Minus One
by South Park Commons
A show about the winding journeys the world's most interesting people take to becoming great—and what they do when figuring out a question we all face: What's Next? Because before you launch at Zero, you have to figure out what to launch at Minus One. Hosted by South Park Commons Partner Aditya Agarwal and members of the SPC community.
Episodes
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How Close Are We to Robots That Can Do Anything? | Sergey Levine, Physical Intelligence
Sergey Levine, cofounder of Physical Intelligence, joins South Park Commons Partner Aditya Agarwal to discuss the race to build general-purpose robots that can learn new skills and operate in environments they've never encountered before. They talk about how Physical Intelligence is developing AI...
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How Waymo Made Self-Driving Cars a Reality | Dmitri Dolgov, Co-CEO
Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEO of Waymo, joins South Park Commons Partners Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi to discuss the 17-year journey from early self-driving experiments to putting fully autonomous cars on public roads. They talk about how Waymo built its self-driving system, why simulation and...
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The Blood Test That Could Detect Thousands of Diseases | Helmy Eltoukhy, Guardant Health
Helmy Eltoukhy, CEO of Guardant Health, joins South Park Commons Partner Mark Jacobstein to discuss his journey from electrical engineering to building one of the leading companies in cancer diagnostics. They talk about Guardant’s path from liquid biopsy to early cancer detection, the difficult...
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OpenAI's ex-B2B CTO on Keeping AI Aligned
How close are we to AGI, and what happens when AI systems stop behaving the way we expect? Srinivas Narayanan, former CTO of B2B Engineering at OpenAI and former VP of Engineering at Facebook, joins South Park Commons Partner Prateek Mehta for a wide-ranging conversation on his Minus One to Zero...
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The Secret Superpower of Great Founders | Sridhar Ramaswamy (Snowflake CEO)
What does it take to build something that lasts? Snowflake CEO and former Google SVP of Ads Sridhar Ramaswamy joins South Park Commons General Partner Aditya Agarwal to share his answer. Ramaswamy traces his journey from Google to founding Neeva, an ad-free search startup that shut down before…
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What Is Reward Hacking and Can We Stop It? | Tom McGrath, Goodfire
Why did OpenAI’s model hack into Hugging Face? Tom McGrath, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Goodfire, joins South Park Commons Partner Jonathan Brebner to explore one of AI’s biggest challenges: interpretability. Using OpenAI’s recent reward hacking incident as a starting point, they discuss…
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Anthropic Engineer on the Future of Coding with AI | Thariq Shihipar
Thariq Shihipar, a member of Anthropic's Claude Code team (and SPC alum), joins South Park Commons Partner Evan Tana to discuss what it takes to build at the frontier of AI, where the models, tools, and best practices are constantly evolving. Thariq traces his journey from a gaming startup to...
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The Man Who Took India to the International Space Station | Shubhanshu Shukla
What does it actually take to become an astronaut? Shubhanshu Shukla, the second Indian to travel to space after more than four decades, joins South Park Commons general partner Aditya Agarwal to share the answer. During Axiom Mission 4, Shukla became the first Indian aboard the International…
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Minus One to Space Gun | Nato Saichek
Nato Saichek, cofounder and CTO of Longshot Space, joins South Park Commons Partner Jonathan Brebner to explain why rockets won the space race for the wrong reasons—and why a 15-kilometer space gun may be the most rational path to cheap access to orbit. Nato traces Longshot's origins from garage...
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Why Great AI Companies Are Moving Beyond Tools | Amit Jain (Luma AI)
Amit Jain, cofounder and CEO of Luma AI, joins South Park Commons Partner Finn Meeks to explain why the most defensible AI companies aren't just building tools—they're developing systems that can understand and simulate the world. Amit traces Luma's path from a free 3D capture app designed to...
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The AI Cybersecurity Crisis Is Here | Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks CEO)
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, joins South Park Commons partner Aditya Agarwal to discuss the cybersecurity crisis currently unfolding—and why AI is both the threat and the only viable solution. Nikesh traces his own unlikely journey from Google's Chief Business Officer to leading one…
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How Replit Is Enabling a New Wave of Million-Dollar Founders | Amjad Masad & Haya Odeh
Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh, cofounders of Replit, join South Park Commons Partners Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi to share what it really took to build one of AI’s most important platforms, and how it’s now enabling a new wave of million-dollar founders. Amjad breaks down why traditional ideas...
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Anthropic CTO on AI Safety in the Age of Exponential Growth | Rahul Patil
As AI models become more powerful, safety is emerging as one of the defining challenges of our time. Rahul Patil, CTO at Anthropic, joins SPC Partner Ankit Chowdhary to discuss why they prioritize AI safety above all else, how the company thinks about building reliable and trustworthy AI models,...
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Elad Gil: Silicon Valley’s Most Dangerous Startup Advice
Elad Gil, investor and author of High Growth Handbook, sits down with South Park Commons Partner Aditya Agarwal to challenge some of Silicon Valley’s favorite startup myths. He talks about why you might not actually need a cofounder, why data alone isn’t much of a moat, and how the strongest...
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What Gamma ($2B Unicorn) Learned that Most Founders Get Backwards | Grant Lee
Grant Lee, cofounder and CEO of Gamma, joins South Park Commons General Partner Jonathan Brebner to discuss how his AI storytelling platform is taking on PowerPoint and Google Slides. Grant shares how Gamma survived the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, how they stayed lean while scaling to a $2B...
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We Asked DoorDash’s CEO If AI Competitors Scare Him
When Tony Xu cofounded DoorDash 13 years ago, he was rejected by more than 100 investors. Today, it’s a $70B+ behemoth dominating the delivery industry. Tony joins SPC General Partner Aditya Agarwal to reveal how DoorDash won the delivery war and answer the burning question of whether AI agents...
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Andrew Yang: AI's "Job-Killing Tsunami" + Why He'll Pay You Not to Use Your Phone
In 2018, Andrew Yang warned that automation would destabilize society by displacing millions of jobs. Eight years later, he says the crisis is no longer hypothetical—"you're already seeing it." Andrew joins his early mentor, SPC General Partner Mark Jacobstein, and Aditya Agarwal to unpack where…
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You Don't Need "Passion" to Build a $1B+ Company | Pilot CEO Waseem Daher
"I think the mission basically doesn't matter." Waseem Daher, CEO of Pilot (and South Park Commons alum), has a contrarian theory about what actually drives startup success—and it's not passion for the problem you're solving. Waseem joins General Partner Aditya Agarwal to unpack the real patterns...
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Betting an Entire Company on AI, Bubble or Not | Render CEO Anurag Goel
What does it feel like to bet your company on AI when everyone's talking about a bubble?Anurag Goel, CEO of Render and former employee #8 at Stripe, joins SPC Partner Jonathan Brebner to share why he's going all-in on AI infrastructure. The SPC alum breaks down the honest debates happening inside...
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How Asking ‘Why?’ Changes What You Build | Kunal Shah
Most things Kunal Shah says, turn into quotes that are shared across a cross-section of worlds — whether that is the startup and tech ecosystem, or simply among people looking to better understand human behaviour. First with FreeCharge and now with CRED, he has truly traversed a journey of what…
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From -1 to Meesho | Before the IPO | How Vidit Aatrey & Sanjeev Barnwal Built for Bharat
This is the story behind all the IPO headlines. In this episode of Minus One, Vidit Aatrey talks to Prateek Mehta about the high-conviction journey of building Meesho — from early uncertainty and brutal trade-offs to cracking scale in one of the hardest consumer markets in the world. We talk…
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How a $3 Trillion+ Company Thinks About AI | Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott
If there’s one person to listen to truly grasp the scale and intent of technology and where we’re headed, it’s Kevin Scott. The Microsoft CTO joins Aditya Agarwal to discuss navigating his Minus One days, the partnership with OpenAI, why the most valuable problems to solve are often the ones…
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Mission Before Startup: Gokul Rajaram’s Playbook for Founders
Having been a key part of building Google and Meta, and helping scale DoorDash and Block, Gokul Rajaram joins Aditya Agarwal to share his principles and patterns for deciding what’s truly worth building. Together, they draw on real stories from Silicon Valley and reflect on what it will take to...
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Nandan Nilekani | On Building Digital India, and the Next Population-Scale Opportunity
If you want to know what it’s like to be the architect of nations, not just platforms - you ask a man like Nandan Nilekani. In this episode of Minus One, Nandan breaks down the ideas, effort and intent behind building Aadhaar for 1.4 billion people, his next chapter in using AI to drive social...
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The Most Underrated Unicorn Founder In Silicon Valley | Tuhin Srivastava
SPC alum Tuhin Srivastava sits down with Aditya Agarwal to break down how a failed four-year startup, plus early chapters in finance and biotech, shaped the way he is scaling Baseten into one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies today. His approach is simple: kill what doesn’t work,...
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Scaling India's Payments: How PhonePe Built for 500-Million+ Users
Rahul Chari is a leader in India’s tech evolution, from building Flipkart’s foundations, to architecting PhonePe’s planet-scale platform. Simply put, there are very few people in a country of over a billion, who have not used what he built. In this episode of Minus One, he reflects on forming...
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Scaling a Founder-First Community | Ruchi Sanghvi & Aditya Agarwal
After years of operating at scale at companies like Facebook and Dropbox, Ruchi Sanghvi, founding partner of South Park Commons, and Aditya Agarwal, General Partner, turn the mic on each other to revisit the early days that grew this community to over 1,000 founders and technologists. They…
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Selling Pulse to LinkedIn & Scaling Notion Globally | Akshay Kothari
Akshay Kothari has built tools that transform the everyday by making technology feel effortless, like Pulse and Notion. He joins Aditya Agarwal to share the counterintuitive lessons behind enduring products, why selling can sometimes be the braver choice, and how constraints often spark lasting...
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-1 to Extreme Conviction in India’s EV Market | Tarun Mehta & Ather Energy
Tarun Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy, joins Prateek Mehta, to unpack how Ather lived the “minus one” philosophy. By taking risks, locking in on what they truly wanted to build for the next 10 years, and then proceeding to just doing it - with India’s first smart electric scooter.…
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Inside Early Facebook with Andrew Bosworth: Culture, Ads, and AR Glasses
Facebook’s early culture was chaotic, fun, and fueled by a belief that "you can just do things." Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO, joins Aditya Agarwal to revisit that foundational energy. He covers the creation of News Feed, the grit behind the pivot to mobile, and how Meta is tackling long-term…
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The Man Betting on Institutional Reform | Joe Lonsdale and 8VC
After building companies that made their mark, Joe Lonsdale launched 8VC to tackle institutional decay, backing ambitious startups and encouraging the next generation to build what’s missing. Now overseeing $6B+ in assets, he joins Aditya Agarwal to break down where the Valley lost its way, and...
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Building Great Companies, Not Just Good Ones | Mukesh Bansal
What does it take to build great companies? Mukesh Bansal, founder of giants like Myntra and Cure.fit, and now building at the frontier of deep tech with Meraki Labs and Nurix, joins Prateek Mehta in a chat at SPC Bangalore. He shares lessons from his early Silicon Valley “startup MBA”, the…
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Robinhood, Space, and the American Dream | Baiju Bhatt
Baiju Bhatt helped millions learn to invest through Robinhood. He’s since taken the leap to aerospace with his new company Aetherflux. Baiju joins Aditya Agarwal to cover what building from first principles looks like the second time around, the true meaning of the American Dream, and how he aims...
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What the Smartest People in AI Are Missing | Gary Vaynerchuk
How do brands like PepsiCo and Chanel convert consumer attention into real business growth? Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia and multiple New York Times Bestselling Author, joins Dylan Itzikowitz to share how his agency helps these brands turn culture, AI, and data into measurable impact.…
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Google, Facebook, Then Sierra | Bret Taylor
“If there's one lesson I wish I could give my younger self, it's to focus less on the technology and more on the customer need.” Bret Taylor has helped shape how billions interact with the internet, and now with Sierra, he’s rethinking customer interactions through AI that feels more human. Apply...
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The Man Behind India's First Unicorn | Naveen Tewari of InMobi
What does it take to build a global ad-tech company from India? In this episode, Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of InMobi and Glance, gets candid about his early failures and the grit it took to bet on mobile before India was ready. He’s now reimagining commerce on lock screens through AI-powered...
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The Physics of Good Judgment | Rana Adhikari
Rana Adhikari, winner of the 2019 New Horizons in Physics Breakthrough Prize, joins Aditya Agarwal to discuss his 'minus one' journey as an experimental physicist, the current state of LLMs, and the vision that led to the creation of India’s own LIGO facility. Connect with us here: 1. Rana...
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The Designer Who 'Liked' Everything | Soleio
In this episode of Minus One, Facebook’s second designer, Soleio shares how he helped build the emotional layer of the internet and is now backing tools like Figma and Framer to push it further. Connect with us here: Soleio Aditya Agarwal South Park Commons 00:00 Trailer 01:00 Introduction 01:41...
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Silicon Valley, Capital & Globalization | Balaji Srinivasan
Balaji Srinivasan, angel investor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Network State, joins Aditya Agarwal on Minus One to challenge prevailing assumptions about global tech and opportunity. Connect with us here: 1. Balaji Srinivasan- https://x.com/balajis 2. Aditya Agarwal-...
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David Baszucki: Roblox, Minus One, Digital Economy, & the Metaverse
In this episode of Minus One, host Dylan Itzikowitz sits down with Roblox’s chief blocksmith to trace a minus one to zero prototype that evolved into a full blown digital economy, now serving more than 100M DAUs. Connect with us here: 1. David Baszucki- https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbaszucki/…
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AGI, Sci-Fi, and Storytelling | Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, & more
What unfolds when those who imagine the future sit across from those building it? In this special SPC panel, worlds converge. Sci-fi legends Neal Stephenson and Ken Liu join visionary investor Cyan Banister and researcher Joscha Bach to explore how narratives shape reality, how fiction becomes a...
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The Origin Story of Facebook, Quora & OpenAI | Adam D’Angelo
In conversation with Aditya Agarwal, Adam D’Angelo reflects on his early days at Facebook, the founding of Quora, his early conviction in OpenAI, and why he believes the recursive nature of AI is grounded in a first-principles approach. Connect with us here: 1. Adam D’Angelo-...
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History, AI & Technology’s Shared Trajectory | Niall Ferguson
During his three-decade career in academia, Niall Ferguson has explored the critical inflection points that have shaped the course of history — and the future it continues to inform. In this conversation, hosted by Aditya Agarwal and Jonathan Brebner, he delves into why we may be living through a...
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Why I Backed OpenAI, AGI, & the Zero to One Team | Vinod Khosla
In this episode of Minus One, Vinod Khosla joins Aditya Agarwal to reflect on his four-decade journey shaping Silicon Valley. They discuss making high-conviction bets, why the team you build becomes the company you build, Khosla’s first investment in OpenAI, and why he is convinced that AGI sits...
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How Blake Scholl Went to Mach Speeds: The Boom Supersonic Story
In this episode of Minus One, Aditya Agarwal and Jonathan Brebner sit down with Blake Scholl, who went from Groupon product leader to founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic, to discuss his pursuit of reviving supersonic travel. With a vision to make high-speed air travel accessible to millions, Scholl…
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CEO of Microsoft on AI Agents & Quantum
While he hardly needs an introduction, few leaders have shaped the future of technology quite like Satya Nadella. He stepped into Microsoft’s top job at a catalytic moment—making bold bets on the cloud, embedding AI into the fabric of computing, all while staying true to Microsoft’s vision of...
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Kirsten Green’s $500M Bet on Consumer AI
Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures and 8-time Midas List investor, sees the next wave of breakout brands emerging at the intersection of shifting consumer behavior, novel business models, and technological inflection points. In this conversation with Ruchi Sanghvi, she unpacks the...
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How to build a $5 billion+ company in India | Bhavish Aggarwal
From launching Ola as a ride-hailing startup to expanding into EVs, AI, and now a third shot at food delivery, Bhavish Aggarwal has remained in relentless “founder mode.” He dives into the mental models that shaped his journey, how he processes failure, and his vision for India’s deep-tech…
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Scott Belsky, Building Adobe & the Future of Design
Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer & EVP of Design & Emerging Products (and previous Co-founder at Behance), joined us in NYC. Find out why Scott believes the intersection of design, technology & business converges on some of the most important problems worth solving today.
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Alexandr Wang, Scale AI, & the Startup Hunger Games
Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang shares how he navigated the existential angst of early company building to emerge as a leader in AI infrastructure. He shares insights on the brewing US-China AI race and offers provocative opinions on how the next generation of AI companies will need to...
About this show
A show about the winding journeys the world's most interesting people take to becoming great—and what they do when figuring out a question we all face: What's Next? Because before you launch at Zero, you have to figure out what to launch at Minus One. Hosted by South Park Commons Partner Aditya Agarwal and members of the SPC community.
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South Park Commons
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