Two Conversations, One City: My Podcast Trip to NYC

Recording the MIC Podcast in New York

For our first MIC Podcast episodes in New York, I flew across the Atlantic to meet two very different guests. Gunnar Wiedenfels is the CFO of Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paula Hübner Wehmeyer is a former venture capital partner who now helps build the young AI company General Intuition. For a student podcast from the Mannheim Investment Club, this trip was a big step, and a very memorable one for me personally.

A Mannheim Alumnus in New York

The recording with Gunnar took place in a real studio: cameras, lights, a full crew. Everything was prepared to a T. We have recorded more than 70 episodes by now, but this one still felt different.

Gunnar himself was a big part of that. He took his time with me before and after the recording, and I had the feeling the conversation mattered to him. He studied in Mannheim, like most of our listeners. I must say, sitting in New York and hearing the CFO of Warner Bros. Discovery talk about his first semesters at our university was truly surreal.

The unique timing helped too. When we recorded, Paramount Skydance was in the middle of taking over Warner Bros. Discovery, after a bidding process with Netflix and Comcast that Gunnar had been part of from the inside. He explained how that process played out and what it means to steer a company through it as CFO. You rarely hear that firsthand.

We also talked about the more than 50 billion dollars of debt after the WarnerMedia merger, about HBO Max, and about the differences between working in the US and in Germany.

The part I keep coming back to is his perspective on risk. As he puts it, deciding against something is just as risky as deciding for it, which many people forget when assessing risk. At the end, he had a message for everyone studying in Mannheim. There couldn't have been a better way to end the episode.

Startup Energy with Paula

A few days later I met Paula Hübner Wehmeyer, and the mood was completely different. General Intuition is still growing, things change quickly, and you can feel that energy from the moment the conversation begins.

Paula left her partner role at General Catalyst to join General Intuition as VP Marketing & Talent. Not many people would make that move, and hearing her reasoning behind that choice was one of the highlights of my trip.

She has also built a large following on X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Substack, which made her views on reach and personal branding fascinating to hear.

Two topics I didn't see coming: why gaming clips are useful for teaching an AI spatial understanding, and Europe's position in an AI race currently dominated by the US.