Inspired with Alexa von Tobel

Kevin Ryan is known as the godfather of New York City tech. Over three decades, he's founded or backed companies worth more than $40 billion combined, including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), MongoDB (now valued at $30 billion), Business Insider (sold for $450 million), and Gilt Group. As founder of AlleyCorp, Kevin has spent his career building category-defining companies and correctly predicting major technology shifts before they happened. From betting on the internet in 1996 to understanding AI's trajectory today, Kevin shares his framework for seeing what's next and why speed executed properly changes everything.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
02:10 Kevin's Childhood 
05:00 Reflecting on His Entrepreneurship Journey
08:30 Speed Matters
11:15 The Feeling When You Know a Company Is the One
14:58 Why You Need Top 0.1% Talent
17:00 Two Categories Kevin Is Betting On
20:00 Drawing the Defensibility Line in Vertical AI
22:22 Thinking About the Product
23:10 Acceleration of Science and When Kevin's Antenna Goes Up
25:08 What the World Looks Like in 2036
27:00 Job Loss and AI Displacement
32:00 San Francisco vs New York City
38:18 What Kevin Hopes for NYC Tech
40:50 Interesting Topics Kevin Is Exploring
42:36 Quickfire Round

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Flock Safety founder and CEO Garrett Langley is building the technology infrastructure to eliminate crime in America. A repeat entrepreneur who previously built and sold two companies for over $200 million each, Garrett now leads a $7.5 billion company serving more than 6,000 communities, 5,000 law enforcement agencies, and 1,000 businesses while helping achieve nearly a million arrests annually. He shares his conviction that safety drives economic prosperity, the surprising fact that drones arrive on scene 94% of the time before officers, and how AI will free police officers from paperwork to focus on community relationships.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:08 Why Team Is the Only Thing That Matters

04:40 Growing Up in Atlanta: Learning Sales from His Father

06:45 What Is Flock Safety and How Does It Work?

11:20 The Crime Crisis No One Talks About

14:33 Serving Neighborhoods, Businesses, and Law Enforcement

17:00 Real Cases: From U-Hauls to Black SUVs

19:55 The Future of Policing in 10 Years

23:30 Building Technology While People's Lives Are at Stake

25:38 How Drones Are Changing Emergency Response

28:09 Scaling to $300M ARR at 70% Growth

29:38 Why Safety Drives Economic Prosperity

32:30 The "Do the Work" Culture at Flock

33:48 Quickfire Round

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Alexa is sharing her bold predictions for 2026, from physical AI transforming our crumbling infrastructure to quantum computing breakthroughs that will reshape innovation. With her signature focus on walking into the office "in 2035," she explain why AI won't destroy jobs but will instead free us from mundane work, how autonomous vehicles will give suburban parents their time back, and why smart machines are finally taking us out of the Roman times.

Chapters:

00:09 Prediction #1- Physical AI

02:06 Prediction #2- Quantum

03:00 Prediction #3 - Jobs

05:04 Prediction #4 - Autonomous cars

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Suno founder and CEO Mikey Shulman is building the future of music creation. A Harvard PhD physicist who led machine learning at Kensho before it was acquired by S&P Global, Mikey had a realization in 2022 that audio was a backwater in machine learning—despite being everywhere in human life. He turned that realization into $2.5B company Suno, which grew from zero to over 100 million users. Mikey shares how Suno scales to users generating seven million tracks a day, why music's format will change as dramatically in this era as it did in the shift from vinyl to streaming, and how AI is democratizing creativity for billions of people who never thought they could make music.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:
01:52 Growing Up: Following What You Love
03:45 From Physics to a PhD at Harvard
05:30 Kensho and the Path to Machine Learning
09:30 Teaching Machine Learning at MIT Sloan
12:10 The Birth of Suno
15:30 Why Audio When Everyone Chose Text
16:25 Zero to 100 Million Users in Three Years
18:55 Xania Monet: The First AI Billboard Artist
21:55 Stories That Keep the Team Going
24:15 Music Was Invented to Be Social
27:27 The Business Model for Interactive Music
29:44 Reshaping the Music Industry
32:45 New Boundaries of Music Creation
35:00 The Future: Interactive Albums and Fan Fiction
37:35 Growing the Pie for All Creators
40:00 Will There Be Agentic AI Stars?
41:15 Building Teams That Move Fast
43:30 Speed and Craft: The Cultural Balance
45:30 What's Coming Next at Suno
46:30 Guardrails in a Lower Stakes Domain
47:47 Managing Chaos as a First-Time CEO at Scale
49:55 Quickfire Round

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Dylan Taylor, founder and CEO of Voyager Technologies, is building the infrastructure that will define humanity's future in space. Through defense, space solutions, and Starlab, Voyager is working on some of the most ambitious aerospace projects of our generation. In this conversation, Dylan takes us from watching Star Trek as a kid in Idaho to becoming a publicly traded space company CEO. He shares what it's actually like to reach space aboard Blue Origin, why we're living through the biggest space boom in human history, and how space will transform our global economy.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:
01:52 From Star Trek Dreams to Space Reality
04:37 What is Voyager Technologies?
07:02 Winning the Contract to Build Starlab
09:40 Going to Space on Blue Origin
16:36 The Overview Effect and What Astronauts Feel
20:10 How Space Shifted Dylan's Perspective on Risk and Ambition
22:40 The Henry Crown Fellowship and Leadership Transformation
23:40 Inside Voyager Technologies' Projects
26:50 The Purpose of Starlab as a Microgravity Laboratory
31:00 Space Predictions
35:23 Space as the Eighth Continent
36:55 Perfect Real-Time Information About Earth
38:50 What Keeps Dylan Up at Night About Space's Future
41:07 Frontier Innovations in Quantum Computing and Beyond
45:15 Quick Fire Round
47:52 Outro

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Axion founder Daniel First is building the command center for American manufacturing that detects product failures before they reach customers. His AI-powered observability platform links IoT data, technician reports, and customer feedback across aerospace, medical devices, and consumer products to identify emerging issues manufacturers don't even know exist. Born from watching enterprise AI pilots fail at McKinsey, Axion is architecting customer-centric manufacturing where products iterate in real time based on what's breaking in the field.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:

2:00 From Orthodox Debates to Independent Thinking
3:00 Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Human Flourishing
6:00 The Pivot from Academia to Industry
7:20 Predicting AI as the Next Cultural Mania
8:10 What Axion Actually Does for Manufacturers
10:35 The Invisible Quality Crisis Costing Trillions
13:30 Surprising Multi-Department Platform Adoption
16:02 Surgery Equipment Failure With Two Root Causes
16:47 Why Axion's Organization Looks Different
18:00 Building an Ecosystem Across Product Lifecycle
20:28 How Quality Data Drives Product Innovation
21:58 American Manufacturing Winning on Empathy
26:00 How Axion Succeeded Where 95% Fail
28:50 Why Robotics Will Create More Quality Issues
31:10 What Enterprise Leaders Think About AI
32:50 Data Centers and Manufacturing Tailwind
34:09 The Experimental Mindset Driving Speed
36:30 Why 2010s Advice No Longer Applies
38:40 The Vertical AI Revolution
39:55 Quick-fire Questions

Follow Axion and Daniel:

• ⁠Axion Website⁠
⁠• ⁠Axion LI ⁠
⁠• ⁠Daniel LI

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• ⁠Substack

Interior designer Nate Berkus is one of the most recognizable names in design. He started his firm at 24 with nothing but authenticity and hustle, building an empire spanning TV, books, product lines, and high-end interiors that's landed him on the AD100 list for a decade. His journey includes 12 years as Oprah's design expert, surviving the 2004 tsunami, and building a life with Jeremiah Brent as one of TV's first openly gay families. With his new book Foundations releasing November 18th, Nate reflects on what it takes to stay creatively obsessed for 30 years and build a household name in design.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:

Follow Nate Berkus:

• Nate's Website

• Nate's Instagram

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Writer CEO May Habib is building the future of enterprise AI. Born in Lebanon as the oldest of eight kids, May grew up navigating chaos, multiple languages, and cultures, skills that shaped her into a founder willing to challenge assumptions. After pivoting from Qordoba, she built Writer's own foundational models and spent a decade solving real AI problems for Fortune 500 companies. Now leading a $2B+ company, May shares her bold vision for where AI is headed, from self-evolving LLMs that proactively guide us to why work in 2030 will be unrecognizable.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:50 Growing Up as the Oldest of Eight in an Immigrant Family
05:30 Why Language Shapes Who We Become
09:05 The Decision to Leave Finance and Start Qordoba
12:05 The Risky Pivot from Qordoba to Writer
17:45 What Problem Writer Actually Solves for Enterprise
21:05 Building Trust at Scale in Regulated Industries
24:30 How Writer Stays Maniacally Focused
28:10 Writer's Vision for Self-Evolving AI
35:00 Why Narrow Job Specs Are Dead
37:30 What Work Looks Like in 2030 and the Two Unknowns Shaping the Future
39:26 What Most People Misunderstand About AI
41:44 The Book That Changed May's Life
43:06 Is There an AI Bubble?
43:15 May's One-Word Mantra: Forward
43:49 How May Manages Stress
44:00 Beyond AI: What Excites May the Most

Follow Writer and May:

• Writer Website

• Writer LinkedIn

• May's LinkedIn

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• Website

• Instagram

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Atria Health Institute founder Alan Tisch is rebuilding America's healthcare system from the ground up. After two near-death experiences in his mid-20s revealed how broken preventive care truly is, Alan made it his life's mission to tackle a system designed to profit from sick people rather than keep them healthy. With a multidisciplinary team of 15 medical specialties and cutting-edge diagnostics, Atria is pioneering the preventive healthcare movement to extend not only lifespan but healthspan.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:40 Early Influences and Family Background
06:38 Lessons from Building Spring
10:25 The Birth of Atria Health Institute
16:07 Why Healthcare Incentives Favor Sick Care
20:20 What It's Like to Be an Atria Patient
23:50 The Four Step Framework for Disease Prevention
25:49 Health Fads: Overhyped vs Underhyped
28:50 Genomics and Full Body MRI Scans for Everyone
34:50 The Two Sides of Atria: Clinical Care and Research
39:07 The Future of Healthcare
43:58 Healthspan vs Lifespan
47:03 One Thing You Should Do Tomorrow
49:05 AI in Preventive Care
52:00 Book That Changed Alan's Life
52:46 Health Habit Alan Has Adopted

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ShopMy co-founders Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky are building the most sophisticated three-sided commerce platform that revolutionizes how creators monetize authentic recommendations, how brands scale through trusted advocates, and how consumers discover products through curated networks they actually trust. Powered by intricate product graph technology and advanced data infrastructure that maps millions of products across retailers, they're architecting the future of commerce driven by intentional curation rather than algorithmic impulse buying.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters:
01:53 Intro
03:30 From Boston Foodies to Engineering Complementary Backgrounds
10:08 The ShopMy Genesis Solving Creator Monetization
14:18 Breaking Down ShopMy Three Core Constituencies
18:39 Introducing Circles Personalized Shopping Through Trust
25:27 The Three Phases of Building ShopMy
26:35 Product Philosophy Minimizing Calories in User Experience
32:38 Cutting Through the Noise Where Shopping Journeys Begin
34:32 Opportunities Scaling Creator Performance Marketing
36:25 The Role of AI in Taste and Personalization
37:49 From Creator Economy to Curator Economy
44:10 Funding Strategy Building for the Long Term
46:10 Building the Team The Sweep the Floors Leadership Philosophy
52:20 Personal Discoveries What the Founders Buy Through Circles

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