Latest Interviews

How Family Businesses Should Plan for Generational Success

FX de Mallmann, Tucker York, Alison Nathan

While family-owned enterprises drive 70% of global economic output and dominate sectors from luxury goods to defense, only 10% successfully transition to a third generation due to poor succession planning. Key operational challenges include the tension between emotional family identity and the need for disciplined capital allocation, often necessitating the integration of professional non-family management as firms scale. To mitigate concentrated risk and resolve governance conflicts, successful transitions increasingly rely on formal exit mechanisms, external capital infusions, and a strategic shift from business management to long-term wealth stewardship.

How Borderless Founders Build Global Companies

Elena Burger, Angela Strange, Gabriel Vasquez

A16C's global strategy targets "Borderless Founders" from overlooked regions who leverage hybrid profiles and deep local networks to build full-stack solutions with international ambitions. The firm facilitates this growth through "Borderless Dinners" and visa support, helping diaspora members navigate Silicon Valley's infrastructure while maintaining engineering hubs in their home countries. This approach has already positioned international founders as 40% of A16C's portfolio, aiming to diversify venture returns beyond the traditional Silicon Valley dominance.

What the Surge in IPOs Means for Investors

Jay Ritter, Owen Lamont, Allison Nathan

Goldman Sachs Research reports that the U.S. IPO market reached record issuance levels in 2026 while maintaining average valuations that distinguish current activity from historical speculative bubbles. Analyst Jay Ritter and Owen Lamont offer diverging perspectives on this surge, with Ritter arguing deep capital markets can absorb new supply without overvaluation, whereas Lamont warns that a massive wave of issuance signals the early stages of a potential bubble. Both experts agree that structural shifts, including expanded private markets and industry consolidation, have permanently reduced the average annual IPO count to roughly 100, fundamentally altering the relationship between new listings and future market returns.

How Will AI Impact the Labor Market?

Daron Acemoglu, Neil Thompson, Joseph Briggs, Allison Nathan

Experts from Goldman Sachs and MIT project that while AI will displace tens of millions of U.S. workers over the next decade through significant labor reallocation, the unemployment rate is expected to rise by less than one percentage point annually as new job creation offsets automation. The consensus indicates a gradual transition driven by integration barriers rather than sudden mass layoffs, though disagreement persists regarding short-term net employment impacts depending on whether firms prioritize replacing or complementing human labor. Recorded in June 2026, these forecasts highlight that the trajectory of inequality and total job levels will ultimately depend on whether AI development focuses on automating routine cognitive tasks or augmenting high-value human expertise.

Emma Grede on Building Iconic Brands and the Inspiration Behind 'Start with Yourself'

Emma Grede, Kim Posnett

Entrepreneur Emma Greed challenges conventional views on networking and work-life balance, advocating instead for resilience built on professional excellence and the acceptance of life's fluctuating "seasons." In her book *Start With Yourself*, she urges leaders to discard the "self-made" myth, embrace strict trade-offs based on core principles, and prioritize financial fluency to navigate AI-driven disruption. By promoting a mindset that separates personal identity from risk outcomes and values team assembly over individual heroics, Greed offers a pragmatic roadmap for sustainable success and equitable power acquisition.

Why the Fed’s Hawkish Turn Could Support the AI Boom

Tony Pasquariello, Josh Schiffrin, Dominic Wilson

New Federal Reserve Chair Warsh signaled a data-dependent approach focused on price stability while the committee's uncertain dot plot and absence of forward guidance prompted a hawkish market reaction. Panelists interpret current conditions as a mid-cycle adjustment driven by falling oil prices from geopolitical shifts and resilient AI-driven equity momentum rather than impending recession. This unique environment, characterized by rapid narrative shifts and robust capital absorption, suggests a high-velocity economic landscape distinct from the stagnation of previous years.

Bill Ackman: Here's What the Market is MISSING

Bill Ackman, Chamath, Jason, David

Howard Ackman outlines a strategic evolution at Pershing Square toward concentrated long-term holdings in high-quality businesses, leveraging deep board involvement to counteract market short-termism and capitalize on undervalued legacy tech giants amidst AI-driven disruption. His approach extends to late-stage founder-led ventures like SpaceX and XAI, which he values through a venture capital lens of people and opportunity, while simultaneously repurposing the Howard Hughes Corporation into a "Berkshire 2.0" model that utilizes real estate cash flows to fund an insurance float for tax-efficient capital compounding. Ackman further explains how social media dynamics now enable persistent narratives to influence valuations, supporting a three-vehicle investment structure that includes a royalty-based management company, a public discount vehicle, and a transformed real estate holding to deliver sustained growth over decades.

What Founders Can Learn About Excellence From MIT President Sally Kornbluth

Sally Kornbluth

MIT President Sally Kornbluth defends the institution's rigid meritocratic standards, which exclude legacy admissions and resist federal pressure to ensure excellence scales without compromising integrity. Facing a high-stakes congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, she maintained a calm, factual posture that secured her survival while Harvard and UPenn leaders stepped down, attributing her resilience to a supportive board and swift crisis communication. Looking forward, Kornbluth rejects AI replacing human interaction, advocating instead for holistic education and an Oxbridge-style tutorial model to train students in critical thinking while strengthening ties to the local Boston-Cambridge tech ecosystem.

The most important question nobody's asking about AI.

Following Anthropic's refusal to permit its AI models for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, the Department of Defense has designated the company a "supply chain risk" and threatened coercive measures under the Defense Production Act to force compliance. With AI projected to automate 99% of the workforce within two decades, legal loopholes in the Fourth Amendment and plummeting surveillance costs create an imminent environment where the government could leverage its purchasing power to dismantle corporate moral boundaries. Although some predict a 74% chance the restrictions will be overturned, the analysis suggests that without new political norms explicitly banning state-led AI surveillance, the technology's diffusion will eventually allow the government to achieve universal monitoring regardless of individual vendor resistance.

Sequoia’s Alfred Lin: $10T Companies Are Coming

Alfred Lin, Molly O'Shea

Sequoia Capital partners discuss a critical shift from legacy strategies to an AI-driven future, emphasizing that companies failing to recognize this paradigm shift face existential risk while their own portfolio valuations have surged to billion-dollar benchmarks. The firm reports distributing $43 billion to limited partners since 2020 and highlights how AI tools have enabled top engineers to triple output, fundamentally altering development cycles from years to days. Ultimately, Sequoia remains optimistic about automating mundane tasks to free human capital for strategic work, while refining its investment thesis to target founders with unique "spikes" capable of leveraging these new technological efficiencies.

‘Affordability’: Consumer Concerns and Government Proposals

David Mericle, Alec Phillips, Allison Nathan

Amidst a persistent housing affordability crisis driven by regulatory constraints and construction labor shortages, the administration has relied on reactive executive orders to utilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac capacity rather than enacting comprehensive legislative reforms. While these measures aim to modestly lower mortgage rates through increased mortgage-backed security purchases and a ban on institutional single-family home purchases, they fail to address the root causes of supply scarcity or deliver immediate price relief for homeowners. Future policy focus is expected to shift toward zoning incentives and speculative tariff rebates, though significant progress remains hindered by the need for congressional approval and the long-term nature of structural housing deficits.

Context Engineering Our Way to Long-Horizon Agents: LangChain’s Harrison Chase

Harrison Chase, Sonya Huang, Pat Grady

The shift from scaffolding to agent harnesses has enabled long-horizon LLM agents to function by relying on context engineering and file system access rather than custom cognitive architectures. Current applications, including coding and incident response, operate under a "first draft paradigm" where AI generates outputs for human review rather than aiming for fully autonomous deployment. To address non-deterministic behavior, developers now utilize trace analysis, online testing, and recursive self-improvement loops that allow agents to refine their own instructions based on historical execution data.

Ashlee Vance: Stories from Elon, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson & Priscilla Chan

Ashlee Vance, Elon, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson, Priscilla Chan, Molly O'Shea

Host Molly O'Shea and guest Brian Johnson dissect the extreme work ethic and polarizing influence of Elon Musk while contrasting his relentless pace with Johnson's strategic shift from full-time influence to frontier science research. The conversation further explores the host's high-risk personal experiences, ranging from radiation exposure in Soviet nuclear sites to testing unconventional self-driving vehicles, alongside a skeptical analysis of the current realities of quantum computing and fusion energy. Finally, the dialogue outlines future podcast expansions into deep-dive biotech investigations and reflects on the dynamics of corporate travel culture through the lens of the host's record-breaking expense reports at Bloomberg.

After a Summer of Stablecoins, What’s Next?

Brian Brooks, Barry Eichengreen, Allison Nathan

The U.S. "Genius Act" establishes a comprehensive federal framework for stablecoins that mandates full backing by high-quality assets like U.S. Treasury bills while subjecting issuers to national bank-style supervision. Key figures Brian Brooks and Barry Eichengreen debate the legislation's efficacy, with Brooks advocating for private innovation and treasury demand growth while Eichengreen warns of systemic risks to the singleness of money and potential taxpayer liabilities. Despite these conflicting views on financial stability, the regulatory clarity is expected to dismantle existing market monopolies and accelerate mass adoption across savings, remittances, and commercial payment sectors.

Google DeepMind Lead Researchers on Genie 3 & the Future of World-Building

Jack Parker-Holder, Shlomi Fruchter, Anjney Midha, Marco Mascorro, Justine Moore, Erik Torenberg

Google DeepMind has released Genie 3, a research preview that generates interactive, photorealistic 3D worlds in real-time from text prompts to support navigation and control. Built by integrating insights from three internal projects, the model introduces spatial memory for one-minute object persistence and emergent physical reasoning to distinguish it from previous video generation systems. While currently limited to visual simulation without audio, Genie 3 aims to bridge the sim-to-real gap for robotics and agent training by providing diverse, high-fidelity environments free from physical data collection risks.