Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital

A head start doesn't always ... well, help you get ahead. With examples from sports, technology and economics, journalist David Epstein shares how specializing in a particular skill too early in life may undermine your long-term development -- and explains the benefits of a "sampling period" where you try new things and focus on building a range of skills. Learn how this broader, counterintuitive...

This week I am so pumped to be speaking with Momei Qu, Managing Director of PSP Growth, where she leads PSP’s venture capital and growth equity initiative, working closely with the esteemed Penny Pritzker, former United States Sec of Commerce and American billionaire businesswoman with family investments in the Hyatt Hotels and Marmon Group. From Momei’s leadership lessons working with a trailblaz...

This week's Billion Dollar Bite features the big question: Who am I beyond the company I built? This has become a theme that has emerged in so many of my conversations with both founders and funders at the helm of their businesses — an inspired this week’s Billion Dollar Bite about finding identity and decoupling your identity from your business. Tune in to what Rana el-Kaliouby who sold her emoti...

Our next guest is tackling the food waste problem by applying what he and his team have learned from nature. They created a plant-based protective coating that can make fruits and vegetables last longer. When the average household wastes over 30% of their food and throws $1,500 of the food they buy into the trash, you can see how it’s crucial to work to reduce this impact on our planet and our poc...

What’s the secret to becoming more likable and influential as a leader? How do we actually build and scale by appealing to our consumers in a sustainable way? Why are we more likely to eat an imperfect cookie? This week’s episode will have you taking copious notes from Phill Agnew, a behavioral science expert and my podcast brother in the network, where he hosts one of the top Marketing podcasts,...

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. And with it, a whole conversation surrounding AI, it’s opportunities and yes perils. Well, to go deeper in this, I’m excited to speak with someone who has been working in this space of AI, VR and XR, immersive and extended reality long before it was the hype it is today. Mar...

This week I’m chatting with a Billion Dollar Mover who absolutely captivated me when I first met her, but for a change, from the world of politics. Phumzile Van Damme is a former Member of Parliament of South Africa, winning multiple awards for her work counter-electoral disinformation, digital rights and platform accountability focusing on Africa. Phumzile’s first foray in the fight against disin...

Welcome to Billion Dollar Bite! Between the SVB collapse (and now First Republic Bank on the edge, with stock now down 95% for the year to date!), ChatGPT taking over and the "SAAS-cre", where valuations of Software-As-A-Service companies have taken a dive, for some, as high as 60%; it’s been a lot. A question that I get asked in this environment is: how will we find outliers? My answer: surface t...

Founder turned Funder, from Head of Digital Ventures of the BBC to Managing Director of Techstars, to now Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures with 250 portfolio companies and counting, Jenny Fielding is the ultimate community builder and investor. Together with Scott Hartley, Jenny is today pursuing a global strategy, as U.S. venture capitalists have taken a step back from deals abroad; launch...

For the Billion Dollar Mover that you are, this is not new news: Silicon Valley Bank; what was said to be the epicenter of Silicon Valley tech and small businesses collapsed on March 10th after a run on the deposits doomed the banks plans to raise fresh capital. At first, there was major concern that this crash will take the VC and startup ecosystem with it, but the gov swooped in and provided a b...

We’re bringing our next billionaire on Billion Dollar Moves; this time from Nepal, my friend Nirvana Chaudhary who is at the helm of Nepal’s first and only company listed on the Forbes list of Billionaires since 2015, valued in excess of $2.5 Billion. What started in 1935 has today become a conglomerate of 136 companies and 76 brands spread across 30 different countries with over 24,000 employees....

What does it take to sell and execute on what feels like an impossible vision? This, is the task of a stem-cell scientist turned founder who is tapping into the multi-billion opportunity to create lab-grown crustacean meat. Under Dr. Sandhya Sriram's leadership, Shiok Meats today is the world’s first cultivated shellfish meat company, and Southeast Asia’s first cultivated seafood and meat company....

A ping on your phone takes you out of a conversation with a friend. At the office, a colleague interrupts your work on a project. At home, screens intrude on time with your partner. Your goals don’t get done and it feels like someone (or something) is constantly pulling you away from what you really want to do. Why does it seem we’re no longer in control of our attention or our lives? How differen...

In today's Billion Dollar Moves, we bust some myths about Southeast Asia's VC activity and the narratives driving the expansion seen in the region. The key question: will the momentum survive this downcycle? I chat with Dmitry Levit, Founding Partner of Cento Ventures, a venture capital firm specialized in under-invested emerging digital markets, primarily Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philip...

In today's Billion Dollar Moves, we bust some myths about Southeast Asia's VC activity and the narratives driving the expansion seen in the region. The key question: will the momentum survive this downcycle? I chat with Dmitry Levit, Founding Partner of Cento Ventures, a venture capital firm specialized in under-invested emerging digital markets, primarily Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philip...

While scaling globally seems often to be part of the 'Billion Dollar Plan', it is hardly as simple as it is thought to be. Nicole Sahin who founded and scaled G-P, a global PEO leader from an idea to over $4Bn in value chats with me in Davos on her thoughts on the future of work, the challenges of globalization and some of her own hard lessons in scaling. Watch this live interview filmed in Davos...

Private Equity has a tremendous role to play in the real economy: with about $10Trillion assets under management, robust returns relative to public market measures, a reach that touches the lives of many (some say 1/3, 2/3 of global GDP by 2030) and with maximizing impact across the risk/return continuum becoming a fast-growing trend within the investing industry. I chat with veterans of the indus...

Quiet quitting, a recession looming, a polycrisis declared at Davos 2023 — how can leaders navigate this uncertainty? Silvia Wiesner, former Managing Director at Unilever who was with me in Davos joins me to weigh in on the 53rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum. -- Billion Dollar Moves is THE show for the audacious next generation leader; featuring the top US-Asia founders, funders and e...

The 'non-political' company leader. In 2020/2021, we saw feathers ruffled when leaders like those from Google, Coinbase declared certain "political activism" was a distraction. Employees walked out since of course, in many ways, we're in a generation that have been told to bring "our full selves to work", including our belief systems. But how do we as leaders, manage what feels like a double bind?...

Social media platforms and creator-focused startups haven’t looked too hot coming into 2023, with companies like Meta, Snapchat waging of layoffs along with the rest of the tech industry. BUT the creator and influencer economy are more than just buzzwords losing interest among venture capitalists. Despite challenges on a platform level, blogger turned entrepreneur Vivy Yusof is a case study of jus...

Data shows that building with diversity in mind just makes business sense. Yet, we’ve not moved the dial nearly enough: bringing it to our investment world, as of Sep 2021 according to Knight Research only 1.4% of US AUM are managed by diverse firms, and at a startup level, we all know the abysmal numbers: women get less than 3% of funding, and Black founders hovering at about 1.2 - 1.3%. What can...

Phil Knight, the founder of Nike famously said “Nike is a marketing company, and our product is our most important marketing tool.” But what does it take to build a world-class brand, and rise above the noise? I dive deep with Eric Toda, former Global Digital Brand Marketing Director at Nike, now Global Head of Social Marketing at Meta and Founder of Meta Prosper who has worked with little upstart...

We've heard a lot about scaling tactics for businesses, but have we paused to think about what it takes to scale ourselves as leaders at the helm? In this episode, Kim Yao, shares with us about how each chapter of her companies demanded different versions of her as a leader, and the future of 'virtual' or 'ghost' kitchens, i.e. delivery-only restaurants that proliferated during the pandemic and is...

In this episode, Paul Ark shares how "when you take that big leap of faith, what's waiting for you on the other side is not necessarily a bad thing". From investment banker with global banks Deutsche Bank and Citigroup in Asia and New York, to facilitating Apple and Microsoft's Retail’s market entry into Asian markets, rolling out a US$100 million global corporate venture capital fund, producing o...

What if at the edge of your deepest fear lays your greatest potential? Exiled from the only place she knew to be home, Iranian singer, Gola (Golazin) shares her story on how her first hand experiences of life under the oppressive Iranian Regime shaped her as a fearless, international women’s rights advocate. Fighting everyday to have her voice heard since female solo singers are not allowed to rel...