Sarah Chen-Spellings
175 episodes listed below
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Conversations with billionaires, unicorn founders, and the world’s leading funders. Hosted by Sarah Chen-Spellings, a global investor and entrepreneur, Billion Dollar Moves examines how enduring companies — and the capital behind them — are built. Through long-form conversations, the show explores decision-making under uncertainty, capital allocation, and the inflection points that shape category-defining businesses. From early platform backstories to allocator frameworks used across private markets, the focus is on judgment, incentives, and long-term value creation — beyond headlines and hype. New episodes weekly. Built for those who take the long view. Billion Dollar Moves is proud to be p…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Concrete interviews reveal how fund structure and investor incentives determine which founders get backed.
Sarah Chen-Spellings treats venture capital as a set of choices with consequences. Her interviews with Shawn Xu, Jesse Draper, Itamar Novick, and Rick Baker move from fund formation and startup experiments to the incentives behind fund size and founder selection.
Blackbird needed 530 meetings to raise its first fund; your third follow-up suddenly looks restrained.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A family-business story about crisis response, operational risk, and long-term growth in ASEAN food.
The piece keeps its focus where it should be: on a family-run food business in ASEAN and the practical work of keeping it steady through a bad stretch.
Climate tech, framed as a serious capital bet.
Sean Xu treats climate tech as a capital allocation problem, not a morality play, and that is where the episode has some bite. He describes Lowercarbon as chasing a generational wealth creation opportunity, says many of the next companies will be missed by much of Silicon…
A candid leadership profile about women, capital, trust, and long-term impact.
Sarah Chan Spellings brings the conversation into clear focus: women, capital, and the long work of influence. She moves from Malaysia to the United States, from early hustle to the harder question of belonging, and keeps returning to the same aim, shifting capital toward women,…
A grounded look at how conviction compounds across fund vintages.
Rick Baker's conversation follows Blackbird's move from a small debut fund to a broader venture platform without losing sight of the practical details that made that shift matter: 530 meetings, 97 limited partners, a $29 million Aussie first fund, early investments in Canva,…
Climate investing is framed as a long-horizon allocation question, not a box-ticking one.
It treats climate investing as a long-horizon allocation question rather than a box-ticking exercise. Set against the LP Summit at Arctic 15 in Helsinki, it puts ESG fatigue, political backlash, and the responsibilities of family owners and long-term businesses under the same…
A clear look at how cross-border conviction becomes fundable.
Marisa Warren's story tracks how a cross-border venture thesis gets built in practice: bruising fundraising, a revised strategy, and steady conviction around early-stage female founders in the US and Australia.
A succession story grounded in workforce economics and operating detail.
This episode stays with a founder-led company after a major health crisis, and that handoff becomes part of the story rather than a side note.
Inclusion is framed as a growth problem, not a side conversation.
The episode treats growth as a question of who gets counted, not just how fast the numbers move. Jeffrey Bowman and Sarah Chen-Spellings keep the discussion grounded in market size, user journeys, testing, and the cost of clinging to a narrow base instead of the broader reality…
Demetri Kofinas interviews specialists on geopolitics, energy markets, AI, and finance at length.
BBC's daily business show, from toy-industry founders to Anthropic's Pentagon standoff.
Sarah Chen Sparlings frames a Paris panel around one question: what does diverse leadership change for billion-dollar businesses?
Sarah Chen-Spellings opens Billion Dollar Moves™ with a specific AANHPI Heritage Month frame and the claim that one-third of U.S.
An interview with Jim Sorensen about his journey from burning a million dollars a month to exiting near a billion dollars in less than three years.
A serial entrepreneur discusses her journey from a $53 million exit to winning a TV pitch competition and launching a children's wellness brand.
A panel discussion at SXSW about women in venture capital, covering capital, ownership, equity, and scaling businesses.
Crisis sets the frame.
Climate is treated as a wealth creation problem with teeth.
In this episode, host Sarah Chen-Spellings interviews Joel Sandu, an LP expert, to explore how limited partners evaluate private markets, focusing on market cycles, venture vs.
Sarah Chen-Spellings discusses her journey from Malaysia to co-founding Beyond the Billion, highlighting female leadership challenges and venture capital strategies.
Rick Baker walks through the hard first raise for Blackbird’s first fund and the long stretch from doubt to scale.
Sarah Chen-Spellings opens from the LP Summit at Arctic 15 in Helsinki.
ICONIC manages over eighty billion dollars for Silicon Valley's most powerful tech founders.
Marisa Warren lays out how ALIAVIA Ventures is building a cross-border fund around early-stage female founders in the US and Australia.
This episode features Bijal Shah, CEO of Guild Education, discussing her journey from slum development in India to leading a $4.4 billion company after co-founder Rachel Romer's stroke.
Sarah Chen Spalings speaks with Jeffrey Bowman about why many companies are still working from outdated data models.
Erin Harkless-Moore discusses her role at Pivotal Ventures, Melinda French Gates' $1 billion commitment to advancing women's power and influence, and the strategies for investing in women-led funds and companies.
Sarah Chan Smallings sits down with Rosalind Basney to trace how Antler thinks about intentional early-stage investing.
Turin Southern, an early YouTube pioneer and AI innovator, discusses her journey from viral videos to working on brain-computer interfaces at BlackRock Neurotech.
Sarah Chen Sparlings talks with Itamar Novik of Recursive Ventures about why solo capitalists and focused pre-seed funds are getting more attention.
Host Sarah Chen-Spellings interviews Dr.
Sarah Chan Sparlings speaks with Jesse Draper about how Halogen Ventures came together.
Laurel Mintz says her first fundraising experience felt “like begging” until she reframed it as a marketing vehicle, which changed how she approached LP conversations and capital raising.
Host Sarah Chen-Spellings interviews Jeff Majin-Kalda, CEO of Coursera and former CEO of Financial Engines, about his journey from working with Nobel laureate Bill Sharpe to leading two pioneering companies.
Sarah frames a timely market question: what does impact investing look like now?
Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings profiles Susan Wojcicki as the executive who pushed Google to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion when a headline said "only a moron would buy YouTube." The episode ties that decision to her reading of user-generated content, including the dorm-room Backstreet Boys clip that reached millions of views and showed that "anyone can have a hit." It also breaks down YouTube's four R's of responsibility — remove, raise, reduce, reward — with concrete details like roughly 9 million video removals in one quarter and 400 billion authoritative COVID impressions.
An interview with Shubhi Srivastava from Lightspeed India discussing the realities of building and backing billion-dollar companies in India.
An interview with Joel Sandu about family offices, private equity, and venture capital investing strategies.
A special episode celebrating Women's History Month, featuring a panel discussion on how women drive returns in business, investment, and innovation, covering financing pathways and the rise of female founders in tech.
Sarah Chen-Spellings interviews Kimberly Yao, CEO of CloudEats, about building a cloud kitchen business during the pandemic and raising venture capital.
Sarah Chen-Spellings discusses strategic marketing lessons from Berkshire Hathaway with content marketing expert Ross Simmons.
Interview with Momi Kew of PSP Growth about venture capital, growth equity, and the future of B2B SaaS.
A conversation about the importance of diversity in venture capital and investing in women, featuring insights from Erin Harkless-Moore of Pivotal Ventures.