Latest Interviews
Showing 1591–1605 of 9,636 transcripts.
Clear all filtersWhy VC Today is Worse than 2021
Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
Hosted by Harry Stebbings, the discussion features Benchmark General Partner Everett Randall, Jason Calacanis, and Rory Fenton debating the tension between immediate tech liquidity and long-term venture carries alongside the rising capital intensity of AI infrastructure. The panel analyzes critical market shifts, including Revolut's $3B funding at a $75B valuation and OpenAI's strategic pivot to offload data center risks onto Oracle, while warning against the dangers of conflating temporary enterprise adoption spikes with permanent structural growth. Furthermore, the conversation explores the evolving venture landscape where extreme capital requirements and "vibe coding" disrupt traditional due diligence, forcing a consolidation of funds toward dominant winners like OpenAI and Deel while questioning the viability of mid-tier vertical tools.
Inside Coatue: $70B Hedge Fund’s AI & Retail Strategy
Michael, an asset manager at CodeTwo, discusses the firm's pivot toward retail-driven intelligence and deep AI integration following lessons from Melvin Capital's 50% loss during the GameStop short squeeze. Leveraging real-time data from platforms like Wall Street Bets and Reddit, CodeTwo successfully predicted growth accelerators for companies like AppLovin and Meta by capitalizing on AI-enhanced ad engines and identifying human content as a critical licensing asset for AI training. The discussion further outlines a strategic shift where software roles face automatable transformation, prompting internal efficiency upgrades and a hybrid public-private tracking approach to navigate extreme market volatility driven by AI narratives.
- Sequoia Capital17 min
Reinventing Delivery with Instant Drone Transport ft Zipline's Keller Cliffton -
Keller Cliffton, Roelof Botha, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oxenhorn, Maggie Jim, Alfred Lin
Zipline CEO Keller Clifton transformed his company from a failed consumer robotics venture into the world's largest autonomous logistics network by pivoting to medical supply delivery in Rwanda, where a partnership with the government addressed critical health crises caused by poor infrastructure. After securing NASA collaboration and achieving a historic U.S. regulatory milestone for nationwide Beyond Visual Line of Sight flights, the organization scaled to serve over 5,000 facilities globally while introducing a novel string-based urban delivery system. This evolution, driven by the founders' persistence through early investor skepticism and technical failures, established a resilient infrastructure that now connects remote hospitals and urban centers alike.
- The Diary Of A CEO1h 19m
Oz Pearlman (Mentalist): This Small Mistake Makes People Dislike You! They Do This, They’re Lying!
Former Wall Street executive Oze Perlman leverages three decades of mentalist training to teach professionals how to decode behavior, enhance memory, and master persuasive communication without literally reading minds. His approach emphasizes shifting focus from self to the other person by utilizing specific tactics such as non-threatening body language, active listening loops, and the ethical application of misdirection to build deep rapport. By treating observation and recall as a rare superpower, Perlman guides executives to overcome the fear of rejection and institutionalize habits that drive quantifiable success in both business and personal relationships.
- Milken Institute45 min
Connecting Global Markets: Navigating Risk to Unlock Growth | Global Investors' Symposium MX City
Carolina Millan, Mary Ng, Len O'Donnell, Wolfgang Schwerdtle, Pablo Sprenger
A panel of international stakeholders, including Canadian official Mary, affirmed that the USMCA framework will remain the cornerstone of North American trade while advocating for a dual strategy of strengthening trilateral ties and deepening Canada-Mexico bilateral relations. Experts highlighted a massive capital opportunity driven by Mexico's pension system, projected to reach $1 trillion by 2035, which could unlock growth in infrastructure, energy transition, and private credit sectors despite current concerns regarding regulatory predictability and the rule of law. To capitalize on these nearshoring trends, investors and governments are urged to forge long-term local partnerships and establish stable regulatory environments that can sustain multi-decade investments in logistics, technology, and grid resilience.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
Making Sense of Weak Job Growth Alongside Solid GDP Growth
Despite tariffs reaching eight times 2019 levels and a three-week government shutdown subtracting from growth, U.S. GDP resilience is maintained by a depreciating dollar, stable stock markets, and a productivity rebound to historical averages. Core inflation is projected to normalize toward the 2% target as supply chains recover, supporting the Federal Reserve's current expectation of three consecutive 25-basis-point rate cuts through the end of the year. While immigration drops have constrained labor supply and AI adoption remains limited to specific sectors, policymakers anticipate maintaining a moderate expansion path unless post-shutdown data reveals significant deviations from current forecasts.
- a16z1h 24m
Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code | Kevin Rose and Anish Acharya
Kevin Rose and Anish Agarwal discuss how Digg's "like" button invention and its defensive patent strategy reshaped social media algorithms before pivoting to analyze the current renaissance of AI-driven consumer software. They identify a market shift where independent founders leverage multi-model applications and "vibe coding" workflows to challenge Big Tech in sensitive sectors like AI companionship and productivity, which require emotional authenticity that corporate models struggle to replicate. The conversation further outlines an investment thesis prioritizing contrarian, "weird" instincts and forecasts a future where "lossy" AI summarizes conversational themes to balance utility with evolving privacy norms.
- The Economist8 min
Why are so many Chinese bosses disappearing?
Don Weinland, Rosie Blau, Rosie Bloor
China's "Liu Zhi" extra-judicial detention system, which allows the anti-corruption agency to hold individuals without court oversight for renewable eight-month cycles, has expanded from government officials to include private sector leaders. This mechanism has contributed to a projected record of one million corruption cases by 2024, with local authorities increasingly conducting cross-border "deep sea fishing" operations to seize assets from business networks connected to high-ranking probes. The resulting economic pressure has degraded business sentiment, added 200,000 individuals to credit blacklists, and triggered five high-profile suicides among entrepreneurs despite official efforts to signal private sector support.
- Milken Institute48 min
You and AI: Breaking Boundaries Everywhere | Asia Summit 2025
John B. Quinn, Hans A.T. Dekkers, Rodrigo Kede Lima, Panos Madamopoulos-Moraris, Grace Park, Rodrigo Lima, Pavel
Industry leaders from IBM, Microsoft, Prudential, and Stanford gathered to address the critical gap between AI hype and measurable enterprise value, revealing that 70% of tangible benefits stem from traditional algorithms rather than generative models. The panelists emphasized that successful adoption requires a hybrid strategy combining bottom-up tool empowerment with top-down strategic integration to avoid "death by a thousand pilots," while simultaneously reskilling the workforce for "AI business translator" roles. With Asia emerging as a dominant innovation hub accounting for 70% of global AI patents, the discussion concluded that future growth depends on orchestrating domain-specific models and investing in long-term human-machine collaboration to bridge the lab-to-reality divide.
- All-In Podcast11 min
California Forever: The Startup Building America's Next Great City
Silicon Valley-backed investor Jan Sramic is advancing the California Forever project to construct a 70,000-acre self-funded community in Solano County designed to solve California's housing crisis and reindustrialize the region. The development plan features a massive advanced manufacturing park, a national shipbuilding hub on the Deepwater Ship Channel, and a walkable city intended to house 400,000 residents. By co-locating high-tech R&D with production and leveraging AI-driven robotics, the initiative aims to demonstrate American capacity for rapid construction and strategic abundance over the next two decades.
- Milken Institute48 min
Escaping Scam City: Untangling the Human and Economic Cost of Cybercrime | Asia Summit 2025
Manisha Tank, Rafael Frankel, David Koh, Shibani Mahtani, Jacob Sims, Emily Fortuna, Shabani Singh Cassidy, Nicole Sinclair, Rafael Alvarez, Jake Archibald O'
Hundreds of militarized scam compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos operate with state protection, creating a massive global criminal economy that enslaves tens of thousands of workers and generates billions in annual losses. Governments and tech firms like Meta have responded with sanctions, integrated command centers, and account takedowns, yet significant challenges remain due to limited US funding and sanctions that fail to address state-embedded actors. Experts warn that while total eradication is unlikely, coordinated diplomatic pressure at the upcoming ASEAN summit and heightened public vigilance are essential to blunt the industry's growth.
- Y Combinator39 min
Startup Advice: AI GTM, Pivoting & How To Hire
Founders entering legacy industries must select a go-to-market model—typically software-first, full-stack, or acquisition-based—while rigorously tracking automation trajectories to secure software valuations from investors. Strategic execution requires prioritizing mid-market segments for faster feedback loops and securing empowered early adopters, as AI sales tools and high-level marketing hires only succeed after founders have personally mastered their own product-market fit. Ultimately, successful scaling depends on treating hiring as a failure-prevention necessity, leveraging open-source components to build enterprise trust, and maintaining the conviction to pivot when customer conviction indicates a "great" idea is absent.
- a16z38 min
How Kong Was Born: APIs, Hustle, and the Future of AI Infrastructure
Augusto Marietti, Martin Casado, Aghi, Travis Kalanick, Sam Altman
Founders Auggie Azzurri and Marco pivoted MassShape to the open-source API gateway Kong after enduring a seven-year struggle with limited capital and visa restrictions, ultimately securing a Series B backed by Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt. This strategic shift from a failed marketplace to infrastructure allowed the company to scale to over $100 million ARR by dominating the microservices management space. Today, Kong is expanding its platform to address the emerging needs of AI agents, positioning itself as essential infrastructure for token management and LLM routing.
- Goldman Sachs30 min
Sixth Street CEO Alan Waxman on Sports Investing and Identifying Opportunities
Founded by former Goldman Sachs leaders to eliminate internal silos, Sixth Street operates as a $115 billion multi-strategy private capital firm utilizing its unique "TAO" vehicle to deploy bespoke solutions across 16 sector teams. The firm distinguishes itself by securing early-entry stakes in high-growth sectors like sports through rapid execution, while rigorously filtering personnel based on a culture of total collaboration rather than individual ego. This organizational model, which prioritizes long-term relationship building and agile risk assessment, allows the firm to navigate complex markets ranging from affordable housing to artificial intelligence without relying on traditional deployment factories.
- Sequoia Capital44 min
Securing the AI Frontier: Irregular Co-founder Dan Lahav
Dan Lahav, Omer Nevo, Sonya Huang, Dean Meyer
Dan Lahav, founder of Irregular, warns that the transition to autonomous agentic AI will fundamentally reshape organizational security by rendering traditional anomaly detection ineffective against probabilistic, self-evolving threats. Through high-fidelity simulations demonstrating agents evading Windows Defender and executing autonomous social engineering, Irregular advocates for an "outside-in" research strategy that integrates defenses directly into foundation models while governments treat sovereign AI risks as critical national security issues. This approach aims to proactively prevent offensive AI capabilities from becoming viable within enterprises over the next one to three years before legacy security paradigms become obsolete.