The Co-Writer of "The Hangover" Runs A Media Empire Out Of An Old High School In Syracuse

The Co-Writer of "The Hangover" Runs A Media Empire Out Of An Old High School In Syracuse

Jeremy Garelick just wants to make people laugh. But to sustain an incredibly successful career doing that, he has solved some pretty knotty problems. In his twenties, he didn't know how to write a script but transformed himself from a production assistant into a sought-after screenwriter in just a few years. He would go on to co-write The Hangover. When movie studios refused to make the kind of comedies he loves, because they thought the return on smaller films wasn't worth their effort, he purchased an old high school as a film set, kept costs low, and arranged his own financing. Today, he controls every aspect of production on a campus called American High. While Hollywood struggles in the streaming era and sees diminishing returns from old, overused properties, Garelick has figured out his own business model, how to grab attention with original stories, and when he needs to, bypass the studio system, all in the service of jokes. 3:13 Garelick describes growing up in New York with no entertainment industry connections. A conversation with classmates about unusual summer experiences convinced him that he could pursue something beyond the familiar world around him. 4:20 Persistence and cold outreach led him to an internship at Disney through a producer’s office. There, he fell in love with screenplays and began writing extensive notes on scripts despite having no formal training. 9:35 No one ever asked the interns for their opinion, yet only a few years later he became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriters. 11:44 Interning with television legends David Milch and Steven Bochco before joining the talent agency CAA 15:00 Arriving in Florida for the filming of Tigerland and realizing immediately that directing movies was what he wanted to do with his life 19:08 The Hangover 28:46 Writing for stars Vince Vaughn, Adam Sandler, Kevin Hart, and Owen Wilson 30:36 Realizing that high school movies share many production requirements and that controlling the location could dramatically reduce costs. After learning about New York’s film tax incentives, he searched online for schools and found the perfect property. 37:30 The origin story of Rolling Loud 40:45 Why he is not afraid of artificial intelligence 44:12 Partnering with Hulu 53:17 Garelick is a creative first and a talented, but accidental, entrepreneur out of necessity

Artificial Intelligence That Creates More Career-Defining Moments For Users

There are pivotal moments that have the potential to change so much. We take on new jobs, new projects, get promoted, start hiring for a key role. When the right people coordinate during these small windows of time, great things can happen. But we may not hear about them until the opportunity to connect, do business, or celebrate together has passed. A startup called Ren is fixing this by teeing up information about key moments happening to the people you know so that you can act. Camber Creek sat down with Ren Systems CEO Canay Deniz to talk about his mission to systematize serendipity, as he describes it, and why Camber Creek invested. 1:14 Canay shares his immigration story. Born in a refugee camp, he and his family received asylum in Switzerland, where he spent most of his childhood and received his education. 3:00 Canay describes joining an early-stage startup spun out of ETH Zurich, where he worked on predictive analytics for industrial equipment and telecommunications infrastructure. 7:30 On “engineered serendipity.” Many successful leaders repeatedly place themselves in situations where opportunity can emerge. 10:58 Contrasts between European and American attitudes toward risk, entrepreneurship, and innovation. 14:06 Ren’s central mission: helping people stop missing important moments in the lives of the people and organizations they care about. 17:00 Extensive customer interviews revealed a common problem among dealmakers: learning about important developments too late to act on them. 21:00 One user attributed a career-defining business win to information surfaced through Ren. 28:23 Why platforms like LinkedIn fall short for relationship management and business development. 32:24 Ren’s emphasis on simplicity, including AI-generated outreach suggestions and workflow automation. The platform learns a user’s communication style and becomes increasingly personalized over time. 39:00 Canay introduces one of Ren’s future initiatives: helping organizations determine the best person to facilitate an introduction to a target contact or company. 41:55 Avoiding generic-sounding AI-generated communication. In Canay’s view, purpose-built AI should amplify individuality rather than homogenize communication. 46:21 Ren’s security architecture isolates and protects sensitive customer information.

Her Organization Has A Perfect Track Record Preventing Maternal Deaths During Childbirth. But She Knows One Day It Won’t.

Aza Nedhari set out to solve an enormous problem facing women giving birth. The US has the highest rate of maternal death of any high-income country, and within the US, that rate is by far the highest for Black women. Researchers estimate that most of these deaths are preventable. To fix this, Aza helped invent a new type of community health worker, a perinatal community health worker, coordinating across medical professionals and generations of family members to reshape the environment around expecting mothers. Over more than a decade, her organization, Mamatoto Village, has a perfect track record: four thousand families and zero maternal deaths. But what kind of toll does perfection take when navigating complex health systems, economic inequality, and bias? And how important is it to celebrate now when you know that eventually, statistically, you will lose at least one? 1:25 Mamatoto Village’s history and the story behind its name 4:45 The stark maternal mortality statistics facing Black women and why these disparities persist across income and education levels. 7:30 The unique challenges facing families in Washington, DC’s Wards 7 and 8, where maternal mortality rates are especially severe 9:20 Aza traces the roots of today’s maternal health inequities through American history, public policy, and healthcare system design. 11:45 Black patients often must advocate forcefully to receive appropriate healthcare and be heard by providers. 18:55 Serena Williams’ experience gave these disparities a national audience. 23:10 Mamatoto Village’s intervention model and how it operates on the ground. It’s a three-generation approach, educating not only mothers but also partners, grandparents, and extended family members. 25:30 The Perinatal Community Health Worker credential that Aza and her co-founder created 31:20 How do healthcare providers respond to Mamatoto’s involvement with patients? 34:45 Mamatoto Village’s extraordinary track record: over 4,000 families served with zero maternal deaths. But should they continue to tout that number? 44:40 The first time they met, Lionel made Aza cry. 46:15 Aza explains the immense personal weight of leading a social change organization and carrying community stories. 49:45 Aza reflects on sustainable leadership practices and the need for strong support systems around founders and social entrepreneurs. 55:00 Mamatoto Village’s proprietary electronic health record platform 58:40 Aza shares future initiatives, including a new birth center east of the river in Washington, DC

The Founder of Facebook Marketplace Says Customers Will Tell You What Your Product Is—If You’ll Listen

If you can turn your business into a platform, you probably should. There are amazing multi-billion-dollar products out there, but any one product has limits. Companies that run platforms, by contrast, cultivate ecosystems that make it possible for other businesses and many products to thrive. That is a much bigger market. Deb Liu knows a ton about platforms. It took years of advocacy and strategy, but she literally invented Facebook Marketplace and ran Facebook’s entire platform group, helping monetize the different ways users wanted to leverage the network. Now she’s founded an AI startup helping small businesses go from zero to fully automated. Like platforms, Deb is multifaceted, so this conversation also goes deep on payments, the trust gaps that have to be filled to make online transactions possible, and some of the differences between running public and private companies. 1:40 Deb argues that any product with scale should become a platform that enables others to build businesses. 2:50 How APIs and developer ecosystems expanded Facebook’s reach 4:45 Observing user behavior and enabling emerging use cases 5:00 PayPal’s unexpected adoption by eBay sellers became its defining business opportunity. 7:00 Closing the trust gap in e-commerce enabled trillions of dollars in transactions. 8:50 PayPal was fundamentally a risk management company as much as a payments company. 11:50 Deb praises Starbucks’ rewards ecosystem as one of the strongest examples of customer lock-in and loyalty and argues that more brands should emulate it. 15:20 inKind as an example of how a platform uses stored value to drive consumer demand 20:00 Deb reflects on the pressure public companies face to manage earnings and expectations. 25:10 Why Deb chose to lead Ancestry. 27:45 How her engineering background shaped her systems-oriented mindset. 29:00 Everyone has a hidden superpower that often feels effortless to them. 32:10 Why Deb intentionally questions her own intuition. 35:10 Her new startup, Ember AI. 40:40 Deb compares today’s AI moment to the early internet and mobile eras. 43:00 Deb predicts that “fast eats slow” will define the next phase of competition. 43:40 Purpose is the fuel that sustains long-term entrepreneurship.

The Man Who Helped Salesforce Prepare For The AI Era Has Advice For The Rest Of Us

After the public launch of ChatGPT, Salesforce knew that AI agents were coming for it. AI agents are smart, autonomous programs set loose on an infinite number of specific tasks. The danger was that this giant company that revolutionized business software and popularized the very concept of software as a service might be overtaken by the next big thing. One of the people it turned to to help prevent that was Prasad Thammineni. Now Prasad has his own company, Agentman, which is focused on helping organizations deploy AI agents that can automate sophisticated workflows without requiring users to write code. In Prasad's view, yes, AI agents might be as disruptive as many people fear. But he's also convinced that, like Salesforce, we can adapt. It's still early enough that we can all choose to be pioneers. 1:30 Prasad reflects on his entrepreneurial journey and explains why he repeatedly returns to building startups. 2:55 How Salesforce recognized that AI agents could threaten traditional SaaS business models 4:00 The early limitations of copilots and why customer expectations initially exceeded technical capabilities 6:30 From copilots to agents 7:20 The creation of Salesforce’s Frontier AI team to prototype technologies expected to mature a year later 11:10 Prasad argues that large technology companies must lead publicly even while products remain unfinished. 17:20 How he landed the leadership role at Salesforce.\ 19:20 Using AI to write the business model 23:50 Building AgentMan 28:40 Why AgentMan chose healthcare as its initial vertical 30:40 Healthcare organizations accelerated technology adoption after COVID. 31:40 Focusing on small practices rather than large hospital systems 38:40 Are end-users ready to build their own agents? 40:40 Are concerns about AI-driven job displacement justified?