Luminate with Lan Anh Vu

Today’s guest is Larry Gadea, founder and CEO of Envoy. Envoy is a workplace platform that helps companies welcome visitors, keep employees safe, book desks and conference rooms, and manage deliveries in over 16,000 locations around the globe. To date, Larry has raised over $170 million for Envoy from a16z, Menlo Ventures, Brookfield Growth, Marc Benioff, Elad Gil to name a few. Prior to Envoy, Larry started his career as a software engineer at 17, having been recruited by Google out of high school. He later joined X (formerly Twitter) as one of the early people driving its ability to scale. In today’s episode, we talk about Larry experiences at Google and Twitter and to better understand what pain points Envoy was trying to solve. We also talk about Larry on leadership lessons scaling Envoy to a billion-dollar company, what it takes to manage the board effectively, and so much more.

Today's guest is Daniel Goleman, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion. Daniel is the author of Emotional Intelligence, a blockbuster book that sold more than 5 million copies in about 40 languages.  Apart from his writing on emotional intelligence, Daniel has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, eco-literacy and the ecological crisis. His latest book, Optimal, shows why emotional intelligence can help each of us have rewarding and productive days. Ranked one of the 10 most influential business thinkers by the Wall Street Journal, Daniel’s articles in the Harvard Business Review are among the most frequently requested reprints. He has won many awards, including the HBR McKinsey Award for best article of the year. Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences awarded him its Centennial Medallion. He started out by getting his PhD in clinical psychology at Harvard, and he then spent 12 years writing about brain research as a science reporter for the New York Times. In this episode, Lan Anh talks to Daniel about why emotional intelligence matters, how science demonstrates that emotional intelligence matters far more than IQ, how we can enhance and manage our emotions to expand our brain capacity, and gives actionable tips about how we can learn emotional intelligence. 

Today’s guest is Liz Elting, cofounder and former CEO of TransPerfect, the world’s largest language solutions company, with over $1.1 billion in revenue and offices in more than 100 cities worldwide. In 2018, Liz left TransPerfect after being there for 26 years and now she’s running Elizabeth Elting Foundation , which advances economic social and political equality for women and marginalized people.  Liz received the 2019 Charles Waldo Haskins Award for business and public service from NYU’s Stern School of Business, the American Heart Association’s 2020 Health Equity Leadership Award, the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs’ 2021 Vertex Award for changing the face and direction of women’s high-growth entrepreneurship, the American Heart Association’s 2022 Woman Changing the World Award, Trinity College’s 2022 Kathleen O’Connor Boelhouwer ’85 Alumni Initiative Award, and the Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation’s 2023 Angel of Hope Award. Liz has been recognized as a NOW Woman of Power & Influence, American Express' and Entrepreneur magazine's Woman of the Year, and one of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women every year since the list’s inception. Liz is also the bestselling author of “Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business”. In this episode, we discuss how Liz came up with the idea for TransPerfect, how she built and scaled a billion-dollar company without taking any outside funding. We also discuss the power of setting goals and taking action, and the role that partnerships play in your success. 

Today’s guest is Isabelle Freidheim, founder and managing partner of Athena Capital, a technology fund that focuses on bringing high-performing, mission-driven companies to the market. Isabelle is the youngest female chairman of a publicly traded company in the U.S. Under her leadership, Athena has raised more than $1.2 billion. Before founding Athena Capital, Isabelle co-founded and acted as CEO of Magnifi, the AI and machine-learning fintech company. Isabelle led Magnifi's early growth as one of the few female CEOs in the AI industry. Isabelle previously co-founded and managed The London Fund and was the first female venture partner at VC fund MissionOG. During this interview, Isabelle shares her personal and career journey, from VC to entrepreneur. We then discuss SPACs in-depth, how they work, why some companies would prefer to IPO through a SPAC rather than the traditional IPO process, and much more.

Today’s guest is Doug Conant, an internationally respected business leader. Doug served as the President of Nabisco from 1999-2001, served a decade as President and CEO of The Campbell Soup Company and then spent three years as Chairman of Avon Products. In 2011 he founded ConantLeadership, a consulting company focused on championing leadership that works in the 21st century. Doug is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and one of the 100 Most Influential Authors in the World. He’s also the author of The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights, and Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.   During this interview, Doug shares some of his personal story and leadership philosophy. He also talks about some of his first 100 days as CEO of Campbell Soup, how he saved Campbell’s Soup from freefall, the importance of focusing on the workplace before the marketplace and so much more.  No matter where you may be positioned in your current work situation, the lessons Doug shares will bring your attention to how important a brilliant leader is for a business and how you can take concrete steps towards being one yourself.

Today’s guest is Hristo Borisov, cofounder and CEO at Payhawk, a financial system that combines credit cards, payments, expenses, and cash into one integrated experience. Hristo has raised over $236 million with Payhawk from Lightspeed Ventures, Greenoaks, QED investors, and many more. Today, Payhawk is valued at US$1 billion, making it the first Bulgarian startup to achieve Unicorn status. Prior to founding Payhawk, Hristo worked at Telerik as software engineer and a product manager. In this episode, we talk about his founding of Payhawk, the challenges he encountered as an entrepreneur, lessons learned from scaling Payhawk into 32 countries, and much more.

Today’s guest is Hap Klopp, founder and former CEO of The North Face, one of the world's biggest apparel companies. Hap was CEO of The North Face for 20 years. During that time The North Face was honored with many awards for being the best managed company in its industry, including being lauded by Business Week Magazine for providing one of the highest quality products of any company in the United States.  Hap is also an author of two highly acclaimed books "Conquering The North Face" and “Almost”. We draw upon so much wisdom from Hap, especially around what it takes to build an iconic brand. Hap built a brand that has stood the test of time, and that brand has gone through all sorts of pivots and turns, but there’s a lot of fundamental lessons that Hap shares with us around core brand building, leadership that we can all take away and learn from.

Today's guest is Gary Klein, a cognitive psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on human decision making. He has spent the last 50 years studying how and why people make the decisions they do. He is the author of six books, including the popular Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights; Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. His latest book "Snapshots of the Mind " is available now. Gary pioneered the naturalistic decision-making movement and is the founder of ShadowBox Training, a cognitive skills training company. In this episode, we talk about how humans make decisions and how leaders can make better ones. We also talk about pre-mortem analysis, intuition, mental simulation, shadow box and so much more.

Today’s guest is Rahul Vohra, founder and CEO of Superhuman, the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from the ground up creating the fastest email experience ever made.  To date, Rahul has raised over $108 million from some of the best in the business including a16z, IVP, First Round, Tiger Global Management and from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Will Smith and Arianna Huffington. Rahul previously founded Rapportive, a much-loved product that added social profiles to Gmail; it became the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users, kickstarted a whole ecosystem of email enhancements, and was ultimately acquired by LinkedIn. In this episode, we talk about Rahul entrepreneurial journey, how he founded Superhuman. We then discuss how to measure product market fit, and why you have to figure out positioning before pricing.   Resources: Rahul on finding product-market fit on First Round Review: https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

Today’s guest is Yoni Assia, cofounder and CEO of eToro, the world’s largest social investment network. Yoni has raised over $412 million with eToro from ION group, SoftBank, Velvet Sea Ventures, Spark Capital and many more. Prior to founding eToro, Yoni was the cofounder of CDRIDE, an on-ride video technology company that was acquired by Kodak in 2006. Yoni was included by Financial News in its prestigious Fintech 40 ranking and by City A.M. as a Fintech 100 top influencer and by Fortune business magazine's 40 Under 40.  In this episode, we discuss how Yoni built his empire, getting dinner with Warren Buffet, how he scaled the world’s largest social investment network and much much more.

Today’s guest is Bill George, one of the world’s best-known experts on leadership. Bill was the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest medical technology company Medtronic, which grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion in market cap, under Bill’s leadership. After working 13 years at Medtronic, he then became a professor at Harvard Business School, where he taught Leadership for over 19 years. Bill has written nine books; most notably, True North and now True North, Emerging Leader Edition. Along the way, he has served as a director of Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, Novartis Target, the Mayo Clinic, and the World Economic Forum USA, and has received honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Auburns College and Bryant University. Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the US Department of Defense. In this episode, we talk about his upbringing, his time at Honeywell, why he felt that joining Medtronic was the perfect move for him. And then we discuss how to find your own true north, and what it takes to be a purpose driven leader today, and much, much more.

Today’s guest is Jason Fried, one of the pioneers in software as a service (SaaS). Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY. He’s also the author of the hugely bestselling book “Rework”. In this episode, Jason talks about his journey through building 37Signals, scaling a company without external funding and the number one thing he looks for when recruiting and hiring remote workers. Jason packs quite a punch in this interview and you are going to get a ton of insight from him.

Today’s guest is Luca Ferrari, cofounder and CEO of Bending Spoons, one of the world's largest mobile app developers. The company’s apps are currently being used by more than 100 million people every month, with over 500 million app downloads to date. Its apps include popular video editing tool Splice, AI based photo editor Remini and the prominent note-taking app Evernote. Luca has raised over $600 million from Banco BPM, Intesa Sanpaolo, Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper, Eric Schmidt and many more. He previously worked at Evertale as a cofounder and COO. In this conversation, Luca takes us through his career, where he got his entrepreneurial bug. We also get into some of Luca’s lowest moments, including a couple of times he actually broke down, so I think you are going to learn a lot from him. All right! Now let’s start the show.

Today’s guest is Hubert Palan, who is the founder and CEO of Productboard, a product management system that enables teams to get the right products to market faster. Since 2015, Productboard has raised over $262 million from Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Index to name a few. Today, ProductBoard is valued at US$1.725 billion, making it the second Czech startup to achieve Unicorn status. Hubert was previously the VP of product management at GoodData, where he played an instrumental role in their scaling from 6 to 300 people. In this episode, we talk about Hubert’s career background and what motivated him to follow an entrepreneurial path after many years of working for others. We also candidly talk about the early days of building ProductBoard, unpack scaling and building the company over the last eight years, the many lessons he learned along the way, and so much more.

Today’s guest is John Kim, who is the co-founder and CEO of Sendbird, the number 1 in app chat API. Sendbird latest funding round priced the company at $1.05 billion and to date, John has raised over $220 million with Sendbird from ICONIQ, Tiger Global, SoftBank and many more. Prior to founding Sendbird, John was the founder of Paprika Lab, a social gaming company that was acquired by Japanese gaming firm GREE in 2012 and John was South Korea’s all time no.1 pro gamer in Unreal Tournament. In this episode, John talks about his career journey, how he went from no. 1 pro gamer to a serial tech entrepreneur. John also shares his leadership insights about core values, setting expectations, the biggest mistakes founders make in the hiring process, and much more. John packs quite a punch in this interview and you are going to get a ton of insight from him.

Today’s guest is BJ Fogg, one of the world’s most renowned experts in forming new habits. BJ is a behavior scientist who founded and directs the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University. On today's episode, BJ shares his breakthrough method that will help you design your habits and make them stick. Whether you want to de-stress, or be more productive - you can apply the Tiny Habits framework to your life immediately. Start small and get big results!

Today’s guest is Michael Gronager, who is the co-founder and CEO of Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform. Chainalysis latest funding round priced the company at a reported $8.6 billion in May 2022 and to date, Michael has raised over $537 million for the company from the likes of Accel, Addition, Benchmark, GIC and more. Prior to founding Chainalysis, Michael was the co-founder and COO of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. In this episode, we talk about Michael entrepreneurial journey, lessons on leadership, fundraising and much more. His wisdom will be invaluable to you as well.

Today’s guest is Ivan Misner, who is the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. Ivan is also known as the “Godfather of Networking” and is considered one of the top networking experts in the world. Ivan is also a New York Times best-selling author who has written 27 books. Among his many awards, he has been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Red Cross and has been the recipient of the John C. Maxwell Leadership Award. In this episode, we discuss what real networking is all about. Why most people do it wrong, how you can do it right, and the key ingredient that’s been missing in your networking efforts. And without further ado, here’s my conversation with Ivan Misner. Enjoy!

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 founded Apption, an enterprise software consultancy, and 360pi, a retail price intelligence platform that was acquired by MarketTrack in 2017. Sam has been named an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, a Microsoft Code Award winner, and was a Google Scholarship recipient. On this episode, we talk about Sam’s leadership style, decision making, framework for hiring the best talent remotely, and Getaround $1.2bil SPAC deal.

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 clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow.  On this episode, Kim talks about how to develop real, human relationships at work by caring personally and challenging directly. Kim also shares tips on how to start implementing radical candor.