Claire Zau spent six years in venture capital and became the youngest investor to make partner at GSV. Then she did something very few other VCs were doing: she started posting social media videos about AI to inform the general public. A year, 337,000 followers and 1.6 million likes later, Lightspeed Venture Partners hired her in a role that's never existed in venture before: New Media and Investor. Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle sits down with Claire to talk about the AI bubble, AI education, the gap between Silicon Valley and the general public, and why one in three Gen Zers say AI makes them angry.

0:00 — From VC to Viral: How a Lightspeed Partner Built an Audience on Short-Form

0:29 — The Algorithm Is a Feedback Loop and VCs Are Finally Using It

8:37 — Why Some People Are Being Left Out of the AI Story

17:21 — Promethean Fire: The Case for Techno-Optimism When Everyone's Scared

11:23 — AI Literacy Is Like Sex Ed — You Don't Have to Love It, But You Need to Know

13:54 — The Real Problem With How People Are Using AI (And How to Fix It)

23:53 — AI Gives You Leverage, but Only If You Know How to Use It

24:49 — Can You Actually Build a Moat in AI? A VC Answers Honestly

28:21 — Why Early-Stage Investing Is Still a Bet on People, Not Products

30:29 — Bits and Atoms: The New Investment Thesis for the AI Hardware Era

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Approximately nine out of every ten net new jobs in America come from small businesses, yet they shoulder over $81 billion a year in federal paperwork. As more Americans launch their own businesses, the back office is buckling under the weight.
In this episode, Josh Reeves, cofounder and CEO of Gusto, a payroll, benefits, and HR platform for small businesses, breaks down the contrarian bet that built a $9 billion company. He and Fortune's Allie Garfinkle discuss why small business tech is often overlooked, why he doesn't think AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic will touch tax compliance, and how Gusto crossed $1 billion in revenue on its path to what Reeves believes is a trillion-dollar opportunity.

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What is the secret to raising world-class leaders? In this episode, Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle sits down with Esther Wojcicki, the legendary educator and "Godmother of Silicon Valley." As the mother of three high-achieving daughters—including the former CEO of YouTube and the founder of 23andMe—Esther shares her leadership and parenting philosophy that works as well in the boardroom as it does in the classroom. She is also joined by her former student, Mary Minno, to discuss their latest collaboration–TreeHub–an ambitious new venture in AI-driven healthcare.

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American agriculture is the backbone of the U.S. economy, yet the average farmer earns only 5 cents of every dollar spent on food. With an almost 50% spike in bankruptcies of U.S. farms and margins thinner than ever due to falling revenues and rising production costs, the agricultural economy is facing an inflection point.

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Harvey co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg has a method for leading his legal AI company, now valued at $11 billion after just three and a half years: psychological discipline. On this episode of Term Sheet, Weinberg tells Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle how he tracks his daily to-do list against his goals six months out, what he looks for in new hires, and how he avoids the pitfalls of being trapped by his own ego.

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“Give everything you have to the people around you.” That’s Redpoint partner Meera Clark’s advice for aspiring venture capitalists looking to break into the increasingly competitive industry.
In this episode of Term Sheet, Clark defines what “greatness” looks like in founders and explains why revenue is an outdated metric.

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Chemistry cofounder Kristina Shen says the market may be nearing a “reckoning” point. So why is she still optimistic going into 2026?
In this episode of Term Sheet, Shen discusses why she decided to co-found her own VC firm, her excitement around health care, and why her team is focused on bringing the human element into venture capital. Allie also talks about the recent SpaceX and xAI merger and her exclusive feature story on Kleiner Perkins.

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As resource-hungry data centers continue to sprout around the country, many are wondering whether our current utility network has the capability to handle such large-scale demands. Exelon CEO Calvin Butler says yes. Exelon is one of the nation’s largest public utility companies. It serves around 11 million customers, ranging from individual apartment owners to massive corporations. Butler joins Term Sheet to talk about how he and Exelon are working to address the surge in power demands sparked by new data centers while still serving the diverse array of consumers that make up their customer base.

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The artificial intelligence PhD to VC pipeline may seem relatively obvious now but Jenny Xiao, cofounder of Leonis Capital, forged this path well before the AI boom ever started. She left a PhD program at Columbia to join OpenAI as a researcher and, one week after the debut of ChatGPT, she left to cofound Leonis Capital, a “research-driven” VC firm. Having seen the world of artificial intelligence through an academic, market, and investor lens, she joins Term Sheet to talk about why AI companies should be valued closer to (or even below) SaaS, the role academia plays in AI progress, the possibility of another “DeepSeek” moment, and more. 

Allie also talks about Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s surprising Sunday night video and her recent story on Strava. 

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On day 36 of the U.S. government shutdown – fueled in part by clashes over the Affordable Care Act and the country’s healthcare system – Allie talks to someone working to disrupt and fix that system: Cityblock Health cofounder and CEO Dr. Toyin Ajayi. A former physician for at-risk patients, Ajayi saw how the system can sometimes work against patients, driving burnout and increasing costs. She cofounded Cityblock Health, a tech-forward healthcare startup that provides care to underserved communities. She joins Allie to talk about healthcare reform and how technology can lead to better health outcomes. 

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