In this episode of Conductive Conversations, host Carey Lai brings together two leaders whose lives followed parallel paths long before they ever spoke about business.

For Juan Jaysingh, tennis was not a side pursuit. Starting in India at age 10 and continuing after moving to the U.S. at 14, the sport became a decision-making framework. It earned him a full scholarship, shaped his years at American University, and later influenced how he runs Zingtree with a sharp focus on discipline and capital efficiency.

Across the net sits Martin Blackman. A former Stanford player, ATP professional, and longtime leader in U.S. player development, Martin has spent decades inside elite performance environments. From listening to Wimbledon on BBC Radio in the 1970s to leading the Junior Tennis Champion Center, his career has been defined by building systems that produce excellence over time. He was also the American University coach who first recruited Juan to the school.

Rather than talking tactics or trophies, this conversation explores something deeper: how repetition builds judgment, how pressure clarifies priorities, and why long-term performance depends more on mindset than momentum.

This episode is for anyone curious about how elite sports quietly trains leaders for life and business.

🕒 Timestamps

0:00 — Trailer: Where Potential Actually Comes From

0:58 — Two Paths, One Discipline: Juan Jaysingh and Martin Blackman

1:39 — Growing Up Inside the Game: Martin’s Early Tennis Roots

2:22 — Intro: Conductive Conversation

2:48 — From India to American University: Juan's Turning Point

3:39 — When Sport Becomes a Business Framework

4:18 — Landing in the U.S. at 14: Learning Everything From Scratch

5:03 — Small Shocks That Change You (Cars, Candy, and Context)

5:49 — Finding a Voice in a New Language

6:15 — Adapting Fast: Culture, Space, and Scale

7:09 — Taste as a Metaphor for Change

8:31 — Tennis as a Doorway to Education

9:06 — Why Track Came Before Tennis

10:09 — Picking Up a Racket at 10

10:54 — Martin’s First Steps Into Tennis

11:45 — A Scholarship That Altered the Trajectory

13:30 — Nick Bollettieri and the Economics of Opportunity

14:40 — What Each Career Chapter Quietly Teaches You

15:18 — Missing the Pro Dream and Gaining Something Better

16:19 — From Player to Coach: An Accidental Shift

16:46 — Why Failure Accelerates Learning

17:31 — Handling Wins and Losses Without Identity Collapse

18:13 — Becoming Head Coach Without Expecting To

19:33 — Spotting Hunger: Recruiting Juan

21:22 — Leading Young, Leading Early

21:40 — Navigating College Recruitment Decisions

22:56 — The Road Almost Taken

23:44 — Learning Who Martin Blackman Was

25:11 — The Conversation That Changed the Decision

26:11 — Why Martin Pushed So Hard to Recruit Juan

27:20 — Quiet Inflection Points That Shape Careers

28:58 — Watching Excellence Up Close: Jim Courier

30:16 — What the Pursuit of Excellence Actually Looks Like

31:02 — The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Improvement

31:50 — Feedback as Fuel, Not Criticism

33:44 — Character as the Hidden Variable

35:59 — Coaching Values That Outlast Results

36:47 — Building a Self-Policing Culture

40:07 — When the Leader Becomes Accountable

41:44 — Translating Team Accountability to Zingtree

42:53 — Progress as a System, Not a Sprint

43:10 — Doing the Work After the Match Ends

44:20 — Training the Brain for Emotional Control

45:32 — Admitting to Choking

47:35 — Playing to Win vs. Playing Not to Lose

48:19 — Why Business Needs Faster Feedback Loops

50:31 — The Patriot League Finals Moment

52:10 — Process Over Outcomes

52:31 — Why Choking Is Often a Sign You’re Close

54:17 — Capital Efficiency, Explained Through Tennis

55:12 — The 80/20 Rule on the Court

56:49 — Rafael Nadal and Mental Discipline

57:39 — Why the Right Constraints Create the Best Performance

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In this episode of Conductive Conversations, host Carey Lai sits down with Laura Huang, Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizational Development at Northeastern University and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of EDGE: Turning Adversity into Advantage and You Already Know: The Science of Mastering Your Intuition. A leading thinker on bias, entrepreneurship, and intuition, Laura has held faculty positions at Harvard Business School and Wharton and has been recognized by Thinkers50 and Poets & Quants for her impact on business and leadership.​

Together they unpack the real stories and research behind EDGE and You Already Know, why Laura wrote these books, how being underestimated can become your greatest asset, and how her EDGE framework (Enrich, Delight, Guide, Effort) helps founders and leaders turn adversity into opportunity. Laura shares insights from her work on accent bias, investor Q&A dynamics, and her “Ten Nos” exercise, giving tactical tools for navigating perception, bias, and high-stakes pitch meetings.​

The conversation also explores the future of work, teaching, and entrepreneurship in an AI-driven world, how AI is changing jobs, how it will reshape the classroom, and how entrepreneurs can use AI as a force multiplier rather than a threat. Drawing from You Already Know, Laura explains intuition as a trainable synthesis of experience and data, and shows how founders can sharpen their “gut feel” to make better, faster decisions in uncertainty.​

If you’re a founder, investor, or operator navigating bias, AI, and high-stakes decisions, this episode gives you a playbook for turning disadvantages into an edge and learning to trust what you already know.​

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In this episode of Conductive Conversations, Carey Lai, co-founder and managing director of Conductive Ventures, speaks with Abigail Hing Wen, New York Times bestselling author and former Silicon Valley dealmaker at Intel Capital. Abigail shares her unique journey from clerking at the DC Circuit Court to working at Intel on AI investments, and becoming a celebrated author and Hollywood filmmaker. She delves into her life, growing up with activist parents, navigating the often challenging career path as an Asian American woman and how she has honed her creative process writing novels. Abigail also discusses her transition to filmmaking with her directorial debut, 'The Vale', and the challenges and rewards of adapting her books into movies.

About Abigail Hing Wen

Abigail Hing Wen works at the intersection of storytelling and technology. She is a New York Times Best Selling Author of five novels, producer, director, woman-in-tech leader specializing in artificial intelligence, as well as a mother of two. She writes and speaks about tech, AI ethics, women’s leadership and transforming culture.

Abigail penned the New York Times Best Selling and Indie Best Selling novel LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI and its two companion novels. She executive produced the film adaptation of the Paramount Plus original film, LOVE IN TAIPEI starring Ashley Liao (Hunger Games) and Ross Butler (Shazam). Her middle grade debut, THE VALE, has been partially adapted to a short film prequel THE VALE–ORIGINS starring Lea Salonga. She and her work have been profiled in Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, NBC News, Forbes, Fortune, Cosmopolitan, Bloomberg, Seventeen, Google Talk, People, People en Espanol, South China Morning Post and the World Journal, among others.

Abigail holds a BA from Harvard, where she took coursework in film, ethnic studies and government. She also holds a JD from Columbia and MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In her career in tech, she has negotiated multibillion dollar deals on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, worked in venture capital and hosted Intel’s Artificial Intelligence podcast.

About Carey Lai

Carey Lai is a Founder and General Partner at Conductive Ventures focused on finding overlooked entrepreneurs who are building capital-efficient businesses who punch above their weight. With deep experience in software and tech-enabled services, Carey brings a results-driven, hands-on approach to scaling businesses empowering founders who dare to dream big and make the nearly impossible a reality.

Carey’s journey to becoming a seasoned venture investor over the past 20 years has been anything but conventional. Before founding Conductive Ventures, he spent over seven years diving into the world of tech investing at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), where he specialized in later-stage, high-growth companies in the enterprise software realm.

He was involved with companies like ArcSight (ARST), At Road (ARDI), Business.com (DEXO), Concur (CNQR), Cortina Systems (acquired by Inphi), Danger (MSFT), Data Domain (EMC), Mobile365 (SAP), SuccessFactors (SFSF), Synchronoss (SNCR) and Yodlee (YDLE). After IVP, Carey continued to sharpen his investment experience at Intel Capital, where he honed his focus on the most promising Internet and enterprise software companies. His portfolio included 500Friends (acquired by Dentsu), Box (BOX), BrightEdge, Gigya (acquired by SAP), Kabam (acquired by Netmarble), Nexmo (acquired by Vonage), Onefinestay (acquired by AccorHotels), Sprinklr (CXM), and SweetLabs.

This episode of Conductive Conversations was produced by Carissa Lai for Conductive Ventures.

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