Latest Interviews
Showing 4606–4620 of 4,766 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Y Combinator28 min
Michelle Zatlyn and Matthew Prince at Startup School SV 2014
Michelle Zatlyn, Matthew Prince, Andrew, Lee Holloway
Founded five years ago by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn, Cloudflare now serves two million customers with a market capitalization of $250 billion while processing one in every twenty web requests globally. The company achieved its current scale of 120 employees and 3,000 daily new users by leveraging a founder-led culture that rejects traditional titles in favor of distinct technical and operational roles. By prioritizing long-term momentum over immediate valuation and solving complex security challenges, the firm protects critical infrastructure for entities ranging from Y Combinator to the UK government.
- Y Combinator24 min
Eric Migicovsky at Startup School SV 2014
Industrial design student Eric Migicovsky evolved a Nokia 3310 prototype into Pebble, a Kickstarter-funded wearable device that revolutionized the smartwatch market by raising over $10 million in 30 days. By pivoting from limited Blackberry compatibility to an open-source E-ink platform with cross-device interoperability, the company successfully challenged established tech giants like Apple and Sony. This strategic shift secured Pebble's place as a dominant, community-driven ecosystem focused on battery efficiency and developer integration rather than a closed proprietary system.
- Milken Institute1h 23m
MI Forum - Innovating Women - The Changing Face of Technology
Sharon Vosmek, Dane Stangler, Anousheh Ansari, Vivek Wadhwa, Farai Chideya, Mindy Silverstein
Moderated by Mindy Silverstein, a Milken Institute forum featuring Vivek Wadhwa, Anusha Ansari, Dane Stangler, and Sharon Vozmek dissected the systemic gender biases in Silicon Valley's venture capital ecosystem and the economic benefits of inclusive innovation. The panel highlighted how exclusionary networks and "pattern recognition" practices result in women founders accessing a fraction of available capital despite evidence that diverse teams outperform male-only counterparts by 64%, prompting Wadhwa to crowdsource his book *Innovating Women* to fund a Singularity University initiative. Addressing both global and local barriers, the speakers advocated for shifting from mandatory quotas to cultural normalization of diversity, early STEM mentorship, and increased angel investing by women to unlock the projected 6-9% GDP growth derived from full female economic participation.
- Goldman Sachs9 min
Inventor Dean Kamen & Goldman Sachs' Don Duet: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Dean Kamen, Don Duet, Calvin Lully
A self-taught entrepreneur who entered the healthcare sector to solve fundamental problems rather than make incremental improvements, the speaker cites the iBot wheelchair as a breakthrough that overcame both physical and social barriers for users like Calvin Lully. Challenging the notion that education lacks teachers or resources, the speaker argues that engagement requires packaging learning through entertainment and elevating tech innovators as cultural heroes. While employing 600 engineers to define new markets, the organization intentionally avoids direct manufacturing, instead partnering with global incumbents to scale rare, world-changing innovations despite a high rate of experimental failure.
- Bank of America32 min
Small Business Social Series: Women in Business: Rising Revenues, Optimism, and Power – How to Ta...
Carol Roth, Jill Calabrese Bain, Kimberly Weisul, Darla Beggs
Hosted by Bank of America, the Small Business Social Series convened Carol Roth, Jill Calabrese-Bain, Darla Beggs, and Kimberly Weisel to analyze the doubling rate of women-owned businesses and the strategic shift toward long-term corporate culture and succession planning. The panelists emphasized how empathy-driven leadership, digital tools like The Mentor Cloud, and a focus on specific personal branding attributes are dismantling entry barriers while capital access improves through crowdfunding and female investor support. With 70% of female entrepreneurs anticipating revenue growth, the discussion concluded that audacious goal-setting and organic mentorship are critical for navigating the transition from tactical execution to exponential expansion.
- Milken Institute59 min
Asia Summit 2014 - Global Overview: Geoeconomics vs. Geopolitics
Michael Milken, Tony Fernandes, Jamie Forese, Joshua Harris, Axel Weber
Citi's Jamie Dimon and industry leaders from Apollo Global Management convened in Singapore to analyze the structural shift of global economic gravity toward Asia, contrasting the region's high growth potential with the stagnation of European markets and the geopolitical risks of fiscal integration. The discussion highlighted specific investment dynamics, including the underutilization of private capital in Asian SMEs, the manufacturing renaissance driven by the US shale revolution, and the resilience of entrepreneurs like AirAsia in serving mass markets. Ultimately, panelists called for regulatory environments that prioritize long-term stability over short-term populism to facilitate sustainable capital flows and address the growing disparities between emerging and advanced economies.
- Milken Institute47 min
Asia Summit 2014 - Celebrating and Selling to the Growing Middle Class
Donald Tang, Achal Agarwal, Timothy Chen, Kevin Lu, Peter Tan, Arjun Agarwal
Industry leaders and investors convened to analyze the projected expansion of the global middle class, which is shifting decisively toward Asia by 2030 and fundamentally altering consumption patterns and investment flows. Executives from Kimberly Clark, Private Equity, and technology firms detailed strategic pivots toward localized innovation, digital engagement, and decentralized governance to capture this emerging demographic. The panel concluded that sustaining this growth requires a departure from Western consumption models, necessitating robust political stability, strict corporate governance, and a renewed focus on collective well-being over individual wealth accumulation.
- Milken Institute55 min
Asia Summit 2014 - A Conversation with Robert Zoellick: U.S. Rebalancing Toward Asia
Robert Zoellick, Chan Heng-Chi, Manraj Sekh, Jared Carney Lightdale, Kevin Chen, Yanqing
Former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zellick addressed the strategic challenges of the current global order, analyzing the implications of Scottish independence on UK-US relations while advocating for a federalism model to counter insular fragmentation. He outlined a complex counter-ISIS strategy requiring local ground forces and regional partnerships to navigate the collapse of the Sykes-Picot system without overextending US domestic will. Furthermore, Zellick emphasized the necessity of advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to secure US leadership, urging the integration of rising powers like China into reformed multilateral institutions rather than isolating them.
- Milken Institute52 min
Asia Summit 2014 - U.S. Capital Markets: Smooth Sailing, but in What Direction?
John Sokoloff, Samir Jain, Tom Fink
Managing Partners John Sokoloff, Samir Jain, and Tom Fink analyze a credit environment where historical valuation precedents suggest the current boom is unsustainable despite mid-cycle economic expansion. The panelists identify a strategic pivot toward dividend recapitalizations and secondary market acquisitions as private equity firms navigate rising interest rate risks and a projected market correction. While Asian markets offer long-term growth opportunities through institutional capital flows, the experts warn that rapid rate hikes could trigger a violent downturn that fundamentally alters exit multiples.
- Goldman Sachs24 min
Congressman John Lewis & Lloyd Blankfein: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Former civil rights leader John Lewis traces his journey from a sharecropper's son in rural Alabama to a central figure in the 1960s nonviolent movement, detailing his collaboration with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and pivotal events such as the Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" confrontation in Selma. These struggles directly catalyzed landmark federal legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Lewis credits for enabling the presidencies of Carter, Clinton, and Obama while warning that the unfinished work of racial and LGBTQ+ justice demands continued vigilance against modern legal setbacks.
- Goldman Sachs32 min
John C. Whitehead & Tom Brokaw: Talks at GS Session Highlights
John C. Whitehead, Tom Brokaw, Peter van de Ven
Goldman Sachs senior partner John Whitehead shared his classified D-Day experience where, to save his crew, he disobeyed orders and maneuvered his landing craft through enemy fire, a sacrifice he concealed for decades to avoid court-martial. This hidden act of courage foreshadowed his post-war humanitarian airlifts to Hungary and his unique consensus-based leadership philosophy at Goldman Sachs, which prioritized moral responsibility and team cohesion over rapid decision-making. Tanya Cushman's book *The Greatest Generation* finally brought these suppressed stories to light, revealing how the extreme pressures of World War II forged the ethical frameworks that defined Whitehead's public and private life.
- Milken Institute1h 20m
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull outlines a leadership philosophy at Pixar that prioritizes building resilient teams and protecting vulnerable creative concepts over immediate commercial safety or rigid IP protection. Through mechanisms like the unfiltered "Brain Trust" and the strategic separation of Disney and Pixar operations, Catmull cultivated a culture where iterative failure and the balancing act between production demands ("the hungry beast") and artistic development ("the ugly baby") drive long-term innovation. This approach, which evolved from Catmull's own early misconceptions about self-managing talent and Steve Jobs' leadership transition, ultimately sustained a unique organizational environment capable of consistently delivering high-risk, high-reward animated films.
- Y Combinator22 min
Urska Srsen
Bellabeat, a Slovenian startup co-founded by Urska Sršin and Sandra Sršin, pivoted from a complex B2B patient monitoring system to a consumer wearable that allows expectant mothers to track health metrics and connect emotionally. Founded in 2012 and accelerated by Y Combinator in late 2013, the company has sold over 8,000 devices and secured seed funding shortly after its Demo Day presentation. Operating across European, American, and Australian markets, the firm aims to digitize prenatal care by integrating medical data into everyday lifestyle habits through a hardware and mobile app ecosystem.
- Y Combinator31 min
Alfred Lin with Justin Kan
Lin and Tony Hsieh launched LinkExchange in 1997 to solve traffic acquisition for web hosts, eventually selling the network to Microsoft for $265 million before co-founding an angel fund that pivoted to Telme Networks and Zappos during the dot-com crash. While leading Telme, Lin executed a strategic shift from a failing consumer portal to an enterprise SaaS model that generated $150 million in recurring revenue and an $800 million exit, whereas Zappos survived a liquidity crisis by enforcing profitability on the first order and pioneering rapid overnight fulfillment. This dual success story culminated in Zappos maintaining operational independence before its acquisition by Amazon, illustrating Lin's philosophy of prioritizing long-term cultural partnerships over short-term investor returns.
- Y Combinator27 min
Adora Cheung
Founded by siblings Adora and Aaron Chung to disrupt a stagnant home cleaning industry, the technology platform Homejoy now operates in over 30 markets with a $40 million investment history. The company survived a critical cash crisis in 2012 thanks to immediate seed funding from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and Y Combinator's Paul Graham, following a strategy where the founders personally cleaned jobs to identify operational inefficiencies. Leveraging their unique sibling dynamic and relentless execution, the team scaled from manual booking experiments into a digital infrastructure designed to lower overhead costs through algorithmic optimization.