Introducing the Thesis Driven Leader Series

Top to bottom, L to R: Gilmartin, Case, Bennett, Blake, Doctoroff, Rascoff, Poleg, Helman, Maio, Sramek, Kagan, Eisenberg, and Marohn

At long last, we’re making it happen: a Thesis Driven podcast. We’re excited to announce Season One of the Thesis Driven Leader Series, which explores topics at the intersection of real estate, technology, innovation, and cities. And we are joined by some incredible guests who will be sharing their experiences and perspectives on the future of the built world.

Season One will feature hour-long deep dives with:

• Moses Kagan and Rhett Bennett, co-founders, ReSeed Partners (Episode went live this morning and is available to listen on Substack, Apple, and Spotify)

• Spencer Rascoff, founder, Zillow

• MaryAnne Gilmartin, founder & CEO, MAG Partners

• Dror Poleg, author, Rethinking Real Estate and After Office

• Jilliene Helman, founder and CEO, Realty Mogul

• Dave Eisenberg, founding partner, Zigg Capital

• Charles Marohn, author, Strong Towns and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer

• Dan Doctoroff, founder, Sidewalk Labs

• Stephanie Blake, CEO, Skylight

• Caren Maio, co-founder and former CEO, Funnel

• Steve Case, founder and CEO, Revolution

• Jan Sramek, founder and CEO, California Forever

The Leader Series will be available here on Substack as well as on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. And it’s available to everyone, not just Thesis Driven paid subscribers. We’ll also be posting video from our interviews on our YouTube channel, so feel free to access the Leader Series on any of those channels. New episodes will come out once per week. This week, we’re dropping Episode One featuring Moses Kagan and Rhett Bennett discussing ReSeed, an exciting accelerator program for developers that we’ve previously covered in our newsletter.

We’re thrilled to be doing this in partnership with Turpentine, the exceptional podcast publishing house also responsible for Packy McCormick’s Age of Miracles and Noah Smith’s Econ 102, among others. (If you are interested in sponsoring the Thesis Driven Leader Series, you can get in touch with Turpentine here.)

What We Cover

While the Leader Series brings a new format to Thesis Driven, our interests remain the same. In general, our interviews focus on the real estate market today, future trends, and big secular changes on the horizon rather than our guests’ biographies.

Specifically, we look to tap into each guest’s deep knowledge of real estate and the built world to project a little farther out into the future than we typically see. Given the shifts that are happening in the world today, what do we expect to see 3, 5, 10 or more years in the future—and how should real estate operators, investors, and entrepreneurs respond?

And each guest shares their answers to a handful of key questions, including:

• Cities they’d bet on today;

• Developers and entrepreneurs they’re watching;

• Real estate laws and policies they’d like to change;

• New technologies that will have the biggest impact on the built world.

… and much, much more.

What’s to come?

While we’re only announcing Season One today, we hope that the Leader Series will be a regular Thesis Driven feature. Of course, the more that you listen—and share—the more likely it is that we keep it rolling and produce a second season.

You can access the Leader Series on the following platforms:

• Here on Substack

• Spotify

• Apple

• YouTube

Come join us and hope you enjoy!

—Brad Hargreaves