Beginner's Mind
by Christian Soschner
Latest episode
Spark 20: Alex Dang | Everyone Agrees? Think Again. How Venture…
Spark 20: Alex Dang | Everyone Agrees? Think Again. How Venture…
About this podcast
Blueprints for Builders and Investors
Hosted by Christian Soschner
From pre-seed to post-IPO, every company—especially in deep tech, biotech, AI, and climate tech—lives or dies by the frameworks it follows.
On Beginner’s Mind, Christian Soschner uncovers the leadership principles behind the world’s most impactful companies—through deep-dive interviews, strategic book reviews, and patterns drawn from history’s greatest business, military, and political minds.
With over 250 interviews, panels, and livestreams, the show ranks in the Top 10% globally—and is recognized as the #1 deep tech podcast.
With 35+ years across M&A, company building, board roles, business schools, ultrarunning, and martial arts, Christian brings a rare lens:
What it really takes to turn breakthrough science into business—how to grow it, lead it, and shape the world around it.
🎙 Expect each episode to deliver:
• Founder & Investor Blueprints: How breakthrough technologies scale from lab to IPO
• Historical & Biographical Frameworks: Timeless playbooks from the world's great builders
• Leadership & Communication Mastery: Tools to inspire, persuade, and lead at scale
Whether you're building the next biotech success, investing in AI, or leading a climate tech company through hypergrowth—this podcast gives you the edge.
Listen in. Apply what matters. Build companies that last.
📬 Join the newsletter & community: https://lsg2g.substack.com/
Episodes
The newest 20 of 231 episodes
- Spark 20: Alex Dang | Everyone Agrees? Think Again. How Venture Capitalists Decide · 29 min · Season 7 Episode 19Invest in the wrong startup and you lose one times your money. Miss the next Google and you lose ten thousand times. Most boards are built to avoid the first mistake. Venture…
- EP 185: Ivy Nguyen | IQ, EQ and the Execution Quotient Investors Fund · 1 h 4 min · Season 7 Episode 18The trait a Silicon Valley AI investor rewards most in a management team has a name almost nobody uses: XQ. IQ brings the idea and EQ reads the people across the table. The…
- EP 184: Ivy Nguyen | 10,000 AI Pitches and the One Test That Matters · 59 min · Season 7 Episode 17In 2017 another investor told Ivy Nguyen that artificial intelligence was too small a niche to dedicate a fund to. More than ten thousand AI pitches later, every pitch deck says…
- EP 183: Marie Schroeder | Send the Rough Deck, Not the Perfect One · 2 h 4 min · Season 7 Episode 16A seed investor at Novo Holdings would rather read your rough idea than your finished pitch deck. Most founders spend a year building the deck, forming the team and waiting until…
- #182 - How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You Are Going: 4 Lessons from Ben Horowitz (Part 2 of 2) · 57 min · Season 7 Episode 15What does it mean when the most respected adviser in Silicon Valley tells you that you are the best chief executive he works with, while your company is heading straight into a…
- #181 - When Things Fall Apart: 3 Lessons from Ben Horowitz on Leading Through the Struggle (Part 1 of 2) · 48 min · Season 7 Episode 14What do you do on the morning when there are no good moves left? In March 2001, Ben Horowitz took Loudcloud public in the middle of the dot-com collapse. The bankers cut the…
- EP 180: Eric Ries | Why Good Companies Go Bad After Success · 1 h 2 min · Season 7 Episode 13What happens when the moment a company finally succeeds is the moment it becomes most likely to be destroyed? Most founders assume the market rewards the better product and…
- EP 179: Joško Bobanović | Why Venture Capital Fights Human Instinct · 2 h 18 min · Season 7 Episode 12What happens when the instinct to help a struggling company is exactly what prevents the strongest companies from succeeding? Venture capital forces investors to make decisions…
- #178 - The Elon Musk Method: 7 Rules for Building What the Market Thinks Is Impossible · 55 min · Season 7 Episode 11How can a company have the right numbers and still reach the wrong strategic conclusion? In 2017, Volkswagen’s chief executive mocked Tesla as one of the “world champions of big…
- EP 177: Alberto Chalon | Liquidity Before the IPO Window Opens · 1 h 43 min · Season 7 Episode 10Private companies are staying private longer, and that changes who gets liquidity, when, and why. Founders, employees, and early investors can wait a decade or more for an IPO or…
- Alasdair Milton, KPMG | Why Precision Medicine Still Fails Patients (SPARK20 – 168) · 25 min · Season 7 Episode 9Only one in three eligible lung cancer patients receives the targeted therapy they should get. That is not a failure of science. It is a failure of delivery. After more than two…
- #176 - Why Smart People Say Yes: 7 Lessons from Influence by Robert Cialdini · 59 min · Season 7 Episode 8Some books explain how the world works. Influence explains why people move. Why someone takes the meeting. Why an investor leans in. Why a customer trusts. Why a team follows…
- EP 175: Stefanie Schubert | Why Smart People Lose Negotiations Before They Start · 1 h 55 min · Season 7 Episode 7Most leaders think negotiation begins when both sides sit down to talk numbers. By then, trust, incentives, timing, internal alignment, and first impressions have already shaped…
- EP 174: Wanwipa Siriwatwechakul | Funding the Next Industrial Era · 2 h 4 min · Season 7 Episode 6Most people still treat climate solutions as a cost. Wanwipa Siriwatwechakul argues that this is exactly why so many leaders miss the real opportunity. The next industrial era…
- EP 173: Bret Kugelmass | The West Bet on the Wrong Energy Future · 1 h 2 min · Season 7 Episode 5Power demand is rising faster than the systems meant to support it. AI, electrification, and industry all need stable energy, but the dominant story sold to the public was far…
- #172 - Fast Forward Thinking: Why Most Investments Fail — And How Elite VCs Think Differently · 59 min · Season 7 Episode 4Most investors think they’re rational. Most founders think they’re disciplined. Most boards think they’re strategic. They’re usually wrong. In this episode, we unpack Fast…
- EP 171 - Björn Cochlovius: Why Brilliant Biotech Breaks at Manufacturing · 1 h 5 min · Season 7 Episode 3Most biotech breakthroughs don’t fail in the lab. They fail when science meets manufacturing reality. And by the time this bottleneck appears, tens of millions are already sunk…
- EP 170 - Jim Pulcrano: Why Most Venture Capital Fails And What Europe Still Gets Wrong · 1 h 55 min · Season 7 Episode 2Nine out of ten startups fail, yet Europe keeps funding them the same way. Governments replace judgment with bureaucracy, capital replaces experience, and failure is…
- EP 169 - Why New Year’s Goals Fail by February - Even for Disciplined People · 36 min · Season 7 Episode 1Most goals don’t fail because of laziness or lack of ambition. They fail quietly — buried under daily noise, competing priorities, and forgotten intentions. By March, even the…
- EP 168 - Alasdair Milton: The Innovation Inflection Point: Why 70% of Cures Never Reach Patients · 2 h 41 min · Season 6 Episode 23Breakthrough science has never been stronger — yet patients still miss life-saving therapies. Despite decades of innovation, most precision medicines fail at the last mile of…
