Latest Interviews

Credit Markets Forging Ahead | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024

Will Caiger-Smith, Ashley Baum, Michael Buchanan, Lee Kruter, Michael Patterson

A panel of investors analyzed the post-tightening fixed income landscape, highlighting how rising Treasury yields severely impacted duration-sensitive assets while high-yield and bank loan sectors demonstrated resilience through credit risk isolation. The Texas Teachers Retirement System outlined its opportunistic credit strategy, deploying $7.5 billion into asset-based financing and real estate loans while navigating a market where private credit's dominance is receding amid a sharp rebound in syndicated loan issuance. Furthermore, the discussion addressed the evolution of distress dynamics, noting that while modern covenants masked default rates, a wave of coercive liability management exercises and covenant erosion now signals an impending cycle of stricter documentation and reduced recovery rates.

Highlights: Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI

Carl Shulman, Rob Wiblin

Carl Schulman argues that advanced AI will soon replace human nannies and labor through superior cost-efficiency, continuous availability, and optimized developmental outcomes, effectively dismantling the economic viability of human childcare. Projections suggest that harnessing solar energy could enable each person to command billions of dollars worth of cognitive labor, scaling global industrial capacity by orders of magnitude while bypassing historical growth limitations. Although skeptics question the impact of regulatory hurdles and diminishing returns, Schulman contends that massive productivity gains will drive resource abundance and redistribution mechanisms sufficient to guarantee billionaire-level living standards for all.

Bidin’: will Joe go or no?

Joe, Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, John Brito, Claire McHugh, Mark Johnson

President Biden remains defiant against calls for withdrawal following a contentious debate, despite polls showing a record deficit against Donald Trump and internal Democratic concerns that he is endangering broader election prospects. In Colombia, the government has initiated a controversial scientific excavation of the intact San José galleon, navigating a complex legal battle with Spain, the United States, and indigenous groups over the billions in treasure while prioritizing cultural heritage over commercial gain. Meanwhile, the Finnish town of Rautalampi is experimenting with importing foreign students from Myanmar, Vietnam, and Tanzania to avert school closures, leveraging EU funding to address a looming national demographic crisis.

Scott Galloway: We’re Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build Wealth

Scott Galloway

The speaker outlines a wealth-building philosophy centered on leveraging youth to accumulate capital through disciplined saving, diversified low-cost investments, and geographic arbitrage rather than pursuing high-risk passion careers. Key strategies include utilizing compound interest, minimizing taxes by converting labor to asset ownership, and relying on a trusted "kitchen cabinet" for decision-making while avoiding over-concentration in single assets. Ultimately, the approach prioritizes financial independence through passive income generation and emphasizes that storytelling skills, rather than traditional credentials, are the most critical competency for long-term economic success.

Graphcore’s Nigel Toon on advances in semis and an AI-powered future

Nigel Toon, Clif Marriott

Experts project that while modern semiconductor progress is slowing and alternatives like quantum computing remain decades away, AI infrastructure will soon host 150 million intelligent agents capable of governing sectors and transforming fields like drug discovery and fusion energy. Led by founders with history-making exits in Intel and NVIDIA, the company Graphcore addresses these shifts by developing specialized hardware and software ecosystems that prioritize application value over raw compute. As the industry moves toward a future where education focuses on fundamental problem-solving rather than coding, the economic landscape will eventually shift from hardware creators to a vast network of developers who leverage machine intelligence to reshape business operations.

The research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption | Seren Kell (2023)

Seren Kell, Luisa Rodriguez

This event addresses the urgent need to transition from animal agriculture to alternative proteins by highlighting the sector's role in mitigating climate change, reducing antimicrobial resistance, and overcoming consumer barriers driven by taste and price. It details significant technical progress across fermentation and cultivated meat, including a potential reduction in production costs to €4.68 per kilogram by 2030 and the development of circular economy feedstocks, while identifying a critical global funding gap of $40 billion that remains to be bridged. By emphasizing interdisciplinary career opportunities and the necessity of coordinated public and private investment, the discussion outlines a scalable roadmap to displace animal farming entirely.

The Future of Corporate Governance | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024

Andy Serwer, Betsy Atkins, Jarvis V. Hollingsworth, Dambisa Moyo, Ronald Sugar, Mark A. Weinberger

Prominent governance leaders including Betsy Atkins, Ron Sugar, and Mark Weinberger address the imperative for boards to navigate rapid generative AI adoption and geopolitical fissures by embracing ambiguity and shifting from short-term survival to long-term value creation. The discussion highlights critical board evolution strategies, such as confidential peer assessments, the integration of digital upskilling roles, and the necessity of balancing stakeholder interests with rigorous capital allocation across diverse sectors from tech to sovereign wealth funds. By contrasting the governance models of public companies, state institutions like the Texas Teachers Retirement System, and global entities like Saudi Aramco, the speakers conclude that effective oversight requires a tailored approach that aligns board composition and risk tolerance with specific CEO archetypes and industry-specific assets.

When you’re pre-product market fit, sales is a job for the founders.

The event asserts that early-stage B2B founders possess the unique capability to sell their products before achieving product-market fit, rendering external sales hires premature and ineffective. Success in this phase requires founders to leverage their vision for high-volume experimentation and establish tight feedback loops between sales efforts and product development. This distinction highlights pre-PMF sales as an exclusively entrepreneurial role, fundamentally different from the specialized functions assumed after a company validates its market.

Ara Mahdessian: ServiceTitan Would Not Be the Success if We Raised VC Earlier | E1175

Ara Mahdessian, Harry Stebbings

Ara Teklalian, an Armenian-American founder whose immigrant background drove his relentless work ethic, led Service Titan to a decade-long journey from bootstrapping to becoming a market leader in trade management software. By prioritizing quantifiable ROI over features and treating customer success as a core strategic driver, the company achieved premium pricing and deep loyalty within the contracting community despite initial struggles to secure institutional funding. Teklalian now evolves his leadership from a demanding style to one focused on inspiring confidence, while continuously refining hiring practices to align with the company's high-performance DNA.

Change of heart surgeon: Iran’s reformist president

Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, Nicholas Pelham, Kerryyn Richmond-Jones, Anjani Trivedi

Reformist heart surgeon Massoud Pezeshkian secured the Iranian presidency with 16 million votes following the fatal helicopter crash of Ebrahim Raisi, promising social liberalization and Western negotiations while navigating deep public distrust and hardline security constraints. Simultaneously, Ukraine faces a critical $20 billion private debt deadline as a negotiation deadlock between proposed 60% and 22% write-downs threatens default amidst a shrinking economy and uncertain post-war outlook. In a contrasting shift of capital flows, over 7,000 global millionaires selected Dubai as their primary destination this year, drawn by tax advantages and regulatory transparency following the UAE's exit from the FATF grey list.

Jonathan Haidt: How to Help the Anxious Generation | The All-In Interview

Jonathan Haidt, Jason, Friedberg, Chamath

In a new interview format, Jonathan Haidt joins All-In hosts to diagnose how rapid technological shifts have rewired human behavior and destabilized liberal democracy by prioritizing algorithmic dopamine over biological evolution. He identifies the 2010–2015 era as a critical "great rewiring" where smartphones and social media replaced face-to-face socialization, creating a generation of anxious youth ill-equipped for adult resilience and prone to polarization. To reverse these trends, Haidt proposes four collective norms: banning smartphones before high school, delaying social media access until age 16, enforcing phone-free schools, and restoring independent free play to rebuild anti-fragility.

Lunch Program | Part 1: Well-being in the Digital Era

Louise Tabbiner, Deepak Chopra, Paris Hilton

Deepak Chopra and Paris Hilton explore the intersection of narrative psychology, business strategy, and holistic health, arguing that human perception is a constructed story and that chronic disease is largely driven by anxiety rather than genetics. The dialogue challenges the notion that rigid ambition guarantees success, proposing instead that aligning with one's higher purpose through the "Happiness Formula" and the "STOPS" meditation method yields greater fulfillment than mere hard work. Through this exchange, they illustrate how Hilton leveraged a 70-million-person social ecosystem to evolve from a celebrity persona into a $3 billion enterprise while advocating for compassion to counteract the loneliness of a hyper-connected society.

Moving Beyond Financials: Mega-Trends Shaping Business and Finance | Global Conference 2024

Hiromichi Mizuno, Raphael Arndt, Jonathan Goldstein, Saira Malik, Andy Sieg, Hiro Mizuno

Projected $80 trillion in wealth transfers from Baby Boomers to younger generations are colliding with rising geopolitical fragmentation and divergent investment values, compelling a fundamental restructuring of portfolio management. In response to these pressures, financial institutions are adapting by integrating ESG factors as material risk metrics, shifting toward alternative assets, and redefining fiduciary duty to account for societal stability and climate impact. Despite these structural changes, significant challenges remain regarding financial literacy gaps, the need for diverse hiring practices, and the inability of current markets to fully price in long-term systemic risks.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on How Far Scaling Laws Will Extend | Training Data

Kevin Scott, Pat Grady, Bill Coughran

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott outlined the company's strategic pivot to a comprehensive AI ecosystem driven by the belief that scaling data and compute will continue to yield exponential capability improvements despite market saturation. Through key partnerships like the one with OpenAI and a focus on hardware efficiency, the organization aims to transition from training-heavy infrastructure to cost-effective inference that augments human cognition across healthcare, education, and scientific research. Scott emphasized that while full autonomy remains a challenge, flexible architectural design and new economic models for data will enable widespread deployment to solve complex societal problems without forcing developers into proprietary traps.

Oil’s extended reign? Adapting to a new era in oil markets

Daan Struyven, Nikhil Bhandari, Alison Nathan, Dan Stroivin

Goldman Sachs projects global oil demand will peak around 2034 rather than 2024, driven by emerging market growth in India and China where jet fuel and petrochemical consumption continue to rise despite stagnating EV sales in developed economies. The bank forecasts Brent crude to trade between $75 and $90 per barrel through 2026, supported by OPEC spare capacity, before supply risks intensify in the latter half of the decade due to underinvestment in long-cycle projects and structural tightness in the refining sector. Political outcomes in the 2024 US election may further influence prices through potential sanctions on Iran or changes to EV incentives, with the firm recommending gold over oil as a primary hedge against policy-driven inflation.