In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Zalando co-founder Robert Gentz recounts launching the company during the 2008 financial crisis with just €100,000 and a culture of extreme frugality, then scaling rapidly to €1.2 billion revenue within four years through a selection-driven flywheel model that now serves 60 million European customers and leverages AI and logistics infrastructure to power both consumer experiences and B2B services.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Reid Hoffman argues that AI represents the most significant technological platform shift in our lifetimes, surpassing previous cycles in speed and societal impact, and warns that organizations must aggressively deploy AI tools now while navigating risk aversion and geopolitical threats to Western innovation dominance.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Givaudan CEO Gilles Andrier reveals how the world's largest fragrance and flavor company combines neuroscientific principles with artistic creativity to serve B2B clients, while navigating the tension between consumer testing data and bold innovation in a market being reshaped by Gen Z self-expression trends.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Capital Group CEO Mike Gitlin details how the firm's employee-owned structure and unique 'Capital System'—where analysts invest real capital and multiple portfolio managers collaborate—enables genuine long-term investing across $3.2 trillion in assets, positioning active management to capitalize as markets broaden beyond concentrated passive benchmarks.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Mala Gaonkar, founder of SurgoCap Partners, details her concentrated investment strategy focused on identifying rare businesses with durable competitive advantages across four verticals, emphasizing that every company is a technology business and that small teams combined with data science create an edge in identifying how legacy technologies disrupt traditional industries.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel argues that European banks must achieve scale through consolidation and transform their business models using AI to survive, shifting from rigid 3-year plans to adaptive management in an era of volatility, while positioning banks as the essential 'gasoline' to finance Europe's industrial competitiveness.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal discusses how the company captured 21% of the AI data center networking market by building reliable 'information highways' for GPU clusters, while warning that power constraints—not technology—are the critical bottleneck limiting AI infrastructure expansion today.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Norges Bank Investment Management reported a 15% return in 2025, reaching a record value of over 25 trillion Norwegian kroner, driven by a concentrated AI-led equity rally. However, the fund warns of unprecedented concentration risk—with the top 10 holdings now representing 20% of the equity portfolio—and has published stress tests showing potential 37% losses in a 'fragmented world' scenario.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Bill Winters details Standard Chartered's unique 'connector bank' model bridging emerging markets and global finance, while recounting his decade-long turnaround from regulatory crisis and massive write-downs to restored credibility, emphasizing that prioritizing regulators over shareholders and rebuilding team integrity were essential to saving the franchise.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Mala Gaonkar, founder of SurgoCap Partners, explains her firm's strategy to outperform the market over 3-5 year cycles while minimizing capital loss (not volatility) through concentrated investments in "truly great businesses" with long-duration moats, leveraging data science to debias decision-making across four technology-intersecting verticals.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Dylan Field explains how Figma bridges the gap between imagination and digital production, tracing design's evolution from superficial aesthetics to a core business differentiator, while arguing that AI will simultaneously democratize design entry points and amplify the importance of human taste and contextual understanding.

In Good Company (Nicolai Tangen)

Michael Bloomberg shares his journey from a laid-off Salomon Brothers partner to building a financial data empire, emphasizing that success comes from solving real problems, outworking competitors, and taking care of people—principles he applied equally to business, 12 years as NYC Mayor, and giving away over $20 billion in philanthropy.