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Giant Ideas invites leading minds from tech, business, politics and beyond to explore the giant ideas that use technology as a force for good. Giant Ventures, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen, backs purpose-driven founders solving the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.
37 Episodes
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Today on the podcast we welcome Jeremy Chan. Jeremy is a British-Canadian chef who grew up between London and Hong Kong, and is the Co-founder of Ikoyi restaurant. In 2017, Chan joined forces with Iré Hassan-Odukale – a friend who had just left a career in insurance - and together they decided to build Ikoyi. Ikoyi is now a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London, and it has recently been voted one of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. But Chan has not always been a chef. In fact he s...
Today on the podcast we are joined by Sebastian Thrun - the “Godfather of self-driving cars”. He invented Google’s autonomous vehicle, now known as Waymo, which is doing a quarter of all rideshare journeys in SF. Sebastian’s life has been full of moonshot ideas. He co-founded Google X, the moonshot factory at Google, and co-founded the flying taxi startup Kitty Hawk and Udacity, which democratised elite education online. He’s seen as one of the greatest computer scientists and roboticists of ...
Today on the podcast we have Synthesia Co-founder and COO Steffen Tjerrild. Synthesia is an AI company that allows you to create professional videos with just a few lines of text. It’s now used by over 1 million customers, including +80% of Fortune 100 companies. Synthesia is a UK unicorn, recently valued at $2 billion, At the heart of Synthesia's exponential growth is Steffen. As the company’s COO, Steffen has seen the company through its inception to the latest funding round. Today we talk ...
Today on the podcast we are joined by Floyd Steadman OBE. Floyd Steadman’s journey began in North-West London as a 10-year-old runaway, surviving alone after escaping an abusive home. Rejected by his own father and placed into care, Floyd's early life was marked by hardship, racism, and resilience. After discovering rugby, Floyd became the first Black captain of Saracens rugby club, rising through a sport where no one looked like him. Later, he became a respected headteacher (including of Tom...
Today on Giant Ideas we’re joined by General David Petraeus — arguably one of the most influential generals in American history. From leading coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to running the CIA, General Petraeus has shaped the world on and off the battlefield. We explore his insights on global security, technological warfare, leadership under pressure, and what the future holds for geopolitics. This is a rare and wide-ranging conversation with a man who has stood at the centre of hist...
Welcome back to Giant Ideas! Today we are joined by Trip Adler, the Co-founder of Scribd - a company he co-founded with Jared Friedman, now Partner at Y Combinator. Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents, with billions of views a year. Today we talk about Trip’s next act: Created By Humans, where he is Co-Founder and CEO, on a huge mission to champion AI rights for authors. Giant proudly led the seed round of Created by Humans, and we invited Trip on ...
Today on the podcast we are joined by tech titan Reid Hoffman. As the founder of LinkedIn, which Microsoft acquired for $26 billion, Reid is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history. He broke through as a founding board member of PayPal, one of the so-called PayPal mafia alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Reid went on to become a legendary investor both as an angel and partner at Greylock. He invested in Facebook’s first round and led Airbnb’s Series A. Reid operates right at th...
Alain de Botton, philosopher, author, and founder of The School of Life, joins the Giant Ideas show today. The School of Life provides emotional education to help people lead more fulfilled lives. Alain is a world-renowned philosopher and public speaker, and has shaped much of the discourse of 21st century philosophy and emotional introspection. He is the author of over 20 books - from novels like Essays in Love, to non-fiction books like Religion for Atheists, Art as Therapy, and Status Anx...
Welcome back! Today, we’re joined by one of the most insightful voices in tech - Benedict Evans, former Andreessen Horowitz partner and founder of Benedict's Newsletter. Over the last ten years, Benedict has independently predicted huge waves in tech, often before others. If you’ve followed the evolution of technology, it’s likely you’ve read his work. Benedict has spent 20 years analysing media and technology, and worked across equity research, strategy, consulting and venture capital....
Sophia Amoruso is the entrepreneur-turned-investor best known for founding the fashion e-commerce brand Nasty Gal and for coining the term “Girlboss”. She wrote the New York Times best-seller #Girlboss in 2014, which also got turned into a Netflix show. She lived the Girlboss dream herself: turning a humble eBay store that she started at age 22, into a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in sales by the age of just 29. She was on the cover of Forbes as one of the richest self-...
Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Katherine Boyle, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In 2022 Katherine unveiled her thesis - ‘Building American Dynamism’ - which has both inspired the tech landscape and provided a central philosophical plank of Trump’s America. American Dynamism is defined as “embodying the spirit of innovation, progress, and resilience that drives the United States forward”. Putting her money where her mouth is, Katherine Boyle co-founded Andrees...
Welcome back to the Giant Ideas Podcast, Season 2! Today on the podcast we are joined by Rick Fox - businessman, actor, three-time NBA Champion and captain of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant at the LA Lakers. Elite sport was part of Rick's life from an early age - his mother was an Olympic athlete. Rick's own NBA career went on to span 13 seasons, from Boston Celtics in 1991, to captain of the LA Lakers, captaining three consecutive championships from 2000 to 2002. Then, Rick did a d...
Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F: the biggest startup incubator in the world. Based in Paris, Roxanne is recognised as one of the most influential figures in the French startup ecosystem. The French media have called Varza the "young empress of startups," and even the “new pope of high-tech and startups in France." Roxanne was formerly a TechCrunch journalist and startup ambassador with Microsoft before being personally selected by Xavier Niel to spearhead the development of Station...
Mike Maples Jr is a Co-Founding Partner at Floodgate. He was named a “Rising Star” by Fortune, and has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was a founder and operator at back-to-back startup IPOs. Now, Mike’s own investments include companies like Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Refinery29, and Clover Health. Mike is also the author of the National Bestselling book Pattern Breakers - sharing lessons from startup top performers....
Welcome to the Giant Ideas podcast! Run by Giant Ventures - the venture fund for purpose-driven founders building companies that matter. At Giant, we’re lucky to often meet extraordinary people with giant ideas that are changing the world. So we’ve released a brand new podcast to showcase these behind-the-scenes conversations on the giant ideas shaping the world, and the inspiring stories of the leaders behind them. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at ww...
Today on the podcast, we are joined by Robert Langer, scientist, inventor and entrepreneur - and one of the most cited researchers in history, often called the “Edison of Medicine”. What makes Dr Langer special is that he is not only an academic but also an entrepreneur: turning frontier science into groundbreaking companies. Langer Lab's research has given rise to over 400 companies, and is also the co-founder of multiple companies, including Moderna, which discovered the COVID-19 vacc...
Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Azeem Azhar: author, futurist and founder of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast which explains how society and the political economy are changing under the force of technology. Azeem’s first book Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology studied how technology’s rapid pace of development is impacting the world. Azeem is considered one of the most influential thinkers on the impact of technology on humanity’s f...
🎄 Today is our last podcast before the holidays! We will be back on 9 January with a conversation on AI - follow the show to get a notification when it's live! On the show today we are joined by one of the world’s leading designers: Thomas Heatherwick. Thomas has created many of the world’s most striking new public spaces and buildings. Heatherwick Studio is behind culture-defining projects like the Vessel in New York’s Hudson Yard, and London’s Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross, where we...
Today on the podcast we are joined by Alistair Brownlee, Double Olympic Triathlon Champion - to talk about his incredible career and the extreme mental discipline that got him to the very top of athletics. It’s his first in depth interview since he announced his retirement. Alistair Brownlee is the only athlete in history to hold two Olympic titles in the individual triathlon event, having won gold medals in both the 2012 and the 2016 Olympic Games. He is also a four-time World Champion in tr...
Today on the podcast we have Ali Parsa - founder of two unicorn health businesses - Babylon Health and Circle Health. Ali was born in Iran, but left when he was 16, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. Amazingly, he taught himself UK high school, and went on to study civil and environmental engineering at University College London. He sold a media company he started during university, and then joined the investment banking world. 20 years ago, he set up Circle Health - the first ...
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