Blindspot Steve Reardon

Matt is the MANAGING DIRECTOR of Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle based Venture capital firm.

We spent today talking about Venture investments, being a good board memeber,  business in the Pacific Northwest and the future of Seattle. 

Matt invests in a broad range of software-driven companies with a focus on cloud computing, intelligent applications and the intersection of the digital and physical world.

Before joining Madrona in 2000, Matt was vice president of business process for the Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC).

He also was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, concentrating on strategy and marketing in technology-driven sectors and prior to that worked in investment banking at Credit Suisse.

Matt has been named several times to both the list of Top 100 Venture Capitalists by CB Insights and The New York Times and the Forbes Midas list.

Matt is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

We recorded today with guest host Francis Brown and we are happy to be joined by Weijian Shan.

WEIJIAN SHAN is chairman and CEO of PAG, a private equity firm. Prior to PAG, he was a partner of TPG, a private equity firm based in San Francisco. He led a number of landmark transactions including the acquisitions of Korea First Bank and China’s Shenzhen Development Bank.

Previously, Shan was a managing director of JP Morgan, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a farm labor in China’s Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from the Univer­sity of San Francisco.

We talk about Mao's cultural revolution, the current US/China trade war and the future of China's growth on the world stage.

I'm very lucky to be joined on the show today by 2 wonderful guests, Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas who are here to talk about humor in business.

Jennifer is a behavioral psychologist, author and the General Atlantic Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research focuses on time, money, and happiness. She was unanimously voted the least funny person in her family.


Naomi Bagdonas is a Lecturer in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Naomi designs and facilities immersive workshops for groups of executives. She has trained at Upright Citizens Brigade and BATS, worked at IDEO, and has been making SNL-inspired shorts in her living room since before she could lift the VHS recorder. She has since built muscle mass.

Today we talk about humor in the workplace, the types of humor, the risks and how it can be a powerful culture tool.

Nancy Koehn is a historian at the Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration. Koehn's research focuses on how leaders, past and present, craft lives of purpose, worth, and impact.

We spoke about authentic leadership in times of crisis, how to be political as a business leader, race and gender relations and using history to inform our business thinking.

Her forthcoming book, Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times is an enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of readers—including those in government, business, education, and the arts—Forged in Crisis spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

I'm happy to welcome on the podcast today Lanhee Chen. We discussed Health Care reform, immigration and the future of conservatism.

Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University; and an affiliate of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a Counsel at the law firm of Arent Fox LLP.

A veteran of several high-profile political campaigns Chen served as the policy director for the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign and most recently, Chen was a senior adviser to Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Chen earned his Ph.D. and A.M. in political science from Harvard University, his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and his A.B. magna cum laude in government from Harvard College. He is a member of the State Bar of California.

It's my pleasure to have Kori Shake back with me on the podcast today.

We discussed Trump's first 100 days, the current state of foreign policy and the strategy in Syria and North Korea.

Kori is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is the editor, with Jim Mattis, of the book Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military. She teaches Thinking About War at Stanford, is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, and a contributor to War on the Rocks.