Warm Intro
Warm Intro is what happens when you sit down at a dinner party and fall into the best conversation in the room. Not an interview. A conversation. Honest, human, and sometimes weird conversation with interesting people doing big things. Entrepreneurs, artists, politicians and chefs open up about their childhoods, hot takes and insecurities — with honesty, humor, and heart.Hosted by Chai Mishra.Views are our own.
The Philosopher Sharing Indian Thought with the World
Professor Purushottama Billimoria is a philosopher, historian, and one of the people most responsible for getting the world of philosophy to take Indian and Eastern thought seriously, not as spirituality or religious studies, but as philosophy proper.
He's also my former professor and friend.
Join us for a deeply human conversation about philosophy, the corrupting power of wealth, the Parsi Diaspora, and Bob Dylan.
Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things.
Warm Intro is a video pod...
The Chinatown Local Running To Succeed Nancy Pelosi
Connie Chan is running for the most important house seat in the country. Her path here has been unlike anyone else's.
Connie is an immigrant and a daughter of San Francisco's Chinatown. She rose through the ranks of its city government, eventually coming to represent a large portion of it. She's a proud progressive from a very proudly progressive city, now in a race for mainstream power.
Join us for sentimental conversation about how Connie got her name, what went wrong in San Francisco and Chai's question that made Connie pause.
0:07 Chai's Warm...
The Woman Helping Create Superbabies
0:00 Chai's warm intro to Noor
1:40 Parents’ unconditional love
7:35 Chai’s thoughts on parenting
8:16 Noor’s childhood
12:29 Orchid was always the goal
18:46 What’s Orchid and why?
25:30 Early Users and Haters
30:52 Criticism that Noor understands
34:35 Orchid’s accidental life changing story
38:52 Noor’s dream world
43:48 Just being a grandma
Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things.
Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.
YouTube...
The Funniest Man On LinkedIn
Jack Kuveke is a spitting image of the disgraced CEO Adam Neumann. At 20, he ran a 50 million dollar crypto fund in Belgrade, Serbia. His meme factory is called Jabroni Capital. All of this and almost everything else about Jack is objectively hilarious.
Jack is an absurd man who has had an absurd career in an absurd industry. This has given him the ability to ridicule tech and finance better than anyone else. He sincerely roasts CEOs, he ironically broetry praising Elizabeth Holmes and his fake VC firm can’t invest in you “because you’re too early”. He does...
The Immigrant Woman Who Sold A Million Sneakers
Sidra Qasim created the internet’s favorite sneaker. In getting there, she has lived a life that no one could have predicted.
Born and raised in rural Pakistan, Sidra clawed her way out of a system that afforded her no opportunities. Through sheer will, she made it to America and started a company that no one believed she could run.
But now, at 39, Sidra is the founder CEO of Atoms — notoriously the world’s most comfortable sneaker brand, with over 1,000,000 pairs sold, worn by celebrities from Malala to Marques Brownlee, funded by Silicon Valley’s greatest...
The NASA Engineer Building America’s New Iron Dome
Sebastian Fischer is a different kind of Silicon Valley engineer. He’s not a coder. He builds physical objects that move fast, blow up and generally bring about shock and awe.
Sebastian started by building tiny rockets in his parents' backyard with his little brother. But those rockets eventually took him to NASA, Lockheed Martin, Amazon Prime Air and Cruise Self Driving.
Now, he's onto his most wildest project yet, Wardstone — building satellites that detect missiles and shoot them down before they reach America.
Join us for a fast-moving conversation about the ethics of buil...
The 22 Year Old Building A Hotel On the Moon
Skyler Chan wants to make humanity intergalactic and he's not entirely sure why anyone would want to work on anything else.
At 22, Skyler has already lived a life. He flew airplanes with the Canadian Air Force, started a company, worked at Tesla, NASA and every major space organization, got into YC and had a dozen brushes with death all before he could legally drink.
Now, he's sure. He knows what he wants to build: the first hotel on the moon. And that's just step one.
Join us for a soaring conversation about why space is...
A Warm Thank You
A message from Chai.
Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things.
Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.
YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro
Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.
Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has a...
The Most Bipartisan Congressman in America
Congressman Mike Lawler holds a seat that no other Republican had held since the year he was born (he is a 39-year-old Republican from deep-blue New York).
The reason he was able to win — and keep — that seat is the same reason he's been ranked one of the most bipartisan members of Congress: he understands the assignment. He knows politics is about persuasion, not purity. It's about talking to people you disagree with and finding areas of agreement so you can make progress.
Join us for our final conversation of the season about Americans' love of f...
Silicon Valley’s Most Effective Philanthropist
Matt Flannery’s work has uplifted over six million families across a hundred countries.
That’s because Matt is one of the godfathers of microfinance. His creations, Kiva and Branch, have delivered billions of dollars in small loans to some of the most forgotten and overlooked people in the world.
But Matt doesn’t see himself as a philanthropist. In fact, he’s pretty down on the concept of nonprofits altogether.
Join us for a deeply honest conversation about Matt’s religious childhood, how he had over $8,000,000 stolen from him, how his board betrayed h...
The Founder Who Helped Startups Raise Over $1 Billion
Nick Tommarello has probably helped fund more American founders than almost anyone alive.
But Nick’s not a businessman — he’s a founder. That distinction matters a lot to him and it defines everything about him.
See, Nick loves risk and he thrives on uncertainty and chaos. He’s good at helping founders because he literally can’t imagine having a regular job.
Join us for a loose conversation about Nick’s childhood working at his dad’s nightclub, how his dad became a millionaire and went broke over and over, how Nick got congress an...
The Startup Founder Running For Governor Of California
Ethan Agarwal is the youngest and strangest candidate running for Governor.
Ethan’s not a politician, he’s a founder. And a very successful one. He grew his first company to $100M in revenue, and then sold it. He then raised $50M for a second company — which he then also sold in 2025
Within months of that exit, he launched a run for governor as a proud capitalist and meritocrat (his words) to restore the entrepreneurial dream of California.
Join us for a freewheelin’ conversation about how what went wrong in CA, Katie Porter’s mashed p...
The Tech Founder Who Became America’s Best Chocolate Maker
Todd Masonis makes the best chocolate in America—but he took an unexpected path to get there.
Todd co-founded a startup with Sean Parker (yes, that Sean Parker from The Social Network). After selling it for over $150 million, he walked away from Silicon Valley to make chocolate in his friend’s garage.
Seventeen years later, that experiment became Dandelion Chocolate—considered by many to be America’s best chocolate maker (not just a chocolatier, mind you).
In this conversation, we talk about:
– Building fast vs. crafting slow
– What makes good chocolate truly good
The Street Artist Who Took Over An Entire City
fnnch is San Francisco's Banksy; the most loved and hated artist in the city.
People who love him believe that he made the city a more joyous, beautiful place to be. His haters think he is an outsider who helped gentrify the city.
One thing is for sure — fnnch is opinionated and controversial. He is also thoughtful, whip-smart and incredibly prolific.
Join us for a whirlwind conversation about the purpose of art, getting death threats for painting honey bears, and how he might just be the Andy Warhol of his generation.
W...
The Founder Helping People Buy Their First Homes
How do you find a mission actually worth spending your life on? Are most startup “mission statements” complete BS?
Niles Lichtenstein wants everyone to own a home and he’s dedicating his career to making it possible.
Niles lost his dad at 13. His mom rented out rooms to make ends meet. As a result, he grew up with a revolving circus of people living in his home, with his family.
Decades later (and after several successful startups) Niles has turned that experience into an incredible company.
Join us for a sentimental conver...
The Founder Reinventing The Global Spice Trade
What is the point of a business? Is it exclusively to make money? Or could there be more variables in this equation?
Sana Javeri Kadri is on a mission.
She started a company at 22 to build an entirely new model for one of the oldest trades in the world. Her company, Diaspora Co is building a new Silk Route for spices.
Join us for a wide-ranging conversation about what someone’s pantry tells you about them, the sheer insanity of the modern spice trade and if you were a spice, which one you’d be...
The Youngest 2-Michelin Star Chef In America
Harrison Cheney might be the best chef of his generation.
His restaurant (Sons and Daughters) recently earned its second Michelin star and a green star, and Harrison himself won the Michelin Guide’s Young Chef of the Year award. He has worked in some of the world’s greatest kitchens, from Gastrologik to Quince.
And he has done all of this in record time. Harrison is just 32. At 16, he sold his Xbox to work in a fine dining restaurant. In the 16 years since, he has risen to the top of the industry.
Join us f...
The 39-Year Old Challenging Nancy Pelosi
What should you work on as a young person? The smaller, achievable thing that builds your track record? Or the big bold thing that probably won't work?
Saikat Chakrabarti is running to unseat Nancy Pelosi — the most powerful, feared, and respected democrat in the country. Saikat is less than half of Pelosi's age but he has big ideas and a track record to back them up.
Before this, Saikat recruited AOC to run for congress, wrote the Green New Deal, ran tech for Bernie's presidential campaign and was the founding engineer at one of Silicon Va...
Welcome To Warm Intro
Hey! This is Chai.
I'm a founder in Silicon Valley and I've spent a third of my life running my company.
In all those years, I found that the only cure for the pain of building something big is talking to others who are doing the same thing. I've been lucky to have a lot of these conversations and I wanted to find a way to bring them to more builders.
That's how we came up with Warm Intro. These are honest conversations with interesting people who are building big things — from entrepreneurs to ar...
