SALT Talks

Josh and Griffin are two of the biggest influencers on TikTok, a social media network where users share short-form videos, where they have a combined 34+ million followers. Their media and business ventures extend across multiple channels. Business-minded from a young age, early media success born out of TikTok has opened doors across media and finance. Social media content houses, like the Sway H...

Mike Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, a cryptocurrency investment firm. Ari Paul is the co-founder and chief investment officer of BlockTower Capital, an investment firm that manages a portfolio of crypto assets. In the early stages around 2013, Bitcoin was a speculative asset that appealed mainly to libertarians and those with frustrations surrounding recent economic crises. Th...

Sa'ad Shah is the co-founder and managing partner of Noetic, a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in emerging and early-stage psychedelic-based wellness, therapeutic and pharmaceutical companies. JR Rahn is the co-founder and co-CEO of MindMed, a leading psychedelic medicine biotech company that discovers, develops and deploys psychedelic-inspired medicines and therapies to address addi...

Lyn Alden is the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy where she provides investors with research, information, and tools to help them build wealth. Initially, there were concerns around Bitcoin that made it too risky to feel confident in. Over a few years, concerns over potential competitors and vulnerabilities were addressed, greatly de-risking the asset. To cap a strong 2-3 year run, 2020 pr...

Michael Saylor is a technologist, entrepreneur, business executive, philanthropist, and best-selling author. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of MicroStrategy.  Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple represent the big winners in the technology space. The last ten years were marked by investments in these giants. Now, it is harder to s...

Michael Oren is a former member of the Knesset, a former deputy minister in the Israel prime minister's office and was Israel's ambassador to the United States (2009-2013).  The US-Israel relationship is the most special among all of the United States' allies. This is due to three pillars: democratic values, defense, and the spiritual connection. The recent Abraham Accords represent a...

Christopher Hahn is a progressive pundit and host of the Aggressive Progressive podcast. Hahn served for five years as a senior aide to US Senator Chuck Schumer.  As a regular guest on Fox News for ten years, providing a progressive perspective, Hahn has seen the network's dramatic shift to the right, particularly from its opinion hosts. The conservative movement more broadly reflects this shi...

Louis Evans is the president and CEO of Commonwealth Energy Group. Ed Fortunato is the chief economist at Exelon Corporation.  For many years, renewable energy could be seen simply as a subsidized inferior product compared to fossil fuels. As the technology has improved, renewable energy is now not only independently viable, but superior in many ways. Energy storage represents the most important n...

Benn Steil is a senior fellow and director of international economics, as well as the official historian in residence, at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, was named the winner of the New-York Historical Society's Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, awarded each year to the best work in the field of American history or biograph...

Heidi Heitkamp is the first woman ever elected to be a U.S. Senator from North Dakota (2013-19). Senator Heitkamp also served two terms as North Dakota State Tax Commissioner and two terms as North Dakota Attorney General as a member of the North Dakota Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party. A political career that started at 28 years of age, and has spanned over 35 years, has seen a massive shift i...

Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director of over 20 full-length feature films, among them some of the most influential and iconic films of the last decades. Some have been at deep odds with conventional myth—films such as “Platoon” (1986), the first of three Vietnam films; “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989); “JFK” (1991); “Natural Born Killers” (1994); and “Nixon” (1995)...

For the seventh and final installment of SALT Talks: Pandemic Venture Investment Series, presented in partnership with OurCrowd, the advent of social media and online forums sophisticated deepfakes have become a growing problem, intent on the spread of misinformation and pose an alarming threat to public discourse. In this episode we will hear from experts in the disinformation and fake news secto...

Stephen A. Smith is ESPN's most recognizable personality and studio analyst. He is a commentator on ESPN's First Take, where he appears with Max Kellerman and Molly Qerim. He also makes frequent appearances as an NBA analyst on SportsCenter. Smith also is an NBA analyst for ESPN on NBA Countdown and NBA broadcasts on ESPN. He also hosts The Stephen A. Smith Show on ESPN Radio. Smith is a f...

Ida Beerhalter is the co-head of IOME, a private investment partnership of women principals from the Gulf with its head office in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Additionally, Beerhalter currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Astia, USA. It is important for a member of an educational family office to first understand who they are. This involves recognizing both strengths an...

Lorenzo Thione is the Managing Director of Gaingels and a co-founding chairman of StartOut, two of the leading groups dedicated to supporting and elevating LGBTQ+ leaders in the venture startup ecosystem. There is a negative business impact when a gay person is uncomfortable being open about their orientation. The time and attention dedicated to that issue takes away from time building out an idea...

Arjun Sethi is the co-founder of Tribe Capital, a venture capital firm built by engineers and scientists. Arjun sits on the board of Carta, Relativity, and Bolt. As a founder and operator, he has also been an active angel investor in over 100 tech companies, including Lyft, Opendoor, Gusto, and Front. Success is never a straight line and involves failure and unsuccessful attempts. Achieving succes...

Ric Edelman is the founder of the nation’s largest independent RIA, with 350 advisors in 170 offices nationwide, managing $230 billion for 1.2 million individuals and households. The firm is also the nation’s largest independent provider of advice to 401(k) plans, serving thousands of companies, including 150 of the Fortune 500. Advisors are obligated to look into the future for opportunities and...

Prior to COVID-19, digital transformation projects were at a pace of their own - slow and experimental. For the sixth installment of SALT Talks: Pandemic Venture Investment Series, presented in partnership with OurCrowd, foodtech startups are not just reimagining the future of agriculture and food, but also the sustainability of our planet. 2019 saw the sector grow to a $20 billion venture capital...

Dr. Saifedean Ammous is the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, the best-selling groundbreaking study of the economics of bitcoin. The book was a pioneer in explaining bitcoin's value proposition, and the implications of its unique properties. As a peer-to-peer software for operating payment network, Bitcoin acts as the native currency. Bitcoin is...

PlanB is a Dutch institutional investor with a legal and quantitative finance background. He created the Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model where he uses scarcity to quantify Bitcoin value. PlanB is currently working as an investment manager in a team managing a multi-billion-dollar balance sheet. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset of the last one, five and ten years. It represents a very a...

Phil Murphy is the 56th Governor of the State of New Jersey. He has signed legislation putting New Jersey on the path to a $15-an-hour minimum wage, enacted the nation’s strongest equal pay law to combat gender wage discrimination, ensured all workers have access to paid sick days, and expanded the state's Paid Family Leave provisions. From 2009-13, under President Obama, Murphy served as the...

Strauss Zelnick is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. In addition, he recently served as Interim Chairman of The CBS Corp. Board of Directors.  Quitting a role as a film studio president in order to launch a video game company 25 years was a major risk, but this relatively new genre of entertainment showed signs similar to moti...

Szymon Idzikowski joined the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) in January 2015 to lead the 3rd party fund selection and co-manage discretionary client investment portfolios. He is a lead fund manager of ADCB Target Date Funds and ADCB Multi-Asset Funds. There are three major factors driving the market and forecasts of future returns: demographics, globalization and global growth. We see aging demog...

Prior to COVID-19, digital transformation projects were at a pace of their own - slow and experimental. For the fifth installment of SALT Talks: Pandemic Venture Investment Series, presented in partnership with OurCrowd, leading digital health startups provide a unique view into the revolution in artificial intelligence and how it’s shaping MedTech trends, and where investment opportunity lies. He...

Julia Collins is the CEO of Planet FWD, a company on a mission to tackle climate change by expanding regenerative agriculture adoption. The company is building a software platform for regenerative agriculture alongside a climate-smart snack brand. Climate change is the most important and pressing issue facing our planet and the food we eat plays a significant role. Regenerative agriculture represe...