Warm Intro

Broke-Ass Stuart showed up in San Francisco with a notebook, a hangover, and no money--then turned all three into a twenty-year career. The writer, publisher, and man-about-town, Stuart Schuffman, built brokeassstuart.com from a photocopied zine into one of the city's last independent local news outlets, ran for mayor, hosted his own IFC travel show, and, on October 17, 2025, even had an offi...

Adena Ishii is one of America's youngest mayors—that too, of its most livable city, Berkeley. While her peers are still figuring out their careers, she's managing a $900 million city budget, trying to solve a housing crisis and fielding calls from politicians asking for endorsements. But the most interesting thing about her? She does not sound like any politician you've ever heard....

Chef Sri Gopinathan is the first Indian chef in the world to earn two Michelin stars and one of San Francisco’s most successful restauranteurs. This distinction arrives with an asterisk—because Indian cuisine, despite being one of the world's oldest and most technically sophisticated food traditions, has never been treated as gourmet. Chef Sri is changing that in the most beautiful way possib...

Correction: We stated in the video that Dean faced up to 12 years in prison. Since filming, he has been hit with 2 additional felony charges, increasing his potential sentence to 31 years. Dean Guzman Wyrzykowski is an animal rescuer who is facing 31 years in prison for saving nearly 2,000 beagle puppies from torturous conditions in an animal testing facility. This is not a simple story about a go...

Abe Woodliff is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and the memelord behind @RealBayAreMemes—a project that has become the sharpest cultural mirror San Francisco has of itself.  Abe grew up in Section 8 housing in the Bay, watched the city transform around him. Through this experience, Abe developed an almost anthropological eye for the the Bay’s absurdities: the cold machinery at the center of its progres...

Thomas Percy Kim is a 25-year-old filmmaker who's already won critical acclaim at Sundance, been selected for the Oscars, and raised $1.6 million from retail investors to fund his feature film. But here's what makes him different: he didn't wait for permission. When he wanted to make a stop-motion film in high school, he taught himself. When he wanted a name actor, he cold-emailed a...

Isabella Sun gave up a job on Wall street to solve fashion’s fit problem — one hiding in plain sight — nearly half of American women are 5'4" or under, yet almost nothing is made to fit them. With no fashion background whatsoever, Isabella founded Short Story — a personal styling service for petite women — out of her apartment in 2019. She packed boxes until 3 AM, ran to the post office...

Windy Chien is one of San Francisco's greatest living artists. But that's just her most recent life. In a previous life, Windy owned San Francisco's coolest record store, Aquarius Records. In yet another, she was on the original iTunes team, building the way we all now experience music.  Today, as the undisputed queen of knots, her work proudly hangs everywhere from the MoMa to Goog...

Professor Purushottama Billimoria is a philosopher, historian, and one of the people most responsible for getting the world of philosophy to take Indian and Eastern thought seriously, not as spirituality or religious studies, but as philosophy proper.  He's also my former professor and friend.  Join us for a deeply human conversation about philosophy, the corrupting power of wealth, the Parsi...

Connie Chan is running for the most important house seat in the country. Her path here has been unlike anyone else's. Connie is an immigrant and a daughter of San Francisco's Chinatown. She rose through the ranks of its city government, eventually coming to represent a large portion of it. She's a proud progressive from a very proudly progressive city, now in a race for mainstream p...

Noor Siddiqui is building technology that people call "designer babies"—and she's thought more carefully about the ethics than most of her critics. At 16, she decided she wanted to screen embryos for genetic disease. Today, as founder of Orchid, she does exactly that: scanning the full genome of IVF embryos to identify thousands of genetic risks, letting parents make more informed c...

Jack Kuveke is a spitting image of the disgraced CEO Adam Neumann. At 20, he ran a 50 million dollar crypto fund in Belgrade, Serbia. His meme factory is called Jabroni Capital. All of this and almost everything else about Jack is objectively hilarious. Jack is an absurd man who has had an absurd career in an absurd industry. This has given him the ability to ridicule tech and finance better than...

Sidra Qasim created the internet’s favorite sneaker. In getting there, she has lived a life that no one could have predicted. Born and raised in rural Pakistan, Sidra clawed her way out of a system that afforded her no opportunities. Through sheer will, she made it to America and started a company that no one believed she could run. But now, at 39, Sidra is the founder CEO of Atoms — notoriously t...

Sebastian Fischer is a different kind of Silicon Valley engineer. He’s not a coder. He builds physical objects that move fast, blow up and generally bring about shock and awe.  Sebastian started by building tiny rockets in his parents' backyard with his little brother. But those rockets eventually took him to NASA, Lockheed Martin, Amazon Prime Air and Cruise Self Driving.  Now, he's ont...

Skyler Chan wants to make humanity intergalactic and he's not entirely sure why anyone would want to work on anything else.  At 22, Skyler has already lived a life. He flew airplanes with the Canadian Air Force, started a company, worked at Tesla, NASA and every major space organization, got into YC and had a dozen brushes with death all before he could legally drink.  Now, he's sure. He...

A message from Chai. Warm Intro A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things.  Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube. YouTube: @warmintro Instagram: @warm.intro Hosted by Chai Mishra Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of...

Congressman Mike Lawler holds a seat that no other Republican had held since the year he was born (he is a 39-year-old Republican from deep-blue New York). The reason he was able to win — and keep — that seat is the same reason he's been ranked one of the most bipartisan members of Congress: he understands the assignment. He knows politics is about persuasion, not purity. It's about talk...

Matt Flannery’s work has uplifted over six million families across a hundred countries. That’s because Matt is one of the godfathers of microfinance. His creations, Kiva and Branch, have delivered billions of dollars in small loans to some of the most forgotten and overlooked people in the world. But Matt doesn’t see himself as a philanthropist. In fact, he’s pretty down on the concept of nonprofi...

Nick Tommarello has probably helped fund more American founders than almost anyone alive. But Nick’s not a businessman — he’s a founder. That distinction matters a lot to him and it defines everything about him.  See, Nick loves risk and he thrives on uncertainty and chaos. He’s good at helping founders because he literally can’t imagine having a regular job. Join us for a loose conversation about...

Ethan Agarwal is the youngest and strangest candidate running for Governor. Ethan’s not a politician, he’s a founder. And a very successful one. He grew his first company to $100M in revenue, and then sold it. He then raised $50M for a second company — which he then also sold in 2025 Within months of that exit, he launched a run for governor as a proud capitalist and meritocrat (his words) to rest...

Todd Masonis makes the best chocolate in America—but he took an unexpected path to get there. Todd co-founded a startup with Sean Parker (yes, that Sean Parker from The Social Network). After selling it for over $150 million, he walked away from Silicon Valley to make chocolate in his friend’s garage. Seventeen years later, that experiment became Dandelion Chocolate—considered by many to be Americ...

fnnch is San Francisco's Banksy; the most loved and hated artist in the city.  People who love him believe that he made the city a more joyous, beautiful place to be. His haters think he is an outsider who helped gentrify the city. One thing is for sure — fnnch is opinionated and controversial. He is also thoughtful, whip-smart and incredibly prolific. Join us for a whirlwind conversation abo...

How do you find a mission actually worth spending your life on? Are most startup “mission statements” complete BS? Niles Lichtenstein wants everyone to own a home and he’s dedicating his career to making it possible. Niles lost his dad at 13. His mom rented out rooms to make ends meet. As a result, he grew up with a revolving circus of people living in his home, with his family. Decades later (and...

What is the point of a business? Is it exclusively to make money? Or could there be more variables in this equation? Sana Javeri Kadri is on a mission.  She started a company at 22 to build an entirely new model for one of the oldest trades in the world. Her company, Diaspora Co is building a new Silk Route for spices. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation about what someone’s pantry tells you a...

Harrison Cheney might be the best chef of his generation. His restaurant (Sons and Daughters) recently earned its second Michelin star and a green star, and Harrison himself won the Michelin Guide’s Young Chef of the Year award. He has worked in some of the world’s greatest kitchens, from Gastrologik to Quince. And he has done all of this in record time. Harrison is just 32. At 16, he sold his Xbo...