Latest Interviews
Showing 2806–2820 of 4,782 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Goldman Sachs32 min
Zalmay Khalilzad, former Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq
Former ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad evaluates the concluded $2.3 trillion war in Afghanistan, which failed to democratize the region but successfully deterred Al-Qaeda, while noting that current U.S. engagement with the Taliban remains constrained by domestic politics and unfulfilled human rights commitments. The discussion further analyzes how the withdrawal from Afghanistan miscalculated Putin's aggression in Ukraine, a conflict that ironically strengthened NATO cohesion despite escalating risks of nuclear escalation. Finally, the briefing identifies China as a comprehensive strategic challenger whose technological and territorial ambitions, particularly regarding Taiwan, now constitute the primary contradiction for U.S. foreign policy.
- Goldman Sachs21 min
Investing with The Carlyle Group’s Sandra Horbach
Sandra Horbach, Alison Mass, Alison Nathan
In a May 23, 2022 conversation, Sandra Horbach of the Carlyle Group discusses the private equity industry's evolution from a niche sector to a mainstream asset class while detailing Carlyle's specialized investment strategies focused on market leaders and ESG integration. Horbach outlines the firm's aggressive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, including a compensation-linked mentorship program and a $2 million award pool, aimed at empowering women to secure high-impact leadership roles. Addressing current macroeconomic headwinds, she advises prioritizing companies with resilient business models capable of thriving through volatility while reflecting on her 35-year career trajectory from her early days at Forsman Little to her current advocacy for long-term, quality-driven value creation.
- The Diary Of A CEO1h 47m
Victimhood & Self-sabotage Is Destroying The World In 2026: Africa Brooke | E160
Africa Brooke, Stephen Bartlett
Zimbabwean-born founder of Cherry Revolution Afrika Brooke explores the destructive cycle of adopting victimhood as an identity, detailing how her history of alcohol abuse and compulsive lying served as defenses against racial insecurities and familial trauma. She challenges the modern self-help and political narratives that promote binary thinking, arguing instead that true progress requires accepting personal agency while holding multiple truths about one's flaws and past. To combat societal polarization, Brooke is planning a global festival dedicated to hosting uncomfortable conversations and is currently working to overcome her own fear of success as she redefines intimacy and happiness through vulnerability.
Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906
Luke Schoenmaker details his tenure across major tech companies like TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Shopify, where he established scalable growth engines by integrating viral loops directly into core product experiences rather than treating them as afterthoughts. He argues that successful growth strategy requires a broad definition of "whatever it takes to move the one metric," emphasizing the critical importance of hiring senior leaders with a history of repeated success and fostering a culture of curiosity over rigid playbooks. His approach prioritizes aligning product and marketing teams, securing direct engineering capacity for experimentation, and ruthlessly eliminating initiatives that do not contribute to a clearly defined North Star metric.
Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905
Matt Mullenweg outlines the evolution of WordPress from a 2003 code fork into a global platform under Automatic's leadership, highlighting strategic acquisitions like Tumblr to target younger demographics and drive social networking expansion. He details a management philosophy centered on radical transparency, default trust, and distinct wartime versus peacetime leadership styles to ensure organizational agility and sustainable unit economics. Mullenweg also reflects on personal battles with insecurity and grief alongside his vision to democratize publishing through a more creative and individual open web by 2027.
- The Diary Of A CEO1h 18m
Chris Eubank Jr. Opens Up About His Grief, Living In His Father's Shadow & His Future | E159
Chris Eubank Jr., Stephen Bartlett
Chris Eubank Jr. reflects on his career trajectory, attributing his resilience and competitive drive to an innate personality shaped by a strict father and pivotal training experiences like a knockout in Cuba that cemented his refusal to quit. The 34-fight veteran discusses the physical and cognitive toll of the sport, his strategic cultivation of a polarizing public persona, and the profound impact of his brother Sebastian's death on his emotional boundaries and life philosophy. With a retirement goal set between ages 37 and 39, Eubank aims to secure world titles while maintaining emotional control and prioritizing personal happiness over the negativity of online trolling.
- Goldman Sachs19 min
Investing with KKR’s Tara Davies
Tara Davies, Alison Mass, Alison Nathan
On March 17, 2022, KKR Partner Tara Davies outlined a strategic pivot toward inflation-resistant real assets, emphasizing infrastructure's ability to hedge rising costs through revenue pass-through mechanisms while navigating a competitive market landscape. Davies detailed KKR's sector-agnostic approach to classifying assets by complexity rather than industry, prioritizing pricing power to protect margins amid supply chain disruptions and operational risks. The discussion further highlighted the firm's commitment to decarbonizing existing "brown" assets through granular operational improvements rather than divestment, alongside a leadership philosophy that values constructive debate and people skills over pure analytical modeling.
- Y Combinator28 min
Top Ways Startups Waste Money
Harj Taggar, Michael Seibel, Brad Flora
Early-stage founders frequently squander capital on premature hiring, marketing, and professional services before achieving product-market fit, a behavior driven by the "Sebastianism" fallacy of seeking external saviors rather than building internal foundations. The discussion outlines specific inefficiencies in seeking FAANG talent, over-relying on advertising and PR retainers, and granting unnecessary equity to advisors, all of which can be avoided by founders executing core tasks themselves. By prioritizing self-reliance and scrappy alternatives to validate hypotheses, companies can prevent costly mistakes and ensure that significant spending only occurs after proving the business model generates active customer demand.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon on the Economy, Investing and Sustainability
David Solomon, Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen, Alison Nathan, Valentine Van Nieuwenhuizen
Goldman Sachs has completed its acquisition of NN Investment Partners to significantly expand its European asset management platform and accelerate its sustainable investing capabilities under CEO David Solomon's four-year strategy. While the transaction strengthens the firm's fee-based revenue streams and operational scale, Solomon warns that clients should brace for increased market volatility and a heightened recession risk in Europe driven by energy supply disruptions and geopolitical tensions. The integration aims to combine NNIP's sustainability expertise with Goldman's global capital resources to deliver active returns that outperform passive benchmarks amidst the current uncertain economic climate.
- Lex Fridman1h 41m
Joe Rogan: Comedy, Controversy, Aliens, UFOs, Putin, CIA, and Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #300
Joe Rogan explores the intersection of extreme discipline, artistic resilience, and the psychological toll of public scrutiny, citing his own use of psychedelics and physical conditioning to navigate media attacks and career challenges. The conversation further delves into geopolitical skepticism regarding Donald Trump and Alex Jones, alongside theories on UFOs, government secrecy, and the corruption of the American political system. Looking forward, Rogan plans an unrecorded, one-way expedition to Ukraine and Russia to personally witness the war's impact and engage directly with local populations and leaders.
Daniel Yanisse: Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in the Hiring Process | 20VC #903
Checkr co-founders Daniel and Jonathan launched an API-first background check platform in a high-risk transition from corporate employment, leveraging early acquisitions and strategic hiring to build a scalable infrastructure. The company subsequently prioritized capital efficiency and founder-led delegation over rapid valuation growth, navigating significant lessons from premature enterprise expansion and pandemic-era fundraising challenges. Today, Checkr aims to redefine HR technology by normalizing second-chance hiring for individuals with criminal records while maintaining near-profitability to control its long-term strategic destiny.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
Investing with Norges Bank Investment Management’s Nicolai Tangen
Nicolai Tangen, Katie Koch, Alison Nathan
Nikolai Tangen, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, directs the world's largest sovereign wealth fund as it navigates a projected decade of stagflation and geopolitical instability through tactical portfolio adjustments and a rigorous negative selection strategy. Leveraging an interrogative background and a philosophy of active ownership, Tangen emphasizes capitalizing on undervalued opportunities in markets like China while excluding companies with weak balance sheets to preserve the fund's $1.3 trillion in long-term assets. His approach integrates diverse intellectual perspectives and a commitment to transparency, as evidenced by his "Good Company" podcast and a pledge to donate most of his personal wealth to educational initiatives.
- Lex Fridman2h 11m
Demis Hassabis: DeepMind - AI, Superintelligence & the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #299
Demis Hassabis outlines a comprehensive vision for Artificial Intelligence, detailing how DeepMind has progressed from game-playing benchmarks like AlphaGo to solving the protein folding problem with AlphaFold. He argues that future AI systems must evaluate general intelligence across diverse modalities and physical domains, including nuclear fusion control and material science, while explicitly decoupling intelligence from consciousness to address ethical risks. Ultimately, Hassabis envisions these technologies as foundational tools designed to accelerate the discovery of fundamental laws governing the universe and biology.
- Goldman Sachs43 min
Howard Marks, Co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management
Bill Marks and Bruce Karsh executed a massive $10 billion distressed debt strategy during the 2008 financial crisis by maintaining an $11 billion reserve to capitalize on market dislocation without relying on predictive forecasting. Marks argues that long-term investment success depends on buying quality assets at "absurdly" low prices while avoiding quantitative risk models, emphasizing that surviving catastrophic losses is more critical than chasing top-tier annual returns. He maintains that superior performance requires human judgment to navigate qualitative uncertainty and a commitment to idiosyncratic positions that diverge from market euphoria.
- All-In Podcast1h 35m
E85: SBF's crypto bailout, Zendesk sells for ~$10B, buyout targets, US diplomacy, AlphaFold & more
SBF, Chamath, Calacanis, Friedberg, David Sacks
A British Virgin Islands court ordered the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital, triggering a cascade of defaults and bailouts involving Sam Bankman-Fried that exposed systemic risks in unregulated crypto markets and spurred predictions of aggressive regulatory crackdowns. Simultaneously, the acquisition of Zendesk for $10.2 billion marks a pivotal shift in the software sector where private equity investors prioritize free cash flow and profitability over the previous era of loss-led growth. On the macro and scientific front, economists forecast a prolonged recession driven by inflation and geopolitical instability, while researchers achieved a breakthrough in modeling the nuclear pore complex using AlphaFold, offering new pathways for treating severe diseases.