Best Andrew Xu Podcasts (2025)

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Figma CEO Dylan Field: How AI Will Transform Design 40:36

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7m ago40:36

40:36

Dylan Field on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Dylan Field co-founded Figma to bring the design process online and make it multiplayer. From a meme maker built on WebGL to a design platform powering millions, Figma’s journey hit a major milestone with its IPO last week.In this conversation, Dylan shares the early challenges of…

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Bret Devereaux on the Norms of the US Military 1:25:46

6d ago1:25:46

1:25:46

Bret Devereaux is a military historian and a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He writes the blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry," which covers Roman history, the nature of power and violence in society, and the best sci-fi/fantasy stories. In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about how George Wash…

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The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street 46:15

7d ago46:15

46:15

Brothers Chaz and Arnie Englander started Model ML after building and selling two YC companies. What began as a tool to help them analyze deals has grown into a full AI-powered workspace purpose-built for financial services, empowering firms to create automations and workflows that reflect exactly how their teams operate. And it's already being use…

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The Future of Everything: "The Future of Motivation" 34:02

8d ago34:02

34:02

This week on If/Then, we’re sharing an episode of The Future of Everything, a podcast hosted by Stanford School of Engineering professor and friend of the show Russ Altman. Everyone has goals — some are monumental, others modest — but every goal matters. Szu-chi Huang, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, is …

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Scaling and the Road to Human-Level AI | Anthropic Co-founder Jared Kaplan 40:47

9d ago40:47

40:47

Jared Kaplan on June 16th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Jared Kaplan started out as a theoretical physicist chasing questions about the universe. Then he helped uncover one of AI’s most surprising truths: that intelligence scales in a predictable, almost physical way.That insight became foundational to the modern era of large language…

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Brand Design Tips From Linear Founder Karri Saarinen 43:41

13d ago43:41

43:41

For this episode of Design Review, YC’s Aaron Epstein is joined by Karri Saarinen, co-founder & CEO of Linear, one of the top designer-founders working today. Together, they'll review several sites from the YC community with an eye for how to build and maintain a high-quality brand. Thank you to these companies for volunteering to have their sites …

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Chelsea Finn: Building Robots That Can Do Anything 44:52

16d ago44:52

44:52

Chelsea Finn on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.From MIT through her PhD at Berkeley, where she pioneered meta‑learning methods, and Google Brain, Chelsea Finn has built her career around teaching machines how to learn. Now an Assistant Professor at Stanford and co‑founder of Physical Intelligence, she’s using that foundation …

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Replit CEO Amjad Masad: Coding Agents, Autonomy, and the Future of Work 35:50

16d ago35:50

35:50

Amjad Masad started Replit to make programming accessible to anyone, anywhere. What began as a tool for learning to code has grown into a platform pushing the limits of AI-assisted software creation and recently surpassed $100M in ARR.On The Breakdown with Tom and Dave, Amjad shares the journey from his early days in Jordan, working on open-source …

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Karin Tamerius on Why Our Brains Struggle with Modern Politics 1:09:19

23d ago1:09:19

1:09:19

Karin Tamerius is a psychiatrist, a political psychologist, and the founder of Smart Politics. She writes the Substack "The Smart Politics Way," which has quietly become one of the most thoughtful guides to how we talk about—and think about—politics. The truth is, we’re living in a time where the news cycle is relentless. It’s not just a daily onsl…

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John Jumper: AlphaFold and the Future of Science 27:12

23d ago27:12

27:12

John Jumper on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco. John Jumper is a physicist-turned-computational biologist who led DeepMind’s AlphaFold team—and earned the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving protein folding, a decades-old scientific challenge. In this talk, he shares how a deep learning breakthrough at CASP14 turned into A…

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Aravind Srinivas: The Race to Build the AI Browser of the Future 43:12

27d ago43:12

43:12

Aravind Srinivas on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Aravind Srinivas started Perplexity with one goal: to rethink how we search, browse, and interact with information online. In this conversation, he shares the journey from hacking together a natural-language-to-SQL search tool to building a product used by millions around the w…

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Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI 43:57

28d ago43:57

43:57

Andrew Ng on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Andrew Ng has helped shape some of the most influential movements in modern AI—from online education to deep learning to AI entrepreneurship. In this talk, he shares what he’s learning now: why execution speed matters more than ever, how agentic workflows are changing what startups ca…

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Think Fast, Talk Smart: "Ambiguity to Action: Tensions and Trade-Offs of Leadership and Communication" 23:45

29d ago23:45

23:45

This week on If/Then, we’re sharing an episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, a podcast hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer and friend of the show, Matt Abrahams. How do you communicate with others when you’re confused yourself? For fellow GSB lecturer Rob Siegel, leadership isn’t about avoiding uncertainty: it’s about embracing the…

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Mónica Guzmán on Navigating Difficult Political Disagreements 1:05:34

1M ago1:05:34

1:05:34

Mónica Guzmán is the author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. She is also host of the podcast "A Braver Way," and an advisor for Public Practice at Braver Angels. Her beat is bridging political divides, and how to model good-faith political disagreements across the aisle. I…

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François Chollet: The ARC Prize & How We Get to AGI 34:47

1M ago34:47

34:47

François Chollet on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco. François Chollet is a leading voice in AI. He's the creator of the Keras library, author of Deep Learning with Python, and the founder of the ARC Prize, a global competition aimed at measuring true general intelligence. He's spent years thinking deeply about what intelligence …

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Fei-Fei Li: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI 44:21

1M ago44:21

44:21

A fireside with Dr. Fei-Fei Li on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Dr. Fei-Fei Li is often called the godmother of AI—and for good reason. Before the world had AI as we know it, she was helping build the foundation.In this fireside, she recounts the creation of ImageNet, a project that helped ignite the deep learning revolution b…

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Legendary Consumer VC Predicts The Future Of AI Products 35:46

1M ago35:46

35:46

Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, has backed some of the most iconic consumer brands of the past two decades — from Warby Parker to Chime to Dollar Shave Club. In this conversation with Garry, she shares how great products (not marketing tricks) still win, why AI is unlocking a new kind of emotional relationship between consumers and t…

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#200 - Into the Unknown & Doing the Work with Ada Tseng (Journalist & Author) 1:38:50

1M ago1:38:50

1:38:50

What does it take to make a dream, reality? Any goal, any vision can be daunting when you're at the very beginning. Uneducated, inexperienced, overwhelmed...it's hard to identify or even decide what's the best place to start. And even when you do decide, getting the ball rolling and finally taking the proverbial leap is its own major feat. In one o…

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Satya Nadella: Microsoft's AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs 40:29

1M ago40:29

40:29

A fireside with Satya Nadella on June 17, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Satya Nadella started at Microsoft in 1992 as an engineer. Three decades later, he’s now Chairman & CEO, navigating the company through one of the most profound technological shifts yet: the rise of AI.In this conversation, he shares how Microsoft is thinking about…

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Culture Still Eats Strategy For Breakfast 29:54

1M ago29:54

29:54

Do you stick to the rules or do you roll through stop signs? Whether you’re “tight” or “loose” — how closely you adhere to social norms — has major implications for your life at home and at work. “To be effective, we want to be ambidextrous,” says Michele Gelfand, the John H. Scully Professor in Cross-Cultural Management and Professor of Organizati…

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Sam Altman: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT's Origins, and Building AI Hardware 42:44

2M ago42:44

42:44

A fireside with Sam Altman at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Sam Altman grew up obsessed with technology, broke into the Stanford mainframe as a kid, and dropped out to start his first company before turning 20.In this conversation, he traces the path from early startup struggles to building OpenAI—sharing what he’s learned about ambition, the …

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Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful 49:40

2M ago49:40

49:40

A fireside with Elon Musk at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Before rockets and robots, Elon Musk was drilling holes through his office floor to borrow internet. In this candid talk, he walks through the early days of Zip2, the Falcon 1 launches that nearly ended SpaceX, and the “miracle” of Tesla surviving 2008. He shares the thinking that guid…

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Stephanie Murray on Why Low Birthrates Matter 1:19:42

2M ago1:19:42

1:19:42

Stephanie Murray is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and the author behind the Substack "Family Stuff." Her beat involves covering many of the intricacies and data points behind parenting and child-rearing, particularly the decline in birthrates throughout much of the developed world. In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about th…

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Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again) 39:31

2M ago39:31

39:31

Andrej Karpathy's keynote at AI Startup School in San Francisco.Drawing on his work at Stanford, OpenAI, and Tesla, Andrej sees a shift underway. Software is changing, again. We’ve entered the era of “Software 3.0,” where natural language becomes the new programming interface and models do the rest.He explores what this shift means for developers, …

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Cursor CEO: Going Beyond Code, Superintelligent AI Agents And Why Taste Still Matters 37:28

2M ago37:28

37:28

Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, joins Garry to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups of all time—and why he's betting on a future beyond code. He walks through the early insights that led his team to leave a promising AI-powered CAD project and instead chase a bigger dream: reinventing h…

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The AI Prescription for Healthcare 27:40

2M ago27:40

27:40

AI has the potential to reshape medicine. But translating its promise into solutions for providers and patients is a high-stakes challenge. “There’s a lot more problems than solutions available,” says Mohsen Bayati, the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Professor of Operations, Information & Technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “So it’s ripe f…

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Fusion Energy Is Tech's Next Big Unlock 8:07

2M ago8:07

8:07

Fusion may still sound like science fiction— but it might not be for much longer. With AI pushing demand for clean power to new highs, a breakthrough may finally be close. For Decoded, YC General Partner Gustaf Alstromer traces the history of fusion, the physics behind it, and the engineering challenges that stalled it for nearly a century. He also…

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Charlotte Swasey on How Voters Perceive the Democrats 1:11:01

2M ago1:11:01

1:11:01

Charlotte Swasey is the writer behind the Substack "Medium Data," which examines the intricacies of polling and political analysis to generate upcoming election forecasts and predictions for Democratic politicians. In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about the Senate forecast for the 2026 Elections, the gap between the perception and …

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#199 - Following Your North Star with Director Andrew Ahn 1:27:20

2M ago1:27:20

1:27:20

We show up to work, to relationships, to passion projects and hobbies in various phases of our lives and do the best we can, never knowing if and how we may be changing the world around us. For director Andrew Ahn, he's never endeavored to change minds or hearts doing what he loves most (and is also really good at), which is telling funny, vulnerab…

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Designing the AI Organization 26:35

2M ago26:35

26:35

“The way I think about trying to anticipate and shape the AI future requires us to take a step back and ask ourselves first, ‘What does this technology do? What does it enable?’” reflects Amir Goldberg, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “That’s very different from asking ourselves, ‘How is the technolog…

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AI Apps Are Broken — Here's How To Fix Them 30:07

3M ago30:07

30:07

In this episode of The Breakdown, Tom and Dave are joined by fellow YC General Partner Pete Koomen to lay out a new vision for how AI should actually work: not as a chatbot bolted onto legacy software, but as a customizable tool that helps people offload the work they don't want to do. From editable system prompts to agents that act more like colla…

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Dylan Matthews on Negativity Bias and the Cost of Foreign Aid Cuts 54:18

3M ago54:18

54:18

Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent at Vox and one of the key writers behind Future Perfect, a section of the site dedicated to exploring ways to make the world better through evidence, reason, and moral philosophy. If you look at his body of work, you’ll find that he’s written about everything from AI risk to tax policy to foreign aid spendin…

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Listener Favorites: Paul Millerd | The Pathless vs Default Path 1:05:17

3M ago1:05:17

1:05:17

Join us for a compelling conversation with Paul Millerd, author of The Pathless Path. In this episode, Paul shares his insights on finding yourself in the wrong life and the real work of figuring out how to live. Discover his journey through experiments, travels, and lessons learned, as he pieces together a set of principles to guide him from unful…

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Matthew Adelstein on Theism, Utilitarianism, and Animal Welfare 1:19:52

3M ago1:19:52

1:19:52

Matthew Adelstein writes the Substack "Bentham's Newsletter" under the alias "Bentham's Bulldog." He is the rare thinker who will, in one breath, defend a rigorous logical case for the existence of God, and in the next insist that we should worry more about shrimp than about most public-policy debates. His outlook isn’t contrarian for sport; it’s t…

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What Happened to the Middle? 30:07

3M ago30:07

30:07

Neil Malhotra, the Edith M. Cornell professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, aims to identify the nature of our tumultuous political moment in his work. In this episode, Malhotra explores rising distrust, shifting political identities, and what these changes mean for individuals — and businesses. Plus, the billion-dol…

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How AI Coding Agents Will Change Your Job 19:11

3M ago19:11

19:11

Coding agents are no longer a distant idea—they're already starting to reshape how we work. YC's Tom Blomfield and David Lieb discuss how AI coding tools are transforming software development, why small, high-agency teams will be able to do what once took armies of engineers, and why there's never been a better time to start something new. They exp…

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Katherine Dee on the Nature of Internet Subcultures 58:23

3M ago58:23

58:23

Katherine Dee is an internet culture reporter who writes the Substack "default.blog," which observes the quirks and tendencies of various subcultures on social media. In this episode, I got a chance to talk with her about her history covering different facets of the internet, how she approaches AI, and the different incentives of online interaction…

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Jessica Grose on Technology and Post-Pandemic Divides 1:15:54

3M ago1:15:54

1:15:54

Jessica Grose is an opinion writer for The New York Times. What I admire about Jessica's writing is that she doesn’t just cover politics as a horse race or culture as a meme war; she zooms into the kitchen tables, classrooms, and waiting rooms where policy choices land on real bodies. Her beat is parenthood and education, faith and loneliness, COV…

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Small Business, Big Impact 25:36

3M ago25:36

25:36

Sridhar Narayanan, a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, studies how small businesses operate and why they’re so important, especially in the developing world. “Modernizing small businesses will have a profound impact on economies worldwide in many ways,” he says. In this episode of If/Then, Narayanan explains why so man…

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Listener Favorites: Arianna Warsaw | Navigating The Dynamics of Identity Change 1:00:52

3M ago1:00:52

1:00:52

Join us as we sit down with music industry insider, Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch. Discover her unique perspective on navigating identity change and get an insider's tour of the industry. From musician life to proper clapping etiquette, Arianna shares her knowledge and experiences. Don't miss this chance to gain a deeper understanding of the classical m…

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How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School 16:39

4M ago16:39

16:39

AI can't yet one-shot an entire product—but with the rise of vibe coding, it's getting close. YC's Tom Blomfield has spent the last month building side projects with tools like Claude Code, Windsurf, and Aqua, seeing just how far you can push modern LLMs. From writing full-stack apps to debugging with a single paste of an error message, AI is becom…

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Listener Favorites: Manisha Thakor | Money Zen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough 58:16

3M ago58:16

58:16

In the latest episode of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast titled 'Money Zen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough', we are joined by Manisha Thakor, a seasoned financial expert and the Founder of MoneyZen LLC. With over 25 years of experience in the financial industry, Manisha offers a fresh perspective on our relationship with money and success. Dra…

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Micah Sifry on Government Protest and American Authoritarianism 1:13:05

4M ago1:13:05

1:13:05

Micah Sifry is a writer and organizer behind the Substack "The Connector." He has decades of experience in covering how technology is changing politics, and how to participate productively in the political process. In this episode, I got a chance to talk with him about the history of mass protests in the US, the recent authoritarian cuts to governm…

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Listener Favorites: Aaron Dignan | How to Speed up The Organizational Decision Making Process 57:11

4M ago57:11

57:11

Aaron Dignan is using software to help scale new ways of working and expedite the decision making process of organizations. Discover the possibilities for transformation in the workplace and realize how we can use software like Murmur to revolutionize our slow and outdated systems. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

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How Zepto Became India’s Fastest Growing Startup 38:23

4M ago38:23

38:23

Imagine ordering groceries and having them show up at your doorstep in just 10 minutes. That’s the promise of Zepto, the fastest-growing e-commerce company in India. In this episode of How To Build The Future, Garry sits down with Aadit Palicha, the co-founder and CEO of Zepto, to discuss how they got started in a Whatsapp group, what it’s like goi…

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Noah Smith on the Crisis of Trump's Tariff Madness 57:27

4M ago57:27

57:27

Announcement: this podcast will be publishing episodes twice as often as before (so every single week on Thursdays) for the next several weeks at least, and hopefully for longer. Count yourself lucky in that regard :) Noah Smith is an economist who writes the Substack "Noahpinion" and co-hosts the podcast "Econ 102." He is known for his commentary …

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Could Financial Literacy Change the World? 27:40

4M ago27:40

27:40

Only a third of the global population is financially literate. Why? Because most of us don’t learn the basics of personal finance in school — or elsewhere. Treating financial literacy as an afterthought can have serious consequences, from personal calamities to economic crises, according to Annamaria Lusardi, a professor of finance and the director…

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Listener Favorites: Drew Plotkin | How to Use Tattoos to Rewrite Your Story and Reinvent Yourself 1:00:01

4M ago1:00:01

1:00:01

Drew Plotkin, tattoo artist and filmmaker, shares his journey of self-discovery through tattoos in this episode. He recounts his adventures, from death row to Hollywood, and uses his experiences to inspire listeners with his resilience and determination to live life on his own terms. Don't miss this raw and honest account of success, failure, and f…

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Listener Favorites: Gautam Mukunda | What Presidential Elections Can Teach us About Leadership 1:06:48

4M ago1:06:48

1:06:48

In this podcast episode, we sit down with Gautam Mukunda, a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership, to discuss what we can learn about leadership from presidential elections. Drawing on insights from his book 'Picking Presidents', which examines the qualities that make for successful leaders, Mukunda provides a…

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Listener Favorites: Jeremey Utley | How Having Lots of Ideas Leads to Creative Breakthroughs 57:10

4M ago57:10

57:10

If you want to be more innovative, you need to start by changing the way you think about creativity. Good ideas aren't the result of pure wisdom, but rather the practice of innovation. Learn how to tap into surprising and valuable ideas on demand and fill the creative pipeline with breakthrough ideas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more…