Latest Interviews

From Software Engineers to AI Word Artisans: Filip Kozera of Wordware

Filip Kozera, Sonya Huang

Philip Kizera, co-founder of WordWare, positions his platform as a programmable document system that enables analytical creatives to encode human intent and structured logic into AI agents, treating English as the assembly language for Large Language Models. The company distinguishes its approach by moving beyond simple chat interfaces to offer deployment as an API, an AI-native workflow engine, and a collaborative ecosystem for sharing agent components, thereby targeting a user base of 500 million to 1 billion by democratizing complex AI deployment. By framing the future human role as setting strategic taste while AI executes operational details, WordWare aims to replace raw prompting with repeatable, structured workflows capable of handling massive document ingestion and deep reflection loops.

Dame Sarah Storey on winning her 19th Paralympic gold medal

Dame Sarah Storey, Kunal Shah

Britain's most decorated Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey secured her 19th Paris 2024 gold medal, extending her career total to 30 golds while reflecting on her unique transition from swimming to cycling and the erosion of government funding since 2008. She advocates for increased sponsorship and infrastructure investment to support the "speculate to accumulate" reality of Paralympic cycling and emphasizes innovation in physiological management as she considers a potential 10th Paralympic appearance in 2028. Storey attributes her longevity to a multidisciplinary team approach and the aggregation of marginal gains, rejecting traditional sports hierarchies in favor of holistic strategies that accommodate perimenopausal needs and family motivations.

Navigating co-founder relationships is a journey that takes self examination and discovery.

This discussion examines how high-pressure startup environments and immigrant backgrounds often condition co-founders to suppress dissent and prioritize stability, leading to extreme work habits and internal conflict. The speakers identify these intense relational dynamics as catalysts for deep self-examination, revealing that the resulting emotional strain is a normal, albeit difficult, aspect of the entrepreneurial journey. Ultimately, the dialogue frames the ongoing resolution of these internalized patterns not as a final achievement but as a necessary process for healing and eventual growth.

White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue

Cyan Banister, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg

Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg spent three days embedded in the Trump White House to conduct high-level interviews with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick regarding fiscal reform and deregulation. Concurrently, the group analyzed critical market shifts, including Google's $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and the Federal Reserve's diverging monetary strategy, while celebrating major aerospace milestones like SpaceX's successful ISS rescue. The panel concluded that the current administration's intense, mission-driven culture represents a "money for purpose" opportunity for private sector leaders to address national challenges without bureaucratic inertia.

Automating Developer Email with MCP and AI Agents

Zeno Rocha, Yoko Li

Resend and other industry leaders are reimagining product architecture to treat autonomous agents as first-class citizens, prioritizing instant execution workflows over traditional human-centric interactions. The organization leverages emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and plain-text "Agent Experience" formats to enable seamless communication between AI systems and critical data sources such as Linear and Notion. This shift transforms development and marketing processes into high-velocity loops where services like email delivery and domain provisioning operate automatically, allowing founders to launch side projects that solve immediate, high-friction problems.

The future of real estate investing: Pretium’s Don Mullen on the rapidly changing asset class

Don Mullen, Allison Mass

Founded by former Goldman Sachs executive Don Mullen in 2012, Pretium has evolved into the largest private owner-operator of single-family homes in the United States by capitalizing on a projected long-term shift from homeownership to renting. The firm leverages its status as a leading non-qualified mortgage lender and distressed asset manager to address systemic housing shortages while expanding its operations into international markets like the UK and Canada. By integrating asset ownership with active management across approximately 150,000 units, Pretium aims to bridge the gap between institutional capital and the needs of self-employed borrowers and families seeking single-family rentals.

Howard Lutnick Exposes Washington’s Biggest Lies

Howard Lutnick, Chamath, Friedberg

Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, leveraging his long-standing relationship with Donald Trump and his 9/11 leadership experience, serves as the Transition Chair and architect of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency to address the nation's fiscal crisis. The initiative outlines a comprehensive strategy combining $1 trillion in entitlement cuts with a "gratis vendor" model and a $5 million Gold Card immigration program to generate $2 trillion in revenue, aiming to balance the federal budget and eliminate income taxes for households earning under $150,000. Further pillars of this economic framework include leveraging tariffs to force industrial reshoring, establishing a sovereign wealth fund to secure Social Security, and deploying strict regulatory and AI export controls to safeguard domestic economic interests.

Global Debt Levels: Opportunity to Innovate | Finance Forum 2025

Matthew Aleshire, Avinash Persaud, Stacy Swann, Heiko Thoms

A panel of international economists and policymakers convened to address the critical intersection of record-high global public debt and the urgent need for climate resilience financing, highlighting how current debt frameworks stifle essential green investments. The discussion examined structural reforms in Germany, such as new debt rules exempting defense spending, alongside the growing dominance of private creditors in developing nations which complicates traditional resolution mechanisms like the Paris Club. Experts concluded that effective solutions require MDBs to expand capital bases, greater Chinese creditor participation, and the design of shock-absorbing debt instruments that capture long-term fiscal savings from climate adaptation.

Resilience and Change: Giles Duley & The Legacy of War Foundation

Giles Duley, Lia Larson

Former rock photographer Giles Dooley pivoted to humanitarian work in 2004 and became a triple amputee following a 2011 IED attack in Afghanistan. He subsequently founded the Legacy of War Foundation, which transitions from documentary photography to tangible aid projects such as the "Land for Women" initiative in Rwanda that transfers land ownership to female farmers. Dooley advocates for resilience as a gift born from suffering and critiques modern over-protection, emphasizing that sustainable peace requires removing barriers rather than simply telling stories.

Dylan Field describes design as “art as it applies to problem solving.”

Dylan Field

The event establishes design as the intersection of art and problem-solving, highlighting the current failure of AI to effectively bridge diffusion models and large language models in this domain. It identifies the industry's struggle to integrate these technologies as a primary barrier to automated design. Furthermore, the discussion underscores the continued necessity of human designers, whose value lies in synthesizing broad context, economic dynamics, and user intent to solve complex problems.

The Future of Digital Workers

Joe Schmidt, Prabhav Jain

Level Next distinguishes itself in the AI sector by prioritizing customer outcomes over technology, recently re-architecting its Alice and Mike agents from basic prompting to fully agentic frameworks capable of planning and reasoning. The company supports this technical shift with a unique go-to-market strategy that offers free product access for validation and employs a vendor-agnostic architecture to rapidly swap model providers based on performance metrics. Underpinned by a "zero-to-one" pod structure and a hiring focus on chaos tolerance, Level Next aims to deliver anti-fragile revenue motions while educating clients on data-driven optimization over subjective perception.

Jensen Huang & Arthur Mensch: Why Every Nation Needs Its Own AI Strategy

Jensen Huang, Arthur Mensch

AI leaders Jensen Huang and Arthur Chou define sovereign AI as a critical cultural and economic infrastructure requiring nation-states to develop specialized, vertically integrated systems that embed local language, laws, and values. Their strategic framework advocates for a hybrid approach combining open-source horizontal models with sovereign vertical platforms to prevent digital colonialization while building "digital labor" forces that enhance productivity without displacing human workers. By prioritizing developer-first ecosystems and agile alignment over rigid control, this model aims to secure national economic equilibrium and accelerate innovation across sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and defense.

Scaling Medicaid Innovation with Rajaie Batniji, Sanjay Basu, and Afia Asamoah

Rajaie Batniji, Sanjay Basu, Afia Asamoah, Vineeta Agarwala

Waymark, co-founded by Sanjay Rajagopal to address the under-resourced Medicaid population, operates as a Public Benefit Corporation that combines machine learning with community-based care to improve health outcomes. A 2023 study involving over 60,000 patients demonstrated a nearly 25% reduction in emergency room visits and hospitalizations by deploying a "Signal" risk model and intervention teams of community health workers. The company now seeks to scale its grant-funded model to health plans and primary care systems while navigating contract barriers that historically limit access to new care delivery resources.

Not so delightful: Erdogan arrests rival

Erdogan, Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, Piotr Zalewski, Matt Yuki, Annie Crable, Kevin Torregrossa

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu and over 100 allies on politically motivated charges, a move that triggered a 12% collapse in the Turkish lira and a 9% drop in the BIST 100 index. Simultaneously, the Trump administration pressured Panama into accepting US immigration demands and infrastructure projects to safeguard the Panama Canal, while the US government faces a critical gap in exotic snake antivenom supplies that has turned the Bronx Zoo into a vital emergency medical hub for bite victims. These distinct geopolitical and domestic crises highlight the immediate economic fallout in Turkey, the strained sovereignty dynamics in Central America, and the systemic regulatory failures regarding exotic animal imports in the United States.

Why AI Voice Feels More Human Than Ever

Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore

The rapid advancement of AI voice technology has enabled near real-time, emotionally nuanced interactions that are replacing human agents in high-volume sectors such as customer service, recruiting, and logistics. Market dynamics are shifting toward specialized vertical SaaS products that leverage proprietary data moats to offer opinionated, culturally adapted conversational experiences while moving beyond simple per-minute pricing models. As latency drops and capabilities expand, voice is predicted to become the primary consumer AI interface within the next year, driving a transition from labor substitution to augmented efficiency across financial, healthcare, and operational domains.