Emil 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 of Defense for Research and Engineering opens up about what a real partnership demands from both sides.

He also shares how he's built three new entry points for defense tech companies, and why America's military is called the "Department of War" again.

Guest: Emil Michael, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

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Few 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 Taylor is now building AI agents at Sierra to redefine customer experience.

On Grit, he explains why “competitive intensity” is a core value at their fast-growing company and why he believes AI won’t lead to a world where people stop working.

Guest: Bret Taylor, co-founder of Sierra

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins:https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

What 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 Joubin Mirzadegan to explore AI driven cyber threats, strategic reinvention, and the discipline of evolving before the market forces you to.

“We’ve exceeded. Now, what do we do to protect individuals against the next wave of threats, which are plentiful?”

Guest: Marcin Kleczynski, CEO at Malwarebytes

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

Can 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 sustainably for companies like United Airlines and Porsche.

In this episode, Ping also breaks down the three constraints that shape automation in the real world: conversation complexity, infrastructure debt, and customer demographics.

Guest: Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

USDC 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 system after more than a decade of work.

He also shares why for him grit is about sustaining belief through deep uncertainty, even when Circle faced the threat of bankruptcy in 2019.

Guest: Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO at Circle

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins:https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

Glean 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. Here’s what stood out:

• “My mindset by default is that if you build something last year, that it's got to be obsolete. There has to be a new way to do that thing better today. If not, then it's just lack of imagination.”
• “I have no doubts that AI capabilities are just going to increase more and more over the next few years. But even more important is this concept of how much are we even leveraging what AI can do today? I would say that we've not even used 1% of current capabilities of these models”
• “If you're trying to be everything to everyone, then you just cannot compete with somebody who's focused on a smaller problem and going deep into that.”

You can also listen to Arvind’s earlier episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIH0Qp6d6bg&list=PLRiWZFltuYPF8A6UGm74K2q29UwU-Kk9k&index=96

Guest: Arvind Jain, founder and CEO, Glean

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins:https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

In 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)
Yamini Rangan (CEO of HubSpot)
Ben Chestnut (co-founder of Mailchimp)
Winston Weinberg (co-founder and CEO of Harvey)
Garrett Lord (co-founder of Handshake)
Aidan Gomez (co-founder and CEO of Cohere)
Michelle Zatlyn (co-founder of Cloudflare)
Evan Spiegel (co-founder and CEO of Snap)

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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

What 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 MongoDB gain visibility and leverage inside AI models.

On this episode of Grit, he explains why brand narrative has shifted away from content, and why Profound is scaling globally ahead of traditional SaaS timelines.

Guest: James Cadwallader, co-founder and CEO of Profound and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins

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​
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​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/