Wharton Tech Toks

“It ends up being about: is this truly a venture investable business? You need to be in a massive market and have the ability to scale quickly…the company should grow with speed and accelerate.”  Join Manasi Patwa in her conversation with Arjun Arora, Founder and Managing Partner at Format One, where he advises transformational companies on their growth strategies through hands-on and impactful co...

"We don't always need an AI person [to] come up with a new transformer-like model, but we do need people who have a good intuition on understanding where these models do well and where these models can fail." In this episode, Cynthia and Leon interviewed Dr. Kanu Gulati, partner at Khosla Ventures. Kanu started her career as a research scientist at Intel, was a founding engineer at a...

“On the sustainability side, [we’re] helping our members understand the benefits and positive impact they’re having… How much are they able to reduce their carbon footprint? How much waste is diverted from landfills by shopping from our platform?... Being able to present that information is critical to helping [customers] feel good about their membership and really helps provide value that goes be...

“It’s alot of reacting to the situation, but we don’t run these companies. I think that as a minority investor you have to have the mentality that you backed a set of entrepreneurs to do it, and you have to coach them and support them as best as you can, but you can’t run the company.” In today’s episode, Cynthia and Zoë welcome Wharton alumni Charles Birnbaum to the podcast. After beginning his c...

“Space Traffic Management is not just about avoiding collisions, it’s about ensuring the sustainability of space for future generations.” In this podcast episode, Emma Robinson converses with Araz Feyzi, co-founder and CTO of Kahan Space. They discuss the critical issue of space traffic coordination, highlighting Kahan's pioneering Pathfinder platform for automated space traffic management. Fe...

"When you go out to raise...you have to think about if you have a story to tell...think like an investor. Why are you the best person to solve this?" Join Manasi Patwa and Cynthia Zhou as they chat with Vivien Ho, Partner at Pear VC (Wharton '21). Listen to dive into the world of early-stage investing, tips for founders and entrepreneurs, and insights on the tech sphere as it stands...

Learn in this episode from Muhammad Shahzad, CFO of Relativity Space. With a valuation of over $4B, Relativity is one of the few companies positioned to challenge SpaceX. "Our long-term goal, and as audacious as those sounds, is to create humanity's industrial base on Mars." Emma Robinson and Shahzad delve into financial strategy and risk in a capital intensive industry with some of...

“We were the last ones in the market by years… and yet our investors have an unrealized IRR that is significantly better than anyone else’s” Join Emma Robinson as she dives into conversation with Gabe Dominocielo, co-founder and president of Umbra Space. Discover how Umbra's innovative technology is reshaping our view from space, offering unprecedented clarity and detail. Learn about their uni...

"To be a great investor, you need to be deeply curious...you need to be great at operating in ambiguity. Show your ability to drive to an outcome. And it's very important to have that empathy or EQ." Join Manasi Patwa and Cynthia Zhou in a conversation with Meera Clark, Principal at Redpoint Ventures. Listen to learn about Meera's remarkable career journey in the investing world,...

“How do we use data more and more intelligently to be able to understand who do we market to, how do we market to them, [and] what’s the story that we tell each of them in a different way to be really relevant?” This week, Leon and Zoë are joined by Jessica Gilmartin, Wharton alum and Chief Marketing Officer at Calendly. With experience across large companies and startups, Jessica is an expert in...

Ever wondered about the science behind your favorite tunes or podcasts? John us as we talk to Marion Boeri, Associate Director, Thought Leadership Research at Spotify and Josh McDermott,  Associate Professor at MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Marion and Josh share insights on how audio shapes our experiences and emotions and how that relates to business strategy. Discover the intri...

“[Soon] we won't be talking about questions like, do you have to be an engineer or be super technically strong to have a meaningful impact in the space world?” Join us in talking to the new CEO of Space Tango, Sita Sonty, for the first official episode of our series on the space industry. This series is geared towards proving space is a diverse industry not only for those with technical backgr...

"What I think is important in venture capital is to understand where the analogy is the same and where the analogy is different." "[There is this] opportunity to use technology to help people have more authentic human interactions online ... to create novel forms of human interaction that try to connect people more closely." Join ⁠Cynthia Zhou as she interviews Brett Martin, Ma...

“We will see strength in a few players that will ultimately prove out this technology and in consumer and urban environments specifically… some of these other semi-controlled environments are already ripe for disruption by autonomous technologies.” Join ⁠Leon Zhang⁠ and Javier Torres as they interview Scott Walbrun, Principal at BMW i Ventures. Together they explore broad trends in the future of m...

“There’s a fundamental lack of data and information at every level. Even the government doesn’t have access to reliable, real time information, especially in the used home space… you just kind of had to ask some friends and try to guesstimate what [prices] would be like.” Join Leon Zhang and Javier Torres in a conversation with Brynne McNulty Rojas, the first and only female founder and CEO of a L...

“Data is food for AI and so are the queries for generative AI…How do we ask the right questions to the machine? How do we have the right data so the machine has all of the information we need, and not misinformation or missing information?”  Join Cynthia Zhou and Spandana Bhattacharya as they interview JoAnn Stonier , Mastercard Fellow of Data and AI, previously the Chief Data Officer at Mastercar...

“It was disheartening… but there was also a weird voice inside me that was kind of excited. We have our backs against the wall, we have a really hard problem, how are we going to figure it out?” Join Emma Robinson as she interviews Austin Link , the co-founder of Starfish Space , a startup working on the future of on-orbit servicing. Join us as we discuss the path of founding a deep tech startup f...

“The hardest problem in education is the problem of transfer. ChatGPT gives us the ability to practice transfer in other ways… we start to be able to approach problems in different ways that build expertise or intuition faster.” Join Leon Zhang and Jordan Baker in a conversation with Christian Terwiesch, Professor at Wharton and chair of the Operations, Information, and Decisions department and Et...

“[The hardest part of procurement at Zoox] is trying to convince [the major automotive companies] to give us their engineering resources on the promise that, one day, we are going to change their industry.” Join Emma Robinson and Leon Zhang in a conversation with Kit Cutler, Director of Procurement and Strategic Partnerships. Together they explore the challenges of building a supply chain for a co...

“We saw a lot of our event creators, who were just doing real-life events, start to do more online events. So we very quickly pivoted to give them all the tools to do online events. Now we are seeing hybrid events, event creators who might be sitting in New York and used to just do a small, local event with 20-25 attendees every week, are now suddenly doing that in a hybrid format, where they stil...

“9 out of 10 people that use our platform tell us that they come to get inspired. The majority of our users want to shop. So you have this wonderful intersection of inspiration and commerce on the platform. The magic of go-to-market strategy happens at the intersection of our advertising partners adding value to our users, who, in turn, help us fulfill our mission of bringing everyone the inspirat...

“It is a political cudgel that people try to say there is a seesaw between investor protection and capital formation and market efficiency... The US has 4.4% of the world's population, and over 60% of the world's capital was raised in the US. It's because we've pursued all of those objectives. ”  Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Jordan Baker as they talk to Jay Clayton , former Chair...

“If you think about how we go through our day…It’s not natural for someone to stop and switch over to email, or try to find the 1-800 number. We want to use messaging, that’s just the way we communicate.” Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Cynthia Zhou on Wharton Tech Toks as they talk to Matt Idema , who was most recently VP of Business Messaging Group at Meta and was previously the Chief Operating O...

“When I was ten or twelve, I thought wouldn't it be great if I found myself participating in the birth of a technology at that right time when that technology is being born. Drone technology for me is this. It is extremely challenging but fascinating to participate in the birth of a new industry.” While the delivery by drone of pizza to your high-rise window may still be far off, listen in whi...

“Someone who leads large teams needs to spend a material amount of time and energy to understand what the world of AI, machine learning and natural language processing mean because it’s a muscle you need to have…  If you are a student, you need to think about not only how AI helps you but how you influence where AI is going.” Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Javier Torres on Wharton Tech Toks as the...