Rob Henderson: An Internet Academic
North Star Podcast
Rob Henderson is one of my favorite up-and-coming writers. I like him because he's one of those people who doesn't fit into a category. He's a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, but I met him in a book club about technological stagnation. He's spent years in the academy, first at Yale and now at Cambridge, but most of his influence comes from his online writing. Most of all, he's interested in human nature. In particular, psychology, status, and social class.
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Chrisman Frank and Ana Lorena Fabrega: How Childhood Education Will Change
North Star Podcast
This week, I have two guests. Both are affiliated with Synthesis, a new kind of online school where kids learn through games and simulations. One is Chrisman Frank, the CEO of Synthesis. The other is Ana Lorena Fabrega, who is their Chief Evangelist.
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Ash Fontana: Building Artificial Intelligence
North Star Podcast
Ash Fontana is an entrepreneur, investor, and author. As an entrepreneur, he was only of the early employees at an online investing platform called AngelList. From there, he became the Managing Director at Zetta, the first investment fund focused on artificial intelligence. Now, he's the author of the AI-First Company.
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Li Jin: Creating the Creator Economy
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Li Jin, the founder and managing partner at an early-stage venture capital firm called Atelier.
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Zena Hitz: Liberal Arts Thinking
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Zena Hitz, a tutor at St John’s and the author of an excellent book called Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Her book explores the meaning and the value of learning for its own sake, through images and stories of bookworms, philosophers, scientists, and other learners, both fictional and historical.
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Tiago Forte and Will Mannon: Building Cohort-Based Courses
North Star Podcast
I have two guests today: Tiago Forte and Will Mannon.
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Gagan Biyani: Building Silicon Valley Startups
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Gagan Biyani, the current CEO of an education startup that helps teachers run Cohort-Based Courses on the Internet and has students from around the world. Gagan also founded a multi-billion dollar online education platform called Udemy. Afterward, he founded Sprig, a food delivery platform that grew to a nine-digit valuation but eventually failed. So today, he has the distinct pleasure of being both the founder of a unicorn and the founder of a massive failure.
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Trevor Bauer: Playing Professional Baseball
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Trevor Bauer, who is arguably the very best pitcher in Major League Baseball. I wanted to interview Trevor not only because he's an excellent pitcher, but because he takes a radical approach to the game. He's a physicist and a scientist. A scholar and an entrepreneur. And you don't find that combination very often.
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Nik Sharma: Building DTC Companies
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Nik Sharma, the founder of Sharma Brands and an advisor to companies like Judy and Cha Cha Matcha. Nik is one of my very best friends, and my go-to person for all things commerce. Since we first met, we've spent hours exploring the future of marketing and commerce together, and recorded this podcast to give you a window into what our conversations are like.
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Kevin Kelly: Seeing the Future
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Kevin Kelly, who co-founded Wired Magazine in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for the first seven years. As one of the most important futurists of our generation, he's published a number of books including The Inevitable, What Technology Wants, and New Rules for the New Economy which is my favorite one. Coolest of all, he's also a founding member of the board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit devoted to encouraging long-term thinking.
info_outlineMy guest today is Gagan Biyani, the current CEO of an education startup (where I’m both an investor and an advisor) that helps teachers run Cohort-Based Courses on the Internet and has students from around the world. Gagan also founded a multi-billion dollar online education platform called Udemy. Afterward, he founded Sprig, a food delivery platform that grew to a nine-digit valuation but eventually failed. So today, he has the distinct pleasure of being both the founder of a unicorn and the founder of a massive failure.
In this conversation, we talk about what he’s learned playing the Silicon Valley startup game. Then, we talk about our visions for the future of the online education industry, and how he's learned so much about cooking and restaurant operations. Please enjoy my conversation with Gagan Biyani.
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Show Notes
2:11 - How Gagan comes up with and develops his startup ideas.
7:38 - Why Gagan believes that the market is the best thing we have, but that it is still deeply random and flawed.
10:14 - The lessons we should be learning from Silicon Valley and what people in Silicon Valley need to learn themselves.
14:51 - The dogma and necessities of startups that Gagan has seen in Silicon Valley that are proven to be untrue.
21:17 - How the duality of total rationalization and going with your guy fits together.
25:18 - How the "soul" plays into optimizing our lives and why Gagan sees the future of human connection.
30:50 - What inspired Gagan to become fascinated and so knowledgeable about food.
35:58 - What changes when making food at scale and why recipes don't multiply easily.
43:01 - What Gagan looks for in determining whether a restaurant is worth going to.
47:41 - How lifelong learning changes the way you see the world.
52:22 - Why the way a company does one thing will show you how it does everything.
56:17 - Why knowledge should be something that is shared, not something that pushes people away.
1:02:54 - How the classical cohort-based learning model has evolved on the internet.
1:09:35 - How colleges and traditional institutions are adapting to the new learning paradigm.
1:11:03 - What Gagan envisions in an ideal future-thinking educational company.
1:22:45 - How cohort-based courses can be improved and where Gagan saw these flaws in his own and in other courses.
1:26:17 - What in Gagan's early life made him so driven and motivated to do what he wanted to do.
1:36:51 - Gagan's trip to the Amazon, and what he learned from the indigenous tribes that he visited.
1:43:01 - The infantilization of different ways of life, and why it is a more ethically dense topic than people realize.