Podcast appearances and mentions of baker scholar

Andrew and David discussed the financial industry, focusing on timeless topics and the role of Jeremy Grantham. In this episode, we also explored the challenges of valuing private equity investments, the importance of having a clear investment strategy, and the impact of government intervention in capital markets. A spirited discussion followed about our contrasting views on China and Japan, and discussed the current state of the economy, particularly focusing on inflation and the actions of the Federal Reserve. Guest: David Salem - HedgeEye David Salem, Managing Director – Capital Allocation @ Hedgeye Prior to joining Hedgeye in early 2023, David served as founding President and Chief Investment Officer of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) and as a partner at GMO, working closely with Jeremy Grantham on investment solutions for large institutional funds. David received a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar. A member of the District of Columbia Bar, David has held adjunct faculty positions at Middlebury College, from which he earned his undergraduate degree summa cum laude, and the University of Virginia, and served in the White House Counsel's office while enrolled at Harvard. David's has given talks at many colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Middlebury, Northwestern, and Oxford, and at conferences organized by the Association of Governing Boards, the CFA Institute, the Council on Foundations, the Foundation Financial Officers Group and NACUBO among other organizations.   Check this out and find out more at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ CHARTS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Follow @andrewhorowitz Looking for style diversification? More information on the TDI Managed Growth Strategy - HERE Stocks mentioned in this episode: (META), (AAPL), (NVDA), (MSFT)

Welcome to an interview with Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, HBS professors and the hosts of 'Think Big, Buy Small' podcast.    In this episode, we discuss current market trends related to entrepreneurship through acquisition. We also touch on the demographic trend of baby boomers retiring and needing to sell their businesses, and its impact on buying and selling businesses. Most importantly, Richard and Royce share their advice on how to find the right business to buy, the key considerations and how to evaluate businesses, common buyer errors, and the challenges of buying from baby boomers.   Think Big, Buy Small is a new podcast from Harvard Business School that explores this innovative approach to entrepreneurship: acquisition entrepreneurship. The show is an extension of their courses on small firms, including “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition,” which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company, which has sold more than 65,000 copies.   Richard S. Ruback is a Baker Foundation Professor and the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School.  Over the last 15 years, he and Royce Yudkoff have been developing and teaching a second year course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”.  Ruback and Yudkoff's book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.   Ruback earned his Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Rochester in 1980 and taught at MIT's Sloan School before joining the HBS faculty as a visiting professor in 1987. He was appointed associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1989. Ruback has served as an editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and is the author of numerous articles on corporate finance and valuation.   Royce Yudkoff is the MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice of Entrepreneurial Management at the Harvard Business School and a General Partner and co-founder of ABRY Partners, LLC in Boston, MA. Alongside Professor Richard Ruback, Royce currently co-teaches a second year case course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship through Acquisition”. These courses focus on how to acquire, finance, and operate your own smaller firm.   As was mentioned above, Ruback and Yudkoff's book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017.  The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.   In 1989, Royce co-founded ABRY Partners, a private equity firm focused on the media, communications and business and information services markets. Since 1989 the firm has completed over $27 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity investments involving approximately 450 properties. Over this period Royce has also served on numerous private and public corporate boards.   Royce graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1980 as a Baker Scholar and is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College.   Get a copy of HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company: https://rb.gy/2omnrh   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 485, featuring an interview with Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, HBS professors and the hosts of 'Think Big, Buy Small' podcast.    In this episode, we discuss current market trends related to entrepreneurship through acquisition. We also touch on the demographic trend of baby boomers retiring and needing to sell their businesses, and its impact on buying and selling businesses. Most importantly, Richard and Royce share their advice on how to find the right business to buy, the key considerations and how to evaluate businesses, common buyer errors, and the challenges of buying from baby boomers.   Think Big, Buy Small is a new podcast from Harvard Business School that explores this innovative approach to entrepreneurship: acquisition entrepreneurship. The show is an extension of their courses on small firms, including “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition,” which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company, which has sold more than 65,000 copies.   Richard S. Ruback is a Baker Foundation Professor and the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School.  Over the last 15 years, he and Royce Yudkoff have been developing and teaching a second year course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”.  Ruback and Yudkoff's book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.   Ruback earned his Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Rochester in 1980 and taught at MIT's Sloan School before joining the HBS faculty as a visiting professor in 1987. He was appointed associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1989. Ruback has served as an editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and is the author of numerous articles on corporate finance and valuation.   Royce Yudkoff is the MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice of Entrepreneurial Management at the Harvard Business School and a General Partner and co-founder of ABRY Partners, LLC in Boston, MA. Alongside Professor Richard Ruback, Royce currently co-teaches a second year case course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship through Acquisition”. These courses focus on how to acquire, finance, and operate your own smaller firm.   As was mentioned above, Ruback and Yudkoff's book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017.  The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.   In 1989, Royce co-founded ABRY Partners, a private equity firm focused on the media, communications and business and information services markets. Since 1989 the firm has completed over $27 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity investments involving approximately 450 properties. Over this period Royce has also served on numerous private and public corporate boards.   Royce graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1980 as a Baker Scholar and is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College.   Get a copy of HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company: https://rb.gy/2omnrh   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo  

Welcome to an interview with the authors of Career Forward: Strategies from Women Who've Made It, Christiana Smith Shi and Grace Puma. In this book, the authors challenge negative stereotypes about female ambition, and urge women to be bold, follow their dreams, and seize the chance to lead “big” lives. The secret is to focus on career first, job second. Instead of chasing a better job title or a salary bump, the goal should be a long-range career path that leads to success. “Career forward” means keeping a focus on the future and recognizing that being good at your job is often not enough—that you should take every opportunity to boost your connections, take on “difficult” assignments, and work actively to broaden your skills. Christiana Smith Shi is the former president of Nike's consumer-direct division where she led the company's global retail and ecommerce business. Before that she was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. Christiana has been named one of the Most Influential Corporate Directors by Women, Inc. She currently leads Lovejoy Advisors, which is focused on digitally transforming consumer and retail businesses. Shi is a graduate of Stanford University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar. She lives in Portland, Oregon.  Grace Puma is the former executive vice president and COO of PepsiCo, and before that held senior positions with United Airlines, Kraft Foods, Motorola, and Gillette. A board member of both Organon & Co and Target, she has been ranked on the “Most Powerful Latina” list by Fortune magazine and recognized as the “Executive of the Year” by Latina Style magazine. Puma holds a BA in business administration and economics from Illinois Benedictine University. She lives in Tampa, Florida. Get Career Forward here: https://rb.gy/t7e8f9 Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

238 Business for the Changing Social Fabric with Courtney Leimkuhler, Co-Founder Springback Collective; New York, NY, USA In this electrifying episode, we delve into the future of career, care, and consumer behavior with Courtney Leimkuhler, the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Springback Collective. Join us as we uncover the secrets behind Courtney's journey from the heights of corporate finance at Marsh and the New York Stock Exchange, to her current role as a venture capitalist shaping the landscape of the new care economy. With the mindset of a futurist and a firm background in finance and infrastructure knowledge, Courtney and the team at Springbank seek to elevate unique companies that are positioning services to meet the challenges of the next generation of the workforce. With an eye on gender equity and family care, they partner and invest in mission-based companies referred to as 'The Builders' to be catalysts of change. Here are some of the topics we touched on in our conversation: - Venturing into the Unknown: Courtney shares her insights on transitioning from the traditional corporate world to the dynamic realm of venture capital, and how her diverse background has shaped her approach to investing in disruptive startups. - Pioneering Business for the New Care Economy: Dive deep into the innovative ventures Springback Collective supports, and discover how they are revolutionizing how we approach caregiving and inclusive work environments. For example, Wealthy is a company that offers human-powered care concierge and it is sold as a benefit through employers for employees. And Risk is using AI to build tools for teachers to make their workflows much more efficient. - Trends that Every Business Must Watch: Understand the data behind key areas that leaders must understand and evolve within corporate activity, government activity, the insurance landscape, and consumer behavior and how these trends if not addressed will affect worker productivity, presence, and ultimately profits. - Unveiling Financial Frontiers and Shinning a Spotlight on Data: Explore the next wave of financial progress as Courtney discusses the evolving landscape of fintech and the opportunities it presents for investors and entrepreneurs alike. Courtney also serves as a board member or advisor to several companies including New Front, Dandi, Parento, Orchard, Coverwallet (sold to Aon in 2020), Betterment and Asta Capital. Courtney is a graduate of Harvard College summa cum laude and Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar. Courtney and her husband live in New York City with their two daughters. Connect with Courtney: Website: https://www.springbank.vc/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-leimkuhler-32459b/ Connect with Allison: Feedspot has named Disruptive CEO Nation as one of the Top 25 CEO Podcasts on the web and it is ranked the number 10 CEO podcast to listen to in 2024! https://podcasts.feedspot.com/ceo_podcasts/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsummerschicago/ Website: https://www.disruptiveceonation.com/ Twitter: @DisruptiveCEO #digitalmarketing #branding #socialgood #Bcorp #CEO #startup #startupstory #founder #business #businesspodcast #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 425, an interview with the authors of Career Forward: Strategies from Women Who've Made It, Christiana Smith Shi and Grace Puma. In this book, the authors challenge negative stereotypes about female ambition, and urge women to be bold, follow their dreams, and seize the chance to lead “big” lives. The secret is to focus on career first, job second. Instead of chasing a better job title or a salary bump, the goal should be a long-range career path that leads to success. “Career forward” means keeping a focus on the future and recognizing that being good at your job is often not enough—that you should take every opportunity to boost your connections, take on “difficult” assignments, and work actively to broaden your skills. Christiana Smith Shi is the former president of Nike's consumer-direct division where she led the company's global retail and ecommerce business. Before that she was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. Christiana has been named one of the Most Influential Corporate Directors by Women, Inc. She currently leads Lovejoy Advisors, which is focused on digitally transforming consumer and retail businesses. Shi is a graduate of Stanford University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar. She lives in Portland, Oregon.  Grace Puma is the former executive vice president and COO of PepsiCo, and before that held senior positions with United Airlines, Kraft Foods, Motorola, and Gillette. A board member of both Organon & Co and Target, she has been ranked on the “Most Powerful Latina” list by Fortune magazine and recognized as the “Executive of the Year” by Latina Style magazine. Puma holds a BA in business administration and economics from Illinois Benedictine University. She lives in Tampa, Florida. Get Career Forward here: https://rb.gy/t7e8f9 Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo  

This week we are continuing in our conversation with Harry Dent where bond yields, real estate, and the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin take center stage.Unravel the complex relationship between inflation, economic growth, and investment strategies as the conversation sheds light on unexpected vulnerabilities in luxury real estate and potential dramatic shifts in the tech and crypto markets.Tune in to gain invaluable insights on your investments approach in an ever-changing economic landscape.Loral's Takeaways:Inflation, Bonds, And Real Estate Investments (00:43)Housing Market Downturn And Inflation (03:42)Cryptocurrency Market Trends And Potential Future Growth (08:37)Stock Market Trends And Potential Crashes (13:02)The Impact Of A Potential Economic Downturn On Small Businesses (16:57)Global Economic Bubble And Safe Investment Options (22:23)Investing During Economic Downturns (28:13)Economic Forecasting And Market Analysis (33:53)Meet Harry Dent:Harry S. Dent, Jr. is a best-selling author and one of the most outspoken financial editors in America.  Using proprietary research, Harry developed a unique method for studying economies around the world, and uses his analysis to provide insights on what to expect in the future. Instead of focusing on endless graphs that assume people behave rationally, Harry instead looks at real people, making real economic decisions for themselves and their families.  He combines demographics with actual spending to inform his research. Harry received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. He then joined Bain & Company as a Fortune 100 business consultant and now heads the independent research firm HS Dent Publishing. Since then, he's spoken to executives, financial advisors and investors around the world about demographics and the power of identifying different trends. Harry has appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC and CNN, Fox News and is a regular guest on Fox Business. He has also been featured in Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Harry has written numerous bestselling books over the last few decades, from The Great Boom Ahead in 1992 to Zero Hour in 2017. In 2019, Harry published his latest book Spending Waves, where he shares decades of extensive research covering over 200 businesses across 14 different industries to give readers insight into business and investing trends for the years ahead. Connect with Harry:https://harrydent.com/Meet Loral Langemeier:Loral Langemeier is a money expert, sought-after speaker, entrepreneurial thought leader, and best-selling author of five books.Her goal: to change the conversations people have about money worldwide and empower people to become millionaires.The CEO and Founder of Live Out Loud, Inc. – a multinational organization — Loral relentlessly and candidly shares her best advice without hesitation or apology. What sets her apart from other wealth experts is her innate ability to recognize and acknowledge the skills & talents of people, inspiring them to generate wealth.She has created, nurtured, and perfected a 3-5 year strategy to make millions for the “Average Jill and Joe.” To date, she and her team have served thousands of individuals worldwide and created hundreds of millionaires through wealth-building education keynotes, workshops, products, events, programs, and coaching services.Loral is truly dedicated to...

In this compelling episode, renowned economist Harry Dent shares his unconventional journey and insights into the world of economics, challenging traditional theories with his practical approach. Having honed his analytical skills at Harvard Business School, Dent shifted his focus from the corporate sphere to aiding small businesses and individual investors. His groundbreaking research on generational spending cycles reveals a clear, predictable pattern in economic booms and busts, influenced by human behavior and life stages. This episode is more than just an economic discussion; it's a deep dive into the mind of a maverick economist who brings clarity to the complex world of finance.Loral's Takeaways:Economics, Business, And Personal Experience (01:19)Economic Trends And Predictability (03:25)Economic Cycles And Generational Spending Patterns (08:59)Demographic And Economic Trends In China And India (14:46)Economic Bubbles And Inflation (25:59)Financial Asset Bubble And Its Potential Impact On Investors (31:01)Economic Bubbles And Their Impact On The Market (36:13)Meet Harry Dent:Harry S. Dent, Jr. is a best-selling author and one of the most outspoken financial editors in America.  Using proprietary research, Harry developed a unique method for studying economies around the world, and uses his analysis to provide insights on what to expect in the future. Instead of focusing on endless graphs that assume people behave rationally, Harry instead looks at real people, making real economic decisions for themselves and their families.  He combines demographics with actual spending to inform his research. Harry received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. He then joined Bain & Company as a Fortune 100 business consultant and now heads the independent research firm HS Dent Publishing. Since then, he's spoken to executives, financial advisors and investors around the world about demographics and the power of identifying different trends. Harry has appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC and CNN, Fox News and is a regular guest on Fox Business. He has also been featured in Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Harry has written numerous bestselling books over the last few decades, from The Great Boom Ahead in 1992 to Zero Hour in 2017. In 2019, Harry published his latest book Spending Waves, where he shares decades of extensive research covering over 200 businesses across 14 different industries to give readers insight into business and investing trends for the years ahead. Connect with Harry:https://harrydent.com/ Meet Loral Langemeier:Loral Langemeier is a money expert, sought-after speaker, entrepreneurial thought leader, and best-selling author of five books.Her goal: to change the conversations people have about money worldwide and empower people to become millionaires.The CEO and Founder of Live Out Loud, Inc. – a multinational organization — Loral relentlessly and candidly shares her best advice without hesitation or apology. What sets her apart from other wealth experts is her innate ability to recognize and acknowledge the skills & talents of people, inspiring them to generate wealth.She has created, nurtured, and perfected a 3-5 year strategy to make millions for the “Average Jill and Joe.” To date, she and her team have served thousands of individuals worldwide and created hundreds of...

About Steve Kraus:Steve Kraus is a partner at Bessemer in the Cambridge office and a world-renowned healthcare investor. He is the author of Bessemer's 10 Laws of Healthcare,  Benchmarks for Growing Health tech Businesses, and is a co-host of A Healthy Dose podcast. Steve currently sits on the boards of Bright Health Group, Headspace Health, Groups, Qventus, AspenRx, HouseRx, Oshi Health, Folx Health, Mural Health, Alcresta and US Health Partners.Prior to joining Bessemer, Steve worked for a growth-stage, private equity firm and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. He has also worked on several different political campaigns throughout his career.He serves as an Observer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an advisor to Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard Business School's Center for Entrepreneurship, and on the investment committees of BCBS Massachusetts and Rock Health.Steve graduated from summa cum laude from Yale University and earned his MBA from Harvard, where he was a Baker Scholar.Things You'll Learn:With a dedicated healthcare practice for over 40 years, Bessemer brings a unique advantage by integrating partners with diverse industry expertise and networks. This approach allows them to make strategic investments in various industries, including healthcare, software as a service, fintech, consumer, and crypto.The Intersection of Healthcare and AI: One of the fascinating topics discussed is how Bessemer leverages the convergence of healthcare and AI.By combining Bessemer's healthcare team's knowledge with a deep AI team, they have built one of the most extensive portfolios in healthcare AI today. This focus on innovation and emerging technologies positions them to tap into the potential of AI to drive down costs, improve outcomes, and revolutionize the healthcare industry.Navigating the Current Landscape: With recent economic challenges, including market downturns and valuation adjustments, the VC industry has faced some headwinds. However, Steve Krause highlights that the current valuation reset has created opportunities for investors.Steve emphasizes that the healthcare sector, in particular, holds immense potential, and as the public markets open up, the next cohort of healthcare tech companies will emerge, propelling the industry forward.Resources:Connect with and follow Steve Kraus on LinkedIn.Follow Bessemer on LinkedIn and visit their website.

About Steve Kraus:Steve Kraus is a partner at Bessemer in the Cambridge office and a world-renowned healthcare investor. He is the author of Bessemer's 10 Laws of Healthcare,  Benchmarks for Growing Health tech Businesses, and is a co-host of A Healthy Dose podcast. Steve currently sits on the boards of Bright Health Group, Headspace Health, Groups, Qventus, AspenRx, HouseRx, Oshi Health, Folx Health, Mural Health, Alcresta and US Health Partners.Prior to joining Bessemer, Steve worked for a growth-stage, private equity firm and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. He has also worked on several different political campaigns throughout his career.He serves as an Observer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an advisor to Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard Business School's Center for Entrepreneurship, and on the investment committees of BCBS Massachusetts and Rock Health.Steve graduated from summa cum laude from Yale University and earned his MBA from Harvard, where he was a Baker Scholar.Things You'll Learn:With a dedicated healthcare practice for over 40 years, Bessemer brings a unique advantage by integrating partners with diverse industry expertise and networks. This approach allows them to make strategic investments in various industries, including healthcare, software as a service, fintech, consumer, and crypto.The Intersection of Healthcare and AI: One of the fascinating topics discussed is how Bessemer leverages the convergence of healthcare and AI.By combining Bessemer's healthcare team's knowledge with a deep AI team, they have built one of the most extensive portfolios in healthcare AI today. This focus on innovation and emerging technologies positions them to tap into the potential of AI to drive down costs, improve outcomes, and revolutionize the healthcare industry.Navigating the Current Landscape: With recent economic challenges, including market downturns and valuation adjustments, the VC industry has faced some headwinds. However, Steve Krause highlights that the current valuation reset has created opportunities for investors.Steve emphasizes that the healthcare sector, in particular, holds immense potential, and as the public markets open up, the next cohort of healthcare tech companies will emerge, propelling the industry forward.Resources:Connect with and follow Steve Kraus on LinkedIn.Follow Bessemer on LinkedIn and visit their website.

In this episode you will learn:00:00:00 - Introduction00:01:37 - Productivity of Agriculture in India00:05:34 - Why Manufacturing isn't where it's supposed to be00:06:54 - Opportunities for Tech Investment in Agriculture00:07:59 - Omnivore's Investment Focus00:09:27 - Life Sciences00:11:28 - Can ALT protein address protein deficiency in the Indian diet?00:13:52 - Structural Changes in Diet00:19:04 - Opportunities in Life Sciences00:23:05 - Policy Changes for Agriculture00:27:52 - Land Reforms and Digitization00:30:30 - Leasing Land00:33:34 - Entrepreneurial Talent in Agri Tech00:36:42 - Diverse Business Models in Agri Tech00:38:06 - IPOs in Agri Tech00:40:07 - Small Holder Farming00:41:23 - Drawing Wisdom from Rudyard KiplingAbout:Mark co-founded Omnivore with Jinesh Shah in 2010. Previously, Mark was the Executive Vice President (Strategy & Business Development) at Godrej Agrovet, one of India's foremost diversified agribusiness companies. At Godrej Agrovet, Mark was responsible for corporate strategy, M&A, R&D, and new business incubation.  Earlier in his career, Mark worked for Syngenta and PFM.  He earned a BA (Honors) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.

Courtney Leimkuhler is the co-founder and managing partner of Springbank Collective, an early-stage investment firm focused on building the infrastructure to close the gender gap. By investing in companies creating the tools, technology, and services that support women and working families, Springbank's goal is to catalyze the new care economy and the future of inclusive work.   Before founding Springbank, Courtney was the Chief Financial Officer of Marsh, the world's leading corporate insurance broker with 35,000 employees in over 100 countries. Previously, Courtney spent a decade at the New York Stock Exchange from pre-IPO through the sale of the public company in 2013. She served as a member of the Management Committee and the Head of Corporate Strategy and M&A during a transformational period for the company and the global exchange industry. Courtney began her career at Goldman Sachs.   Courtney serves as a board member or advisor to several fintech and insurtech companies, including New Front, Orchard, Coverwallet (sold to Aon in 2020), Betterment, and Asta Capital.   Courtney is a graduate of Harvard College summa cum laude and Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar. Courtney and her husband live in New York City with their two daughters.   In this episode of Takin' Care of Lady Business®, Jennifer Justice speaks with Courtney Leimkuhler, a seasoned professional with a background in financial services began her career at Goldman Sachs, gaining valuable experience in electronic trading, fintech, and regulatory matters. However, she decided to take a year off to travel and reflect on her career goals, giving her a unique perspective on navigating career paths and taking risks. Courtney believes in letting go of the idea that there is a specific path or set of boxes to check off to achieve success. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of being prepared to make the best of whatever opportunities come along and being open to alternative ways of acquiring skills. Her experiences, from starting in a traditional role at Goldman Sachs to co-founding Spring Bank, a company focused on building better childcare and making paid leave universal, have taught her the value of embracing flexibility, seizing unexpected opportunities, and adaptability.   Here is what to expect on this week's show: Learn the importance of trusting your instincts when making career decisions. Discover why you should be adaptable and willing to take calculated risks to achieve career growth. Why you should align your career decisions with societal challenges and find ways to make a positive difference. Understand how to critically evaluate advice and make decisions based on your unique circumstances. Quotes: “We have massive problems to solve. I'm talking about one of them. But we have some really big societal challenges that I'd love to see more smart people with experience, without experience, engineering, everyone working together." - Courtney Leimkuhler   “My perception was like those practical and logistical supports were actually the main barrier and the way we worked was the problem." - Courtney Leimkuhler   "I think just sort of letting go very early on of this idea that there is a path and there's a specific set of boxes you're trying to check off has proved to be very valuable to me over the rest of my career." - Courtney Leimkuhler   “Nothing is objectively bad or good. It's sort of trying to understand what is the set of experiences that is leading to this piece of advice and do I think that those sets of experiences are actually relevant to me in this circumstance." - Courtney Leimkuhler   This episode is sponsored by Medjet. Medjet is the top-rated air medical transport and crisis response membership for travelers. If you're hospitalized while traveling or your safety is threatened abroad, they get you home. Join Medjet before your next trip at Medjet.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vikram Gandhi is a Professor at Harvard Business School, where he co-pioneered their Sustainable Investing Course, “Investing: Risk, Return & Impact.” The course won the 2021 Teaching Recognition Award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education from the Financial Times. He is also a Visiting Faculty member at Tsinghua University. Vikram Gandhi is a Founding Partner at Asha Ventures, an Indian-focused impact investment fund, and a Senior Advisor to The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Growth for Good Acquisition Corporation, a Climate Tech SPAC, which recently merged with ZeroNox, a leader in commercial and industrial vehicle electrification. Prior to his teaching and investing endeavors, Vikram Gandhi was a Global Investment Banking executive for 25 years with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. He graduated from the University of Mumbai and Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar. He is also a Chartered Accountant. Check out the Climate Finance Podcast website for more information. Topics discussed: Vikram's career transition from being a Global Investment Banking Executive to teaching at Harvard Business School and initiating Climate Venture Investment firms. The process of an alumnus coming back to Harvard Business School as a faculty member and collaborating with Shawn Cole and George Seraphim to create an award-winning course. Growth Drivers of Sustainable and Impact Investing. Teaching Case Studies at Harvard Business School: Investment Banks Goldman Sachs: Making an Imprint in Impact Investing Morgan Stanley: Building Long-Term Sustainability Private Equity The Rise Fund: TPG Bets Big on Impact Public Markets Generation Investment Management Public Equities Impact Investing at BlackRock State Street—The Development and Growth of SHE Engagement and Activism Engine No.1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil JANA Partners: Impact through Activism? CalSTRS Takes on Gun Violence Corporate Finance TotalEnergies CVC Investment in Hyzon Motors The Ford Motor Company Green Bond Vikram´s Investment and Entrepreneurial Engagements Asha Impact Ventures Growth for Good Acquisition Corp - Sustainability SPAC Impact Investing Potential in India (Bullish India) Personal Advice to Investors, Young Professionals, and Students interested in Climate and Sustainable Finance and Investing. Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice. The interview took place on 1st June 2023.

Leadership expert, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer and bestselling author of Friendly Fire Scott A. Snook discusses what he's learned over his time in the military and academia about what it takes to lead. Snook, a decorated veteran and victim of friendly fire himself, studies these incidents of tragedy as a way to make sense of — and ultimately prevent — organizational dysfunction. Among other things, they discuss why every leadership program should cover “followership” and the art of managing up; how leaders fundamentally cannot control outcomes, and can only shift the odds; the importance of finding the right balance between high challenge and high support; and why ultimately, what leaders need most is self-awareness and self-acceptance — or, in other words, to be both socially intelligent and secure.       Learn about:   11:42 How Scott describes leadership 14:13 The deep connection between leadership and “followership” 19:00 The organizational lessons from a “friendly fire” incident 23:45 Why your core values are so critical for leaders 28:58 The worst attribute in a leader 29:52 The intersection of high performance, high support and high challenge 38:22 Scott's summary lessons for leaders       —  Scott A. Snook graduated with honors from West Point, earning the Royal Society of Arts Award for the most outstanding overall cadet in his class. Following graduation, he was commissioned in the US Army Corps of Engineers, where he served in various command and staff positions for over 22 years, earning the rank of Colonel before retiring in 2002. He has led soldiers in combat. Among his military decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Master Parachutist badge. He has an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he graduated with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar. Dr. Snook earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Organizational Behavior, winning the Sage-Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Award from the Academy of Management for his study of the Friendly Fire Shootdown in Northern Iraq. Until July of 2002, Colonel Snook served as an Academy Professor in the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department at the United States Military Academy. He also directed West Point's Center for Leadership and Organizations Research as well as its joint Master's Program in Leader Development. Scott's passion is to help others live more "meaning-full" lives. More specifically, he is interested in unpacking and understanding transformational leader (human) development experiences --how to make the most out of life's curriculum, as well as how to create high-leverage/high-impact interventions to accelerate the growth of leaders. Professor Snook's book Friendly Fire was selected by the Academy of Management to receive the 2002 Terry Award as the most influential book on managerial thinking published during the past two years. He has also co-authored a book that explores the role of "common sense" in leadership titled, Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life (2000) and co-edited The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being (2011). Most recently, he co-authored The Discover Your True North Fieldbook (2015), which is the primary text for “Authentic Leader Development,” the popular MBA elective he has taught for over 10 years. Professor Snook has shared his leadership insights in formal executive education programs at Harvard and with numerous corporate audiences around the world.   ABOUT LET GO & LEAD   Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change.  Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.     Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.    ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD   At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For almost 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future. We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership, and employee engagement. Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.      Full episodes also available on:       Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525       Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A       Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXRnb2xlYWQubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M      —      Gagen MacDonald is a strategy execution consulting firm that specializes in employee engagement, culture change and leadership development. Learn more at http://www.gagenmacdonald.com. 

Rick and Kaleem have a fun chat with Brian Elliott, Executive Leader and the former SVP and Executive Director of Slack's Future Forum. Brian is a graduate of Northwestern University and a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School. After a brief moment of wondering how we could share the same room with Brian, we quickly learned he is not only a brilliant mind but a cool cat with a great sense of humor.Despite his impressive education and professional experience, Brian's goal is really very simple: to make work better for everyone. The world has moved past financial and physical capital as the determinants of success. Business challenges and competitive advantages in this century come down to people: how you attract and retain diverse talent, align them against a common purpose that engages them fully, and enable them to act with agility to achieve great things.Learn More About Brianhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/belliott/ https://futureforum.com/ 

In Part Three, Avanish and Allan discuss: The evolution of monetization models (3:00) Understanding the three buckets of  tech partner monetization (6:45) How Procore's model resulted in much higher levels of adoption and engagement, and a much higher orientation around how to make the magic happen (10:50)How to turn ISVs from  flavor-adders to the meal, into the whole meal (16:34)Allan's favorite monetization model: the reciprocity or reciprocal model (20:37) Bringing it all back  to sourced revenue attribution (28:14) The importance of finding lagging and leading indications (30:33)Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge PartnersAllan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.Host: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guests, Allan AdlerFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark 

Umaimah Mendhro is the Founder of VIDA, a global platform offering unique, sustainable, and beautifully design-driven products that aim to positively impact people's lives and overall well-being. Umaimah grew up in rural Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - with no access to formal education most of her life - but a deep passion for design and art and a drive to make a difference in the world. She paved her way to Cornell University and later Harvard Business School, and built a career in technology, working with a highly select portfolio of game-changing tech companies and managing and growing million dollar businesses. Umaimah is also the Founder of thedreamfly.org, a global initiative connecting communities in conflict around common causes with presence across four countries touching over 5,000 lives. dreamfly kickstarts seed initiatives that are 100% financially sustainable within one year.Currently, Umaimah is the Founder and President of One League, a global education institution connecting the world's highest potential talent with the world's best opportunities by offering an Ivy League Plus quality education, irrespective of financial means. Umaimah has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar, and a BSc from Cornell University in Human Development with coursework in Computer Science.In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:00] Intro[01:04] The types of products Vida brings to market[02:15] The idea of VIDA goes way back[02:56] Creating her own products initially[03:58] Noticing the divide between creators and brands[05:04] The impetus of VIDA[06:16] How Umaimah got started with VIDA[08:25] How VIDA achieved product-market fit[10:01] How VIDA takes advantage of economies of scale[11:34] Sponsor: Electric Eye electriceye.io/connect[12:30] Sponsor: JSON-LD for SEO jsonld.app[14:15] How VIDA does “digital manufacturing”[15:02] Getting customers for VIDA's designers[15:55] COVID affecting VIDA's manufacturing process[18:25] VIDA pivoting to health care because of COVID[19:30] Other health-related products developed during COVID[21:25] How VIDA products evolved over time[22:45] Investing in education and empowermentResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeA collaboration between designers and makers around the world that brings original, inspiring apparel and accessories to you - creating beauty every step of the way shopvida.comConnect with Umaimah linkedin.com/in/umaimahTake the first step towards Shopify success electriceye.io/connectGet your free structured data audit for your store jsonld.appIf you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

In this HCI Podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Bill George about his book, True North: Emerging Leader Edition. Bill George (https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamwgeorge/) is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. Bill is the author of: Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field book, Authentic Leadership, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis True North, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic. He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College and Bryant University. Part of the LinkedIn Podcast Network #LinkedInPresents Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon and leaving a review wherever you listen to your podcasts! Check out FindLaw at FindLaw.com. Check out Shopify at www.shopify.com/hci. Check out the HCI Academy: Courses, Micro-Credentials, and Certificates to Upskill and Reskill for the Future of Work! Check out the LinkedIn Alchemizing Human Capital Newsletter. Check out Dr. Westover's book, The Future Leader. Check out Dr. Westover's book, 'Bluer than Indigo' Leadership. Check out Dr. Westover's book, The Alchemy of Truly Remarkable Leadership. Check out the latest issue of the Human Capital Leadership magazine. Each HCI Podcast episode (Program, ID No. 592296) has been approved for 0.50 HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR™, aPHRi™, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi™ and SPHRi™ recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®). Each HCI Podcast episode (Program ID: 24-DP529) has been approved for 0.50 HR (General) SHRM Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCPHR recertification through SHRM, as part of the knowledge and competency programs related to the SHRM Body of Applied Skills and Knowledge™ (the SHRM BASK™). Human Capital Innovations has been pre-approved by the ATD Certification Institute to offer educational programs that can be used towards initial eligibility and recertification of the Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) and Associate Professional in Talent Development (APTD) credentials. Each HCI Podcast episode qualifies for a maximum of 0.50 points. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Part Two, Avanish and Allan discuss: Understanding taxation, reciprocal, and mutuality models (3:30) The role of NRR and ARR (7:27)The “stickiness” justification when monetizing tech partnerships (9:30) Understanding universal success models (12:00) Hyperscalers (14:01) Why your go-to-market or the go-to-eco motion has to be multi-threaded(20:50) Why Allan likes to look at the journey of go-to-eco very similarly to the journey of making a product(24:30) Understanding that is incumbent on partner leaders to recognize that partner operations is not a “nice to have.”(30:29)Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge PartnersAllan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.Host: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guests, Allan AdlerFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark

Avanish and Allan unpack a wide range of topics to kick off this series, including:Why tech partnerships harness so much power (3:42) The role tech partnerships play between channel and alliances (5:43) The commercial envelope concept and what it means for technology partners (8:02) Distinguishing between the strategy and the platform business model (10:34) Going to market directly vs. going to market through an ecosystem (12:00) Where does the customer fit in? (15:40) Why is digital transformation happening, and what does it mean for customers? (20:26) The important CEO to CPO conversation that needs to be had (24:13) And much more!Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge PartnersAllan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.Host: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guests, Allan AdlerFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark

Welcome to Valuable Conversations with the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. On this episode, Ph.D. student Nai Kalema and MPA alumni Justin Beirold talk to IIPP Visiting Professor of Practice, Damon Silvers. For over 30 years, Damon has been a leading voice in the US labour movement. He tells Justin and Nai how he got involved in labour activism during the dining hall worker strikes and anti-apartheid protests when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. He talks about how the labour movement has changed over his career, and how we are now at a crucial inflection point for aligning the objectives of unions, environmental activism, and innovation policy. As Damon is also a scholar of constitutional law, he also provides a lengthy explanation of the recent right-wing supreme court rulings in the US, and how we might be able to overcome them. This is a long interview - the longest we have done so far on this podcast. But it is also a really good conversation! So rather than cutting it into pieces, we've provided a few time stamps so you can skip around if you desire. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Damon Silvers! ******* - 3 min 40 sec: Damon's life journey, undergraduate labour activism. - 29 min 30 sec: the anti-apartheid movement - 35 minutes: How Damon started working for unions - 44 min 30 sec: The past, present, and future of the organised labour - 59 min 30 sec: Joining IIPP, and his lectures on "Climate Change, innovation, and the labour movement." - 1 hr 33 min: The US Supreme Court rulings of Summer 2022 ********Guest Bio: Damon A. Silvers a Visiting Professor in Labour Markets and Innovation at the UCL IIPP. He is on sabbatical from the AFL-CIO where is has served as the Director of Policy and Special Counsel for the AFL-CIO. He joined the AFL-CIO as Associate General Counsel in 1997. From 2008 to 2011, Mr. Silvers served as the Deputy Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Mr. Silvers has also served on the Treasury Department's Financial Research Advisory Committee, as the Chair of the Competition Subcommittee of the United States Treasury Department Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession and as a member of the United States Treasury Department Investor's Practice Committee of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. Mr. Silvers led the successful efforts to restore pensions to the retirees of Cannon Mills lost in the Executive Life collapse and the severance owed to laid off Enron and WorldCom workers following the collapse of those companies. He served from 2003 to 2006 as pro bono Counsel to the Chairman of ULLICO, Inc. and in that capacity led the successful effort to recover over $50 million related to improperly paid executive compensation. Mr. Silvers received his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School. He received his M.B.A. with high honors from Harvard Business School and is a Baker Scholar. Mr. Silvers is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude, and has studied history at Kings College, Cambridge University. Recorded in Summer 2022 *******-Check out Damon's IIPP lectures on Labour, Innovation, and Climate Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u34XWAmzeJ0 -Blog: "The End of the Roberts Court" https://damonsilvers.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-roberts-court -Follow Damon on Twitter:@DamonSilvers -See Damon's full bio: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/people/damon-silvers Learn about our hosts: - Justin Beirold - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/justin-beirold - Nai Kalema - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/nai-lee-kalema -Follow IIPP on Twitter: @IIPP_UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/ -Production and music by Justin Beirold

How do you go from being literally dirt poor to becoming a serial entrepreneur responsible for founding, investing in, or serving on the board of over 100 companies? How can an eagerness to learn and serve shape your life in a way that influences local and global communities for the better?  Listen as our guest shares his path from a subsistence farm life to one filled with “FinTech” and “Impact investing,” the importance of knowing what you are good at and creating a dream team to handle the rest, and how a willingness to serve can open doors to amazing opportunities for growth.    Wade T. Myers, a serial entrepreneur, advisor, investor, author, and speaker, has turned a lifetime of learning into a multi-faceted career that impacts local and global communities. Growing up on a subsistence farm in North Dakota, Wade worked his way through intermediate grades, high school, and college while also enlisting in the Army Reserves. After graduating, Wade went active duty in the Army Corps of Engineers before volunteering for Ranger School, ultimately completing Airborne training and then commanding a special weapons unit. Ever in pursuit of knowledge, Wade decided to get a graduate degree in Computer Information Systems while on active duty. When he left active duty, he was recruited to work at Mobil Corporation in their plastics division until he was called up to serve in the Gulf War, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. Upon returning home, Wade knew that he wanted to buy or start a company so to learn how to do so he attended Harvard Business School and graduated with an MBA as a Baker Scholar.  Following a post-graduate stint with the prestigious Boston Consulting Group, Wade started his career as a serial entrepreneur.  Since then, Wade has founded, invested in, or served on the board of over 100 companies. In addition to his own entrepreneurship, Wade has an advisory focus to help startup entrepreneurs achieve their vision. Wade is also a featured speaker at conferences and has taught seminars at business schools. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University, a Master's degree in Computer Information Systems from Texas A&M University Central Texas, and an MBA as a Baker Scholar at Harvard. He has five children and currently lives with his wife, Lisa, in Westover Hills, Texas. Bigger Than Business is the show where you'll discover real-world stories of business owners living their purpose. You'll encounter men and women all over the world who draw strength from understanding why they do what they do and how they remain true to that purpose through the ups and downs every business owner will face. www.thecapitalchartroom.com

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova.    In the search for life's purpose, Bill George has an authentic perspective. His brilliant insight hones in on the characteristics needed to shape the next generation of leaders, inspiring others through courage, empathy, and vision for the future. In his latest remastering of the subject, The Emerging Leaders Edition of North, Bill explores the topic of leadership with top executives of the business world with honest conversation about their fears, failures, and ultimately how they overcame those hardships and emerged successful.   Bill George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic.  He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004.     Bill is the author of: Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field book, Authentic Leadership, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis True North, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic. He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College and Bryant University.        THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR…  emerging leaders and seasoned professionals alike who wish to find their purpose and lead with their hearts full of passion and courage.    TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… the real magic happens when business leaders, employees, and customers alike can align their values with the values of the business. This creates genuine value for the company and inspires the public view of your brand.      WHAT  I  LOVE  MOST… Bill has a practical approach to leadership that involves empathy from the bottom up. In his view, the only way to be a successful leader is understanding the needs of workers across all levels of the business spectrum to create a sense of belonging and inclusion.     Running time: 30:36 Subscribe on iTunes      Find Tiffani on social:  Facebook  Twitter LinkedIn Instagram   Find Bill on social: Website Facebook Twitter LinkedIn   Brian's Book: True North Emerging Leader Edition

Nihar Bobba hosts Seema Amble, a partner focused on fintech investments at a16z. She primarily focuses on B2B fintech, such as payments, CFO tools, and vertical software, globally. She serves on the boards of Mvmnt and Stoik. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Seema had been investing in fintech for over a decade. She was a vice president at Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, a venture growth fund, where she focused on leading investments in fintech and Latin America. Previously, she worked at LeapFrog Investments, an emerging markets fund, and at Altamont Capital Partners. She began her career at Blackstone. Seema also worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while in law school. Seema has a BA in Economics, magna cum laude, and a JD/MBA from Harvard University, where she was a Baker Scholar. In this episode you will hear about: - Seema's path into fintech - Her thoughts on fintech business models in emerging markets - Why she's excited about b2b payments, and a whole lot more

Welcome to an episode with Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. He has written two of the most enduring leadership classics of all time: Authentic Leadership and True North. Now, Bill has written a new book aimed at the next generation of leaders, the Emerging Leaders Edition of True North, coauthored with millennial entrepreneur Zach Clayton. Get Bill's new book here. This book is a clarion call to emerging leaders to step up to lead their organizations with their hearts, not just their heads, as authentic leaders who lead with purpose by inspiring and coaching their teammates. It heralds the end of the baby boomer era of Jack Welch, when too many leaders focused on maximizing shareholder value and taking shortcuts rather than building sustainable enterprises to serve all of their stakeholders. Our best hope for a better world is to empower the next generation of emerging leaders – not just those on top – to follow their True North to make this world better for everyone. The stories in this book, which came from 220 interviews with exceptional leaders, illustrate that most authentic leaders first discovered their True North through their life stories and crucibles, developed self-awareness, and then found their North Star – the purpose of their leadership. Wisdom learned from leaders like Satya Nadella, Mary Barra, Ken Frazier, Indra Nooyi, Ursula Burns, and Hubert Joly will guide emerging leaders at all levels in their development. Bill joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field Book, Authentic Leadership, Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic.  He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, and Bryant University.  True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition. Bill George & Zach Clayton. Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Tina Bou-Saba is Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner at Verity Venture Partners, an early-stage consumer-focused investment firm. Verity Venture Partners invests in purpose-driven entrepreneurs who are building the next generation of great consumer companies, including emerging brands and the technologies that enable them. Tina has been actively investing since 2016 through CXT Investments, her personal investment vehicle, with a focus on beauty, personal care, health and wellness, e-commerce, and enabling technology. Tina is a problem solver, creative and independent thinker, and trusted partner to entrepreneurs, with sharp instincts for commercial opportunities. After starting her career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, she covered retail as an equity analyst at Sanford Bernstein and Berman Capital, and has broad knowledge of the industry from mass to specialty to e-commerce. As a member of the strategy team at Victoria's Secret, Tina worked closely with VS leadership to commercialize new business opportunities, and led extensive quantitative and qualitative customer research. She attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/skincareanarchy/message

Former Medtronic CEO and current professor, Bill George shares foundational principles for excelling as a leader in today's world of work. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) What a “true north” is and why it's so critical 2) The top three distractions leaders must overcome 3) Powerful questions to clarify your purpose Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep812 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT BILL — Bill George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. Bill is the author of: Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field book, Authentic Leadership, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis True North, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic. He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College and Bryant University. • Book: True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership • Book: True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Researcher: Richard Davidson• Book: Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge • Past episode: 371: The Keys That Make a Great Team with Don YaegerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Upasana Unni is the Chief Commercial Officer of Sayata, a marketplace where wholesale brokers can find small business insurance from multiple carriers in just a few minutes. Upasana oversees market partnerships and carrier relationships and says insurance remains a relationships business, with people on the phone. Insurance remains a very relationship-driven place, needing well-respected voices making the calls to place business. She does not see a zero-touch digital-only experience being possible in more complex insurance areas like commercial and speciality lines. Brokers need support on the 20% of policies that do not fly through the underwriting/renewal process, and to learn where to place policies in speciality markets like cyber.  In the current state of insurtech evolution, insurance carriers still own the product and MGA insurtechs' own distribution. Carriers have tried to launch or buy their own marketplaces, but there is a disincentive to list on that marketplace if you are an agent who does not work with that carrier and seek truly neutral offers. They tend to buy marketplaces that do not have a profitable, growth-ready customer acquisition process.  Upasana sees tremendous growth opportunity for marketplaces. There are many more uninsured risks to cover today, for example how could insurers cover an invasion, which is considered uninsurable much the same as cyber risk was ten years ago. Upasana sees a future evolving where insurtech MGAs are acquiring their own capital and becoming full-stack insurers. Upasana is actively seeking candidates in various roles at Sayata so get in touch with her to find out more! Previously, Upasana spent 10 years at McKinsey & Co. as an Associate Partner guiding blue-chip insurers to develop digital strategies and build platforms for digital risk placement. Upasana served over a dozen carriers on topics ranging from board strategy, portfolio optimization, capital strategy, and operating model transformation. Upasana is a graduate of Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar and holds a Bachelor's, magna cum laude, from Harvard College. Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 274, an episode with Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. He has written two of the most enduring leadership classics of all time: Authentic Leadership and True North. Now, Bill has written a new book aimed at the next generation of leaders, the Emerging Leaders Edition of True North, coauthored with millennial entrepreneur Zach Clayton. Get Bill's new book here.   This book is a clarion call to emerging leaders to step up to lead their organizations with their hearts, not just their heads, as authentic leaders who lead with purpose by inspiring and coaching their teammates. It heralds the end of the baby boomer era of Jack Welch, when too many leaders focused on maximizing shareholder value and taking shortcuts rather than building sustainable enterprises to serve all of their stakeholders. Our best hope for a better world is to empower the next generation of emerging leaders – not just those on top – to follow their True North to make this world better for everyone.   The stories in this book, which came from 220 interviews with exceptional leaders, illustrate that most authentic leaders first discovered their True North through their life stories and crucibles, developed self-awareness, and then found their North Star – the purpose of their leadership. Wisdom learned from leaders like Satya Nadella, Mary Barra, Ken Frazier, Indra Nooyi, Ursula Burns, and Hubert Joly will guide emerging leaders at all levels in their development.   Bill joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field Book, Authentic Leadership, Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic.    He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, and Bryant University.    True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition. Bill George & Zach Clayton.   Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Sharing his philosophy and process for owning great businesses is Cory Whitaker, Founder, and CIO at Bowie Capital, who, like the legendary Peter Lynch, articulates clarity, passion, and conviction, even going back to his early teens when he bought Nike and still owns to this day.  Cory launched Bowie Capital Management in 2014, serves as an advisory director for Petrus Trust Company, the trustee for the Perot family's trusts, and serves on the advisory board of the Terry Foundation. He has over 25 years of personal and professional investing experience across all major asset classes. Prior to founding Bowie, Cory was the portfolio manager for public equities and sourced/ executed private equity and debt investments at Perot Investments. Prior to Perot, he worked in New York as an investment associate with J.P. Morgan Partners in private equity and as an investment banking analyst with Citigroup.  Cory was born in Bowie, Texas, hence the name of his firm. He graduated summa cum laude from Texas A&M University where he attended as a Terry Scholar and earned a BBA in Accounting and MS in Finance. He was active in the Corps of Cadets and student government. Cory also earned his MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School where he was designated a Baker Scholar and awarded the John Loeb Fellowship as the top finance graduate. He is also a CFA Charterholder. Disclaimer: All podcast discussions represent only the views and opinions of the host and guests. This podcast in no way constitutes investment advice and is not an offer to buy or sell any products or services. 

For the past thirty years David J. Collis has been a professor at the Harvard Business School, where he was only the second ever full-time Adjunct Professor appointed, having also completed five years as the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Business Administration at the Yale School of Management and two years as a professor at Columbia Business School. The winner of the 50th Anniversary McKinsey Award for the best article in the Harvard Business Review in 2008, and a Harvard Business Review best-selling author, he is an expert on corporate strategy and global competition, and is the author of the recent books International Strategy: Context, Concepts and Choices; Corporate Strategy (with Cynthia Montgomery); and Corporate Headquarters (with Michael Goold and David Young). As the author of over thirty articles and book chapters, his work has been frequently published in the Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and in many books including Managing the Multibusiness Company, International Competitiveness, and Beyond Free Trade. The over one hundred cases and articles he has authored have sold nearly 2.5 million copies, with over 14,000 citations. David Collis received an M.A. (1976) with a Double First from Cambridge University where he was the Wrenbury Scholar of the University. He graduated as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, MBA (1978), and received a Ph.D. (1986) in Business Economics at Harvard University where he was a Dean's Doctoral Fellow. From 1978 to 1982 he worked for the Boston Consulting Group in London. He is currently a consultant to several major U.S. corporations, and on the Board of Directors of Cambridge in America, the Board of Trustees of the Hult International Business School, and the Advisory Boards of Vivaldi Partners, Muzzy Lane and formerly of Walter Scott, PICIS, Ocean Spray, and WebCT. He is also the cofounder of the elearning company E-Edge, and the advisory firm Ludlow Partners. Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/david-collis/ for the original video interview.  

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. This week we had the man, the myth, the legend Ram Charan on the show to talk about his business consulting experience. Ram is a world-renowned business advisor, author, and speaker who has spent the past 40 years working with many top companies, CEOs, and boards of our time. Fortune magazine has called him "the most influential consultant alive." Ram began his business education early in his life while working in the family shoe shop in northern India. As a young engineer, his bosses recognized his business talent and encouraged him to develop it. He went on to earn MBA and doctorate degrees from Harvard Business School, where he graduated with high distinction and was a Baker Scholar. He has written over 30 books that have sold more than 4 million copies in more than a dozen languages. Three were Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and Execution, co-authored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy, spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.  THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR…  business leaders that are looking to hone in on a clear, decisive strategy for goal setting and achievement in the workplace. TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… What does it mean for a company to have a successful growth period? Well, that actually depends on the context of historical past data used as a baseline comparison to metrics from the current year. Success must be measurable, and by using “key performance indicators” we can set our own definitions of success and begin to determine for ourselves just what it means to be successful.  WHAT I LOVE MOST… During the hiring process, managers are looking to select the right person for the job, but Ram insightfully flips the question and asks if the job is right for the person. Sometimes people aren't able to showcase their full talents in certain roles, and can really come alive if you put them in the right conditions.   Running time: 37:42 Subscribe on iTunes     Find Tiffani on social: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn   Find Ram online: Official Website Twitter LinkedIn   Ram's Book: Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier

Randy Shumway founded Cicero Group (www.cicerogroup.com) in 2001. It began humbly, with fourpeople working out of Randy's house. Today, Cicero has grown to a highly respected, global managementconsulting firm, rated one of the globe's top 50 overall consulting firms, and one of the five bestconsulting firms in the world to work for, with offices located across the United States.In 2016, Randy was awarded Utah's CEO of the Year and in 2017, Randy was recognized with Utah'sLifetime Accomplishment award.Randy's vision in founding the company was for Cicero to reside at the crossroads of data, strategy, andtransformation, with Cicero helping organizations – both traditional for-profit operations as well as non-profit and educational institutions – make and implement better, evidence-based decisions.During his 21 years at Cicero, Randy has led multiple strategy, transformation and operational excellenceengagements for Fortune 1000 clients as well as non-profits and government entities. His experiencespans such sectors as High Tech, Telecommunications, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Financial Services,Non-Profit, Government, and Education.Prior to starting Cicero, Randy was an Executive Vice President and Managing Director at Answerthink(Nasdaq: ANSR), a 2,500-person global consulting firm. Before completing graduate school, Randyworked for Bain & Company and Dow Chemical.From 2010 - 2019, Randy served as Economic Advisor to Zions Bank and as an Adjunct Professor ofStrategy at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business.Today, Randy serves on the University of Utah Board of Trustees and on the State of Utah HomelessBoard. He serves on two corporate boards, a publicly traded software company and a privately heldhospitality company, and multiple state and community volunteer, service-oriented boards. He is aprolific author in the Deseret News and in Forbes regarding effective education and economic publicpolicy.Randy obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School, graduating with highest academic honors(Baker Scholar). He earned bachelor's degrees in Business Management and in Political Science fromBrigham Young University. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, having lived in Taiwan for two years as avolunteer Christian missionary.Randy is married to Maureen Shumway and is the father of five. Maureen has a Bachelor of Science inNursing and a Master of Science in Early Childhood Development. She is a pediatric nurse at PrimaryChildren's Hospital and is currently completing her Doctor of Nurse Practitioner, Pediatrics at theUniversity of Utah. The Shumways live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Michael Graffeo, CEO of Fluidform, is a senior executive with a proven track record in the commercialization of innovative medical technology. Throughout his career, he has gained extensive experience translating highly complex devices and clinical data into successful businesses, both in the US and globally. Mike holds a BS in Engineering Physics and an M.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, as well as an MBA with high distinction (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School.

The HR department's priorities, processes, and tools have changed in the past couple of years. New research from TrustRadius, a popular review website for business technology, underscores the extent of the transformation and gives a glimpse of what lies ahead in 2022.Using data sourced from more than 700 HR pros across the country, the 2022 HR Trends Report breaks down some of the biggest trends on the horizon for HR departments and the workplace in general, from the continued impact of The Great Resignation and technology's role in DEI efforts to work-life balance and spending forecasting.Joining Bill on the HRchat show to talk about the findings is Vinay Bhagat, founder and CEO of TrustRadius, a site helping buyers make better product decisions based on unbiased and insightful reviews. Questions Include:Tell us about TrustRadius' 2022 HR Trends Report: why it was conducted, the demographics of respondents, and who the findings are aimed at. What findings from TrustRadius's recent 2022 HR Trends Report do you find most interesting and why? Was there anything from the report that surprised you?What are your thoughts on the “Great Resignation” and how do you think companies can position themselves for success amidst ongoing talent shortages?  How do you see DEI investments and efforts expanding in 2022 and beyond? Which vendors are doing a good job helping to provide solutions for rollout, adoption etc? More About VinayVinay is an entrepreneur passionate about improving the software buying process so professionals like HR teams can make better decisions for their organizations. Vinay started TrustRadius after experiencing challenges when buying enterprise solutions at his last company. In 1999, Vinay founded Convio, the leading Software as a Services platform for nonprofits. In April 2010, Convio became a public company, and was acquired in May 2012 for $325 million. Prior to Convio, Vinay was at Trilogy Software and Bain & Company. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar, an MS Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University, and a MA Engineering Information Sciences from Cambridge University with First Class Honors. When he's not working, Vinay loves spending time with his family, playing squash and racing cars.We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast, and Iceni Media Inc.  

A special Spring Meeting edition of ULI Toronto's 12th annual Fireside Chat took place in 2020 with Gary Berman, President & Chief Executive Officer, Director, Tricon. Since joining Tricon in 2002, Mr. Berman has built on the company's 30+ year history of innovation and continuous improvement to help transform Tricon from a private provider of equity and mezzanine capital to the for-sale housing industry to a publicly listed, residential real estate company with a clear focus on rental housing in North America. Tricon is the third-largest public owner of single-family rental homes in the U.S. and recently acquired a major portfolio of multi-family properties in the U.S. sunbelt. The Selby, the first of Tricon's purpose-built rental buildings in Toronto, was FRPO's Residential Development of the Year in 2019. Mr. Berman is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and serves on the Board of Governors of the Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, where he was designated a Baker Scholar and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University.

Martha Notaras serves as Independent Director of the Company. Ms. Notaras is Managing Partner at Brewer Lane Ventures. Prior to joining Brewer Lane, Ms. Notaras was a Partner at XL Innovate, investing in insurtech, including startups focused on data & analytics and new business models. XL Innovate's investments include Lemonade, Embroker, New Energy Risk, Notion, Cape Analytics, Slice Labs, Pillar Technologies and Stonestep. Ms. Notaras served on the boards of: Cape Analytics, which leverages geospatial imagery, computer vision, and machine learning to deliver more accurate property data; Pillar Technologies, an end-to-end environmental monitoring solution to reduce risk at construction sites and in commercial buildings; GeoQuant, creator of a revolutionary platform for measuring political risk in real time, using machine learning; and Notion, an IoT home awareness solution provider, which reduces risk for insurers and homeowners. Ms. Notaras continues as a board observer at Cape Analytics and Pillar Technologies. Previously, Ms. Notaras ran corporate development for DMG Information, the business data and analytics division of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc. Of the 20 investments Ms. Notaras made at DMG Information, two achieved valuations over $1 billion. Ms. Notaras has served as board director for many early and growth stage companies focusing on fintech, insurtech, proptech, edtech and digital media. Ms. Notaras's prior experience includes investment banking at Merrill Lynch and commercial banking at Credit Suisse. Ms. Notaras earned her A.B. cum laude from Princeton University and her MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar, awarded for graduating in the top five percent of the class.   Highlights from the Show Martha Notaras is a venture capital investor who started investing in data and analytics companies over 25 years ago, including RMS when it was still very small Having focused on later stage companies, she shifted to earlier stage companies when Tom Hutton, who had been the CEO at RMS, went to XL to launch their CVC, XL Innovate, and asked Martha to join right before the wave of InsurTech (or the word) took off Some of their investments included companies like Lemonade, Zendrive, Cape Analytics, Emrboker and Slide Labs This gave Martha great insight into what makes selling into insurance so tough and what having insurers as your customers means At XL Innovate, Martha and the team focused on P&C, while her move to her current firm, Brewer Lane, has allowed her to look across P&C, Life, Health and solutions around all of those spaces and FinTech, too Brewer Lane also takes an earlier stage focus, which has been fun because it allows Martha to engage in things when they're still forming rather than when so much is already fixed, as it can be with later stage companies, allowing for investors to be able to pull more levers to help the business When funding is so plentiful, as it is today, what the VC offers is so much more important than when money is tighter as you can really look for a better fit in your investor BL has a framework for selecting investments in InsurTech and FinTech, with four kinds of companies Engagement Layer - companies that reach out to customers as their primary business, like Hi Marley Risk & Analytics - things that drive better risk selection, understanding and decision making around it, like Cape Analytics (for jer fifth time) and Codoxo Infrastructure - core systems, like Socotra Disruptors - could be disrupting all of these categories and more, like Ladder Life, Brella and Cowbell Cyber For some of these disruptors, how do you know early on whether they have a real, robust platform that has legs? Martha shares how they looked at investments like Ladder, and how they looked for decisions Day 1 on how they can underwrite better As a VC, you can't have a single view of the future, so you need to place a few bets on different teams and operating plans that have the ability to scale One thing they're seeing is a lot of companies building APIs, especially for connecting agents, and marketplaces to connect different insurance products to other sales avenues As a VC, Martha thinks about scale - how much can your top line scale, and is it going to be enough to have an impact on the market When you are going after a large market, you have to believe you are doing something special, and that you can communicate that The quality and relationship of the founding team really matters, and was a hard thing to judge when things shifted to Zoom because you can't always read how people are interacting, interrupting, supporting, challenging, etc As advice for founders, Martha thinks you need to be sure your team doesn't just agree – you need diversity to push you outside of your comfort zone She also says you should really talk to everyone – ask questions, learn and grow This episode is brought to you by Hi Marley (himarley.com), and by the the book series, The Future of Insurance: From Disruption to Evolution by Bryan Falchuk (future-of-insurance.com). Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes. Music courtesy of UPbeat Music, available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google Play. Just search for "UPbeat Music"

Paul Mango was the Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2019-2021. During this time, he served as Secretary Azar's formal liaison to Operation Warp Speed where he was involved in nearly all strategic, operational, and financial aspects of the program, and facilitated its day-to-day activities among the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and the White House.   Prior to his role as Deputy Chief of Staff, Paul served from 2018-2019 as the Chief of Staff at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He started his professional career as a field artillery officer in the United States Army, serving both in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC, and the 8th Infantry Division in Germany. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in General Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1981, where he graduated as a Distinguished Cadet. He received his Master's in Business Administration from Harvard University in 1988, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.

The business author and journalist is a popular Today Show and CNBC contributor, as well as the author of the New York Times bestseller 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, a guide to values-driven decision making. Lately, Suzy has had shows on CNBC about careers, notably ‘Fix My Career: With Suzy Welch', and ‘Get To Work: With Suzy Welch', which get millions of views. She has also been a hands-on tech leader of an exciting music tech start-up (Quadio) which has 50 employees. Throughout her career, her view on leadership has changed and modernized. An assiduous writer and diary keeper since a young girl, Suzy always knew she wanted to work with storytelling and journalism. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, Suzy joined The Miami Herald as a reporter. At the newspaper, she was unexpectedly asked to cover a business conference, a world she knew nothing about but immediately fell in love with. She left daily journalism to attend Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar in 1988. She worked as a management consultant at Bain&Co. for several years before joining the Harvard Business Review, where she was named editor-in-chief in 2001. Suzy stepped down from the Harvard Business Review after becoming romantically involved with the famed business leader, Jack Welch. Jack and her have been happily married for the 13 years since. Between them, Jack and Suzy have 8 children – 4 each from previous marriages. Suzy and Jack form a real team, together they have written several books, a weekly column on business and career challenges that appeared in BusinessWeek magazine from 2005 to 2009, and founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, ranked as one of the top online MBA programs in the world. The Caring Economy made it onto FeedSpots Top 30 CSR Podcasts Don't forget to check out my book that inspired this podcast series, The Caring Economy: How to Win With Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/toby-usnik/support

About MatthewMatthew Prince is co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world's largest networks, which spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. Matthew is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, winner of the 2011 Tech Fellow Award, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law. Matthew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a George F. Baker Scholar and awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Illinois Bar, and earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago and B.A. in English Literature and Computer Science from Trinity College. He's also the co-creator of Project Honey Pot, the largest community of webmasters tracking online fraud and abuse.Links: Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com Blog post: https://blog.cloudflare.com/aws-egregious-egress/ Bandwidth Alliance: https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ Announcement of R2: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage/ Blog.cloudflare.com: https://blog.cloudflare.com Duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Writing ad copy to fit into a 30 second slot is hard, but if anyone can do it the folks at Quali can. Just like their Torque infrastructure automation platform can deliver complex application environments anytime, anywhere, in just seconds instead of hours, days or weeks. Visit Qtorque.io today and learn how you can spin up application environments in about the same amount of time it took you to listen to this ad.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards, while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other, which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at Honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability, it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. Today, my guest is someone I feel a certain kinship with, if for no other reason than I spend the bulk of my time antagonizing AWS incredibly publicly. And my guest periodically descends into the gutter with me to do the same sort of things. The difference is that I'm a loudmouth with a Twitter account and Matthew Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, which is, of course, publicly traded. Matthew, thank you for deigning to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Matthew: Corey, it's my pleasure, and appreciate you having me on.Corey: So, I'm mostly being facetious here, but not entirely, in that you have very publicly and repeatedly called out some of the same things I love calling out, which is AWS's frankly egregious egress pricing. In fact, that was a title of a blog post that you folks put out, and it was so well done I'm ashamed I didn't come up with it myself years ago. But it's something that is resonating with a large number of people in very specific circumstances as far as what their company does. Talk to me a little bit about that. Cloudflare is a CDN company and increasingly looking like something beyond that. Where do you stand on this? What got you on this path?Matthew: I was actually searching through really old emails to find something the other day, and I found a message from all the way back in 2009, so actually even before Michelle and I had come up with a name for Cloudflare. We were really just trying to understand the pricing on public clouds and breaking it all down. How much does the compute cost? How much does storage cost? How much does bandwidth cost?And we kept running the numbers over and over and over again, and the storage and compute costs actually seemed relatively reasonable and you could understand it, but the economics behind the bandwidth just made no sense. It was clear that as bandwidth usage grew and you got scale that your costs eventually effectively went to zero. And I think it was that insight that led to us starting Cloudflare. And the self-service plans at Cloudflare have always been unlimited bandwidth, and from the beginning, we didn't charge for bandwidth. People told us at the time we were crazy to not do that, but I think that that realization, that over time and at scale, bandwidth costs do go to zero is really core to who Cloudflare is.Cloudflare launched a little over 11 years ago now, and as we've watched the various public clouds and AWS in particular just really over that same 11 years not only not follow the natural price of bandwidth down, but really hold their costs steady. At some point, we've got a lot of mutual customers and it's a complaint that we hear from our mutual customers all the time, and we decided that we should do something about it. And so that started four years ago, when we launched the Bandwidth Alliance, and worked with almost all the major public clouds with the exception of Amazon, to say that if someone is sending traffic from a public cloud network to Cloudflare's network, we're not going to charge them for the bandwidth. It's going across a piece of fiber optic cable that yeah, there's some cost to put it in place and maybe there's some maintenance costs associated with it, but there's not—Corey: And the equipment at the end costs money, but it's not cloud cost; it just cost on a per second, every hour of your lifetime basis. It's a capital expense that is amortized across a number of years et cetera, et cetera.Matthew: And it's a fixed cost. It's not a variable cost. You put that fiber optic cable and you use a port on a router on each side. There's cost associated with that, but it's relatively de minimis. And so we said, “If it's not costing us anything and it's not costing a cloud provider anything, why are we charging customers for that?”And I think it's an argument that resonated with almost every other provider that was out there. And so Google discounts traffic when it's sent to us, Microsoft discounts traffic when it's sent to us, and we just announced that Oracle has joined this discounting their traffic, which was already some of the most cost-effective bandwidth from any cloud provider.Corey: Oh, yeah. Oracle's fantastic. As you were announced, I believe today, the fact that they're joining the Bandwidth Alliance is both fascinating and also, on some level, “Okay. It doesn't matter as much because their retail starting cost is 10% of Amazon's.” You have to start pushing an awful lot of traffic relative to what you would do AWS before it starts to show up. It's great to see.Matthew: And the fact that they're taking that down to effectively zero if you're using us is even better, right? And I think it again just illustrates how Amazon's really alone in this at being so egregious in how they do that. And it's, when we've done the math to calculate what their markups are, it's almost 80 times what reasonable assumptions on what their wholesale costs are. And so we really do believe in fighting for our customers and being customer-centric, and this seems like a place where—again, Amazon provides an incredible service and so many things, but the data transfer costs are just completely outrageous. And I'm glad that you're calling them out on it, and I'm glad we're calling them out on it and I think increasingly they look isolated and very anti-customer.Corey: What's interesting to me is that ingress to AWS at all the large public tier-one cloud providers is free. Which has led, I think, to the assumption—real or not—that bandwidth doesn't actually cost anything, whereas going outbound, all I can assume is that one day, some Amazon VP was watching a rerun of Meet the Parents and they got to the line where Ben Stiller says, “Oh, you can milk anything with nipples,” and said, “Holy crap. Our customers all have nipples; we can milk them with egress charges.” And here we are. As much as I think the cloud empowers some amazing stuff, the egress charges are very much an Achilles heel to a point where it starts to look like people won't even consider public cloud for certain workloads based upon that.People talk about how Netflix is a great representation of the ideal AWS customers. Yeah, but they don't stream a single byte to customers from AWS. They have their own CDN called Open Connect that they put all around the internet, specifically for that use case because it would bankrupt them otherwise.Matthew: If you're a small customer, bandwidth does cost something because you have to pay someone to do the work of interconnecting with all of the various networks that are out there. If you start to be, though, a large customer—like a Cloudflare, like an AWS, like an Azure—that is sending serious traffic to the internet, then it starts to actually be in the interest of ISPs to directly interconnect with you, and the costs of your bandwidth over time will approach zero. And that's the just economic reality of how bandwidth pricing works. I think that the confusion, to some extent, comes from all of us having bought our own home internet connection. And I think that the fact that you get more bandwidth up in most internet connections, and you get down, people think that there's some physics, which is associated with that.And there are; that turns out just to be the legacy of the cable system that was really designed to send pictures down to your—Corey: It wasn't really a listening post. Yeah.Matthew: Right. And so they have dedicated less capacity for up and again, in-home network connections, that makes a ton of sense, but that's not how internet connections work globally. In fact, you pay—you get a symmetric connection. And so if they can demonstrate that it's free to take the traffic in, we can't figure out any reason that's not simply about customer lock-in; why you would charge to take data out, but you wouldn't charge to put it in. Because actually cost more from writing data to a disk, it costs more than reading it from a disk.And so by all reasonable accounts, if they were actually charging based on what their costs were, they would charge for ingress but they want to charge for egress. But the approach that we've taken is to say, “For standard bandwidth, we just aren't going to charge for it.” And we do charge for if you use our premium routing services, which is something called Argo, but even then it's relatively cheap compared with what is just standard kind of internet connectivity that's out there. And as we see more of the clouds like Microsoft and Google and Oracle show that this is a place where they can be much more customer-centric and customer-friendly, over time I'm hopeful that will put pressure on Amazon and they will eliminate their egress fees.Corey: People also tend to assume that when I talk about this, that I'm somehow complaining about the level of discounting or whatnot, and they yell at me and say, “Oh, well, you should know by now, Corey, that no one at significant scale pays retail pricing.” “Thanks, professor. I appreciate that, but four years ago, or so I sat down with a startup founder who was sketching out the idea for a live video streaming service and said, ‘There's something wrong with my math because if I built this on AWS—which he knew very well, incidentally—it looks like it would cost me at our scale of where we're hoping to hit $65,000 a minute.'” And I checked and yep, sure enough, his math was not wrong, so he obviously did not build his proof of concept on top of AWS. And the last time I checked, they had raised several 100 million dollars in a bunch of different funding rounds.That is a company now that will not be on AWS because it was never an option. I want to talk as well about your announcement of R2, which is just spectacular. It is—please correct me if I get any of this wrong—it's an object store that lives in your existing distributed-points-of-presence-slash-data-centers-slash-colo-slash-a-bunch-of-computers-in-fancy-warehouse-rooms-with-the-lights-are-always-on-And-it's-always-cold-and-noisy. And people can store data there—Matthew: [crosstalk 00:10:23] aisles it's cold; in the other aisles, it's hot. But yes.Corey: Exactly. But it turns out when you lurk around to the hot aisle, that's not where all the buttons are and the things you're able to plug into, so it's freeze or sweat, and there's never a good answer. But it's an object store that costs a fair bit less than retail pricing for Amazon S3, or most other object stores out there. Which, okay, great. That's always good to see competition in the storage space, but specifically, you're not charging any data transfer costs whatsoever for doing this. First, where did this come from?Matthew: So, we needed it ourselves. I think all of the great products at Cloudflare start with an internal need. If you look at why do we build our zero-trust solutions? It's because we said we needed a security solution that was fast and reliable and secure to protect our employees as they were going out and using the internet.Why did we build Cloudflare Workers? Because we needed a very flexible compute platform where we could build systems ourselves. And that's not unique to us. I mean, why did Amazon build AWS? They built it because they needed those tools in order to continue to grow and expand as quickly as possible.And in fact, I think if you look at the products that Google makes that are really great, it ends up being the ones that Google's employees use themselves. Gmail started as Caribou once upon a time, which was their internal email system. And so we needed an object store and the sometimes belligerent CEO of Cloudflare insisted that our team couldn't use any of the public cloud object stores. And so we had to build it.That was the start of it and we've been using it internally for products over time. It powers, for example, Cloudflare Images, it powers a lot of our streaming video services, and it works great. And at some point, we said, “Can we take this and make it available to everyone?” The question that you've asked on Twitter, and I think a lot of people reasonably ask us, “What's the catch?”Corey: Well, in my defense, I think it's fair. There was an example that I gave of, “Okay, I'm going to go ahead and keep—because it's new, I don't trust new object stores. Great. I'm going to do the same experiment twice, keep one the pure AWS story and the other, I'm just going to add Cloudflare R2 to the mix so that I have to transfer out of AWS once.” For a one gigabyte file that gets shared out for a petabyte's worth of bandwidth, on AWS it costs roughly $52,000 to do that. If I go with the R2 solution, it cost me 13 cents, all of which except for a penny-and-a-half are AWS charges. And that just feels—when you're looking at that big of a gap, it's easy to look at that and think, “Okay, someone is trying to swindle me somewhere. And when you can't spot the sucker, it's probably me. What's the catch?”Matthew: I guess it's not really a catch; it's an explanation. We have been able to drive our bandwidth costs down low enough that in that particular use case, we have to store the file, and that, again, that—there's a hard disk in there and we replicate it to make sure that it's available so it's not just one hard disk, but it's multiple hard disks in various places, but that amortized over time, isn't that big a cost. And then bandwidth is effectively zero. And so if we can do that, then that's great.Maybe a different way of framing the question is like, “Why would we do that?” And I think what we see is that there is an opportunity for customers to be able to use the best of various cloud providers and hook the different parts together. So, people talk about multi-cloud all the time, and for a while, the way that I think people thought about that was you take the exact same workload and you run it in Azure and AWS. That turns out not to be—I mean, maybe some people do that, but it's super rare and it's incredibly hard.Corey: It has been a recurring theme of most things I say where, by default, that is one of the dumbest things I can imagine.Matthew: Yeah, that isn't good. But what people do want to do is they want to say, “Listen, there's some really great services that Amazon provides; we want to use those. And there's some really great services that Azure provides, and we want to use those. And Google's got some great machine learning, and so does IBM. And I want to sort of mix and match the various pieces together.”And the challenge in doing that is the egress fees. If everyone just had a detente and said there's going to be no egress fees for us to be able to hook these various [pits 00:14:48] together, then you would be able to take advantage of a lot of the different technologies and we would actually get stronger applications. And so the vision of what we're trying to build is how can we be the fabric that can stitch the various cloud providers together so that you can do that. And when we looked at that, and we said, “Okay, what's the path to getting there?” The big place where there's the just meatiest cost on egress fees is object stores.And so if you could have a centralized object store, and you can say then from that object go use whatever the best service is at Amazon, go use whatever the best service is at Google, go use whatever the best service is at Azure, that then allows, I think, actually people to take advantage of the cloud in a way which is what people really should mean when they talk about multi-cloud. Which is, there should be competition on the various features themselves, and you should be able to pick and choose the best of all of the different bits. And I think we as consumers then benefit from that. And so when we're looking at how we can strategically enable that future, building an object store was a real key part of that, and that's part of what we're doing. Now, how do we make money off of that? Well, there's a little bit off the storage, and again, even [laugh]—Corey: Well, that is the Amazonian answer there. It's like, “Your margin is my opportunity,” is a famous Bezos quote, and I figure you're sitting there saying, “Ah, it would cost $52,000 to do that in Amazon. Ah, we can make a penny-and-a-half.” That's very Amazonian, you could probably get hired over there with that philosophy.Matthew: Yeah. And this is a commodity service, just [laugh] storing data. If you look across the history of what Cloudflare has done, in 2014, we made encryption free because it's absurd to pay for math, right? I mean, it's just crazy right?Corey: Or to pay for security as a value-add. No, that should be baked into whatever you're doing, in an ideal world.Matthew: Domain registration. Like, it's writing something down in a ledger. It's a commodity; of course it should go to whatever the absolute cost is. On the other hand, there are things that we do that aren't commodities where we are able to better protect people because we see so much traffic, and we've built the machine learning models, and we've done those things, and so we charge for those things. So commodities, we think over time, go to effectively, whatever their cost is, and then the value is in the actual intelligent services that are on top of it.But an object store is a commodity and so we should be trying to drive that pricing down. And in the case of bandwidth, it's effectively free for us. And so if we can be that fabric that connects the different class together, I think that makes sense is a strategy for us and that's why R2 made a ton of sense for us to build and to launch.Corey: There seems to be a lack of ability for lots of folks, at least on the internet to imagine a use case other than theirs. I cheated by being a consultant, I get to borrow other people's use cases at a high degree of turnover. But the question I saw raised was, “Well, how many workloads really do that much egress from static objects that don't change? Doesn't sound like there'd be a whole lot of them.” And it's, “Oh, my sweet summer child. Sure, your app doesn't do a lot of that, but let me introduce it to my friends who are hosting videos on their website, for example, or large images that get accessed a whole bunch of times; things that are written once and then read forever by the internet.”Matthew: And we sit in a position where because of the role that Cloudflare plays where we sit in front of a number of these different cloud providers, we could actually look at the use cases and the data, and then build products in order to solve that. And that's why we started with Workers; that's why we then built the KV store that was on top of that; we built object-store next. And so you can see as we're sort of marching through these things, it is very much being informed by the data that we actually see from real customers. And one of the things that I really like about R2 is in exactly the example that you gave where you can keep everything in S3; you can set R2 in front of it and put it in slurp mode, and effectively it just—as those objects get pulled out, it starts storing them there. And so the migration path is super easy; you don't have to actually change anything about your application and will cut your bills substantially.And so I think that's the right thing to enable a multi-cloud world where, again, it's not you're running the exact same workload in different places, but you get to take advantage of the really great tack that all of these companies are building and use that. And then the companies will compete on building that tech well. So, it's not just about how do I get the data in and then kind of underinvest in all of the different services that I provide. It's how can we make sure that on a service-by-service basis, you actually are having real competition over time. And again, I think that's the right thing for customers, and absolutely R2 might not be the right thing for every use case that's out there, but I think that it wi—enabling more competition is going to make the cloud better for everyone.Corey: Oh, yeah. It's always fun hearing it from Amazonians. It's, “You have a service that talks to satellites in orbit. You really think that's a general-purpose thing that every company out there has to deal with?” No. Well, not yet, anyway.It also just feels to me like their transfer approach is antithetical to almost every other aspect of how they have built their cloud. Amazonians have told me repeatedly—I believe them—that their network is effectively magic. The fact that you can get near line rate between any two points without melting various [unintelligible 00:20:14], which shows that there was significant thought, work, effort, planning, technology, et cetera, put into the network. And I don't dispute that. But if I'm trying to build a workload and put it inside of AWS, I can control how it performs tied to budget; I can have a lot of RAM for things that are memory intensive, or I can have a little RAM; I can have great CPU performance or terrible CPU performance.The challenge with data transfer is it is uniformly great. “I want to get that data over there super quickly.” Yeah, awesome. I'm fine paying a premium for that. But I have this pile of data right here. I want to get it over there, ideally by Tuesday. There's no good way to do that, even with their Snowball—or Snow Family devices—when you fill them with data and send them into AWS, yeah, that's great. Then you just pay for the use of the device.Use them to send data out of AWS, they tack on an additional per-gigabyte fee for getting the data out. You're training as a lawyer, you went to the same law school that my wife did, the University of Chicago, which, oh, interesting stories down that path. But if we look at this, my argument is that the way to do an end-run around this is to sue Amazon for something, and then demand access to the data you have living in their environment during discovery. Make them give it to you for free, though, they'd probably find a way to charge it there, too. It's just a complete lack of vision and lack of awareness because it feels like they're milking a cash cow until it dies.Matthew: Yeah, they probably would charge for it and you'd also have to pay a lot of lawyers. So, I'm not sure that's the cost [crosstalk 00:21:44]—Corey: Its only works above certain volumes, I figure.Matthew: I do think that if your pricing strategy is designed to lock people in to prevent competition, then that does create other challenges. And there are certainly some University of Chicago law professors out there that have spent their careers arguing why antitrust laws don't make any sense, but I think that this is definitely one of those areas where you can see very clearly that customers are actually being harmed by the pricing strategy that's there. And the pricing strategy is not tied in any way to the underlying costs which are associated with that. And so I do think that, especially as you see other providers in the space—like Oracle—taking their bandwidth costs to effectively zero, that's the sort of thing that I think will have regulators start to scratch their heads. If tomorrow, AWS took egress costs to zero, and as a result, R2 was not as advantaged as it is today against them, you know, I think there are a lot of people who would say, “Oh, they showed Cloudflare.” I would do a happy dance because that's the best thing [thing they can do 00:22:52] for our customers.Corey: Our long-term goals, it sounds like, are relatively aligned. People think that I want to see AWS reign ascendant; people also say I want to see them burning and crashing into the sea, and neither one of those are true. What I want is, I want someone in a few years from now to be doing a startup and trying to figure out which cloud provider they should pick, and I want that to be a hard decision. Ideally, if you wind up reducing data transfer fees enough, it doesn't even have to be only one. There are stories that starts to turn into an actual realistic multi-cloud story that isn't, at its face, ridiculous. But right now, you have to pick a horse and ride it, for a variety of reasons. And I don't like that.Matthew: It's entirely egress-based. And again, I think that customers are better off if they are able to pick who is the best service at any time. And that is what encourages innovation. And over time, that's even what's good for the various cloud providers because it's what keeps them being valuable and keeps their customers thinking that they're building something which is magical and that they aren't trapped in the decision that they made, which is when we talk to a lot of the customers today, they feel that way. And it's I think part of why something like R2 and something like the Bandwidth Alliance has gotten so much attention because it really touches a nerve on what's frustrating customers today. And if tomorrow Amazon announced that they were eliminating egress fees and going head-to-head with R2, again, I think that's a wonderful outcome. And one that I think is unlikely, but I would celebrate it if it happened.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build.With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: My favorite is people who don't do research on this stuff. They wind up saying, “Oh, yeah. Cloudflare is saying that bandwidth is a fixed cost. Of course not. They must be losing their shirt on this.”You are a publicly-traded company. Your gross margins are 76% or 77%, depending upon whether we're talking about GAAP or non-GAAP. Point being, you are clearly not selling this at a loss and hoping to make it up in volume. That's what a VC-backed company does. Is something that is real and as accurate.I want to, on some level, I guess, low-key apologize because I keep viewing Cloudflare through a lens that is increasingly inaccurate, which is as a CDN. But you've had Cloudflare Workers for a while, effectively Functions as a Service that run at the edge, which has this magic aura around it, that do various things, which is fascinating to me. You're launching R2; it feels like you are in some ways aiming at becoming a cloud provider, but instead of taking the traditional approach of building it from the region's outward, you're building it from the outward in. Is that a fair characterization?Matthew: I think that's right. I think fundamentally what Cloudflare is, is a network. And I remember early on in the pandemic, we did a series of fireside chats with people we thought we could learn from. And so was everyone from Andre Iguodala, the basketball player, to Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, to we had a [unintelligible 00:25:56] governor and all kinds of things. And we these were just internal on off the record.And I got to do one with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. And I said, “You know, Eric, one of the things that we struggle with is describing what is Cloudflare.” And without hesitation, he said, “Oh, that's easy. You're the network I plug into and don't have to worry about anything else.” And I think that's better than I could say it, myself, and I think that's what it is that we fundamentally are: we're the network that fits together.Now, it turns out that in the process of being that network and enabling that network, we are going to build things like R2, which start to be an object store and starts to sort of step into some of the cloud provider space. And Workers is really just a way of programming that network in order to do that, but it turns out that there are a bunch of workloads that if you move them into the network itself, make sense—not going to be every workload, but a lot of workloads that makes sense there. And again, I think that you can actually be very bullish on all of the big public cloud providers and bullish on Cloudflare at the same time because what we want to do is enable the ability for people to mix and match, and change, and be the fabric that connects all of those things together. And so over time, if Amazon says, “We're going to drop egress fees,” it may be that R2 isn't a product that exists—I don't think they're going to do that, so I think it's something that is going to be successful for us and get a lot of new users to us—but fundamentally, I think that where the traditional public clouds think of themselves as the place you put data and you process data, I think we think of ourselves as the place you move data. And that's somewhat different.That then translates into it as we're building out the different pieces, where it does feel like we're building from the outside in. And it may be that over time, that put versus move distinction becomes narrower and narrower as we build more and more services like R2, and durable objects, and KV, and we're working on a database, and all those things. And it could be that we converge in a similar place.Corey: One thing I really appreciate about your vision because it is so atypical these days, is that you aren't trying to build the multifunction printer of companies. You are not trying to be all things to all people in every scenario. Which is impossible to do, but companies are still trying their level best to do it. You are staking out the bounds of where you were willing to start and where you're willing to stop, in a variety of different ways. I would be—how do I put it?—surprised if you at some point in the next five years come out with, “And this is our own database that we have built out that directly competes with the following open-source project that we basically have implemented their API and gone down that particular path.” It does not sound like it is in your core wheelhouse at that point. You don't need—to my understanding—to write your own database engine in order to do what you do.Matthew: Maybe. I mean, we actually are kind of working on a database because—Corey: Oh, no, here we go again.Matthew: [laugh]—and yeah—in a couple of different ways. So, the first way is, we want to make sure that if you're using Workers, you can connect to whatever database you want to use anywhere in the world. And that's something that's coming and we'll be there. At the same time, the challenge of distributed computing turns out not to be the computing, it turns out to be the data and figuring out how to—CAP theorem is real, right? Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance; you can pick any two out of the three, but you can't get all three.And so you there's always going to be some trade-off that's there. And so we don't see a lot of good examples. There's some really cool companies that are working on things in the space, but we don't see a lot of really good examples of who has built a database that can be run on a distributed workload system, like Cloudflare to it do well. And so our team internally needs that, and so we're trying to figure out how to build it for ourselves, and I would imagine that after we build it for ourselves—if it works the way we expect it will—that that will then be something that we open up.Our motivation and the way we think about products is we need to build the tools for our own team. Our team itself is customer zero, and then some of those things are very specific to us, but every once in a while, when there are functions that makes sense for others, then we'll build them as well. And that does maybe risk being the multifunction printer, but again, I think that because the customer for that starts with ourselves, that's how we think about it. And if there's someone else's making a great tool, we'll use that. But in this case, we don't see anyone that's built a multi-tenant, globally-distributed, ACID-compliant relational database.Corey: I can't let it pass on challenge. Sure they have, and you're running it yourself. DNS: the finest database in the world. You stuff whatever you want to text records, and now you have taken a finely crafted wrench and turned it into a barely acceptable hammer, which is what I love about doing that terrible approach. Yeah, relational is not going to quite work that way. But—Matthew: Yes. That's a fancy key-value store, right? So—and we've had that for a long time. As we're trying to build those things up, the good news is that, again, we've run data at scale for quite some time and proven that we can do it efficiently and reliably.Corey: There's a lot that can be said about building the things you need to deliver your product to customers. And maybe a database is a poor example here, but I don't see that your motivation in this space is to step into something completely outside your areas of expertise solely because there's money to be made over there. Well, yeah, fortune passes everywhere. The question is, which are you best positioned to wind up delivering an actual transformative solution to that space, and what parts of it are just rent-seeking where it's okay, we're going to go and wherever the money is, we're chasing that down.Matthew: Yeah, we're still a for-profit business, and we've been able to grow revenue well, but I think it is that what motivates us and what drives us comes back to our mission, which is how do you help build a better internet? And you can look at every single thing that we've done, and we try to be very long-term-oriented. So, for instance, when we in 2014 made encryption free, the number one reason at the time, when people upgraded for the free version of our service, the paid version of our service is they got encryption for that. And so it was super scary to say, “Hey, we're going to take the biggest feature and give it away for free,” but it was clearly the direction of history and we wanted to be on the right side of history. And we considered it a bug that the internet wasn't built in an encrypted way from the beginning.So, of course, that was going to head that direction. And so I think that we and then subsequently Let's Encrypt, and a bunch of others have said, it's absurd that you're charging for math. And again, I think that's a good example of how we think about products. And we want to continue to disrupt ourselves and take the things that once upon a time were reserved for our customers that spend $10 million-plus with us, and we want to keep pushing those things down because, over time, the real opportunity is if you do right by customers, there will be plenty of ways that you can earn some of their budget. And again, we think that is the long-term winning strategy.Corey: I would agree with this. You're not out there making sneakers and selling them because you see people spend a lot of money on that; you're delivering value for customers. I say this as one of your paying customers. I have zero problem paying you every month like clockwork, and it is the least cloud-like experience because I know exactly what the bill is going to be in advance, which is apparently not how things should be done in this industry, yadda, yadda, yadda. It is a refreshingly delightful experience every time.The few times I've had challenges with the service, it has almost always been a—I'll call it a documentation gap, where the way it was explained in the formal documentation was not how I conceptualize things, which, again, explaining what these complex things are to folks who are not steeped in certain areas of them is always going to be a challenge. But I cannot think back to a single customer service failure I've had with you folks. I can't look back at any point where you have failed me as a customer, which is a strange thing to say, given how incredibly efficient I am at stumbling over weird bugs.Matthew: Terrific to have you as a customer. We are hardly perfect and we make mistakes, but one of the things I think that we try to do and one of the core values of Cloudflare is transparency. If I think about, like, the original sins of tech, a lot of it is this bizarre secrecy which pervades the entire industry. When we make mistakes, we talk about them, and we explain them. When there's an error, we don't throw up a white page; we put up a page that has our logo on it because we want to own it.And that sometimes gets blowback because you're in front of it, but again, I think it's the right thing to do for customers. And it's and I think it's incredibly important. One of the things that's interesting is you mentioned that you know what your bill is going to be. If you go back and look at the history of hosting on the internet, in the early days of internet hosting, it looks a lot like AWS.Corey: Oh, 95th percentile transit billing; go for one five minutes segment over and boom, your bill explodes. Oh, I remember those days. Unkindly.Matthew: And it was super complicated. And then what happened is the hosting world switched from this incredibly complicated billing to much more simplified, predictable, unlimited bandwidth with maybe some asterisks, but largely that was in place. And then it's strange that Amazon came along and then has brought us back to the more complicated world that's out there. I would have predicted that that's a sine wave—Corey: It has to be. I mean—Matthew: —and it's going to go back and forth over time. But I would have predicted that we would be more in the direction of coming back toward simplify, everything included. And again, I think that's how we've priced our things from the beginning. I'm surprised that it has held on as long as it has, but I do think that there's going to be an opportunity for—and I don't think Amazon will be the leader here, but I think there will be an opportunity for one of the big clouds.And again, I think Oracle is probably doing this the best of any of them right now—to say, “How can we go away from that complexity? How can we make bills predictable? How can we not nickel and dime everything, but allow you to actually forecast and budget?” And it just seems like that's the natural arc of history, and we will head back toward that. And, again, I think we've done our part to push that along. And I'm excited that other cloud providers seem to be thinking about that now as well.Corey: Oh, yeah. What I do with fixing AWS bills is the same thing folks were doing in the 70s and 80s with long-distance bills for companies. We're definitely hitting that sine wave. I know that if I were at AWS in a leadership role, I would be actively embarrassed that the company that is delivering a better customer experience around financial things is Oracle of all companies, given their history of audits and surprising people and the rest. It is ridiculous to me.One last topic that I want to cover with you before we call it an episode is, back in college, you had a thesis that you have done an excellent job of effectively eliminating from the internet. And the theme of this, to my understanding, was that the internet is a fad. And I am so aligned with that because I'm someone who has said for years that emerging technologies are fads. I've said it about cloud, about virtualization, about containers. And I just skipped Kubernetes. And now I'm all-in on serverless, which means, of course it's going to fail because I'm always wrong on these things. But tell me about that.Matthew: When I was seven years old in 1980, my grandmother gave me an Apple ][+ computer for Christmas. And I took to it like a just absolute duck to water and did things that made me very popular in junior high school, like going to computer camp. And my mom used to sign up for continuing education classes at the local university in computer science, and basically sneak me in, and I'd do all the homework and all that. And I remember when I got to college, there was a small group of students that would come around and help other students set their computer up, and I had it all set up and was involved. And so, got pretty deeply involved in the computer science program at college.And then I remember there was a group of three other students—so they were four of us—and they wanted to start an online digital magazine. And at the time, this was pre-web, or right in the early days of the web; it was sort of nineteen… ninety-three. And we built it originally on old Apple technology called HyperCard. And we used to email out the old HyperCard stacks. And the HyperCard stacks kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and we'd send them out to the school so [laugh] that we—so we kept crashing the mail servers.But the college loved this, so they kept buying bigger and bigger mail servers. But they were—at some point, they said, “This won't scale. You got to switch technologies.” And they introduced us to two different groups. One was a printer company based out in San Francisco that had this technology called PDF. And I was a really big fan of PDF. I thought PDF was the future, it was definitely going to be how everything got published.And then the other was this group of dorky graduate students at the University of Illinois that had this thing called a browser, which was super flaky, and crashed all the time, and didn't work. And so of the four of us, I was the one who voted for PDF and the other three were like, “Actually, I think this HTML thing is going to be a hit.” And we built this. We won an award from Wired—which was only a print magazine at the time—that called us the first online-only weekly publication. And it was such a struggle to get anyone to write for it because browsers sucked and, you know, trying to get students on campus, but no one on campus cared.We would get these emails from the other side of the world, where I remember really clearly is this—in broken English—email from Japan saying, “I love the magazine. Please keep writing more for the magazine.” And I remember thinking at the time, “Why do I care if someone in Japan is reading this if the girl down the hall who I have a crush on isn't?” Which is obviously what motivates dorky college students like myself. And at that same time, you saw all of this internet explosion.I remember the moment when Netscape went public and just blew through all the expectations. And it was right around the time I was getting ready to graduate for college, and I was kind of just burned out on the entire thing. And I thought, “If I can't even get anyone to write for this dopey magazine and yet we're winning awards, like, this stuff has to all just be complete garbage.” And so wrote a thesis on—ehh, it was not a very good [laugh] thesis. It's—but one of the things I said was that largely the internet was a fad, and that if it wasn't, that it had some real risks because if you enabled everyone to connect with whatever their weird interests and hobbies were, that you would very quickly fall to the lowest common denominator. And predicted some things that haven't come true. I thought for sure that you would have both a liberal and conservative search engine. And it's a miracle to this day, I think that doesn't exist.Corey: Now, that you said it, of course, it's going to.Matthew: Well, I don't know I've… [sigh] we'll see. But it is pretty amazing that Google has been able to, again, thread that line and stay largely apolitical. I'm surprised there aren't more national search engines; the fact that it only Russia and China have national search engines and France and Germany don't is just strange to me. It seems like if you're controlling the source of truth and how people find it, that seems like something that governments would try and take over. There are some things that in retrospect, look pretty wise, but there were a lot more things that looked really, really stupid. And so I think at some level, I had to build Cloudflare to atone for that stupidity all those years ago.Corey: There's something to be said for looking back and saying, “Yeah, I had an opinion, and with the light of new information, I am changing my opinion.” For some reason, in some circles, it feels like that gets interpreted as a sign of weakness, but I couldn't disagree more, it's, “Well, I had an opinion based upon what I saw at the time. Turns out, I was wrong, and here we are.” I really wish more people were capable of doing that.Matthew: It's one of the things we test for in hiring. And I think the characteristic that describes people who can do that well is really empathy. The understanding that the experiences that you have lead you to have a unique set of insights, but they also create a unique set of blind spots. And it's rare that you find people that are able to do that. And whenever you do—whenever we do we hire them.Corey: To that end, as far as hiring and similar topics go, if people want to learn more about how you view things, and how you see the world, and what you're releasing—maybe even potentially work with you—where can they find you?Matthew: [laugh]. So, the joke, sometimes, internal at Cloudflare is that Cloudflare is a blogging company that runs this global network just to have something to write about. So, I think we're unlike most corporate blogs, which are—if our corporate blog were typical, we'd have articles on, like, “Here are the top six reasons you need a fast website,” which would just be, you know, shoot me. But instead, I think we write about the things that are going on online and our unique view into them. And we have a core value of transparency, so we talk about that. So, if you're interested in Cloudflare, I'd encourage you to—especially if you're of the sort of geekier variety—to check out blog.cloudflare.com, and I think that's a good place to learn about us. And I still write for that occasionally.Corey: You're one of the only non-AWS corporate blogs that I pay attention to, for that exact reason. It is not, “Oh, yay. More content marketing by folks who just feel the need to hit a quota as opposed to talking about something valuable and interesting.” So, it's appreciated.Matthew: The secret to it was we realized at some point that the purpose of the blog wasn't to attract customers, it was to attract potential employees. And it turns out, if you sort of change that focus, then you talk to people like their peers, and it turns out then that the content that you create is much more authentic. And that turns out to be a great way to attract customers as well.Corey: I want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Matthew: Thanks for all you're doing. And we're very aligned, and keep fighting the good fight. And someday, again, we'll eliminate cloud egress fees, and we can share a beer when we do.Corey: I will absolutely be there for it. Matthew, Prince, CEO, and co-founder of Cloudflare. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a rambling comment explaining that while data packets into a cloud provider are cheap and crappy, the ones being sent to the internet are beautiful, bespoke, unicorn snowflakes, so of course they cost money.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Join Joyce & Ann Berry, Chief Investment Officer at Wheelhouse, for a casual conversation you can walk to. Find out how walking led Ann to be more creative, calm and curious, and gave her a sense of freedom and independence from early on in her life. Ann also shares tips for improving your financial literacy.About AnnAnn Berry is the Chief Investment Officer of media company Wheelhouse, overseeing direct equity investing in technology and consumer businesses that can be expanded through Wheelhouse's TV and digital content capabilities. Ann is also a Senior Advisor to Cornell Capital, the New York and Hong Kong based private equity fund, with over $6 billion of AUM. She was previously a Partner and Investment Committee member at Cornell Capital. A regular live TV commentator, Ann is often seen on Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, FBN and Yahoo Finance discussing innovation, consumer spending, private capital trends and macro market movements. Previously, Ann was a private equity investor with the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division in New York and London. From 2019 to 2020, Ann served as CEO of PureStar. Ann received her MBA from Harvard Business School, graduating with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar, and holds her BA (First Class Hons) from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Trinity College Scholar.Connect with AnnWebsite: https://wheel-house.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annberry_nyc/Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnBerry_NYC

Jordan co-founded Medley with her mother, Edith, because throughout her life, she's felt the power that comes from being part of a team, and felt the void when it's missing. Prior to founding Medley, Jordan worked in media as Chief of Staff at Mic and was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. She received her AB from Harvard College and her MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar.To learn more about Medley visit withmedley.comFor all of your jewelry needs find us at theclearcut.co

My guest today is Chris Yeh, entrepreneur, investor, writer, and mentor with two Bachelor’s degrees with distinction from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Chris co-authored the New York Times best-seller The Alliance as well as the book Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn). Chris wrote Blitzscaling with Reid to explain how some of the largest companies in the world like Amazon, AirBNB, and Uber use a very specific set of offensive, competitive strategies that prioritize speed to achieve massive scale at incredible speed. In this episode, Chris is going to demystify what some of the world's most valuable companies did in order to reach their highest highs and then break down his concept of blitzscaling. He’ll even go over the principles and methodologies in his book and how they apply to any idea or business. We’ll break down the different principles and methodologies in the book and how they can apply to any idea or business. What You Will Learn How to compete and grow faster than the competition in a winner-take-all market The three key principles of blitzscaling and how they work Business model innovation Strategy innovation Management innovation How the world's most valuable companies use a framework for growth called blitzscaling The five stages of growth a blitzscaling company will go through Why tying your ego in with the company is extremely dangerous Ways to evolve that all-important culture as your company grows How the blitzscaling growth model has changed the world and created the most valuable companies What the network effect is and how it fits into a company’s flywheel Why you must define “what is better” compared to “what currently exists” How to intelligently calculate risks — and why risks are beneficial in innovation Why it’s “better to be a pirate than join the navy” and what that means Current thoughts on raising money and the truth about valuations Bio: Chris Yeh is a writer, investor, and entrepreneur who has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. He has authored such books as The Alliance and Blitzscaling (co-authored with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn), the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations. Quotes: 13:20 - “It really is the case that these feedback loops are getting stronger and stronger. [...] The feedback loop of talent and capital. We’ve seen this happen. Companies that breakout to an early lead find it much easier to attract great talent and the follow-on capital and that’s because people love a winner.” - Chris Yeh 13:53 - “Think of the number of millionaires that have been minted by the Facebooks and the Googles and the AirBnBs of the world.” - Chris Yeh 14:40 - “There’s a little bit of a controversy there because the term Blitzscaling is explicitly modeled on the term Blitzkrieg, which you may remember from your history lessons of WWII. It’s the concept of a lightning war, where your forces go out ahead of their supply line, and is moving faster than anyone is possibly anticipating. It’s a high risk, high reward s

My guest today is Chris Yeh, entrepreneur, investor, writer, and mentor with two Bachelor’s degrees with distinction from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Chris co-authored the New York Times best-seller The Alliance as well as the book Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn). Chris wrote Blitzscaling with Reid to explain how some of the largest companies in the world like Amazon, AirBNB, and Uber use a very specific set of offensive, competitive strategies that prioritize speed to achieve massive scale at incredible speed. In this episode, Chris is going to demystify what some of the world's most valuable companies did in order to reach their highest highs and then break down his concept of blitzscaling. He’ll even go over the principles and methodologies in his book and how they apply to any idea or business. We’ll break down the different principles and methodologies in the book and how they can apply to any idea or business. What You Will Learn How to compete and grow faster than the competition in a winner-take-all market The three key principles of blitzscaling and how they work Business model innovation Strategy innovation Management innovation How the world's most valuable companies use a framework for growth called blitzscaling The five stages of growth a blitzscaling company will go through Why tying your ego in with the company is extremely dangerous Ways to evolve that all-important culture as your company grows How the blitzscaling growth model has changed the world and created the most valuable companies What the network effect is and how it fits into a company’s flywheel Why you must define “what is better” compared to “what currently exists” How to intelligently calculate risks — and why risks are beneficial in innovation Why it’s “better to be a pirate than join the navy” and what that means Current thoughts on raising money and the truth about valuations Bio: Chris Yeh is a writer, investor, and entrepreneur who has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. He has authored such books as The Alliance and Blitzscaling (co-authored with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn), the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations. Quotes: 13:20 - “It really is the case that these feedback loops are getting stronger and stronger. [...] The feedback loop of talent and capital. We’ve seen this happen. Companies that breakout to an early lead find it much easier to attract great talent and the follow-on capital and that’s because people love a winner.” - Chris Yeh 13:53 - “Think of the number of millionaires that have been minted by the Facebooks and the Googles and the AirBnBs of the world.” - Chris Yeh 14:40 - “There’s a little bit of a controversy there because the term Blitzscaling is explicitly modeled on the term Blitzkrieg, which you may remember from your history lessons of WWII. It’s the concept of a lightning war, where your forces go out ahead of their supply line, and is moving faster than anyone is possibly anticipating. It’s a high risk, high reward s

Miguel Armaza sits down with Alex Taussig, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures, a global multi-stage VC with over $10B in AUM, focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. They've backed some amazing companies, including Snap, Affirm, and GrubHub. Alex focuses on online marketplaces and co-leads Lightspeed's investment efforts in Latin America. He is also the author of the popular weekly newsletter, DRINKING FROM THE FIREHOSE, in which he writes about recent trends in commerce, media, tech, climate, science, and popular culture. In this episode, we discuss - Alex's story and why he decided to stop pursuing a Phd and left academia to join the tech investing world - The intersection of marketplaces and fintech and why the payment technology is the motor oil that makes transactions flow smoothly for marketplaces - Why in Venture Capital it's very important to ask the best possible questions and pay close attention to the answers that reveal an underlying truth - Early investing mistakes and the importance of focus - Lessons from several years of writing a successful newsletter… and a lot more! Alex Taussig Alex joined Lightspeed in 2016 as a partner on the consumer investment team and has spent 12+ years in venture capital. He is passionate about partnering with founders who are reimagining major categories of commerce using technology. At Lightspeed, Alex has led investments in startups disrupting massive industries like food (Daily Harvest, Frubana), retail (Faire), education (Outschool), and weddings (Zola). He also co-leads Lightspeed's investment efforts in Latin America. Prior to joining Lightspeed, Alex was a partner at Highland Capital Partners, where he led investments in and supported over a dozen companies, including thredUP (IPO TDUP, 2021), Carbon Black (IPO CBLK, 2018), 2U (IPO 2014, TWOU), and RentJuice (acquired by Zillow, 2012). Alex is a trained research scientist and breaks down business problems with deductive logic and analytical rigor. He originally studied physics at Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude, and then went on to receive a Master's degree in materials engineering from MIT, where he was part of a research group building the first fully optical computer chip. Alex also received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, an honor given to the top 5% of the graduating class. Alex publishes a popular weekly(ish) newsletter called DRINKING FROM THE FIREHOSE, in which he writes about recent trends in commerce, media, tech, climate, science, and popular culture. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children and enjoys baking, anime, and heavy metal music. About Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 400 companies globally, including Snap, Nest, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, OYO, Guardant, Affirm, and GrubHub. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage $10.5B across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe. For more FinTech insights, follow us below: Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech Miguel's Twitter: twitter.com/MiguelArmaza Miguel's Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3jWIpqp

Shaan Gandhi is a Director @ Northpond Ventures and leads the firm's work in biotechnologies. Shaan is a board director at Aro Biotherapeutics; CAMP4 Therapeutics; Candel Therapeutics; DiCE Molecules; StrideBio, Inc.; Triumvira Immunologics, Inc.; and Vigil Neuroscience. Previously, Shaan was a Principal at the Longwood Fund, where he created and invested in life sciences companies, including Pyxis Oncology, a cancer immunotherapy company focused on novel modulators of the tumor microenvironment, which he co-founded and served as President. Prior to Longwood, he was an attending hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he also did his residency in internal medicine. He holds an MD from Harvard Medical School; an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar; a D.Phil. in medical oncology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a B.S. with honors in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University. Shaan is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Suffolk District Medical Society, the professional medical society of Boston, and a Trustee of the Boston Medical Library.Thank you for listening!BIOS (@BIOS_Community) unites a community of Life Science innovators dedicated to driving patient impact. Alix Ventures (@AlixVentures) is a San Francisco based venture capital firm supporting early stage Life Science startups engineering biology to create radical advances in human health.Music: Danger Storm by Kevin MacLeod (link & license)

Jarrid Tingle is Managing Partner of Harlem Capital where he focuses on deal sourcing, organizational strategy, and due diligence efforts. Jarrid was featured on the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2019 Inc. 30 under 30 list, and the 2018 Ebony Power 100 list. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2019 where he was a Baker Scholar (top 5% of class). During HBS, Jarrid was a fellow in the Robert Toigo Foundation and Management Leadership for Tomorrow MBA Programs. Previously, Jarrid was a Private Equity Investment Professional at ICV Partners. Prior to ICV, Jarrid was an Investment Banker in the Global Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group at Barclays. Jarrid graduated cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Concentration in Finance. Jarrid was an active member of Friars Senior Society, Onyx Senior Honor Society, and The Lantern Senior Society. Upon graduation, Jarrid received the Wharton Undergraduate Dean's Award for Excellence (Wharton's highest honor). Jarrid's favorite activities include reading, weight training, traveling, and attending concerts.   Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/  

Miguel Armaza sits down with Jarrid Tingle, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Harlem Capital, an early-stage, diversity-focused venture capital firm that was founded in 2015 with the specific mission to fundamentally change the face of entrepreneurship. Jarrid and team now manage a $174 million portfolio comprised of 61% Black or Latino led companies and 43% female-only led companies. Harlem Capital aims to invest in 1,000 diverse founders over the next 30 years. Jarrid is also a proud alum of our amazing Wharton School! In this episode, we discuss: - Jarrid's background and how he and his co-founders raised Harlem Capital's initial capital while in business school - The story behind Harlem Capital's very own Harvard Business School case - Importance of backing founders that fundamentally can sell and are analytical - Their fintech outlook and why Jarrid is excited about the power of fintech to help supercharge eCommerce - Debunking the myth of the pipeline problem and why it's really just about giving people access and opportunities - Why he's hopeful but not satisfied with the progress of the VC and Tech industry as it relates to diversity - Biggest lesson he's learned as an investor - And a lot more! Jarrid Tingle Jarrid Tingle is Managing Partner of Harlem Capital where he focuses on deal sourcing, organizational strategy, and due diligence efforts. Jarrid was featured on the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2019 Inc. 30 under 30 list, and the 2018 Ebony Power 100 list. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2019 where he was a Baker Scholar (top 5% of class). During HBS, Jarrid was a fellow in the Robert Toigo Foundation and Management Leadership for Tomorrow MBA Programs. Previously, Jarrid was a Private Equity Investment Professional at ICV Partners. Prior to ICV, Jarrid was an Investment Banker in the Global Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group at Barclays. Jarrid graduated cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Concentration in Finance. Jarrid was an active member of Friars Senior Society, Onyx Senior Honor Society, and The Lantern Senior Society. Upon graduation, Jarrid received the Wharton Undergraduate Dean's Award for Excellence (Wharton's highest honor). Jarrid's favorite activities include reading, weight training, traveling, and attending concerts. About Harlem Capital: Harlem Capital (HCP) is an early-stage, diversity-focused venture capital firm. HCP makes initial investments of $750k to $1.5mm in U.S. Seed rounds for 10%+ ownership. For more FinTech insights, follow us below: Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech Miguel's Twitter: twitter.com/MiguelArmaza Miguel's Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3jWIpqp

Foreseeing The Crash with Harry S. Dent, Jr. Harry S. Dent, Jr. isn't just the face of Dent Research, he is also a bestselling author and one of the most outspoken financial editors in America who has developed a unique method for studying the global economies and providing insights to what to expect in the future. After years of studying economics in college, Harry quickly became disillusioned and grew to find the profession itself vague and inconclusive. So he shifted his focus to the burgeoning new science of finance, where he could identify and study demographic, technological, consumer and many other trends that empowered him to begin forecasting economic changes. Harry went on to receive his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. He then joined Bain & Company as a Fortune 100 business consultant and now heads the independent research firm Dent Research. Since then, he's spoken to executives, financial advisors and investors around the world about demographics and the power of identifying different trends. Harry has appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC and CNN, Fox News and is a regular guest on Fox Business. He has also been featured in Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Harry has written numerous bestselling books over the last few decades, including The Great Boom Ahead in 1992, The Demographic Cliff in 2015, The Sale of a Lifetime in 2016 and Zero Hour in 2017. In 2019 Harry published his latest book Spending Waves, where he shares decades of extensive research covering over 200 businesses across 14 different industries to give readers a usable tool to find the most lucrative opportunities over the next 20 years. Today, Harry uses the same research he developed from years of hands-on business experience to offer Dent Research subscribers a positive, easy-to-understand view of the economic future in his flagship newsletter, Boom & Bust. Website Link:

Dan is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar healthcare improvement company, but what sticks out about him is that he's one of the best examples you can find anywhere of a person who is able to love a fellow human being. Dan shares how he was able to come to know the timeless principles that guide his life, and how his understanding of the immeasurable value of every person on the planet influences his daily interactions. Dan Burton serves as CEO of Health Catalyst, a healthcare data warehousing and analytics company. He became involved with Health Catalyst when it was a three-person startup. Mr. Burton is also the co-founder of HB Ventures, the first outside equity holder in Health Catalyst. Prior to Health Catalyst and HB Ventures, Mr. Burton led the Corporate Strategy Group at Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU). He also spent eight years with Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in strategy and marketing management roles. Before joining HP he was an associate consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, where he advised healthcare systems and technology companies. Mr. Burton holds an MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was elected a George F. Baker Scholar, and a BS in economics, magna cum laude, from BYU. In the episode, Dan mentions twelve habits he tries to achieve daily to help "keep his cup full": Sleep – at least 7 hours Prayer Plan the day – specific tasks to accomplish that day Prepare for and anticipate any particularly challenging elements of the day Journal One hour of gospel study One hour visiting time with Sarah Kindness – in every interaction, starting with immediate family Service – pay attention to promptings and then act -- serve others multiple times each day Exercise Record Calories Stay within Calorie budget (at or below calories burned) You can hear more of Dan's story on Measuring Success Right. To learn more about Health Catalyst, visit healthcatalyst.com. Music for this episode included the following: Acid Trumpet by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3340-acid-trumpet License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Roll The Intro by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4793-roll-the-intro License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Loopster by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4991-loopster License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Total Happy Up And Sunny by Sascha Ende® Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/555-total-happy-up-and-sunny License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Summer by Liron Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6907-summer License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Find out more about Hear It Share It by stopping by www.hearitshareit.com. While you are there, you can leave a voicemail or make a donation to the podcast. Share your feedback or your story at hearitshareit@gmail.com or drop by https://www.facebook.com/HearItShareIt to join in on the conversation. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hearitshareit/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hearitshareit/support

About the lecture: As head of three Asian countries' flagship firms, Mr. McCarthy learned the secrets to being successful in other cultures. Often, he was the only American working with 3,000 local employees, giving him a peek into the Zeitgeist of the local business and government leaders that most Americans never see. He learned how to succeed in turnarounds where many others had failed and how to first think like a local then gain their trust. He developed a set of skills and tactics that allowed him to build strong high-performing local teams. In this lecture, he will explain his use of “Sunau or Ting Hua” and other recommendations for how to succeed overseas that will surprise many Americans. About the speaker: Mr. Timothy F. McCarthy's career has been evenly divided between the U.S. and overseas. During the '90s, he was President of Fidelity Investment Advisor Group prior to becoming President of Charles Schwab and Co. In 2000, Mr. McCarthy became Chairman of Good Morning Securities Group in South Korea then Chairman and CEO of Nikko Asset Management in Japan. These were the first times each country's government approved a foreigner to lead one of their flagship financial services companies. Also, notably, during this tenure at Nikko, he co-founded the Rongtong JV in China. His firms attracted over 8 million Asians to invest $300 billion in fund assets. He is now active in venture capital high-tech investing. Mr. McCarthy is fluent in 6 languages. He has published two books – one a best seller in Japanese. Mr. McCarthy's academic history includes an MBA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business as a Baker Scholar in 1978 and a BA in Economics and International Relations from the University of California, Davis, with honors in 1973.

works at the intersection of profit and purpose.  She is a thought leader and veteran in harnessing the power of capitalism to solve the world's most pressing problems.    Elizabeth serves as the Senior General Partner at Dev Equity, a venture capital fund investing in B-Corps in low-income housing, urban revitalization, and sustainable agriculture in Latin America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru). Elizabeth started her career in rapidly growing, innovative technology companies.  She served as a Product Manager for Microsoft Word when Windows was first launched and participated in forming the original Microsoft Office product.  After graduating as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, she joined Yahoo! as one of the earliest employees-- quickly rising through the ranks to lead the business side of several divisions including Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Auctions, Yahoo! Classifieds, Yahoo! Greetings and other properties.  Most importantly, she was a founder of Yahoo! Shopping and became a leader in developing and shaping Yahoo's e-commerce strategy.  Under her leadership, Yahoo's e-commerce initiatives grew to become over 2/3 of the company's revenue. After Yahoo! Elizabeth was appointed President and CEO of CML Global Capital, a publicly traded investment conglomerate based in Canada.  As CEO she oversaw several major transactions including executing a takeover of another publicly traded real estate company, a normal course Issuer bid, and eventually a privatization of the corporation.  She sold several of the firm's corporate assets and eventually sold the remaining portfolio company to its management.  Since that time, Elizabeth has dedicated her career to impact investing and corporate social responsibility-- demonstrating that strong financial performance and positive social change are inherently connected.  Her first impact investment fund, the Dignity Fund, provided growth debt to 14 Microfinance institutions in 12 countries, enabling loans to over 35,000 poor entrepreneurs per year.  The Dignity Fund was one of the very first for-profit investment vehicles in the Microfinance industry, paving the way for the massive influx of capital into that field. Elizabeth became an avid evangelist for impact investing and has served on many boards of impact funds and social enterprises.  Her board positions include Unitus (chair) a microfinance accelerator; Deutsche Bank's Microfinance Consortium, FINCA Microfinance fund, Align Impact's fund-of-funds, MicroPlace (chair) an online investment company she helped sell to EBay, Root Capital (farm expansion capital), and Ujjivan (Microfinance bank that has since gone public) among others. Elizabeth is an active member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) where she served on the international board and founded the YPO Social Enterprise Network; Toniic, an association of impact investors, and many other communities.  Elizabeth is a thought leader and frequent speaker on impact investing and corporate social/environmental responsibility. For more information on Dignity Fund go to https://dignitycapital.com/

works at the intersection of profit and purpose.  She is a thought leader and veteran in harnessing the power of capitalism to solve the world's most pressing problems.    Elizabeth serves as the Senior General Partner at Dev Equity, a venture capital fund investing in B-Corps in low-income housing, urban revitalization, and sustainable agriculture in Latin America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru). Elizabeth started her career in rapidly growing, innovative technology companies.  She served as a Product Manager for Microsoft Word when Windows was first launched and participated in forming the original Microsoft Office product.  After graduating as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, she joined Yahoo! as one of the earliest employees-- quickly rising through the ranks to lead the business side of several divisions including Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Auctions, Yahoo! Classifieds, Yahoo! Greetings and other properties.  Most importantly, she was a founder of Yahoo! Shopping and became a leader in developing and shaping Yahoo's e-commerce strategy.  Under her leadership, Yahoo's e-commerce initiatives grew to become over 2/3 of the company's revenue. After Yahoo! Elizabeth was appointed President and CEO of CML Global Capital, a publicly traded investment conglomerate based in Canada.  As CEO she oversaw several major transactions including executing a takeover of another publicly traded real estate company, a normal course Issuer bid, and eventually a privatization of the corporation.  She sold several of the firm's corporate assets and eventually sold the remaining portfolio company to its management.  Since that time, Elizabeth has dedicated her career to impact investing and corporate social responsibility-- demonstrating that strong financial performance and positive social change are inherently connected.  Her first impact investment fund, the Dignity Fund, provided growth debt to 14 Microfinance institutions in 12 countries, enabling loans to over 35,000 poor entrepreneurs per year.  The Dignity Fund was one of the very first for-profit investment vehicles in the Microfinance industry, paving the way for the massive influx of capital into that field. Elizabeth became an avid evangelist for impact investing and has served on many boards of impact funds and social enterprises.  Her board positions include Unitus (chair) a microfinance accelerator; Deutsche Bank's Microfinance Consortium, FINCA Microfinance fund, Align Impact's fund-of-funds, MicroPlace (chair) an online investment company she helped sell to EBay, Root Capital (farm expansion capital), and Ujjivan (Microfinance bank that has since gone public) among others. Elizabeth is an active member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) where she served on the international board and founded the YPO Social Enterprise Network; Toniic, an association of impact investors, and many other communities.  Elizabeth is a thought leader and frequent speaker on impact investing and corporate social/environmental responsibility. For more information on Dignity Fund go to https://dignitycapital.com/

Bill Fotsch has a 20-year track record of improving company sales and profits in an array of industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. He has co-authored several published articles and serves on the board of several companies that practice Open-Book Management. You can learn more about his company at https://openbookcoaching.com, or email Bill at Bill.Fotsch@openbookcoaching.com or reach out on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/billfotsch. Key points include: 05:07: Where to start with open-book management 08:57: Examples of companies switching to open-book management 17:04: Big changes in operations 28:03: How Bill launched his writing career Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at: www.umbrex.com

About SanjaySanjay Poonen is the former COO of VMware, where he was responsible for worldwide sales, services, support, marketing and alliances. He was also responsible for the Security strategy and business at VMware. Prior to SAP, Poonen held executive roles at SAP, Symantec, VERITAS and Informatica, and he began his career as a software engineer at Microsoft, followed by Apple. Poonen holds two patents as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated a Baker Scholar; a master's degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University; and a bachelor's degree in computer science, math and engineering from Dartmouth College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.Links: VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ leadership values: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxkysDMBM0Q Twitter: https://twitter.com/spoonen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaypoonen/ spoonen@vmware.com: mailto:spoonen@vmware.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It’s an awesome approach. I’ve used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there’s more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It’s awesome. If you don’t do something like this, you’re likely to find out that you’ve gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It’s one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That’s canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I’m a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: Let’s be honest—the past year has been a nightmare for cloud financial management. The pandemic forced us to move workloads to the cloud sooner than anticipated, and we all know what that means—surprises on the cloud bill and headaches for anyone trying to figure out what caused them. The CloudLIVE 2021 virtual conference is your chance to connect with FinOps and cloud financial management practitioners and get a behind-the-scenes look into proven strategies that have helped organizations like yours adapt to the realities of the past year. Hosted by CloudHealth by VMware on May 20th, the CloudLIVE 2021 conference will be 100% virtual and 100% free to attend, so you have no excuses for missing out on this opportunity to connect with the cloud management community. Visit cloudlive.com/coreyto learn more and save your virtual seat today. That’s cloud-l-i-v-e.com/corey to register.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. I talk a lot about cloud in a variety of different contexts; this show is about the business of cloud. But, fundamentally, where cloud comes from was this novel concept, once upon a time, of virtualization. And that gave rise to a whole bunch of other things that later became, then containers, now it becomes Kubernetes, and if you want to go down the serverless path, you can.But it’s hard to think of a company that has had more impact on virtualization and that narrative than VMware. My guest today is Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer of VMware. Thank you for joining me.Sanjay: Thanks, Corey Quinn, it’s great to be with you and with your audience on this show.Corey: So, let’s start with the fun slash difficult questions. It’s easy to look at VMware as a way of virtualizing existing bare-metal workloads and moving those VMs around, but in many respects, that is perceived by some—ehem, ehem—to be something of a legacy model of cloud interaction where it solves the problem of on-premises, which is I’m really bad at running data centers so I’m just going to treat the cloud like a data center. And for some companies and some workloads, where, great, that’s fine. But isn’t that, I guess, a V1 vision of cloud, and if it is, why is VMware relevant to that?Sanjay: Great question, Corey. And I think it’s great to be straight up on a topic [unintelligible 00:02:01]. Yeah, I think you’re right. Listen, the ‘V’ in VMware is virtualization. The ‘VM’ is virtual machines.A lot of what is the underpinning of what made the private cloud, as we call it today, but the data center of the past successful was this virtualization technology. In the old days, people would send us electricity bills, before and after VMware, and how much they’re saving. So, this energy-saving concept of virtualization has been profound in the modernization of the data center and the advent of what’s called the private cloud. But as you looked at the public cloud innovate, whether it was AWS or even the SaaS applications—I mean, listen, the most popular capability initially on AWS was EC2 and S3, and the core of EC2 is virtualization. I think what we had to do, as this happened, was the foundation was certainly those services like EC2 and S3, but very quickly, the building phenomenon that attracted hundreds of thousands and I think now probably a few million customers to AWS was the large number of services, probably now 150, 200-odd services, that were built on top of that for everything from data, to AI, to a variety of other things that every year Andy Jassy and the team would build up.So, we had to make sure that over the course of the last, I’d say, certainly the last five to maybe eight years, we were becoming relevant to our customers that were a mix. There were customers who were large—I mean, we have about half a million customers—and in many cases, they have about 80, 90% of their workloads running on-prem and they want to move those workloads to the cloud, but they can’t just refactor and re-platform all of those apps that are running in the on-premise world. When they will try to do it by the end of the year—they may have 1000 applications—they got 10 done.Corey: Oh, and it’s not realistic and it’s unfair. I mean, there’s the idea of, “Oh, that’s legacy,” which is condescending engineering speak for it actually makes money because it’s been around for longer than six months. And sure you can have Twitter For Pets roll stuff out every day that you want; when you’re a bank, you have different constraints forced upon you. And I’m very sympathetic to folks who are in scenarios where they aren’t, for whatever reason, able to technically, culturally, or for regulatory reasons, be able to do continuous deployment of everything. I want to be very clear that I’ve in no way passing judgment on an entire sector of enterprise.Sanjay: But while that sector is important, there was also another sector starting to emerge: the Airbnbs, the Pinterests, the modern companies who may not need VMware at all as they’re building native, but may need some of our container in a new open-source capabilities. SaltStack was one of them; we will talk about that, I’m sure. So, we needed to be relevant to both customer communities because the Airbnbs of today, will be the Marriotts of tomorrow. So, we had to really rethink what is the future of VMware, what’s our existence in a public cloud phenomenon? That’s really what led to a complete watershed moment.I called publicly in the past sort of a Berlin Wall moment where Amazon and VMware were positioned pretty much as competitors for a long period of time when AWS was first started. Not that Andy was going around talking negatively about VMware, but I think people view these as two separate doors, and never the twain would meet. But when we decided to partner with them—I then quite frankly, the precursor to that was us divesting our public cloud strategy. We’d tried to build a competitive public cloud called vCloud Air between the period of 2012 and 2015, 2016—we had to reach an end of that movement, and catharsis of that, divest that asset, and it opened the door for a strategic partnership. But now we can go back to those customers and help them move their applications in a way that’s highly efficient, almost like a house on wheels, and then once it’s in that location in AWS—or one of the other public clouds—you can modernize it, too.So, then you get to both get the best of both worlds: get it into the public cloud, maybe retire some of your data centers if that’s what you want to do, and then modernize it with all the beautiful services. And that’s the best of both worlds. Now, if you have 1000 applications, you’re moving hundreds of them into the public cloud, and then using all of the powerful developer services on that VMware stack that’s built on the bare metal of AWS. So, we started out with AWS, but very quickly then, all the other public clouds, maybe the five or six that are named in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, came to us and said, “Well, if you’re doing that with AWS, would you consider doing that with us, too?”Corey: There’s definitely been an evolution of VMware. I mean, it’s in the name; you have the term VM sitting there. It’s easy to, at least from where I sit, think of, “Oh, VMware, back when running virtual machines was novel.” And there was a lot of skepticism around the idea. I’m going to level with you; I was a skeptic around virtualization. Then around cloud. Then around containers.And now I’m trying—all right I’m going to be in favor of serverless, which is almost certain to doom it because everything else that I’ve been skeptical of in this sense beyond any reasonable measure. So, there is this idea that VMs are this sort of old-school thinking. And that’s great if you have an existing workload that needs to be migrated, but there are a finite number of those in the world. As we turn towards net-new and greenfield build-outs, a lot of things are a lot more cloud-native than just hosting a bunch of—if you take the AWS example—EC2 instances hanging out in the network talking to other EC2 instances. Taking advantage of native offerings definitely seems to be on the rise. And there have been acquisitions that VMware has made. You talk about SaltStack, which was a great example, given that I wrote part of that very early on, and I don’t think the internet’s ever forgiven me for it. But also Bitnami—or BittenAMI, as I insist on pronouncing it—and you also acquired Wavefront. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that feels almost like a setting up a dichotomy of new VMware versus old VMware. What are the points of commonality there? What is the vision for the next 15 years of the company?Sanjay: Yeah, I think when we think about it, it’s very important that, first off, we acknowledge that our roots are what gives us sustenance because we have a large customer base that uses us. We have 80 million workloads running on that VMware infrastructure, formerly ESX, now vSphere. And that’s our heritage, and those customers are happy. In fact, they’re not, like, fleeing like birds into there, so we want to care for those customers.But we have to have a north star, like a magnet that pulls us into the modern world. And that’s been—you know, I talked about phase one was this really charting of the future of VMware for the cloud. Just as important has been focused on cloud-native and containers the last three, four years. So, we acquired Heptio. As you know, Heptio was founded by some of the inventors of Kubernetes who left Google, Joe Beda, and Craig McLuckie.And with that came a strong I would say relevancy, and trust to the Kubernetes, we’ve become one of the leading contributors to open-source Kubernetes. And that brain trust now, some of whom are at VMWare and many are in the community think of us very differently. And then we’ve supplemented that with many other moves that are much more cloud-native. You mentioned two or three of them: Bitnami, for that sort of marketplace; and then SaltStack for what we have been able to do in configuration management and infrastructure automation; Wavefront for container-based workloads. And we’re not done, and we think, listen, there will be many, many more things that the first 10, 15 years of VMware was very much about optimizing the private cloud, the next 10, 15 years could be optimizing for that app modernization cloud-native world.And we think that customers will want something that can work in a multi-cloud fashion. Now, multi-cloud for us is certainly private cloud and edge cloud, which may have very little to do with hardware that’s in the public cloud, but also AWS, Azure, and two or three other clouds. And if you think of each of these public clouds as mini skyscrapers—so AWS has 50 billion in revenue; I’m going to guess Azure is, like, 30, and then Google is I don’t know 12, 13; and then everyone else, and they’re all skyscrapers are different—it’s like, if we can be that company that fills the crevices between them with cement that’s valuable so that people can then build their houses on top of that, you’re probably not going to be best served with a container Stack that’s trapped to just one cloud. And then over time, you don’t have reasonable amount of flexibility if you choose to change that direction. Now, some people might say, “Listen, multi-cloud is—who cares about that?”But I think increasingly, we’re hearing from customers a desire to have more than just one cloud for a variety of reasons. They want to have options, portability, flexibility, negotiating price, in addition to their private cloud. So, it’s a two plus one, sometimes it might be a two plus two, meaning it’s a private cloud and the edge cloud. And I think VMware is a tremendous proposition to be that Switzerland-type company that’s relevant in a private cloud, one or two public clouds, and an edge cloud environment, Corey.Corey: Are you seeing folks having individual workloads that they want to flow from one cloud to another in a seamless way, or is it more aligned along an approach of having workload A lives in this cloud and workload B lives in this cloud? And you’re in a terrific position to opine on that more than most, given who you are.Sanjay: Yeah. We’re not yet as yet seeing these floating workloads that start here and move around, that’s—usually you build an application with purpose. Like, it sits here in this cloud and of course. But we’re seeing, increasingly, interest at customers’ not tethering it to proprietary services only. I mean, certainly, if you’re going to optimize it for AWS, you’re going to take advantage of EC2, S3, and then many of the, kind of, very capable [unintelligible 00:11:24], Aurora, there are others that might be there.But over time, especially the open-source movement that brings out open-source data services, open-source tooling, containers, all of that stuff, give ultimately customers the hope that certainly they should add economic value and developer productivity value, but they should also create some potential portability so that if in the future you wanted to make a change, you’re not bound to that cloud platform. And a particular cloud may not like us saying this, but that’s just the fact of how CIOs today are starting to think much more so as they build these up and as many of the other public clouds start to climb in functionality. Now, there are other use cases where particular SaaS applications of SaaS services are optimized for a particular [unintelligible 00:12:07], for example, Office 365, someone’s using a collaboration app, typically, there’s choices of one or two, you’re either using a G Suite and then it’s tied to Google, or it’s Office 365. But even there, we’re starting to see some nibbling around the edges. Just the phenomenon of Zoom; that wasn’t a capability that Microsoft brought very—and the services from Google, or Amazon, or Microsoft was just not as good as Zoom.And Zoom just took off and has become the leading video collaboration platform because they’re just simple, easy to use, and delightful. It doesn’t matter what infrastructure they run on, whether it’s AWS, I mean, now they’re running some of their workloads on Oracle. Who cares? It’s a SaaS service. So, I think increasingly, I think there will be a propensity towards SaaS applications over custom building. If I can buy it why would I want to build a video collaboration app myself internally, if I can buy it as a SaaS service from Zoom, or whoever have you?Corey: Oh, building it yourself would be ludicrous unless that was one of your core competencies.Sanjay: Exactly.Corey: And Zoom seems to have that on lock.Sanjay: Right. And so similarly, to the extent that I think IT folks can buy applications that are more SaaS than custom-built, or even on-prem, I mean, Salesforce—the success of Salesforce, and Workday, and Adobe, and then, of course, the smaller ones like Zoom, and Slack, and so on. So, it’s clear evidence that the world is going to move towards SaaS applications. But where you have to custom build an application because it’s very unique to your business or to something you need to very snap quickly together, I think there’s going to be increasingly a propensity towards using open-source types of tooling, or open-source platforms—Kubernetes being the best example of that—that then have some multi-cloud characteristics.Corey: In a similar note, I know that the term is apparently, at least this week on Twitter, being argued against, but what about cloud repatriation? A lot of noise has been made about people moving workloads from public cloud back to private cloud. And the example they always give is Dropbox moving its centralized storage service into an on-prem environment, and the second example is basically a pile of tumbleweeds because people don’t really have anything concrete to point at. Does that align with your experience? Is there a, I guess, a hidden wave of people doing a reverse cloud migration that just doesn’t get discussed?Sanjay: I think there’s a couple of phenomenons, Corey, that we watch here. Now, clearly a company of the scale of Dropbox has economics on data and storage, and I’ve talked to Drew and a variety of the folks there, as well as Box, on how they think about this because at that scale, they probably could get some advantages that I’m sure they’ve thought through in both the engineering and the cost. I mean, there’s both engineering optimization and costs that I’m sure Drew and the folks there are thinking through. But there’s a couple of phenomena that we do—I mean, if you go back to, I think, maybe three or four quarters ago, Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, I think in 2019, mid to late 2019 made a statement in his earnings call, he was asked, “How do you think about cloud?” And he said, “Listen, I can run a private cloud cheaper and better than any of the public clouds, and I save 240%,” if I remember the data right.Now, his private cloud and Bank of America is a key customer [unintelligible 00:15:04] of us, we find that some of the bigger companies at scale are able to either get hardware at really good pricing, are able to engineer—because they have hundreds of thousands—they’re almost mini VMware, right, [unintelligible 00:15:18] themselves because they’ve got so many engineers. They can do certain things that a company that doesn’t want to hire those many—companies, Pinterest, Airbnb may not do. So, there are customers who are going to basically say, even prior to repatriation, that the best opportunity is a private cloud. And in that place, we have to work with our private cloud partners, whether it’s Dell or others, to make sure that stack of hardware from them plus the software VMware in the containers on top of that is as competitive and is best cost of ownership, best ROI. Now, when you get to your second—your question around repatriation, what we have found in certain regions outside the US because of sovereign data, sovereign clouds, sometimes some distrust of some of those countries of the US public cloud, are they worried about them getting too big, fear by monopoly, all those types of things, lead certain countries outside the US to think about something that they would need that’s sovereign to their country.And the idea of sovereign data and sovereign clouds does lead those to then investing in local cloud providers. I mean, for example in France, there is a provider called OVH that’s kind of trying to do some of that. In China, there’s a whole bunch of them, obviously, Alibaba being the biggest. And I think that’s going to continue to be a phenomenon where there’s a [federated said 00:16:32], we have a cloud provider program with this 4000 cloud providers, Corey, who built their stack on VMware; we’ve got to feed them. Now, while they are an individual revenue way smaller than the public clouds were, but collectively, they represent a significant mass of where those countries want to run in a local cloud provider.And from our perspective, we spent years and years enabling that group to be successful. We don’t see any decline. In fact, that business for us has been growing. I would have thought that business would just completely decline with the hyperscalers. If anything, they’ve grown.So, there’s a little bit of the rising tide is helping all boats rise, so to speak. And the hyperscaler’s growth has also relied on many of these, sort of, sovereign clouds. So, there’s repatriation happening; I think those sovereign clouds will benefit some, and it could also be in some cases where customers will invest appropriately in private cloud. But I don’t see that—I think if anything, it’s going to be the public cloud growing, the private cloud, and edge cloud growing. And then some of these, sort of, country-specific sovereign clouds also growing. I don’t see this being in a huge threat to the public cloud phenomena that we’re in.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself. Make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io. Corey: I want to very clear, I think that there’s a common misconception that there’s this, somehow, ongoing fight between all the cloud providers, and all this cloud growth, and all this revenue is coming at the expense of other cloud providers. I think that it is simultaneously workloads that are being migrated from on-premises environments—yes—but a lot of it also feels like it’s net-new. It’s not just about increasingly capturing ever larger portions of the market but rather about the market itself expanding geometrically. For a long time, it felt like that was what tech was doing. Looking at the global IT spend numbers coming out of Gartner and other places, it seems like it’s certainly not slowing down. Does that align with your perception of it? Or are there clear winners and losers that are I guess, differentiating out?Sanjay: I think, Corey, you’re right. I think if you just use some of the data, the entire IT market, let’s just say it’s about $1 trillion, some estimates have it higher than that. Let’s break it down a little bit. Inside that 1 trillion market it is growing—I mean, obviously COVID, and GDP declined last year in calendar 2020 did affect overall IT, but I think let’s assume that we have some kind of U-shape or other kind of recovery, going into the second half of certainly into next year; technology should lead GDP in terms of its incline. But inside that trillion-dollar market, if you add up the SaaS market, it’s about $115 billion market.And these are companies like Salesforce, and Adobe, and Workday, and ServiceNow. You add them all up, and those are growing, I think the numbers were in the order of 15 or 20% in aggregate. But that SaaS market is [unintelligible 00:19:08]. And that’s growing, certainly faster than the on-prem applications market, just evidenced by the growth of those companies relative to on-premise investments in SAP or Oracle. And then if you look at the infrastructure market, it’s slightly bigger, it’s about $125 billion, growing slightly faster—20, 25%—and there you have the companies like AWS, Azure, and Google, and Alibaba, and whoever have you. And certainly, that growth is faster than some of the on-premise growth, but it’s not like the on-premise folks are declining. They’re growing at slower paces.Corey: It is harder to leave an on-premise environment running and rack up charges and blow out the bill that way, but it—not impossible, I suppose, but it’s harder to do than it is in public cloud. But I definitely agree that the growth rate surpasses what you would see if it were just people turning things on and forgetting to turn them off all the time.Sanjay: Yeah, and I think that phenomenon is a shift in spending where certainly last year we saw more spending in the cloud than on-premise. I think the on-premise vendors have a tremendous opportunity in front of them, which is to optimize every last dollar that is going to be spent in the data centers, private cloud. And between us and our partners like Dell and others, we’ve got to make sure we do that for our customer base that we’ve accumulated over last 10, 15 years. But there’s also a significant investment now moving to the edge. When I look at retailers, CPG companies—consumer packaged good companies—manufacturers, the conversation that I’m having with their C-level tech or business executives is all about putting compute in the stores.I mean, listen, what is the retailer concerned about? Fraud, and some of those other things, and empowering a quick self-service experience for a consumer who comes in and wants to check out of a Safeway or Walmart really quickly. These are just simple applications with local compute in the store, and the more that we can make that possible on top of almost like a nano data center or micro data center, running in the store with those applications resident there, talking—you know, you can’t just take all of that data, go back and forth to the cloud, but with resident services and capability right there, that’s a beautiful opportunity for the VMware and the Dells of the world. And that’s going to be a significant place where I think you’re going to see expansion of their focus. The Edge market today is I think, projected to be about $6 or $8 billion this year, and growing to $25 billion the next four or five years.So, much smaller than the previous numbers I shared—you know, $125, $115 billion for SaaS and IaaS—but I think the opportunity there, especially these industries that are federated: CPG, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, retail, and logistics, too—you know, FedEx made a big announcement with VMware and Dell a few months ago about how they’re thinking about putting compute and local infrastructure at their distribution sites. I think this phenomenon, Corey, is going to happen in a number of different [unintelligible 00:21:48], and is a tremendous opportunity. Certainly, the public cloud vendors are trying to do that with Outposts and Azure Stack, but I think it does favor the on-premise vendors also having a very strong proposition for the edge cloud.Corey: I assumed that the whole discussion with FedEx started by someone dramatically misunderstanding what it meant to ship code to production.Sanjay: [laugh]. I mean, listen, at the end of the day, all of these folks who are in traditional industries are trying to hire world-class developers—like software companies—because all of them are becoming software companies. And I think the open-source movement, and all of these ways in which you have a software supply chain that’s more modernized, it’s affecting every company. So, I think if you went into the engineering product teams of Rob Carter, who runs technology for FedEx, you’ll find them and they may not have all of the sophistication as a world-class software company, but they’re getting increasingly very much digital in their focus of next generation. And same thing with UPS.I was talking to the CEO of UPS, we had her come and speak at our kickoff. It’s amazing how much her lingo—she was the former CFO of Home Depot—I felt like I was talking to a software executive, and this is the CEO of UPS, a logistics company. So, I think increasingly, every company is becoming a software company at their core. And you don’t need to necessarily know all the details of containers and virtualization, but you need to understand how software and digital transformation, how technology can power your digital transformation.Corey: One thing that I’ve noticed the more I get to talk to people doing different things in different roles was, at first I was excited because I get to talk to the people where they’re really doing it right and everything’s awesome. And I’ve increasingly of the opinion that those sites don’t actually exist. Everyone talks about the great thing is that they’re doing and aspirationally in certain areas in the terms of conference-ware, but you get down into the weeds, and everyone views their environment as being a burning tire fire of sadness and regret. Everyone thinks other people are doing it way better than they are. And in some cases they’re embarrassed about it, in some cases they’re open about it, but I feel like we’re still in the early days where no one is doing things in the quote-unquote, “Right ways,” but everyone thinks everyone else is.Sanjay: Yeah, I think, Corey, that’s absolutely right. We are very much early days in all of this phenomenon. I mean, listen, even the public cloud, Andy himself would say it’s [laugh]—he wouldn’t say it’s quite day one, but he would say it’s very early [unintelligible 00:24:03], even though they’ve had 15 years of incredible success and a $50 billion business. I would agree. And when you look at the customers and their persona—when I ask a CIO what percentage of—of an established company, not one of the modern ones who are built all cloud-native—but what percentage of your workloads are in a public cloud versus private cloud, the vast majority is still in a data center or private cloud.But with the intent—if it’s 90/10, let’s say 90 private 10—for that to become 70/30, 50/50. But very rarely do I hear a one of these large companies say it’s going to be 10/90 the opposite way in three, five years. Now, listen, I think every company as it grows that is more modern. I mean the Zooms of the world, the Modernas, the Airbnbs, as they get bigger and bigger, they represent a completely new phenomenon of how they are building applications that are all cloud-native. And the beautiful thing for me is just as a former engineering and developer, I mean, I grew up writing code in C, and C++ and then came BEA WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere, and [JGUI 00:25:04].And I was so excited for these frameworks. I’m not writing code, thankfully, anymore because it would create lots of problems if I did. But when I watched the phenomena, I think to myself, “Man, if I was a 22 year old entering the workforce now, it’s one of the most exciting times to write code and be a developer because what’s available to you, both in the combination of these cloud frameworks and open-source frameworks, is immense.” To be able to innovate much, much faster than we did 25, 30 years ago when I was a developer.Corey: It’s amazing there’s the pace of innovation, if cloud has changed nothing else, from my perspective, it’s been the idea that you can provision things without these hefty waiting periods. But I want to shift gears slightly because we’ve been talking about cloud for a bit in the context of infrastructure, and containers, and the rest, but if we start moving up the stack a little bit, that’s also considered cloud, which just seems to have that naming problem of namespace collision, just to confuse folks. But VMware is also active in this space, too. You’ve got things like Workspace ONE, you’ve got a bunch of other endpoint options as well that are focused on the security space. Is that aligned?Is that just sort of a different business unit? How does that, I guess, resonate between the various things that you folks do? Because it turns out, you’re kind of a big company, and it’s difficult to keep it all straight from an external perspective.Sanjay: Well, I think—listen, we’re roughly a little less than $12 billion in revenue last year. You can think of us in two buckets: everything in the first bucket is all that we talked about. Think of that as modernization of applications and cloud infrastructure, or what people might think about PaaS and IaaS without the underlying hardware; we’re not trying to build servers and storage and networking at the hardware level, you know, and so and so. But the software layer is about, that’s the first conversation we had for the last 15, 20 minutes. The second part of our business is where we’re touching end-users and infrastructure, and securing it.And we think that’s an important part because that also is something through software, and the cloud could be optimized. And we’ve had a long-standing digital workspace. In fact, when I came to VMware, it was the first business I was running in terms of all the products and end-user computing. And our thesis was many of the current tools, whether it’s the virtual desktop technology that people have from existing vendors, or even today, the security tools that they use is just too cumbersome. It’s too heavy.In many cases, people complain about the number of agents they have on their laptops, or the way in which they secure firewalls is too expensive and too many. We felt we could radically—VMware gets involved in problems where we can radically simplify thing with some disruptive innovation. And the idea was, first in the digital workspace was to radically reduce cost with software that was built for the cloud. And Workspace ONE and all of those things radically reduce the need for disparate technologies for virtual desktops, identity management, and endpoint management. We’ve done very well in that.We’re a leader in that segment, if you look at any of the analysts ratings, whether it’s Gardner or others. But security has been a more recent phenomenon where we felt like it leads us very quickly into securing those laptops because on those same laptops, you have antivirus, you have a variety of tools, and on the average, the CSOs, the Chief Security Officers tell me they have way too many agents, way too many consoles, way too many alerts, and if we could reduce that and have a single agent on a laptop, or maybe even agentless technology that secure this, that’s the Nirvana. And if you look at some of the recent things that have happened with SolarWinds, or Petya, WannaCry in the past, security’s of top concern, Corey, to boards. And the more that we could do to clean that up, I think we can emerge—which we’re already starting to—as a cybersecurity layer. So, that’s a smaller part of our business, but, I mean, it’s multi-billion now, and we think it’s a tremendous opportunity for us to take what we’re doing in workspace and security and make that a growth vector.So, I think both of these core areas, the cloud infrastructure, and modern applications—topic number one—workspace and security—topic number two—I’m both tremendous opportunities for VMware in our journey to grow from a $12 billion company to one day, hopefully, a $20 billion company.Corey: Would that we all had such problems, on some level. It’s really interesting seeing the evolution of companies going from relatively small companies and humble beginnings to these giant—I guess, I want to use the term Colossus, but I’m not sure if that’s insulting or [laugh] not—it’s phenomenal just to see the different areas of business that VMware has expanded into. I mean, I’ve had other folks from your org talking about what a Tanzu is or might be, so we aren’t even going to go down that rabbit hole due to time constraints at this point, but one thing that I do want to get into, slightly, has been a recurring theme in the show, which is where does the next generation of leaders come from? Where do the next generation engineers come from? And you’ve been devoting a bit of time to this. I think I saw one of your YouTube videos somewhat recently about your leadership values. Talk to me a little bit about that.Sanjay: Yeah. Corey, listen, I’m glad that we’re closing out this on some of the soft topics because I love talking to you, or other talented analysts and thought leaders around technology. It’s my roots; I’m a technical person at heart. I love technology. But I think the soft stuff is often the hard stuff.And the hard stuff is often the soft stuff. And what I mean by that is, when all this peels away, what your lasting legacy to the company are the people you invest in, the character you build. And, I mean, as an immigrant who came to this country, when I was 18 years old, $50 in my pocket, I was very fortunate to have a scholarship to go to a really nice University, Dartmouth College, to study computer science. I mean, I grew up in India and if it wasn’t for the opportunity to come here on a scholarship, I wouldn’t have [been here 00:30:32]. So, everything I consider a blessing and a learning opportunity where I’m looking at the advent of life as a growth mindset: what can I learn? And we all need to cultivate more and more aspects of that growth mindset where we move from being know-it-alls to learn-it-alls.And one of the key things that I talk about—and all of your listeners on this, listening to this, I welcome to go to YouTube and search Sanjay Poonen and leadership, it’s a 10-minute video—I’ll pick one of them. Most often as we get higher and higher in an organization, leaders tend to view things as a pyramid, and they’re kind of like this chief bird sitting at the top of the pyramid, and all these birds that are looking—below them on branches are looking up and all they see is crap falling down. Literally. That’s what happens when you look at the bird up. And our job as leaders is to invert that pyramid.And to actually think about the person who is on the front lines. In a software company, it’s an engineer and a sales rep. They are the folks on the frontline: they’re writing code or selling code. They are the true people who are making things happen. And when we as leaders look at ourselves as the bottom of the pyramid—some people call that, “Servant leadership.”Whatever way you call it, the phrase isn’t the point—the point is, invert that pyramid and to take obstacles out of people from the frontline. You really become not interested as much around what your own personal wellbeing, it’s about ensuring that those people in the middle layers and certainly at the leaf levels of the organization are enormously successful. Their success becomes your joy, and it becomes almost like a parent, right? I mean, Corey, you have kids; I’ve got kids. Imagine if you were a parent and you were jealous of your kid’s success.I mean, I want my three children, my daughter, my two children to do better than me, running races or whatever it is that they do. And I think as a leader, the more that we celebrate the successes of our teams and people, and our lasting legacy is not our own success; it’s what we have left behind, other people. I’ve say often there’s no success without successors. So, that mindset takes a lot of work because the natural tendency of the human mind and the human behavior is to be selfish and think about ourselves. But yeah, it’s a natural phenomenon.We’re born that way, we live in act that way, but the more that we start to create that, then taking that not just to our team, but also to the community allows us to build a better society. And that’s something I’m deeply passionate about, try to do my small piece for it, and in fact, I’m sometimes more excited about these topics of leadership than even technology.Corey: It feels like it’s the stuff that lasts; it has staying power. I could record a video now about technology choices and how to work with those technologies and unless it’s about Git, it’s probably not going to be too relevant in 10 years. But leadership is one of those eternal things where it’s, once you’ve experienced a certain level of success, you can really see what people do with that the people that I like to surround myself with, generally make it a point to send the elevator back down, so to speak.Sanjay: I agree, Corey, it’s—glad that you do it. I’m always looking for people that I can learn from, and it doesn’t matter where they are in society. I mean, I think you often—I mean, this is classic Dale Carnegie; one of the books that my dad gave to me at a young age that I encourage everyone to read, How to Win Friends and Influence People, talked about how you can detect a person’s character based on the way they treat the receptionist, or their assistants, the people who might be lower down the totem pole from them. And most often you have people who kiss up and kick down. And I think when you build an organization that’s that typical.A lot of companies are built that way where they kiss up and kick down, you actually have an inverted sense of values. And I think you have to go back to some of those old-school ways that Dale Carnegie or Steven Covey talked about because you don’t have to build a culture that’s obnoxious; you can build a company that’s both nice and competitive. It doesn’t mean that anything we’ve talked about for the last few minutes means that I’m any less competitive and I don’t want to beat the competition and win a deal. What you can do it nicely. And even that’s something that I’ve had to grow in.So, I think when we all look at ourselves as sculptures, work in progress, and we’re perfecting our craft, so to speak, both on the technical front, and the product front and customer relationship, but then also on the leadership and the personal growth front, we actually become both better people and then we also build better companies.Corey: And sometimes that’s really all that we can ask for. If people want to learn more about what you have to say and get your opinion on these things, okay can they find you?Sanjay: Listen, I’m very approachable. You can follow me on Twitter, I’m on LinkedIn [unintelligible 00:34:54], or my email spoonen@vmware.com. I’m out there.I read voraciously, and probably not as responsive, sometimes, but I try—certainly, customers will hear from me within 24 hours because I try to be very responsive to our customers. But you can connect with me on social media. And I’m honored to be on your show, Corey. I’ve been reading your stuff since it first came out, and then, obviously, a fan of the way you’re thinking about things. Sometimes I feel I need to correct your opinion, and some of that we did today. [laugh]. But you’ve been very—Corey: Oh, I would agree. I come out of this conversation with a different view of VMware than I went into it with. I’m being fully transparent on that.Sanjay: And you’ve helped us. I mean, quite frankly, your blogs and your focus on this and, like, is the V in VMware, like, a bad word? Is it legacy? It’s forced us to think, so I think it’s iron sharpens iron. I’m very delighted that we connected, I don’t know if it was a year or two years ago.And I’ve been a fan; I watch the stuff that you do at re:Invent, so keep going with what you’re doing. I think all of what you write and what you talk about is hopefully making an impact on people who read and listen. And look forward to continuing this dialogue, not just with me, but I think you’re talking to other people in VMware in the future. I’m not the smartest person at VMware, but I’m very fortunate to be [laugh] surrounded by many of them. So hopefully, you get to talk to them, also, in the near future.Corey: [laugh]. I will, of course, will put links to all that in the [show notes 00:36:11]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Sanjay: Thanks, Corey, and all the best of you and your organization.Corey: Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer of VMware, I’m Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you’ve hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a condescending comment telling me that in fact, it is a best practice to ship your code to production via FedEx.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This is the second part of our interview with Harry Dent. Last week, Harry and Bruce talked about the threat to the economy, which is according to Harry's prediction- the financial asset bubble.  Harry S. Dent Jr. studied economics in college in the 1970s, receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. After Harvard he became a management consultant, helping businesses understand where they were, what obstacles they faced, and how to succeed.  He did this by weaving together research on people, technology, and markets. Since then, he's spoken to executives, financial advisors, and investors around the world. He's appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC, and CNN/Fox News. He's been featured in Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Success, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, American Demographics, and Omni. Harry has written numerous books over the years. In his book The Great Boom Ahead, published in 1992, he stood virtually alone in accurately forecasting the unanticipated boom of the U.S. economy in the 1990s, as well as the multi-decade decline of the Japanese economy.  In 2016, Harry published, The Sale of a Lifetime,  where he reveals the secret behind many of the largest (and fastest!) fortunes in history out of great crashes that can create a profit windfall that will last you generations. Today, he uses the tools he developed from decades of research and hands-on business experience to offer readers a positive, easy-to-understand view of the economic future.The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.Video LinkRadio Show

In this episode Kate meets Scott Anthony who is an expert on business innovation. Senior Partner at Innosight, Scott helps leaders design new growth strategies, build innovation capabilities, navigate disruptive innovation, and manage strategic transformation. Scott has written eight books, including most recently Eat, Sleep, Innovate (2020) and Dual Transformation (2017), which describe how forward-thinking organizations can navigate disruptive change and own the future. Scott is a prolific contributor to Harvard Business Publishing. He is the most published digital author on HBR.org and is Harvard Business Corporate Learning's most in-demand subject matter expert. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, where he served as a member of the Committee on the Future Economy and a Board member of MediaCorp from 2013-2019. In 2019 he was named one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50, and in 2017 he won the T50 Innovation Award. Scott is a featured speaker on topics of innovation and growth. He has delivered keynote addresses on six continents, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Channel News Asia, CNBC, and FOX Business. Scott served on the Board of Directors of Media General (NYSE: MEG) from 2009-2013 and of Mediacorp from 2013-2019, helping guide both companies through strategic transformations. From 2009 to 2015 Scott chaired the investment committee for IDEAS Ventures, a SGD 10 million fund Innosight ran in conjunction with the Singapore government that invested in 10 Singapore-based companies and generated a 16% internal rate of return. Prior to joining Innosight, Scott was a senior researcher with Clayton Christensen, managing a group that worked to further Christensen's research on innovation. Scott received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. 

This week, renowned Economic Forecaster Harry Dent joins Bruce Norris on the TNG Real Estate Radio Show and Podcast. They discuss Harry's thoughts on the financial asset bubble and predictions for real estate.Harry S. Dent Jr. studied economics in college in the 1970s, receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. After Harvard he became a management consultant, helping businesses understand where they were, what obstacles they faced, and how to succeed.  He did this by weaving together research on people, technology, and markets. Since then, he's spoken to executives, financial advisors, and investors around the world. He's appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC, and CNN/Fox News. He's been featured in Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Success, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, American Demographics, and Omni. Harry has written numerous books over the years. In his book The Great Boom Ahead, published in 1992, he stood virtually alone in accurately forecasting the unanticipated boom of the U.S. economy in the 1990s, as well as the multi-decade decline of the Japanese economy.  In 2016, Harry published, The Sale of a Lifetime,  where he reveals the secret behind many of the largest (and fastest!) fortunes in history out of great crashes that can create a profit windfall that will last you generations. The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.Video LinkRadio Show

Nigeria's Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has denied having a Christianisation agenda and only appointing Christians into sensitive positions.A widely circulated article written by “Dr Musbau Akinbode” titled “Osinbajo's Stealth Christianization Agenda” had accused Osinbajo of advancing a dangerous religious agenda by appointing mostly Christians into government.Osinbajo denied the allegations through his Senior special assistant to the president on legal, research and compliance matters, Balkisu Saidu.Balkisu Saidu describes the article by Dr. Akinbode as “mischievous”, according to reports.She listed the Muslims who are working closely with the vice-president and also disclosed that he supports them in their right to religious freedom without hindrance.FULL TEXT OF BALKISU SAIDU'S REJOINDERBefore the permeation of social media, I was one of those who believed in and re-echoed the popular saying that “the only way to win with a toxic person is not to play.” To this end, I found silence to be a very potent tool in dealing with some extremely wicked and deliberate acts of provocation exhibited through concoction and spread of falsehoods and apparently implausible stories.I have since realised that, in this day and age of fake news and cyber propaganda, it is important that lies and misinformation, no matter the motive of the initiator, are countered and records set straight. Amongst the recipients of the falsehood could be some innocent consumers who will benefit from having true facts presented. Allowing fake news to linger may create the impression that there could be some element of truth in what was propagated.It is for the foregoing reasons that when the write-up credited to one Dr Musbau Akinbode titled “Osinbajo's Stealth Christianization Agenda”, which has been circulating recently in social media, was brought to my attention, I opted to respond. Although no date was ascribed to the write-up, it appears to be a rehash of several baseless allegations made in the past against the Vice President, many of whom have been debunked with apologies issued by unsuspecting media houses misled into publishing some of the concocted stories.The new twist in Dr Akinbode's write-up is the allegation that the Vice President is implementing a “Christianization” agenda and in that wise none of the appointments made by the Vice President from persons of Yoruba extraction were given to Yoruba Muslims. This allegation reminded me of a similar baseless claim made in 2017 by one Dr. Ismaila Farouk, which Akinbode referred to, alleging that the selection of personal staff of the Vice President was skewed in favour of “his Yoruba ethnic group.” Those fuelling the orchestrated and surreptitious narrative immediately backtracked when confronted with facts and a long list of Northerners, from tribes other than Yoruba, working in the office at the time including, among others, Mrs. Maryam Uwais (Special Adviser on Social Investment, from Kano State); Ambassador Abdullahi Gwary (Senior Special Assistant on Foreign Affairs, from Yobe State); my humble self (Senior Special Assistant on Legal, Research and Compliance Matters, from Sokoto State); Mr. Ismaeel Ahmed (Senior Special Assistant on Social Investment, from Kano State); Mr. Bege Bala (Special Assistant, BPE, from Kaduna State); Abdurahman Baffa Yola (Special Assistant on Political Matters); Mrs. Susan Chagwa (Special Assistant on Household and Social Events, from Adamawa State), etc.Certainly, some of the listed allegations made by Dr Akinbode are objectionably and glaringly malicious and even laughable, unlikely to be believed by any discerning follower of the rise and actions of the Vice President. For example, the Office of the Vice President is like a mini-Nigeria. The level of diversity accomplished in the office reflects all segments of the society – geo-political, ethnic, religious, gender, and youth representation.It is therefore inconceivable for anyone to suggest marginalisation or, as Dr Akinbode puts it, “Christianization” in appointments and religious bigotry. To the specific point of appointment of Yoruba Muslims, Dr Akinbode may wish to know that, even amongst his personal staff, no less than ten Yoruba Muslims were appointed to work for the Vice President including his next in command and the highest-ranking officer in the Vice President's office, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Mr. AbdurRahman Adeola Ipaye. Other Yoruba Muslims who work, at various times, in the office include Distinguished Senator Babafemi Ojudu (Special Adviser on Political Matters); Dr Mariam Masha (Senior Special Assistant on Internally Displaced Persons); Ms Lanre Shasore (Senior Special Assistant on Planning and Coordination); Mrs. Olabisi Ogungbemi (Special Assistant on Political Matters); Yusuf Ali (Special Assistant on Power); Mr Mohammed Brimah (Special Assistant on Job Creation); Mr Mukhtar Tijani (Special Assistant on Power); Ms. Lolade Abiola; and Mr. Akanni Rahman.A leader known to suspend meetings to enable Muslim participants to perform prayers; known to rescue Muslim orphans and provide them with shelter and educational opportunities that safeguard and promote their religious practices; known to host Breaking of Ramadan Fast (Iftar) with Religious Leaders and Muslim communities from across the country; known to timeously intervene in the resolution of thorny inter-religious issues with potential for escalation can certainly not be said to be promoting any particular religion.Also, the allegation of “Christianization” in the appointment of some named individuals to various positions in Government is indicative of a complete lack of understanding of how Government appointments are made or a deliberate attempt to distort facts and mislead the unsuspecting public. Save for Mr. Kayode Pitan, who was appointed by the Vice President as the Managing Director of the Bank of Industry to take over from Mr. Waheed Olagunju, who was serving in an acting capacity, all the other persons named by Dr Akinbode were appointed by the President in the exercise of his constitutional powers.The calibre of the persons is not in question. In terms of accomplishments, these are pacesetters in their respective industries. For example, Mr. Ben Akabueze, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation served more than two terms as Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget in Lagos State and was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAL Bank Plc. (now Sterling Bank Plc.). He has also served as Special Adviser to the President on National Planning.Mr Alex Okoh, the Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, an Alumnus of Harvard Business School and former Managing Partner, Ashford & McGuire Consulting Ltd.; is a quintessential Banker and Financial Advisor who as the Managing Director/CEO of NNB International Bank led the transformation of the bank from a comatose state into a leading commercial bank in Nigeria. He has worked with various banks within and outside Nigeria including Nigeria International Bank Limited (Citibank); United Bank for Africa Plc.; Citibank New York; Fidelity Bank London; Swiss Banking Corporation, Zurich; and Grindlays Bank, Zimbabwe. His first tenure recorded tremendous transformation of the Bureau leading to his reappointment by the President.Before the appointment by Mr. President of Mr Okey Enelamah as the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment in 2015, the Harvard University graduate, Baker Scholar, and Loeb Fellow has had a tremendously successful career in investment banking and with Arthur Anderson (now KPMG Professional Services), New York and London offices of Goldman Sachs, Zephyr Management. He also founded and served as CEO of the African Capital Alliance (ACA).Clearly, even on the appointment of Mr Pitan, the author is not questioning the qualification of Mr Pitan, imaginably considering his robust academic training (including at American Graduate School of International Management, Arizona, USA; London Business School; and Haggai Institute, Singapore) as well as his decades of corporate and banking experience.These appointments were based purely on merit. The only problem with the appointments, according to the author, was their religion. Save Dr Akinbode is suggesting that persons being considered for appointments into Government positions must denounce their religions, it is unclear why the religious leanings of the appointees should be an issue. Recall that similar allegations were made against appointments of equally deserving and competent Muslims with claims of “Islamisation” being bandied around. Such divisive rhetoric and adverse language are dangerous to Nigeria's unified harmonious existence and should be resisted and rejected by all.The Osinbajo I know has been nothing but absolutely and uncompromisingly loyal to his principal, earning him several public and private commendations and additional responsibilities from the President, including the management of the Economic Sustainability Plan, credited with facilitating the “unexpected exit” of Nigeria from one of the worst recession cycles to hit several nations of the world. The man, Osinbajo, seeks no accolades. It is therefore not every action taken by him in support of persons facing challenges that will end up on the pages of newspapers. Just because Dr Akinbode is unaware of these interventions should not be a basis for dehumanising the Vice President.Additionally, it is evil and reprehensible to drag the person of Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo into whatever malicious campaign the author is mounting against the Vice President. This is a humble and compassionate woman, who has conducted her humanitarian and philanthropic activities in a well-guided and detached manner away from any Government activities. It is unacceptable to have persons of integrity be subjected to such ridiculous acts of scathing and baseless attacks. Clearly

Elizabeth serves as the Senior General Partner at Dev Equity, a venture capital fund investing in B-Corps in low income housing, urban revitalization, and sustainable agriculture in Latin America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru). She works closely with her portfolio companies to take their businesses to the next level while also making positive social changes in their countries. Elizabeth started her career in rapidly growing, innovative technology companies. She served as a Product Manager for Microsoft Word when Windows was first launched and participated in forming the original Microsoft Office product. After graduating as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, she joined Yahoo! as one of the earliest employees-- quickly rising through the ranks to lead the business side of several divisions including Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Auctions, Yahoo! Classifieds, Yahoo! Greetings and other properties. Most importantly, she was a founder of Yahoo! Shopping and became a leader in developing and shaping Yahoo’s e-commerce strategy. Since that time, Elizabeth has dedicated the past 15 years to impact investing and corporate social responsibility-- demonstrating that strong financial performance and positive social change are inherently connected. During the Covid-19 pandemic she created a new social enterprise, DignityMoves, with the purpose of creating innovative and scalable solutions for homelessness in California. Her first DignityMoves housing site has been funded by the State of California’s Project Homekey program and additional sites are in the works for Santa Barbara, San Francisco and elsewhere across California.

Life's Tough Media is pleased to announce the latest episode of our “Life's Tough: Explorers are TOUGHER!” podcast series. Hosted by Richard Wiese—explorer extraordinaire and President of The Explorers Club—this episode features Victor Vescovo, an American private equity investor, retired naval officer, avid adventurer, and renowned undersea explorer. Vescovo's storied career as an adventurer began when he was 23 years old and traveling solo to Nairobi to begin a safari in the Serengeti. He couldn't help but stare at Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, breaking through the clouds. Vescovo's guide saw him staring at this majestic peak and remarked: “You know you can climb that, right?” Since then, Vescovo's life has been a series of one extraordinary adventure after another. Eventually, Vescovo went on to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, as well as other iconic mountains. In 2017, he became the 12th American to complete the “Explorer's Grand Slam”—a challenge that consists of climbing the highest summit on each of the seven continents (the “Seven Summits”) and skiing at least 100 kilometers to the North and South Poles. Vescovo's pursuit of the “Seven Summits,” was not always smooth. The first time he attempted to climb Aconcagua, a mountain in Argentina that features the highest summit in the Western Hemisphere, he nearly lost his life. According to an account of the incident in a Dallas publication, D Magazine, published last year: “He (Vescovo) stepped on a boulder and it gave, sending him cartwheeling backward. Rocks hit his face, chipping his teeth. A 70-pounder struck his spine. He blacked out. When he came to a few seconds later, he couldn't speak. But he could understand what his climbing team was discussing: the possibility of leaving him and returning the next day with help, and whether the incoming cold would kill him. The three didn't think they had the strength to carry him back to camp.” As it turned out, a group of French climbers nearby came over and carried Vescovo to an emergency shelter. He spent a recovery period in Mendoza, Argentina, until he was able to travel back to the U.S. He returned to Aconcagua a few years later and made a successful ascent of the mountain. Deep dives Two years after wrapping up the “Slam,” Vescovo, at age 53, became the first person to have reached the deepest points in all five of the world's major oceans, when he took his submersible, called “Limiting Factor,” down 18,212 feet to the bottom of Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean on Aug. 24, 2019. Vescovo began the “Five Deeps Expedition” on Dec. 19, 2018, by visiting the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 27,480 feet. After that, the intrepid adventurer went to the South Sandwich Trench (24,390 feet) in the Antarctic Ocean on Feb. 3, 2019; the Java Trench (23,596 feet) in the Indian Ocean on April 5, 2019; the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (35,843 feet)—the deepest known place in the oceans, about 7 miles down—in the Pacific Ocean on April 28, 2019; and then his final destination in the Arctic. In September 2014, four years before Vescovo began the “Five Deeps Expedition,” he emailed the president of Triton Submarines in his quest to build a submersible that could explore the deepest parts of the oceans. Triton's president had already harbored an interest in developing such a vessel and Vescovo assured him that he had the resources to invest in the project. The two met in 2015, and eventually Triton came up with a plan for building a unique submersible, one that could withstand up to 16,000 pounds of air pressure per square inch. The standard pressure at sea level is 14.7 psi. The white titanium sphere, which Vescovo named for a spaceship in a sci-fi book series, was designed for repeated trips to the greatest ocean depths (a first). It has two seats, one for a pilot, one for a scientist, and a viewport by each seat. Vescovo, however, completed his five deep dives as the lone occupant aboard “Limiting Factor.” Vescovo is a managing partner and co-founder of Insight Equity, a private equity firm based in Texas. Earlier, he worked at Bain and Company, in merger integration, and at Lehman Brothers in mergers and acquisitions. He served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence offer, retiring in 2013 as a commander. The Dallas native has an MBA from Harvard Business School. His degree had a concentration in finance and operations, and he graduated as a Baker Scholar (in top 5 percent of class). He also earned a master's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied defense analysis with an operations research focus. And, he received an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, majoring in economics and political science. Join Richard and Victor for a fascinating conversation on Victor's celebrated adventures and what motivates this ultimate explorer.

We're delighted to begin Season 4 of The Disruptive Voice with Anna Marie Wagner, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Ginkgo Bioworks. Hosted by Derek van Bever, Anna Marie discusses the transformative potential of bioengineering and the work her company is doing to help facilitate it. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar, Anna Marie worked as an investor with Bain Capital Private Equity for several years before diving into the world of biotechnology. In this rich discussion, she teaches Derek (and all of us!) about synthetic biology, and the barriers to more nimble forms of biotech development, as well as the platform solution that Gingko has devised to facilitate biological innovation. 

Investors today seem to be enamored with growth in the US tech sector, regardless of valuations. By contrast, Soo Chuen and his team practice the increasingly rare art of contrarian value investing on a global scale. Soo Chuen Tan is President of Discerene Group LP, a Connecticut-based private investment partnership that invests in businesses protected by either structural barriers to entry (“moats”) or hard assets, when such businesses are out of favor, at prices offering significant margins of safety. In this episode, Soo Chuen discusses the psychological and philosophical underpinnings of value investing, including (1) being greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy, (2) viewing risk as the probability and potential magnitude of permanent capital impairment rather than volatility, (3) distinguishing price from value, and (4) requiring a margin of safety. Soo Chuen also discusses the importance of understanding the historical, social, and cultural context of a business enterprise. What are the unspoken norms that a management team operates by? What are the values of the country or culture that the business operates in? Values, after all, guide behavior, and behavior influences outcomes. Soo Chuen speaks of several investments he's been involved in around the world, and what he's learned from each. In particular, he shares his reflections on operating in "thick" versus "thin" cultures. Born in Malaysia to two physics teachers, Soo Chuen discovered his calling as a value investor in his mid-twenties while in business school. Soo Chuen holds a Bachelor/Master of Arts degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, where he was awarded the Martin Wronker University Prize for Law. Soo Chuen also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar. Before founding Discerene, Soo Chuen worked at Deccan Value Advisors, the Baupost Group, Halcyon Asset Management, and McKinsey & Company.

E25: Woody Bradford is Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board at Conning, a global investment firm founded in 1912 with a long history of serving the insurance industry. Prior to joining Conning, Woody was an Operating Partner with Advent International, a global private equity firm. Previously, he spent 12 years at Putnam Investments where he held multiple roles, including Head of Corporate Development and Chief Operating Officer of Global Distribution. He is a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and of the Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. He is a member of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (“WPI”) Board of Trustees and participates on The Greater Boston Food Bank Emeriti Board, where he has served as Chair of the Board. Woody Bradford's LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/woodybradford/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/woodybradford/ ) Conning https://www.conning.com/ (https://www.conning.com) WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE: Woody's personal story of helping establish the first food bank in Maine when he was a teenager. The bet he took that ended up with him getting into Harvard Business School. The unique distinction of graduating as a Harvard Baker Scholar (top 5%) and the study skills he used to achieve it. The skill Woody developed to create his own luck. The surprising career strategy that helped him find his way to the Financial Services industry. Why humility is the one trait he'd like to instill in every employee. What important things Conning is doing to prepare for the workforce of the future. How individuals from under-represented groups have distinguished themselves as potential future leaders, including C-suite positions, and the encouragement they offer to others with similar aspirations. A helpful resource for having uncomfortable conversations. The one word you should keep in mind when presenting your idea to the C-Suite. A positive strategy to use with an employee who is feeling burned out. Books for inspiration. How to improve your mental and physical health. Woody's favorite Metallica album. HIGHLIGHTS: What characteristics should you look for in a mentor: Someone who can give you honest feedback. Someone who can point you in a direction that helps you think through your strengths and weaknesses and find opportunities in an organization. Advice for people in under-represented groups in the C-Suite: Do your job well. Try to be in an organization that understands and practices diversity and inclusion. Find a manager or a mentor who values you and who will give you opportunities. QUOTES: "Allow people to bring their whole selves to work." "I learned to be ruthless about time management. There's no way you can do everything. You must be able to decide what's important and what's not. RESOURCES: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho,https://uncomfortableconvos.com/ ( https://uncomfortableconvos.com/) Pelotonhttps://www.onepeloton.com/ ( https://www.onepeloton.com/) Why We Sleep, Matthew Walkerhttps://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 ( https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316) How Not to Die, Michael Gregerhttps://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Die-Discover-Scientifically/dp/1250066115 ( https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Die-Discover-Scientifically/dp/1250066115) Indianapolis, Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladichttps://www.amazon.com/Indianapolis-Disaster-Fifty-Year-Exonerate-Innocent/dp/1501135945 ( https://www.amazon.com/Indianapolis-Disaster-Fifty-Year-Exonerate-Innocent/dp/1501135945) Jaws: The U.S.S. Indianapolis Speechhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO60RohuARY ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO60RohuARY) Robert Ludlum bookshttps://www.amazon.com/robert-ludlum-books ( https://www.amazon.com/robert-ludlum-books) Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Alfred...