"If there are two things that have been foundational to my journey, it's been learning, and it's been the importance of taking risk." Hemant Taneja, managing partner and CEO of General Catalyst, shares his insights on leadership, innovation, and the evolving role of venture capital in this episode of View From The Top, the podcast . In his conversation with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, on the Stanford GSB campus, Taneja reflects on his personal journey from a low-income househo...
Aug 30, 2024•58 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast 1,216. That’s the total number of NCAA games won by Tara VanDerveer , making her the all-time winning coach in college basketball history. In addition to coaching for 38 years at Stanford, she led the U.S. Women’s team to Olympic gold in 1996 – finishing with a flawless 16-0 record. “Coaching is teaching. It’s really trying to help people go to places they can’t go themselves,” says VanDerveer. “There’s nothing more rewarding than a great team.” It’s hard to believe that the legendary coach was ...
Jul 10, 2024•47 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast “It wasn’t luck. I worked every single second of the day – I was obsessed with it. I wanted independence for myself, for my family, and I didn’t want to go back to Jacksonville.” In 2022, Daniella Pierson was named the youngest, wealthiest, self-made BIPOC woman in the world by Forbes . The 28-year-old grew her first company, The Newsette , to a $200 million dollar valuation without taking on a single investor. As a one-woman operation, she advertised through word of mouth and ran the compa...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast "You can learn how something can be done and then go back to first principles and ask yourself, 'Given the conditions today, given my motivation, given the instruments, the tools, given how things have changed, how would I redo this? How would I reinvent this whole thing?" Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, started his career washing dishes at Denny's. He then worked his way to busboy and, eventually, founded what is one of today's most valuable companies on Wall Street. In this inter...
Apr 25, 2024•58 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast "My first piece of advice is only take the role if you are really interested in it. Startups are hard," says Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox. "And when it's tough, you find a way, you make a way, you back up the boat, you reassess, you pivot. And so if you don't have that irrational belief and pull, don't do it." Aicha Evans took the role of CEO at autonomous vehicle company Zoox in 2019. And in 2020, she led the company's acquisition by Amazon for $1.3B. Evans visited Stanford Graduate School of Busin...
Dec 15, 2023•56 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast "The secret sauce of being a successful creator on the platform is just being true to yourself. And that sounds sort of very cliché, but I wish somebody had given me that advice early in my career because nothing rings more true." Neal Mohan , MBA ’05 and the CEO of YouTube, visited the Stanford campus as part of View From The Top. Mohan sat down with Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, to discuss his background in tech, his time at Stanford GSB, and why he is an optimist about AI. See Privacy Policy at h...
Dec 13, 2023•55 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast “In companies, you don’t want just the product team thinking about the product; the finance team thinking about finance ... You want everyone all the time feeling like they’re an owner, and they can have a point of view on any part of the company.” In this View From The Top interview, Sarah Friar , MBA ’00, CEO of Nextdoor, sits down with Zack Doherty, MBA ’24. During their conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Friar shared her unique perspective on taking strateg...
Dec 11, 2023•55 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast "I've seen unbelievable change happen in places that the world sees as not investible. Part of storytelling is doing the work of investing so that people can tell their own stories because of the changes they've made." In 1986 Jacqueline Novogratz quit her job on Wall Street and moved to Rwanda to help open the country's first microfinance institution. She then came to Stanford GSB in 1989, and, in 2001, founded Acumen, a nonprofit impact investing fund. "We look at poverty always in terms ...
Jun 29, 2023•55 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast "Now also in that meeting, I asked her, 'Could you introduce me to a few of your friends? I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea.' Because every meeting has to get you to three other meetings. Never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction." In this View From The Top interview, Rent the Runway founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman shares stories from her first meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg and how she's worked to foster and maintain relation...
May 23, 2023•56 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast “If you can create unreasonable expectations, people amaze you with their creativity.” In this View From The Top interview, Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, spoke with Sankalp Banerjee, MBA ’23, about his personal evolution as a leader, including the last 16 years as CEO. Narayen discussed the importance of innovative thinking across multiple scales, seeking opportunities in setbacks, and finding creative inspiration. He also shared his perspective on the future of t...
May 01, 2023•53 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast In April and March of 2020, as shelter-in-place mandates swept the globe and travel halted, bookings on Airbnb plummeted. With an 80% revenue loss, the company had to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce. "When you’re our size, and the business drops by 80 percent in eight weeks, it's is like being in an 18-wheeler going 80 miles-an-hour, and then you slam on the brakes," Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said. Chesky was interviewed by James Yan, MBA '23, for View From The ...
Mar 17, 2023•57 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast “You know what kind of culture you have by how your employees are feeling on Sunday night when they think about getting ready to go back to work on Monday morning.” When Cynt Marshall was hired as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks in 2018, she presented her vision: that the organization would become a global standard for inclusion and diversity. “I truly believe if you have an inclusive culture and a diverse group of employees, you can get anything done," Marshall says. "I’ve lived it. There’...
Feb 23, 2023•55 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast "For me, the thing that stood out was my difference. I wasn’t chasing the thing that others were chasing. I was chasing the things that lived with my values." In this View From The Top interview, Tristan Walker MBA ’10, founder and CEO of Walker & Company, sits down with James Yan, MBA '23, to talk about his journey from Stanford GSB to entrepreneur. Walker shares a story from day he'll never forget: when he found a cafe, and sat down to write down his values. From that day forward, Wal...
Feb 09, 2023•53 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast "If you want to build the future, don't look to the future. Look to something that's in the corner in the present." In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Andy Dunn MBA ’07, founder and CEO of Bonobos, sits down with Cyerra Holmes, MBA '23, to talk about his journey building a clothing company while a student at Stanford GSB. He also shares stories from his recently released memoir, "Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind," which explores the intersec...
Dec 02, 2022•55 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast "My number one priority is to make sure Zoom employees are happy. I believe if you have happy employees, you’re going to have happy customers." Eric Yuan, SEP '06, founded Zoom in 2011 to "deliver happiness and bring people together" in a frictionless video environment. In 2019, Eric led Zoom to one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of the year. But it was the next year that really made his company a global verb. In January 2020, the Zoom app averaged about 56,000 daily download...
Nov 29, 2022•46 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast "Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. In my own life journey, I've come to appreciate the significance of entrepreneurship in transforming communities, in transforming countries, societies, and humanity." Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, and champion of African entrepreneurs, is a steadfast believer that the private sector has a role to play in developing countries across Africa. After a career running United Bank of Africa, Elumelu says he has decided “to commit the ...
Aug 08, 2022•48 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast "Figure out what the big moments where you can bring your teams together are. It cures a lot of ills. It really helps with morale. It's incredible for team building." In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, sits down with Christopher Stromeyer, MBA '22, to discuss risk-taking, feedback, and her pre-launch ritual. Watch this interview on YouTube . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at...
Jul 15, 2022•57 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, sits down with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe to discuss breaking down inequality through genetics and how leaders should build trust by being unabashedly honest. “The guiding principle for 23andMe is transparency and choice. It’s the choice whether you want to get your genetic information, the choice if you want to participate in research, the choice that you don’t want to do all these things. And I think that’s one of the issues I have in healthcare — mo...
Jun 30, 2022•58 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast "You have to encourage innovation. Companies become more conservative in decision making as you grow...be okay with failure and reward effort, not outcomes." In this episode of View From The Top , the podcast, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, speaks to Archana Sohmshetty, MBA '22, about the impact of access to technology, humanity's challenge to harness it, and how Google is sustainably defining the future of work. "When you see the appetite and the desire for people to make thei...
Jun 16, 2022•47 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast "If you talk about and comment on everything, your voice becomes background noise ... It's important [for brands] to be clear what matters most to us and why. What's our purpose? Why do we exist?" In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast , Dara Treseder, MBA '14, Peloton's global head of marketing, communications, and membership discusses how she found her purpose as a leader and why the journey to success is not linear. "Remember no matter how high you are, be humble. No matter h...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast When David Vélez, MBA '12, moved to Brazil in 2008 to open a regional office for a private equity fund, he didn’t expect one of his biggest challenges to be getting a bank account. The process took five months. Five years later, he was in São Paulo after working as a partner for Sequoia Capital, a venture firm, and has just graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To him, Brazil’s financial services sector seemed ripe for disruption. So in May of 2013, with seed funding fro...
May 24, 2022•55 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast “You have to be very humble if you want to be an entrepreneur…know what you know and know what you don’t know.” In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Jessica Alba, founder of The Honest Company, sits down with Alexandra Eitel, MBA '22 to discuss how entrepreneurs have to trust their gut. View From the Top is drawn from the dean’s speaker series in which prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for a conversation on effective leadership, ...
May 12, 2022•42 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast "People will give you credit, but 99% of it is not you,” said Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani, in a View From The Top interview on campus. “It's the environment that you created.” Interviewed by Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, Ulukaya also discussed how businesses can benefit from hiring and training refugees in their community. "Refugees can come into society and a community. It’s very simple, as a CEO: hire them, train them; you will benefit greatly and so will they.” ...
Mar 25, 2022•59 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast MercadoLibre e-commerce, the eBay of Latin America, is a $28 billion company. At its roots are three friends who met at Stanford GSB. In this View From The Top speaker series, MercadoLibre founders Marcos Galperín, MBA ’99; Hernan Kazah, MBA ’99; and Stelleo Tolda, MBA ’99 discuss the team dynamics of starting a company with classmates and the contrarian views that helped them succeed. Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is s...
Jan 25, 2022•39 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast “My story is not an exceptional story. It could have been the story of any girl if their fathers and brothers had allowed them to speak out.” In this View From The Top interview, activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, shares her mission mission to ensure that all 130 million girls who are out of school can have access to education. “My goal is to meet these girls, but also uplift their story so leaders listen to them rather than me. And this is my goal in every ...
Dec 08, 2021•58 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast "What I've found with our players, is that the guys who have the most balance in their lives, are the ones who know how to handle all this stuff the best," said Steve Kerr, head coach of the NBA's Golden State Warriors, in a View From The Top interview on campus. "Work-life balance is just crucial." Interviewed by Rustom Birdie, MBA '22, Kerr compared leading on the court to leading at home. "I think I lead my team a little bit like I raised my children," he said. "My ...
Nov 19, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast In this View From The Top interview, Thasunda Brown Duckett , president and CEO of TIAA, recalls her childhood experience moving from New York to Texas in a car packed with everything her parents and two siblings owned and why she knew from a young age that she had the power to make progress. In her conversation with Adriann Negreros, MBA ’21, Duckett talks about how to change social inequities by believing in “the art of possibility.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Californ...
Jul 28, 2021•43 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast In this View From The Top interview, Priscilla Chan , cofounder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, shares the story of her refugee family fleeing Vietnam and what it was like for her growing up as an Asian American in the Catholic suburbs of Boston. In a conversation with Rex Woodbury, MBA ’21, Chan discusses how the values she learned as a young girl have given her the optimism to always do better and the confidence to tackle problems that others aren’t tackling. ...
Jul 21, 2021•38 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast As the CEO of Gap Inc., Sonia Syngal’s brand is to create with audacity. In this View From The Top conversation with Adriann Negreros, MBA ’21, Syngal discusses her career, from her start in the auto industry to her recent experience guiding a major retailer through the pandemic. “It's like that Apollo 13 moment when you just have to get it done and the situation requires us to step into the leadership required,” she says. “That's what happened and you have to believe that we're all here for a r...
Jul 14, 2021•31 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast As the CEO of Land O'Lakes, Beth Ford connects her working-class Midwestern childhood with her success running a farmer-owned cooperative . In in this View From The Top episode, Ford talks to Adriann Negreros, MBA ‘21, about being the first openly gay female CEO of a Fortune 500 company and how she’s succeeded in a male-dominated industry. “You want to have humility, but you can’t be shy to make clear to your supervisors, your leaders, whomever, what your aspiration is,” she says. “O...
Jul 07, 2021•53 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast 
