Latest Interviews
Showing 5296–5310 of 5,623 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Goldman Sachs15 min
Dr. Cristián Samper, President & CEO of the WCS: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Cristián Samper, Dr. Christian Sampere, Stephen
Dr. Christian Sampere, CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, leads a global conservation effort spanning 65 countries by leveraging public-private partnerships and carbon credit deals to fund community-based protection of charismatic species. This strategy has yielded significant results, such as halting Amazon deforestation through international payments and rebuilding New York's Ocean Wonders aquarium with a $250 million resilience investment following Hurricane Sandy. By combining scientific data on human footprints with sustainable development goals, the organization balances ecological preservation with economic incentives to secure large species populations in critical habitats.
- Goldman Sachs13 min
Tory Burch, Founder and CEO of Tory Burch LLC: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Tory Burch has scaled her brand from a kitchen-table startup to a billion-dollar enterprise operating 136 global stores while driving a five-year expansion strategy targeting Paris, Milan, and Shanghai alongside region-specific product development. Complementing this commercial growth, the Tory Burch Foundation leverages the 10,000 Women Initiative to provide female entrepreneurs with capital, management education, and mentorship, a mission Burch advocates for on the President's Council on Entrepreneurship. This dual focus on aggressive international market penetration and social responsibility has strengthened employee retention and consumer engagement while establishing the brand as a leader in female empowerment.
- Bank of America31 min
Exploring Generational Differences among Small Businesses Owners
Carol Roth, Robb Hilson, Dan Schawbel, Steve Strauss
Hosted by Carol Roth for Bank of America's Small Business Social Series, this panel featured experts Rob Hilsen, Steve Strauss, and Dan Schaubel to analyze intergenerational dynamics in entrepreneurship. The discussion highlighted how Millennials and Boomers can leverage co-mentorship to combine technological innovation with risk-avoidance strategies, while addressing critical financial barriers like credit gaps and diverse funding sources such as crowdfunding versus traditional lending. Ultimately, the speakers urged business owners to build mixed-generational advisory boards and cultivate early banking relationships to navigate an unpredictable market and secure long-term stability.
- Goldman Sachs30 min
Admiral William McRaven: Talks at GS Session Highlights
William McRaven, Admiral William McRaven, Jack
In this strategic briefing, the speaker analyzes the evolution of ISIS from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, warning that unchecked regional instability could cascade to threaten U.S. allies like Jordan and necessitates a coalition strategy involving ground advisors rather than airstrikes alone. Drawing on personal command history of high-stakes missions including the raid on Osama bin Laden, the former three-star admiral emphasizes the importance of political consistency, detailed operational planning, and the human reality of special operations families supported by the SEAL Foundation. The presentation concludes with a call for long-term nation-building in Iraq and sustained global intervention to prevent spillover instability from Africa, underscoring the moral and strategic necessity of addressing conflicts in Mali, Somalia, and Nigeria.
- Goldman Sachs10 min
Lauren Bush Lauren, founder & CEO of FEED Projects: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Founded by a former college student inspired by global hunger statistics, the for-profit enterprise Feed utilizes a consumer goods model to fund meals for both international school feeding programs and domestic food banks. The organization’s flagship Feed Supper initiative and strategic partnerships with groups like the UN World Food Program aim to distribute 100 million meals by its tenth anniversary, with a focus on using nutrition to improve school attendance for girls in the world's poorest countries. Ultimately, the venture operates under the vision of achieving global food security so thoroughly that it can rebrand as "Fed" and dissolve its own operations.
- Goldman Sachs39 min
Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan and Lloyd Blankfein: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Timothy Dolan, Lloyd Blankfein, Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Archdiocese of New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan leads a strategic restructuring that closes 55 parishes and 59 schools to redirect $392 million toward active social services while managing a linguistically diverse flock across three boroughs. Facing tensions between traditional doctrine on marriage and modern pastoral needs, Dolan balances doctrinal integrity with Pope Francis's inclusive approach to ensure the church remains spiritually vibrant despite demographic shifts. Concurrently, he champions religious freedom against government mandates and establishes new communication offices to engage younger generations, aiming to strengthen faith communities by prioritizing dynamic ministry over maintaining vacant facilities.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Barrister and Philanthropist Cherie Blair with GS' Dina Habib Powell: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Cherie Blair, Dina Habib Powell, Dena Powell
Former barrister Cherie Blair discusses her transition from a thirty-six-year partnership with Prime Minister Tony Blair to leading her own international law firm while detailing her foundation's work in fostering female economic empowerment across developing nations. By leveraging mobile technology to support small-scale entrepreneurs in countries like India and Nigeria, the organization aims to bridge the global gender gap in economic participation, which she argues is essential for GDP growth and national stability. Blair contrasts historical legal barriers she faced, such as systemic discrimination during her pupillage, with modern evidence that women reinvest 90% of resources into their communities, positioning financial independence as a critical smart business imperative.
- Bank of America35 min
How Small Businesses Can Take Advantage of the Biggest Technology Developments
Carol Roth, David Solis, Jason Teichman, Steve Strauss
This presentation outlines how small businesses can leverage affordable, foundational technologies like mobile-optimized websites and cloud computing to secure credibility and align with modern consumer behaviors. Experts emphasize that strategic adoption, rather than chasing every innovation, requires vetting vendors, utilizing productivity tools selectively, and prioritizing data-driven decisions to maximize return on investment. Ultimately, success depends on overcoming implementation fears by treating technology as a continuous, integrated investment that supports core business goals through strategic partnerships and careful resource management.
- Goldman Sachs13 min
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women: Proving the Case for Women Entrepreneurs
In its sixth annual iteration, the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative reached its milestone of supporting 10,000 entrepreneurs while demonstrating that 70% of graduates increased revenue and 60% created jobs within 18 months. Building on these results, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, and the World Bank launched the $600 million Women's Entrepreneur Opportunity Facility to close the global $285 billion credit gap and target 100,000 women-owned SMEs. This strategic capital access aims to leverage the projected 12% per capita income growth from closing gender gaps while signaling the financial sector that women's entrepreneurship represents a high-growth market opportunity.
- Y Combinator31 min
Andrew Mason at Startup School SV 2014
Launched by Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon evolved from the struggling The Point platform into the world's fastest-growing company after achieving rapid product-market fit with its daily deal model. Despite facing intense global competition and receiving lucrative acquisition offers from Yahoo and Google, the board rejected these opportunities to prioritize independent growth, a strategic decision that Lefkofsky later viewed as superior to the short-term pressures of the company's subsequent IPO. Reflecting on these experiences, Lefkofsky now applies a disciplined, values-first operational framework to his new venture, Detour, emphasizing long-term conviction over immediate data-driven compromises.
- Y Combinator29 min
Hosain Rahman at Startup School SV 2014
Founded in 1997 to build mobile voice interaction, the company pivoted to noise cancellation technology after securing DARPA funding to survive the dot-com bust, eventually overcoming early hardware failures and investor rejection. Following a 2006 turnaround that generated $70 million in revenue, the organization launched the UP wearable health tracker, which despite a high-profile 2011 hardware crisis was saved by a transparent customer-first response. Today, the firm operates as an integrated entity combining hardware, software, and data science to solve complex user problems.
- Y Combinator28 min
Danae Ringelmann at Startup School SV 2014
Indiegogo founder Denae Robinson launched the world's largest global crowdfunding platform in 2008 to democratize access to capital after witnessing systemic barriers prevent entrepreneurs and artists from securing funding. Facing a prolonged fundraising drought that forced the team to forgo salaries for four years, Robinson pivoted the company to an open, internet-based model featuring flexible funding options that enabled breakthroughs like uBiome's market validation and the Hour of Code initiative's massive educator mobilization. Guided by a culture of fearlessness and diversity, the organization has established itself as a meaningful tool for solving fundamental problems, earning recognition from figures like Bill Gates and the White House for its societal impact over immediate financial returns.
- Y Combinator27 min
Kevin Systrom at Startup School SV 2014
Stanford student Kevin Systrom leveraged a bias towards action to pivot his failed location app, Burbn, into Instagram after identifying a core user need for photo filtering during a photography course in Florence. This strategic shift to a minimalist mobile photography platform, combined with a community-first hiring philosophy and a global time-zone launch strategy, enabled the service to reach massive scale within days despite early infrastructure limits. Systrom's journey highlights a successful transition from building a generic marketplace to cultivating a defensible creator ecosystem that prioritizes user experience over immediate monetization.
- Y Combinator29 min
Reid Hoffman at Startup School SV 2014
Reid Hoffman recounts the strategic origins of LinkedIn, detailing how the concept emerged from a 2000 offsite with PayPal co-founders to address capital constraints and how the platform achieved critical mass by leveraging address book integration to bypass early growth limitations. He contrasts common Silicon Valley myths with historical data, arguing that economic downturns foster superior company formation while warning against raising excessive capital that dilutes operational focus. Furthermore, Hoffman analyzes his investment philosophies through case studies of Facebook, Zynga, and Bitcoin, emphasizing the necessity of balancing conviction with rigorous self-audits to navigate markets where smart peers initially dismiss contrarian visions.
- Y Combinator18 min
Emmett Shear at Startup School SV 2014
Founders of Kiko Calendar leveraged their early failure to raise Y Combinator funding for Justin.tv, where they pivoted from professional reality television to an open live-streaming platform by hiring key leadership to address operational gaps. Following the 2008 market crash, the team reorganized into specialized mobile and gaming units, ultimately launching Twitch in 2011 by prioritizing direct user feedback over business development deals. This eight-year journey of persistence and iteration culminated in an unexpected, unplanned acquisition by Amazon, underscoring that skills and product-market fit are often forged through repeated failure.