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Michael Moritz – Ausländer

    One Family’s Story of Escape and Exile

    Invest Like the Best | 16 September 2026 | 1h 12m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify

    Interview with Michael Moritz about his book Ausländer: One Family’s Story of Escape and Exile. Explores his family’s history as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Contrasts his grandfathers—a cautious civil servant who stayed too long and a streetwise trader who escaped, highlighting how a refugee mindset instilled drive, vigilance, and the necessity of always having a “bolt hole”. Reflects on his leadership journey at Sequoia Capital, evaluating founders through their formative first 14 years, and the power of monomaniacal focus in figures like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

    Book cover

    I also enjoyed the (quite different) Conversations with Tyler episode.

    Dan Wang – The US vs China in the 21st Century

      Invest Like the Best | 16 October 2025 | 1h 37m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
      Interview with Dan Wang about his book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. Discusses his framework for understanding US-China competition; explores the asymmetry that it’s harder for the US to rebuild manufacturing capacity than for China to improve scientific research, with profound implications for AI, national security, and investment returns; explains the “ByteDance problem” – why exceptional Chinese companies trade at massive discounts due to Communist Party unpredictability and geopolitical risks; argues China is a “high agency” society that executes relentlessly while America deliberates endlessly, yet also reveals the societal cost; and discusses innovation, state capacity, and investing across both superpowers.

      Joe Liemandt – Building Alpha School, and The Future of Education

        Invest Like the Best | 26 August 2025 | 2h 28m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
        Interview with Joe Liemandt about Alpha School.  Discusses his background founding Trilogy Software and his mission to transform education with an AI tutoring system so effective that 2x better learning outcomes can be achieved in just two hours a day. Draws on Jeremy Stern’s Colossus profile “Class Dismissed“.

        See also the Modern Wisdom episode with Mackenzie Price about Alpha School.

        Robert Greene – Optimizing Your Reality

          Invest Like the Best | 25 June 2024 | 1h 02m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
          Interview with Robert Greene about his books 48 Laws of Power and Mastery. Discusses his work studying why people behave like they do, why some go on to build great things, and finding your life’s purpose.

          Patrick Collison & John Collison – A Business State of Mind

            Invest Like the Best | 17 October 2023 | 1h 18m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
            Interview with Patrick and John Collison about setting a strategy and culture that attracts ambition, why the returns to sweating the details are high, and how they view Stripe’s progress against their mission to increase the GDP of the internet.

            Samo Burja – The Great Founder Theory of History

              Invest Like the Best | 1 August 2023 | 1h 08m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
              Interview with Samo Burja about his Great Founder Theory of History. Argues that a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society. Discusses institutions, the founders behind them, how they rise and why they always fall in the end, human progress, the nature of exceptional founders, and the future of different societies across the world.

              Avi Goldfarb – The Economic Impact of AI

                Invest Like the Best | 21 March 2023 | 0h 57m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
                Interview with Avi Goldfarb discussing the pace of AI’s development compared with other technologies, the transition from a world governed by rules to one governed by decisions, and the disruptive effects of AI on existing businesses and professions. Draws from his book Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence.

                See also the New Bazaar episode Artificial Intelligence and the Economy of the Future.