Breakthrough Labs General Atlantic

In this episode of Breakthrough Labs, General Atlantic Managing Director and Head of Consumer Internet and Technology Tanzeen Syed speaks with Erik Allebest, Co-Founder and CEO of Chess.com, one of the world’s largest platforms for playing, learning and watching chess, with over 100 million members. They discuss Erik’s mission-driven pursuit to build Chess.com, driven by his love of chess and passion for bringing the game to others; his earlier chess-related businesses and experience in e-commerce, starting when he was in college; his decision to take an unconventional path following his time at Stanford Graduate School of Business; the importance of community and authenticity in his core values and approach to building Chess.com; how personalization of the product and storytelling helped engage first time chess players, as well as those already familiar with the game; his commitment to focusing on Chess.com’s product and creating value for users to build its community organically; Erik’s perspective on what it means to be a mission-driven company and how this has contributed to Chess.com’s development; challenges the company overcame and Erik’s approach to navigating these alongside Co-Founder Jay Severson; pivotal moments that contributed to increased interest in chess globally and, in turn, Chess.com’s success, including the 2018 World Chess Championship, the rise in online gaming catalyzed by COVID-19 lockdowns and Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit; and, Erik’s outlook on the future of chess.
Key Takeaways – “In this episode” 
Learn how Erik’s love of chess and passion for sharing the game with others led to the creation of Chess.com. Erik discusses some of the unconventional, strategic decisions he made throughout the journey to build Chess.com into the global platform it is today.  Hear about Chess.com’s commitment to developing products that add value for chess players of all levels and maintaining the integrity of the game. Erik’s decision to partner with an outside investor and how he approached evaluating potential partners. How Erik and Chess.com Co-Founder Jay Sevenson navigated pivotal moments and seized the moment of the global increase of the popularity of chess. 

In the premiere episode of Breakthrough Labs Season 2, General Atlantic Managing Director and Head of Consumer for EMEA Melis Kahya Akar sits down with Ben Francis, Founder and CEO of Gymshark, a leading online, direct-to-consumer, community-based fitness apparel brand. They discuss Ben’s entrepreneurial journey and the importance of taking risks; how he paired his love for building websites and apps with fitness to create Gymshark; why he dropped out of university to focus on Gymshark full time; how stepping down as CEO for four years allowed him to focus on learning more about business fundamentals and building Gymshark’s community-driven brand; the benefits of an offline strategy in building brand authenticity and community; Gymshark’s early mover position in influencer marketing and the importance of having a great product; the decision to open Gymshark’s first brick-and-mortar retail location and expanding the product’s customer base beyond men’s wear; Ben’s evolution as a leader and the importance of leveraging your network; how Ben’s UK heritage and admiration for UK brands has influenced Gymshark; and, how his job at Pizza Hut taught him about customer service.

In this episode of the podcast, General Atlantic Co-President, Managing Director and Chairman of the Global Technology Group Anton Levy sits down with Caryn Seidman-Becker, Chairman and CEO of CLEAR, a leading biometrics company that streamlines authentication and security as it strives to provide a safe, secure and frictionless way for people to live, work and travel, including solutions for airports, sports stadiums and anywhere else credentials need to be verified. They discuss Caryn’s first job on Wall Street working in risk arbitrage; her decision to start her own investment firm named Arience Capital; discovering Verified Identity Pass and buying the company at a bankruptcy sale; working alongside co-founder Ken Cornick and rebranding the company to CLEAR; Caryn’s personal goal to make flying safer and more efficient in a post-9/11 world; the importance of the customer experience and responding to constructive criticism; how one out of every ten US jobs has a travel-related association; why CLEAR’s ticker symbol is “YOU”; experiences of needing multiple forms of identification and finding a solution that is more productive; destigmatizing the word ‘biometrics’; launching solutions beyond CLEAR access at airports, including Health Pass, which was created during the pandemic; examples of Powered by CLEAR experiences, including frictionless verification at the Raiders’ stadium to help fans order a beer and a partnership with Avis to expedite the car rental check-in process; the Home to Gate app that calculates traffic to the airport and time to walk from the CLEAR line to your gate; why she believes digital trust online is the next great frontier; the launch of Reserve powered by CLEAR to make a reservation for your spot in the CLEAR line at the airport; CLEAR’s IPO listing and commemorating the occasion with a company-wide volunteering day; Caryn’s vision for the company in the next five to ten years; sharing her experience with other founders as a trailblazing female founder bringing her company from inception to IPO; operating during the pandemic and keeping the company connected; Caryn’s best travel tips; the power of partnership; CLEAR’s core value of being indefatigable; and other topics. 

In this episode of the podcast, BeyondNetZero Managing Director Eli Aheto sits down with Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar, the Co-Founders of Sun King, one of the largest providers of solar energy products for off-grid homes in Africa and Asia, to discuss providing access to sustainable and affordable solar power for nearly 82 million people across 40 countries to date. They discuss how they bonded at the University of Illinois over a shared desire to use engineering to solve the world’s “existential problems”; their unique experiences traveling to India and other parts of the developing world, where they witnessed the needs of those living off the electric grid; working on the product throughout their undergraduate years in between classes; sleeping on friends’ couches while getting the product off the ground and navigating the difficulties securing fundraising at a time when ESG impact funds were few and far between; how Anish successfully pitched ZS Associates Co-Founder Prabha Sinha at a party on becoming an angel investor in Sun King; the decline in the cost of solar in the years following Sun King’s founding and its impact on democratizing access to clean energy solutions for consumers; the realization that retail was not a best environment for selling Sun King products and how they created a word-of-mouth network for direct-to-consumer sales to grow the business; Sun King’s impact on reducing emissions and how its products have enabled many communities in developing countries leapfrog the electrical grid entirely; the importance of pay-as-you-go financing and how they worked to minimize the problem of affordability by allowing users to pay down their solar assets incrementally over time; the potential future of Sun King and plans to build larger energy systems that can power a broader range of appliances; the additional steps they believe are needed to support people without consistent access to energy in a sustainable way; lessons learned from their collective journey and partnership, and how they prefer to be in the “mode of being students” and constantly learning; and other topics.

General Atlantic Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences sits down with Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore, a leading biotechnology company aiming to develop a new generation of transformative medicines. They discuss the personal experiences that led Bahija to devote her career to science; the enduring source of inspiration that her mother provides; the power of research and its ability to change lives; the critical importance of diversity in STEM and how Bahjia’s role has allowed her to pave a path for other women in the industry; her view that innovation is rooted in diversity of thought and why diverse leadership is an essential ingredient of commercial successful; the challenges associated with ‘pipeline leakage,’ revealing how diverse talent can get lost in an organization; Immunocore’s groundbreaking development of a novel class of T-cell receptor immunotherapies and the company’s milestone FDA approval of Kimmitrak, the first and only FDA-approved therapy to treat an aggressive form of eye cancer; the difficult yet necessary decisions Bahija had to make when she began her role as CEO just before the pandemic hit; Immunocore’s TCR technology and how it is being explored as an approach to other chronic viral infections; the U.S. government’s active role in funding research; how the pursuit of treatments to chronic viral infections is attractive to scientists throughout the world, including those who come to the U.S. to work on potentially transformative projects; the ways in which COVID-19 posed unique challenges to leadership; and other topics.

Global Head of New Investment Sourcing and Co-Head of Emerging Growth Alex Crisses sits down with Raj Bhargava, co-founder and CEO of JumpCloud, a leading cloud-based, Directory-as-a-Service® company. They discuss Raj’s love of the entrepreneurial journey; hard-won lessons about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, including the vital importance of relationships and the role of focused attention and time management; what it means to have a true partnership with investors; the origins of JumpCloud and building a directory service at a time when the market of solutions in the category had not kept pace with technological innovation taking place elsewhere; why JumpCloud uses an innovation model called product-led growth and how that has enabled the company to amass a number of patents; the unprecedented transformation that has swept through the IT space over the last decade-plus; the ways in which the pandemic and hybrid work environments accelerated the adoption of remote, cloud-based IT solutions; the shift in businesses thinking about IT as a competitive advantage; the immediate, day-to-day benefits that JumpCloud delivers to employees; the significance of zero-trust principles; and other topics.