Today’s guest is Zahaan Bharmal – Senior Director of Strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Google where he has spent the last 16 years. He is also author of The Art of Physics: 8 elegant ideas to make sense of almost everything.

In this conversation, Zahaan and I discuss his younger years, how he struggled at school and had big questions about the world and how The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams completely changed his life and allowed him to fall in love with the subject of Physics, in the hope of finding some of those answers.

We also discuss Zahaan’s career from working as a speech writer for luminaries such as Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela to his current role at Google working with those at the frontier of AI including Sir Demis Hassabis of Deep Mind. 

But the main topic of conversation today is how physics can help us answer very human questions. Drawing on fields of physics such as quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity theory, we look at how physics can help us make sense of an unpredictable world – and, why many of the world’s most successful leaders from Napolean to Charlie Munger all believe a greater understanding of physics can help us save humanity.

So please enjoy my conversation with Zahaan Bharmal.

Zahaan Bharmal has a degree in physics from the University of Oxford. After working on policy issues for the UK government and at the World Bank, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Stanford University where he earned a master's in business administration. Since 2008, he has worked for Google, currently as senior director of strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has written about space and science for the Guardian and is the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal.

Today’s guest is Nuno Coelho Santos – a Portuguese Product Designer who has worked at some of tech’s top companies from DeepMind to Meta’s WhatsApp, and Google Health.

He was at DeepMind working on their Streams app for clinicians when Covid struck and his team were pulled into helping the UK Ministry’s of Health Departments Covid response.

In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about Nuno’s early pull between his two great loves – engineering and design, how design ultimately won and led to his work award winning work at DeepMind and Google as well as the career break he took after being inspired by designer Stefan Sagmeister who believed in taking a complete sabbatical every seven years.

We also discuss the differences in the companies he worked at, and what the impact of AI might be on software and design in the future.

I really enjoyed talking to Nuno and I think you will learn a lot – this is his first ever podcast interview.

So please enjoy my conversation with Nuno Coelho Santos.

Nuno website / LinkedIn / Instagram / Threads

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

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This week's guest is David Senra, ex-founder and host of  Founders podcast – one of my favourite podcasts where each week, David devours a biography of a founder and shares his favourite lessons with the world, whether it’s Charlie Munger, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Kobe Bryant, The Wright Brothers, Lucille Ball, Jay Z, Enzo Ferrari and many more!

But David has a really interesting story himself and one we dive into today. We talk about his tough childhood and how his escape came through his obsession with books because it was within those pages where he found the role models he wanted and needed to inspire him on his way.

We also discuss some key themes between the founders and innovators whose stories David has shared in over 300 episodes now from a self-styled delusion which helps them to ignore the naysayers and dream the impossible to the obsession which comes with a laser focus on what matters.

There are lots of great stories and anecdotes as you can imagine from David but there are also some great lessons that he has learned about success on his personal journey and why he wants to build something he’s younger self would be proud of.

Here is my conversation with David Senra.

Enjoy!

This episode was originally released April 2023 - S9:E73

David's podcast Founders podcast / Twitter / Instagram 

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

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Mentioned in this episode:

Tim Urban post that David mentions in this episode Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think

My episode with Jimmy Soni here

Today’s guest is Charlotte Stavrou – founder and CEO of SevenSix agency – an award winning influencer marketing agency.

In this episode, we talk about Charlotte’s childhood and how it shaped her work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit, how her dyslexia diagnosis last year allowed her to feel whole after the education system left her feeling broken.

We also discuss why so many founders are now becoming influencers, how covid accelerated the influencer landscape and how her agency’s annual pricing reports are helping influencers charge the right amount for their work.

Whether you are a founder, content creator or marketeer, you will find lots of lessons in this episode.

So please enjoy my conversation with Charlotte Stavrou.

Charlotte on Instagram / LinkedIn / SevenSix agency

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Image of Charlotte by Kiran Gidda

All my podcast episodes are edited with Descript - try it for FREE here

Today’s guest is Asif Ahmed, Partner & Head of Early Stage for Tech & High Growth companies at accountancy firm Cooper Parry. He previously founded Acclivity Advisors which was acquired by Cooper Parry and his role at both has been to work closely with early-stage founders and entrepreneurs across all accounting, tax and advisory disciplines - ensuring founding teams are able to help navigate and scale their startups.

In this episode, we discuss Asif’s background and how the pivotal moments in his life shaped him including his father’s sixth diagnosis of cancer which was sadly terminal. Asif took over his father’s business to support his family and this really shaped who he became and what he went on to do in his career.

We also discuss when a founder should set up the startup’s finance function, when is the right time to raise outside capital, why every startup should have a finance bible, and what one piece of advice he would offer a younger Asif.

Quick apology for sound quality which is not perfect in this episode but hopefully it doesn’t take away from the important lessons Asif shares about founders and the importance of getting your finance function up and running from the start of your startup journey.

I learned a lot from Asif and I think you will too so please enjoy my conversation with Asif Ahmed!
 

Asif Ahmed LinkedIn / Cooper Parry

Asif's book:The Finance Playbook for Entrepreneurs: Build a solid finance department for your high-growth business, without the trial and error

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Today’s guest is JZ, currently Chief Product Officer at Linktree and previoysly SVP of Product at Webflow. And before that, she led product teams at Airbnb, WeWork, Dropbox and gaming startup Pocket Gems.

In this episode, we discuss JZ’s life growing up – how frequent moves to different cities and countries built her up resilience and adaptability, how she got into product management despite being an Economics Major, how her father’s brain haemorrhage changed her life and the lessons she learned from working at some of the world’s top companies from Airbnb to WeWork, Dropbox and more.

I learned a lot from talking to JZ about how build out a roadmap for your product, when it’s the right time to launch and how to build something which people not only use, but love too.

I think you will learn a lot too so here is my conversation with the wonderful JZ.

JZ on LinkedIn 

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Today’s guest is Anil Ananthaswamy - an award-winning science writer and former staff writer and deputy news editor for New Scientist magazine. He is a 2019-20 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and has been a guest editor for the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and organizes and teaches an annual science writing workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, India.

He is a freelance feature editor for PNAS Front Matter. He writes regularly for New Scientist, Quanta, Scientific American, PNAS Front Matter and Nature, and has contributed to Nautilus, Matter, The Wall Street Journal, Discover and the UK’s Literary Review, among others.

He has written four award-winning books including The Edge of Physics: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology - voted book of the year in 2010 by UK’s Physics World,

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Tales from the Edge of the Self - was long-listed for the 2016 Pen/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, 

Through Two Doors at Once: The Enigmatic Story of our Quantum Reality- was named one of Smithsonian's Favorite Books of 2018 and one of Forbes's 2018 Best Books About Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics.

And his latest book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI which Geoffrey Hinton labelled "A masterpiece."

In this episode, we discuss his start in life, why he went from a career in software to writing and dig deeper into Why Machines Learn including a history of neural networks.

But, before we get into today’s episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Paddle - and this is especially for the all the mobile devs in my audience. Paddle has produced an invaluable web monetisation guide (for FREE)! As they say, selling your app on the web isn't just about avoiding hefty app store fees, it actually gives you the freedom and opportunity to leverage a direct-to-consumer model where you can reach a bigger audience, enhance your marketing efforts, and experiment with different ways to monetize and grow your app. So, if you are interested in learning more, then do head here to get your FREE web monetisation guide from Paddle.

Please enjoy my conversation with Anil Ananthaswamy.

Anil website / Twitter

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Episode image: Rajesh Krishnan

Today’s guest is Simon Brading who works at App Agency Brightec and is the co-founder of Mentora Money which he started in 2022 with his wife, Anna – a financial education instructor. Their mission is simple but important - to create a platform to help as many people as possible learn basic financial principles so that they can make money, look after their money and reduce money stress. 

In this conversation, we discuss Simon’s strong faith and how that has guided him through his life and career especially around community building, we also talk about how Covid left him with depression and how he managed to get out of that dark hole and, we ponder on what a financially literate society might look like.

But, before we get into today’s episode, a quick word from our sponsor. Paddle - and this is especially for the all the mobile devs in my audience. Paddle has produced an invaluable web monetisation guide which you can download for FREE here. As they say, selling your app on the web isn't just about avoiding hefty app store fees, it actually gives you the freedom and opportunity to leverage a direct-to-consumer model where you can reach a bigger audience, enhance your marketing efforts, and experiment with different ways to monetize and grow your app. So, if you are interested in learning more, then do head to here to get your FREE web monetisation guide from Paddle.

Please enjoy my conversation with Simon Brading.

Today’s guest is the wonderful Doug Menuez – a documentary photographer, director and photojournalist whose incredible career has seen him cover the AIDS crisis, the Ethiopian famine, the birth of the digital revolution in the 1980s where he documented founders like Steve Jobs, Marc Andreessen, Bill Gates, the Adobe founders and more and that is how he came on my radar.

His book, Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000 which highlights just a snippet of the over two million images which he took of that time is a such an incredible homage to the people that built the future we live in now.

And in today’s episode, we talk about it and the people he shot in his career– from the three years he had exclusive access to Steve Jobs to the time he got kidnapped in Sudan. We also discuss the three most pivotal moments in Doug’s life which include meeting his wonderful wife Tereza and the moment she was diagnosed two years ago with Alzheimer's.

There are some incredible stories of hope in this episode and some heartwarming lessons on the importance of patience and persistence and the ability of founders to keep going, despite the odds stacked against them.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here is my conversation with Doug Meneuz.

Doug website / Instagram / Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Image of Doug by Christopher Michel

What's coming up on Series 14 of the Danielle Newnham Podcast.

I have long toyed with the idea of branching out away from solely focusing on tech founders. I started the podcast 3 years ago now with the idea of interviewing people in the tech field because that’s what I knew – that was the field that I had been in and I believed that the human stories behind the game changing tech were important which I still do however, I really wanted to expand the scope of the podcast.

I guess, most importantly, I wanted to elevate the voices and stories you might not have heard before. If you listen to Series 9 of the podcast, you will see that’s when I started telling more of these stories and the response from you, my wonderful audience was amazing.

So, I think the time has come to focus on founders and innovators from all walks of life. I want to give my guests a safe space for them to tell their unabridged stories and I have some incredible guests lined up for Series 14.

So each episode of Series 14 will centre around the theme of hope as I ask each person – what were the top three most pivotal moments of their lives – how did they navigate and overcome them.

And there are some real tear-jerkers I can tell you. There are some unbelievably inspirational and uplifting stories which I can’t wait to share with you soon.

So do subscribe to Danielle Newnham Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from and you will hear more from me, and my guests, shortly.