The Next Great Thing
An exploration into new digital products and experiences — and conversations with the people making them great. What separates a good digital product or experience from being the next great thing in our lives? It’s not just one thing, it’s lots of things — ideas, people, inspiration, distribution, longevity, luck. Host Andrew Greenstein talks with founders, CEOs, product heads, makers, producers, designers, and digital creationists about how they’re coming up with big ideas, pushing creative boundaries, and expanding what’s possible in the digital space. The Next Great Thing podcast is a production of SF AppWorks. Learn more at www.sfappworks.com.
Episodes
51 episodes
How AI Has Generated Trillions in Value Long Before ChatGPT and the Future of AI, with Konstantine Buhler, Partner at Sequoia Capital
In this episode of The Next Great Thing, we sit down with Konstantine Buhler, a Sequoia Capital partner and AI pioneer, to explore the transformative journey of artificial intelligence. From his early days at Stanford to his influentia...
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Season 3
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Episode 13
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55:03
Building a relationship advice app you can actually trust, with Renate Nyborg, Founder & CEO, Meeno
Renate Nyborg has been building consumer-focused apps for as long as the App Store has existed. She’s held senior leadership roles at Apple and Headspace. She was the CEO of Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app, at the height of the pand...
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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44:37
Creating the world’s most accurate weather forecasts & fighting climate change, with WindBorne Systems Co-Founders John Dean and Kai Marshland
As the planet warms, we're experiencing more frequent and destructive extreme weather. Yet, 85% of the world lacks critical atmospheric data for precise forecasting that could help us better prepare. John Dean and Kai Marshland, Co-Founders of ...
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42:20
LIVE from SXSW 2024: The Paradox of Loneliness and Technology
Technology connects us more than ever. Yet, we feel lonelier than ever. Worldwide, one in four adults (more than a billion people) feel lonely. And 36% of all Americans — including 61% of young adults aged 18-25 — feel “serious loneliness.” It’...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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1:04:13
From Google Search to solving enterprise search, with Arvind Jain, Co-Founder & CEO, Glean
Arvind Jain, Co-Founder and CEO of generative AI workplace search startup, Glean, has an impressive, 25-year career in Silicon Valley. It’s safe to say he’s learned a thing or two along the way. He’s held en...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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37:04
AI is transforming the recruiting game, with Moonhub Founder & CEO, Nancy Xu
Named to TIME’s inaugural AI 100 list, Nancy Xu is an AI innovator who worked on early foundation models at Stanford’s AI Lab before founding Moonhub. It’s here where she’s revolutionizing recruiting with A...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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31:44
From producing Kanye to building the future of smart video, with Adventr Founder & CEO, Devo Harris
Devo Harris isn't your typical tech founder. He’s a builder. A creative visionary who’s most comfortable at the intersection of media and technology. From co-founding G.O.O.D. Music with Kanye West, to launching John Legend’s career, to snaggin...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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36:14
Full-stack generative AI means business with Writer Co-Founder & CEO, May Habib
AI is booming, but transforming industries still requires custom models that most companies can't build, customize, and deploy themselves. That's the opportunity May Habib saw early and seized. As Co-Founder and CEO of
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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35:43
Storytelling and the art of persuasion in the age of AI with Tome Co-Founder & CEO, Keith Peiris
AI like ChatGPT and DALL·E 2 is raising important questions about human creativity. Will AI one day replace us as creators and storytellers? Keith Peiris believes AI can boost creativity rather than hinder it – and he’s built a platform to do j...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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32:48
Making sense of the world through design, with Georg Petschnigg, Head of Product Design, The New York Times
How does the 171-year-old Gray Lady stay so innovative? Design, technology, and storytelling. Georg Petschnigg, Head of Product Design at The New York Times, shares how his team collaborates with editors, journalists, and experts across the org...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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39:42
Scaling Fast and Compounding Success with Brex Co-Founders & Co-CEOs, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi
As Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of fintech startup Brex, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi are true “friendpreneurs” – and they’re not even 30 years old. As teens, they met over Twitter in Brazil, hacking a...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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41:28
Post News Founder & CEO Noam Bardin on combatting misinformation in a new era of social media
Noam Bardin is drawn to working on world-changing ideas. As the former CEO of Waze, the popular traffic crowdsourcing app, he got the chance to do that. Now, as Founder and CEO of social media startup Post News, he’s on to his next big idea: br...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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44:43
Marissa Mayer on the AI revolution and why she wants to clean up your contacts
Marissa Mayer is one of the most successful and influential women in tech. As employee #20 at Google, she played a lead role in building the iconic products we use every day, like Google Search, Gmail, AdWords, and Google Maps. As President and...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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41:05
Summer 2023 Hype Episode! - Just Start (Up) book drop & vote for us at SXSW
We’re off for the summer, but stopping by with a quick update on a few cool happenings at The Next Great Thing! Now through August 20th, vote for ‘The Paradox of Loneliness and Techno...
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Season 2
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Episode 21
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4:07
Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder & CEO, Eight Sleep - The tech optimizing our sleep fitness
We’re constantly looking for ways to track, goal-set, and optimize our physical fitness. Why don’t we do the same with sleep – something we spend one-third of our life doing and foundational to our health? This question was Matteo Franceschetti...
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Season 2
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Episode 20
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37:49
RJ Pittman, CEO, Matterport - Creating digital twins of our built world
Imagine exploring inside any building or space, right down to the tiniest details, from anywhere on the planet. That’s exactly what 3D “digital twins” allow you to do. With specialized cameras, a mobile app, sensors, AI, and deep learning, we c...
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Season 2
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Episode 19
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40:19
James Reinhart, Co-Founder and CEO, thredUP - Solving (and Scaling) the Hard Problem of Secondhand
We’re in a clothing waste crisis, buying more clothes than ever but tossing them out twice as fast. Americans trash 11.3 million tons of textiles annually – a whopping 2,150 garments every second! The fashion industry, especially fast fashion, ...
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Season 2
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Episode 18
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32:08
Leslie Witt, Chief Product and Design Officer, Headspace Health - Designing for Healthy Outcomes (Not Just Engagement)
The United States is in the midst of a mental health crisis. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five adults in the U.S. experiences mental illness each year. And yet, only about half of those who need mental health car...
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Season 2
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Episode 17
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33:55
Brennan Spellacy, Co-Founder & CEO, Patch - Simplifying Carbon Markets to Unite Climate Action
We’re at a global climate tipping point. Along with policymakers, public-private partnerships, and political will, technology is central to solving our planet's biggest existential threat. One solution that’s gaining momentum: buying and sellin...
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Season 2
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Episode 16
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33:41
Jeff McGregor, CEO, Truepic - Authenticating what’s real in a deepfake, synthetic world
Before the decade is out, over 90% of all the content on the internet will be artificially generated. From deepfakes of famous faces to flattering (or not-so-flattering) Instagram and TikTok filters, we've already seen a glimpse of what's possi...
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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30:33
Aaron Easterly, CEO, Rover - Lessons in Building the World’s Largest Pet Care Marketplace
Our pets aren't just furry friends, they're family. And the pandemic brought this bond into focus for millions of Americans, with one in five households adopting a new dog or cat. But like any family member, pet parents need to care for their p...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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30:01
Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Global Head of Product, Grammarly - The Rise of AI Communication Assistants
The robots are coming! Actually, they’re already here. Every day there’s a new story in our newsfeeds about how AI technology is disrupting everything from education to healthcare to the workplace. Remarkably, one of the greatest benefits of AI...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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29:52
Jenny Arden, Chief Design Officer, Zillow - Designing the Housing Super App
Buying a home ain’t easy. It can be a fragmented, frustrating, often downright painful experience. You scour the market for your dream home, only to find that each property has its own unique set of flaws. You waste another weekend visiting o...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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34:45
Dorothy Li, CTO, Convoy - Building Elastic Capacity in Freight (And Saving the Planet, Too)
Look around you. Chances are, most of what you see has, at some point, been shipped on a truck and driven around by a truck driver. Trucking is a massive, $800 billion industry in the U.S. — 80% of every dollar spent moving freight is spent on ...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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19:30
Eddie Martucci, CEO, Akili Interactive - Software that is the medicine
What if software could actually treat a disease? That’s the question that Eddie Martucci, a biochemist and biophysicist whose focus is in drug design, wondered 10 years ago. It’s also the question that set his digital therapeutics company,
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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31:14