Latest Interviews

What will be the biggest stories of 2019? | Part One

The 2019 global landscape features significant technological advancements including the market launch of assistive robotic suits for aging workforces, the opening of mega-hubs in Istanbul and Beijing to drive down airfares, and the commercial deployment of driverless car services by companies like GM and Waymo. Concurrently, the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots highlights ongoing legal battles for LGBTQ+ rights in Kenya and other former colonies, while exhibitions commemorating Leonardo da Vinci's 500th death anniversary draw inspiration from his designs to influence modern aviation. Despite projections of massive industry growth, these developments face scrutiny regarding safety risks, environmental costs, and the challenge of transitioning from niche innovation to mass adoption.

Nature as Technology

James Rogers

Appeal, a materials science firm, harnesses 3.8 billion years of biological innovation to synthesize plant-based, cutin-like barriers that extend perishable produce shelf life from days to weeks. This biomimetic technology prevents moisture diffusion and oxygen exposure, transforming the global food supply chain to eliminate trillions in annual waste and enable sustainable markets for smallholder farmers. By prioritizing integration with natural systems over external fixes, the company aims to define a new era of human progress through molecular-level solutions to climate and demographic pressures.

Extending Human Lifespan

Kristen Fortney, Tanya Cushman

This presentation argues that targeting aging as a root cause of chronic disease offers a superior strategy to treating individual conditions, with projections indicating such interventions could extend average human lifespans to 113 years. Citing breakthroughs in rapamycin, senolytics, and metformin trials alongside genomic insights from exceptional longevity cases, the discussion highlights a shift from skepticism to clinical application where three distinct therapeutic classes are currently advancing toward adding a decade or more of healthy life.

Programming Medicine

Jorge Conde, Peter van de Ven

The medical field is undergoing a paradigm shift from chemical synthesis to programming living entities like cells, genes, and microbes as direct therapeutics. Four core imperatives—sensing disease, executing treatments, containing activity to specific sites, and self-terminating after success—are now driving the development of advanced therapies such as CAR-T, CRISPR gene editing, and engineered microbiome treatments. This evolution aims to overcome historical safety barriers and treat the thousands of genetic diseases and cancers affecting a significant portion of the global population.

José Neves: Moving Fashion Forward with Technology

José Neves

Founded by Jose Neves in 2008, Farfetch established itself as a zero-inventory e-commerce enabler by integrating 25 boutiques and 500 brands into a platform that allows third-party API development and logistics data sharing. The company differentiates its growth strategy through a leadership team split evenly between fashion and technology veterans, allocating capital to optimize the core marketplace, expand into new categories like fine jewelry, and fund moonshot projects such as the Dream Assembly incubator. Neves anchors the organization's culture on an "enabler" philosophy and intense personal passion, explicitly rejecting the term "disruption" in favor of sustaining long-term brand value and relationships with traditional retailers.

The best place to be a woman?

Egill Bjarnson

For nearly a decade, Iceland has led global gender equality rankings through targeted interventions such as single-sex schooling in Reykjavik that encourages non-traditional traits and a 2000 "daddy quota" mandating paid paternity leave used by over 70% of fathers. The nation recently became the first to criminalize pay gaps by requiring companies with more than 25 employees to prove equal pay for work of equal value, a measure Reykjavik Energy has already applied to correct disparities between male and female unskilled roles. Although a 6% residual wage gap remains and critics cite compliance costs, proponents maintain these structural changes are essential to treating equal wages as a fundamental human right.

"Catch-Up With David": with Chief Economist Jan Hatzius

Jan Hatzius, David Solomon

Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius projects a global economic slowdown to approximately 3.5% through 2020 driven by US full employment and Federal Reserve rate hikes, though he maintains that recession risk remains low under this gentle deceleration trajectory. Drawing on 2018 forecasting errors regarding emerging markets and the historical lesson of the Berlin Wall's sudden fall, Hatzius advocates for a professional philosophy that balances rigorous modeling with the artistic judgment required to challenge conventional consensus. He concludes that effective forecasting fundamentally depends on acknowledging the inherent limits of predictive knowledge, a principle he applies by abstaining from speculating on unpredictable events ranging from geopolitical shifts to major sporting outcomes.

Beyond Cryptocurrencies

Linda Xie, Tanya Cushman

Presenter Tanya Cushman outlines how historical financial failures and banking inefficiencies drove the development of Bitcoin's censorship-resistant, decentralized architecture. The event details the mechanics of Proof of Work mining and explains how smart contracts have enabled advanced applications like decentralized prediction markets and self-sovereign identity systems. Cushman concludes that these technologies facilitate rapid experimentation in governance and economics through tools such as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, offering robust alternatives to traditional centralized institutions.

Fashion's toxic threads

Professor Richard Thompson, Tom Kay, Javier Goyeneche

Professor Richard Thompson highlights the fashion industry's severe environmental footprint, identifying synthetic fiber shedding during washing as a primary source of microplastic pollution that now contaminates up to one-third of fish in the English Channel. In response to these ecological threats, pioneering brands like Finisterre and EcoAlf are restructuring their supply chains to utilize organic materials and recycled ocean plastics, despite facing higher production costs and a lack of regulatory frameworks. While these sustainable initiatives offer a path forward, experts warn that without stricter laws and further research into long-term human health impacts, the industry's current trajectory poses an immediate danger to marine ecosystems.

Kevin Plank: Building the Ethos of Under Armour

Kevin Plank

Over fourteen years, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank steered the company away from a $750 million acquisition to an independent IPO, guided by a small circle of advisors including Sean Combs and his own wife. The organization has since scaled to over 14,000 employees while shifting its marketing focus from traditional media to a digital "Connected Fitness" ecosystem serving more than 50 million monthly users. Plank also reinvented the brand's athlete strategy by betting early on underdogs like Jordan Spieth and Stephen Curry, emphasizing long-term partnership development over immediate financial gains to maintain a culture of resilience.

The Case Study of BuzzFeed Tasty and the Evolution of Brand

Ashley McCollum

BuzzFeed argues that the internet has inverted traditional brand loyalty, forcing companies to prioritize a "loyalty of me" model where consumers control their own choices and content sharing. This strategic shift was exemplified by the Tasty brand, which grew from an accidental 2012 experiment into a global food network generating 1.5 billion monthly views by adopting post-literate video formats and data-driven personalization like its on-demand printed cookbooks. Moving beyond mere metrics, modern media brands now focus on tangible sales conversion, diverse talent, and platforms that foster deep connections to capture a market where 90% of consumers describe themselves as choosy.

How data transformed the NBA

Daryl Morey, Rajiv Masheswaran, Professor Rajiv Mahesharan

Leveraging big data and video tracking, the Houston Rockets transformed into championship contenders by prioritizing three-pointers and recruiting agile players to maximize efficiency. Analytics expert Daryl Morey and company Second Spectrum pioneered the integration of machine learning models that now track spatial data for all NBA teams, enabling real-time tactical adjustments. This data-driven approach, which claims to provide a five percent competitive edge, is shifting the entire league toward a transformational stage where algorithms and human instinct jointly guide in-game strategies.

The true cost of fast fashion

Mohammad Patel, Ijeoma Kola, Ryan Gellert

While global apparel production is projected to triple by 2050, overwhelmed recycling infrastructure currently processes only 25% of discarded clothing, resulting in massive landfill waste. Industry pioneers like Patagonia and Rent the Runway have demonstrated that alternative models prioritizing durability, repair, and shared access can achieve significant revenue and profitability while countering throwaway culture. Despite these proven success stories, the document concludes that such sustainability-focused approaches remain rare exceptions within a sector still dominated by rapid volume growth and disposable consumption.

Why Should I Start a Startup? by Michael Seibel

Michael Seibel, Craig Cannon

Y Combinator's Michael Seibel categorizes the population into three distinct career segments, arguing that only the approximately 1% "radically entrepreneurial" individuals thrive without predictable paths or external success metrics. He warns that technical experts often misidentify their drive to practice a craft as a desire to found a business, noting that successful founders must pivot to managing weaknesses while peers provide little guidance due to the diversity of modern career tracks. Seibel concludes that while stable corporate roles offer better short-term financial security, the majority of people experience lasting dissatisfaction on the traditional path because their peak performance is conditional on the high-risk, high-autonomy environment of startup leadership.

One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup by Michael Seibel

Michael Seibel, Craig Cannon

The event outlines a four-step framework for technical talent to transition from problem identification to launching a Minimum Viable Product, emphasizing that personal passion and early traction are superior to abstract concepts or outsourced development. This approach explicitly discourages premature fundraising or incorporation, urging founders to secure technical co-founders and generate initial revenue to validate hypotheses before seeking investor capital. By shifting focus from idea-centric pitching to execution-driven iteration, the methodology aims to replace the outdated model of raising funds on a business plan with the modern requirement of demonstrating functional product progress.