Alibaba, known as the “Amazon of China,” is one of the world’s most valuable companies. In a wide-ranging conversation on View From The Top: The Podcast, co-founder and chairman Joe Tsai recalls how it became the company it is today — and looks ahead to the company it may become. 

Having access to AI, Tsai says, is like “having access to water and air.” He rejects the suggestion that the United States and China must compete to develop this resource. “AI is a race among companies, but AI shouldn’t be a race between countries,” he says. 

Asked for his advice on building a global company, Tsai suggests focusing on winning locally first. “You have to win the market where you started,” he says. “And then you can think about going overseas, going global, because with winning local battles, you’re training your team, you’re developing talent that enables you to be a global player. So you’ve got to start somewhere.” 

This conversation was recorded on January 29, 2026. 

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“Being a reporter is the most fun an adult is allowed to have at work,” says A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher and chairman of The New York Times. 

In a wide-ranging conversation with Amira Weeks, MBA ’26, on View From The Top: The Podcast, Sulzberger reflects on what it means to lead a 175-year-old media institution in a moment of intense political pressure and technological disruption. He explains why journalists must “tune out the cheers and the jeers” and why democracy and markets depend on “the accountability and transparency that the press provides.”

This conversation was recorded on January 13, 2026.

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This week on View From The Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.

On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll experience Centennial Day, hear Dean Sarah A. Soule honor the past, celebrate the present, and look to what the future may hold. GSB at 100 depicts a school defined not only by its innovation and impact, but by its people: curious students, devoted faculty, and accomplished staff — a community of thinkers, dreamers, and doers.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

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This week on View From The Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.

On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll step inside the classrooms where teaching sparks transformation.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

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

At 30, Orlando Bravo, JD/MBA '97, thought his private equity career might be over. “I did three deals and when the dot-com bubble burst two out of the three went to zero,” he tells Gintare Zukauskaite, MBA ’26. “It was an absolute disaster.” 

Mentor and firm principal Carl Thoma, MBA ’73, gave him one more chance. Bravo pitched software buyouts, and five years later — “one deal at a time” — he’d become a named partner at the firm, Thoma Bravo, which today manages about $180 billion.  

“Find the [risks] that are meant for you to take,” Bravo advises. “Do the work, focus on your business, focus on you, and do your thing. That will pay huge, huge dividends, and will make everything very, very clear.”

This conversation was recorded on October 21, 2025.

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This week on [If/Then or View From The Top] we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.

On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll hear from the dedicated and accomplished staff members who work behind the scenes to make Stanford GSB a community unlike anywhere else in the world.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

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

This week on View From the Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs, as the GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next hundred years may hold.

The first episode of the series begins where the GSB begins: in 1925, Herbert Hoover, a Stanford alum and future U.S. president, had an idea. “A graduate School of Business Administration is urgently needed upon the Pacific Coast,” he wrote. 

One hundred years later, what has Stanford Graduate School of Business accomplished, and what might its future hold? Listen in as professors reflect on founding principles, frontier technologies, and the magic that makes the GSB the place it is — and shapes what it aspires to be.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

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

Luis von Ahn was a tenured professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who had sold a company to Google. “You were pretty set, a lot of us would say, so why were you so hungry to build something new with Duolingo?” asks Ayesha Karnik, MBA ’25. 

“For the first time ever, with phones, we can reach billions of people,” reflects the Duolingo co-founder and CEO. “I want it to be the case that we can show that screen time is actually useful for the world.” 

From human-computer interaction and pioneering early 2000s consumer tech gamification to his thoughts on leadership and the future of AI, von Ahn shares his unique perspective on where he’s been, what he’s working on today, and the future of learning. 

There’s also that unpredictable owl mascot. “I wouldn’t say our brand is ‘chaos,’ okay?” he jokes. “We call it wholesome unhinged.”

This episode was recorded on May 5, 2025.

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Ken Griffin heads the most profitable hedge fund in history. But Citadel’s founder and CEO is focused on the future — not the scoreboard.   

“I like to think I haven’t accomplished yet what I will be remembered for,” Griffin tells Michael Liu, MBA ’25. “That this is not a view from the top, but a journey to a destination yet to be determined.”

From entrepreneurship — “If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to first learn how to sell” — to the importance of lifelong learning — “If you’re going to go to work at a firm and you’re the smartest person in the room, you have so screwed up your Stanford MBA” — Griffin reflects on what he’s learned since the early days of Citadel and why he's still laser-focused on learning today.

“​I think legendary investors really know when they have an advantage — and they press it. They’re confident in their conviction, and when they're wrong, they move on.”

This conversation was recorded on April 25, 2025.

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Aravind Srinivas leads Perplexity — whose AI-powered search engine provides direct, sourced answers to any question you might ask it. 

On this episode of View From The Top: The Podcast, Srinivas joins Aislin Rorth, MBA ’25, for a conversation that provides unique insight into how a young leader steers a late-stage startup with big aspirations — from finding a lane in consumer AI to rounding up investors and fighting the inertia that seems to grip startups as they grow. 

“If we are a reliable answer machine to everybody and widely accessible, that not just gives you answers but helps you accomplish tasks, too — make transactions, buy things, book things, book flights, get the best deals and make your life more productive, give you back more time — I think we are going to be a pretty industry-defining product and company,” Srinivas says.

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