Problems Sighted

Education, learning, and the leaders of the future. The children of today will be the Elon Musks and Elizabeth Warrens of tomorrow—and yet, we still educate them within a flawed system. When it comes to learning and the psychology behind child development, Mason Hartman is at the forefront of thought leaders. Motivated by the vast potential of children to achieve greatness, Mason is incredibly passionate about spurring change within these systems so as to ensure a better future for us and for our children. Tune in to hear her thoughts on child learning and development, how to best change current systems of education, and to join us in supporting the solving of the very real, very profitable problems that plague education.Special Guest: Mason Hartman.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." When you imagine our future, what do you see—flying cars, robot kitchens, maybe even life on Mars? To Michael Solana, host of Anatomy of Next and VP of Founders Fund, the most important thing for creating the future is having a plan. No matter which sectors of the world you are excited to see the future of, good planning is a hard prerequisite. As the creator of a podcast that focuses on the future, Mike has great insights and strong intuition as to what we need to create the best one possible. Listen to hear his thoughts as they apply to the future of capitalism, social media, energy, space and much more. Special Guest: Mike Solana.

We all hear about problems with Russia in the current political climate, but there is much more to the story. We sat down with Michael McFaul, former Ambassador to Russia to talk about problems with Russia, Russian investment in US companies, social media, and we we also touched on how many students and young people are staying away from the public sector, a shift that could hurt us for decades.Special Guest: Michael McFaul.

Product building is like art, and with art comes a mass of problems with philosophy and building choices to ensure your product is right for the space. We sat down with Brian Norgard, Angel Investor and former CPO of Tinder and talked about problems in product building, what tools are needed to help this process, problems targeting and delivering to customers, angel investing and what’s needed to facilitate the process, problems with the crypto space, remote work, and more. This episode is full of pure insight and passion for products.Special Guest: Brian Norgard.

There are a lot of problems when it comes to Silicon Valley, the heart of innovation — research scientists with inadequate design software, companies that aim to solve problems that aren’t really problems, and a culture that promotes these debatably bad ideas. The list goes on. Our episode with Riva touches on problems with broader society too: philosophy, what changes the media needs to see, and how to speed up the progression of science and the pursuit of knowledge.Special Guest: Riva Tez.

Whether you are in primary school, higher education, or one of the many up and coming alternatives, I think it's clear for many that education is filled with problems. We sat down with Austen Allred, CEO of Lambda School, to talk about these problems. Austen highlighted problems in education curriculum, the misalignment of incentives, and what he and his team at Lambda School still need to help education. Austen highlighted three big problems that people need to work on and fix. From tapping into India's labor market, making immigration easier, and making income verification better in the many areas Lambda school has yet to tap into. These problems are huge for Lambda School and the education space in general. These are the real opportunities and problems that people who want to affect education need to tackle before we can really see a reshaping of the space.Special Guest: Austen Allred.

100 trillion. One hundred trillion dollars. This is the amount of wealth controlled by institutional investors (pension funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds of the world). They are rife with problems though—from misalignment of incentives to invest in long term projects, to the difficulty in acquiring talent, to the complete lack of tools and technologies that could power and reshape this space. We sat down with Dr. Ashby Monk, Executive Director of Stanford's Global Projects Center, to discuss these issues and hear how others can contribute to fixing these problems.Special Guest: Ashby Monk.

When it comes to tangible problems in the world, it's pretty hard for the average person to get to know the ins and outs of them without a connection to the industry. And that's why we are here — to knowledgeably complain; to provide a space to learn, to digest, and to hopefully get you inspired to work on your next project. Talking with everyone from education CEOs, former ambassadors, investment professionals, government leaders, and more about the why's, the who's, and the what's of problems they've seen in the world. We want our listeners to better understand the problems of today and build a community around fixing them. So whether you're here to dive deep with us into problems just out of casual interest, or want to leave each episode with a new perspective and inspiration to work on a problem you discovered, tune in each week as we talk to our guests about problems and do some good ol' knowledgeable complaining.