Giant Ideas

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. He is known as one of the world's most exceptional discoverers of talent. 

In this episode we talk about his giant idea - why we shouldn’t focus on being better than the last company, we should focus on being completely different. We also talk about the aiming phase, when you should quit, and the art of the pivot. Welcome Mike!

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

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 www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

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 vaccine.

Dr Langer is one of nine Institute Professors at MIT - the highest honour that can be awarded to a faculty member. Langer’s MIT research laboratory is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world, with over $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. He has written over 1,600 articles, which have been cited almost half a million times. Dr Langer has also received over 220 awards and served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board.

Dr Langer's work specialises in biotech fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He was the pioneer of delayed release medicine, and it was calculated his work had impacted an estimated two billion lives, helping those with cancer, burns, heart disease, spinal injuries and more - even before the Moderna Covid19 vaccine was developed.

In this episode we talk about what scientific founders should watch out for, why getting patents are so critical, why you should follow your passion, why he thinks science is better than ever in the US, why he's excited by brains built on chips, if Attention Deficit Disorder makes him a better founder, and why failure makes you better.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

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 future.

We discussed: How is energy now a technology not a commodity, and why does that matter so much for society? How are China and Pakistan using solar panels to power their economies? And how will AI change energy consumption - will AI be good or bad for the climate? And lots more... enjoy!

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

🎄 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 are recording this podcast.

They’ve also designed iconic cultural moments like the London 2012 Olympics cauldron, and cultural landmarks like the reimagined double decker bus in London. From Cape Town’s coolest building to Google’s new office, Thomas is building daring urban landscapes that will outlive all of us. 

Our cities and our buildings have such a profound impact on our lives, but often we don’t have time to really think about why that is, and how things could be so much better. 

Today Thomas joins the podcast to talk about why we need to humanise cities - he’s even written a book called Humanise which talks about exactly this. We also cover the surprising health and climate consequences of not taking this ambition seriously. 

We’ll talk about why design matters for you, how to put the soul back into buildings and why we’ve got cities so badly wrong for a century.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

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 triathlon.

Famously, his younger brother Jonny Brownlee is also a decorated triathlete. The Brownlee brothers were considered the dominant male Olympic distance triathletes of the 2010s - often competing together. In 2016, Alistair famously spotted his brother suffering from exhaustion and pushed him across the line in the final stretch of the race that he had been leading. 

Alistair Brownlee is widely regarded as one of the greatest male athletes ever to have lived. Today Alistair is building a new chapter to his career focused on a range of new ventures, building on his on decades of experience working in sports. We are also very lucky to count Alistair as an investor in Giant’s funds.

In this conversation, we talk about why relying on willpower is a recipe for failure, what you can learn from elite athletes, nature vs nurture for excellence, and the characteristics that define Olympic champions and top founders.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

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 private company to run a UK NHS hospital, which became Europe's largest partnership of clinicians with around £200 million of annual revenue and about 3,000 employees. Circle Health was taken public in 2012, when Ali stepped down as CEO.

Then, in 2014 - Ali formed Babylon Health, a health service provider that enabled users to have virtual consultations with doctors via text and video on its app. At its height, Babylon was a unicorn - and Ali led Babylon’s listing on the NYSE. But share prices dropped at flotation to below $1, with Ali calling the decision to go public through a SPAC an "unbelievable, unmitigated disaster".

And now he’s bringing a lifetime of lessons from right at the top of American and British healthcare to his next company: Quadrivia - an all-in-one AI health assistant.

In this episode we talk about how AI can transform healthcare, what Ali learnt from Babylon Health, and what the perfect age is to build a startup.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today on Giant Ideas we bring you a conversation with a titan of American business and society, Arianna Huffington.

Arianna is the co-founder of The Huffington Post, which built an audience of 200 million, and the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. She also sat on the board of Uber during its succession drama. 

Arianna is also the author of an astonishing fifteen books - on everything from Sleep to Becoming Fearless. She has been named on Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list.

Her latest company, Thrive Global, is on a mission to improve the world's health, and productivity, through science-based behaviour change. Thrive Global recently launched Thrive AI Health, in collaboration with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, to find solutions for the 130 million Americans diagnosed with a chronic condition.

In this conversation we discuss Arianna’s predictions for the future of health, why she thinks joy is more important than productivity and why AI can supercharge your wellbeing, and how she uses gratitude to create her own reset.

You can also watch Arianna Huffington's reset here. 

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

In 1975, in a two bedroom apartment in New York City, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm. Over forty years later, this firm - Bridgewater Associates - has grown into not just the world's largest hedge fund, but also what Fortune has called the “fifth most important private company in the United States”. Ray Dalio himself appears on Time Magazine's list of the world’s top 100 most influential people. 

His philosophy has travelled far beyond the four walls of his hedge fund through the medium of multiple best-selling books, most notably Principles, a distillation of the intense rules he built an empire around.

Cameron McLain - Co-founder and Managing Partner at Giant - sat down to talk with Ray about the unique ingredients behind his success and the creation of a culture of radical transparency that has attracted admiration and disagreement in equal measure. We cover his Principles and how in reality you can live your working life by them, especially when challenged.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today on the podcast we have Michael Lynton, one of America’s leading CEOs. Michael led Sony Entertainment as CEO, overseeing Sony’s global entertainment businesses during a period of great success. But it also had its challenges - notably when North Korean hackers released private emails and unreleased films. 

Michael had previously worked for Time Warner as CEO of AOL Europe, and was  Chairman and CEO of Pearson PLC’s Penguin Group.

But today our focus is on Michael’s role as a mentor. He has been arguably one of the most successful startup mentors of all time, discovering and nurturing a young Evan Spiegel - the founder of Snapchat, now Snap. Michael spotted Evan after Michael’s wife contacted Snapchat customer support in a moment of serendipity. From that chance encounter, Michael went on to become chairman of Snap, now one of the world’s largest social media platforms. 

On this episode, you find out from Michael what truly great mentorship looks like, what you should look for in a mentor and how this changes as you scale, and what matters most when becoming a great leader.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.