The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
Vidit Agarwal
5 episodes
#289 Alan Joyce Unfiltered: Former Qantas CEO on What He Got Wrong, Blind Spots and His Untold Personal Story
- Alan Joyce says he planned to leave Qantas in 2019 but stayed because the board asked for three more years.
- He lists Qantas's mistakes as flight credits, the illegal sacking of TWU members and ghost flights.
2 Nov · 1 h 35 min
#288 Justin Lopas: Midwest Roots, Building SpaceX’s Starbase, Anduril Lessons, Co-Founding Base Power with Zach Dell
- Justin Lopas says Base Power is building grid infrastructure, not the consumer backup-power product the public often assumes it to be.
- Lopas says he and Zach Dell launched Base Power after bonding over the shared traits of utilities and defense primes: cost-plus, heavily regulated and short on top talent.
28 Oct · 1 h 15 min
#287 Unpacking the DNA of "Rainmakers" with Global Business Leaders Neil Plumridge & Robert Nason (EY, Kearney, PwC)
- Neil Plumridge and Robert Nason, co-founders of RAYN Group, say rainmakers are built through consistent daily practices anyone can follow, not born with the skill.
- Robert Nason argues relationships must come before point of view, saying the old boot camp approach to winning business no longer works.
26 Oct · 1 h 8 min
#276 John Willett: Rogo’s COO on Princeton, Being Ignored for Years to Winning the World’s Biggest Banks
- John Willett says ChatGPT's November 2022 release was Rogo's biggest turning point, since before it the team avoided mentioning AI in sales decks.
- Kevin Ryan, MongoDB and DoubleClick co-founder, became Rogo's first investor with $2m and told the founders to quit their banking jobs.
7 Sept · 55 min
#229 Jack Zhang: The Relentless Founder of Airwallex — From Rural China to Building a $8B FinTech Powerhouse
- Jack Zhang says he worked around 100 hours a week for two decades and had multiple anxiety attacks during Airwallex's startup phase.
- Airwallex's first idea, a peer-to-peer currency matching algorithm, failed because it needed more scale, and its second, a bill pay platform for SMEs, failed on customer acquisition costs above $1,000.
21 Oct 2025 · 54 min