Luminate with Lan Anh Vu

Today’s guest is Sam Zaid, who is CEO and cofounder of Getaround, the world’s first connected carsharing marketplace. It operates in more than 1000 cities across the United States and Europe. To date, Sam has raised over $600 million for Getaround from some of the best including Softbank, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Partners, and General Catalyst to name a few. Before co-founding Getaround, Sam found...

Today’s guest is Kim Scott, who is the author of the revolutionary New York Times bestsellers Radical Candor and Just Work. She co-founded two companies that help organizations put the ideas in her books into practice. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. Kim previously held leadership roles at Apple and Google. Earlier in her career Kim managed a pediatric...

Phil Libin is on the podcast this week. Phil is a software engineer turned serial entrepreneur. He immigrated to the United States as a child from the Soviet Union and went on to build the popular note-taking app Evernote. The company grew to have more than 150 million users and a $1 billion valuation while Phil served as CEO, a position he stepped down from in 2015. He then took a detour as a ven...

Joining us on Luminate this week is Felix Ohswald. Felix is the Co-Founder and CEO of GoStudent, Europe’s first Edtech unicorn. GoStudent is a company that provides tailored, high quality video-based tuition for students of all school levels and for all school subjects. To date, Felix has raised over $600 million with GoStudent from some of the best including Softbank, Tencent, Dragoneer and Prosu...

Today, I’m excited to be here with Jim McKelvey, he’s the co-founder of Square along with Jack Dorsey. Square is a payment processing company that lets anyone accept credit cards. Square went public in 2015 and the company is worth over $100 billion! In December 2021, Square changed its name to Block. In 2009, Jim designed a card reader, which, in 2011, was inducted in the Museum of Modern Art. In...

Paul English is on the podcast this week. Paul is a serial entrepreneur, since high school he has founded 8 companies and 4 philanthropies ranging from gaming to fintech to GetHuman, a site that helps users access human customer support. Paul is best known for disrupting the travel industry with online travel search engine Kayak, which he sold to Priceline in 2012 for $1.8 billion. If you have any...

Today’s guest is Dr. Robert Cialdini. Dr. Cialdini is one of the most renowned psychologists in the world. He is known as the “Godfather of Influence”, because he is the creator of the science of persuasion. He is New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Influence, which has sold over five million copies. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger called Dr. Cialdini's book "Influence"...

Today’s guest is Chris Voss, who is the founder of the Black Swan Group and the author of the mega bestseller "Never Split the Difference". Chris was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. He has been on the front lines of some of the most high-stakes hostage negotiations of the last 20 years. In today’s episode of Luminate, master negotiator Chris shares his journey from the FB...

Joining us on Luminate this week is the incredible Vaira Vike Freiberga. She became the first female President of Latvia in 1999 and served a second term in 2003. President Vaira is also known as the “Baltic Iron Lady”. She was a hugely popular and successful President, and at one point her approval ratings were as high as 85%. President Vaira was instrumental in achieving membership in the Europe...

Joining us on Luminate this week is Alan Patricof, one of the early pioneers of the venture capital and private equity industries. In 1977, Alan founded APAX Partners, one of the largest private equity firms in the world and in 2006 he also co-founded Greycroft, which is a venture capital firm focusing on investment in the internet and mobile markets. His latest venture Primetime Partners, which i...

Joining us on Luminate this week is Evan Goldberg, who’s the Founder and Executive Vice President of NetSuite. Evan founded NetSuite in 1998. It’s a cloud computing company that provides software and services to manage business finances, operations, customer relations, and much more. In 2016, Evan sold the company to Oracle for $9.3 billion. In our conversation, Evan talks about his first failed s...

Joining us on Luminate this week is Brian Smith. Brian is the founder of UGG boots, a brand that started from humble beginnings and went on to become a multibillion-dollar global icon. Graduating in 1978 as a Chartered Accountant in Australia, Brian came to California looking for the next big opportunity to bring back to Australia. While studying at the UCLA Graduate School of Management he observ...

In this week’s episode, we’re joined by a living legend Joe Foster, founder of Reebok. Joe founded Reebok in 1958 with his late brother Jeff, following their family heritage back to 1895. Joe’s Grandfather, also Joseph W Foster, pioneered the spiked running shoe and famously made shoes of some of the world’s best athletes of the early 20th century. Wearing (pumps) made by J W Foster & Sons Ltd, Ha...

Serge Haroche is on Luminate this week. Serge Haroche is a professor at the Collège de France and holds the Chair of Quantum Physics. In 2012, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for “ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”.   Starting in the 1980s, Haroche has designed ingenious experiments to study quantum phenomena when m...

Our guest today is Mika Hakkinen, a.k.a. the Flying Finn. He's a two time Formula 1 world champion and one of the most popular drivers of all-time. And Mika Hakkinen was perhaps the only racer who could challenge Michael Schumacher to his possible limits.     Back in 1995 at the Australian Grand Prix, Mika Hakkinen nearly died in a terrible accident, but somehow he was back on track just a few of...

We are so honored for this week’s distinguished guest, Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and the world’s most renowned and successful mediator in international conflicts.   In 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in bringing independence to Namibia, Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo, and autonomy for Aceh in Indonesia.     In this conversation, we talk about his...