Grit

Founder quality becomes more important as startups become easier to build.

Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril and partner at Founders Fund, has spent years backing founders with strong conviction, including most recently at Roadrunner.

He shares why too much capital too early can hurt startups, and why the best companies are built by teams with complementary strengths.

Guest: Trae Stephens, co-founder, Anduril and Partner, Founders Fund

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What does it take to run a company where the business is risk itself?

In conversation with Joubin Mirzadegan, Peter Zaffino shares what the role demands at AIG, including high stakes decisions, constant responsibility, and sacrifice.

This episode looks at his journey as CEO ahead of his transition to Executive Chairman this June.

Leading at a global scale across 200+ countries.

Guest: Peter Zaffino

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In a market that hadn’t changed in decades, Linear didn’t win by being faster. They won by being more thoughtful.

Karri Saarinen helped shape design at Airbnb and Coinbase before building Linear around small teams and high standards.

On Grit, he shares how Linear is building for a new era of software development.

Guest: Karri Saarinen, co-founder and CEO of Linear

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What does security look like when attackers use AI better than you do?

Armadin recently raised $200M to build for the “attacker of the future,” where attacks are autonomous and harder to contain.

On the Kleiner Perkins Grit podcast, Kevin Mandia joins Joubin Mirzadegan to share how he’s thinking about this shift, why cybersecurity has always been a calling, and why customer trust is what ultimately compounds into market leadership.

Guest: Kevin Mandia, Founder and CEO, Armadin

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Emil Michael went from scaling Uber across 600 cities to rewiring the world's largest military.

In the midst of the Pentagon-Silicon Valley debate, the now U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering opens up about what a real partnership demands from both sides.

He also shares how he's built three new entry points for defense tech companies, and why America's military is called the "Department of War" again.

Guest: Emil Michael, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

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Few founders have seen Silicon Valley from every seat at the table.

After co-creating Google Maps at Google, serving as CTO at Facebook, and later as co-CEO of Salesforce, Bret Taylor is now building AI agents at Sierra to redefine customer experience.

On Grit, he explains why “competitive intensity” is a core value at their fast-growing company and why he believes AI won’t lead to a world where people stop working.

Guest: Bret Taylor, co-founder of Sierra

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What began as a 14 year old fixing infected computers became Malwarebytes, an 800 person cybersecurity company trusted by millions of customers.

On Grit, Marcin Kleczynski joins Joubin Mirzadegan to explore AI driven cyber threats, strategic reinvention, and the discipline of evolving before the market forces you to.

“We’ve exceeded. Now, what do we do to protect individuals against the next wave of threats, which are plentiful?”

Guest: Marcin Kleczynski, CEO at Malwarebytes

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Can you scale customer support without burning out agents or frustrating customers?

Ping Wu shares how Cresta combines AI and human intelligence into a single system that scales sustainably for companies like United Airlines and Porsche.

In this episode, Ping also breaks down the three constraints that shape automation in the real world: conversation complexity, infrastructure debt, and customer demographics.

Guest: Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta

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USDC closed the gap between software and law in modern finance.

On Grit, Jeremy Allaire discusses how fully reserved, dollar backed digital currency became part of the financial system after more than a decade of work.

He also shares why for him grit is about sustaining belief through deep uncertainty, even when Circle faced the threat of bankruptcy in 2019.

Guest: Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO at Circle

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Glean has grown into a $7.2B company by giving employees AI assistants and agents that extend their capabilities.

CEO Arvind Jain is back on Grit alongside Joubin Mirzadegan. Here’s what stood out:

• “My mindset by default is that if you build something last year, that it's got to be obsolete. There has to be a new way to do that thing better today. If not, then it's just lack of imagination.”
• “I have no doubts that AI capabilities are just going to increase more and more over the next few years. But even more important is this concept of how much are we even leveraging what AI can do today? I would say that we've not even used 1% of current capabilities of these models”
• “If you're trying to be everything to everyone, then you just cannot compete with somebody who's focused on a smaller problem and going deep into that.”

You can also listen to Arvind’s earlier episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIH0Qp6d6bg&list=PLRiWZFltuYPF8A6UGm74K2q29UwU-Kk9k&index=96

Guest: Arvind Jain, founder and CEO, Glean

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