Stanford GSB: View From The Top

"If there are two things that have been foundational to my journey, it's been learning, and it's been the importance of taking risk."

Hemant Taneja, managing partner and CEO of General Catalyst, shares his insights on leadership, innovation, and the evolving role of venture capital in this episode of View From The Top, the podcast. 

In his conversation with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, on the Stanford GSB campus, Taneja reflects on his personal journey from a low-income household in Delhi to becoming a prominent figure in the venture capital world. 

The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities in various sectors, including healthcare, defense, and AI. Taneja discusses the role of venture capital in fostering transformative companies. He also highlights the importance of aligning profit with purpose and the necessity of engaging with policymakers to navigate the complexities of emerging technologies.

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

For a full transcript, visit the episode's page on the Stanford GSB website.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

1,216. That’s the total number of NCAA games won by Tara VanDerveer, making her the all-time winning coach in college basketball history. In addition to coaching for 38 years at Stanford, she led the U.S. Women’s team to Olympic gold in 1996 – finishing with a flawless 16-0 record. “Coaching is teaching. It’s really trying to help people go to places they can’t go themselves,” says VanDerveer. “There’s nothing more rewarding than a great team.”

It’s hard to believe that the legendary coach was once barred from playing herself. In the seventh grade, VanDerveer was her school basketball team’s mascot. By the time she was in ninth grade, she still wasn’t allowed to play – even though the coach told her she was the best among both the boys and girls. Since then, the iconic trailblazer for women in sports has changed the game. In this episode of the View From The Top podcast hosted by Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, VanDerveer shares moments from her legendary career and reflects on what it means to be a great teammate – on and off the court. 

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“It wasn’t luck. I worked every single second of the day – I was obsessed with it. I wanted independence for myself, for my family, and I didn’t want to go back to Jacksonville.”

In 2022, Daniella Pierson was named the youngest, wealthiest, self-made BIPOC woman in the world by Forbes. The 28-year-old grew her first company, The Newsette, to a $200 million dollar valuation without taking on a single investor. As a one-woman operation, she advertised through word of mouth and ran the company from her college dorm room.

She wasn’t just working against a full college course load. Pierson also battled OCD and ADHD diagnoses. Her mental health experiences would help inspire the mental fitness startup Wondermind, confounded with Selena Gomez in 2022. Two years later, Pierson is already onto her next project: Breadwinner, a financial literacy brand dedicated to helping young visionaries turn their barriers into building blocks. 

In this View From The Top interview, Pierson sits down with Zach Doherty, MBA ’24, to discuss her entrepreneurial journey, work life balance, and what’s next for Breadwinner. “This is my ecosystem of everything that I have proven in my story. None of my businesses have ever been me first.”

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"You can learn how something can be done and then go back to first principles and ask yourself, 'Given the conditions today, given my motivation, given the instruments, the tools, given how things have changed, how would I redo this? How would I reinvent this whole thing?"

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, started his career washing dishes at Denny's. He then worked his way to busboy and, eventually, founded what is one of today's most valuable companies on Wall Street. In this interview at Stanford GSB's View From The Top event, founder and CEO Jensen Huang, MS '92, shares the stage with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, to detail his experience founding NVIDIA, funding it, and, finally his views on AI.

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"My first piece of advice is only take the role if you are really interested in it. Startups are hard," says Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox. "And when it's tough, you find a way, you make a way, you back up the boat, you reassess, you pivot. And so if you don't have that irrational belief and pull, don't do it."

Aicha Evans took the role of CEO at autonomous vehicle company Zoox in 2019. And in 2020, she led the company's acquisition by Amazon for $1.3B.

Evans visited Stanford Graduate School of Business for View From The Top and was interviewed by Katie Harris, MBA '24. In their conversation, Evans addressed the challenges of leading in a highly dynamic industry, the nuances of navigating corporate transitions and acquisitions, and the principles guiding her leadership in a future-focused company. 

For a full transcript of this conversation, visit the podcast webpage.

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"The secret sauce of being a successful creator on the platform is just being true to yourself. And that sounds sort of very cliché, but I wish somebody had given me that advice early in my career because nothing rings more true."

Neal Mohan, MBA ’05 and the CEO of YouTube, visited the Stanford campus as part of View From The Top. Mohan sat down with Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, to discuss his background in tech, his time at Stanford GSB, and why he is an optimist about AI.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“In companies, you don’t want just the product team thinking about the product; the finance team thinking about finance ... You want everyone all the time feeling like they’re an owner, and they can have a point of view on any part of the company.”

In this View From The Top interview, Sarah Friar, MBA ’00, CEO of Nextdoor, sits down with Zack Doherty, MBA ’24. During their conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Friar shared her unique perspective on taking strategic career risks, how social media can effect positive change in society, and the value of bringing people together through human connection and community.

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund. During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I've seen unbelievable change happen in places that the world sees as not investible. Part of storytelling is doing the work of investing so that people can tell their own stories because of the changes they've made."

In 1986 Jacqueline Novogratz quit her job on Wall Street and moved to Rwanda to help open the country's first microfinance institution. She then came to Stanford GSB in 1989, and, in 2001, founded Acumen, a nonprofit impact investing fund.

"We look at poverty always in terms of income, but poverty is so much more than income. Poverty is a lack of choice, it's a lack of opportunity, it's a lack of agency, it's a lack of feeling that you can contribute. Dignity is the opposite." 

In this View From the Top interview, Novogratz sits down with Kathleen Schwind, MBA ’23, to talk about her journey into impact investing and how the industry has grown in the last decade.  

"We are in this moment of just extraordinary technological acceleration. Our challenge is to ensure that our moral reasoning, our moral imagination, our moral courage keeps pace with that acceleration." 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Now also in that meeting, I asked her, 'Could you introduce me to a few of your friends? I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea.' Because every meeting has to get you to three other meetings. Never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction." In this View From The Top interview, Rent the Runway founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman shares stories from her first meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg and how she's worked to foster and maintain relationships with more than 1,000 retail brands. 

"If you’re an entrepreneur, effectively you are a salesperson. That’s your number one skill that you need to have," Hyman says.   

Interviewed by Cyerra Holmes, MBA ’23, Hyman talked about how growing up with a sibling with a disability helped her become relentlessly optimistic in the face of insurmountable odds. And, just twelve years after business school and those first meetings with fashion designers, Hyman took Rent The Runway public, becoming the 30th woman to complete an IPO in the history of U.S. markets.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“If you can create unreasonable expectations, people amaze you with their creativity.”

In this View From The Top interview, Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, spoke with Sankalp Banerjee, MBA ’23, about his personal evolution as a leader, including the last 16 years as CEO. Narayen discussed the importance of innovative thinking across multiple scales, seeking opportunities in setbacks, and finding creative inspiration. He also shared his perspective on the future of technology and digital experiences, including the impact of generative AI and data transparency. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.