Giant Ideas

Alain de Botton, philosopher, author, and founder of The School of Life, joins the Giant Ideas show today. The School of Life provides emotional education to help people lead more fulfilled lives. Alain is a world-renowned philosopher and public speaker, and has shaped much of the discourse of 21st century philosophy and emotional introspection. He is the author of over 20 books - from novels like...

Welcome back! Today, we’re joined by one of the most insightful voices in tech - Benedict Evans, former Andreessen Horowitz partner and founder of Benedict's Newsletter. Over the last ten years, Benedict has independently predicted huge waves in tech, often before others.  If you’ve followed the evolution of technology, it’s likely you’ve read his work. Benedict has spent 20 years analysing m...

Sophia Amoruso is the entrepreneur-turned-investor best known for founding the fashion e-commerce brand Nasty Gal and for coining the term “Girlboss”. She wrote the New York Times best-seller #Girlboss in 2014, which also got turned into a Netflix show.  She lived the Girlboss dream herself: turning a humble eBay store that she started at age 22, into a company with hundreds of millions of dollars...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Katherine Boyle , General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In 2022 Katherine unveiled her thesis - ‘Building American Dynamism’ - which has both inspired the tech landscape and provided a central philosophical plank of Trump’s America.  American Dynamism is defined as “embodying the spirit of innovation, progress, and resilience that drives the Unit...

Welcome back to the Giant Ideas Podcast, Season 2! Today on the podcast we are joined by Rick Fox - businessman, actor, three-time NBA Champion and captain of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant at the LA Lakers. Elite sport was part of Rick's life from an early age - his mother was an Olympic athlete. Rick's own NBA career went on to span 13 seasons, from Boston Celtics in 1991, to captain...

Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F: the biggest startup incubator in the world. Based in Paris, Roxanne is recognised as one of the most influential figures in the French startup ecosystem. The French media have called Varza the "young empress of startups," and even the “new pope of high-tech and startups in France." Roxanne was formerly a TechCrunch journalist and startup a...

Mike Maples Jr is a Co-Founding Partner at Floodgate. He was named a “Rising Star” by Fortune, and has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade.  Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was a founder and operator at back-to-back startup IPOs. Now, Mike’s own investments include companies like Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Refinery29, and Clover Health. Mike is also the author of th...

Welcome to the Giant Ideas podcast! Run by Giant Ventures - the venture fund for purpose-driven founders building companies that matter. At Giant, we’re lucky to often meet extraordinary people with giant ideas that are changing the world. So we’ve released a brand new podcast to showcase these behind-the-scenes conversations on the giant ideas shaping the world, and the inspiring stories of the l...

Today on the podcast, we are joined by Robert Langer, scientist, inventor and entrepreneur - and one of the most cited researchers in history, often called the “Edison of Medicine”.  What makes Dr Langer special is that he is not only an academic but also an entrepreneur: turning frontier science into groundbreaking companies. Langer Lab's research has given rise to over 400 companies, and is...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Azeem Azhar : author, futurist and founder of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast which explains how society and the political economy are changing under the force of technology. Azeem’s first book Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology studied how technology’s rapid pace of development is impacting the world. Aze...

🎄 Today is our last podcast before the holidays! We will be back on 9 January with a conversation on AI - follow the show to get a notification when it's live! On the show today we are joined by one of the world’s leading designers: Thomas Heatherwick . Thomas has created many of the world’s most striking new public spaces and buildings.  Heatherwick Studio is behind culture-defining project...

Today on the podcast we are joined by Alistair Brownlee , Double Olympic Triathlon Champion - to talk about his incredible career and the extreme mental discipline that got him to the very top of athletics. It’s his first in depth interview since he announced his retirement. Alistair Brownlee is the only athlete in history to hold two Olympic titles in the individual triathlon event, having won go...

Today on the podcast we have Ali Parsa - founder of two unicorn health businesses - Babylon Health and Circle Health. Ali was born in Iran, but left when he was 16, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.  Amazingly, he taught himself UK high school, and went on to study civil and environmental engineering at University College London. He sold a media company he started during university, and...

Today on Giant Ideas we bring you a conversation with a titan of American business and society, Arianna Huffington. Arianna is the co-founder of The Huffington Post , which built an audience of 200 million, and the founder and CEO of Thrive Global . She also sat on the board of Uber during its succession drama.  Arianna is also the author of an astonishing fifteen books - on everything from Sleep...

In 1975, in a two bedroom apartment in New York City, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm. Over forty years later, this firm - Bridgewater Associates - has grown into not just the world's largest hedge fund, but also what Fortune has called the “fifth most important private company in the United States”. Ray Dalio himself appears on Time Magazine's list of the world’s top 100 most influ...

Today on the podcast we have Michael Lynton , one of America’s leading CEOs. Michael led Sony Entertainment as CEO, overseeing Sony’s global entertainment businesses during a period of great success. But it also had its challenges - notably when North Korean hackers released private emails and unreleased films.  Michael had previously worked for Time Warner as CEO of AOL Europe, and was  Chairman...

This talk was recorded live at our Giant Ideas event at the Tate Modern earlier this year. Jim McKelvey , best known for co-founding multi-billion dollar company Square , joined the stage at Giant Ideas to talk about moving the needle of drug discovery. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2009, and it became a revolutionary payment processing company, allowing small b...

Today on the podcast we have June Sarpong - internationally renowned broadcaster, writer and diversity expert. June started her career presenting for shows on MTV and Channel 4's T4. It would be fair to say that June is considered a ‘British Icon’ and has broad cultural influence. Not everyone can claim that Elton John has performed a special edition of the hit "Your Song" with the...

Today joining the podcast is Susanna Campbell - co-founder of Syre, and a board member of Northvolt and H2 Green Steel - all companies incubated by Vargas.  Based in Sweden, Vargas has systematically created a succession of climate juggernauts from scratch. Their portfolio includes unicorns like Polarium and H2 Green Steel, and Northvolt, a climate decacorn - so worth over 10 billion dollars - whi...

Today on the podcast we bring you a conversation with Toni Petersson, former CEO of Oatly. This was recorded live at our Giant Ideas summit in June of this year. Toni Petersson was the CEO of oat milk giant, Oatly, for a decade. He transformed an unknown Swedish eco food company into a global consumer giant, with just shy of $1BN in sales. On its first day on the NASDAQ in 2021 it traded at $13 bi...

After 14 years of Conservative rule, Britain voted on Thursday for change. But what should the world expect from a Labour government?  2024 is the year of democracy. More people than ever in history will go to the polls - 2 billion in over 60 countries. But it’s also a year of rising nationalism.  With Europe at war, Trump possibly returning and Labour winning by a landslide, today we bring you an...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. This episode was recorded live at an event we hosted with McKinsey for Europe’s top 100 climate leaders. Asking the questions for us here is Pilita Clark, an editor and columnist at The Financial Times.  Today on the show, we are joined by Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. You might think o...

Today on the podcast we have Tom Blomfield - founder of not one but two UK unicorns - Monzo and GoCardless.  We asked Tom on the show to give the inside story on what it takes to found a multi-billion dollar business - the character traits but also the sacrifices. Are there consistent characteristics that unite leading founders, and ultimately is the struggle worth it? To say scaling Monzo has bee...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you an interview with the fo...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today on the podcast we have a conversation...