Danielle Newnham Podcast
Danielle Newnham interviews founders, creators, and innovators from the technology world. Each conversation digs into their personal stories, the challenges they've faced, and the lessons they've learned along the way. Listeners get an inside look at what drives the people shaping our digital lives and startups.
Episodes
Steve Furber: Reverse Engineering the Human Brain (REPLAY)
As April 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Arm architecture, I am re-releasing my episode with Steve Furber. What began as an ambitious project in a small corner of Cambridge, U.K., has grown into the world's most widely adopted computing architecture, now powering billions of devices – from sensors, smartphones and laptops to vehicles, datacenters and beyond.It was at 3pm on 26th April 1985,
Pixar Co-Founder Alvy Ray Smith (REPLAY)
Dr Alvy Ray Smith is the co-founder of Pixar, a computer scientist and pioneer in the field of computer graphics and to celebrate 39 years to the day that Pixar was officially founded, I wanted to release my interview with Alvy from Series 3.After starting his career in academia, Alvy had an epiphany following a serious skiing accident. He decided to move to California to combine his two passions
Zahaan Bharmal: How Physics Can Explain Almost Everything
Today’s guest is Zahaan Bharmal – Senior Director of Strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Google where he has spent the last 16 years. He is also author of The Art of Physics: 8 elegant ideas to make sense of almost everything.In this conversation, Zahaan and I discuss his younger years, how he struggled at school and had big questions about the world and how The Hitchhiker's Guide t
Nuno Coelho Santos: Designer, DeepMind, Google, Meta
Today’s guest is Nuno Coelho Santos – a Portuguese Product Designer who has worked at some of tech’s top companies from DeepMind to Meta’s WhatsApp, and Google Health.He was at DeepMind working on their Streams app for clinicians when Covid struck and his team were pulled into helping the UK Ministry’s of Health Departments Covid response.In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about Nuno’s ear
David Senra: Why Founders Rule the World (REPLAY)
This week's guest is David Senra, ex-founder and host of Founders podcast – one of my favourite podcasts where each week, David devours a biography of a founder and shares his favourite lessons with the world, whether it’s Charlie Munger, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Kobe Bryant, The Wright Brothers, Lucille Ball, Jay Z, Enzo Ferrari and many more!But David has a really interesting story himself and o
Charlotte Stavrou: Influencers and Entrepreneurship
Today’s guest is Charlotte Stavrou – founder and CEO of SevenSix agency – an award winning influencer marketing agency.In this episode, we talk about Charlotte’s childhood and how it shaped her work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit, how her dyslexia diagnosis last year allowed her to feel whole after the education system left her feeling broken.We also discuss why so many founders are now becoming
Asif Ahmed: The Finance Playbook For Founders
Today’s guest is Asif Ahmed, Partner & Head of Early Stage for Tech & High Growth companies at accountancy firm Cooper Parry. He previously founded Acclivity Advisors which was acquired by Cooper Parry and his role at both has been to work closely with early-stage founders and entrepreneurs across all accounting, tax and advisory disciplines - ensuring founding teams are able to help navigate and
JZ: Lessons in Leading Products at Airbnb, WeWork and more
Today’s guest is JZ, currently Chief Product Officer at Linktree and previoysly SVP of Product at Webflow. And before that, she led product teams at Airbnb, WeWork, Dropbox and gaming startup Pocket Gems.In this episode, we discuss JZ’s life growing up – how frequent moves to different cities and countries built her up resilience and adaptability, how she got into product management despite being
Anil Ananthaswamy: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI
Today’s guest is Anil Ananthaswamy - an award-winning science writer and former staff writer and deputy news editor for New Scientist magazine. He is a 2019-20 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and has been a guest editor for the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and organizes and teaches an annual science writing workshop at the National Centre for Biological
Simon Brading: From Faith To Founder
Today’s guest is Simon Brading who works at App Agency Brightec and is the co-founder of Mentora Money which he started in 2022 with his wife, Anna – a financial education instructor. Their mission is simple but important - to create a platform to help as many people as possible learn basic financial principles so that they can make money, look after their money and reduce money stress. In this co
Doug Menuez: Documenting Steve Jobs & The Digital Revolution
Today’s guest is the wonderful Doug Menuez – a documentary photographer, director and photojournalist whose incredible career has seen him cover the AIDS crisis, the Ethiopian famine, the birth of the digital revolution in the 1980s where he documented founders like Steve Jobs, Marc Andreessen, Bill Gates, the Adobe founders and more and that is how he came on my radar.His book, Fearless Genius: T
Series 14 Trailer
What's coming up on Series 14 of the Danielle Newnham Podcast.I have long toyed with the idea of branching out away from solely focusing on tech founders. I started the podcast 3 years ago now with the idea of interviewing people in the tech field because that’s what I knew – that was the field that I had been in and I believed that the human stories behind the game changing tech were important wh
Yancey Strickler: Community, Collaboration & Self Acceptance
Today’s guest before a little summer break is Yancey Strickler – previously co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, currently co-founder of Metalabel. Yancey is also a writer and in 2019, his excellent first book was published - This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. In the book and in this conversation, Yancey also discusses a useful decision making framework that he came up
Sharmadean Reid: Serial Founder On How Women Can Succeed and Thrive
Today’s guest is Sharmadean Reid MBE, a serial founder and author. Sharmadean grew up in Wolverhampton, surrounded by strong female influences before she went to London to study at Central St Martins. She then became a successful stylist and creative consultant before starting her first business at 25 - WAH nails – a pioneering nail salon in East London. Despite wanting to quit after six months,
Sean Dadashi: How AI Can Improve Our Mental Health (REPLAY)
Sean Dadashi is co-founder of Rosebud. Born to Iranian parents who emigrated to the US after the revolution in 1979, Sean grew up in Los Angeles and was on a path of studying mechanical engineering before he switched courses after a year to study Cognitive Science with a minor in Computer Science.He then became a CTO before starting his own company - Somatic Studios in 2016 – where he used his pas
How To Grow Your Podcast
Today's episode is all about how to grow your podcast. I answer questions from listeners such as: Should I do audio or video?How do you find your guests?How to promote your podcastWhat platforms work best to promote your podcastShould you use YouTube?Should you do clips?Is the podcasting space too saturated?Things I would do differently if I were starting a podcast todayHow do you research?Should
Danielle Strachman: Funding Dropouts and Renegades
Today’s guest is Danielle Strachman, co-founder of 1517 venture fund which, in their own words, backs dropouts working on hard problems and sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their startups. Prior to starting 1517, Danielle worked with Peter Thiel, and Michael Gibson (who I Interviewed in Series 8, Episode 60) and together, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don’t
Chrisman Frank: The Future of Education, Elon Musk and AI
Today’s guest is Chrisman Frank – co-founder and CEO of Synthesis – the online platform that teaches kids how to solve complex problems and think critically. Born out of the school Elon Musk set up with Chrisman’s co-founder Josh Dahn (interview with Josh here), Synthesis has two main products – teams where kids learn as a group to work on complex problems, and its AI tutor which was born out of
Leslie Valiant: The Importance of Being Educable
Today’s guest is theoretical computer scientist Leslie Valiant - currently the T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. Among his many accolades, Leslie was awarded the Turing Award in 2010 for transformative contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of PAC learning which stands for Probably Approximately Correct, as
Brett Martin: Lessons on Failure
Today’s guest is founder and VC Brett Martin who I first started following ten years ago when we were both in the mobile space.Brett is currently Co-Founder of Kumospace and co-founder of Charge Ventures. Kumospace is a venture backed virtual office space platform that provides immersive and interactive virtual spaces for hosting team meetings, and social gatherings. Charge Ventures is a venture c
June Angelides: Founder Turned Investor
Today’s guest is June Angelides MBE – a former founder, turned VC. June grew up in Nigeria before coming to London to study Economics. She then joined Thomson Reuters working on the news desk, covering syndicated loans before she got a call to join Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) who were just starting up here in London. She joined a small team there, working on both the Venture Debt Team and Early Sta
Chris Anderson: How To Make The Internet Better
Today’s episode is a special one as it is my very first LIVE recording of the podcast which took place last month with the one and only Chris Anderson of TED.Recorded at the stunning Kindred in London, it was such a special evening and a delight to have so many fans of the podcast and Chris in the audience.In this episode, we discuss Chris’ childhood, growing up with missionary parents in Afghanis
Tamiko Thiel and The Connection Machine
Today’s guest is Tamiko Thiel – lead product designer of The Connection Machine – a revolutionary massively parallel artificial intelligence supercomputer which was developed in the 1980s. Originally conceived by Danny Hillis from MIT’s artificial intelligence lab where he was studying under Marvin Minsky, Danny got an incredibly talented team together including Richard Feynman, Brewster Kale, Tam
Stephen Wolfram: Reimagining Education, and Computational Thinking
Today’s guest is the one and only Stephen Wolfram - a physicist, mathematician, computer scientist and entrepreneur He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha and Wolfram Language, The Wolfram Physics Project and the author of bestselling A New Kind of Science among many other books.A visionary polymath, Stephen published his first scientific paper at
Riva Tez on Genius, Mania and The Impact of Cancel Culture
Today’s guest is Riva Tez - a philosopher, curious thinker, intellect, investor and one of my favourite people on the internet. She studied Philosophy at UCL before digging deeper into technology and engineering and starting the Berlin Singularity.She went on to co-found Permutation Ventures — an early stage VC fund which focused on AI startups and, she has also worked with Jim Keller at Intel a
Joe Macleod: How to Design Good Endings
Today’s guest is Joe Macleod – designer, founder and author, former Head of Design at the award-winning digital product studio Ustwo, which brought the world the hit Monument Valley game.At ustwo, Joe helped build a globally awarded team, working with the world’s favourite brands on the most pioneering of products but he now focuses his energy on product endings and improving that experience for c
Startups: Europe vs US
Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different as it is actually a podcast episode where I appeared as a guest as opposed to a host and I am sharing it here because I think you will find it useful. The podcast is called Digital Europe: Now and Beyond which is about European tech entrepreneurship and innovation and is hosted by serial Spanish entrepreneur Pau Garcia-Mila. In the episode you’
Nicki Sprinz: Group MD of ustwo Studios
Today’s guest is Nicki Sprinz, co-founder of Ada’s List (A digital global network of over 150,000+ women and non-binary in tech) and Group Managing Director of ustwo’s studios – London, Malmö, New York, Tokyo and Lisbon. For those who don’t know, ustwo is a digital product studio with top name clients such Google, Meta, DeepMind, Samsung, and Peloton to name a few. Ustwo games also created the Ap
Sean Dadashi: How AI Can Improve Our Mental Health
Today’s guest is Sean Dadashi, co-founder of Rosebud. Born to Iranian parents who emigrated to the US after the revolution in 1979, Sean grew up in Los Angeles and was on a path of studying mechanical engineering before he switched courses after a year to study Cognitive Science with a minor in Computer Science.He then became a CTO before starting his own company - Somatic Studios in 2016 – where
Series 11 Recap: Best Moments
Today, I wanted to close out Series 11 with a recap of the wonderful guests we have had on – from Mike Slade and James Vincent who both worked for many years with Steve Jobs, VC James Wise of Balderton Capital, Josh Dahn who set up a school with Elon Musk, pioneering tech entrepreneur Dame Stephanie Shirley, Kindred founder Anna Anderson, Google Developer Advocate Kelsey Hightower and Syreeta Chal
James Wise: Why The World Needs More Entrepreneurs
Today’s guest is James Wise – a Partner at Balderton Capital and author of Start-Up Century: Why we're all becoming entrepreneurs - and how we can make it work for everyone, which we will discuss in today’s episode.James grew up in Manchester among a community of business owners and inspired by them has spent his career surrounded by, helping and investing in entrepreneurs. Balderton Capital, wher
Kelsey Hightower: From Sleeping in His Car to Distinguished Engineer, Google
Today’s guest is Kelsey Hightower, a distinguished engineer and developer advocate at Google and speaker known for his work with Kubernetes, open source software and cloud computing.As a curious and motivated self-learner, Kelsey dropped out of College and taught himself the skills required to start his career as an independent contractor for BellSouth – a telecoms company in Atlanta helping the c
Josh Dahn: Building A School with Elon Musk (REPLAY)
What does the future of education look like? This is a question I have pondered for the last ten years or so and today’s guest - Josh Dahn – has the answer. Eight years ago, Josh Dahn was teaching Elon Musk’s kids at Mirman – a private school for highly gifted children in LA when Elon approached him about rethinking the traditional education model. Josh jumped at the opportunity and in today’s epi
James Vincent: My Time With Steve Jobs
Today’s guest is James Vincent who spent eleven years working directly with Steve Jobs to help build Apple’s narrative for some of its hugely ground-breaking products including the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, App Store and iPad.He also founded and was CEO of Media Arts Lab which was a bespoke agency working exclusively for Apple and is host of Fast Company's Innovation in Leaders Podcast.A master storyt
Anna Anderson: Community, Grief and Giving Back
Today’s guest is Anna Anderson, founder of Kindred – a co-working and events space in West London, beloved by founders and creatives alike.Anna Anderson spent her career in social work before founding Kindred in 2019 to help forge human connection between founders. Her goal with Kindred is to create a space that feels inclusive and provides fellow founders and small businesses with the community t
Syreeta Challinger: How to Traverse Trauma
Today, we’re doing things a little bit differently because I felt it was the right time to bring on Syreeta Challinger, a founder, a coach, podcaster and an incredible human whom who I first interviewed five years ago when I had a company called F= which was all about empowering women and Syreeta had started MOSS – Moments of Sense and Style where she sold her beautiful products such as notebooks
Dame Stephanie Shirley: From Child Refugee to £2 Billion Business
Today’s guest is Dame Stephanie "Steve" Shirley - a hugely successful tech entrepreneur and now philanthropist as well as author of her memoir, Let It Go. I actually recorded this interview back in 2016 for my book Female Innovators at Work and you can find the full interview on my YouTube channel, thanks to my friends at Bullet Media who filmed it.But now feels like a good time to release this ep
Mike Slade: Remembering Steve Jobs
Today's guest is Mike Slade of Second Avenue Partners – an investor, advisor and seasoned storyteller who worked with Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Jobs.Mike started his career at Microsoft in 1983 and spent seven years in a variety of product marketing roles launching hugely successful products including Excel, Works and Microsoft Office. He then went to work at NeXT as VP of Marketing, report
Simon Peyton Jones: In Pursuit of Simplicity
Today’s guest is Simon Peyton Jones – a hugely influential computer scientist who has spent his career researching the implementation and applications of functional programming languages, particularly lazy functional programming. After a stint in academia, he joined Microsoft Research Cambridge (1998-2022) where he spent more than 20 years before becoming an Engineering Fellow at Epic Games last y
Dr Mary Lou Jepsen: Curing Cancer, and Human Telepathy (REPLAY)
This is a REPLAY of last year's episode with Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen – serial entrepreneur, inventor, pioneer in VR, medical imaging and telepathic technology, former professor at MIT Media Lab and currently, founder of Openwater.Mary Lou spent many of her childhood years unwell before she was finally diagnosed with a brain tumour in her twenties. And going through that had a huge impact on her life a
Nir Eyal: The Importance of Being Indistractable
Hello and welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind their work.Today’s guest is Nir Eyal - best-selling author, entrepreneur, investor and business consultant teaching about the intersection of psychology, technology and business.An American-Israeli immigrant, Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies before
Dr Robert Langer: The Most Cited Engineer in History
Today’s guests is Dr Robert Langer – a chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and the most cited engineer in history - specializing in the biotechnology fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He is also the co-founder of Moderna a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines which was used globally for Covid-19.Bo
Sarah Hamburg: Neuromorphic Computing
Today’s guest is Sarah Hamburg – a cognitive neuroscientist and researcher currently working as a post-doctoral Neuromorphic AI Engineer in Developmental Robotics. Sarah is also a DeSci (decentralised science) advocate and organiser, heavily involved in the decentralised science (DeSci) space since early 2021. After working as a core member of an Open Science DAO, she published a letter in Nature
Ian Livingstone: Games Pioneer
Today, my guest is Sir Ian Livingstone – games pioneer, entrepreneur and the bestselling author of the Fighting Fantasy book series.Widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry, Ian co-founded Games Workshop in 1975 with Steve Jackson, launching Dungeons & Dragons in Europe, Warhammer, White Dwarf, Citadel Miniatures, and the Games Workshop retail chain. Whilst he exited
Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Physician, Founder, One In A Million
Today’s guest is Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli – a physician, programmer and founder of Patients Know Best.In this conversation, we talk about Mohammad’s upbringing from his family being exiled from Bahrain in the 1970s, to his childhood spent in the Yemen desert, Syria and Beirut during a civil war.On top of that, Mohammad suffers from a one a million genetic immune deficiency called Hyper IgM Syndrome
Matthew Stafford: What Makes a Great Founder?
Today’s guest is Matthew Stafford – an investor and co-founder of 9 Others, a global community for founders, where once a month, ten entrepreneurs come together over dinner and help each other by answering this one question, “What keeps you up at night?”Matthew started 9 Others with Katie Lewis in 2011 and it’s now a global network of thousands of entrepreneurs in over 45+ cities around the world
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE REPLAY
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE is the co-founder of Stemettes, an award-winning social initiative focused on getting girls, young women and non-binary people excited about, and encouraged into STEM fields through mentoring, qualification academies and STEM clubs.But let’s go back a bit. Because to understand why Anne-Marie chose this path, you need to understand her life story. At age just 10 years-ol
Series 10 Trailer
Welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.I know I probably say this every series but Series 10 might be my most favourite yet and I really can’t wait to share it with you! Upcoming guests this series include Simon Peyton Jones – Engineering Fellow at Epic Games, previo
AMA: Addiction, Networking and Irrational Fears
Hello and welcome to the Danielle Newnham podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.To see out Season 9, I thought I would do my second ever AMA. I do these because I want to be helpful and because I think it’s important for listeners to know me and understand where I am coming from and why I do the p
Hana Walker-Brown: ADHD, Brain Injury and Living by Values
Today’s guest is Hana Walker Brown – Audio Documentary and Podcast Creator, a Composer, author and Creative Director.In this really open conversation, Hana discusses how ADHD has informed her career, the impact an adult diagnosis had on her life and we dig deep into her work researching CTE which if I say it right is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy - a progressive and fatal brain disease associat
David Senra: Why Founders Rule the World
Today’s guest is David Senra, ex-founder host of Founders podcast – one of my favourite podcasts where each week, David devours a biography of a founder and shares his favourite lessons with the world, whether it’s Charlie Munger, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Kobe Bryant, The Wright Brothers, Lucille Ball, Jay Z, Enzo Ferrari and many more!But David has a really interesting story himself and one we di
Kevin Kelly: The Evergreen Optimist
This episode with Wired Founding Editor Kevin Kelly is one of my favourite episodes!His joie de vivre is infectious and I learned so much from his inspiring story and his fantastic new book Excellent Advice For Living which we talk about in this episode from which I know you will get a lot from too.But stepping back in time, Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review from 1984-1990 b
Deb Liu: PayPal, Facebook and The Billion Dollar Leader (REPLAY)
Today’s episode is with Deb Liu – CEO of Ancestry.com, the billion dollar genealogy company. Deb also serves on the Board of Intuit and is the co-founder of Women in Product. This is a Replay of S6:E48.In this interview, Deb talks me through her personal and career journey from growing up in a small town where less than 1% of the community were Asian to how she overcame racism to become a VP at Fa
Peter Faulding: What Lies Beneath
Today’s guest is Peter Faulding - a world-leading confined space rescue and forensic search specialist. He has pioneered the use of side-scan sonar in forensic searches for missing persons underwater in the UK and is a world leader in underwater search techniques. He has assisted in the search in many cold cases and has located human remains and evidence that had gone undetected for years, in some
David Auerbach: Is Big Tech Out of Control?
Today's guest is David Auerbach, a former engineer at both Microsoft and Google and now a technologist, writer and author of two books – Bitwise: A Life in Code and his most recent book, Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities.Today, we talk about David’s background in software engineering and what it was like to work at Microsoft on MSN Messe
Mark Murdoch: The Magic of Music
Today’s guest is the incredible Mark Murdoch, founder of Mahogany a multi-faceted music company which is behind the hugely popular Mahogany Sessions on YouTube, famed for its live acoustic sessions with amazing singers in phenomenal locations that include artists fields, warehouses, cemeteries, churches. All these acoustic sessions are filmed with beautiful cinematography making the experience eve
Series 9 Trailer
Welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind their game-changing work.I may have only just wrapped up series 8 but I am so excited about series 9 that I thought I would bring it forward so it will be launching imminently.And upcoming guests on this series include Mark Murdoch, the founder behind music channel Mahogan
Women in Tech: Advice to Younger Selves Part II
As it’s International Women’s Day, I wanted to do what we did last year and hand the episode over to some of the amazing women I have had on the show in the past year, and of course I will link to each of their original episodes below so that you can check them out in full.In order of appearance in today’s show, we have the wonderful Cat Noone of Stark, Noor Shaker of X-Chem and Glamourous AI, Ay
Series 8 - Advice To Younger Selves
I wanted to say a massive thank you for listening to Series 8 of the podcast and thank you to my wonderful guests Steve Furber, Dean Forbes, Michael Gibson, Jennifer Phan, Alvy Ray Smith, Polina Marinova Pompliano and Andrew Zuckerman.Since the beginning of this year, we have learned so much from these inspiring stories - from Steve Furber’s quest to reverse engineer the human brain to Dean Forbe
Andrew Zuckerman: Curiosity, Creativity and The Human Experience
I believe in pure intention. And if your intentions are pure, you're going to create something of value that people will connect with. Andrew ZuckermanThe medium that he works in is almost secondary to the fact that he's a thinker and an intellectual first. David Meredith on Andrew ZuckermanToday’s guest is Andrew Zuckerman, a celebrated filmmaker, photographer, author, podcaster, founder who has
Polina Marinova Pompliano on How to Succeed
Today's guest is Polina Marinova Pompliano, writer and founder of The Profile –a newsletter and media company that profiles the world’s most successful people from founders to athletes, actors to authors and many many more in between.Previously, Polina was at Fortune magazine as a journalist and editor where she wrote Term Sheet – a daily digest on businesses deals and the people behind them.Poli
Jen Phan on The Creator Economy
Today’s guest is Jennifer Phan - co-founder of Passionfroot - a platform empowering creators to partner directly with brands and agencies to monetise their product and services, be it a podcast, a newsletter or YouTube channel.Born to immigrant parents, Jen started her career as VC investor before seeing a gap in the market for creators who are trying to earn money directly from their work. Passio
Alvy Ray Smith: Founder of Pixar (REPLAY)
Dr Alvy Ray Smith is the co-founder of Pixar, a computer scientist and pioneer in the field of computer graphics. After starting his career in academia, Alvy had an epiphany following a serious skiing accident. He decided to move to California to combine his two passions - art and computers - in a place where he felt something good was about to happen. Alvy was always a pioneer. From creating his
Michael Gibson on Peter Thiel and Starting a Renaissance
Today’s guest is Michael Gibson, co-founder of 1517 – a venture fund he started in June 2015 with Danielle Strachman which backs, and I quote, “dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists, at the earliest stages.”Prior to starting 1517, Michael worked with Peter Thiel, and alongside, Danielle Strachman, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don’t know, The Thiel Fel
Dean Forbes: Homeless to Billion Euro Exits
Interview with Dean Forbes - hugely successful turnaround tech CEO who has led several companies to massively successful exits. But let’s go back in time. Dean experienced hardship growing up and his family were made homeless twice but Dean always had big aspirations. His first goal was to make money doing what he loved which was football and whilst he did get to play for a Premiership, the experi
Steve Furber: Reverse Engineering the Human Brain
Steve Furber is a seminal computer scientist, mathematician and hardware designer whose work includes the BBC Microcomputer and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor which can be found in over 100 billion devices today.Steve studied both Maths followed by a PhD in Aerodynamics at Cambridge University before joining Herman Hauser and Chris Curry at Acorn Computers. For the next decade, he would work w
Tech Founders and Innovators: 2023 and Beyond
Hello and welcome to the Danielle Newham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.I wanted to come on here quickly to wish you all a fantastic 2023 and to thank you all for being part of this podcast journey with me. I appreciate everyone who has listened and shared their favourite episodes in 2022 –
Anne-Marie Imafidon: Child Prodigy to Tech Leader
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, co-founder of Stemettes an award-winning social initiative focused on getting girls, young women and non-binary people excited about, and encouraged into STEM fields through mentoring, qualification academies and STEM clubs.But let’s go back a bit. Because to understand why Anne-Marie chose this path, you need to understand her life story. At age just 10 years-old, Anne
Rony Abovitz on Magic Leap and Taking Bold Risks
Magic Leap Founder Rony Abovitz is a serial tech entrepreneur and visionary. He co-founded Mako Surgical in 2004 — a robotics company specialising in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology utilised by hospitals worldwide. MAKO was acquired by Stryker Corporation in 2013 for $1.65 billion.Rony went on to found Magic Leap — a spatial computing company which envisaged a futuristic w
SHORTS | Dhiraj Mukherjee On Shazam's Startup Lessons
Welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.I wanted to try something a little different today. I have been asked for a while now about doing shortened versions of podcast episodes so I thought I would test this out with some takeaway tips from the brilliant Dhiraj Mukher
John Maeda: A Life of Tech, Design and Computational Thinking
Today’s guest is John Maeda – famed artist, designer, technologist, author, ex MIT professor, and once President of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, among many other accolades - most recently as CTO at Everbridge.He completed his bachelors and masters degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT where he would return to become Professor of Design and Computation and
Chris Sheldrick: The Founder Taking on the World
Today’s guest is Chris Sheldrick, co-founder and CEO of what3words – the startup which is quite literally mapping the world.Chris Sheldrick grew up as a gifted musician who thought his music career was all mapped out but sadly, Chris suffers from a sleep disorder which saw him sever the very parts of his body required for such an illustrious career. Not deterred by this life-changing experience, C
Donna Auguste: She Led the Newton Engineering Team Before Selling Her Startup for $147M (REPLAY)
Today’s conversation is with Donna Auguste and I wanted to replay her episode from Series 2 because it’s actually Ada Lovelace Day today which is an international celebration of the achievements of women in STEM and Donna encompasses everything we are celebrating today. An incredible role model, Donna received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Berkeley before
Rick Smith: How Do We Stop School Shootings?
Something I don’t tell many people is that when I was seven years old, two of my school friends and their family were shot dead. As you can imagine, it has had a long-lasting impact on me and all those who had the privilege of knowing them.Fast forward all these years and one of my former guests Jimmy Soni was kind enough to introduce me to Rick Smith, founder of Taser now Axon - a company which
Jack Butcher: One True Fan
Today’s guest is Jack Butcher, founder of Visualize Value, a media and product business that I like to say takes complex ideas and makes them digestible through visual design.He also sells incredible courses which helps others to learn, teach, build and sell their value more effectively. Originally from the UK, Jack moved to NY to pursue his passion as a designer then, at the beginning of 2020 w
Series 7 Trailer
Hello and welcome to the Danielle Newham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.If you are a new listener, welcome. If you are a long-time listener, welcome back and thank you, thank you for sticking with me. I am really excited about Series 7 because we have some truly fantastic guests who are rea
Deb Liu on PayPal, Facebook and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
Today’s guest is Deb Liu – CEO of Ancestry.com, the billion dollar genealogy company. Deb also serves on the Board of Intuit and is the co-founder of Women in Product. In this interview, Deb talks me through her personal and career journey from growing up in a small town where less than 1% of the community were Asian to how she overcame racism to become a VP at Facebook where she spent 12 years of
Timothy Armoo on How He Built and Sold His Business for 8 Figures
What can I say about today’s guest? He started life in London before being sent to live with his grandmother in Ghana at a just a few months old. He was a young boy when he returned to live on a London council estate with his father and it was then that he said he realised that they were poor but that also his life thus far had not been down to his own doing. That he had found himself in these cir
Celebrating 50 Years of Atari with Nolan Bushnell (REPLAY)
50 years ago today, Atari was born! So I am celebrating with a REPLAY of Series 2 episode with the legendary Atari founder Nolan Bushnell – serial entrepreneur and a pioneer of the video games industry.After an early interest in engineering, Nolan went on to study Electrical Engineering before setting up Atari with Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn (I interviewed in Series 1, EP 8 - listen here). Atari ex
Philip Rosedale: The Man in the Metaverse (REPLAY)
This is a re-released episode from Series 1 with Second Life founder and High Fidelity co-founder Philip Rosedale.As a child, Philip Rosedale dreamed of creating a fully-fledged virtual society and that’s exactly what he did with Second Life. Despite it being conceived many years before, Second Life was launched in 2003. Almost two decades later, and with one million active users and hundreds of m
