Beginner's Mind

What happens when the instinct to help a struggling company is exactly what prevents the strongest companies from succeeding? Venture capital forces investors to make decisions that can feel deeply uncomfortable: stop rescuing the weakest, concentrate scarce capital behind the most promising, and accept that most investments will fail.

Deep tech intensifies this conflict. Investors must commit capital while the technology remains un...

How can a company have the right numbers and still reach the wrong strategic conclusion?

In 2017, Volkswagen’s chief executive mocked Tesla as one of the “world champions of big announcements.” At the time, Volkswagen sold roughly eleven million cars a year, while Tesla sold fewer than eighty thousand. The facts supported the criticism, but the conclusion missed the change already underway.

That moment explains why ...

Private companies are staying private longer, and that changes who gets liquidity, when, and why.

Founders, employees, and early investors can wait a decade or more for an IPO or acquisition. Meanwhile, venture funds face growing pressure to return capital, and many of Europe's best companies struggle to access the growth capital needed to scale.

In this conversation, Christian Soschner speaks with Alberto Chalon, Co-Founder of Giano...

Only one in three eligible lung cancer patients receives the targeted therapy they should get.

That is not a failure of science.

It is a failure of delivery.

After more than two decades of precision oncology, biopharma has never had better tools: cell and gene therapy, in vivo CAR-T, antibody-drug conjugates, AI-enabled diagnostics, organoids, multi-omics, and global clinical data.

Yet too many breakthroughs still fail to reach the bed...

Some books explain how the world works.

Influence explains why people move.

Why someone takes the meeting.
Why an investor leans in.
Why a customer trusts.
Why a team follows.
Why a board stays stuck.
Why a founder keeps defending a decision that stopped making sense months ago.

Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is one of those books that becomes more valuable the longer you build, invest, ...

Most leaders think negotiation begins when both sides sit down to talk numbers.
 By then, trust, incentives, timing, internal alignment, and first impressions have already shaped the outcome.
 That is why smart founders, executives, investors, and board members can have the right facts and still walk away with the wrong result.

In this episode of Beginner’s Mind, Stefanie Schubert explains why negotiation is no...

Most people still treat climate solutions as a cost.

Wanwipa Siriwatwechakul argues that this is exactly why so many leaders miss the real opportunity.

The next industrial era will not be built by patching old systems, but by redesigning them from the ground up.

In this episode of Beginner’s Mind, Wanwipa explains why industrial decarbonization is not mainly about sacrifice, compliance, or adding expensive fixes to yesterday&rsq...

Power demand is rising faster than the systems meant to support it.
AI, electrification, and industry all need stable energy, but the dominant story sold to the public was far simpler than reality.
 In this episode, Bret Kugelmass explains why the real bottleneck was never just climate ambition, but how the West misunderstood energy itself.

For years, nuclear was framed as too dangerous, too slow, too expensive, and polit...

Most investors think they’re rational.

Most founders think they’re disciplined.

Most boards think they’re strategic.

They’re usually wrong.

In this episode, we unpack Fast Forward Thinking by Luis Pareras — a physician turned deep-tech venture capitalist who distilled decades of investing under scientific uncertainty into 40 brutally structured rules.

This is not a summary.

It’s a decision upgrade for ...

Most biotech breakthroughs don’t fail in the lab.
They fail when science meets manufacturing reality.
And by the time this bottleneck appears, tens of millions are already sunk.

This episode examines the most under-discussed failure point in modern biotech: the gap between scientific discovery and scalable, usable healthcare solutions.

While science has never been stronger—and big pharma excels at market access&mdas...

Nine out of ten startups fail, yet Europe keeps funding them the same way.
Governments replace judgment with bureaucracy, capital replaces experience, and failure is misunderstood instead of learned from.

This conversation exposes why venture capital is a profession, not a policy tool — and why getting this wrong quietly kills innovation.

In this episode, Jim Pulcrano, Adjunct Professor at IMD and longtime venture invest...

Most goals don’t fail because of laziness or lack of ambition.

They fail quietly — buried under daily noise, competing priorities, and forgotten intentions.

By March, even the most meaningful goals have slipped down the list… replaced by urgency, meetings, and excuses.

In the last years, whenever I work with companies or people in my executive coaching a pattern showed up frequently.

In private life: marathons abando...

Breakthrough science has never been stronger — yet patients still miss life-saving therapies.

Despite decades of innovation, most precision medicines fail at the last mile of healthcare delivery.

The problem isn’t discovery. It’s how science, capital, and systems are aligned — or not.

Possessing elite science is no longer enough to win in the multi-trillion-dollar biopharma ecosystem.

As innovation shifts from W...

Most founders obsess over ideas.
Breakthrough companies obsess over inflections, conviction, and structure.

This episode unpacks Pattern Breakers by Mike Maples Jr.—a book that quietly explains why most startups never break out… and why a small minority reshape entire categories.

But this isn’t a book summary.

It’s a thinking upgrade for founders, operators, board members, and investors navigating the most ...

The world has grown quiet about climate change. Too quiet.

We scroll past floods, fires, droughts… and move on with our day.
As if the problem solved itself.
As if we’ve earned the luxury to look away.

Janos Pasztor (full episode) has spent 40 years inside the rooms where climate decisions are made — from serving as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change to advising presidents, prime ministers, and...

Europe leads the world in discovery — yet too often, its breakthroughs never become global companies.

Billions in research funding turn into patents, not products.

While others build empires from ideas, Europe risks becoming the world’s laboratory — brilliant, but broke.

That’s the paradox at the heart of this conversation.

In this episode, Karl Nehammer, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and ...

Most founders dream of raising millions. Few survive the 153 “no’s” it takes to get there.

Behind every biotech breakthrough lies exhaustion — late-night calls, failed rounds, and investors who walk away at the finish line.

What separates the ones who make it isn’t luck or timing — it’s resilience built into process.

In this episode, Jason Foster, CEO of Ori Biotech, shares how he transformed ...

Imagine waking up to find your company’s most valuable IP leaked—not by hackers, but by the very AI tools you trusted.
This isn’t a distant scenario; it’s happening inside pharma and biotech right now.
And the cost isn’t just financial—it’s patient lives, broken trust, and an industry on the edge of losing credibility. 

In this episode, Kat Kozyrytska shares how leaders can act be...

Most founders obsess over products. Jensen Huang built a $3 trillion company by obsessing over inevitabilities. 

This episode unpacks The NVIDIA Way by Tae Kim—the definitive account of how NVIDIA went from near-death startup to the world’s most valuable chipmaker. More than a history, it’s a manual for founders and VCs navigating the messy, high-stakes stretch between Series A and IPO. 

But this isn&...