Grit
by Kleiner Perkins
Latest episode
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
About this podcast
Grit explores what it takes to create, build, and scale world-class organizations. It features weekly episodes highlighting the leaders who are pushing their companies to make a difference. This series is hosted by Joubin Mirzadegan, go to market operating partner at Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm investing in history-making founders.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 298 episodes
- The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund · 1 h 5 min · Episode 297Why do companies keep optimizing what works instead of building what's next? Immad Akhund is on his fourth startup, building Mercury beyond its core banking business. He explains…
- The 20-Year Bet to Make Fusion Energy Work | Jeff Lawson · 1 h 7 min · Episode 296“Don’t go public without understanding your go-to-market.” Jeff Lawson reflects on Twilio’s go-to-market mistakes, including how the company generated hundreds of millions in…
- How Vercel Is Rethinking Go-to-Market With AI | COO Jeanne Grosser · 1 h 3 min · Episode 295At Vercel, 91% of support volume is already resolved by an agent. After spending a decade at Google and another at Stripe, Jeanne Grosser shares how AI is changing the way Vercel…
- Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper · 1 h 6 min · Episode 294How do you keep up when you go from 50 to 500 employees in a year? Jesse Zhang shares how Decagon scaled that quickly, from hiring ahead of demand to keeping the company…
- The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos · 1 h 0 min · Episode 293AI could be bigger than electricity. Anastasios Angelopoulos is seeing that shift firsthand, with Arena ranking 500+ models and tracking roughly 10 new releases every week. On…
- Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood · 1 h 12 min · Episode 292What kind of founder walks away from a multi-billion-dollar fintech company to start building rockets? Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, joins Joubin Mirzadegan to talk about…
- Booking.com CEO on AI and the Future of Travel · 51 min · Episode 291"Our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world." From the dot-com crash to AI, Glenn Fogel has spent nearly three decades helping Booking Holdings evolve…
- Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal · 1 h 1 min · Episode 290"The answer to every problem is a model." Parag Agrawal shares the ideas behind Parallel: products that continuously learn, and teams designed around versatile problem solvers…
- The Sales Framework Every Founder Needs | Mark Roberge · 1 h 22 min · Episode 289"There's 20 fires going on at every moment in the office and you have enough water to put out four." Mark Roberge shares what it takes to build and scale a company, from finding…
- Airwallex's Jack Zhang on Fintech, Failure, and Growth · 1 h 11 min · Episode 288In 2020, Airwallex lost nearly half its revenue overnight. Today it's worth $11 billion. Jack Zhang reflects on the decisions that kept the company alive, raising capital during…
- Why 80% of the Fortune 100 Chose Qualtrics | Ryan Smith · 1 h 12 min · Episode 287AI may change software overnight, but company building still takes time. Ryan Smith explains why, despite the pace of AI, “the race is going to be way longer than anyone thinks.”…
- What It Takes to Build Software for 171,000+ Restaurants | Aman Narang · 1 h 17 min · Episode 286Great software companies often come from understanding pain points at a very deep level. On Grit, Aman Narang shares how Toast built trust with 171,000+ restaurant operators by…
- What It Takes to Build a Generational Company | Anduril’s Trae Stephens · 56 min · Episode 285Founder quality becomes more important as startups become easier to build. Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril and partner at Founders Fund, has spent years backing founders…
- How AIG Is Reinventing Insurance With AI | Peter Zaffino · 56 min · Episode 284What does it take to run a company where the business is risk itself? In conversation with Joubin Mirzadegan, Peter Zaffino shares what the role demands at AIG, including high…
- From Airbnb to Linear: How Karri Saarinen Redefined Product Design · 1 h 17 min · Episode 283In a market that hadn’t changed in decades, Linear didn’t win by being faster. They won by being more thoughtful. Karri Saarinen helped shape design at Airbnb and Coinbase before…
- How Kevin Mandia Built the Most Trusted Name in Cybersecurity · 1 h 2 min · Episode 282What does security look like when attackers use AI better than you do? Armadin recently raised $200M to build for the “attacker of the future,” where attacks are autonomous and…
- The Silicon Valley Insider In The Pentagon | DoW Emil Michael · 41 min · Episode 281Emil Michael went from scaling Uber across 600 cities to rewiring the world's largest military. In the midst of the Pentagon-Silicon Valley debate, the now U.S. Under Secretary…
- How Sierra Is Pulling Ahead in the AI Race | Co-founder Bret Taylor · 1 h 12 min · Episode 280Few founders have seen Silicon Valley from every seat at the table. After co-creating Google Maps at Google, serving as CTO at Facebook, and later as co-CEO of Salesforce, Bret…
- The AI Era of Cybercrime: How Malwarebytes Is Evolving Its Security Stack | Marcin Kleczynski · 1 h 3 min · Episode 279What began as a 14 year old fixing infected computers became Malwarebytes, an 800 person cybersecurity company trusted by millions of customers. On Grit, Marcin Kleczynski joins…
- The Truth Behind Automation Claims in Customer Support | Cresta CEO Ping Wu · 43 min · Episode 278Can you scale customer support without burning out agents or frustrating customers? Ping Wu shares how Cresta combines AI and human intelligence into a single system that scales…
- The Safest Dollar on the Internet | Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire · 1 h 5 min · Episode 277USDC closed the gap between software and law in modern finance. On Grit, Jeremy Allaire discusses how fully reserved, dollar backed digital currency became part of the financial…
- Why We’re Only Using 1% of AI | Glean CEO Arvind Jain · 59 min · Episode 276Glean has grown into a $7.2B company by giving employees AI assistants and agents that extend their capabilities. CEO Arvind Jain is back on Grit alongside Joubin Mirzadegan…
- The Grittiest Conversations of 2025: AI, Business & Beyond · 41 min · Episode 275In this recap episode, we highlight the best moments from our 2025 interviews and reflect on the ideas that defined the year. Featuring: David Rubenstein (co-founder of Carlyle)…
- How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader · 50 min · Episode 274What happens when AI becomes your most influential referrer? As consumers turn to ChatGPT for answers, James Cadwallader and his team at Profound help brands like Eight Sleep and…
- How Snap Plans to Win the AR Race | Evan Spiegel on Spectacles · 1 h 11 min · Episode 273Turning down a $3B offer from Facebook is a bold move for any young CEO. Evan Spiegel shares how Snap’s early dream was to stay independent and give its community an authentic…
- The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner · 1 h 14 min · Episode 272What does it take to go from advising founders to becoming one? On this week’s special Reverse Grit episode, we flip the script and put our Grit podcast host Joubin Mirzadegan in…
- Building Cloudflare for the Next 50 Years | Co-founder Cloudfare Michelle Zatlyn · 58 min · Episode 271Fifteen years in, it can still feel like “we’re just getting started.” Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder of Cloudflare, returns to Grit with Joubin Mirzadegan to share how Cloudflare…
- She Sold Her Startup for $500 Million, Here’s Her Next Idea · 1 h 12 min · Episode 270Screens have pulled families apart. Brynn Putnam set out to bring them back together with Board, the world’s ‘first face-to-face game console.’ On Grit, she tells Joubin…
- Synthetic Data and the Future of AI | Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez · 1 h 11 min · Episode 269How do companies like Salesforce and Dell scale intelligence across every cloud? Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, explains how they’re building AI that works across all…
- From Yext to Roam: Howard Lerman’s Second Act · 1 h 25 min · Episode 268The hardest company to build is the one you start after you’ve already succeeded. After scaling Yext into a platform powering millions of businesses, Howard Lerman chose to…
- Rebuilding Front for the AI Era | CEO Dan O’Connell · 60 min · Episode 267The hardest part of transformation is knowing what to let go of. Dan O’Connell, now leading Front as CEO and formerly on the board at Dialpad, joins Joubin Mirzadegan to explore…
- ElevenLabs’ Vision for Voice Interfaces | CEO Mati Staniszewski · 1 h 4 min · Episode 266Before AI became a buzzword, a few true believers were already building. Since early 2022, Mati Staniszewski and his team at ElevenLabs have been among them, working to create…
- 95% Faster Video Production with Synthesia | Victor Riparbelli · 1 h 8 min · Episode 265What’s product-market fit like when you give people the power to do what they never thought was possible? On this rerun of Grit from April 2024, Victor Riparbelli, co-founder and…
- From Idea To Impact: How Gamma Is Redefining Presentations | Grant Lee · 1 h 10 min · Episode 264Make your product irresistible, and everything else will follow. That’s the philosophy of Grant Lee, co-founder and CEO of Gamma, an AI design platform with an 'anti-PowerPoint…
- Leadership Lessons From Snowflake’s Sales & Marketing Duo | Chris Degnan and Denise Persson · 1 h 23 min · Episode 263Scaling a business globally comes down to leaders who align teams and drive them forward together. Snowflake serves over 12,000 customers, and early executives Chris Degnan and…
- The Man Who Builds for the Decade Ahead | Founder of Google X, Waymo, and Udacity · 1 h 13 min · Episode 262What does it take to reinvent entire industries, over and over again? This week on Grit, Sebastian Thrun, the “godfather” of self-driving cars and massive open online courses…
- How WordPress Became a Web Giant | Automattic Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg · 1 h 10 min · Episode 261What kind of founder builds a billion-dollar company around something anyone can use for free? Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, joins Joubin…
- The Central Nervous System for Modern Business | Confluent CEO Jay Kreps · 1 h 17 min · Episode 260The apps and websites we use every day depend on systems most of us never see. Jay Kreps joins Joubin Mirzadegan to share how Confluent became the ‘central nervous system’ for…
- Airtable’s AI Reboot with CEO Howie Liu · 1 h 7 min · Episode 259Can a no-code giant reinvent itself in the AI-native era? This week on Grit, Airtable CEO Howie Liu shares what it means to “refound” a company, how speed comes from tearing up…
- Inside the Mind of the World’s Most Optimistic CEO · 1 h 9 min · Episode 258For Bill McDermott, work has never been just a job. On this Labor Day rerun of Grit, first published Jan 9, 2023, the ServiceNow CEO reflects on what he learned from his…
- How Dropbox Beat Big Tech in the Cloud Wars · 1 h 32 min · Episode 257How do you win when your competitors are the biggest companies in the world? This week on Grit, Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston retraces the path from a bus-stop…
- Building High-Impact Sales Teams | Dan Lee and Nooks · 59 min · Episode 256Even with AI, sales still comes down to human connection. This week on Grit, Dan Lee shares how Nooks automates busywork like research and dialing for thousands of sales teams…
- Shishir Mehrotra on Building Tools Creators Love · 1 h 29 min · Episode 255What if your tools shared context like your team does? This week on Grit, Shishir Mehrotra shares how the Coda and Grammarly collaboration unlocks context as a “superpower,”…
- How Notion Reimagined Productivity Tools | Ivan Zhao · 1 h 28 min · Episode 254Ivan Zhao joins Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit to break down how the company’s minimalist design became a strategic edge in a world overwhelmed by bloated software. He shares why the…
- The Travel Giant Built on Billions of Reviews | Steve Kaufer on TripAdvisor · 1 h 12 min · Episode 253How did Tripadvisor become every traveler’s starting point? Steve Kaufer joins Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit to break down how Tripadvisor became the internet’s trusted travel…
- The Expert Network Behind Handshake AI’s Model Training w/ Garrett Lord & Mamoon Hamid · 1 h 2 min · Episode 252Guests: Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO of Handshake; and Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins. Handshake set out to democratize career opportunity. In the process, it…
- How Plaid Turned a Failed $5.3B Deal with Visa into Momentum | Zach Perret (Plaid) · 1 h 4 min · Episode 251Zach Perret saw a fintech explosion coming—and built the rails before it arrived. On this week’s Grit, the Plaid co-founder and CEO retraces his path from building tools for…
- Episode 250: AI Special Featuring Sierra, Harvey, Windsurf & More · 54 min · Episode 250Six leaders from across tech — from SaaS and semis to law and logistics — come together for our 250th episode milestone in this very special AI recap, where we unpack how new…
- How Imprint Is Reinventing Credit Cards for Modern Brands | Daragh Murphy · 56 min · Episode 249Daragh Murphy is giving brands their own credit-card platform—no legacy bank required. On this week’s Grit, the Imprint co-founder and CEO traces the leap from being a junior…
- GitLab’s CEO on Why the Next Great Developer Might Not Write Code | Bill Staples · 1 h 5 min · Episode 248Bill Staples has spent 30 years redefining how the world writes, ships, and secures code. On this week’s Grit, the GitLab CEO shares what it takes to lead a public, all-remote…
