Chris Yeh's First Podcast

I met Ricardo Rocha by listening to social impact accelerator Uncharted's podcast.  When I heard Ricardo's story, I knew I needed to record a podcast with him, and Uncharted CEO Banks Benitez was kind enough to connect us.  At the beginning of the pandemic, Ricardo's organization, Bondadosa.org, was a small, 12-person non-profit that was delivering a couple hundred meals per month to low-income families.  Today, just a few months later, Bondadosa has over 60 employees, and has delivered over 250,000 meals. Ricardo and I discuss the journey that led him to Bondadosa, including what it was like to grow up as an undocumented immigrant, and the key relationship that turned his life around when he was a directionless and mediocre student, and the patient that convinced him to switch from going to medical school to become a doctor to being a social entrepreneur. Ricardo is an amazing person, and I know you'll enjoy hearing his story. Here is a short video that will help you picture Bondadosa: https

Lindsey Mead and I chat with Debbie Hochberg, who has been a loyal listener to this podcast series.  We discuss a fascinating "Sliding Doors" moment in her life, and how 9/11 changed the course of her career, encouraging her to focus on her passion for non-profits.

Welcome to the first post-reunion episode of the HBS Class of 2000 series.  People have enjoyed it so much that we are continuing the series indefinitely.  Since each HBS class has approximately 880 students, I figure we can keep going for another two decades! This week's guest is Dr. Nik Korgaonkar.  Lindsey Mead and I talk with Nik about why he interrupted medical school to go to HBS, and how the lessons he learned in business school are helpful to him.  Right before we recorded the episode, Dr. Nik operated on a lung cancer patient; what was once a death sentence is now an 80-90% chance at a cure. As usual, we spend a lot of time discussing favorite books, and Dr. Nik recommends The Power of One.

Professor Richard Tedlow returns to discuss the first living leader in our series on the Charismatic Leader, Elon Musk.  We discuss how essential Musk's charisma has been to the success of Tesla and SpaceX, debate the value and importance of SpaceX, and try to figure out how to reconcile the greatness of the entrepreneur with the unseemly and unnecessary behavior of the man. You can play the videogame Elon wrote as a 12-year-old here: https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

Acclaimed business historian and Harvard Business School Emeritus Professor Richard Tedlow joins me to discuss the life and career of Mary Kay Ash, one of the most famous women entrepreneurs of the 20th Century.  We discuss the Mary Kay's powerhouse charisma, and how it enabled her to build her eponymous business by enabling other women to become entrepreneurs in a society where they weren't supposed to participate in the traditional workplace.  As with Sam Walton, we discuss a specific video of Mary Kay Ash appearing on 60 Minutes, which is linked to below, along with some other interesting videos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Ash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWz_MzKAMk (Mary Kay on 60 Minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMu5hS7E2Jw (Mary Kay wins the Horatio Alger award in 1978, accepting it from Norman Vincent Peale) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8iG_WEsW6I (Mary Kay’s estate) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYPdIFUz_zo (Mary Kay’s top seller, 2017)

Eli Schwartz and I interview WattPad's Allen Lau (who has been in the high-tech industry since before the Dot Com bust) to discuss his life, WattPad's amazing success, and the reasons why he's optimistic about our ability to recover from the shock of Covid-19. https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-lau-2344b6/ https://www.wattpad.com/user/allenlau https://twitter.com/allenlau https://www.wattpad.com/story/31986026-what-happened-that-night

I welcome my elementary school classmate Brandon Watson to the podcast to discuss what it was like growing up young, gifted, and black; Brandon's distinguished career in the high tech industry including his current project, InterviewAt.com; his love of endurance sports; and discuss a recent Facebook run-in the underscores some of the dangerous forms of intolerance that social media has engendered, even among the "woke". https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwatson/ https://mirman.org/ http://kompartners.com/ https://www.interviewat.com/ And of course, Brandon and Christy's FB live video: https://www.facebook.com/brandonwatson/videos/10105264575829637/

Frantz Alphonse returns to discuss growing up black in Boston, "The Conversation" that all black parents have to have with their young men when they're old enough to drive, what you can do to be a good ally at this time, and what he hopes for his sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantz-alphonse-5575a5/ https://www.apch.com/

Scott Johnson of Blitzscaling Ventures stops by to discuss the May deals by top VCs.  We examine how financings have rebounded from the Covid-19 dip in April, and discuss Commonwealth Fusion, Clyde, and Knowde, with a special bonus discussion of Clubhouse. https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-johnson-49345/ https://cfs.energy/ https://www.joinclyde.com/ https://www.knowde.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/05/15/andreessen-horowitz-wins-vc-sweepstakes-to-back-clubhouse-voice-app/#6b678c6e6f2a

For our virtual 20th reunion, Lindsey Mead and I moderated a special class panel discussion featuring Stephan Bancel, the CEO of Moderna (likely to be the first company to market with a Covid-19 vaccine), Shari Hubert, the Associate Dean of Admissions at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and Christa Quarles, former CEO of OpenTable, and board member of Kimberley-Clark. This session discussed memories of HBS, the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the restaurant industry, and the broader economy, and the murder of George Floyd, the protests in his name, and the Black Lives Matter movement. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan-bancel-8185251/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharihubert/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/christaquarles/

Professor Richard Tedlow returns to discuss an iconic, charismatic business leader.  This time, we discuss Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, how his background enabled him to build Walmart, the two keys to the company's success, and the many ways that Sam's charisma won the hearts and minds of his hundreds of thousands of associates. In the episode, we discuss Sam's final public appearance, shortly before his death from cancer, when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush.  You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgqoRzj62dY

My old friend Josh Breinlinger joins the podcast to describe how he grew up in a family of MIT engineers, how he ended up in the startup world, and what he looks for in marketplace businesses.  We also spend some time discussing how much we admire Amazon's business model and execution, and I share two of my crazy Amazon predictions. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbreinlinger/ https://acrowdedspace.com/ https://www.jsv.com/

Many people have heard that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis wrote an editorial criticizing the actions of President Donald Trump. But I fear that very few have read his letter in its entirety.  In this special mini-episode, I provide my own reading of this document.

When Reed, Richard, and I originally set up a time to record this podcast, we had intended to focus on the Trump Administration's Executive Order targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and more specifically, Twitter placing warning labels on the President's inflammatory and/or false tweets. But life happens. By the time we recorded the podcast on June 2, the murder of George Floyd, and the protests and police responses to those protests had become the focus of the nation. In this podcast, we discuss current events, how they compare to 1968 (when Reed and Richard met as Yale undergraduates), the insider history of Section 230, and why we should still strive to be optimistic, even in times of crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Hundt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act

Renowned historian (and my former Harvard Business School professor) Richard Tedlow returns for the latest installment in our series of conversations exploring the lives and lessons of charismatic business leaders.  This time, we consider the story of Henry Ford, the legendary entrepreneur who put American on wheels, but whose later years were marked by a declining business and virulent anti-Semitism.  We explore the question of how such successful entrepreneur, who appeared invincible, can fall from grace.

Teju Ravilochan, co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute / Uncharted social enterprise accelerator, and founder of of GatherFor.org joins me to talk about his journey in the world of social impact and dive deep into the unanswerable questions of social impact.  Teju takes a deep and unflinching look at the shortcomings of the social impact space, where he was such a star, and tries to find a better way forward. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejuravilochan https://uncharted.org/ https://gatherfor.org/

I recently held a live Q&A session via Zoom.  While I can't share the Q&A session for privacy reasons, I am sharing the fireside chat portion of the proceedings.  If you want to attend a future live session, follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisyeh/

Lindsey Mead joins me to interview our classmate Anthony Marino.  We discuss how Lindsey and Anthony knew each other at Princeton, what it was like growing up in a big, traditional Italian family in New Jersey (hint: a Cadillac full of cantaloupes was involved), and recall some memorable moments from Anthony's time at HBS.  We also convince Lindsey to stop donating her old clothes to Goodwill, and start selling them through ThredUp! https://www.linkedin.com/in/anmarino/ https://www.thredup.com/

I will be collaborating with my old friend and former professor, historian Richard Tedlow, on a series of episodes where we discuss some of the most charismatic business leaders in history.  We kick off the series with a conversation about Steve Jobs, how his status as an out-of-wedlock adopted child may have affected his path, and how his guiding principles made both using his products and working at Apple an emotionally compelling experience. Note that at one point in time Richard mentions meeting with Phil Schiller; he misspoke. He actually met with Ron Johnson.

With all of us settling in to remote work, who better to learn from than Ultranauts, an innovative remote-first company.  Ultranauts provides onshore quality engineering using a neurodiverse team (75% of its employees are on the autism spectrum), which enables the company to outperform both IBM and CapGemini. I speak with the company's co-founder and CEO, Rajesh Anandan (an old friend via Unreasonable) and SVP Quality & Strategy Nicole Radziwill. We discuss the company's origins from Rajesh's time at UNICEF, how Nicole first received her autism spectrum diagnosis in college, and Ultranaut's innovative "biodex" Slackbot for creating "user manuals" for every employee. http://ultranauts.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshanandan/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleradziwill/