Grit

The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund

Joubin Mirzadegan, partner at Kleiner Perkins, interviews Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of Mercury, on the Grit podcast about grit, adversity, fundraising discipline and company building. They cover Mercury's valuation and fundraising history, its headcount growth and hiring timing, hiring executives too early, attrition, and the current AI anxiety in the market.

2 Nov · 1 h 6 min

Airwallex's Jack Zhang on Fintech, Failure, and Growth

Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of the global payments and banking platform Airwallex, talks with Joubin Mirzadegan, a Kleiner Perkins partner who hosts the Grit podcast. They cover his upbringing, his family's sudden loss of wealth, his early businesses and how he built Airwallex through a founding investment, several pivots, and funding rounds. They also discuss the 2018 Stripe acquisition offer that Zhang weighed before turning it down, and his views on grit, happiness and building companies.

29 Jun · 1 h 12 min

ElevenLabs’ Vision for Voice Interfaces | CEO Mati Staniszewski

Joubin Mirzadegan, partner at Kleiner Perkins, interviews Mati Staniszewski, cofounder and CEO of ElevenLabs, about the company's origins in Poland, its research-led hiring and its voice AI products. They discuss whether AI voices and text will become indistinguishable from humans, the company's business and team structure, and how far AI will change moviemaking and work.

27 Oct 2025 · 1 h 5 min