The Gstaad Guy Podcast

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Edgar Bronfman Jr, former CEO of Warner Music Group, and now co-founder of the venture firm Waverley Capital, to explore what it takes to back your own judgement when almost nobody around you agrees with it. From producing his first film at sixteen to running a family business he eventually sold at the top of the market, Edgar reflects on a career defined by early conviction, an instinct for where value was moving before others saw it, and the belief that it does not matter who got you in the door, only what you do once you are in the room.

The conversation gets into the years of bad press he absorbed while trading a chemicals stake for the entertainment industry, the difference between unanimity in word and unanimity in spirit inside a family, and why the customer is never wrong about what they want. Edgar speaks candidly about the personal cost of the job and what he gave up to do it, the standard he sets for anyone about to get married, and what he would do differently for the family member who never wanted the company to go the way he took it. Measured, unsentimental, and full of stories he tells without embellishment, it is a conversation about judgement, legacy, and recognising value where others miss it.

Filmed at Casa Cipriani New York’s Liberty Corner Suite.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(01:55) Anything But Summer Camp 🏕️😏

(04:21) Why Don't You Produce It? 🎬💡

(06:11) Forty Thousand Pounds Of Bad Cheques 💸😬

(08:31) Learning Lyrics To Get A Date 🎵❤️

(09:27) The Dinner He Had To Pay For 🍽️😅

(10:54) Three Conditions For His Father 👨‍👦📋

(12:50) The File Marked LSD 📁😏

(14:22) It's All On You Once You're In The Room 💪🎯

(15:37) The Script His Team Passed On 📝❌

(17:56) Turn The Car Around 🚗🔄

(20:11) Recognising What You Already Have 👁️✨

(24:06) Unanimity In Word, Not In Spirit 🗣️⚖️

(27:53) Two Kinds Of Consumer Company 🏢🔍

(30:04) The Loophole Worth 1.6 Billion 💰🔓

(36:19) Competing With Disney 🏰⚔️

(41:05) Selling At Forty Six, Not Fifty Six ⏳💼

(43:52) I Gave Up Friends 😔🤝

(46:26) When They Invented Marriage, People Died At Thirty 💍⏳

(50:03) What The Internet Did To Distribution 🌐📦

(54:09) Why Celebrity Spirits Rarely Stick 🥃⭐

(56:24) The Customer Is Never Wrong 🛍️✅

(58:10) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Silvio Campara, CEO of Golden Goose and one of the most unconventional operators in luxury, to explore what it really takes to build a brand that people feel they belong to rather than simply buy from. From joining a small Venetian sneaker company to leading one of the most recognisable names in the industry, Silvio reflects on a career defined by instinct over convention, an obsession with the people behind the product, and the conviction that imperfection is a position of strength rather than a compromise.

The conversation gets into why he believes traditional luxury's reliance on desire is its greatest failure, how culture replaced money as the currency of status, and what a brand actually owes the customer beyond the transaction. Silvio speaks candidly about running a company with no employees but dreamers, why he refuses to let anyone stay one version of themselves, and why he calls himself the chief emotional officer rather than the chief executive. Warm, contrarian, and openly critical of the industry he leads, it is a conversation about ambition, belonging, and why the flaw is the point.

Filmed at Mandarin Oriental, Milan.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(01:28) Chief Emotional Officer ❤️👔

(03:02) A Founder Selling A Mission 🚀💡

(06:23) Betting Everything On Sneakers 👟🎲

(08:36) Customers Become The Designers 🛍️🎨

(11:50) Imperfection As Strength 💪✨

(15:07) A Binary Phone Has No Shades 📱⚖️

(18:20) Nobody Has Time To Desire ⏰💭

(21:55) Culture Is The New Currency 🌍💰

(25:30) Handmade To Break 🤲💥

(27:09) Disney, Ferrari And Icons 🏰🏎️

(31:43) Ninety Golden Goose Babies 👟👶

(36:24) No Employees, Only Dreamers 💭✨

(41:31) Why 70% Are Women 👩🔍

(44:18) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

(48:41) A Message For Students 📚💌

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Rampa, producer, DJ and entrepreneur, to explore what happens when the thing you made becomes bigger than you are. Sixteen years on from a shared basement studio and a dream of never going back to the car wash, Rampa reflects on the strange arithmetic of scale: waking up one day with the tickets sold and the visibility earned and no real idea how to hold it, and discovering that most of the people far more famous than him feel exactly the same way.

The conversation gets into what skate culture taught him about belonging before the internet made it easy, why he agrees with a fair amount of his own criticism, and the economics nobody explains about who actually pays for a night in the jungle. He is candid about the two days a year Keinemusik spend with a coach protecting a friendship the scale had drowned out, about the freedom of an unfinished song and the worry that starts on release day, and about the blind date he was dragged along to that turned into TEILE, the speaker and carpentry company he now runs with twenty two people. Increasingly drawn away from the stage and towards engineering, workshops and the young builders he sees there, it is a conversation about creating rather than having created, and why he would not tell his younger self a thing.

Filmed at the Keinemusik Studio in Berlin.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(01:30) Rampa On Stage, Greg Off It 🎭🎵

(03:02) The Car Wash Dream 🚗💭

(09:31) Skate Culture And The Hunt 🛹🔍

(13:46) Waking Up Famous ⭐😮

(16:38) When The Happy Few Stop Being Few 🎉📈

(20:14) The Prep Beats The Show ⚙️🎤

(23:35) Who Pays For The Party 💰🎉

(27:17) Phones Up For The Hits 📱🎵

(29:39) Where The Whoop Came From 🗣️✨

(34:47) Abundance Over Scarcity 🌿⚖️

(36:59) A Tinder Date That Built A Factory 📱🏭

(44:48) Chasing The Flow State 🌊🧘

(48:59) Safer In The Process 🛡️🔄

(53:08) What Berlin Gave Him 🇩🇪🎵

(59:00) Therapy With Your Best Friends 🤝❤️

(1:08:21) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Jack Goldburg, founder of Jack's Dining Room & and Yes Chef Group, whose videos have been watched billions of times and whose food festivals now sell out in a couple of Instagram posts, to explore what separates a viral moment from a business that survives it. From editing until 3am while still employed at PwC to a chance conversation with a stranger at the next table, Jack reflects on a rise built on tunnel vision, a refusal to say anything negative about a restaurant, and the conviction that going viral has never been the hard part.

The conversation gets into what a single video can do to a family business, why he and his co-founder wore their own hat in every clip from the very beginning, and the framework he now builds against: content, community, experience, product. Jack is direct about what he tells people who ask how to start, which is to hold onto what they have for as long as they possibly can, and equally direct that there is no formula waiting behind the question. He speaks candidly about telling his team they are building rather than working and what that costs him outside the office, and about why he has never traded a restaurant's reputation for a bigger number. Warm, practical, and refreshingly unimpressed by virality for its own sake, it is a conversation about attention, taste, and what you do with both once you have them.

Filmed at The Maybourne Beverly Hills Garden Suite.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(01:34) Studying The Menu Three Days Early 📖🍽️

(04:07) The Couch He Could Not Fit On 🛋️😅

(06:03) The Stranger At The Next Table 👀🍽️

(09:04) A Month Of Double Paychecks 💰😮

(10:47) Don't Jump Too Fast ⏳💡

(16:50) Never About One Viral Video 📱🎯

(20:34) Why They Made Their Own Hat 🧢💡

(22:48) Nine Stores In Madrid 🇪🇸🏪

(27:02) Abundance Over Extraction 🌿⚖️

(30:44) A Michelin Guide For Everyone Else ⭐🌍

(32:05) The Golden Triangle 🔺✨

(35:12) Three Products That Failed ❌🔍

(38:36) The Couple Who Met Over A Joke 😂❤️

(44:48) You Think I Eat Sandwiches All Day 🥪😄

(45:36) We're Building, Not Working 🏗️💡

(50:26) Four Seconds To Earn Attention ⏱️👁️

(51:12) Sneaking Into The Drake Suite 🚪😏

(59:23) The Sushi And Pizza Problem 🍣🍕

(1:02:29) The Art Of Ordering 🍽️✨

(1:04:14) Not A Service Snob 😊🍽️

(1:06:09) Food As A Love Language ❤️🍽️

(1:12:20) Five Restaurants Worth Travelling For ✈️🍽️

(1:16:42) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

(1:18:58) A Message For Anyone Starting Out 💌🌟

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Henry Cookson, the polar record holder turned founder of Cookson Adventures, to explore what actually constitutes a life well spent. Henry left a prime brokerage desk at Goldman Sachs with no cold weather experience, entered a race to the magnetic North Pole against Arctic warfare instructors and Everest veterans, and won it. He went on to lead the first team in history to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility using human power alone, and built a company designing frontier expeditions for people with the means to fund science while they travel.

The conversation moves from the trading floor on 11 September to the statue of Lenin at the centre of Antarctica, from lion collars and the discovery of an unknown species of orca to a hard look at greenwashing and the kind of company money attracts. Henry argues that being a rich guy is no longer a legacy because someone bigger always follows, explains why he deliberately got out of the elevator on the third floor, and makes the case that a crappy fishing boat with people you like beats a 150 metre yacht with people you do not. He is equally direct on the commercial side, describing why bespoke travel is a terrible business model and why he turned down a family who had sent the same five year brief to three of his competitors.

Filmed at The Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(01:07) Discovering An Unknown Species Of Orca 🐋🔍

(02:47) Goldman Sachs, Kenya And The 9/11 Trading Floor 📈🌍

(06:25) An Overweight Banker Wins A Polar Race 🏔️❄️

(09:02) The Pole Of Inaccessibility And The Statue Of Lenin 🧭🗿

(17:08) The Anticlimax After The Record 🏆😔

(18:55) Prince Harry, Sycophancy And The First Big Break 👑🎯

(20:26) Funding Lion Collars & The Birth Of A Model 🦁💡

(26:14) Greenwashing & The Friends Money Attracts 🌿💰

(31:35) Losing Local Culture To Globalised Luxury 🌍💎

(33:40) True Nourishment 🌱🛗

(39:49) Advertising, Rolex Scarcity And 72% Of Wildlife Gone ⌚🦁

(42:18) Being Rich Is No Longer A Legacy 💰🔮

(53:20) Why Bespoke Travel Is A Terrible Business Model ✈️💭

(58:58) How A Frontier Trip Gets Designed 🗺️🔍

(1:03:41) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Danny Yeung, co-founder and CEO of IM8 and one of Asia's most accomplished serial entrepreneurs, to explore what it truly means to identify a gap in human health and build a best-in-class product to fill it. From founding Prenetics to partnering with David Beckham, Danny reflects on a career defined by hands-on execution, an instinct for opportunity, and the conviction that most people are massively underinvesting in their own foundation of health.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Danny Yeung, co-founder and CEO of IM8 and one of Asia's most accomplished serial entrepreneurs, to explore what it truly means to identify a gap in human health and build a best-in-class product to fill it. From founding Prenetics to partnering with David Beckham, Danny reflects on a career defined by hands-on execution, an instinct for opportunity, and the conviction that most people are massively underinvesting in their own foundation of health.

Explore IM8 with 10% off your first order: https://www.im8health.com/GSTAAD10 (Or Use Code: GSTAAD10)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Charlotte and Peter Fiell, the design historians, authors and curators behind Taschen's Ultimate Collector series, to explore what separates objects that endure from objects that end up as decoration. Across 35 years and a body of work that includes 1000 Chairs and an 11 kilo, 200,000 word volume on watches, the Fiells reflect on a career spent among the world's greatest collections, and on a publishing brief that has never changed: create the best book there has ever been on the subject.

The conversation moves from the psychology of collecting and the specific neurotype the Fiells keep encountering among serious collectors, to the quartz crisis that nearly ended Swiss watchmaking and instead gave rise to the independents. They argue that design began 2.3 million years ago rather than at the Bauhaus, that constraints make designers better rather than smaller, and that the value of an object lies in the quality of its connections. Charlotte also recounts the moment ChatGPT invented an entire book for her doctoral research, complete with author and ISBN, making the case for scholarship, editorial rigour and physical things in an age spent almost entirely on screen.

Filmed at the TASCHEN London bookstore.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(04:26) The Phone Call From Benedikt Taschen 📞✨

(07:21) Why These Are Not Coffee Table Books 📖🔍

(10:01) What The World's Top Collectors Have In Common 🏆🔍

(16:10) The Neurotype Behind The Urge To Collect 🧠🔮

(22:53) Design Began 2.3 Million Years Ago 🪨⏳

(24:25) A Thousand Chairs And A Unified Theory Of Design 🪑💡

(31:11) Constraints, And Where Design Ends And Art Begins ⚖️🎨

(37:50) Nobody Actually Needs A Mechanical Watch ⌚💭

(39:52) Feeling The Soul Of The Watchmaker ⌚❤️

(46:32) The Quartz Crisis That Remade Swiss Watchmaking 🇨🇭⚡

(50:23) Why Physical Things Ground Us In A Digital Age 🌿💻

(53:10) Why Only One Publisher Can Make Books Like This 📖👑

(56:26) When ChatGPT Invented A Book That Did Not Exist 🤖📖

(58:58) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Matteo Franceschetti, co-founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, the company that has quietly become one of the most powerful sleep labs in the world, to explore what happens when Silicon Valley obsession meets the most underinvested area of human health. From his early days as a fitness-obsessed entrepreneur to building a medical-grade platform trusted by everyone from elite athletes to Formula One drivers, Matteo reflects on the vision, data, and relentless focus on performance that made Eight Sleep impossible to ignore.

Explore Eight Sleep and get up to $350 off your first order: https://www.eightsleep.com/gstaadguy (code: GSTAAD350)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gstaad Guy sits down with Jade and Grant Goulden, the siblings behind Jaded London, the boundary-pushing fashion brand that has built a devoted global following by moving at the speed of culture and refusing to wait for permission, to explore what it truly means to turn instinct into a business. From running operations on WhatsApp to personally delivering clothes to Kylie Jenner, theirs is a story of agility, nerve, and an unwavering focus on product above everything else.

The conversation gets into what it means to identify a trend before it has a name, why trust between co-founders who are also family is both the greatest asset and the greatest test, and how the distinctly London approach to style became the brand's most powerful currency. Jade and Grant speak candidly about hiring the customer, the discipline of doing things differently when the industry pulls towards convention, and why moving fast without a plan is only reckless if you do not know what you stand for. Energetic, unpretentious, and sharply observed, it is a conversation about boldness, timing, and what happens when two people back each other completely.

Filmed at The Twenty Two (London), Gingko Suite.

(00:00) Intro ✨🎙️

(02:03) Marketing At The Speed Of Culture ⚡🌍

(02:38) Awareness Of Culture 👁️🌍

(04:25) One Unified Team 🤝💪

(07:39) From Idea To Product 💡👔

(09:21) Starting A Fashion Brand 👗🚀

(18:04) The "London Look" 🇬🇧👔

(21:48) "Hiring The Customer" 🛍️💡

(25:06) The Jaded Woman & Man 👩👨

(27:39) Family Business 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦💼

(29:18) Working With A Sibling 🤝❤️

(36:50) Designing The "Parachute Pant" 👖✨

(39:14) Personally Delivering Clothes to Kylie Jenner 🚗👗

(41:21) "We Didn't Have A Business Plan" 😅🚀

(43:10) Agility & Hustle ⚡💪

(48:48) Collaborations & Influencer Marketing 🤝📱

(55:00) Fashion Trends 👗📈

(58:37) Stepping Into The Fashion World 👔🌟

(1:03:03) Doing Things Differently 🔀✨

(1:06:15) À La Poubelle vs. Fantastique 🗑️✨

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices