The Latin root of the word “ambition” literally means “to go around,” hinting that ambition isn’t just about drive—it’s the unrelenting ability to face a roadblock and, come hell or high water, find a way around it.
Alexa von Tobel, Inspired Capital cofounder and LearnVest founder, argues that this American ambition has corroded in recent years—and that it’s time for a reset, one that revives ambition to its most sweeping, optimistic form. This is especially true for VCs and entrepreneurs, she exclusively tells Fortune.
“During a period of capital being effectively free, it became very easy to start companies,” said von Tobel, referencing ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) induced booms. “We were creating a lot of direct-to-consumer this and that, and building out incremental ideas—because capital effectively was everywhere. And in some ways, it was great: Entrepreneurship became mainstream. But as entrepreneurship became mainstream and capital was easy to access, we just started seeing a lot of incremental ideas. Coming out of COVID, some of that’s beginning to reset.”
The bi-weekly episodes are generally about an hour long and feature von Tobel interviewing entrepreneurs about taking truly ambitious swings and what it takes to make a vision reality.
“I worry about the world,” von Tobel told Fortune. “As somebody who deeply cares about making the world a better place, I believe we have more problems than we’ve ever seen. And when I really dug deep on what I hope we see more of in the world it’s—no pun intended—inspiring people to dream bigger, think bigger.”
“If someone says to me, ‘I want to be a lawyer’ I want them to say, ‘I want to be a Supreme Court justice,’” said von Tobel. “It’s truly just pushing yourself to say: Is this the point 0.01% of how big we can go to solve a problem and make the world better? Is this idea capable of improving four billion lives? Now, we’re at the scale we should be thinking about.”
