It's Not Magic, a Sixth Street podcast

It's Not Magic, a Sixth Street podcast

It's Not Magic is a podcast about building things, without the pretense. Our host is David Stiepleman, Co-Founder and Co-President of Sixth Street, a leading global investment firm. We talk to founders and industry leaders and get them to explain, in plain English, what they do and how they do it. Building a business is a lot of things, but…It’s Not Magic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

Bill Block, CEO of Miramax

August 14, 2023 • 45 mins
Bill Block, CEO of Miramax, joins us to share his approach to successfully running an award-winning film and television production company. Starting as a Hollywood superagent, Bill has gone on to produce hit films like Bad Moms, The Blair Witch Project, District 9, Halloween (2018), Requiem for a Dream, and the more recent He’s All That starring Addison Rae of TikTok fame. Bill and David talk through a lifetime of movie business kn...

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Aly Wagner, co-chair of Bay FC and lead World Cup analyst for Fox Sports

July 24, 2023 • 48 mins

Aly Wagner, lead analyst for Fox’s broadcast of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and co-chair of Bay FC, joins us to talk about her career progression from winning gold medals for the U.S. Women’s National Team to announcing the games to co-founding a National Women’s Soccer League expansion franchise.


We ask her about her trailblazing path as the first woman to announce a Men’s World Cup game, and how she’s applied the lessons s...

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Wemimo Abbey, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Esusu

July 17, 2023 • 57 mins
Why shouldn’t paying rent on time help you build your credit score?We sit down with Wemimo Abbey, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Esusu, to discuss how he convinced credit ratings agencies, landlords, and renters to use Esusu to help build fuller credit profiles. Motivated by his family’s own experience when applying for a loan after immigrating to the U.S. from Nigeria, Wemimo developed a product that boosts credit scores and helps owner...

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NBA Hall of Famer and Bay FC Board Member Rick Welts

June 5, 2023 • 41 mins

Recorded live at the Sixth Street offsite in Austin, Texas. Former Golden State Warriors President, NBA Hall of Famer, and Bay FC board member Rick Welts joins our host David Stiepleman to talk about pioneering moments in the history of the NBA, including the inception of the Slam Dunk Contest and All-Star Weekend. Rick and David also discuss the key trends driving the future of sports.

 

This is a special episode to kick o...

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Kanishka Cheng, Founder and CEO of TogetherSF

May 15, 2023 • 46 mins

San Francisco has a powerful asset in its fight against its well-publicized civic challenges: its caring community of doers.


Kanishka Cheng, founder and CEO of TogetherSF, is working to revitalize the city by reconnecting its residents with their government. She’s built an organization, with the backing of Sequoia’s Michael Moritz, that provides educational resources and spaces for open dialogue on how to solve the complex issue...

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Frank Doyle, Dean of Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science

May 1, 2023 • 43 mins
Season 3 of INM opens with Frank Doyle, Dean of Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Frank takes us inside Harvard’s efforts to cultivate interdisciplinary collaboration and to grow an engineering school within the “176-year-old startup.” With his inspiring vision for the future of problem solving, Frank challenges us to think bigger and bolder and to embrace the people around us a...

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Chris Miller, Author of "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology"

February 21, 2023 • 46 mins
The microchip powers everything we do — from our iPhones, to the cars we drive, to missile guidance systems. Do we take for granted how much the world depends on such a scarce resource? For our Season 2 finale, we are joined by Chris Miller, Professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of the Financial Times 2022 Book of the Year, “Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology,” to learn how a grou...

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Amy Abernethy, President of Product Development and Chief Medical Officer of Verily

January 18, 2023 • 53 mins
Dr. Amy Abernethy is known for modernizing the FDA’s approach to big data. Now as President of Product Development and Chief Medical Officer of Alphabet’s Verily, and a member of Sixth Street’s Scientific Advisory Board, she’s exploring approaches to real-world data and developing tools to bring advanced therapeutics to patients. Amy joins our host, David Stiepleman, as well as Sixth Street’s Vice Chairman, Marty Chavez, as we disc...

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Rick Berke, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of STAT

January 3, 2023 • 48 mins
Join us as we explore the success of STAT – the fast-growing media company delivering trusted news on health, medicine, and the life sciences. After being the first to break the COVID-19 story in January 2020, STAT became a go-to source for information during the pandemic with over 26 million visitors in March 2020 alone. In this conversation, co-founder and executive editor Rick Berke reveals where things have gone right (and wron...

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Jonathan Cherki, Founder and CEO of Contentsquare

December 12, 2022 • 60 mins
What’s it like running one of the fastest growing tech companies in France? Jonathan Cherki, founder and CEO of Contentsquare, joins us from New York to talk about how his company became a global leader in helping brands enhance their customers’ digital experience. We discuss why Jon left his family’s dry legume supply business to found a tech company, the strategy behind Contentsquare’s rapid growth, and what’s next for brands aft...

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Jim Pohlad, Chairman of the Minnesota Twins

November 21, 2022 • 35 mins
What’s it like leading a family business that invests in everything from baseball to robotics to soft drinks? We went to Minneapolis to talk with Jim Pohlad, chairman of the Minnesota Twins and co-head of the Pohlad Companies, about the balance between building for the long-term and the desire to “win now,” the process behind designing the Twins’ much-loved Target Field, and his family’s enduring commitment to their home state and ...

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Stacy Brown-Philpot, Frmr CEO of TaskRabbit

November 7, 2022 • 43 mins
Welcome back for Season Two of It’s Not Magic! We’re kicking it off with a woman who epitomizes what it means to be a tech leader: Stacy Brown-Philpot, former CEO of TaskRabbit and founding member of the SoftBank Opportunity Fund. Recorded live from the Concrete Rose Summit in Menlo Park, CA, Stacy walks us through her experience leading TaskRabbit and its community of "Taskers", the advice she received while founding the Black Goo...

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Julie Jones, Partner and Chair, Ropes & Gray

July 18, 2022 • 43 mins
For our Season One finale, we sit down with Julie Jones, chair of Ropes & Gray, the venerable law firm founded in 1865 that today is a $2 billion enterprise with over 1500 hundred lawyers. Julie is the first woman to lead the firm, and we discuss her elevation to Chair in 2020 just as the world and business leaders faced unprecedented challenges. We talk about how she prepared and marketed herself with intention early in her ca...

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Igor Rozenblit, Managing Partner, Iron Road Partners

July 1, 2022 • 30 mins
How do you build a business in a highly regulated industry? We asked the expert. Clip in to the via ferrata and join us with Igor Rozenblit, Managing Partner of Iron Road Partners and founder and former Co-Head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Private Funds Unit. We learn about what it takes to build something new within a government agency, and we get Igor’s perspective as an entrepreneur from both sides of the regulato...

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Janice Chen, Co-Founder and CTO, Mammoth Biosciences

June 15, 2022 • 38 mins
What's it like being the first to develop a new way to detect COVID-19 using gene-editing technology? Janice Chen joins us (with special guest Sixth Street's Jeff Pootoolal) to talk about building a business around CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technology. We discuss how she and her co-founders prioritize the myriad potential applications for CRISPR, creating the first CRISPR-based COVID-19 diagnostic test, and how working...

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Sean Mendy, Co-Founding Partner, Concrete Rose Capital

June 1, 2022 • 37 mins
Sean Mendy joins us to talk about founding Concrete Rose Capital, an early stage investment firm with a dual purpose: to invest in and build great companies, while addressing the dramatic under allocation of investment in founders of color. We discuss Concrete Rose's first unicorn portfolio company, what's changed and what hasn't since George Floyd's murder, and we learn about the teacher that made the biggest impact on Sean's life...

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Michael McFaul, Former United States Ambassador to Russia

May 17, 2022 • 48 mins
Ambassador Michael McFaul joins us for a special episode from the Sixth Street Offsite in Austin, TX. He takes us back to his prescient warnings about the rise of Putin's autocracy in 2000. We hear about how Putin has changed since coming to power, what he's like in person, and the latest from leadership in Kyiv. We also discuss how to run an embassy, the value and limitations of historical analogues, and why the Secretary of State...

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Evan Smith, CEO and co-founder, The Texas Tribune

May 3, 2022 • 42 mins
Evan Smith brings us back to the beginnings of The Texas Tribune. We talk about how the business model he spearheaded is saving local news and maybe even keeping the art of civil conversation alive. He tells us how he honed his pitch on the way to raising over $100 million from across the ideological spectrum, and we find out why they play Lyle Lovett for him wherever he goes in Texas. Learn more at https://sixthstreet.com/podcasts...

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