Stanford GSB: View From The Top

"If there are two things that have been foundational to my journey, it's been learning, and it's been the importance of taking risk."Hemant Taneja, managing partner and CEO of General Catalyst, shares his insights on leadership, innovation, and the evolving role of venture capital in this episode of View From The Top, the podcast. In his conversation with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, on the Stanford GSB campus, Taneja reflects on his personal journey from a low-income household in Delhi to becoming a prominent figure in the venture capital world. The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities in various sectors, including healthcare, defense, and AI. Taneja discusses the role of venture capital in fostering transformative companies. He also highlights the importance of aligning profit with purpose and the necessity of engaging with policymakers to navigate the complexities of emerging technologies.Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.For a full transcript, visit the episode's page on the Stanford GSB website. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

1,216. That’s the total number of NCAA games won by Tara VanDerveer, making her the all-time winning coach in college basketball history. In addition to coaching for 38 years at Stanford, she led the U.S. Women’s team to Olympic gold in 1996 – finishing with a flawless 16-0 record. “Coaching is teaching. It’s really trying to help people go to places they can’t go themselves,” says VanDerveer. “There’s nothing more rewarding than a great team.”It’s hard to believe that the legendary coach was once barred from playing herself. In the seventh grade, VanDerveer was her school basketball team’s mascot. By the time she was in ninth grade, she still wasn’t allowed to play – even though the coach told her she was the best among both the boys and girls. Since then, the iconic trailblazer for women in sports has changed the game. In this episode of the View From The Top podcast hosted by Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, VanDerveer shares moments from her legendary career and reflects on what it means to be a great teammate – on and off the court. Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“It wasn’t luck. I worked every single second of the day – I was obsessed with it. I wanted independence for myself, for my family, and I didn’t want to go back to Jacksonville.”In 2022, Daniella Pierson was named the youngest, wealthiest, self-made BIPOC woman in the world by Forbes. The 28-year-old grew her first company, The Newsette, to a $200 million dollar valuation without taking on a single investor. As a one-woman operation, she advertised through word of mouth and ran the company from her college dorm room.She wasn’t just working against a full college course load. Pierson also battled OCD and ADHD diagnoses. Her mental health experiences would help inspire the mental fitness startup Wondermind, confounded with Selena Gomez in 2022. Two years later, Pierson is already onto her next project: Breadwinner, a financial literacy brand dedicated to helping young visionaries turn their barriers into building blocks. In this View From The Top interview, Pierson sits down with Zach Doherty, MBA ’24, to discuss her entrepreneurial journey, work life balance, and what’s next for Breadwinner. “This is my ecosystem of everything that I have proven in my story. None of my businesses have ever been me first.”Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"You can learn how something can be done and then go back to first principles and ask yourself, 'Given the conditions today, given my motivation, given the instruments, the tools, given how things have changed, how would I redo this? How would I reinvent this whole thing?"Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, started his career washing dishes at Denny's. He then worked his way to busboy and, eventually, founded what is one of today's most valuable companies on Wall Street. In this interview at Stanford GSB's View From The Top event, founder and CEO Jensen Huang, MS '92, shares the stage with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, to detail his experience founding NVIDIA, funding it, and, finally his views on AI.Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"My first piece of advice is only take the role if you are really interested in it. Startups are hard," says Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox. "And when it's tough, you find a way, you make a way, you back up the boat, you reassess, you pivot. And so if you don't have that irrational belief and pull, don't do it."Aicha Evans took the role of CEO at autonomous vehicle company Zoox in 2019. And in 2020, she led the company's acquisition by Amazon for $1.3B.Evans visited Stanford Graduate School of Business for View From The Top and was interviewed by Katie Harris, MBA '24. In their conversation, Evans addressed the challenges of leading in a highly dynamic industry, the nuances of navigating corporate transitions and acquisitions, and the principles guiding her leadership in a future-focused company. For a full transcript of this conversation, visit the podcast webpage. Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"The secret sauce of being a successful creator on the platform is just being true to yourself. And that sounds sort of very cliché, but I wish somebody had given me that advice early in my career because nothing rings more true."Neal Mohan, MBA ’05 and the CEO of YouTube, visited the Stanford campus as part of View From The Top. Mohan sat down with Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, to discuss his background in tech, his time at Stanford GSB, and why he is an optimist about AI.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“In companies, you don’t want just the product team thinking about the product; the finance team thinking about finance ... You want everyone all the time feeling like they’re an owner, and they can have a point of view on any part of the company.”In this View From The Top interview, Sarah Friar, MBA ’00, CEO of Nextdoor, sits down with Zack Doherty, MBA ’24. During their conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Friar shared her unique perspective on taking strategic career risks, how social media can effect positive change in society, and the value of bringing people together through human connection and community.Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund. During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I've seen unbelievable change happen in places that the world sees as not investible. Part of storytelling is doing the work of investing so that people can tell their own stories because of the changes they've made."In 1986 Jacqueline Novogratz quit her job on Wall Street and moved to Rwanda to help open the country's first microfinance institution. She then came to Stanford GSB in 1989, and, in 2001, founded Acumen, a nonprofit impact investing fund."We look at poverty always in terms of income, but poverty is so much more than income. Poverty is a lack of choice, it's a lack of opportunity, it's a lack of agency, it's a lack of feeling that you can contribute. Dignity is the opposite." In this View From the Top interview, Novogratz sits down with Kathleen Schwind, MBA ’23, to talk about her journey into impact investing and how the industry has grown in the last decade.  "We are in this moment of just extraordinary technological acceleration. Our challenge is to ensure that our moral reasoning, our moral imagination, our moral courage keeps pace with that acceleration." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Now also in that meeting, I asked her, 'Could you introduce me to a few of your friends? I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea.' Because every meeting has to get you to three other meetings. Never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction." In this View From The Top interview, Rent the Runway founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman shares stories from her first meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg and how she's worked to foster and maintain relationships with more than 1,000 retail brands. "If you’re an entrepreneur, effectively you are a salesperson. That’s your number one skill that you need to have," Hyman says.   Interviewed by Cyerra Holmes, MBA ’23, Hyman talked about how growing up with a sibling with a disability helped her become relentlessly optimistic in the face of insurmountable odds. And, just twelve years after business school and those first meetings with fashion designers, Hyman took Rent The Runway public, becoming the 30th woman to complete an IPO in the history of U.S. markets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“If you can create unreasonable expectations, people amaze you with their creativity.”In this View From The Top interview, Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, spoke with Sankalp Banerjee, MBA ’23, about his personal evolution as a leader, including the last 16 years as CEO. Narayen discussed the importance of innovative thinking across multiple scales, seeking opportunities in setbacks, and finding creative inspiration. He also shared his perspective on the future of technology and digital experiences, including the impact of generative AI and data transparency. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April and March of 2020, as shelter-in-place mandates swept the globe and travel halted, bookings on Airbnb plummeted. With an 80% revenue loss, the company had to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce. "When you’re our size, and the business drops by 80 percent in eight weeks, it's is like being in an 18-wheeler going 80 miles-an-hour, and then you slam on the brakes," Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said. Chesky was interviewed by James Yan, MBA '23, for View From The Top, on the Stanford GSB campus."This is weeks after we were preparing for what was supposed to be one of the hottest IPOs in years. It was completely bewildering." Chesky was called upon to provide answers, guidance, and business decisions at a time when uncertainty ruled. But when there's only a blank slate, he says, it's time to deploy creativity.  "The hardest thing to manage in a crisis is your own psychology. People look in your eyes, and if you think you’re screwed, they see it in your eyes. You need to be optimistic. But it can’t be optimism that’s delusional. ... The optimistic mentality is the mentality you need to be creative. And you need to be creative because, in a crisis, you often have no good solutions."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“You know what kind of culture you have by how your employees are feeling on Sunday night when they think about getting ready to go back to work on Monday morning.”When Cynt Marshall was hired as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks in 2018, she presented her vision: that the organization would become a global standard for inclusion and diversity. “I truly believe if you have an inclusive culture and a diverse group of employees, you can get anything done," Marshall says. "I’ve lived it. There’s a bottom line impact to having diversity, and having equity in your organization, and an inclusive culture.”In this View From The Top interview, Marshall sits down with Sankalp Banarjee, MBA ’23, to share stories of how she stepped into her authentic self as a leader, how she navigated personal and professional challenges, and how she keeps burn-out at bay.  “A lot of times people ask the question, ‘What keeps you up at night?’ I say, ‘No, to me, the question is, ‘What gets you up in the morning?’” Marshall was named one of 15 of the world’s most inspiring female leaders by Forbes in 2021. In March 2020 and several times prior, she was selected as one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Corporate America” by Black Enterprise magazine.Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"For me, the thing that stood out was my difference. I wasn’t chasing the thing that others were chasing. I was chasing the things that lived with my values." In this View From The Top interview, Tristan Walker MBA ’10, founder and CEO of Walker & Company, sits down with James Yan, MBA '23, to talk about his journey from Stanford GSB to entrepreneur. Walker shares a story from day he'll never forget: when he found a cafe, and sat down to write down his values. From that day forward, Walker says, built his business and life accordingly. In 2018, Walker merged his brand with Procter & Gamble, becoming the first Black CEO under the P&G umbrella in the company’s 180-year history. He is also the founder and board chairman of CODE2040, a program that matches high performing Black and Latino undergraduate and graduate coders and software engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"If you want to build the future, don't look to the future. Look to something that's in the corner in the present." In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Andy Dunn MBA ’07, founder and CEO of Bonobos, sits down with Cyerra Holmes, MBA '23, to talk about his journey building a clothing company while a student at Stanford GSB. He also shares stories from his recently released memoir, "Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind," which explores the intersection of entrepreneurship and mental illness. Andy's next business venture is a social media app that aims to detoxify digital culture.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"My number one priority is to make sure Zoom employees are happy. I believe if you have happy employees, you’re going to have happy customers." Eric Yuan, SEP '06, founded Zoom in 2011 to "deliver happiness and bring people together" in a frictionless video environment. In 2019, Eric led Zoom to one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of the year. But it was the next year that really made his company a global verb. In January 2020, the Zoom app averaged about 56,000 daily downloads on the Apple App Store. Within two months, as the COVID-19 outbreak forced a tectonic shift in the way people communicate, those downloads surpassed two million per day.In this episode of View From the Top, the podcast, Kathleen Schwind MBA '23, sits down to interview Yuan about what how he creates company culture, how he strives for work-life balance, and the few things he can't live without. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. In my own life journey, I've come to appreciate the significance of entrepreneurship in transforming communities, in transforming countries, societies, and humanity." Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, and champion of African entrepreneurs, is a steadfast believer that the private sector has a role to play in developing countries across Africa.After a career running United Bank of Africa, Elumelu says he has decided “to commit the second phase of my life to helping democratize the luck that I had growing up, to help expand access to opportunities.” And he has done just that, funding thousands of early-stage startups and empowering more than 15,000 entrepreneurs across 54 African countries to solve the continent’s biggest problems.In this View From The Top interview on Stanford campus, Chisom Obi-Okoye, MBA '22, interviews Elumelu about his career path, philosophy of African capitalism, and vision for the future of the continent.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Figure out what the big moments where you can bring your teams together are. It cures a lot of ills. It really helps with morale. It's incredible for team building."In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, sits down with Christopher Stromeyer, MBA '22, to discuss risk-taking, feedback, and her pre-launch ritual.Watch this interview on YouTube.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, sits down with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe to discuss breaking down inequality through genetics and how leaders should build trust by being unabashedly honest. “The guiding principle for 23andMe is transparency and choice. It’s the choice whether you want to get your genetic information, the choice if you want to participate in research, the choice that you don’t want to do all these things. And I think that’s one of the issues I have in healthcare — most times you’re not provided choice and you’re not provided transparency.”Wojcicki also recounts stories from the early days of 23andMe to how she’s navigating hybrid work today. “Everything is about being redefined,” she says. “Work environments are never going to be the same. And so, how do you really have a hybrid environment? And even at different policies, talking to companies about what are you doing for return to office, or are people coming in. How do you manage vaccinations? Everything has been nonstop of helping manage.”Watch this interview on our YouTube channel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"You have to encourage innovation. Companies become more conservative in decision making as you grow...be okay with failure and reward effort, not outcomes."In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, speaks to Archana Sohmshetty, MBA '22, about the impact of access to technology, humanity's challenge to harness it, and how Google is sustainably defining the future of work. "When you see the appetite and the desire for people to make their lives better by gaining access to technology, that is what compels me to go beyond." says Pichai. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"If you talk about and comment on everything, your voice becomes background noise ... It's important [for brands] to be clear what matters most to us and why. What's our purpose? Why do we exist?"In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Dara Treseder, MBA '14, Peloton's global head of marketing, communications, and membership discusses how she found her purpose as a leader and why the journey to success is not linear. "Remember no matter how high you are, be humble. No matter how low you are, be hopeful," she says. This podcast is drawn from Stanford GSB's speaker series in which prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for a conversation on effective leadership, core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.Watch the video.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.