CHARLY'S ANGLES

Charly Kleissner

Charly Kleissner - tech visionary, turned impact investor - invites you into conversations that move us forward. Every month, he invites guests with deep expertise from the worlds of impact investing, business and personal transformation to discuss challenging questions: How can we build businesses with a positive impact? Can we change the financial system, one investment at a time? What does it take to be a conscious leader in the age of AI? Charly shares his own angles – from working with Steve Jobs to becoming very wealthy in Silicon Valley to building the premier impact investment communities all around the world – and, together with co-host Andrea Wyss and producer Felix Zeltner, invites his guests to share their own. With curiosity, openness and a willingness to challenge assumptions CHARLY’S ANGLES offers perspectives you can learn from and conversations with lasting impact.

Episodes

  1. 16h ago

    Andreas Treichl, can we build our pensions without destroying the planet?

    Our savings and pensions are meant to secure a good life in old age. But much of that money still flows into industries that wear down the systems we all depend on. Seven of nine planetary boundaries have been breached, AI and geopolitics are adding instability, and most of the financial system still treats these risks as somebody else's problem. In this episode we sit down with Andreas Treichl at the office of ERSTE Foundation & Zweite Sparkasse in Vienna. Over 22 years as CEO, he turned Erste Group from a local Austrian savings bank into a leading financial services provider in Central and Eastern Europe. Since July 2026, he has led ERSTE Foundation, one of Europe's largest non-profit foundations and the core shareholder of Erste Group. Charly first met him in 2007, when ERSTE Foundation backed the global Impact Hub. Andreas's first impression of him was "Who is that crazy guy?" - they've been comparing notes ever since. We ask:Which systemic risks are banks still not taking into account?What can banks actually do, and where do they hit their limits?Why do capital markets need to be democratized before they can finance the transformation?How do we finance a regenerative region when no single instrument really fits?What would it take for pension funds to secure our prosperity, not undermine it? Along the way, Andreas pushes back on how much commercial lending can change. He also makes the case for blended and outcome-based finance, and he explains why regulation isn't built for them yet.

    Andreas Treichl, can we build our pensions without destroying the planet?
  2. Sep 22

    Can AI become a responsible technology, Amit Pradhan?

    "Who owns you?" is the provocative question Amit Pradhan likes to ask audiences. The answer, he says, is about seven companies. And the current acceleration of AI isn't changing that, it's deepening it: training relative cognitive representations of who we are into systems we as users cannot control. Tech wasn't always built this way. When Charly moved to the Silicon Valley in the 80s, the engineers were chasing a challenge, not control. They were after building cool products no one else could. And wealth was a side effect, not the point. Somewhere between then and now, something shifted. Amit gives us a glimpse into what moves builders today - the metrics that dominate the room: how much you've raised, how fast you can cut your unit costs, how high your valuation climbs. Questions about who it actually serves, or what it costs humanity to get there, rarely make the agenda. So is a shift towards responsible AI even possible inside the current system? Or does answering that question require rebuilding the system underneath it - who owns the data, who profits from it and who gets a say? Amit Pradhan has spent the past several years trying to build that alternative with Rainfall, a self-sovereign AI platform built on the idea that your data - and the AI trained on it - should stay under your control. Amit is an entrepreneur and investor who's been part of the Valley for over two decades, co-founded the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society and has been an early mover in decentralized technology. He has served on multiple Boards, including the Norwegian Refugee Council (nrc.no), on the BMW Mobility Council and acts as a mentor to startup founders around the world.  Resources mentioned:  Burnout From Humans: A little book about AI that is not really about AIRainfall: https://rainfall.one/Episode Credits: Hosts: Charly Kleissner, Andrea WyssProducer: Felix ZeltnerEditing: Rabea DebusPhoto: Monika Grassl

    Can AI become a responsible technology, Amit Pradhan?

About

Charly Kleissner - tech visionary, turned impact investor - invites you into conversations that move us forward. Every month, he invites guests with deep expertise from the worlds of impact investing, business and personal transformation to discuss challenging questions: How can we build businesses with a positive impact? Can we change the financial system, one investment at a time? What does it take to be a conscious leader in the age of AI? Charly shares his own angles – from working with Steve Jobs to becoming very wealthy in Silicon Valley to building the premier impact investment communities all around the world – and, together with co-host Andrea Wyss and producer Felix Zeltner, invites his guests to share their own. With curiosity, openness and a willingness to challenge assumptions CHARLY’S ANGLES offers perspectives you can learn from and conversations with lasting impact.

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