static pages under traffic spikes, and physically repairing corrupted drives to bypass initial technical constraints. Ultimately, these under-pressure innovations, such as Google's creation of MapReduce from a broken batch system, demonstrate that accepting manual friction and technical debt is a necessary precursor to establishing product-market fit and solving scaling challenges at scale.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
The Case for Commodities: ‘Super-Backwardation,’ Structural Demand and Inventory Shortages
Jeffrey Currie, Allison Nathan, Jeff Curry
Markets in early 2022 face a critical commodity supercycle driven by decade-long underinvestment in traditional energy and metals sectors alongside surging demand from decarbonization and restored low-income consumption. While central banks signal tighter monetary policy, physical supply deficits in oil, agriculture, and base metals have already pushed Brent crude above $90 with Goldman Sachs forecasting prices reaching $105 by the second half of the year. This divergence between paper market skepticism and tightening real-world inventory levels creates significant investment opportunities in physical commodities as a primary inflation hedge against potential supply-driven economic slowdowns.
Cost Plus Drugs: EXPLAINED | Mark Cuban Full Interview
Mark Cuban's self-funded venture, Cost Plus Drugs, bypasses traditional Pharmacy Benefit Managers to sell generic medications at a transparent wholesale cost plus a fixed markup, leveraging a direct-to-consumer model with over 50,000 users and daily growth exceeding 10,000 accounts. By utilizing TruePill for fulfillment and prioritizing operational efficiency over profit maximization, the platform aims to force pharmaceutical manufacturers to lower prices once a critical mass of ten million customers is reached. Cuban supports this disruption with a "hiring slow" internal philosophy and a vision for future blockchain-based claims processing, all while facing regulatory hurdles and supply chain scaling challenges inherent to the complex healthcare market.
- Goldman Sachs24 min
What’s Ahead for the Housing Market
Douglas Yearley, Terry Hagerty, Allison Nathan, Doug Yearley
Driven by a decade of severe undersupply and a millennial demographic boom, the U.S. housing market experienced rapid price appreciation and a shift toward new construction between 2020 and 2022. Toll Brothers CEO Doug Yearley and sector analysts project sustained demand through 2022 despite rising mortgage rates, citing a fundamental supply shortage rather than market froth. This environment catalyzed over $20 billion in equity issuance and a 60% surge in M&A activity, while capital markets increasingly favor consolidation and the scaling of modular and offsite manufacturing technologies.
Mac the VC on the Journey from Homeless To Becoming A VC | Full Interview with Harry Stebbings
Mac the VC, Harry Stebbings, McKeever "Mac the VC" Conwell II
Mac, a former software engineer and two-time founder, launched Rare Breed in 2020 after raising $10 million through a public solicitation model that bypasses traditional general partner commitments and leverages rolling closes. The Baltimore-based firm targets pre-seed companies outside major tech hubs, prioritizing returns among underrepresented founders in the Americas and the UK rather than adhering to industry gatekeeping norms. By utilizing a flexible capital call structure and public marketing under Regulation 506(c), Rare Breed has established a non-traditional investment vehicle designed to democratize access for emerging managers and overlooked talent.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Verena Pausder, Founder of Fox & Sheep
Verena Pauster advocates for redefining children's digital engagement by mandating a "time budget" that restricts passive consumption in favor of creative output, while her non-profit addresses Germany's educational inequality through subsidized coding access and individualized learning tools. Concurrently, Pauster led the "Stay on Board" initiative to successfully lobby for 2023 legislation protecting board members' employment status during parental leave, proving that strategic advocacy can overcome century-old regulatory barriers. These efforts form part of her broader strategic vision in *The New Country*, which proposes using digitalization to modernize national infrastructure across education, decarbonization, and equal rights.
- Goldman Sachs28 min
Jeff Lawson, Co-founder and CEO of Twilio
Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson argues that reducing the cost and complexity of software experimentation accelerates innovation, citing the Wright Brothers' iterative success and the unique global reach of modern developers as evidence. Drawing from his experiences at Amazon Web Services, Lawson advocates for a strategic shift where executives treat developers as partners rather than coders to build "Minimum Lovable Products" within small, mission-aligned teams. This approach underpins Twilio's evolution from a communications API into a comprehensive Customer Engagement Platform, aiming to democratize the personalization capabilities of digital giants like Amazon and Apple for all businesses.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Piloting Through: Why Investors Should Stay the Course
Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, Allison Nathan
Goldman Sachs' Investment Strategy Group, led by Chief Investment Officer Sharmeen Masavaramani, maintains a "stay invested" stance on U.S. equities for 2022, forecasting a 6% to 12% total return despite valuations in the 10th decile. The firm projects robust U.S. economic growth of 3.5% to 4.0% and 12% earnings expansion, suggesting that the current equity risk premium remains attractive relative to fixed income even as the Federal Reserve implements three to four interest rate hikes. While acknowledging volatility risks such as geopolitical shocks and persistent inflation, the group advises slowly adding to equity positions and maintains a strategic overweight to U.S. stocks over international markets based on superior historical earnings performance.
- Goldman Sachs25 min
Is 2022 the endemic year?
Jeffrey Shaman, Dr. Eric Topol, Allison Nathan
Goldman Sachs Research frames the 2022 transition to endemicity against Omicron's rapid transmissibility and inflation-driven market shifts, while experts Jeffrey Shaman and Eric Topol analyze the variant's biological divergence from previous strains. The discussion highlights that Omicron's upper respiratory focus and robust vaccine-induced immunity have reduced severity, though evolutionary pressure does not guarantee future mildness or a predictable path to stabilization. The dialogue concludes by emphasizing Paxlovid's breakthrough efficacy as a stable treatment option and outlining the remaining hurdles of global vaccine equity and variant unpredictability before the virus can settle into a manageable seasonal pattern.
- Goldman Sachs25 min
As Rates Reprice and Stocks Sell Off, What’s Next?
David Kostin, Jonathan Shugar, Allison Nathan
Amidst a shift in market expectations toward four Federal Reserve rate hikes in 2022, a broad sell-off has disproportionately punished low-margin technology stocks while cyclicals like energy and materials outperformed. Goldman Sachs forecasts record corporate net margins of 12.5% and steady 8% growth driven by margin expansion, supported by $1.25 trillion in planned share buybacks and potential M&A activity. As institutional investors adopt more tactical hedging strategies, the primary market focus remains on whether corporations can successfully pass inflationary costs to consumers without volume degradation during the upcoming earnings season.
- Milken Institute30 min
Building Community Wealth: How Can We Meet the Moment
Margot Brandenburg, Natalie Foster, Shawn Wooden
Ford Foundation host Margo Brandenburg facilitated a dialogue with Natalie Foster and Connecticut Treasurer Sean Wooden on utilizing community wealth strategies to address the widening racial and economic divide. Foster highlighted the Child Tax Credit's success in reducing child poverty while Wooden detailed Connecticut's pioneering Baby Bonds program as a model for closing the generational wealth gap through state-level innovation. The conversation further examined how public sector expansions of guaranteed income, social bonds, and anti-monopoly policies are reshaping labor markets and providing essential financial buffers during economic volatility.
- Milken Institute30 min
A Conversation with Brian Deese, Director, White House National Economic Council
Following the American Rescue Plan, the U.S. achieved historic economic growth in 2021, with GDP expansion between 5% and 6% and a significant decline in child poverty and evictions. Now, the administration is leveraging these funds alongside the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, led by Mitch Landrieu, to deploy 21st-century industrial strategies that address supply chain bottlenecks and accelerate private capital investment in clean energy. Despite current pressures from the Omicron variant and geopolitical instability, officials emphasize a "bottom-up" approach to sustain recovery while ensuring long-term climate resilience and regional equity.
- Milken Institute20 min
A Conversation With Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York
Kathy Hochul, Michael Piwowar, Richard Ravitch
Governor Hochul is fortifying New York State's fiscal reserves against potential crises while rejecting tax hikes to stem the out-migration of high-net-worth individuals. Simultaneously, she is collaborating with New York City Mayor Adams on subway safety initiatives and advancing the delayed congestion pricing plan to secure MTA funding. Her administration also prioritized keeping schools open during the Omicron surge through widespread testing and is incentivizing the construction of 100,000 affordable housing units to address long-term economic stability.