Grit

Updated: 24 Mar 2025 • 236 episodes
www.kleinerperkins.com/podcasts

Grit explores what it takes to create, build, and scale world-class organizations. It features weekly episodes highlighting the leaders who are pushing their companies to make a difference. This series is hosted by Joubin Mirzadegan, go to market operating partner at Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm investing in history-making founders.

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Guest: Zac Bookman, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenGov Thirteen years after co-founding the government transparency startup OpenGov, Zac Bookman is still finding ways to surprise people. In 2024, Cox Enterprises bought the company for $1.8 billion — but as far as Zac is concerned, “we’re just getting started.” “ I left the

76 min
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Guest: Ben Chestnut, Former CEO and Co-Founder of Mailchimp If you find yourself selling your startup, then Mailchimp co-founder Ben Chestnut has some important advice for you: Get a dog.  When Intuit bought Mailchimp in 2021 for $12 billion, the company asked Ben if he wanted to stay on as CEO, but he chose to “walk o

71 min
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Guest: Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic “Passion and drive trumps knowledge and experience,” says Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. Long before he was running Boom — which earlier this year successfully tested the world’s first privately-developed supersonic jet — he was enabling “the world’s most obnoxio

88 min
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Guest: George Kurian, CEO of NetApp For almost 10 years, George Kurian has been CEO of the data infrastructure firm NetApp, overseeing its pivot to cloud services. After he  took the job — a surprise promotion dropped on him just days before it was announced — he had to learn on the job how the job could be. “ There ar

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Guests: Winston Weinberg, CEO & co-founder of Harvey; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins “If you think about pretty much any job out there in the world, we will have some sort of [AI] copilot,” says Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman. “The question is, who are the right folks to build it, and what’s their v

65 min
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Guest: Miki Kuusi, head of international at Doordash + CEO & co-founder of Wolt + co-founder of Slush tech conference Before Miki Kuusi launched the Finnish delivery startup Wolt, which DoorDash acquired in 2022, he wasn’t just another startup entrepreneur. From 2011 to 2015, Miki was the CEO of the hugely influential

81 min
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