"My number one priority is to make sure Zoom employees are happy. I believe if you have happy employees, you’re going to have happy customers." Eric Yuan, SEP '06, founded Zoom in 2011 to "deliver happiness and bring people together" in a frictionless video environment. In 2019, Eric led Zoom to one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of the year. But it was the next year that really made his company a global verb. In January 2020, the Zoom app averaged about 56,000 daily downloads on the Apple App Store. Within two months, as the COVID-19 outbreak forced a tectonic shift in the way people communicate, those downloads surpassed two million per day.

In this episode of View From the Top, the podcast, Kathleen Schwind MBA '23, sits down to interview Yuan about what how he creates company culture, how he strives for work-life balance, and the few things he can't live without. 

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"Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. In my own life journey, I've come to appreciate the significance of entrepreneurship in transforming communities, in transforming countries, societies, and humanity." Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, and champion of African entrepreneurs, is a steadfast believer that the private sector has a role to play in developing countries across Africa.

After a career running United Bank of Africa, Elumelu says he has decided “to commit the second phase of my life to helping democratize the luck that I had growing up, to help expand access to opportunities.” And he has done just that, funding thousands of early-stage startups and empowering more than 15,000 entrepreneurs across 54 African countries to solve the continent’s biggest problems.

In this View From The Top interview on Stanford campus, Chisom Obi-Okoye, MBA '22, interviews Elumelu about his career path, philosophy of African capitalism, and vision for the future of the continent.

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"Figure out what the big moments where you can bring your teams together are. It cures a lot of ills. It really helps with morale. It's incredible for team building."

In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, sits down with Christopher Stromeyer, MBA '22, to discuss risk-taking, feedback, and her pre-launch ritual.

Watch this interview on YouTube.

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Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, sits down with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe to discuss breaking down inequality through genetics and how leaders should build trust by being unabashedly honest. “The guiding principle for 23andMe is transparency and choice. It’s the choice whether you want to get your genetic information, the choice if you want to participate in research, the choice that you don’t want to do all these things. And I think that’s one of the issues I have in healthcare — most times you’re not provided choice and you’re not provided transparency.”

Wojcicki also recounts stories from the early days of 23andMe to how she’s navigating hybrid work today. “Everything is about being redefined,” she says. “Work environments are never going to be the same. And so, how do you really have a hybrid environment? And even at different policies, talking to companies about what are you doing for return to office, or are people coming in. How do you manage vaccinations? Everything has been nonstop of helping manage.”

Watch this interview on our YouTube channel.

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"You have to encourage innovation. Companies become more conservative in decision making as you grow...be okay with failure and reward effort, not outcomes."

In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, speaks to Archana Sohmshetty, MBA '22, about the impact of access to technology, humanity's challenge to harness it, and how Google is sustainably defining the future of work. "When you see the appetite and the desire for people to make their lives better by gaining access to technology, that is what compels me to go beyond." says Pichai. 

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"If you talk about and comment on everything, your voice becomes background noise ... It's important [for brands] to be clear what matters most to us and why. What's our purpose? Why do we exist?"

In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Dara Treseder, MBA '14, Peloton's global head of marketing, communications, and membership discusses how she found her purpose as a leader and why the journey to success is not linear. "Remember no matter how high you are, be humble. No matter how low you are, be hopeful," she says. 

This podcast is drawn from Stanford GSB's speaker series in which prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for a conversation on effective leadership, core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

Watch the video.

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When David Vélez, MBA '12, moved to Brazil in 2008 to open a regional office for a private equity fund, he didn’t expect one of his biggest challenges to be getting a bank account. The process took five months.

Five years later, he was in São Paulo after working as a partner for Sequoia Capital, a venture firm, and has just graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To him, Brazil’s financial services sector seemed ripe for disruption. So in May of 2013, with seed funding from Sequoia Capital and Kaszek Ventures (a firm founded by two Stanford GSB graduates), Vélez launched Nubank, a fintech bank which has grown to be the largest in Latin America. 

Vélez shared the story of his path to entrepreneurship with students at a recent View From The Top event on Stanford GSB campus. 

"You want to position yourself in the scarcity of the market, not in the oversupply," he said. Vélez was interviewed by Christopher Stromeyer, MBA '22, and shared how his drive to continuously be challenged played a large part in his drive to reinvent a part of the banking system. "Why would you wait decades to solve issues if you can now?"

Prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for a conversation on effective leadership, core values, and lessons learned throughout their career. View From The Top, the podcast, is based on the dean’s speaker series at Stanford Graduate School of Business. It is produced by Michael Reilly, Jenny Luna, and the theme music was composed by Lily Sloan.

Show notes

How Stanford GSB alums created one of the most valuable startups in Latin America, Stanford GSB Insights

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“You have to be very humble if you want to be an entrepreneur…know what you know and know what you don’t know.” In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Jessica Alba, founder of The Honest Company, sits down with Alexandra Eitel, MBA '22 to discuss how entrepreneurs have to trust their gut.  

View From the Top is drawn from the dean’s speaker series in which prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for a conversation on effective leadership, core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

Find more episodes on Stanford GSB's website, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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"People will give you credit, but 99% of it is not you,” said Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani, in a View From The Top interview on campus. “It's the environment that you created.” 

Interviewed by Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, Ulukaya also discussed how businesses can benefit from hiring and training refugees in their community. "Refugees can come into society and a community. It’s very simple, as a CEO: hire them, train them; you will benefit greatly and so will they.” 

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.

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MercadoLibre e-commerce, the eBay of Latin America, is a $28 billion company. At its roots are three friends who met at Stanford GSB.

In this View From The Top speaker series, MercadoLibre founders Marcos Galperín, MBA ’99; Hernan Kazah, MBA ’99; and Stelleo Tolda, MBA ’99 discuss the team dynamics of starting a company with classmates and the contrarian views that helped them succeed.

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.