Ulysse Saltiel is an Associate in the Office of the CEO at Armada, the San Francisco edge-computing company building modular data centers and connectivity for the planet's most remote corners. A 2025 Pepperdine graduate who double-majored in finance and philosophy and finished summa cum laude, he founded the Pepperdine Finance Society and built the Coastal Capital Summit from a 50-person idea into a 350-plus person flagship event that has funneled students into JP Morgan, Citigroup and beyond. He came up through wealth management at Bordeaux Wealth Advisors and Pepperdine's $1.5B endowment office before landing at the right hand of Armada's leadership.
Imprint is a New York based education company behind a visual microlearning app that turns dense subjects - psychology, philosophy, history, finance, science - into illustrated, bite-sized lessons you can finish in under 10 minutes a day. Built by mobile entertainment veteran Daniel Terry and developed under the legal entity Polywise, Inc., the app pairs original animation with daily quizzes and visual guides to bestselling nonfiction books. It became one of the highest grossing and most decorated learning apps, winning Google Play's Best App of 2023 and earning Apple Editors' Choice recognition.
Shmulik Fishman is the founder and CEO of Argyle, a New York fintech that turns messy workforce and payroll data into a single consumer-permissioned API used by 300+ clients including Mastercard, SoFi, and LendingClub. A Hampshire College philosophy major turned operator, he co-founded the fleet-software company Stratim (acquired by KAR Global) before starting Argyle in 2018. He has raised roughly $100M+ and leads with a transparency-first, inbox-zero, early-morning style.
Will Wilkinson is a political analyst, essayist, and policy intellectual who spent two decades navigating the intellectual terrain between libertarianism and liberalism before landing somewhere more interesting than either. A former research fellow at the Cato Institute and vice president at the Niskanen Center, he has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, and dozens of other outlets. Currently working in government affairs at Persona, a digital identity company, he continues to publish the 'Model Citizen' newsletter on Substack, where his blend of philosophy, political science, and sharp commentary finds its most faithful audience.
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British philosopher, author, and entrepreneur who has written 15+ books translated into 30+ languages, co-founded The School of Life in 2008, and built a global movement dedicated to making philosophy practically useful for everyday life - covering love, work, anxiety, and what it means to live wisely.
Edmund Zagorin is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Arkestro, the AI-powered Predictive Procurement Orchestration platform he co-founded in San Francisco in 2017. Drawing on a philosophy degree, championship-level policy debate experience, and years as a procurement consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Zagorin built Arkestro around a radical premise: that AI, game theory, and behavioral science could predict procurement outcomes before a sourcing cycle begins - cutting sourcing time by 60-90% and delivering average cost savings of 18.8% per million spent. The company has raised $104M in total funding, including a $36M Series B in 2025 led by Altira Group and Aramco Ventures. Away from procurement, he publishes fiction and poetry under the pen name Elizeya Quate.
Chris Williamson is the host of Modern Wisdom, one of the world's most-listened-to long-form interview podcasts, and co-founder of the nootropic drink brand Neutonic. A former nightclub promoter and Love Island contestant turned interviewer, he has built a 400M+ download catalogue of conversations with thinkers, scientists, and authors.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and one of the most widely read and debated public intellectuals of his generation. Known for his books '12 Rules for Life' and 'Beyond Order' - which together sold over 7 million copies - and a YouTube channel with over 8.8 million subscribers, he blends Jungian psychology, evolutionary biology, and Biblical narrative into a framework for personal responsibility and meaning. He co-founded Peterson Academy in 2024, an online education platform with 72,000 students, and hosts 'The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast,' which has surpassed 150 million downloads.
Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist, AI researcher at MIT, and host of the Lex Fridman Podcast — one of the most-watched long-form interview shows in the world. With a PhD from Drexel University and research spanning autonomous vehicles, deep learning, and human-robot interaction, he interviews everyone from Elon Musk to world leaders to Nobel laureates. A black belt in both jiu-jitsu and judo, he blends intellectual curiosity with martial discipline, and has built a YouTube channel with over 4.8 million subscribers and hundreds of millions of views.
Nathaniel Drew is an American content creator, polyglot, and filmmaker based in Paris, France, with over 1.79 million YouTube subscribers. Born in Los Angeles to Argentine-immigrant parents and raised in Portland, Oregon, he skipped college to teach himself filmmaking and launched his YouTube channel in 2015. Known for his cinematic vlogs exploring travel, language learning, identity, and existential questions, he speaks five or more languages and went viral with 'Speaking 5+ Languages with my Polyglot Grandma.' He also hosts the 'No Backup Plan' podcast, runs a Substack newsletter, creates music, and teaches filmmaking through his 'Frame by Frame' masterclass course.
Naval Ravikant is an Indian-born American entrepreneur, angel investor, and philosopher best known for co-founding AngelList, the platform that democratized startup fundraising. An early investor in Twitter, Uber, and over 200 companies, he is equally renowned for his unconventional wisdom on wealth, happiness, and meaning - distilled in 'The Almanack of Naval Ravikant' and a podcast followed by millions worldwide.
Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967 in Frankfurt, West Germany) is one of the most consequential and controversial figures in the history of technology and venture capital. A Stanford philosophy graduate and law school alumnus, Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998, pioneering online digital payments before selling it to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. He then made what became arguably the greatest angel investment in tech history — a $500,000 bet on a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook in 2004 that ultimately returned over $1 billion. In 2003 he co-founded Palantir Technologies (now valued at over $400 billion), and in 2005 he launched Founders Fund, a venture capital firm managing approximately $17 billion that was among the first institutional investors in SpaceX, Palantir, Stripe, Airbnb, and Spotify. Thiel's 2014 book Zero to One became a defining text on startup theory, articulating his core belief that genuine innovation is far more valuable than incremental improvement. A self-described libertarian, Thiel surprised Silicon Valley when he endorsed Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He is also known for secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media after the outlet outed him as gay. Through the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $250,000 to young people who skip or defer college, he has championed entrepreneurship over credentialism — producing billionaire alumni including Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin and Figma's Dylan Field. As of December 2025, Thiel's net worth is estimated at $27.5 billion.
Peter Fenton is a General Partner at Benchmark, Silicon Valley's most storied early-stage venture firm, where he has spent nearly two decades backing audacious founders building transformative technology companies. A Stanford philosophy graduate who once dug sanitation trenches in rural Brazil, Fenton has a gift for identifying the exact moment when a company's rising adoption curve meets its declining risk curve. His track record - Twitter, Yelp, Zendesk, New Relic, Elastic, Hortonworks, and now Sierra and Exa - places him consistently on the Forbes Midas List, peaking at #2 in 2015, and he was named VC of the Year at the 2014 Crunchies.
Chris Dixon is the founder and managing partner of a16z crypto, the largest dedicated crypto venture fund in the world with over $7 billion in committed capital. A Columbia philosophy graduate turned software engineer turned serial entrepreneur (SiteAdvisor, Hunch), he joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2012 and has since become Silicon Valley's most prominent crypto bull, leading investments in Coinbase, Uniswap, and dozens of foundational web3 companies. His 2018 essay 'Why Decentralization Matters' became a manifesto for the open internet movement, and his 2024 book 'Read Write Own' extended that thesis into a New York Times-listed blueprint for the next era of the internet.
Justin Kan is a serial entrepreneur and investor best known as the co-founder of Twitch, the live streaming platform acquired by Amazon for $970 million in 2014. A Yale graduate who studied physics and philosophy, Kan pioneered lifecasting by wearing a camera 24/7 for Justin.tv in 2007, which evolved into Twitch and revolutionized gaming culture. He's launched multiple ventures including Socialcam (sold to Autodesk for $60M), served as a Y Combinator partner, and now invests through Goat Capital while building new companies in Web3, commerce, and music. Despite selling Twitch for nearly $1 billion, Kan has been candid about struggles with happiness, anxiety, and finding fulfillment beyond exits, making him a rare voice of authenticity in Silicon Valley's success-obsessed culture.
Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, helped build PayPal, seeded Facebook, and has been quietly central to almost every major tech breakout of the last 25 years. A philosopher-turned-venture-capitalist who popularized 'blitzscaling,' he is now betting big on AI — co-founding Inflection AI, launching Manas AI for drug discovery, hosting two podcasts, and writing bestsellers with GPT-4 as co-author.
George Mack is a British entrepreneur, writer, and marketing strategist best known for popularising the concept of 'High Agency' - the belief that you control your own destiny - and for building The Ad Professor into a platform reaching 300+ million people. Through his Substack newsletter (70,000+ subscribers), podcast appearances on Modern Wisdom and My First Million, and a Twitter following of 300,000+, Mack has become one of the most influential thinkers on mental models, decision-making, and entrepreneurship online. He co-founded the marketing agency Multiply, which has worked with startups backed by Stripe, Y Combinator, Sequoia, and LVMH, and is known for viral ideas like the 'Cocaine Phone vs. Kale Phone' two-device productivity protocol.
Dwarkesh Patel is a 25-year-old Indian-American podcaster, writer, and emerging intellectual force in Silicon Valley. Through the Dwarkesh Podcast - launched from a college dorm room in 2020 - he has become the go-to long-form interviewer for AI leaders, economists, and historians, landing everyone from Elon Musk and Jensen Huang to Terence Tao. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024, and called Silicon Valley's favourite podcaster by The Economist in 2025, he co-authored The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025 with Stripe Press. With 1.2M+ YouTube subscribers and 76,000+ Substack readers, Patel has built his platform entirely through obsessive preparation and organic growth.
Alex Danco is a Canadian writer, thinker, and now Editor-at-Large at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he shapes the firm's editorial voice. A former neuroscientist turned ska musician turned VC associate turned Shopify product director, Danco spent five years at Shopify leading merchant financing and blockchain initiatives before joining a16z in August 2025. He is best known for his newsletter Dancoland and foundational essays including 'Debt Is Coming,' 'The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class,' and the 'Emergent Layers' framework - works that apply Carlota Perez, René Girard, and Jane Jacobs to the inner workings of Silicon Valley. He writes approximately 5,000 words per week and is a descendant of Belgian polar explorer Émile Danco, after whom Danco Island in Antarctica is named.
Josh Waitzkin is a chess International Master, two-time Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands World Champion, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, bestselling author of 'The Art of Learning,' performance coach to elite athletes and executives, and founder of The Art of Learning Project. A prodigy who drew with Garry Kasparov at age 11, starred in a Hollywood film about his own chess career, won a martial arts world title on his birthday, became Marcelo Garcia's first-ever black belt, and now consults for the Boston Celtics from a jungle compound in Costa Rica where he trains big-wave foil surfing with Laird Hamilton.
Agnes Callard is a philosopher at the University of Chicago whose work sits at the rare intersection of rigorous academic thought and genuine public provocation. Author of 'Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming' (2018) and 'Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life' (2025), she argues that Socratic open inquiry - the willingness to be persuaded by better reasons - is not just for intellectuals but for everyone. A Guggenheim Fellow and Lebowitz Prize winner, she writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Point Magazine, runs the Night Owls public debate series in Chicago, and co-hosts the 'Minds Almost Meeting' podcast with economist Robin Hanson. Known for contrarian takes ('The Case Against Travel'), deeply personal essays, and a living arrangement that keeps her ex-husband as a co-resident, Callard treats philosophy not as a career but as a way of life.
On the milestone 1,000th episode of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson sits down with actor and author Matthew McConaughey for a wide-ranging philosophical conversation filmed against the virtual backdrop of the Interstellar corn fields in Alberta, Canada. The two explore belief, faith, forgiveness, masculinity, the difference between a nice guy and a good man, the Icarus myth in reverse, and McConaughey's new book 'Points of Prayers.' McConaughey champions the idea of modeling the rise not the result, argues that peace requires rage to reach, and redefines vulnerability as saying your truth in spite of the consequences, especially when they're scary.
Dan Koe is an American solopreneur, writer, and digital philosopher who went from sharing a rundown apartment with 7 roommates in 2018 to building a $2.6M+ per-year one-person business by 2023. Known for 'The Koe Letter' newsletter, his 2-Hour Writer course, and his book 'The Art of Focus', he has amassed nearly 4 million followers across platforms. He champions the idea that a single person, equipped with writing skills and a personal brand, can build a high-margin business working just 2-4 hours a day - and he lives the proof. He is also co-founder of Eden, a knowledge management app for creators.
Erik Hoel is an American neuroscientist, novelist, and philosopher who turned the hardest problem in science - consciousness - into a literary career. Holding a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under consciousness pioneer Giulio Tononi, Hoel developed 'causal emergence' theory and the 'overfitted brain hypothesis' before trading academic tenure for a Substack with 69,000+ subscribers. His newsletter The Intrinsic Perspective blends rigorous science with razor-sharp cultural commentary, while his books - the debut mystery novel The Revelations (2021) and the nonfiction The World Behind the World (2023) - bring consciousness science to general readers. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he grew up in his mother's independent bookstore in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was mentored by novelist Andre Dubus III at age 13.
Mark Manson is a three-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, blogger, and podcaster whose books have sold approximately 20 million copies worldwide across 65+ languages. Known for his brutally honest, profanity-laced take on self-help, his breakout book 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' spent over 279 weeks on the NYT bestseller list and was adapted into a documentary by Universal Pictures in 2023. He runs a popular weekly newsletter, an AI-powered coaching app called Purpose, and the podcast 'SOLVED with Mark Manson.'
Matthew Yglesias is one of America's most influential political writers - a Harvard-trained philosopher turned media entrepreneur who co-founded Vox and then bet on himself by launching Slow Boring, a Substack newsletter that earns him over $1.4 million a year. Known for his contrarian, rigorously argued takes on housing, immigration, economics, and American governance, he occupies a strange and productive niche: too wonky for Twitter, too heterodox for legacy media, and too prolific for anyone to ignore.
Nic Carter is a General Partner at Castle Island Ventures, a crypto-focused VC firm investing in blockchain infrastructure and the restoration of property rights on the internet. A former Fidelity analyst turned prolific writer, co-founder of Coin Metrics, and host of the 'On The Brink' podcast, Carter is one of the most influential voices in Bitcoin - known for his rigorous defense of Bitcoin's energy consumption, his early advocacy for proof of reserves, and breaking the 'Operation Choke Point 2.0' story that triggered multiple Congressional investigations. Outside of finance, he's an amateur MMA fighter who competed in Karate Combat under the nickname 'Tungsten Daddy.'
Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and business philosopher who helps small business owners build sustainable, humane companies. Formerly known as Tara Gentile, she spent a decade building a formidable reputation before reclaiming her own name in 2018. She is the founder of What Works, a digital platform and podcast downloaded over 2 million times, co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, and author of books including 'What Works' (Wiley). Drawing on feminist theory, critical sociology, and media studies, she challenges conventional business wisdom with intellectual rigor and a sharp editorial voice.
Sarah Tavel is a venture investor and product thinker best known as the first female General Partner at Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious and selective VC firms. Before Benchmark, she led core discovery products at Pinterest during its hypergrowth years, having first backed the company as a VC at Bessemer Venture Partners. She is the creator of widely-cited frameworks including the Hierarchy of Marketplaces, Happy GMV, and the 'Sell Work, Not Software' thesis for AI startups. As of April 2025, she transitioned to Venture Partner at Benchmark, focusing on AI tools at the edge and broader exploratory work.