In this episode of the podcast, General Atlantic Co-President, Managing Director and Chairman of the Global Technology Group Anton Levy sits down with Caryn Seidman-Becker, Chairman and CEO of CLEAR, a leading biometrics company that streamlines authentication and security as it strives to provide a safe, secure and frictionless way for people to live, work and travel, including solutions for airports, sports stadiums and anywhere else credentials need to be verified. They discuss Caryn’s first job on Wall Street working in risk arbitrage; her decision to start her own investment firm named Arience Capital; discovering Verified Identity Pass and buying the company at a bankruptcy sale; working alongside co-founder Ken Cornick and rebranding the company to CLEAR; Caryn’s personal goal to make flying safer and more efficient in a post-9/11 world; the importance of the customer experience and responding to constructive criticism; how one out of every ten US jobs has a travel-related association; why CLEAR’s ticker symbol is “YOU”; experiences of needing multiple forms of identification and finding a solution that is more productive; destigmatizing the word ‘biometrics’; launching solutions beyond CLEAR access at airports, including Health Pass, which was created during the pandemic; examples of Powered by CLEAR experiences, including frictionless verification at the Raiders’ stadium to help fans order a beer and a partnership with Avis to expedite the car rental check-in process; the Home to Gate app that calculates traffic to the airport and time to walk from the CLEAR line to your gate; why she believes digital trust online is the next great frontier; the launch of Reserve powered by CLEAR to make a reservation for your spot in the CLEAR line at the airport; CLEAR’s IPO listing and commemorating the occasion with a company-wide volunteering day; Caryn’s vision for the company in the next five to ten years; sharing her experience with other founders as a trailblazing female founder bringing her company from inception to IPO; operating during the pandemic and keeping the company connected; Caryn’s best travel tips; the power of partnership; CLEAR’s core value of being indefatigable; and other topics. 

In this episode of the podcast, BeyondNetZero Managing Director Eli Aheto sits down with Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar, the Co-Founders of Sun King, one of the largest providers of solar energy products for off-grid homes in Africa and Asia, to discuss providing access to sustainable and affordable solar power for nearly 82 million people across 40 countries to date. They discuss how they bonded at the University of Illinois over a shared desire to use engineering to solve the world’s “existential problems”; their unique experiences traveling to India and other parts of the developing world, where they witnessed the needs of those living off the electric grid; working on the product throughout their undergraduate years in between classes; sleeping on friends’ couches while getting the product off the ground and navigating the difficulties securing fundraising at a time when ESG impact funds were few and far between; how Anish successfully pitched ZS Associates Co-Founder Prabha Sinha at a party on becoming an angel investor in Sun King; the decline in the cost of solar in the years following Sun King’s founding and its impact on democratizing access to clean energy solutions for consumers; the realization that retail was not a best environment for selling Sun King products and how they created a word-of-mouth network for direct-to-consumer sales to grow the business; Sun King’s impact on reducing emissions and how its products have enabled many communities in developing countries leapfrog the electrical grid entirely; the importance of pay-as-you-go financing and how they worked to minimize the problem of affordability by allowing users to pay down their solar assets incrementally over time; the potential future of Sun King and plans to build larger energy systems that can power a broader range of appliances; the additional steps they believe are needed to support people without consistent access to energy in a sustainable way; lessons learned from their collective journey and partnership, and how they prefer to be in the “mode of being students” and constantly learning; and other topics.

General Atlantic Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences sits down with Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore, a leading biotechnology company aiming to develop a new generation of transformative medicines. They discuss the personal experiences that led Bahija to devote her career to science; the enduring source of inspiration that her mother provides; the power of research and its ability to change lives; the critical importance of diversity in STEM and how Bahjia’s role has allowed her to pave a path for other women in the industry; her view that innovation is rooted in diversity of thought and why diverse leadership is an essential ingredient of commercial successful; the challenges associated with ‘pipeline leakage,’ revealing how diverse talent can get lost in an organization; Immunocore’s groundbreaking development of a novel class of T-cell receptor immunotherapies and the company’s milestone FDA approval of Kimmitrak, the first and only FDA-approved therapy to treat an aggressive form of eye cancer; the difficult yet necessary decisions Bahija had to make when she began her role as CEO just before the pandemic hit; Immunocore’s TCR technology and how it is being explored as an approach to other chronic viral infections; the U.S. government’s active role in funding research; how the pursuit of treatments to chronic viral infections is attractive to scientists throughout the world, including those who come to the U.S. to work on potentially transformative projects; the ways in which COVID-19 posed unique challenges to leadership; and other topics.

Global Head of New Investment Sourcing and Co-Head of Emerging Growth Alex Crisses sits down with Raj Bhargava, co-founder and CEO of JumpCloud, a leading cloud-based, Directory-as-a-Service® company. They discuss Raj’s love of the entrepreneurial journey; hard-won lessons about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, including the vital importance of relationships and the role of focused attention and time management; what it means to have a true partnership with investors; the origins of JumpCloud and building a directory service at a time when the market of solutions in the category had not kept pace with technological innovation taking place elsewhere; why JumpCloud uses an innovation model called product-led growth and how that has enabled the company to amass a number of patents; the unprecedented transformation that has swept through the IT space over the last decade-plus; the ways in which the pandemic and hybrid work environments accelerated the adoption of remote, cloud-based IT solutions; the shift in businesses thinking about IT as a competitive advantage; the immediate, day-to-day benefits that JumpCloud delivers to employees; the significance of zero-trust principles; and other topics.

General Atlantic Managing Director and Global Head of Healthcare Robb Vorhoff sits down with Mike Pykosz, CEO and Co-Founder of Oak Street Health, a network of value-based primary care centers for adults on Medicare and the only primary care provider to carry the AARP name. They discuss Mike’s journey into the world of entrepreneurship after attending law school and spending six years in BCG’s healthcare group advising payers; his decision to found the company alongside Geoff Price and Griffin Myers, MD, after witnessing the shortcomings of the traditional fee-for-service model; the day-to-day challenges of Oak Street Health’s early days, dealing with the practicalities of founding a business including setting up a Chase business checking account; the ever-changing nature of Mike’s role at the company and the new challenges brought on by the business scaling and eventually going public; the impact of COVID on Oak Street Health, and how the company adapted quickly to embrace the new needs of customers with telehealth and vaccine centers; merits and growth of the value-based care model of healthcare, and why Oak Street and other providers have been able to offer Americans better health outcomes for less; reasons behind the healthcare industry’s slow adoption of technology; his views on how to select the right investment partner for your business that is aligned with your vision; and other topics.     

Martín Escobari sits down with Guilherme Benchimol, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at XP Inc., a leading, technology-driven financial services platform and a trusted provider of low-fee financial products and services in Brazil. They discuss Guilherme’s decision at twenty-four to hang out his own shingle after being let go from a job at a brokerage firm; the early days of XP inside a 270-square foot room, and the ‘aha’ moment about financial education that led to the company’s first wave of loyal customers; the ongoing importance of live events to XP’s customer engagement, based on lessons learned from US brokerage firm Charles Schwab; the three values that define XP’s meritocratic culture, including having an entrepreneurial spirit, and the creative approach that XP takes to employee feedback; Guilherme’s transition out of the CEO role, and the theory that got him thinking about making a change; the differences between the business cultures in Latin America and the U.S., including views about making mistakes; the importance of finding an investment partner who is willing to get in the trenches; and other topics. 

General Atlantic’s Anish Batlaw, Managing Director and leader of Human Capital strategies to support the firm’s portfolio, sits down with Bob Bennett, Founder & CEO of EngageSmart, a leading provider of vertically tailored customer engagement software and integrated payments solutions. They discuss Bob’s early entrepreneurial experiences, working at a campground marina in Maine as a teenager; Bob’s first company, MicroFridge, and key lessons he learned as a young founder; the humble beginnings that paved the way to where EngageSmart is today; the company’s customer focused product leadership; and Bob’s unique approach to leadership and cultivating a collaborative culture that has helped him scale EngageSmart to north of 900 employees.

In the first episode of the podcast, Bill Ford sits down with Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company at the forefront of creating and building the future of space transportation and infrastructure for low-Earth orbit commercialization. They discuss Tom’s early fascination with aerospace engineering, including stealthy afternoon trips to walk through out-of-commission planes parked at an Air Force Base near his childhood home; Tom’s journey through the aerospace industry, from Northrop Grumman to Aerion to Sierra Space; the next-generation technology that the Sierra Space team is building, including the DreamChaser, the world’s only runway-landing spaceplane for civil & commercial use, and the Orbital Reef, the first commercially owned and operated space station; a partnership with Blue Origin to chart a new future for the International Space Station in a project for NASA; why the environmental conditions in space allow for pioneering scientific and medical research as well as disruptive innovations in telecoms, energy and other industries; lessons in leadership, such as the vital role of empathy in fostering successful collaboration; the mission-driven mindset that distinguishes the next generation of employees; and other topics.