TruthWorks

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Jun 2026

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Are you ready to dive deep into the world of work, culture and leadership? Join Jessica Neal and Patty McCord each week as they chat with expert guests and explore the issues affecting the workplace — from AI and mental health, to making layoffs and combating toxic cultures. Featuring global industry leaders and specialists that are passionate about reshaping the way work today. Listen in as we redefine the rules to work for us, not against us. Episode 1 of TruthWorks launches March 19! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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June 16, 202640 min

Stanford Professor: Why 85% of People Freeze Up while speaking and 15% might be Lying!

The Communication Expert: The No.1 Skill AI Can't Replace | Matt AbrahamsMatt Abrahams has spent nearly two decades teaching the one skill almost no one is formally trained in: how to communicate. He's a lecturer in Strategic Communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, the bestselling author of "Think Faster, Talk Smarter" and "Speaking Up Without Freaking Out," and the host of the "Think Fast, Talk Smart" podcast.In a world racing toward AI, Matt makes a counterintuitive case: the more capable our machines become, the more our human ability to connect, persuade, and be understood will decide who thrives and who gets left behind.In this episode, Jessica Neal and Jeff Marquitz sit down with Matt to unpack the science and the practice of communication. They get into the "authenticity crisis" and the "empathy paradox" emerging as we hand our hardest conversations to AI, why up to 85% of people freeze in high-stakes moments, and the exact, repeatable techniques to manage that anxiety in real time.Matt doesn't speak in abstractions. He breaks communication down into mindset and messaging, shares the only three ways anyone actually gets good at it, and walks through how to build a personal "anxiety management plan" you can use before your next big meeting or talk. He also explains why most companies treat communication as an afterthought, and how founders can turn it into a genuine competitive advantage.If you've ever gone silent in a room full of people who intimidate you, or felt your body betray you on stage, this conversation is a practical playbook for showing up clearer, calmer, and more human.————————————————————TOPICS COVERED– Why AI makes human connection more important, not less– The "authenticity crisis": when perfect words stop feeling like yours– The "empathy paradox" and the risk of empathy atrophy– The evolutionary reason public speaking terrifies us– The three sources of speaking anxiety: audience, situation, and goal– Physical techniques to calm nerves in the moment– The only three ways to get good at communication: repetition, reflection, feedback– How to build your own anxiety management plan– Why communication should be taught in schools and modeled at work– Mindset and messaging: why you can't separate the two– Building a "communication infrastructure" inside a company– Why "getting it out" is not the same as being understood– Giving vs. getting: how the goal changes the conversation– Matt's nightly journaling practice for improving over time————————————————————

June 9, 202650 min

Fortune 500 work with this CEO building a $1billion dollar company with 100 people - Siobhan Savage.

What if the reason the world's biggest companies keep failing at AI has nothing to do with the AI itself?Siobhan Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Reejig, the Work Operating System helping the most complex organizations on earth move work to worker in the age of AI. She works with Fortune 500 companies across banking, pharmaceutical, and retail, and she is building a billion-dollar company on a single conviction:opportunity belongs to the builder, not the platform.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━HER STORYOne of twelve children. Canadian born, Irish raised, 15 years in Sydney, now in New York. She built her career in workforce strategy on multi billion dollar projects, obsessing over one question: how do you move work to the right worker and make a business run at high velocity?She never imagined agents would become a form of worker. Now that future is arriving, and the Fortune 500 calls her to make sense of it.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━WHAT THIS EPISODE EXPOSESIn this episode of Truth Works, Jessica Neal and co-host Jeff Markowitz sit down with Siobhan to reveal what is really happening inside enterprise AI.Most large companies have turned AI into transformation theatre: 12 month programs, enormous consulting bills, prompt training that changes nothing, and tools that get switched on then quietly switched off when the ROI never shows up.The problem is not the technology. It is that almost no one has actually looked at how the work runs.Reejig spent $40 million mapping how work actually works, building a view of tasks, subtasks, and skills before large language models were even real. That map is why Siobhan can walk into a company and understand 80% of its work without touching a single system.She also draws a hard line on responsibility. Being Bold AND Responsible is not a slogan for her, and she refuses to design a world where two iPads interview each other in a boardroom.Then it gets personal: raising "baby builders," the mom guilt of 16 hour days, and the human skills she believes will matter most in the careers of the future.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━TOPICS COVEREDTHE BACKSTORY→ One of twelve children, Canadian born, Irish raised, 15 years in Sydney→ Starting out in workforce strategy and the obsession with moving work to worker→ Recruiting as the ultimate training ground for resilience and connectionTHE ENTERPRISE AI REALITY→ The real reason enterprise AI is failing, and why it is not the AI→ Transformation theatre: long programs, consulting bills, prompt training that changes nothing→ Why tools get switched on then switched off when the ROI never appears→ Making invisible work visible without plugging into emails or calendars→ How Reejig spent $40 million mapping work before large language models were real→ Understanding 80% of a company's work without touching a single systemVALUE OVER COST→ The shift from cutting cost to unlocking value and growing margin→ How an invoice that took five hours can be reduced to 45 minutes→ Why your job is made of tasks, and how AI quietly removes parts of them→ Emerging and declining skills, and the danger of "jobs of the future" courses→ Stealth change management and the iPhone upgrade approach to adoptionTHE BIGGER QUESTIONS→ What it means to be Bold AND Responsible when jobs are on the line→ The leaders harvesting people out of jobs while paying consultants millions→ How the CHRO role is about to fundamentally change→ Managing a workforce of both humans and agents→ The handcrafted human experience making a comeback, even at AI companiesTHE PERSONAL SIDE→ Raising "baby builders" and teaching kids to use AI early→ Why human to human skills become more valuable, not less→ Mom guilt, 16 hour days, and choosing to build→ Why opportunity belongs to the builder, Jane in accounts, not just the PhDs━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━This is a conversation for anyone trying to understand what work becomes next, whether you lead a Fortune 500 company or you are figuring out your own place in the AI era.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Guest: Siobhan Savage, co-founder and CEO of ReejigHosts: Jessica Neal and Jeff Markowitz

June 2, 202649 min

$10B Gusto CEO: "Imagine Describing Your Idea The 10,000th Time, Will You Still Be Excited?"

Three friends. One closet. A company now valued at $10 billion, serving over 400,000 small businesses.Josh Reeves is the co-founder and CEO of Gusto, the payroll, benefits, and HR platform now valued at roughly $10 billion. But he didn't grow up dreaming of building HR software — nobody does. The son of two teachers who were the first in their families to go to college, Josh studied electrical engineering at Stanford during the dot-com collapse, when the conventional wisdom was that the internet was finished. He ignored it. After a stint as a product manager at Zazzle and a first startup he now describes as "stealth mode" — his polite way of saying he had no idea what he was doing — Josh walked away with the most important lesson of his career: never start a company just because your friends are.In 2011, he and two co-founders started Gusto to fix something genuinely broken. Payroll, benefits, and the systems that quietly reduce people to ID numbers and acronyms — especially in small businesses, where two-thirds of U.S. employers have fewer than five people and every hire is a real human being, not a line item. They set one rule: they wouldn't pay themselves until they could do it through their own product. They launched in December 2012 with 100 small businesses. One co-founder spent four months sleeping on an air mattress in a roommate's closet — it had a skylight, for the record, and the roommate's clothes were still hanging inside.Fourteen years later, Gusto has grown from three people in a Palo Alto house to over 3,000 employees ("Gusties") across Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Scottsdale — with no headquarters, by design. In this episode, Josh sits down with Jessica to unpack how he protected culture at scale, why he deliberately left revenue on the table to launch in all 50 states the right way, and the framework he uses to resist Silicon Valley's growth-at-all-costs gospel.You'll learn:- Why second-time founders have an edge — and why Josh had role, responsibility, and ownership conversations on day one- The weekly feedback walks the three founders started when they were just three people, and still do 14 years in: three things working, three things to improve- Why most systems treat people like transactions — and what changes when you build for the human moments instead- The values-and-motivation interview Gusto uses to hire for what makes someone tick, not just what's on their résumé- Why interviewing is a skill every leader should practice obsessively — and how the best interviewers dig past the first and second answer to what's really underneath- How to scale culture without freezing it: "we're not a museum" — what should persist, and what should always be allowed to change- The "no headquarters" home-base model, and why Josh personally interviewed Denver's first 10-15 hires to make it as important as San Francisco- Why "doing things that don't scale" early can build the momentum that scales later- Why he deliberately left revenue on the table to cover all 50 states comprehensively, instead of launching half-built- The three checks-and-balances Josh runs against growth: product quality and compliance accuracy, unit economics, and team retention- Why there are over 10,000 payroll rules in the U.S. — and why the business owner should never have to become the expert- How AI is a tailwind, not a threat — making Gusto more of a teammate and partner to the small business owner- Why work should be more than a paycheck: purpose, community, and impact, when the alignment is there- The thought experiment every founder should run before committing: the 10,000th time you describe your idea, will you still be excited?Whether you're starting a company, scaling one, or just trying to do work that means something, Josh's philosophy is the throughline — the one he repeats to his four kids and to every founder who'll listen:In our family, we do hard things.Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, now in the business of telling the truth about how work really works.

May 26, 202647 min

$0 to $750M - From Starting Hotel Empire at 11 to Biggest Raise in Legal Tech - Dan Mishin

At 11 years old, Dan Mishin convinced his grandmother to move in with his parents so he could turn her apartment into a backpacker hostel. The idea came to him in Berlin, where his mom's wallet had just been stolen and they were stranded overnight in a hostel full of laughing 20-year-olds speaking a language he didn't understand. He made two decisions on the train ride home: learn English, and open a place just like it.That summer project became the largest hostel chain in Eastern Europe — 13 countries, 3,500 guests a night — and the start of one of the most unlikely founder journeys you'll hear this year.In this episode, Dan sits down with Jessica Neal to walk through all of it. Starting a company at 11 in post-Soviet Ukraine, a place he describes as the Wild West, with no functioning law enforcement and entire generations of savings wiped out overnight by government decisions. Sleeping in his car for six months when the business almost went bankrupt. Signing 100-year leases with personal guarantees at 18 because Ukrainian law had no concept of bankruptcy protection. Raising a $100M term sheet that same year. Buying a yellow Porsche he now calls a total douchebag move. Ballooning to 280 pounds on a diet of Snickers and Red Bull. And eventually getting on a flight to the US with a single phone number — only to walk away from a 10-minute call with a $100K check at a $5M valuation.After building Joon Homes to $300M and 250 employees, Dan hit a wall most founders don't talk about: he was building something valuable, but he didn't believe in it anymore. So he walked away to start Manifest — an AI-native legal company that's raised $60M to fix one of the most broken industries in America. The US has 1.3 million lawyers, ten times more per capita than most countries in the world, yet 80% of Americans can't afford one. Dan thinks he knows why, and he's rebuilding the entire system starting with immigration.The conversation also goes deep on what it actually means to run an AI-native company — how Dan hires, why he believes generalists are winning, the applied AI engineers he embeds in every team, and the one-year severance policy he introduced to take the fear out of automating yourself out of a job.A conversation about volatility, reinvention, and what it actually takes to build something that matters.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📌 TOPICS COVERED▸ Growing up in post-Soviet Crimea and the night in Berlin that started it all▸ Convincing his grandmother to give up her apartment so he could open a hostel at 11▸ Building the largest hostel chain in Eastern Europe as a teenager▸ What it's like to sign 100-year leases at 18 with no bankruptcy protection▸ Sleeping in his car for 6 months before raising $100M▸ The yellow Porsche, 280 pounds, and the Snickers-and-Red-Bull years▸ Landing in the US with one phone number and walking away with a $100K check▸ Scaling Joon Homes to $300M and 250 employees▸ Why he walked away from a high-growth business to start Manifest▸ Why the US has 1.3M lawyers but 80% of Americans can't afford one▸ How Manifest is rebuilding immigration law with AI from the ground up▸ Why immigration is a hiring and retention lever most companies underuse▸ Running an AI-native company: hiring, autonomy, applied AI engineers▸ Why generalists are beating specialists in the AI era▸ The 1-year severance policy that made AI adoption psychologically safe▸ What to do when senior leaders refuse to adapt to AI▸ His advice to over-thinking founders who won't take real risk▸ Why this is the most exciting time in history to be building

May 19, 202649 min

Ex-Google HR Boss & CHRO At Oura: Why Most Companies get People Completely Wrong!

This week on Truth Works, my co-host Jeff Markowitz and I sit down with Judy Gilbert, the Chief People Officer of Oura, the company behind the Oura Ring.Judy is not a typical HR leader.She started her career at McKinsey, moved into executive search at Egon Zehnder, and then spent 12 years inside Google's People Operations team, helping scale the company from roughly 3,000 employees to 70,000.Along the way she ran learning and development, ran performance management, and served as head of HR for both YouTube and Google's moonshot factory, Google X.After Google, she became Chief People Officer at the biomanufacturing company Zymergen, where she helped build the team, took the company public, and then navigated its sale and wind-down.She tried to retire. It didn't last. The pull of being on a team trying to do hard things brought her to Oura.In this episode, we get into the difference between HR as an order-taker and HR as a genuine strategic partner, and why so many chief people officers get "organ rejected" within a year of joining.We talk about the danger of arriving with a fixed playbook, the chemistry that has to exist between a founder and their people leader, and why the job is really about being the one person willing to tell the emperor he has no clothes.Judy also shares the exact questions she asks before taking any role, how she pressure-tested Oura's CEO Tom Hale by sparring with him over compensation philosophy, and why a company's soul has to already exist before anyone can help it grow.In this conversation, we discuss:- The "I don't want to know" fear that stops people tracking their health- Whoop vs Oura, and how much data is actually useful- Why strategic HR is a competitive advantage most companies waste- The three questions Judy asks before joining any company- Why chief people officer turnover is so brutally high- The "toolkit" mistake that gets HR leaders fired- Being the person who has to tell the CEO he has no clothes- Glass balls vs rubber balls, and what to drop when you're building- How to protect a company's soul while running a hard business- Why clear cultures keep people and confused ones lose them- Why every CHRO is now the company's AI strategistThis is a candid look at the work behind the work, from someone who has built the people function at three very different companies and seen what separates the ones that scale from the ones that stall.If this conversation changed how you think about culture, leadership, or the people who quietly hold a company together, share it with someone who needs to hear it.Full episode of Truth Works with Judy Gilbert out now.

May 12, 202646 min

The 6 Second Trick That Wins Every Negotiation: FBI's Hostage Negotiator || Chris Voss

Chris Voss is the former lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. For seven years, his job was to talk people out of the worst decisions of their lives. He's the reason a bank robber walked out of a Manhattan branch after an eight-hour standoff and surrendered to him personally on the sidewalk. A teammate named Jamie Sedania passed Chris two notes at critical moments. Those two notes ended the standoff.But Chris didn't start there. He grew up in a small town in Iowa, the son of an entrepreneur who put every kid to work the moment they could carry trash. He joined the Kansas City police, then the FBI, then the New York Joint Terrorist Task Force. He applied for the hostage negotiation team and got rejected. The woman in charge told him to go volunteer on a suicide hotline first. He did. That decision changed everything, because tactical empathy doesn't get built in simulation rooms. It gets built in conversations where the stakes are someone's life.Today Chris is the founder of the Black Swan Group, named after Nassim Taleb's book on the impact of the highly improbable. He's the author of Never Split The Difference, a book that has sold millions of copies and still ranks #1 in negotiation a decade after release. In this episode of Truth Works, he sits down with Jessica Neal and Peter Clark to unpack how the skills that brought hostages home alive close million-dollar deals, win raises, and transform hiring conversations.This is not a tactics episode. It's a conversation about what happens inside the human brain when someone feels heard, and why coachability is the rarest and most expensive trait in any room.What you'll learn:The 6 second silence rule that triggers oxytocin and serotonin, and why most people destroy it by speaking too soonWhy "negotiate your career, not your salary" is the only raise strategy that actually works, and the exact opening line to use with your bossThe 3 negotiator types (assertive, analyst, accommodator) and how the same silence lands differently with eachHow to spot when you're the fool in the game (20% of the time, you are)Why Stephen Covey got "seek first to understand" wrong, and the small correction Chris makesThe tactical empathy framework, why it was rebranded from plain "empathy," and the neuroscience underneath itThe single observation Chris makes at the grocery store that turns a produce clerk into a personal tour guideThe Robert Greene charmer principle that explains why some people make you feel like the most interesting person in the roomWhy coachability is the rarest trait in any room, and the man on a plane who proved it in 10 secondsThe bank robbery story, the swap negotiator tactic, and the two notes that ended an eight-hour standoffThe 22 second silence Elon Musk held with Lex Fridman, and what came out the other sideLearn more about Chris, his Professional Dealmaker Day on May 15th, and his upcoming salary negotiation course at blackswanltd.com.Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe for more honest conversations on leadership, work, and what needs to change.

May 5, 202658 min

$29 Billion CPO Reveals how they Manage 70,000 Employees - Michael Bowes

What does it actually take to lead 70,000 people through one of the biggest cultural resets in beauty history?Michael Bowes, Chief People Officer of The Estée Lauder Companies, joins Jessica Neal on Truth Works for a candid conversation about stepping into the top HR seat at an iconic 80-year-old company in the middle of a billion-dollar restructure, the courage it takes to disagree with your CEO without breaking the partnership, and why the loneliness of the role is real but the work is worth it.Michael walks through his path from Saks Fifth Avenue in the early 90s, to Nike, to Tommy Hilfiger, to Coach and Tapestry, and a brief detour into executive search before joining Estée Lauder in 2015. He spent almost ten years in talent before being promoted into the Chief People Officer role. He is honest about the fact he was not chasing the title. He took it because he believed in the new CEO Stefan's vision for the next 80 years of the company.Then the conversation gets into what is actually changing inside Estée Lauder under the new Beauty Reimagined strategy. A culture that used to default to no is now committing to say yes. Over 1,000 different bonus calculations across business units have been consolidated into nine. Brands that used to operate in silos are now rowing in the same direction with one shared set of goals.Michael also opens up about the realities of the CPO seat that no one prepares you for. The loneliness. The board dynamics. The added complexity of working inside a family-majority-shareholder company. The fact that everyone thinks they can do your HR job until you actually have to do something hard. And the running joke that the only people who tell you they would never want your job are the ones who just watched you do it.The episode closes with how Estée Lauder is approaching AI as a tool rather than a threat, including how the company is mining 80 years of prestige beauty consumer data in ways no competitor can match. Plus the rise of K-beauty, why Dr. Jart sits inside the portfolio, the China R&D centre that is reversing the old east-to-west flow of trends, and the philosophy that has guided how Michael hires for the last decade: hire the player, not the playbook.Topics Covered:How The Estée Lauder Companies scaled from a kitchen in Queens to a global prestige beauty portfolioWhy 87% of the workforce is women and how that shapes consumer decisionsTravel retail as a multi-billion dollar growth channelMichael's career path from Saks to Nike to Tommy Hilfiger to Coach to Estée LauderBeing part of the CEO succession conversation before being promoted himselfTaking the Chief People Officer role in the middle of a global billion-dollar restructureThe Beauty Reimagined strategy and its five pillarsShifting the culture from "protect by saying no" to "we say yes"Consolidating 1,000+ bonus calculations into nine business unitsThe loneliness of the CPO seat and why CEO chemistry is non-negotiableHow to disagree with your CEO and still own the decision publiclyNavigating board dynamics and family-majority shareholdersAI as a tool, not a threat, and how Estée Lauder is embedding it across R&D and consumer insight80 years of prestige beauty data and what AI can unlock from itThe K-beauty wave, Dr. Jart, The Ordinary, and the China R&D centreThe biggest hiring mistake organisations make by defaultWhy the right hire is the player, not the playbookThe piece of advice from Michael's grandmother that he still lives byTruth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix.

April 28, 202653 min

Ex-LinkedIn CHRO: The Whiteboard Exercise That Built LinkedIn's Culture & The Question That Empowers Her Every Day

Pat Wadors, CHRO at Intuitive (the company behind the da Vinci surgical robot), the architect of LinkedIn's Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging framework known as DIBs, and the author of the 2024 Wiley book Unlock Your Leadership Story, joins Jessica Neal and Peter Clarke on Truth Works.From losing her mother during her freshman year of college and getting diagnosed with dyslexia in a career center conversation at LSU, to declaring at nineteen that she was going to run HR, Pat traces the unlikely path that took her from a fine art major in Louisiana to one of the most respected CHROs in Silicon Valley.She walks through the moment Jeff Weiner called her in the middle of a staff meeting at Plantronics to come fix LinkedIn at three thousand employees, the whiteboard exercise in her first five weeks that forced the executive team to admit they were not actually being "open and constructive," and the 3am realisation that became DIBs.She talks openly about why John Donahoe pursued her for ServiceNow with a now legendary line about marriage, and the comment from a head of product that has stuck with her for years, telling her she was the dentist while the rest of the executive team were just dental hygienists.She then opens up about her Personal Scorecard, and the moment her son devastated her by pointing out that if she actually stuck to her own scorecard, she would only see her grandchildren seventy two times by the time they turned eighteen.In this episode, Jessica, Peter and Pat discuss:The art show story that taught Pat at eighteen that she only sold to people she actually likedThe three year clock she runs in her head to avoid getting pigeon-holed in any roleWhat joining LinkedIn at three thousand employees was actually likeThe whiteboard exercise that became the foundation of LinkedIn's cultureWhy she gave DIBs to the world rather than keep it inside LinkedInThe dinner with John Donahoe that turned into a marriage proposal for a jobWhy she thinks of HR as a product with agile development methodologyWhat a CHRO actually needs to learn about the business to earn a real seat at the tableWhy she had a hysterectomy with the da Vinci robot and was ready to cook dinner that nightThe Personal Scorecard framework and how her son broke her heart with itGoldilocks, the Three Pigs, the Tortoise and the Hare, and Mulan as leadership lessonsThe one question she keeps on her desktop that empowers her every dayPat's book, Unlock Your Leadership Story: How to Build Understanding and Motivate Teams Using Fables and Folktales, is available now on Amazon, patwadors.com and as an audiobook.

April 21, 202653 min

'Most People Are MISSING The AI Revolution!' Gagan Biyani On Why Universities Are LAGGING Behind

Jessica Neal and co-host Peter Clarke sit down with Gagan Biyani, co-founder of Udemy, founder of Sprig, and now co-founder and CEO of Maven, the live cohort-based learning platform reshaping how the world's top operators learn from each other.Gagan started his first business at 13, teaching speech and debate to kids in his living room while his parents went through a divorce and his family rode out multiple tech recessions. By his senior year, that summer camp had 150 students and was financing the trips of every student on his school's debate team.In this conversation, Gagan walks Jessica and Peter through the unlikely path that took him from a Fremont kid with no idea startups existed, to obsessively reading TechCrunch four hours a day from a government consulting desk, to becoming the business co-founder of Udemy after a single Skype call with two Turkish immigrants who didn't even know they wanted to run the company yet.He talks openly about getting pushed out of Udemy, raising $60 million for Sprig and watching it crash and burn, and the years of self-doubt that followed before Maven finally clicked. He shares why his habits get stricter the more pressure he's under, why a status-oriented social network is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a founder, and the friend group from high school speech and debate that has kept him grounded for two decades.Then he and Jessica get into the part of the conversation that should make every leader sit up. Why most AI rollouts fail in week three. Why "just give people the tools" is the laziest mistake HR teams keep making. Why Maven has already restructured its engineering pods from 4.5 engineers per PM down to 2, and is asking whether that ratio still needs to shrink further.He explains why universities will be the single biggest laggards in the AI transition, why the education gap is about to widen dramatically, and what he'd actually do if he had a six-year-old in the public school system right now.Topics covered:Starting his first business at 13 during his parents' divorceThe Stanford summer camp that became a $50K business with 150 studentsWhy he was a terrible boss as a teenagerHow TechCrunch and one comment from a friend changed his life trajectoryBecoming Udemy's business co-founder after a single Skype callGetting pushed out of his own company and starting overRaising $60M for Sprig, burning out, and shutting it downWhy founders need friend groups that aren't status-orientedThe counterintuitive habit pattern: stricter routines under more stressWhy product-market fit is the #1 job, and recruiting is #2Why Maven exists, humans still have a place in modern learningRestructuring engineering pods because of AI: 4.5 engineers per PM down to 2Why most AI rollouts fail in week threeThe biggest mistake HR leaders are making with AI right nowWhy universities will be the laggards in the AI transitionThe Alpha School model and the future of K-12 educationThis is one of those episodes where a founder you might not have heard of teaches you more about building, leading, and surviving in the next decade than most of the household names ever will. Gagan is honest about the failures, generous with the frameworks, and clear-eyed about what's coming.

April 14, 202643 min

"I Came To America With $5": The Billionaire Detecting Stage 1 Pancreatic Cancer Before Symptoms Appear

What if illness was optional?Naveen Jain has built seven companies. He was on top of the world running Moon Express, the first private company ever granted permission to leave Earth orbit, with a $2.6 billion NASA contract to mine the moon, when his father was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given three months to live.He got exactly that.That moment broke something open. Naveen walked away from space and started asking a different question: if we can land on the moon, why are we still finding cancer by a dentist running a finger across someone's gum?In this episode, Naveen sits down with Jessica to share the framework behind every company he builds: why this, why now, why me.That framework led him from helium-3 mining to founding Viome, the company now running 1.5 million tests, sitting on 400 quadrillion biological data points, and holding FDA Breakthrough Device designation for detecting stage 1 oral and throat cancer with 95% specificity.A stage 1 pancreatic cancer test launches in the next three months.Jessica and Naveen go deep on:The three questions every founder must answer before starting anythingWhy DNA testing companies are asking the wrong question, and what RNA reveals insteadThe 100 trillion microbes producing 99.9% of the genes expressed in your bodyHow a classified Los Alamos biological defense project became the foundation of ViomeWhy cancer immunotherapy works for 1/3 of patients, and what changes when you fix the gutThe double-blind data: HbA1c down 0.42 in 90 days, IBS reversal in 64% of patients, anxiety down 50%Building a culture where loyalty shifts from the founder to the missionWhy Naveen, at 66, still believes he owes a debt to his fellow humansThe advice he'd give every leader: dream so big people think you're crazyA masterclass in first-principles thinking, mission-driven leadership, and the radical idea that chronic disease isn't a feature of aging.It's a signal we've been ignoring.Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Netflix CHRO, here to interrogate what actually works in leadership and life.If this conversation shifted how you think about your health, your work, or what you're capable of building, share it with someone who needs to hear it.