Guest: Taylor Francis, co-founder of Watershed

One day when he was 13, Taylor Francis walked out of the movie theater, and he was pissed off. He had just seen Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth and internalized a “generational call to arms, that my parents had screwed our generation” by causing the climate crisis, he says. 14 years later, he was working at Stripe and felt another call to arms: The 2020s would be a crucial decade for slashing carbon emissions and combating global warming. So, he and his co-founders Avi Itskovich and Christian Anderson all left Stripe to start Watershed, which helps companies measure and reduce their emissions.

In this episode, Taylor and Joubin discuss Patrick Collison, Dan Miller-Smith, hiring challenges, Jonathan Neman, “golden age syndrome,” John Doerr and Mike Moritz, the Climate Reality Project, steady partnerships, DRI cultures, shared context, social distancing, information sprawl, and the founders’ “woe is me” narrative.

Chapters:

• (01:02) - Magnetic missions
• (06:40) - How enterprise sustainability works
• (08:40) - Watershed’s first client, Sweetgreen
• (11:04) - Reflecting on the early days
• (16:36) - Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth
• (18:53) - Mobilizing teenagers
• (22:16) - The origins of Watershed
• (27:04) - Leaving Stripe and raising money
• (31:41) - Interchangeable co-founders
• (33:33) - The ground truth
• (35:52) - The Dunbar Number
• (38:49) - Watershed’s operating principles
• (42:23) - Intensity, priorities, and sacrifice
• (48:04) - Moving faster
• (50:53) - Sustainability is a part of business
• (52:48) - The topology of emissions
• (58:35) - Who Watershed is hiring

Links:

• Connect with Taylor
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guests: Victor Riparbelli, CEO and co-founder of Synthesia; and Josh Coyne, partner at Kleiner Perkins

When Victor Riparbelli wants to learn something, he’ll start with a YouTube video or a podcast: “I maybe buy the book on Amazon as like the fifth step,” the Synthesia CEO says. His company is trying to change the text-first (or text-only) way information is conveyed at work, making AI avatar-narrated videos to replace documents like customer profiles and HR manuals. Victor says that as the technology improves over many years, it could replace text entirely. “I think for most people, if they had a choice, they would probably prefer to watch video and listen to audio.”

In this episode, Victor, Josh, and Joubin discuss Seedcamp, Annie Case, Rubik’s Cubes, AI video dubbing, Instagram filters, emotive avatars, Ilya Fushman, Atlassian, Grammarly, the Gutenberg Parenthesis, European startups, email responsiveness, acqui-hires, and being “lonely at the top.”

Chapters:

• (01:33) - Loose screws
• (02:45) - How Victor and Josh met
• (04:35) - AI hype cycles
• (06:57) - What Synthesia does
• (08:22) - Copycats and competition
• (14:34) - Winner take all
• (16:38) - Synthesia’s origin story
• (21:36) - Category creation
• (23:41) - The next era of AI video
• (28:51) - The uncanny valley
• (30:07) - Watching videos at work
• (33:17) - Scaling video and audio content
• (37:45) - Emailing with Mark Cuban
• (45:15) - Battle scars
• (48:47) - Customer obsession
• (50:54) - Pressure to succeed
• (54:41) - Deep passion
• (57:16) - Who Synthesia is hiring

• Connect with Victor
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Josh
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Kat Cole, COO of Athletic Greens

You can’t make smart decisions if you don’t know the truth — the “true truth,” as Athletic Greens COO Kat Cole puts it. “As you get bigger and you have success, innovator’s dilemma, you end up talking to yourself instead of really being rooted in what’s going on.” That’s why she has embraced the anxiety of the unknown, channeling what she doesn’t know about the market into productive questions for her team and her customers. Anxiety can be harmful, she concedes, but “there’s a healthy version of believing you never really know what’s going on, and you never really know the true truth, because things change so quickly.”

In this episode, Kat and Joubin discuss Huberman Lab, ultra-endurance athletes, Chris Ashenden, founder-owned businesses, “fancy jobs,” international trips, unplanned succession, private equity, the Atkins diet, inheriting a bad situation, omni-channel marketing, working with franchisees, fully remote companies, “if not for...,” and why Athletic Greens has only one SKU.

Chapters:

• (01:04) - Podcast superfans
• (06:54) - AG1 and Kat’s professional journey
• (11:14) - Her “Jerry Springer childhood”
• (14:31) - Learning, moving, thriving
• (16:18) - The Hooters business school
• (24:05) - Leaving Hooters and joining Rourke Capital
• (28:46) - Cinnabon’s dark years
• (35:55) - The three questions
• (41:11) - MiniBons
• (45:37) - Anxiety and uncertainty
• (48:40) - The wad of paper story
• (50:26) - Favorite interview questions
• (54:49) - The temptation to do more

• Connect with Kat
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm