Why leave a storied tech icon to lead a troubled brand? As the pandemic deepened this summer, Peggy Johnson left a safe perch at Microsoft to take the helm of one-time startup darling Magic Leap, which had just barely avoided bankruptcy. Yet with CEO roles for women in tech still unfortunately rare, Johnson felt compelled to take a risk. Now she's betting that the accelerated tech adoption prompted by Covid-19 will boost emerging areas like Magic Leap's AR. All entrepreneurs face moments when the bar seems impossibly high. But even in difficult times, Johnson knows, we can make our own opportunities.

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Rapid Response: Why take on a turnaround, w/Magic Leap’s Peggy Johnson

On Masters of Scale, iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating companies. Founders, CEOs, and dynamic innovators join candid conversations about their triumphs and challenges with a set of luminary hosts, including founding host Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner). From navigating early prototypes to expanding brands globally, Masters of Scale provides priceless insights to help anyone grow their dream enterprise.

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What started with three college friends looking for a healthy lunch in D.C. grew into Sweetgreen, a fast-growing restaurant business focused on salads and grain bowls. From a tiny 500-square-foot storefront to more than 220 locations nationwide, the Sweetgreen journey includes booking The Strokes for a "salad festival," adopting cutting-edge technology, and proving that fast food can include locally-sourced, farm-fresh ingredients. Listen to co-founders Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru, and Nicolas Jammet share how they have scaled the business in alignment with its core values, to a public company valued at $2.5 billion.

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Local veggies, national scale: Sweetgreen co-founders

Khan Academy first rocked the education world with online video. Now Khan Academy CEO and founder Sal Khan has gone all-in on AI, convinced that it has immense potential to democratize and improve education. Khan tells Rapid Response host Bob Safian how an early outreach from OpenAI led Khan Academy to create an AI assistant called Khanmigo, which is already being used by thousands of students and teachers. Khan shares lessons from this real-world experiment, plus the inspiration behind his new book, Brave New Words, and why the most educated among us tend to avoid the risks worth taking.

Pre-order Sal Khan’s new book, Brave New Words: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740806/brave-new-words-by-salman-khan/

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Meet your kid’s new AI tutor, w/Khan Academy founder and CEO Sal Khan

Every day we’re inundated with news and opinion pieces about America’s hopeless division — but is this really true? Axios CEO Jim VandeHei joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to bust what he sees as myth, plus share his seemingly counterintuitive AI play. VandeHei also makes a case for why the era of business leaders speaking out on political issues may be behind us, and he weighs-in on the state of Buzzfeed, NPR, and where the future of news media is inevitably headed.

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Fighting media's reality distortion, w/Axios CEO Jim VandeHei

Maëlle Gavet is the CEO of Techstars, a pre-seed investor focused on early-stage entrepreneurs. It boasts a market cap of $111.6 billion, and supports founders in programs that span from Tokyo to Lagos to Alabama. Maëlle champions hard work, gratitude, and a questioning nature, qualities her grandfather imparted while she was growing up in France. She has carried her curiosity through a wide-ranging international career, in start-ups and scaled corporations. We hear lessons drawn from her vast experience, including the transformation of Ozon — the "Amazon of Russia" — in the early 2010s, to leadership roles in global travel and real estate. And we get a sample of the advice she often shares with Techstars’ founders, about how to balance their values and the needs of their company, always with an optimism about entrepreneurship as a force for good.

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Preserve start-up spirit at scale: Techstars’ Maëlle Gavet

The streaming wars have reached a new inflection, as Netflix and Disney+ jostle for position, and in the process disrupt post-strike Hollywood. Paramount+ invested heavily in blockbuster veteran Alex Kurtzman to turn Star Trek into a distinguishing franchise. Now Kurtzman talks with Rapid Response host Bob Safian about the future of streaming, the end of TV’s golden age, and how courting Trekkies offers lessons for all customer engagement. Plus, Kurtzman shares behind the scenes stories of Star Trek’s past, present and future.

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Rapid Response: Why take on a turnaround, w/Magic Leap’s Peggy Johnson

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