Guests: Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO of Handshake; and Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins.

Handshake set out to democratize career opportunity. In the process, it unlocked something more: a high-trust expert network built on verified talent and earned trust.

This week on Grit, Garrett Lord shares how what began as a platform for student job seekers is now partnering with leading labs, enabling experts to train real-world AI systems. He explains how owning verified domain talent has become their core strategic edge, bypassing middlemen and turning a decade of trust into lasting advantage.

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Zach Perret saw a fintech explosion coming—and built the rails before it arrived.

On this week’s Grit, the Plaid co-founder and CEO retraces his path from building tools for developers to linking the world’s largest banks, and how a failed $5.3B acquisition by Visa became a launchpad.

He unpacks the pressure of operating in a tightly regulated industry, why rebuilding trust after the deal collapse was harder than expected, and how Plaid is navigating the shift from startup to staple—while staying obsessed with the end user.

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Six leaders from across tech — from SaaS and semis to law and logistics — come together for our 250th episode milestone in this very special AI recap, where we unpack how new advances are transforming the way industries function, and how work gets done.

Featuring:

• Bret Taylor (Sierra Co-founder)
• Winston Weinberg (Harvey Co-founder and CEO)
• Matt Murphy (Marvell Technology Chairman and CEO)
• Yamini Rangan (HubSpot CEO)
• Chris Urmson (Aurora CEO)
• Varun Mohan (Windsurf Co-founder and CEO)

Connect with Joubin:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/ 
- X:  https://x.com/Joubinmir 

Email: [email protected]

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com

Daragh Murphy is giving brands their own credit-card platform—no legacy bank required.

On this week’s Grit, the Imprint co-founder and CEO traces the leap from being a junior lawyer to closing nine-figure card deals.

He breaks down the hidden economics of credit-card loyalty, the discipline of treating capital “like the last dollar,” and how AI will slash risk-and-support costs.

Guest: Daragh Murphy, CEO & Co-Founder of Imprint

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:48 Introduction
01:30 Actualizing the dream
08:37 Imprint
11:37 Partnerships are massive
16:48 Understand the market
18:42 “Get more, spend more” tradeoffs
23:57 Fishing in the wrong ponds
31:32 Can’t skip work
32:43 Exciting and scary
34:56 Pride and ownership
46:50 The way you spend your day
50:20 New technologies
54:51 Who Imprint is hiring
54:59 What “grit” means to Daragh
55:34 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: Figma, Rippling, H-E-B Grocery Company, LP, Barclays US, IBM, Coinbase, Charlie Munger, Instagram, Hamptons, Google, Nick Huber, Ribbit, Ireland, WeWork, Adam Kim, Amazon, Shopify, Tobias Lütke, Duolingo, Parker Conrad

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Bill Staples has spent 30 years redefining how the world writes, ships, and secures code.

On this week’s Grit, the GitLab CEO shares what it takes to lead a public, all-remote DevSecOps company trusted by more than half of the Fortune 100.

He breaks down the discipline of managing energy instead of hours, why weekly operating cadences beat quarterly plans, and how AI will 10× software engineers by auto-debugging code and closing security gaps.

Guest: Bill Staples, CEO of GitLab

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer

00:42 Introduction

02:34 True joy in life

08:16 Winning teams

13:53 When the energy isn’t there

18:00 Super ambitious

21:01 It’s not just technology

29:27 Elevating quality and standard

41:36 Lifelong collaborator

51:22 Competent intelligence

54:22 Structuring goals and time

1:03:59 Who GitLab is hiring

1:04:17 What “grit” means to Bill

1:04:54 Outro

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What does it take to build the logistics backbone for the next generation of commerce?

Sean Henry, founder and CEO of Stord, joins Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman and Grit host Joubin Mirzadegan to talk about scaling a national fulfillment network that now moves 50 million packages a year and reaches 15% of U.S. households.

They explore how Stored is using AI to connect warehouses, middle-mile routes, and delivery promises into one smart system. The goal: to give every brand an Amazon Prime-like advantage.

Guest: Sean Henry, Co-Founder & CEO of Stord

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Eric Yuan turned a simple belief into Zoom, the platform that kept the world moving through a once-in-a-century shutdown and redefined modern work. 

On this episode of Grit, the Zoom CEO shares why velocity beats size, how a family-first ethos powered his leadership during COVID, and why the coming wave of AI dwarfs the original internet boom. 

He details how he’s refreshing Zoom’s culture for 7,500 people, opting for virtual deal calls over in person meetings, settling into life as an empty-nester, and keeping Zoom nimble enough to outpace Big Tech and the next wave of AI startups.

Guest: Eric S. Yuan, Founder & CEO of Zoom

Chapters: 

00:00 Trailer

00:44 Introduction

01:47 Walking with swagger

03:48 Extremely exciting moment

10:05 Classic innovators’ dilemma

12:59 Laser-focused bandwidth

17:56 Family first: lead by example

22:09 Everybody was doing their road shows

25:34 The entire world was dependent

28:04 Community care

31:57 Valuation and a co-founder

35:17 A lot of unhappy days

39:25 Building Zoom for consumers

46:57 Holograms?

52:01 Home

53:23 Huge competition, high velocity

1:00:33 Where companies get wrong

1:04:52 Giving back

1:13:12 Who Zoom is hiring

1:13:24 What “grit” means to Eric

1:14:24 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: Webex by Cisco, Glean, Apple, HP, Netscape, Yahoo, Brian Armstrong, Emilie Choi, Coinbase, New Limit, Elon Musk, Windy Hill, Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz, Jony Ive, OpenAI ChatGPT, Bill McDermott, ServiceNow, Carl Eschenbach

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Over the past two decades, Bret Taylor has quietly helped shape the arc of Silicon Valley.

From co-creating Google Maps to steering Facebook, Salesforce, and OpenAI, he’s been behind some of the most consequential products in tech. Now, with his new company Sierra, he’s starting from zero—again.

In this conversation, Bret opens up about how founders navigate identity, why the best ideas often come from everyday friction, and how staying relentlessly focused can unlock real momentum in AI.

Guest: Bret Taylor, Co-Founder of Sierra

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:49 Introduction
01:57 Saving OpenAI
09:15 Overwhelming yet capable of a lot
13:36 Father and founder
16:49 History is written by the victors
22:13 How you price matters
35:58 Stickiest piece of software
49:48 The first realtime social network
55:34 Facebook CTO who rewrote Google Maps
1:02:10 Least known, most impressive
1:11:39 The best way to predict the future
1:16:22 Most personally passionate
1:21:22 Currency of reputation
1:27:17 Away from work
1:28:35 Who Sierra is hiring
1:28:58 What “grit” means to Bret
1:29:18 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: Google Maps, Salesforce, OpenAI ChatGPT, Meta Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Marissa Mayer, Excite, MSN, AltaVista, Amazon, Harvey, Airbnb, Coinbase, Apple, John Doerr, Cursor, Codeium Windsurf, Perplexity, xAI, Kleenex, Amazon Web Services (AWS), FriendFeed, Tumblr, Kevin Gibbs, Google Maps, Yelp, Trulia, iOS App Store, Blackberry, Facebook Messenger, Marvel Avengers, Slack, Quip, Leonardo da Vinci, Clay Bavor, Microsoft, Eric Schmidt, Alan Kay, Brian Armstrong, Brian Chesky, Shopify, SiriusXM, Patrick Collison

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Chris Urmson has spent the last 20 years pushing the limits of autonomous driving—first at Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Grand Challenge team, then as co-founder of Google’s self-driving car project, now Waymo.

On this week’s episode, the Aurora CEO retraces that journey—from building robot cars in the desert to leading a public company pioneering driverless trucking.

He shares why autonomy was always a matter of when, not if, how he handled a high-profile departure from Waymo, and what it takes to build at the intersection of deep tech, safety, and infrastructure.

Now eight years into Aurora, Urmson says the future he’s been chasing is finally within reach.

Guest: Chris Urmson, Co-Founder & CEO of Aurora

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:43 Introduction
01:59 FSD: are we there?
14:31 The competition, a million dollar check from LA to LV
22:50 Dream like an amateur, execute like a pro
32:30 Operate with integrity
42:49 The future is here, unevenly distributed
49:36 Underestimated decisions, minimizing regrets
1:03:55 Retaining value
1:16:45 Integrating self-driving
1:28:20 Lifer
1:29:25 Who Aurora is hiring
1:29:53 What “grit” means to Chris
1:30:15 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: Waymo, Google, Rivian, Dmitri Dolgov, Uber, Tesla, The DARPA Grand Challenge, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Department of Defense, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, FedEx, Werner Enterprises, Hirschbach, Schneider Electric, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, Batman, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Anthony Levandowski, Donald Trump, Apple iPhone, Airbnb, Blackmore, Stripe, Titan, Ford, Volkswagen, RJ Scaringe, Peterbilt Motors Company, The Volvo Group, Continental AG, Dara Khosrowshahi

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John Chambers led Cisco through the rise of the internet—transforming it into the world’s most valuable company at its peak.

On this week’s Grit, the former Cisco CEO unpacks how he scaled the business from $70M to $50B+, pioneered M&A as a growth strategy with 180 acquisitions, and built what many called the best sales force in tech.

Now leading his own venture firm, Chambers shares how he’s backing the next generation of AI-native startups.

Guest: John T. Chambers, Former Cisco Executive Chairman & CEO, JC2 Ventures Founder & CEO

Chapters: 

00:00 Trailer

00:45 Introduction

01:45 Track record, relationships, trust

13:21 Acquisitions every year

17:32 Product-focused

24:40 Family, dyslexia, and without shame

30:46 Wang Laboratories

35:59 Ready being CEO

40:17 Reinventing your business

50:08 Numbers don’t lie

54:09 Sales calls and making mistakes

56:20 Adapting leadership style

1:06:32 Best leadership year ever

1:13:35 A busy, exhausting schedule

1:22:07 Candid with me

1:25:21 What “grit” means to John

1:26:43 Outro

Mentioned in this episode: John Doerr, OpenAI, Wang Laboratories, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms, FMC Corporation, DuPont de Nemours, Inc., John Mortgage, Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital, Alcatel Mobile, Lucent Technologies, Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc., Rick Justice, Pankage Patel, Larry Carter, CNBC, Jim Cramer, George Kurtz, CrowdStrike, Randy Pond, Rebecca Jacoby, Mel Selcher

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