“We will see strength in a few players that will ultimately prove out this technology and in consumer and urban environments specifically… some of these other semi-controlled environments are already ripe for disruption by autonomous technologies.” Join ⁠Leon Zhang⁠ and Javier Torres as they interview Scott Walbrun, Principal at BMW i Ventures. Together they explore broad trends in the future of mobility space such as autonomous vehicles and electrification as well as current sentiment in the investment landscape. Scott also goes deep into investments like Fox Robotics (warehouse automation) and Lilac (lithium extraction technology).

“There’s a fundamental lack of data and information at every level. Even the government doesn’t have access to reliable, real time information, especially in the used home space… you just kind of had to ask some friends and try to guesstimate what [prices] would be like.” Join Leon Zhang and Javier Torres in a conversation with Brynne McNulty Rojas, the first and only female founder and CEO of a LatAm unicorn, on how she built Habi. Brynne shares her journey of identifying a market gap and founding her innovative proptech company, including the inception, team building, and nuances of scaling across diverse Latin American cultures compared to the U.S. Listen in for her insights on emerging trends in proptech as well as her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“Data is food for AI and so are the queries for generative AI…How do we ask the right questions to the machine? How do we have the right data so the machine has all of the information we need, and not misinformation or missing information?”  Join Cynthia Zhou and Spandana Bhattacharya as they interview JoAnn Stonier, Mastercard Fellow of Data and AI, previously the Chief Data Officer at Mastercard. JoAnn shares her thoughts on the explosive growth of generative AI, how data plays a pivotal role, and what it means to use AI responsibly. Plus, her career journey is simply fascinating - tune into this episode to learn about how she went from law school student to becoming a leading expert on data and AI. 

“It was disheartening… but there was also a weird voice inside me that was kind of excited. We have our backs against the wall, we have a really hard problem, how are we going to figure it out?” Join Emma Robinson as she interviews Austin Link, the co-founder of Starfish Space, a startup working on the future of on-orbit servicing. Join us as we discuss the path of founding a deep tech startup from concept to early stages while highlighting the unique challenges they face compared to other industries. Also, learn about the major obstacle Starfish Space faced this summer and what it means to build a resilient community. And don't worry, no spoilers here – stay with us until the end to find out how this challenging experience has unfolded for Starfish Space.

“The hardest problem in education is the problem of transfer. ChatGPT gives us the ability to practice transfer in other ways… we start to be able to approach problems in different ways that build expertise or intuition faster.” Join Leon Zhang and Jordan Baker in a conversation with Christian Terwiesch, Professor at Wharton and chair of the Operations, Information, and Decisions department and Ethan Mollick, Associate Professor at Wharton. Together they explore the impact of ChatGPT in educational settings: how it can help students accelerate learning, but also situations where intuition is lost by “faking it”. Ethan and Christian also touch upon how the AI tool’s ability to increase variability makes it powerful, current flaws in the model, and how students can use ChatGPT to come up with and vet entrepreneurial ideas.

“[The hardest part of procurement at Zoox] is trying to convince [the major automotive companies] to give us their engineering resources on the promise that, one day, we are going to change their industry.” Join Emma Robinson and Leon Zhang in a conversation with Kit Cutler, Director of Procurement and Strategic Partnerships. Together they explore the challenges of building a supply chain for a company that is not only pioneering self-driving technology but is also reimagining the car itself. Kit discusses how he got major automotive companies to invest their time and resources in designing new car systems for a promising, albeit early-stage startup. Kit also sheds light on other aspects of procurement and draws comparisons to his previous role at Apple.  

“We saw a lot of our event creators, who were just doing real-life events, start to do more online events. So we very quickly pivoted to give them all the tools to do online events. Now we are seeing hybrid events, event creators who might be sitting in New York and used to just do a small, local event with 20-25 attendees every week, are now suddenly doing that in a hybrid format, where they still get 20-25 attendees in New York but they have 10-15 folks from London or 5-10 from Mexico City attending those events. I think that’s been good, our creators suddenly have realized they have a global footprint and they can choose to operate and the most successful ones do that pretty effectively” Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Javier Torres on Wharton Tech Toks as they talk to Vivek Sagi, Chief Technology Officer at Eventbrite. Listen in to learn more about Eventbrite’s innovative approach to event creation, how they are using machine learning to improve the creator and user experience, what headwinds and tailwinds the company is facing, and the launch of Eventbrite’s ad business. Vivek also sheds light on his career journey starting from enterprise software, RetailMeNot, to becoming an entrepreneur, to Amazon, and to his current role as CTO of Eventbrite. 

“9 out of 10 people that use our platform tell us that they come to get inspired. The majority of our users want to shop. So you have this wonderful intersection of inspiration and commerce on the platform. The magic of go-to-market strategy happens at the intersection of our advertising partners adding value to our users, who, in turn, help us fulfill our mission of bringing everyone the inspiration to go create the life they love.”  Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Javier Torres on Wharton Tech Toks as they talk to Bill Watkins, Chief Revenue Officer at Pinterest. Listen in to learn more about Pinterest’s full-funnel advertising solution backed by computer vision technologies and commitment to driving value for advertisers and users in automated ways. Bill also sheds light on his career journey starting from Yahoo to joining Pinterest as one of the first 200 employees and helping Pinterest IPO.

“It is a political cudgel that people try to say there is a seesaw between investor protection and capital formation and market efficiency... The US has 4.4% of the world's population, and over 60% of the world's capital was raised in the US. It's because we've pursued all of those objectives. ”  Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Jordan Baker as they talk to Jay Clayton, former Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020. Mr. Clayton is also a Senior Policy Advisor at Sullivan Cromwell LLP, Non-Executive Chair of Apollo Global Management, on the board of American Express, and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Wharton and Carey schools. Mr. Clayton describes how crypto technology can revolutionize the financial industry, especially in terms of efficiency. When it comes to the global future of crypto, Mr. Clayton likens it to the evolution of phones in that interoperability once seemed a far-off dream but now is ubiquitous. He also emphasizes that to gain regulatory acceptance, crypto must do the current regulatory job at least as well and that investor protection is not a tradeoff with efficiency and growth. 

“If you think about how we go through our day…It’s not natural for someone to stop and switch over to email, or try to find the 1-800 number. We want to use messaging, that’s just the way we communicate.” Join Spandana Bhattacharya and Cynthia Zhou on Wharton Tech Toks as they talk to Matt Idema, who was most recently VP of Business Messaging Group at Meta and was previously the Chief Operating Officer at WhatsApp. Matt is also a proud alumni and holds an MBA from the Wharton School.  In this episode, Matt covers how leaders at Meta find business models, why he believes messaging is the future for business and his career development philosophy. Tune into this episode if you’re interested in learning more about commerce enablement, how to find product-market-fit and how to have a twenty-year-and-counting successful career in technology.