Confession with Ali Partovi

Ali speaks with longtime friend Alfred Lin, general partner at Sequoia Capital. Alfred shares early memories of moving from Taiwan to New York at age six, frequent childhood trouble, and pivotal teachers who taught him the importance of leadership. He also talks about tension with his parents over quitting his Stanford statistics PhD to join LinkExchange, where Ali (with fellow co-founders Tony Hsieh and Sanjay Madan) later promoted Alfred to CFO. Alfred reflects on the stress of going through three rounds of layoffs at Tellme. With Sequoia, he discusses the pain of losing $150 million money in FTX and fumbling an early investment with Uber, missing out on a possible $20 billion.

Ali speaks with Luana Lopes Lara, Co-founder and COO of Kalshi, a financial exchange used to trade on outcomes in politics, economics, weather, and more. Long before Kalshi was valued as a $22 billion juggernaut, Luana and co-founder Tarek Mansour spent years trying to persuade the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) that election markets could operate legally. After repeated rejections, layoffs, and a company that felt closer to death than success, she made the extraordinary call to sue the federal government. Luana focuses on the years when almost no one believed Kalshi would make it. She reflects on growing up in Brazil, intense training as a professional ballerina, and choosing MIT over safer paths. Luana opens up about the emotional cost of being an optimistic founder when times are tough, why she believed suing the CFTC was the only path forward, and how she convinced Tarek, the investors, and board to take this chance. Despite retaliation and delays, Kalshi ultimately won in court, shifting the power dynamic and enabling major expansion. Luana shares what she has learned about conviction, resilience, and knowing when to go all in.

Ali sits with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella who reflects on growing up in Hyderabad, India with academically accomplished parents, his early obsession with cricket, and a lifelong focus on getting a little better each year. He describes standing up to bullies, being introduced to computing through a Sinclair ZX80, working at Sun, and joining Microsoft in 1992. Satya shares formative lessons about empathy, including an interview moment where he was told to hypothetically “pick up and hug” a fallen child, and how his late son Zain’s cerebral palsy reshaped his perspective on leadership. He regrets early management failures, discusses missed strategic opportunities around search and keyword auctions in the search wars, and emphasizes courage, persistence, and taking risks while empowering others.

Ali is joined by his cousin, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Dara recounts being born in Tehran in 1969, leaving Iran during the revolution of the late 1970s, and settling with extended family in New York. He goes into his experience as CEO of Expedia in his mid-30s, and how he lost confidence after a missed quarter and failing to push the board to approve buying Priceline. Dara discusses leading with both honesty and transparency, and describes COVID at Uber as his rock-bottom moment, pointing to massive demand collapse and survival-driven layoffs of over 5,000 people.

Every successful tech veteran has a story they don't tell from the stage: the deal that fell apart, the agonizing period of self-doubt, the moment they hit rock bottom. We pull back the curtain on those stories in Confession with Ali Partovi, a new podcast featuring candid conversations with tech leaders including Satya Nadella, Dara Khosrowshahi, and others.