Warm Intro

The Best Conversation On The Internet. Made in San Francisco. Founders, artists, politicians and chefs open up about their childhoods, hot takes and insecurities — with honesty, humor, and heart. 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. Hosted by Chai Mishra. Presented by Wefunder. Views are our own.

Warm Intro is a business podcast hosted by Warm Intro With Chai Mishra, with 29 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Warm Intro With Chai Mishra hosts Warm Intro, a business show with 29 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Warm Intro

  The Illustrator Who Redrew Black History

  Aug 19, 20261h 32m

  George McCalman keeps a sketchbook the way other people keep a diary, except his pages end up in the San Francisco Chronicle. For years he ran art departments at magazines that told other people's stories; now he tells his own, one watercolor image at a time. Born in Grenada, raised in Brooklyn, and remade in San Francisco, George is the illustrator and author behind Illustrated Black History, a 500-plus-page tribute to figures both iconic and nearly forgotten. His Chronicle column Observed turns the city into a running visual essay — the coffee shop regulars, the drag queens, the protest marches, the funerals — rendered with the patience of someone who knows that seeing is a form of respect. Join us for a searching conversation about who gets to be considered beautiful, how taste used to be manufactured by curators and is now generated by the algorithm, how you draw a face you've never seen, and what an immigrant kid from Grenada learned about holding up a mirror to America. 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 advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider. Presented by Wefunder Wefunder created The Community Round. — allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities — allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success. Raise on Wefunder Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

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  Warm Intro

  The Top-Ranked Poker Player And Why She Gave It Up

  Jul 17, 20261h 10m

  Cate Hall was once the highest-ranked female poker player in the world. But that’s not the most incredible part of her story. Cate was a Supreme Court lawyer before walking away to play poker full-time. Within a year, she had become the highest-ranked female player in the world. Since then, she’s led a multibillion-dollar science foundation, co-founded a pandemic medicine company, and built a Substack that has become a cult favorite for its unflinching writing on agency, addiction, and what it takes to reinvent yourself. Join us for a searching conversation about agency and the invisible rules most people mistake for laws, what poker taught her about risk and pressure, how to tell when you’re being lied to, the acid trips that reordered her sense of self, finding God in unexpected places, and what she thinks happens when we die. Cate’s new book, You Can Just Do Things, out July 21st. It’s a prison-break manual for anyone who has been quietly waiting for permission to live the life they actually want. 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 advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider. Presented by Wefunder Wefunder created The Community Round. — allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities — allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success. Raise on Wefunder Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

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  Warm Intro

  The Most Famous Broke Man in America

  Jul 6, 20261h 10m

  Broke-Ass Stuart showed up in San Francisco with a notebook, a hangover, and no money--then turned all three into a twenty-year career. The writer, publisher, and man-about-town, Stuart Schuffman, built brokeassstuart.com from a photocopied zine into one of the city's last independent local news outlets, ran for mayor, hosted his own IFC travel show, and, on October 17, 2025, even had an official San Francisco holiday declared in his honor by the Board of Supervisors. His new book, The Worst of Broke-Ass Stuart: 20 Years of Love, Death & Dive Bars , brings together two decades of writing about San Francisco and the people who make it interesting. It's part memoir, part collection of stories, and a look at the artists, activists, weirdos, and regulars that have shaped the city over the years. Join us for a conversation about staying broke on purpose, building an independent media business, running for mayor with no money and no shame, why dive bars still matter, and what it feels like to have the city you love give you your own holiday. 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 advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider. Presented by Wefunder Wefunder created The Community Round. — allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities — allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success. Raise on Wefunder Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

  ListenShow Notes
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  Warm Intro

  The Mayor of America's Most Livable City

  Jun 18, 20261h 18m

  Adena Ishii is one of America's youngest mayors—that too, of its most livable city, Berkeley. While her peers are still figuring out their careers, she's managing a $900 million city budget, trying to solve a housing crisis and fielding calls from politicians asking for endorsements. But the most interesting thing about her? She does not sound like any politician you've ever heard. Join us for an earnest and optimistic conversation about the lost idea of "public service," Bad Bunny and the Democrats' "fun deficit" problem, whether California is truly a hellhole, and a newly forming millennial vision for what government can still do for people. 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 advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider. Presented by Wefunder Wefunder created The Community Round. — allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities — allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success. Raise on Wefunder Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

  ListenShow Notes
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  Warm Intro

  The First Indian Chef with Two Michelin Stars

  Jun 11, 20261h 20m

  Chef Sri Gopinathan is the first Indian chef in the world to earn two Michelin stars and one of San Francisco’s most successful restauranteurs. This distinction arrives with an asterisk—because Indian cuisine, despite being one of the world's oldest and most technically sophisticated food traditions, has never been treated as gourmet. Chef Sri is changing that in the most beautiful way possible. Chef Sri speaks with the sensory precision of someone who has spent his life understanding flavor not just as taste but as memory, emotion, and culture. He describes the smell of his childhood kitchen with the specificity of someone for whom that smell is a moral architecture. He talks about tadka—the Indian cooking technique of tempering spices in hot oil—not as method but as feeling. And he carries with him a deep, almost spiritual understanding of what Indian food means to Indian people: it's not cuisine, it's inheritance. Join us for a fun, honest, and deeply sentimental conversation about what everyone gets wrong about Indian food, why the world's most prestigious culinary institutions have been blind to it, and how one chef is changing that., the first meal he ever made and what it taught him, how he overcame that bias to earn recognition at the highest level, what he hopes his last meal will be, and what it means to fight for the dignity of your culture's food. 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 advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider. Presented by Wefunder Wefunder created The Community Round. — allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities — allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success. Raise on Wefunder Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

  ListenShow Notes

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