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What did it take to build an $11 billion company, Airwallex? Jack moved from rural northeast China to Melbourne at 15 and now runs Airwallex, the global payments and business banking platform. Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen talk to Jack about what it took to get there: the jobs he worked to put himself through college, why he thought he'd be happy with a $100 million business, and why he turned down Stripe's $1.2 billion offer. He also explains why he believes the future of banking is agentic, and why the big banks are too far behind to build it. He speaks about: What he learned about work ethic: washing dishes, bar shifts and overnights at a petrol stationThe difference between anxiety and survival Running ten side businesses, and still feeling irrelevantThe angel who wired $1 million into his personal account before signing anything Pulled term sheets, and a $100 million cheque from Yuri MilnerBeing targeted as a Silicon Valley outsider (and why he thinks the facts are on his side)Agentic banking and the end of vertical finance softwareAnd lots more...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're back with Max Jaderberg, president of Isomorphic Labs, to talk about his life lessons. After years at DeepMind working on deep learning, generative models and reinforcement learning, Max helped launch Isomorphic in 2021 to turn the promise of AlphaFold into new medicine. Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen talk to Max about why he rejected a consultancy contract to do a PhD at Oxford, and why he later left core AI research after writing a pro/con list on a whiteboard in his loft. He also explains how Isomorphic keeps a startup's hunger (even with Alphabet's backing), and what nearly 15 years of working with Demis Hassabis has taught him. He speaks about: Deciding what "superpower" his research could createWhether DeepMind could ever have done it alone, without selling, and how Alphabet backs its investmentsKeeping a startup culture, with a giant's backing Why Isomorphic wanted a global investor base in its latest roundTrusting Demis Hassabis's vision (including an early Nobel Prize prediction he didn't believe)Rejecting a job contract to do a PhD Working 24/7 in his head, but making time for Counter-Strike - and needing plenty of sleep...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Max Jaderberg, President of Isomorphic Labs. Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet-backed company spun out of DeepMind, is using AI to design new medicines, with the mission of solving all disease.  Tommy Stadlen and Cameron McLain talk to Max about why he believes no future exists where medicines aren't designed with AI, and why he'd be "severely disappointed" if disease doesn't mean something completely different 30 years from now. He speaks about: What "solve all disease" means in practice How a medicine actually gets made today, and why it's "very, very fancy trial and error"Why earlier AI drug discovery overpromised, and what AlphaFold changedWhy you can't download the data this field needs off the internetThe 90% clinical failure rate Bio-resilience, bad actors, and why Isomorphic keeps its models in-houseBuilding a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

After more than 50 episodes interviewing founders, investors and leaders, Giant co-founders Tommy Stadlen and Cameron McLain turn the mic on themselves to ask what the best entrepreneurs have in common. From resilience, storytelling, obsession and self-awareness, to the power of control. They speak about: Cameron's four founder traits, and why three out of four is the barWhy Tommy added control to his list (and what Alex Ferguson has to do with it)Producing under fire vs simply enduringThe case for benign dictatorship in early-stage companies"Trauma showcasing" in pitch meetings, and what drives foundersThe four burners: what founders give up, and why the greats might not call it sacrificeWhy intelligence might not make the top threeAgentic founders, 16-year-olds pitching from Sweden and 10-person teams building huge revenue...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, to talk about what the first internet boom can tell us about this one. Steve started AOL in 1985, when 3% of people were online. He took it public in 1992 as the first internet company to list, and now runs Revolution, the firm behind Rise of the Rest and more than 200 investments across 100 American cities.  Cameron McLain talks to Steve about why AOL raised just $10 million over seven years (while today's AI companies are seeded with a billion), why he still thinks the Time Warner merger was the right call, and why he thinks AI needs to be very carefully deployed to avoid a revolution. He speaks about: The nine years it took AOL to reach a million users (ChatGPT took three months)Arguing with IBM and Apple about whether to build modems into computersBeing 26 and taking on AT&T, GE and Microsoft with just $10 millionWhether he'd do the Time Warner merger againThe industries AI can't disruptBuilding a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange. Eric wrote the book that taught a generation of founders how to build under uncertainty, and he has spent the years since trying to fix what happens to those companies once they grow. His new book, Incorruptible, is about a double mystery: why successful companies so often get ruined, and why a handful avoid that fate. Tommy Stadlen and Cameron McLain talk to Eric about why he thinks the best practices of modern corporate governance destroy value, why he believes a strong founder is not enough to protect a company, and what he'd change about The Lean Startup if he could go back. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're back with Michael Moritz, the Sequoia investor who backed Google, Yahoo and PayPal, to talk about his family and his latest book. Moritz has written a memoir, Ausländer, out in the US this month. It began with papers found when they cleared out their mother's house in Wales, and grew into an account of how his grandparents were murdered and how his father got out during the Nazi Regime. We talk to him about what he found in the archives, why he thinks a stable society is a much more fragile thing than most people assume, his experience of anti-semitism, and if he thinks Silicon Valley is befriending Trump (and what he thinks of the US president). Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Michael Moritz, the former chairman of Sequoia Capital, one of the most successful venture capitalists of all time. Michael Moritz is a venture capitalist and philanthropist renowned for backing early tech giants like Google, PayPal, and YouTube during his 38-year career, first as Partner then Chairman of the firm.  Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen talk to Michael about why he thinks the first 16 years of a founder's life tell you more than you can find anywhere is, why he still wears the cap of the company that lost Sequoia more money than any other, and why he shivered every time anyone called Sequoia an institution. He speaks about: the phone call that brought Sequoia to Googlewhy he asks founders about their first 15 or 16 yearsmeeting the Collison brothers at 20 and 18, and what was obvious within minuteswhy founding pairs make each other betterwhy Bill Gates took the radio taken out of his Mercedes the $44m Webvan loss, and going back to the same idea 20 years later as Instacartand lots more...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're back for our FINAL episode before a 3 week summer break! We're back the first week of September. Today we're joined by Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition and former COO of Y Combinator, to talk about his life lessons & career advice. He speaks about: The rule he got from a Harvard professor: a mediocre person in a high-growth industry beats the best person in a mediocre oneThe most useful advice of his careerOptimising for the people you'll learn from over title and pay (at any cost)The four life-burners problem, and which one he switched offWorking seven days a week since he was 14, and what his routine is on the weekendWhy you can't become Nirvana by copying Kurt CobainThe three eras of Y Combinator, and why the old YC wouldn't work today"We Make Mistakes" — the only post he wrote as COO, and why it mattersBuilding a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a physical AI company valued at $15 billion that builds the models and simulation tools behind autonomous vehicles, defence systems, and industrial machines (before this, he was COO of Y Combinator). Tommy Stadlen talks to Qasar about why he thinks physical AI will define the next 25 years, and why Applied's ability to run the same models across cars, drones, and construction equipment is its biggest edge. They also get into how he thinks about fundraising and cap tables, and why he says not all money is equally useful. He speaks about: Why Applied Intuition has never spent a dollar of the ~$1 billion raisedCorporate VCs, multi-stage funds, and why the partner matters more than the firm nameWhy 85% of the global economy is physical (and why that's the real AI opportunity)Neural simulation, and how Applied trains one model to work in a car, a drone, and a tankWhy timing is the hardest thing for founders to get rightWhy he's not worried about self-driving safetyThe billion-machine vision (and why he still drives a 1987 manual Land Cruiser)Enjoy! Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're back with Fareed Zakaria, the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, to talk about his lessons about how to do a great interview. Fareed Zakaria has interviewed people from presidents, dictators, and the Dalai Lama over three decades, live on air. Tommy Stadlen and Cameron McLain talk to Zakaria about the craft behind those conversations: why he treats an interview as seduction rather than confrontation, why Lee Kuan Yew is the most impressive guest he's ever had, and why the Dalai Lama was a tough interview. He speaks about: Why he avoids confrontation and treats interviews as seduction insteadThe Omar Bartov interview, and why he thinks a soft question made the conversation deeper than an accusation would haveWhy he rarely books politicians in power anymore (and regrets it most times he has)Lee Kuan Yew turning a "polyglot population" into a nation with no race riotsWhy the Dalai Lama was his hardest interview What AI leaves for humans once it becomes the better "analytic machine"Why he doubts there will be another CNNBuilding a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's flagship foreign affairs show and author of The Post-American World.  Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen talk to Fareed about what the world could look like in 2040: why he believes the American-led order built in 1945 is dissolving, why he argues liberal democracy's issues are cultural rather than economic, and why he still thinks a coalition of the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore and India could keep a rules-based order alive. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're back with Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel, to talk about his life lessons. Alex Bouaziz is the co-founder and CEO of Deel, the global payroll and HR platform he's grown from zero to a $17 billion business in just a few years. Tommy Stadlen talks to Alex about the mindset behind building Deel, from why he calls himself a "wartime CEO" to how a chance encounter on Reddit led to his first hire. Alex opens up about running the business alongside his father, why he thinks his generation's gaming habits made remote-first culture feel normal rather than crazy, and the moment of seeing Deel's logo on Arsenal shirts around London. Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel, the global HR and payroll platform now serving companies across 150+ countries with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Tommy Stadlen talks to Alex about how Deel became the fastest startup to reach $100M in recurring revenue: and why that record came down to one thing: following customers. Alex explains why Deel launched with contractors when everyone else went after employees, how they carried the intensity of Y Combinator all the way to a billion-dollar business, and why their M&A strategy (13 acquisitions in six years) has been one of their most underrated growth levers. He speaks about: The YC "time chamber" mindset they still run the company onWhy speed of execution matters - and why comfort in any department is a warning signWhy hiring A players is less about finding them, and more about NOT lowering the bar when you're desperate to hireWhat most people miss about the Deel M&A strategy (and how they keep founders motivated years after acquisition)The case for brand marketing at the enterprise stage, and what Arsenal taught him about communityWhy being a remote company selling to remote companies is an unfair advantage And lots more!Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

Today, we're joined by Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health and a former doctor who trained in the NHS before taking on the US healthcare. Toyin built Cityblock to serve people on Medicaid. The company is now around $1.5bn in annual revenue, with 150,000 members across 11 states. Tommy Stadlen talks to her about her giant idea, value-based care: why she thinks paying doctors for procedures instead of real outcomes is the root of America's healthcare crisis, why the patients who need care most are the least likely to walk into a clinic, and why she believes AI poured onto the wrong business model will do real damage. She speaks about: Why "value-based care" is the worst brand for one of the biggest ideas in healthcareThe first Cityblock patient, an elderly, partially blind man living in a Brooklyn basementWhy fee-for-service ends up paying more for the amputation than for keeping someone safe at homeThe ~140 million Americans on Medicaid and Medicare, and the market everyone missedHow AI is pushing the marginal cost of a patient interaction close to zeroWhy most healthcare AI dollars are making the system more expensive, not betterGrowing up in Nairobi during the AIDS epidemic, and the UN moment that outraged her and still drives herNHS vs US healthcare - and the one-line answer to which she'd choose...Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc. Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.