“The best content, best delivered of all the sessions — the only one where totally immersed engagement was the default rather than something that took effort.”
—Gartner
Safi has presented at industry conferences, leadership retreats, and Fortune 500 companies including Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PWC, and many others; has advised hypergrowth startups, investment funds, the CIA, and branches of the US military; and spoken at leading academic and medical instutions including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Caltech, Cornell, Bell Labs, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Mayo Clinic, and the National Institutes of Health.
Contact: speaking@bahcall.com
TESTIMONIALS
- “Safi set the conference alight with his talk … one of the most captivating speakers I have ever heard … gripping style! … Pitch perfect” –Applied Materials
- “One of the smartest, most innovative, actionable talks I have heard in a long time. The book is also a breakthrough intertwined with some wonderful story telling.” –Verizon
- “This is the best GTM [talk] we’ve ever had … Everything Safi said resonated with me … I was taking notes the whole time!” –US Navy
- “A perfect example of how an opening keynote should impact a meeting and set the tone. Having a message that will resonate with those who came to the event is always key … As a keynote speaker myself, I am hyper critical of events that are not focused on the need of audience. Too often conference keynote slots are just a box check. This session was meaty and worth the price of admission … [I took] 5 pages of notes” –American Society of Association Executives
- “One of the best keynote speeches I have ever heard … the positive feedback we have received has been overwhelming” –Fortune 500 Insurance Company
- “I can honestly say you were the best speaker I have listened to in my time at Kraft Heinz”
- “Safi seamlessly merged best practices in engineering with successful business strategies … I’ve listened to it three times and am still picking up new things … I already hear Safi’s themes echoing in meetings!” –Applied Materials
KEYNOTES
1— Five Rules for Innovating in Turbulent Times
What is the one thing that separates apex innovators, in any industry, from the rest? Safi looks back at 200 years of technology disruption – from the birth of modern science to the telephone, the transistor, and frontier LLMs – and identifies what separates those companies that thrive in turbulent times and dominate their industries from those that end up in the dustbin of history. Using surprising and entertaining examples from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and others, Safi distills these insights into practical rules that teams and companies can use to innovate faster and better.
2— The Three Zones of Leadership
What was the biggest source of wealth creation in business before AI? Which companies were best positioned to win the race to capture that business? They all lost to a company that sold diapers online. Why? Learn how Amazon beat Google, why one retailer thrived while others collapsed, and how the music industry escaped death. Safi presents the strategic lessons and leadership principles behind these great business battles, including the importance of mastering the three zones of leadership: core, experiments, and transformation.
3— Chasing Anomalies: The secret to breakthoughs in science, business, and medicine
Contact speaking@bahcall.com.
3— Bubbles: Why Markets Crash and Nations Divide
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WORKSHOPS
Building an innovation operating system
Contact speaking@bahcall.com.
WHY LOONSHOTS MATTER
With cameos from leaders of Pixar, Apple, and Moderna. Often used by organizers to introduce Safi on stage.
APPEARANCES
ARTICLES
BIO
Safi is a physicist, former public-company CEO, author of the international bestseller Loonshots, and the founder of Folkman Ventures, which invests in biomedical, digital health, and technology companies.
Safi’s research has focused on applying the science of phase change to understanding the spread of ideas inside companies, which helps leaders design more innovative organizations, and the behavior of markets, which helps investors understand bubbles and crashes. His book Loonshots: Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries describes how this research can help explain the rise and fall of companies and nations, and offers practical rules for innovating in turbulent times. The book combines physics, business, and world history through stories: how the Allies won WWII, the rise and fall of Pan Am, Steve Jobs, James Bond, and why the world speaks English.
Loonshots was an instant WSJ bestseller; has been translated into 23 languages; was recognized as a top nonfiction book by Bloomberg, The Financial Times, Forbes, Inc., Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post; and was the #1 most recommended book of the year in Bloomberg’s annual survey of CEOs and entrepreneurs.
Prior to writing Loonshots, Safi founded a biotechnology company focused on novel therapies for serious diseases. As CEO for 13 years, he led the company’s growth from startup through its public offering and evolution into a fully integrated drug discovery and development organization. The company, now known as Madrigal Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: MDGL) and valued at over $10 billion, achieved the first FDA approval for a treatment for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a major milestone in treating liver disease. Before that, Safi was a consultant at McKinsey, advising organizations on strategy and operations, and contributed to public policy through his work with President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Safi received an A.B. degree in physics from Harvard University summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University, where he studied particle physics under Lenny Susskind and many-body physics under Nobel Prize winner Robert Laughlin. He was a Miller Research Fellow in physics at UC Berkeley, where he studied properties of high-temperature superconductors.
He lives with his wife and three children in Washington, DC, and splits his time between Folkman Ventures, working closely with a small number of hypergrowth companies, and research for his next book.
ADVISING
Safi is a member of the MG100 group of senior executive coaches. He works 1-1 with a small number of CEOs of pre-IPO and post-IPO hypergrowth companies, as well as leaders of government agencies, on strategy and innovation. Contact: speaking@bahcall.com or reach Safi on linkedin.
Read the Loonshots Letter
Read the Five Laws of Loonshots
“A groundbreaking book that spans industries and time” –Newsweek
“If the Da Vinci Code and Freakonomics had a child together, it would be called Loonshots” –Senator Bob Kerrey