Inside CVC by u-path

u-path
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Welcome to Inside CVC —Inside CVC by U-Path is the podcast where corporate venture capital meets strategy, leadership, and systemic change. Hosted by Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith, the show brings senior voices from across corporate venture, startups, investment, academia, and policy to the table. Each episode goes beyond buzzwords to explore how capital, technology, and leadership shape the future of business and society. From AI and robotics to geopolitics, board governance, and inclusive innovation, Inside CVC is designed for executives and policymakers who want to understand not just what’s happening — but what to do about it.

  1. 17h ago

    Inside CVC: Everybody Needs a Hero's Journey: Naiana Miranda on Near-Death Experience, Intuition, and Investing in the Amazon

    Send us Fan Mail Naiana Miranda is Principal and Co-Founder of MSH Partners and Chair of the Amazon Bioeconomy Chamber, the first international chamber built to connect capital with entrepreneurs across the Amazon basin.  Naiana joins Philipp and Steve to trace her path from a childhood in the Amazon and a family of Brazilian entrepreneurs to a severe bout of mold poisoning that triggered a near-death experience in Qatar, one she says left her channeling Harriet Tubman and starting what she calls a love revolution in a hospital ward. She explains how that experience reshaped her relationship to intuition, why she thinks leaders confuse fear for strategy more often than they admit, and why her Amazon Bioeconomy Chamber treats a standing rainforest as a market to build rather than a cause to defend.  She also pushes back on what investors and philanthropists still get wrong about the 25 million people who live in the region. A conversation about what happens when a leadership philosophy is built directly from a near-death experience, not around one. Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  2. Aug 31

    Inside CVC: What Executives Don't Say: Nick Jonsson on Loneliness, Addiction, and the Cost of Asking for Help

    Send us Fan Mail Outwardly, Nick Jonsson had everything that success is supposed to look like: two decades as a senior executive across Asia, an Ironman athlete, a family, the villa and the driver. Alone, he was turning to alcohol, and eventually drugs, to cope.  It is an issue many corporate leaders carry in silence, and it is the one Nick, now an executive coach, spends his days trying to change.  In this conversation with Philipp and Steve, Nick shares his own story: the divorce, the collapse, and the friend he lost to suicide a year into his sobriety, a loss that pushed him to write one raw LinkedIn post that went viral and changed the direction of his life.  He walks through the real numbers behind addiction and suicide among corporate executives worldwide, what he is doing to remove the stigma through EGN, the confidential peer network he built into Southeast Asia's largest, with over 900 executives, and the advice he gives anyone carrying something similar. A conversation about what gets hidden at the top, and what it costs to keep hiding it.  Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  3. Aug 3

    Inside CVC: A Nation by Design: Dawn Lim on AI's Human Edge, Trust in Government, and the Business Case for Aging Well

    Send us Fan Mail Dawn Lim is Executive Director of the DesignSingapore Council, Singapore's national agency for design, and spent over a decade before that at the Economic Development Board working with Fortune 500 companies on innovation and investment.  In this conversation, Dawn joins Philipp and Steve to unpack what it means to treat design not as aesthetics but as a strategic capability for governing a country, walking through Singapore's ten-year design master plan built around one ambition: a nation that is more livable, lovable, and limitless. She makes the case that as AI gets more powerful, human judgment, the ability to ask the right question and make the right call for the moment, becomes the scarcer and more valuable skill. She also explains why the government-citizen trust behind Singapore's fast development can't be copied wholesale, and why the aging population is one of the largest underexplored business opportunities for corporations still treating care as a niche. A case for giving design an actual seat at the table, from the person building the national playbook for it. Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  4. Jul 27

    Inside CVC: Dr. Tan Sian Wee on Singapore's Innovation Edge, Europe's Capital Gap, and the Global AI Race

    Send us Fan Mail Dr. Tan Sian Wee has built companies in Silicon Valley, lived and worked in Germany, and now sits inside Singapore's innovation engine at the National University of Singapore, where he manages a S$150 million venture fund.  In this conversation with Philipp and Steve, Sian lays out why Germany's welfare state now discourages full-time work, why Europe allocates just 0.01% of its $9 trillion in pension assets to venture capital, and why that single number is quietly handing 50% of Europe's best follow-on rounds to the US.  He explains what makes Singapore's innovation "flywheel" turn when Europe's 27 jurisdictions can't, why leadership and not talent is Europe's real constraint, and where a Southeast Asia-Europe corridor in AI and biotech could offset America's compute advantage and China's manufacturing scale.  He also details how Chinese labs are shipping near frontier AI models at a fraction of US cost, and how automation is compressing drug development timelines from six years to three. If you sit on a board or run capital allocation in Europe, this conversation reframes what's actually broken, and what leadership would need to look like to fix it.  Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  5. Jul 20

    Inside CVC | Taj Eldridge on Why Africa Is the Next Innovation Frontier

    Send us Fan Mail For decades, much of the world viewed Africa through the lens of aid, extraction, or geopolitical risk. Taj Eldridge argues that perspective is rapidly becoming obsolete.  Drawing on experience spanning venture capital, private equity, climate investing, and now living and working in Nairobi, Taj explains why Africa is emerging as one of the world's most important innovation markets—not because it mirrors Silicon Valley, but because it solves problems born from necessity.  He explores: Why workforce may become the most overlooked investment thesis of the AI eraWhy corporate venture capital is uniquely positioned to build long-term infrastructureWhy investors should pay as much attention to energy, water, food, and human potential as they do to artificial intelligence. Steve, Philipp, and Taj also discuss China's growing influence across Africa, Kenya's rise as a regional innovation hub, the intersection of climate and healthcare, and what founders and investors must understand before entering emerging markets. This episode offers a fresh perspective on global innovation—and why the next generation of transformative companies may emerge where necessity, not convenience, drives invention.  Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  6. Jul 13

    Inside CVC | Stuart Russell on Why Europe Lost the AI Race and the Poisonous Logic of "But China"

    Send us Fan Mail Stuart Russell co-wrote Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the textbook that trained a generation of AI researchers, and founded UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible AI. He joins Philipp and Steve on Inside CVC straight from the floor of SuperReturn in Berlin, where AI was the only topic anyone wanted to talk about. Stuart takes apart the "but China" argument used in Washington to block AI safety regulation, and explains why China's rules are actually stricter than Europe's. He walks through why a Paris AI startup can raise three hundred thousand euros while the same company gets one hundred million in California, and why that funding gap, not regulation, is what pushed a generation of British and European AI pioneers to Stanford and Silicon Valley. He also breaks down why no country, including the US, actually has a sovereign AI stack, and shares a randomized trial showing chatbot users gave up on problems twice as often once the tool was taken away. If you sit on a board or in the C-suite weighing where AI belongs in your business, this conversation will sharpen the questions you ask before you approve the next deployment. Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  7. Jul 7

    Inside CVC: Values Aren't Just Pretty Words on Paper: Lynda Mansson on Leadership, Trust, and Escaping Burnout

    Send us Fan Mail Lynda Mansson spent close to thirty years in the nonprofit sector, most recently as Director General of the MAVA Foundation, a large family philanthropic foundation. She started her career about as far from philanthropy as it gets: as a stockbroker. Today she's a leadership coach for mission driven leaders, working from a framework of six practices that separate those who sustain impact from those who burn out chasing it. Lynda walks Steve and Philipp through why transformation problems almost always trace back to leadership rather than strategy, citing a study MAVA commissioned with Cambridge University's Conservation Evidence group that found over 85 percent of failed projects came down to people issues. She makes the case for stakeholder capitalism over shareholder value, unpacks what happens when a leader's personal values collide with their organization's stated ones, and explains why stated values without follow through are just pretty words on a piece of paper. The conversation closes on what boards should screen for in a new CEO, and why the pressure leaders feel today is never going away, so the real work is changing our relationship to it. If you're trying to sustain impact without burning out your team or yourself, this episode will give you language for it. Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

  8. Season 2 Trailer

    Boardrooms in Transition: Start Here

    Send us Fan Mail Boardrooms in Transition is a five-part special series from Inside CVC by U-Path on how boards make decisions when the information is incomplete and the stakes are real. Start with Episode 1 and listen in order.   All five episodes are live now.  Support the show Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.

    Boardrooms in Transition: Start Here
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About

Welcome to Inside CVC —Inside CVC by U-Path is the podcast where corporate venture capital meets strategy, leadership, and systemic change. Hosted by Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith, the show brings senior voices from across corporate venture, startups, investment, academia, and policy to the table. Each episode goes beyond buzzwords to explore how capital, technology, and leadership shape the future of business and society. From AI and robotics to geopolitics, board governance, and inclusive innovation, Inside CVC is designed for executives and policymakers who want to understand not just what’s happening — but what to do about it.

Information

  • Creator
    u-path
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    56
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Inside CVC by u-path
  • Show Website
    Inside CVC by u-path