Latest Interviews

Jon Winkelried on Lessons from Goldman Sachs and TPG’s Next Chapter

Jon Winkelried, Matt McClure, John Winkle-Reed

John Winkle-Reed, who rose from a 1981 Goldman Sachs intern to co-president before retiring in 2009, applied his leadership philosophy of active listening and decision transparency to transform TPG from a $64 billion founder-led buyout firm into a $310 billion diversified public alternative asset manager. His strategic shift from a siloed structure to a unified "one firm" orientation overcame significant internal resistance, enabling the 2022 public listing and major acquisitions like Angela Gordon in 2023. Currently serving as sole CEO since 2021, Winkle-Reed has integrated artificial intelligence as a central growth driver while steering the organization's geographic and operational evolution from a San Francisco-centric model to a global enterprise with its largest workforce in New York.

Will Open-Source Threaten Anthropic's Business & Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | Matt Murphy

Matt Murphy, Harry Stebbings

Menlo Partners led Anthropic's initial $10 million seed round and subsequently deployed a $500 million Special Purpose Vehicle to secure a leading position in the AI sector, prioritizing access to high-conviction outliers over traditional ownership mandates. This strategy supports a broader barbell approach where the firm targets hyper-growth seed companies like Lovable and OpenRouter while maintaining large growth positions, effectively bypassing the crowded Series A stage. By focusing on technical depth, operational efficiency, and global talent hubs, Menlo aims to maximize upside in a market shifting toward "winner-take-all" dynamics despite high valuations.

Inside the Fastest-Growing Category in AI: Scott Wu, CEO of $26B Cognition

Scott Wu, Molly O'Shea

Cognition has secured a $26 billion valuation and $500 million in revenue by deploying its autonomous AI engineer, Devon, to solve complex engineering tasks for major clients like Goldman Sachs and NASA. The company recently consolidated its operations by acquiring the 200-person Windsurf IDE team, creating a unified hybrid environment where local coding and remote cloud agents collaborate seamlessly. Founder Scott Wu emphasizes an immediate "abundance era" of software mass-creation over human obsolescence, while maintaining model neutrality and refusing integration into larger tech conglomerates as the firm prepares to demonstrate its self-driving software capabilities at the upcoming RAISE AI summit in Paris.

The Dirty Secrets of Trading Revealed

Anton, Raj, Jason, Rush

The Institute addresses retail traders' information overload and predatory educational practices by implementing rigorous mentorship programs led by verified professionals from major financial institutions. By enforcing zero percent IB agreements and promoting strict risk management frameworks, the organization has shifted industry incentives, grown a community managing $150 million in daily risk, and achieved Sharpe ratios between 1.4 and 2.6. Through collaborative efforts with regulators like the FCA, the Institute successfully transitions students from unverified losses to institutional-grade performance by emphasizing quantitative back-testing and downside protection over speculative volume.

The AI Gold Rush: Models Are Shovels, Data Is the Gold | RAISE Summit 2026

Gareth Davies, Will Bryk, Dmitry Panenkov, Mark Surman, Alex Bouzari, Akhil Ahuja

This panel features industry leaders from Okta, DDN, Mozilla, Emma, and Exa discussing the strategic pivot from model-centric AI to a data-driven economy where proprietary data quality and security determine competitive advantage. Experts highlighted critical infrastructure challenges, noting that 48% of enterprises fail to secure AI agents while emphasizing the urgent need for sovereign data solutions and fair data markets to unlock the exponential costs of agentic inference. The discussion concluded that future enterprise success relies on "data network effects" and robust governance frameworks, as organizations transition from experimental sandboxes to production environments driven by headless, agent-based architectures.

Vitamin D Expert: The Supplement World Is Giving The WRONG Advice!

Dr. Stasha Gominak

Dr. Stasha Gomenak challenges conventional medical approaches by asserting that widespread sleep disorders and chronic conditions stem from biochemical deficiencies, specifically Vitamin D and B vitamin deficits resulting from indoor lifestyles that limit sunlight exposure. Her clinical protocol prioritizes maintaining serum Vitamin D levels above 60 ng/mL and administering high-dose B-complex supplementation to restore acetylcholine production and gut microbiome health, effectively treating patients with severe insomnia, depression, and neurological symptoms often misdiagnosed as anatomical or purely behavioral issues. Supported by case studies of individuals recovering from conditions ranging from narcolepsy to postpartum depression, this framework proposes a shift from symptom suppression to fundamental biological repair through personalized nutrient dosing and sunlight interaction.

Self-Maintaining APIs

I

A recent analysis of over 50 early-stage vendor relationships and AWS data reveals that undetected API changes cause significant downtime, prompting a shift toward agentic tools that automate codebase access. To solve this infrastructure gap, the proposed solution introduces provider agents that scan customer repositories upon breaking changes and automatically generate pull requests with necessary fixes. The speaker is currently inviting Y Combinator applicants to build these specialized agents or a neutral third-party service that functions like Dependabot but for API migrations.

Chamath: Google Is the Ultimate AI Compounding Machine

Chamath

Google maintains a 25-year average return on invested capital of 32% by leveraging its dominance in search, cloud infrastructure, and specialized silicon. The company benefits from AI market fragmentation, as the proliferation of hundreds of distinct models drives demand for its hardware and cloud services while enhancing monetization across application layers. This strategy allows Google to act as a methodical compounder that capitalizes on the diverse needs of the evolving AI ecosystem rather than relying on excessive risk-taking.

Chamath: Banning Open Source AI Will Crash the Stock Market

Chamath

A speaker warns that direct U.S. government intervention in AI policy, such as banning domestic use of open-source models, would catastrophically tank the stock market and destabilize global competitiveness. Using Coca-Cola as a case study, the argument highlights how forced reliance on restricted commercial alternatives would inflate input costs by 50 to 100 times, triggering a negative re-rating of affected firms and causing valuations of major providers like Anthropic and OpenAI to crater. The analysis concludes that such regulatory capture creates irrational, non-market-driven cost structures that guarantee market chaos, necessitating a policy approach where the government abstains from involvement.

David Sacks: Anthropic Wants to Kill Open Source AI in America

David Sacks

The speaker argues that derivative models developed by American companies from public domain open-source assets, such as the Cursor "Composer 2" system, constitute independent domestic intellectual property rather than Chinese entities. Warnings are issued that restricting access to these modified tools would severely damage the American open-source ecosystem by effectively penalizing standard industry innovation. Furthermore, the presentation contends that such limitations primarily serve Anthropic's competitive interests by eliminating rivals seeking to leverage shared public resources.

Advancing a Modern Regulatory Framework: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins Conversation | Global Conference

Paul Atkins, Michael Piwowar, Mike

The SEC is executing a strategic pivot from enforcement-heavy regulation to a framework prioritizing economic materiality, aiming to reverse the decline in public companies and revitalize the IPO market through simplified disclosure rules and reduced litigation barriers. Parallel efforts are establishing clear jurisdictional boundaries with the CFTC for digital assets while modernizing fund structures to enhance tax efficiency and expanding 401(k) access to private credit markets. Guided by Enforcement Director David Woodcock's focus on substantive fraud over procedural technicalities, the agency seeks to restore investor confidence and preserve the United States' competitive standing in global capital formation.

Mercor Head of Product on Revenue Concentration from Frontier Labs

Osvald Nitski, Harry Stebbings

McCore, led by CPO Oswald Nitzke, is navigating a hyper-growth phase driven by insatiable demand for frontier model training data while strategically pivoting from enterprise labs to self-serve tools for smaller enterprises. To manage operational complexity amidst AI coding agent proliferation, the company is streamlining its product surface area and shifting hiring priorities toward senior candidates capable of rapid business impact assessment. Looking ahead, McCore anticipates expanding into robotics and cybersecurity data markets while maintaining a high-agency startup culture to address the persistent skills gap in enterprise AI deployment.

What Actually Makes A Startup Durable

Paul Graham and YC partners outline a strategic framework for navigating the AI era, emphasizing that while AI increases individual productivity by 1,000x, founders must target "hard" problems with durable moats to survive market saturation. The session advises building companies through co-founders who provide essential emotional support rather than just complementary skills, noting that human judgment remains critical for community building and navigating high-stakes pivots. Finally, students are offered over $25,000 in AI credits to neutralize geographical disadvantages, reinforcing the program's focus on rapid execution and deep market engagement over theoretical development.

AI-Native Compliance Infrastructure

Y Combinator is soliciting founder applications for companies that replace fragmented, manual compliance infrastructure with AI-native systems capable of consolidating regulatory tools and reducing reliance on specialized legal personnel. These ventures aim to solve the inefficiencies of state-by-state regulatory patchwork by automating monitoring, anomaly detection, and audit trails to provide finance teams with real-time global visibility. As such solutions become essential enterprise infrastructure for global expansion, successful applicants will be expected to redefine compliance operations through a default AI operating mode rather than simple process automation.

Proving You’re Human

Following a $25 million fraud involving deepfake avatars impersonating corporate executives, industry experts identify the collapse of traditional human verification as a critical vulnerability across digital communications. Strategic initiatives are now prioritizing the reconstruction of an internet trust layer capable of authenticating identities in video calls, messages, and transactions without compromising user privacy. The entity that successfully builds this scalable verification infrastructure is projected to become the mandatory standard for financial institutions and social platforms over the next decade.