Instigators of Change
Instigators of Change is a Khosla Ventures podcast that explores innovative ideas, the people who come up with them, and those who invest in them. Our guests are the outliers, creators, mavericks — those who imagine differently. They build companies that alter transportation, retail, food, energy, entertainment, space. And when they succeed, we cannot imagine life without them. Tune in to hear about non-obvious ideas from inspiring people.
The podcast is hosted by Kara Miller, former host of the nationally-syndicated public radio show "Innovation Hub."
Episodes
32 episodes
How to Conquer Imposter Syndrome, and Become a Tech CEO
Shellye Archambeau has encountered a lot of obstacles in life, but her ability to navigate around them has proved almost superhuman. Archambeau talks about deciding - as a teenager - that she wanted to be a CEO, and how she navigated the busine...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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42:02
Dheeraj Pandey Wants to Change CRM. Can He?
When Dheeraj Pandey co-founded the cloud computing company Nutanix in 2009, the economy was shaky. Housing was turbulent. And interest rates had moved dramatically. Sound familiar? Nutanix would grow into a multibillion dollar company, and now,...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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31:50
Why entrepreneurs ignore an aging America - at their peril
After tennis great Serena Williams announced her retirement from tennis, she tweeted out an article from Joseph Coughlin, head of the MIT AgeLab. Williams said she wasn’t retiring - she was “forever evolving.” And Coughlin believes that William...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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36:01
Jeff Wilke: From Amazon Exec to Rebuilding American Manufacturing
When Jeff Wilke left Amazon in 2021, where - since 2016 - he had served as CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, his next chapter could have focused on rest and relaxation. After all, Wilke had been at Amazon for more than 20 years, and had seen it...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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42:42
What Evidence Shows About Who Really Succeeds in Business
You might call Ethan Mollick a man obsessed. And he probably wouldn’t mind. Because Mollick - a high-profile professor at The Wharton School - is obsessed with data, which dispels a lot of the myths around startups. Like: Do twenty somethings h...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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40:03
Siddhartha Mukherjee and Anand Parikh On A New Way To Fight Cancer
More than 50 years ago, President Nixon announced a moonshot to cure cancer. But the cure never came. More than half a million Americans still die from cancer every single year. Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and cancer physician Siddhartha Mukh...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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35:00
Why Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar Took A Big Career Risk
When Sarah Friar quit as the CFO of Square, CEO Jack Dorsey wasn't thrilled. But she felt compelled to take the leap. Friar explains why she left, and how her childhood in a conflict-plagued part of Northern Ireland factored into the decision. ...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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36:40
From Cute Cats to Political Upheaval: How YouTube Changed The World
In 2005, a small company began offering up a way to post amateur videos on the web. YouTube operated on a shoestring, with its founders maxing out credit cards, and debating what the company was really about. The next year, Google - sensing tha...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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43:19
WeBuilt, WeCroaked (Rebroadcast)
In the early 2000s, a baby clothes salesman was about to strike it big. His name was Adam Neumann, and his rise - and fall - has a lot to teach both founders and funders about why a company can go off the rails. Neumann's new real estate ventur...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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47:18
How one VC navigates today's volatility (Rebroadcast)
Financial markets have been up and down enough to make anyone seasick. And if you're starting a company - or investing in one - it's an uncertain time. In one of our most popular episodes of the last few months, Samir Kaul - a founding partner ...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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32:49
Why Big Money Makes Big Bets (Rebroadcast)
This month, as we highlight some of our favorite episodes, we take a look at an industry that has altered the economic fortunes of the world over the last 50 years: venture capital. It has brought us game-changing medicines and life-reordering ...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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38:28
How AI destroys businesses... and creates new ones (Rebroadcast)
This summer, we're revisiting some of our favorite shows. Including this discussion with Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani, which reflected Lakhani's view that almost every company is now an AI company. Even if founders and CEOs a...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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37:03
Can Batteries Solve Everything? (Rebroadcast)
As the summer - and lots of record-setting heat - drags on, you might wonder how we can slow global warming. But, even for a scientist and entrepreneur like Jay Whitacre, who has spent decades thinking about how to get Americans to embrace clea...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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31:42
Ben Horowitz on Building Company Culture
Ben Horowitz isn’t afraid to pick favorites when it comes to great CEOs. Like Andy Grove, the former head of Intel. Grove didn’t put up with any nonsense, Horowitz says, because he was singularly focused on what it takes to achieve and maintain...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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31:10
Star In a Bottle: Can Fusion Solve Our Energy Crisis?
Imagine if we could harness the power of a star, right here on Earth. Our energy challenges, as we know them, would disappear. That’s the promise of fusion technology, a way of generating electricity that scientists have been working on for dec...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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27:56
How A Tough 2022 Could Reshape Biotech
From massive supply chain issues to wary investors, 2022 is turning out to be a tough year for biotech. But it's also a sector that's reshaping our lives, as we saw during the pandemic. So what are the most exciting opportunities in biotech rig...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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49:26
Vinod Khosla’s American Story (Rebroadcast)
On a week when we celebrate American indepedence, we revisit our conversation with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Khosla talks about coming to the U.S. and what it took to succeed here. Then, we look at the environmental implications when bil...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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37:01
Why You're Managing Talent All Wrong
Sure, Roger Martin used to run a business school. But that doesn't stop him from questioning the way we train captains of industry. In fact, he argues, many business leaders don't realize that we're not just locked in a struggle between capital...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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36:56
How one VC navigates today's volatility
Financial markets have been up and down enough to make anyone seasick. And if you're starting a company - or investing in one - it's an uncertain time. Samir Kaul, a founding partner of Khosla Ventures, talks about how this volatility compares ...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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33:09
MIT's Angela Belcher on cancer, green synthesis, and getting inventions to market
About a decade ago, when the President of MIT approached Angela Belcher about doing cancer research, Belcher turned her down. After all, Belcher is a materials and biological engineer who had done lots of work on environmental sustainability. B...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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30:20
Should you be radically candid at work?
Kim Scott admits she has made some huge mistakes as a boss - mistakes that made her kind of obsessed with becoming a better manager. She's also learned a thing or two from being managed by Sheryl Sandberg, and from teaching managers at Apple to...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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49:22
Can a burger save us?
Patrick Brown makes burgers for a living, but he’ll tell you without hesitation: he has no interest in making burgers. So how did a Stanford biochemist - who happily studied cells in a lab - end up trying to revolutionize fast food? He talks to...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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36:23
Can batteries solve everything?
You want to do what’s right for the planet. So you buy an all-electric car. Right? Well... not always. Jay Whitacre, one of the country’s foremost experts on batteries, tells us why where you live may dictate the answer to that question. Which ...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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32:12
Turning pollution into jet fuel (and yoga pants)
Sure, lots of business leaders have big dreams. But when Jennifer Holmgren tells you she wants to turn pollution into both jet fuel and yoga pants, she means it. And she's done it. Her company, LanzaTech, has refined a technology to recycle car...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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23:11
What Smart Companies Know about Working with the Government
Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., aren't always two peas in a pod. The "move fast, break things" approach may not square with a cautious-at-all-costs outlook. So if you're a company that needs to work with government regulators, how do you d...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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41:30