Newcomer, the Podcast

I’m pleased to announce that I’m introducing a new podcast and starting a YouTube channel. I’m calling it “Newcomer” — like this newsletter.

What can I say? It’s a good name.

The show kicks off tomorrow with an interview with LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman.

Hoffman just stepped off OpenAI’s board of directors. We talk about that decision, AI sentience, the PayPal mafia, cloud compute spending, Joe Biden’s presidency, and much more. I think you’ll enjoy the episode.

For the new show, I’ve got interviews lined up with investor and former top Tesla and Lyft executive Jon McNeill and with Lightspeed Venture Partners founder and managing director Ravi Mhatre.

I’m also going to publish some of the conversations from the Cerebral Valley AI Summit on the podcast feed and YouTube channel.

In that vein, I’m happy to announce that Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, and Amjad Masad, the CEO of Replit, are scheduled to sit down with me together at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit on March 30. (Founders and CEOs can still apply this week to attend the one-day conference in Hayes Valley. We’ve been overwhelmed with investor interest to attend.)

Newcomer, the weekly podcast, will post on Tuesdays. I’ll send it to newsletter subscribers and publish it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Email me with guest ideas.

I’ll publish summaries of the episodes here in the newsletter. Over time, I might add bonus sections for paying Newcomer subscribers.

With this podcast, I’m going solo, interviewing top investors and founders. I’m bringing my sensibility as someone who understands the inside-story of Silicon Valley but who is happy to poke and prod as to why the tech world operates like it does.

I want to thank automated security and compliance platform Vanta for being the launch sponsor for the Newcomer podcast. You may remember Vanta CEO Christina Cacioppo from her appearance on the second episode of my old podcast Dead Cat. She’s been an early believer in my audio efforts! Excited to have Vanta on board.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out.

For fans of my old podcast Dead Cat, give the new podcast a try. It will be arriving via the same podcast feed. The Newcomer podcast shouldn’t be so much a revolution as an evolution. Yes, my former co-host Tom Dotan is off skewering Marc Benioff for the Wall Street Journal. I’m on my own. It will give me more time to ask the hard questions and listen to the guests’ replies. I’m going to try to talk about the media less and the business of tech more. But it will be the same probing podcast that you’ve come to love.

To get new episodes, subscribe to this newsletter, sign up to receive the podcast on Apple, and subscribe to the Newcomer YouTube channel. I’d definitely appreciate some positive reviews as I get this thing going. Like, comment, subscribe, and all that.

See you in your feeds tomorrow!