Latest Interviews

VMware Cofounder Diane Greene with Jessica Livingston at the Female Founders Conference

Diane Greene, Jessica Livingston

VMware co-founder Diane Greene navigated early skepticism and capital constraints to build the virtualization giant while retaining full voting control, later exiting to found Bebop before its 2017 sale to Google. Following her tenure on the boards of Intuit and Google, Greene leveraged her governance experience and strategic relationships to pivot enterprise software automation toward machine learning. She now advocates for cloud market consolidation driven by superior security models and advises founders to prioritize specific board expertise over prestige when constructing their leadership teams.

Morgan DeBaun on Reaching 20M Millennials - With Kat Manalac at the Female Founders Conference

Morgan DeBaun, Kat Manalac

Founded by Morgan de Bon in 2014, Blavity has evolved from a bootstrapped text-based blog into the largest media company for Black millennials, now serving over seven million readers through a community-first model that leverages user-generated content. After securing a $1 million Series A by demonstrating robust organic growth, the company successfully expanded its portfolio by acquiring Shadow and Act and launching verticals like 2190 and Afrotech conferences. De Bon's journey highlights a strategic pivot from traditional editorial control to empowering creators, overcoming early fundraising rejections by validating the unique ecosystem of Black audiences against standard industry benchmarks.

Small Business Financing Tips for 2017: Banks, Family and Additional Resources

Carol Roth, David Burch, Steve Strauss, Gerri Detweiler

Addressing the financing needs of over 50% of U.S. small business owners planning growth, experts including David Burch of Bank of America and Steve Strauss outline strategies to navigate traditional lending and family funding. The presentation details the critical preparation required for the "Three Cs" of credit, emphasizing accurate financial reporting and formal contracts to mitigate relationship risks with family investors. Panelists further advocate for leveraging free advisory networks like SCORE and SBDCs to build robust capital reserves before crises occur, ensuring businesses can transition from informal financing to institutional support.

Lessons from Lloyd: Advice to Our Summer Interns

Lloyd Blankfein

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon reflects on his 35-year tenure, tracing his path from a Harvard law graduate who rejected initial offers to a strategic leader who leverages the firm's risk management expertise for its new consumer lending division. He champions diverse corporate policies, including support for marriage equality, while addressing global economic resilience and the market anxieties surrounding an extended economic cycle. Solomon concludes by warning of geopolitical tensions like the Thucydides Trap and emphasizing the importance of a well-rounded background alongside technical acumen for long-term professional success.

Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference

Emily Weiss, Amy Buechler

Glossier, led by CEO Emily Weiss, leverages its sister publication *Into the Gloss* and a 600% annual growth trajectory to scale its Direct-to-Consumer beauty model while maintaining accidental profitability with $40 million in raised capital. The company prioritizes product quality and community transparency over traditional retail tactics, driving expansion through peer-to-peer recommendations and a strategic shift to physical locations that function as cultural hubs rather than sales counters. As Weiss directs focus toward a new European headquarters, the firm exemplifies a market shift where data-driven community engagement replaces conventional advertising to cultivate brand loyalty among a predominantly female workforce.

Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta

Doug Eck, Craig Cannon

Google's Magenta project deploys open-source machine learning tools like NSynth and SketchRNN to assist human creators in generating novel music and art rather than replacing them. By leveraging deep learning architectures such as LSTMs and reinforcement learning, the team enables the interpolation of distinct sounds and the generation of complex long-form structures while emphasizing active user participation through creative coding. As the initiative expands its community via its open-source platform, it aims to refine evaluation methods and integrate with professional workflows to support a future where human artists adapt by focusing on unpredictable, emotionally raw expressions.

How 'Going Direct' Changes Everything: for Brands, Retail, Marketing, and Advertising

Jeff Jordan

Andreessen Horowitz identifies a market shift toward "Direct Response 2.0," where companies bypass traditional retail and media walls to build direct data-driven relationships with consumers. This new model leverages crowd-based social commerce, granular promotional transparency, and discovery-focused experiential shopping to replace guesswork with measurable sales optimization. Key case studies, including Tesla's reservation-driven capital raise and J.Crew's demand signaling via Pinterest, demonstrate how brands are now eliminating mass media waste to control their own supply chains and consumer engagement.

The Bitcoin Network Effect

The speaker advocates for viewing blockchain entities as autonomous software mechanisms rather than legal corporations, highlighting their distinct lack of liability and governance attributes. While Bitcoin dominates through strong network effects, successful altcoins must offer unique functional advantages to coexist, and regulatory pressure currently targets intermediaries rather than the decentralized protocol itself. Future adoption hinges on resolving transaction latency through layer-2 solutions and mitigating volatility, with international remittances identified as the primary catalyst for non-speculative utility alongside a reevaluation of monetary policy as a fixed-supply asset.

MIc'd Up | Part 2: A Conversation with Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof

Sheryl WuDunn, Nicholas Kristof, Nick Kristof

Columnist Nicholas Kristof and author Sheryl Sandberg discuss their bestsellers' findings on the "empathy gap," illustrating how focusing on individual stories rather than abstract statistics drives charitable giving and policy support. Kristof further argues that effective global leadership requires prioritizing economic growth through job creation and early childhood investment while urging corporations and governments to align with Environmental, Social, and Governance values. The conversation concludes with a warning that retreating from U.S. global hegemony invites a "Kindleberger trap" of international instability and preventable human suffering.

MIc'd Up | Part 1: A Conversation with Norman Lear and Ava DuVernay

Norman Lear, Ava DuVernay, Alex Witt

Hosted by Alex Witt, legendary television producer Norman Lear and filmmaker Ava DuVernay discussed the role of entertainment as a catalyst for radical justice and the enduring reality of systemic oppression. Lear detailed his strategy for centering Black life through sitcoms like *The Jeffersons* and his recent Latin American adaptation of *One Day at a Time*, while DuVernay explained her vision for Array as a long-term institution challenging Hollywood's distribution barriers with her upcoming film *A Wrinkle in Time*. The speakers concluded that true progress requires moving beyond symbolic milestones, such as the Obama presidency, to actively dismantle intersecting privileges and hold society accountable for equal opportunity.

MIc'd Up | Part 2: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Conversation with Katie Couric

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Katie Couric

In an upcoming podcast episode scheduled for May, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recounts his 1985 NBA championship victory over the Celtics, discusses his friendship with John Wooden, and details his 2009 leukemia diagnosis which has intensified his advocacy for social justice. He critically analyzes the Trump administration's tax and travel policies, attributes Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Electoral College mechanics, and argues that visual documentation of police brutality is shifting the national dialogue on race. The conversation, which also covers his religious conversion to Islam and the evolution of the NBA, was highlighted by President Obama awarding Abdul-Jabbar the Presidential Medal of Freedom for overcoming systemic biases in basketball.

A Conversation with Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon argues that U.S. economic stagnation stems from bipartisan policy failures and structural issues like low labor participation and crumbling infrastructure, urging corporate leaders to prioritize national interests over parochial self-gain. He endorses the Trump administration's strategic focus on corporate tax reform, deregulation, and infrastructure investment as essential tools to reverse capital flight and stimulate job creation. While dismissing the prospect of seeking elected office, Dimon highlights JPMorgan Chase's rapid progress in diversity, noting that women and LGBT employees already comprise significant portions of its leadership pipeline.

MIc'd Up | Part 2: A Conversation with Ernest Moniz

Ernest Moniz, Alan Schwartz, Alan M., David Sanger, Alan Magnuson

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz outlines the strategic logic behind the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, emphasizing its unprecedented verification mechanisms and the administration's successful monofocus on nuclear containment despite broader regional tensions. Simultaneously, he details the Nuclear Threat Initiative's urgent efforts to secure high-enriched uranium and research reactors across the former Soviet bloc and Africa to prevent terrorist acquisition. These security measures are paired with a proposal to leverage the global energy transition, utilizing carbon capture and advanced storage technologies to create economic opportunities while reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

MIc'd Up | Part 1: A Conversation with John S. Watson

John S. Watson, Brian Sullivan

Chevron CEO John Watson warns that California's aggressive regulatory framework has driven up energy costs, decimated manufacturing, and eroded the middle class, urging a return to free-market mechanisms to stabilize the industry. Despite these domestic headwinds, Watson outlines Chevron's aggressive global expansion strategy, which includes quadrupling Permian Basin output through capital generated by massive LNG investments in Australia and a joint venture with Exxon in Kazakhstan. While noting that OPEC's influence has waned in favor of shale producers and resilient Russian exports, the executive emphasizes that technological advancements are offsetting high exploration risks and driving wage growth in key U.S. energy hubs.

MIc'd Up | Part 2: A Conversation with Elizabeth Blackburn

Elizabeth Blackburn, Joon Yun

Salk Institute President Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discusses the biological mechanisms of aging and telomere maintenance with host Jun Yun, framing the extended human lifespan as an opportunity to maximize health span rather than a inevitable decline. The dialogue details how specific lifestyle interventions—including brisk daily exercise, seven hours of sleep, and cognitive reframing of stress—directly influence telomere length to mitigate risks of chronic diseases like Alzheimer's and diabetes. By integrating molecular biology with health psychology, Blackburn argues that dynamic gene expression allows individuals to actively shape their cellular health and extend their years of vitality.