Latest Interviews
Showing 5956–5970 of 6,110 interview transcripts.
- Y Combinator36 min
Jessica Livingston : How to Build the Future
Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman
Y Combinator has accelerated 1,500 startups to a combined valuation exceeding $70 billion by prioritizing founder determination, execution capability, and deep user empathy over specific initial ideas or academic pedigrees. The program distinguishes successful founders by their hyper-focus on building products and securing validation through retention metrics, while strictly avoiding premature distractions like corporate partnerships or early-stage PR. Through iconic examples such as Airbnb's pivot from selling cereal to hosting entire homes and Stripe's rise by 17-year-old technical founders, the firm demonstrates how adaptability and founder-centric advice drive innovation regardless of background.
- Y Combinator25 min
Mark Zuckerberg : How to Build the Future
Mark Zuckerberg and co-founder Dustin Moskovitz rejected a $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo in 2006, prioritizing a global connectivity mission over immediate financial gain despite causing significant leadership turnover. To execute this vision, they established a culture driven by the scientific method and massive data experimentation, which enabled the incremental development of features like News Feed and the People You May Know growth engine. Looking forward, Zuckerberg is currently steering the company toward a ten-year roadmap focused on universal internet connectivity, artificial intelligence for life-saving applications, and the transition to immersive VR and AR computing platforms.
- Goldman Sachs8 min
Alex Tapscott: The Blockchain Revolution - Talks at GS
Blockchain technology is being promoted as a second-generation Internet infrastructure that replaces centralized intermediaries with a distributed ledger to securely transfer value and establish identity for billions of unbanked individuals. By utilizing Bitcoin as an incentive mechanism to validate transactions, the network currently secures assets ranging from financial instruments to land titles, addressing specific failures in countries like Honduras and Haiti where traditional record-keeping collapsed. While the technology offers a path to resolve systemic poverty and identity crises through immutable registries, industry observers warn that the coming 18 months are critical for shifting from speculative investment to practical, daily-life utility before market momentum evaporates.
- Goldman Sachs6 min
Meet Ciiru An Inspiring Entrepreneur from Nairobi
Ciiru, Tiffany Dufu, Shiro Avera-Waidaka
Nairobi-based entrepreneur Shiro Avera-Waidaka founded the children's brand Fun Kids to replace Western-centric narratives with products reflecting local Kenyan culture while navigating export challenges to Uganda through a strategic network of female mentors. Her leadership journey, further accelerated by the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, leveraged cross-sector peer accountability and reciprocal business relationships to turn classmates into both suppliers and customers. This approach underscores her philosophy that effective leadership relies on collective vulnerability and self-belief to transform external obstacles into opportunities for growth.
- Goldman Sachs10 min
Andrew Bolton: The Intersection of Fashion, Art And Technology - Talks at GS
Following the Costume Institute's establishment as a self-funded department in 1959, the annual Met Gala organized by Anna Wintour has served as its critical financial engine, enabling major exhibitions like the *Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty* retrospective and the current *Manus Ex Machina* display. Curator Andrew Bolton utilizes these platforms to challenge historical barriers to fashion's recognition as art, highlighting the intersection of handmade and machine-made techniques while critiquing the industry's unsustainable, socially accelerated production cycles. Through a strategy that balances educational discourse with public appeal, the Institute aims to slow the fashion pace and foster deeper appreciation for design talent amidst the pressures of modern commercialization.
- The Economist18 min
The music industry and the digital revolution
Nick Raphael, Willard Ardritz, Jacob Whitesides, Elliot
While traditional major labels have long dominated the market by financing artist development and retaining master rights, the industry is shifting toward a service-based model driven by technological disruption. Startups like Cobalt now enable thousands of songwriters to retain full ownership and access previously hidden revenue streams, challenging the status quo that relied on catalog sales to fund new acts. This evolving landscape empowers established independent artists with significant leverage, prompting major corporations to adapt from strict ownership models to partnerships focused on specific commercialization services.
- Goldman Sachs9 min
Bjarke Ingels: Transforming the Skyline: Talks at GS
Bjarke Ingels, founder of the award-winning BIG firm, discusses his methodology of transforming strict project constraints into generative forces for high-profile projects like the World Trade Center and the Vancouver tower. He further details his approach to the year's Serpentine Summer Pavilion, which utilizes simple materials like fiberglass and aluminum to create a "gigantic shelf" that elevates ordinary elements into an extraordinary form. By treating architectural limitations as variables in a consistent logic, Ingels demonstrates how his firm achieves functional necessity and added value across radically different scales and contexts.
- Goldman Sachs9 min
Loyd Grossman - An American-British Gastronome on Global Food Trends: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Television producer Lloyd Evans details the near-rejection of the *MasterChef* concept by a skeptical BBC executive and its subsequent success as a cornerstone of the UK's thirty-year food revolution. Evans analyzes current culinary trends, noting a shift from exclusive molecular gastronomy to the "one-item" restaurant model, foraging, and high-quality local produce, while offering a nuanced critique of the queuing culture that dominates trendy dining. Drawing on his career philosophy and observations of British identity, he argues that food remains an affordable alternative to travel and highlights the enduring appeal of accessible, high-quality dining experiences.
- Y Combinator26 min
Selina Tobaccowala at the Female Founders Conference 2016
Selina Tobaccowala, Colleen Taylor
Former SurveyMonkey CTO and President Selina Teece is departing after six and a half years to co-found a new venture with her original Evite co-founder, Al, having previously scaled the company from 20 employees to 600 with $200 million in revenue. Teece utilizes her experience navigating leadership transitions and capital market tightening to advise founders on embedding data-driven cultures, prioritizing early revenue over valuation, and structuring boards with independent members to balance venture capital influence. Her career trajectory serves as a case study in applying rigorous operational discipline to build family-friendly, globally scalable organizations while avoiding the strategic pitfalls of delayed product-market fit and excessive fundraising.
- Milken Institute1h 1m
Disrupt Aging: A Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age
Jo Ann Jenkins, Soledad O'Brien
AARP CEO Joanne Jenkins leverages her extensive federal background to spearhead the "Disrupt Aging" initiative, which aims to reframe the societal narrative around aging as a period of continued vitality rather than decline. Through high-impact campaigns like the viral "What is Old?" video and a $40 million innovation fund, the organization actively promotes policies supporting "freedom to earn," while simultaneously advocating for critical infrastructure changes to ensure financial security and independent living for the 10,000 daily new retirees. This multifaceted approach addresses the economic realities of a population where half of those over 50 rely on Social Security, utilizing a 38-million-member base to influence everything from healthcare funding to workplace flexibility.
- Y Combinator28 min
Fundraising Panel at Female Founders Conference 2016
Talia Frenkel, Katelyn Gleason, Aarthi Ramamurthy, Liz Wessel, Kat Manalac, Caitlin Gleason
Four YC alumni from diverse sectors including healthcare, consumer goods, and job marketplaces share detailed accounts of their capital-raising journeys, which ranged from bootstrapping to securing multimillion-dollar rounds through persistent outreach and strategic narrative framing. The founders emphasize that overcoming investor skepticism requires deep domain expertise, a willingness to educate unfamiliar backers, and the resilience to handle rejection without compromising professional relationships. Ultimately, the discussion underscores that fundraising is an optional strategic tool rather than a mandatory industry norm, urging entrepreneurs to prioritize value creation and self-belief over blind adherence to Silicon Valley conventions.
- Goldman Sachs10 min
Christy Turlington Burns - Advancing Global Maternal Health: Talks at GS
Established in 2010 by Christy Turlington-Burns following her own postpartum hemorrhage, the organization Every Mother Counts leverages the documentary *No Woman, No Cry* to address preventable maternal mortality driven by barriers in transportation, education, and medical supplies. While Turlington-Burns extends this advocacy to the United States through the CNN series *Giving Birth in America* to highlight domestic disparities in care access and Medicaid reimbursement, the initiative remains focused on a global statistic that 98% of maternal deaths are avoidable. Her approach combines personal experience with public health expertise to confront systemic failures in both developing nations and the U.S., where the country's maternal mortality ranking has notably declined despite high provider density.
- Milken Institute57 min
Marketing in the Digital Age: A Conversation with John Sculley and David A. Steinberg
John Sculley, David A. Steinberg, Peter L. Hopkins
Former Pepsi CEO John Scully and Zeta Interactive discuss the critical industry shift from mass-media brand campaigns to data-driven, attribution-based marketing that directly correlates ad spend to sales outcomes. This transformation is powered by Zeta's proprietary database of 350 million individuals, which enables real-time "fast data" analytics to replace traditional agency models while adhering to strict privacy standards and opt-in regulations. Looking ahead, the speakers predict that surviving organizations must pivot toward adaptive innovation and the "experience internet," where future success depends on customer lifecycle management rather than broad advertising budgets.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Governors Address Challenges Facing States
Eric Schmidt, John Hickenlooper, Terry McAuliffe, Rick Scott, Scott Walker
Governors Rick Scott, Scott Walker, John Hickenlooper, and Terry McAuliffe convened to discuss distinct state-level strategies for economic growth, ranging from Florida's tax-cut model and Wisconsin's fiscal stabilization to Colorado's workforce adaptability and Virginia's international trade focus. Despite operating in opposing partisan environments, these leaders emphasized a unified shift from job creation to filling vacancies by prioritizing apprenticeships, dismantling federal mandates on healthcare and infrastructure, and challenging anti-capitalist sentiment through high-wage employment. The panel concluded that states must serve as "laboratories of democracy" to craft granular solutions for environmental and social issues while advocating for federal devolution of authority to maximize efficiency in workforce development and public safety.
- Milken Institute39 min
A Conversation with Jacob J. Lew, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew characterizes Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt crisis as an immediate emergency requiring legislative authority to establish an independent oversight board and prevent a chaotic restructuring that would harm 3.5 million residents and U.S. municipal bond markets. Simultaneously, Lew advocates for comprehensive federal reforms to overhaul the housing finance system, close corporate inversion loopholes, and implement a revenue-generating tax code that addresses broken incentives without relying on revenue neutrality. Complementing these economic measures, the administration announced a redesign of U.S. currency featuring Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill to better reflect American history, while urging bipartisan cooperation to overcome modern political divisiveness.