Latest Interviews
Showing 2641–2655 of 3,000 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Y Combinator27 min
Tracy Young Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
Founded in 2010 by Tracy Young and Ryan Sutton Gee, PlanGrid evolved from a Y Combinator-backed concept into a construction software platform serving over 10,000 customers and processing 200,000 projects. The San Francisco-based team, currently expanding its 92-person workforce, attributes its resilience and market dominance to a culture of deep mutual support and strategic pivots that turned early hardware limitations into a global digital blueprint repository. Young's leadership narrative also underscores the legacy of late co-founder Antoine Hersen and advocates for increased female representation in engineering sectors through the company's rapid structural scaling from a flat hierarchy to a formalized organization.
- Y Combinator22 min
Kimberly Bryant Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
Founded in 2011 by an accidental social entrepreneur, Black Girls Code launched in the Bay Area to shift girls of color from technology consumers to creators while addressing a sharp decline in their computer science degree attainment. The organization has since expanded to eight chapters across the U.S. and South Africa, training approximately 3,000 students and raising over $125,000 through aggressive fundraising targets to reach its 2040 vision of educating one million girls. By prioritizing culturally sensitive mentorship and hiring teams more skilled than the founder, the nonprofit aims to level the playing field and ensure technology reflects the nation's shifting demographic majority.
- Y Combinator22 min
Ruchi Sanghvi Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
The speaker contrasts the successful, first-principles-driven launch of Facebook's News Feed against the strategic missteps taken during her tenure at the startup Go, where she admits to applying inappropriate growth patterns. Upon joining Dropbox, she pivoted from a "move fast and break things" mentality to a quality-focused approach, leading a massive engineering recruitment drive that prioritized cultural fit and reliability. Now launching a new venture, she advocates for strict adherence to fundamental truths and persistent execution despite the psychological toll of entrepreneurship.
- Milken Institute1h 5m
Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear (II)
Frank Luntz, Skip Reimer, Jim Gray, Bob Shapiro, Eric Schmidt Jr., John McWhorter, Priscilla Burton, Charlie Stokes
A prominent business leader outlines a strategic shift from traditional corporate branding to building trust through emotional connection and value-aligned language, citing record-low public confidence in CEOs and corporations. The presentation details specific linguistic reframing tactics, such as replacing "CEO" with "Business Leader" and "capitalism" with "economic freedom," to align with public priorities like peace of mind and stability. Ultimately, the speaker argues that future business success depends on adopting "hardworking taxpayer" messaging, prioritizing tangible results over abstract metrics, and addressing deep-seated societal fears regarding financial security.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
Ray Kelly, Former NYPD Commissioner: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the first officer to rise from a cadet to the agency's top leadership, details his tenure's establishment of the first municipal counterterrorism bureau and the surveillance of major events like the 2010 Times Square bombing attempt. Kelly critiques a 2011 ruling on racial profiling as evidentiary flawed and warns that current oversight measures and the refusal to appeal could shift policing from proactive crime prevention to reactive responses, a strategy he links to a reduction of 9,300 murders over two decades. With ISIS cited as an escalating global threat, Kelly advocates for the continued use of data-driven security initiatives like the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative while balancing privacy concerns through automatic data deletion protocols.
- Milken Institute33 min
Best-Performing Cities Index 2014 - Press Conference
Ross Duvall, Jim, Manoli Ratacunga, Armin Bedrosian, David Klesch, Kish Rajan, Larry
The 2014 Milken Institute Metro Index identified San Francisco as the top U.S. economic performer, driven by a technology sector that accounts for 45% of metro job growth and offers average wages of $160,000. While five Texas metros and cities like Provo, Utah, also ranked highly due to energy and job creation, the report noted that U.S. employment has fully recovered from the recession alongside a historic surge in oil production. Mayor Ed Lee responded by outlining aggressive strategies to expand the local economy through housing initiatives targeting 30,000 new units and diversifying sectors beyond technology to include biotech and manufacturing.
- 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.
- Milken Institute1h 13m
MI Forum: Hall of Mirrors
Barry Eichengreen, Michael Hiltzik, Skip Reimer
Economist Barry Eichengreen joined Michael Hiltzik at the Milken Institute's January 2015 forum to analyze historical parallels between the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis in a discussion of his book *Hall of Mirrors*. Eichengreen argued that the Euro's structural flaws and the Federal Reserve's past policy errors, including the Lehman Brothers failure, created systemic vulnerabilities that Keynesian fiscal intervention successfully averted during previous depressions. The session concluded with warnings that prioritizing short-term stability over long-term structural reform risks precipitating a future financial collapse within the next eighty years.
- Milken Institute1h 16m
The Water Challenge: Doing More with Less
Rodney Smith, Sanjay Gaur, Susan Leal, Andy Lipkus, Frances Phoebe Weber, Karen Ross, Moss, Carolyn Jungermann Bennett, Sanjeev, John McDonald Jr., Alec, Jim McDaniel, Marine Stapleton
An upcoming December event in Sacramento will convene Australian water authorities and technology firms to share critical lessons from Australia's decade-long "sea change" in water management with California stakeholders. The presentation aims to address the state's transition to a high-risk hydrologic environment by discussing integrated solutions for agricultural adaptation, groundwater regulation, and urban conservation technologies like direct potable reuse. Participants will examine how market mechanisms and infrastructure investments, such as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, can bolster resilience against escalating water volatility without relying on single silver-bullet solutions.
- Milken Institute58 min
California the Pioneer: Blazing the Trail of Innovation
Michal Levram, Gil Elbaz, David Koenig, Brett Johnson, Peter Marks
Moderated by Fortune's Michal Levram, a panel comprising leaders from SpaceX, Factual, Control Group, and the City of Los Angeles examined California's innovation ecosystem, emphasizing the tension between radical technological ambitions and the practical challenges of talent retention, cybersecurity, and high living costs. The discussion highlighted how data-driven cultures, public-private collaborations, and manufacturing advantages are driving a hardware revival in Los Angeles despite significant brain drain to Silicon Valley and urgent STEM workforce shortages. Looking forward, the experts predicted that ubiquitous connectivity and autonomous vehicles will fundamentally reshape society, provided policymakers address digital divides and streamline regulations to maintain the region's competitive edge.
- Milken Institute1h 7m
Bettering California's Business Climate
Mike Cloughton, Mike Milken, Scott Minard, Kevin DeLeon, Sharon, Troy
Hosted by the Milken Institute, the California Summit convened key policymakers and investors to address the state's economic trajectory, demographic shifts, and innovation capacity. Leaders such as Scott Minard, Senator Kevin de León, and Troy Carter debated strategies to leverage California's upgraded credit rating for massive infrastructure bonds, reform the film tax credit system, and resolve funding disparities for women-led bioscience firms. The event concluded with a consensus that the state must reduce regulatory friction and lower marginal tax rates to retain global talent and sustain growth in critical sectors like technology and healthcare.
- Milken Institute1h 9m
Bay to Basin: Cities Make a Comeback
Mindy Silverstein, Scott Miner, Kevin Clouden, Austin Buechner, William Rusty Bailey, Dale Bonner, Jim Wunderman, Carol Armstrong
The Milken Institute is broadening its global initiatives while leveraging its California Center to drive policy changes in government efficiency and small business capital access. A recent summit highlighted the critical need for reauthorizing public-private partnership statutes to unlock $42 billion in infrastructure investment, focusing on regional waterways, transportation, and climate resilience. Panelists from major institutions and local governments identified fragmented governance as a primary barrier to execution, calling for centralized regional leaders to manage complex long-cycle projects and mitigate catastrophic flood risks.
- Milken Institute1h 4m
Women's Breakfast: Transformational Philanthropy
Mike, Wendy Kopp, Alexis, Precious, Margaret, Marissa Drew, Helena, Maria, Katie O'Reilly, Nancy Oseas
Leading economists, philanthropists, and corporate executives convened to address the critical role of human capital, highlighting that education and health constitute up to 90% of national assets while global leaders like Wendy Kopp and Margaret Chan outlined successful interventions for educational equity and disease prevention. The discussion detailed specific strategies to close gender and economic gaps, including the expansion of Teach for All across 35 countries, initiatives to boost female participation in STEM fields, and financial models designed to increase women-led business funding in Sub-Saharan Africa. Participants concluded that sustained, horizontal collaboration between the public and private sectors is essential to leverage technological solutions and ensure inclusive economic growth for the next generation.
- Milken Institute1h 17m
2014 London Summit - Capital Markets Outlook
Michael Milken, Madelyn Antoncic, Richard Byrne, John Calamos Sr., Elroy Dimson, Thomas Finke, Mike, Rich Byrne
Following post-2008 regulatory shifts that forced legacy banks to retreat from middle-market lending, non-bank alternative capital providers and Business Development Companies have rapidly absorbed the resulting $40 billion funding gap. This structural transition coincides with a global surge in cash held by sovereign wealth funds and corporations, who are increasingly favoring direct investments in equities and convertibles over traditional fixed income as the risk-free rate nears zero. Simultaneously, market participants are shifting focus toward underdeveloped regions in Africa and Asia to capitalize on emerging consumer demand while utilizing capital market mechanisms to address climate and health risks previously managed by traditional sovereign budgets.
- Milken Institute56 min
2014 London Summit - U.S. Overview: Business and Ballots
Alex Witt, Eric Cantor, Ross DeVol, William Kahane, Alan Schwartz, Gene Sperling
Experts convened to analyze the U.S. economy's recovery, with Ross Milken identifying a trajectory toward 3% "escape velocity" growth driven by robust auto sales and small business hiring alongside Jean Soltis's critique of overly tight housing credit standards. While Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is expected to maintain accommodative policies until labor market sub-indicators improve, panelists warned that geopolitical risks and regulatory uncertainty regarding mergers and tax reform continue to stifle corporate investment and equity stability. The discussion further highlighted that resolving housing finance ambiguities could boost GDP, whereas achieving comprehensive immigration or energy infrastructure legislation remains hindered by legislative gridlock despite bipartisan support for incremental reforms.