How I Built This with Guy Raz

Description

Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their iconic brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success. How I Built This is a master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership and how to navigate challenges of all kinds.

New episodes release on Mondays and Thursdays. Listen to How I Built This on the Wondery App or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/how-i-built-this now.

Get your How I Built This merch at WonderyShop.com/HowIBuiltThis.

Episodes

2025 / 7 / 31

Advice Line with Isaac Larian of MGA Entertainment

Isaac Larian is the founder of MGA Entertainment, the company behind Bratz and LOL Surprise dolls. This week, he joins Guy on Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Isaac...

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2025 / 7 / 28

Torchy's Tacos: Mike Rypka

Long before founding Torchy’s Tacos, Mike Rypka was a troubled teenager trying to outrun his own self-destruction. Growing up around addiction and falling into heavy drug use himself, Mike’s future looked...

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2025 / 7 / 24

Advice Line with Troy Carter of Atom Factory

Former manager of Lady Gaga and Atom Factory founder Troy Carter joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Troy’s advice for reaching new audiences...

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2025 / 7 / 21

WHOOP: Will Ahmed

As a Harvard squash player, Will Ahmed discovered his game improved when he focused on things like sleep, diet, and time spent recovering from training. He was convinced that granular health and heart...

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2025 / 7 / 17

Advice Line with Justin McLeod of Hinge

Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Justin describes Hinge’s new initiatives around intentional dating.First, Jessica in...

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2025 / 7 / 14

Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya (2022)

As a newly arrived immigrant from Turkey, Hamdi Ulukaya learned to be resourceful, determined, and even stubborn when he needed to be. All those traits would serve him well as he began to navigate the hairpin...

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2025 / 7 / 10

Advice Line with Norma Kamali of Norma Kamali (2024)

Iconic fashion designer Norma Kamali joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early stage founders. Plus, Norma shares her take on balancing a strong creative vision with the...

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2025 / 7 / 7

Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves (2021)

Rick Steves spent the summer after high school backpacking through Europe on two dollars a day—sleeping on the floor, sneaking into museums, and subsisting on a diet of bread and jam. When he came home, he...

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2025 / 7 / 3

Advice Line with Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (August 2024)

Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders about finding product-market fit.Today, we meet Kim, whose tropical-inspired apparel company...

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2025 / 6 / 30

Talenti: Josh Hochschuler

After falling in love with the gelato shops of Buenos Aires, Josh Hochschuler came home to Dallas with a bold idea: bring authentic Argentine gelato to the U.S. He raised $600,000 from friends and family and...

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2025 / 6 / 26

Advice Line with Eric Ryan of Method

Method co-founder and serial entrepreneur Eric Ryan joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Eric shares his strategies for entering new market categories, and...

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2025 / 6 / 23

UNTUCKit: Chris Riccobono

On a trip to Las Vegas, Chris Riccobono found himself wearing the same J.Crew shirt over and over; it was the only dress shirt he had that looked good untucked. All of his other button-downs were too long and...

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2025 / 6 / 19

Advice Line with Marcia Kilgore of Beauty Pie

Serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore — founder of brands like Beauty Pie and Soap & Glory — joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders managing uncertainty and...

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2025 / 6 / 16

Figma: Dylan Field

The dashboard in your car – the interface on your Zoom screen … many of the products we interact with every day were created with the collaborative software Figma. Figma is a kind of Google Docs for design,...

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2025 / 6 / 12

Advice Line with Perry Chen of Kickstarter

Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about what they really want from investment deals and acquisitions.Today we meet...

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2025 / 6 / 9

Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith

Bill and Leigh Keith had an extraordinary childhood, travelling the country in a school bus with their parents and ten siblings. Along the way, their dad fed them a homemade concoction of peanut butter, honey...

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2025 / 6 / 5

Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024)

Sir Kensington’s co-founder and former CEO Mark Ramadan joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they work through business challenges with three early-stage founders.Today we meet Pat, a physician assistant...

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2025 / 6 / 2

Tatcha: Vicky Tsai (July 2020)

In 2008, Vicky Tsai walked away from a startup job and set out to rediscover herself on a trip to Japan. In Kyoto, she had an unforgettable meeting with a geisha, and learned about the face creams and...

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2025 / 5 / 29

Advice Line with Steve Holmes of goba Sports Group

Springfree Trampoline founder Steve Holmes joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Steve’s tariff navigation guidance for businesses manufacturing...

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2025 / 5 / 26

Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith

As a young entrepreneur in the Wild West days of the internet, Alex Tew was drawn to meditation for its simple calming power. Together with fellow tech founder Michael Acton Smith–known for hits like Moshi...

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2025 / 5 / 22

Advice Line: Scaling Strategies

This week, Guy is joined by Travis Boersma of Dutch Bros. Coffee, Michael Preysman of Everlane and Chris Ruder of Spikeball in a special “mashup” episode of Advice Line.First, Andy from Nashville is...

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2025 / 5 / 19

Tecovas: Paul Hedrick

Western wear is having a moment – and so is the upstart Western brand Tecovas. Founder Paul Hedrick is a Texan who realized that cowboy boots were either too expensive or too cheap, so he decided to create a...

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2025 / 5 / 15

Advice Line with RJ Scaringe with Rivian

Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. He also gets into how trade policies and shifting tariffs are impacting the automotive...

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2025 / 5 / 12

Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie

Substack was founded to create an escape vehicle for writers: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie imagined a world where writers didn’t have to rely on legacy publications or corporate advertisers, but could...

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2025 / 5 / 8

Advice Line with Richard Branson of Virgin

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Richard’s recent adventures in bungee jumping, ziplining, space...

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2025 / 5 / 5

Whisker/Litter-Robot: Brad Baxter

Brad Baxter sidelined a promising career in the car industry to build a better cat litter box – an undertaking that embarrassed his kids and eventually prompted his wife to ask "what’s the endgame here?” That...

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2025 / 5 / 1

Advice Line with Luis von Ahn of Duolingo

Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Luis shares insights on how data can help entrepreneurs understand what their customers...

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2025 / 4 / 28

Hexclad: Danny Winer

Cookware is a $73 billion global industry - awash in all kinds of pots and pans. Like, if you’ve ever cooked scrambled eggs, you've probably used a non-stick frying pan. They’re inexpensive and everywhere....

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2025 / 4 / 24

Advice Line with Jonathan Neman of Sweetgreen

Sweetgreen’s co-founder Jonathan Neman joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Sweetgreen’s plans to automate salad assembly in the coming years. First, we...

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2025 / 4 / 21

Snap: Evan Spiegel

What started as a design project for Stanford student Evan Spiegel quickly flourished into one of the most-used social media platforms in the world: Snapchat. It only took two years for Mark Zuckerberg to...

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2025 / 4 / 17

Advice Line with Andy Dunn of Bonobos

Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Andy shares the motivation for his latest venture, Pie—a new social app that fosters...

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2025 / 4 / 14

Vizio: William Wang

When Wiliam Wang started selling flat-screen TV’s, he used a winning playbook: partner with an efficient manufacturer, cut out the middlemen, and price your product as low as you can. William used a similar...

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2025 / 4 / 10

Advice Line with Peter Rahal of RXBAR

RXBAR co-founder Peter Rahal joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about positioning new products in competitive markets. Plus, Peter’s take on getting back...

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2025 / 4 / 7

Title Nine: Missy Park (October 2021)

As a college basketball player, Missy Park was lucky to grow up during the early era of Title IX, the 1972 law that created new opportunities for young women in sports. But in the years before Lululemon and...

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2025 / 4 / 3

Advice Line with Jeff and Curran Dandurand of Jack Black Skin Care

Jack Black Skin Care co-founders Jeff and Curran Dandurand join Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, how the Dandurands are passing the entrepreneurial torch one...

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2025 / 3 / 31

Misfits Market: Abhi Ramesh

While apple picking on a farm near Philadelphia, Abhi Ramesh learned that a massive amount of “misfit” produce goes to waste. He started running ads on Facebook to see if people would pay a discount for...

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2025 / 3 / 27

Advice Line with Jeni Britton of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams founder Jeni Britton joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, how Jeni’s newest venture Floura is tackling one of America’s...

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2025 / 3 / 24

Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare: Dennis and Carrie Gross

Dr. Dennis Gross was worried about putting his name on his skincare brand: would the word “gross” turn shoppers away? But Dennis and his wife and business partner, Carrie, realized that the key to the brand’s...

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2025 / 3 / 20

Advice Line with Leah Solivan of Taskrabbit (September 2024)

Taskrabbit founder Leah Solivan joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three tech founders working to identify and grow their core customer base. First we meet Kate in Los...

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2025 / 3 / 17

Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström

In the early 2000s, one of the most popular pieces of software in the world was a free peer-to-peer file-sharing network called Kazaa. It was launched by two Scandinavian entrepreneurs, Niklas Zennström and...

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2025 / 3 / 13

Advice Line with Jenn Hyman of Rent The Runway

Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Jenn Hyman joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Jenn’s take on how letting go of ego helps business leaders stay in...

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2025 / 3 / 10

SpotHero: Mark Lawrence

After racking up thousands of dollars in fines, Chicago roommates Mark Lawrence and Jeremy Smith figured there had to be an easier way to park. So in 2011, they launched SpotHero as a peer-to-peer service,...

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2025 / 3 / 6

Advice Line with Alberto Perlman of Zumba

Zumba co-founder and CEO Alberto Perlman joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Alberto’s take on the value of partnerships for growing brands — and...

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2025 / 3 / 3

PayPal: Max Levchin (June 2022)

During its formative years in the late 1990's, Paypal attracted an extraordinary group of young entrepreneurs, who then went on to build some of the best known companies in tech. They became known as The...

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2025 / 2 / 27

Advice Line with Lyndon Cormack of Herschel Supply Co.

Herschel Supply Co. co-founder Lyndon Cormack joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about leveraging brand stories to reach new customers.Today we meet...

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2025 / 2 / 24

Listen Now: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

Monica Lewinsky has been a major reference in pop culture since she was 24 years old when a scandal made her a household name overnight. Since then, she’s fought to redefine her reputation - and now, she's...

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2025 / 2 / 24

Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner

When Barry Turner co-founded Lenny & Larry’s, the idea of selling a protein-packed breakfast muffin was practically unheard of: it was the early 1990’s, and protein-fortified food was not yet a thing. But...

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2025 / 2 / 20

Advice Line with Ariel Kaye of Parachute Home (August 2024)

Parachute Home founder Ariel Kaye joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders on being mindful and strategic in their next expansion steps. Today, we meet Daen, an...

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2025 / 2 / 17

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day: Monica Nassif

Mrs. Meyer’s is a hugely successful line of soaps and cleansers named for a real Mrs. Meyer: a no-nonsense Iowa homemaker who raised nine kids, including the brand’s founder. When Monica Nassif started Mrs....

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2025 / 2 / 13

Advice Line with Travis Boersma of Dutch Bros

Dutch Bros co-founder and former CEO Travis Boersma joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Travis reflects on the baby steps that scaled his initial...

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2025 / 2 / 10

Beyond Yoga: Michelle Wahler

When Michelle Wahler and Jodi Guber Brufsky set out to launch a yoga wear brand in 2005, they had no idea that it would eventually be acquired—for hundreds of millions of dollars—by one of the most iconic...

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2025 / 2 / 6

Advice Line with Vicky Tsai of Tatcha (September 2024)

Tatcha co-founder and former CEO Vicky Tsai joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Vicky explains her decision to briefly step back into, and then out...

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2025 / 2 / 3

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery: Sam and Mariah Calagione (2022)

Sam and Mariah Calagione started dating in high school, and have been on a wild ride ever since. Their biggest, craziest adventure? Founding Dogfish Head Brewery and forever changing the landscape of American...

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2025 / 1 / 30

Advice Line with Joe Gebbia of Airbnb

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Joe shares an update on his latest entrepreneurial adventure: Samara.Today we meet...

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2025 / 1 / 27

Fanatics: Michael Rubin

If you’ve ever bought sports merch or bet on a big-league game, you’ve likely spent money on Fanatics. It’s a massive one-stop-shop for sports, founded by a guy who could barely read growing up. What Michael...

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2025 / 1 / 23

Advice Line with Katlin Smith of Simple Mills

Simple Mills founder Kaitlin Smith joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three founders about knowing how, when, and where to go “all-in.”First, we meet Scott in Minnesota, who’s looking to...

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2025 / 1 / 20

Resy and Eater: Ben Leventhal

When Ben Leventhal first started blogging about New York City’s restaurant scene in the early 2000s, he was doing it as a hobby. But as the website Eater gained weight and spread to other cities, it became a...

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2025 / 1 / 16

Advice Line with Jack Conte of Patreon

Patreon co-founder and CEO Jack Conte joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about marketing and building community.First we meet Zac from Indiana, who’s...

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2025 / 1 / 13

Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022)

David Heath and Randy Goldberg saw an opportunity to disrupt a long dormant—and arguably boring sector...socks. They met at a startup in their 20s, each already had their own side hustles before they hatched...

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2025 / 1 / 9

Advice Line with Lara Merriken of LÄRABAR (October 2024)

LÄRABAR founder Lara Merriken joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Lara discusses her latest venture: a coaching service for entrepreneurs.First we...

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2025 / 1 / 6

Raising Cane's: Todd Graves (2022)

By his early 20s, Todd Graves knew exactly what he wanted to do—open a restaurant near Louisiana State University that would make four things better than anyone else: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas...

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2025 / 1 / 2

Advice Line with Brett Schulman of CAVA (July 2024)

CAVA co-founder and CEO Brett Schulman joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders experiencing growing pains as they scale their companies. Today we meet...

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2024 / 12 / 30

Hero Cosmetics: Ju Rhyu and Dwight Lee

The company behind the blockbuster acne fighter, Mighty Patch, was launched in 2017 with a single product sold exclusively on Amazon. It was inspired by similar patches Ju Rhyu had seen while living in Korea....

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2024 / 12 / 26

Advice Line with Serial Entrepreneur Marc Lore

Serial entrepreneur and U.S. National Bobsled Team qualifier Marc Lore joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early stage founders. Marc also discusses his latest venture -...

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2024 / 12 / 23

The Container Store: Kip and Sharon Tindell

When Kip Tindell co-founded The Container Store in 1978, people laughed at him for wanting to sell empty boxes. But Kip and his partners had identified a clear problem—the tyranny of household clutter—and a...

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2024 / 12 / 19

Advice Line with Steve Case of AOL

AOL co-founder and former CEO Steve Case joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Steve reflects on the challenges and opportunities facing today’s...

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2024 / 12 / 16

Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth

No athlete wishes for an injury, but when Kurt Ainsworth’s bad shoulder derailed his professional pitching career, it created a big opportunity. Kurt and two partners started a wooden bat company in his...

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2024 / 12 / 12

Advice Line with Jane Wurwand of Dermalogica

Jane Wurwand, co-founder of the global skincare brand Dermalogica, joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early stage founders. Plus, Jane shares her philosophy on the importance...

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2024 / 12 / 9

Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali (2021)

When Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration in the 1960s, she never expected to become a designer. So when a job as an airline clerk came along, she was glad to accept it—along with the perk of dirt-cheap...

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2024 / 12 / 5

Advice Line with Gary Erickson of Clif Bar (May 2024)

Clif Bar founder Gary Erickson joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about expanding their customer base.Today we meet James, who recycles water bottles...

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2024 / 12 / 2

Dude Perfect: Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney (2021)

As Texas A&M students in the mid 2000's, Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney and their housemates spent countless hours playing hockey in the living room and attempting trick shots in the backyard. A spontaneous bet...

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2024 / 11 / 28

Advice Line with Norma Kamali of Norma Kamali

Iconic fashion designer Norma Kamali joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early stage founders. Plus, Norma shares her take on balancing a strong creative vision with the...

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2024 / 11 / 25

Listen Now: 'Tis The Grinch Holiday Podcast

Cuddly as a cactus and charming as an eel, Whoville's favorite talk show host is back on the mic! The Grinch may hate the holidays, but he loves his new celebrity status as a chart-topping podcaster. With...

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2024 / 11 / 25

Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae

In a small beach town on Australia’s sunshine coast, Koel Thomae tasted a yogurt that would change her life: creamy, infused with honey and piquant with passion fruit, it became an obsession–something she was...

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2024 / 11 / 21

Advice Line with Chris Ruder of Spikeball

Spikeball founder and CEO Chris Ruder joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Chris shares an early-days strategy that ended up revealing surprising...

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2024 / 11 / 18

Athletic Brewing Company: Bill Shufelt

Bill Shufelt founded Athletic Brewing Company to re-invent non-alcoholic beer, but quickly learned that brewers didn’t want to make it, stores didn’t want to sell it, and potential customers didn’t want to...

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2024 / 11 / 14

Advice Line with Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield

Stonyfield co-founder and former CEO Gary Hirshberg joins Guy on the Advice Line where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Gary explains how a social mission can be a competitive...

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2024 / 11 / 12

Listen Now - REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. Each week, Luke Lamana, a Marine Corp Reconnaissance Veteran,...

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2024 / 11 / 11

Boll & Branch: Scott and Missy Tannen

Scott and Missy Tannen knew nothing about bed linens when they dreamed up the idea of launching a bedding company, but that didn’t stop them from setting ambitious goals: super soft sheets, 100% organic...

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2024 / 11 / 7

Advice Line with Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

1-800-GOT-JUNK? founder and CEO Brian Scudamore joins Guy on the Advice Line where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. First we meet Theresa in Denver, who’s wondering if she...

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2024 / 11 / 4

BARK: Matt Meeker

When Matt Meeker started sharing a Brooklyn apartment with a Great Dane, he didn’t know it would inspire him to launch a multi-million dollar company. But, disappointed by what pet stores offered for big dogs...

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2024 / 10 / 31

Advice Line with Angie Hicks of Angi

Angie Hicks, founder of Angi (formerly Angie’s List), joins Guy on the Advice Line where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. First we meet Paige, a dirt bike rider in Southern...

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2024 / 10 / 28

Black Diamond Equipment: Peter Metcalf

In 1989, after years of scaling some of the most challenging peaks in the world, Peter Metcalf took on a daunting new risk: resuscitating a bankrupt climbing-equipment company, and putting himself into deep...

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2024 / 10 / 25

What It Really Takes To Build a Food Business: Part 2

This is part two of our special series on building food businesses presented by Klaviyo. If you haven't heard part one from last week, go back and check it out.In that episode, three founders of three...

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2024 / 10 / 24

Advice Line with Michael Preysman of Everlane

Everlane co-founder and former CEO Michael Preysman joins Guy on the Advice Line where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. First we meet Todd in the Bay Area, who’s looking to...

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2024 / 10 / 21

21 Seeds: Kat Hantas

Kat Hantas turned her home hobby of infusing Tequila into a $160 million business. Her story began when her nightly glass of wine started to give her headaches, and her doctor recommended she replace it with...

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2024 / 10 / 18

What It Really Takes To Build a Food Business: Part 1

Innovation is a constant in the food industry. But it’s incredibly difficult to go from a tasty idea to an actual spot on the grocery store shelves. So if you have an idea for a food business, how do you turn...

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2024 / 10 / 17

Advice Line with Lara Merriken of LÄRABAR

LÄRABAR founder Lara Merriken joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Lara discusses her latest venture: a coaching service for entrepreneurs.First we...

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2024 / 10 / 15

Listen Now: The Best Idea Yet

The untold stories behind the products you’re obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who made them go viral. How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler’s passion project 250 years ago to a starring role in...

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2024 / 10 / 14

Viator: Rod Cuthbert

Clicking a button to book vacation tours might feel normal today, but Rod Cuthbert helped create that future through his company, Viator. Founded in the early days of the internet boom, Viator emerged almost...

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2024 / 10 / 10

Advice Line: Growing Beyond Your Niche

This week, Guy is joined by Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, Andrew Abraham of Orgain, and Brett Schulman of CAVA to give advice to three early-stage founders in this special “mashup” episode of...

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2024 / 10 / 7

Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld

In 2007, when James Hirschfeld got the idea to start an online invitation company, the first person he turned to for help was his older sister, Alexa. Together, they were inspired to create a brand that...

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2024 / 10 / 3

Advice Line: Reaching New Customers

This week, Guy is joined by Leah Solivan of TaskRabbit, Scott and Ally Svenson of MOD Pizza, and Holly Thaggard of Supergoop! to answer questions about reaching new customers from three early-stage founders...

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2024 / 9 / 30

Lily’s Sweets: Cynthia Tice

When it comes to launching a multi-million dollar brand, Cynthia Tice was a late bloomer. Nearly 60 and looking for a healthy way to satisfy her love of chocolate, she set out to make an indulgent, sugar-free...

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2024 / 9 / 26

Advice Line with Vicky Tsai of Tatcha

Tatcha co-founder and former CEO Vicky Tsai joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Vicky explains her decision to briefly step back into, and then out...

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2024 / 9 / 23

Graduate Hotels: Ben Weprin

In 2014, Ben Weprin decided to take people’s best college memories and spin them into a new business: Graduate Hotels. Each of the chain’s properties was decorated to reflect the character of the college town...

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2024 / 9 / 19

Advice Line with Sadie Lincoln of barre3

barre3 co-founder and CEO Sadie Lincoln joins Guy on the Advice line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Sadie breaks down how she introduced her novel fitness concept to new...

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2024 / 9 / 16

Barefoot Wine: Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan

Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan started Barefoot Wine with $300,000 in debt and almost no knowledge of wine. What they did understand was how to sell it—with a carefree name and label that evoked the...

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2024 / 9 / 12

Advice Line with Leah Solivan of Taskrabbit

Taskrabbit founder Leah Solivan joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three tech founders working to identify and grow their core customer base. First we meet Kate in Los...

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2024 / 9 / 9

Groupon and Descript: Andrew Mason

Andrew Mason was a 27-year-old with a degree in music when he co-founded one of the fastest growing companies of all time: Groupon. Its deep discounts on everything from sushi rolls to plastic surgery soon...

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2024 / 9 / 5

Advice Line with Scott and Ally Svenson of MOD Pizza

MOD Pizza founders Scott and Ally Svenson join Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders about strategic expansion, plus discuss MOD’s recent acquisition.Today we meet Evan, who...

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2024 / 9 / 2

Olipop: Ben Goodwin

When Ben Goodwin was growing up, the concept of healthy soda seemed as oxymoronic as jumbo shrimp. But for Ben, that presented an irresistible challenge: to create a beverage that evoked the colas and root...

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2024 / 8 / 29

Advice Line with Ariel Kaye of Parachute Home

Parachute Home founder Ariel Kaye joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders on being mindful and strategic in their next expansion steps. Today, we meet Daen, an...

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2024 / 8 / 26

Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz

When Seth Berkowitz was in college, he was the cookie guy on campus. He’d grown frustrated that the only food he could get delivered late at night were standards like pizza or Chinese food. He had a sweet...

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2024 / 8 / 22

Advice Line with Jamie Siminoff of Ring

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders about balancing short- and long-term goals. Today, we meet Vico, an industrial designer in...

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2024 / 8 / 19

Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler

With $1500 in savings and no experience in retail, Mel and Patricia Ziegler stumbled upon a clever idea: buy inexpensive Army surplus gear, refashion it into stylish clothes, and sell them in a setting that...

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2024 / 8 / 15

Advice Line with Holly Thaggard of Supergoop!

Supergoop! founder Holly Thaggard joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders about finding the right audience and introducing their brands.Today, we meet Christina, the...

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2024 / 8 / 12

Thrive Market: Nick Green

In 2013, Nick Green set out to solve a vexing problem: in many parts of the country, it’s hard to get access to healthy groceries. As a solution, Nick and his co-founders launched an e-commerce mashup of...

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2024 / 8 / 8

Advice Line with Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company

Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three founders about finding product-market fit.Today, we meet Kim, whose tropical-inspired apparel company...

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2024 / 8 / 5

SmartSweets: Tara Bosch

Tara Bosch wasn’t always considered a likely contender for success. At 21 years old, she dropped out of college the summer before her junior year and moved in to her grandmother’s basement. But, with a gummy...

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2024 / 8 / 1

Advice Line with Jeff Raider of Harry's

Harry’s and Warby Parker co-founder Jeff Raider joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they talk with three founders grappling with strategic decisions.Today we meet Uli, who’s trying to balance multiple revenue...

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2024 / 7 / 29

Specialized Bicycle Components: Mike Sinyard

Mike Sinyard helped put mountain biking on the map. In the 1970’s, he founded Specialized Bicycle Components to do exactly what the name suggests: sell high-quality bike parts. He eventually decided to make...

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2024 / 7 / 26

BONUS: Brand Building Live at Cannes Lions

What does it take to successfully market a brand today? Last month, Guy sat down with marketing expert Jim Stengel to find out.Jim spent more than two decades at Procter & Gamble, where he managed...

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2024 / 7 / 25

Advice Line with Joe Kudla of Vuori

Vuori founder Joe Kudla joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they work through business challenges with three early-stage founders.Today we meet Laurie, a Florida-based physician with savings to invest back...

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2024 / 7 / 22

On athletic shoes: Olivier Bernhard and Caspar Coppetti

Swiss triathlete and Ironman champion Olivier Bernhard was warned not to challenge the goliaths in the sneaker industry. But, inspired by the cloud-like sensation of a prototype running shoe made with strips...

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2024 / 7 / 18

Advice Line with Pete Maldonado of Chomps (April 2024)

In case you missed it, we’re rerunning one of our first Advice Line episodes. Chomps co-founder and co-CEO Pete Maldonado joins Guy to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs about growing their...

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2024 / 7 / 15

KAYAK: Paul English (2021)

Paul English is a perpetual founder. Since high school, he's started 3 philanthropies and 8 companies—ranging from e-commerce, to gaming, to GetHuman, a site that helps users access human customer support....

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2024 / 7 / 11

Advice Line with Tony Lamb of Kona Ice

Kona Ice co-founder and CEO Tony Lamb joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders.Today we meet Dylan, who’s wondering how to tell if his small town Illinois...

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2024 / 7 / 8

Ouidad hair products: Ouidad Wise

Ouidad Wise found the inspiration for her multi-million-dollar business right on top of her own head. She turned her passion for curly hair into a bustling New York City salon - and then a national hair care...

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2024 / 7 / 4

Advice Line with Brett Schulman of CAVA

CAVA co-founder and CEO Brett Schulman joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders experiencing growing pains as they scale their companies. Today we meet...

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2024 / 7 / 1

American Giant: Bayard Winthrop

Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant in 2011 with the simple idea to sell clothes made entirely in America at a time when most apparel manufacturing had moved overseas. The first struggle was finding all...

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2024 / 6 / 27

Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's

Sir Kensington’s co-founder and former CEO Mark Ramadan joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they work through business challenges with three early-stage founders.Today we meet Pat, a physician assistant...

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2024 / 6 / 24

Spin Master/PAW Patrol: Ronnen Harary (2021)

Ronnen Harary built a 4 billion dollar toy company without relying on market research or focus groups. Instead, he believed wholeheartedly in intuition: the "ah-hah" moment that comes from thinking like a...

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2024 / 6 / 20

Advice Line with Sarah Kauss of S'well

S’well founder Sarah Kauss joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about positioning their products in competitive markets. Today we meet Chiara, a...

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2024 / 6 / 17

The Cronut and Dominique Ansel Bakery: Dominique Ansel

Dominique Ansel’s invention of the Cronut — an inspired liaison between croissant and donut — was supposed to be a one-time indulgence for Mother’s Day. But once word spread about the perfect hybrid pastry,...

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2024 / 6 / 13

Advice Line with Randy Goldberg of Bombas

Bombas co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Randy Goldberg joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about building brands and reaching new communities.Today we...

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2024 / 6 / 10

Dave’s Hot Chicken: Arman Oganesyan

Dave’s Hot Chicken began as a tiny pop-up, selling spicy chicken tenders and fries from a tent in East Hollywood. Their homemade take on Nashville Hot Chicken was an overnight sensation in a city that had...

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2024 / 6 / 6

Advice Line with Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey (April 2024)

In case you missed it, we’re rerunning our Advice Line launch episode from a few weeks ago. Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey founder Fawn Weaver joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from...

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2024 / 6 / 3

ECKO UNLTD and COMPLEX: Marc Ecko

Growing up in the ‘80s in New Jersey, Marc Ecko loved hip hop, graffiti art, and painting t-shirts for friends. His passion soon bloomed into a full-on business: ECKO UNLTD, a streetwear brand known for its...

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2024 / 5 / 30

Advice Line with Mauren Kelly of Tarte Cosmetics

Tarte cosmetics founder and CEO Maureen Kelly joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about their marketing strategies.Today we meet Kristina, who’s designed...

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2024 / 5 / 30

Advice Line with Maureen Kelly of Tarte Cosmetics

Tarte cosmetics founder and CEO Maureen Kelly joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about their marketing strategies.Today we meet Kristina, who’s designed...

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2024 / 5 / 27

Concept2 Rowing Machines: Dick and Peter Dreissigacker

Brothers Dick and Peter Dreissigacker used their experience as Olympic-level rowers to build a rowing machine that captured the sensation of being on the water. Initially made of bicycle parts in a...

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2024 / 5 / 23

Advice Line with Tom Rinks of Sun Bum

Sun Bum co-founder Tom Rinks joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about refining their brand identities. Today we meet Wendy, a former comedian whose...

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2024 / 5 / 20

Therabody: Jason Wersland

The Theragun was born out of a late-night experiment with a Makita jigsaw, by a man searching desperately for pain relief in his arm. Jason Wersland was studying to become a chiropractor when he got injured...

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2024 / 5 / 16

Advice Line with Andrew Abraham of Orgain

Orgain founder and CEO Andrew Abraham joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about strategically positioning their products. Today we meet Brynn,...

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2024 / 5 / 13

nutpods: Madeline Haydon

When Madeline Haydon decided to turn her homemade, plant-based coffee creamer into a business, she didn’t fit the mold of a typical founder. She was a woman of color, pregnant with her second child, and had...

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2024 / 5 / 9

Advice Line with Gary Erickson of Clif Bar

Clif Bar founder Gary Erickson joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about expanding their customer base.Today we meet James, who recycles water bottles...

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2024 / 5 / 7

Listen Now: The Competition

Every summer for the past seven decades, 50 high school seniors—one from every state—descend on Mobile, Alabama to take part in one of the country’s most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen...

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2024 / 5 / 6

Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams

As co-founder of Twitter and founder of Blogger and Medium, Evan Williams literally helped change the conversation: he understood that real-time connectivity—being able to write a post and have people read it...

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2024 / 5 / 2

Advice Line with Pete Maldonado of Chomps

Former guest Pete Maldonado, co-founder and co-CEO of Chomps, joins Guy for another “Advice Line” edition of HIBT Lab. In this episode, we’ll meet Jennifer, a sourdough bagel slinger thinking about...

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2024 / 4 / 29

Dhar Mann Studios: Dhar Mann

Five years before he became a massively successful content creator, Dhar Mann was nearly broke and living in a studio apartment. It’s the kind of story he might tell in one of his videos: bite-sized,...

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2024 / 4 / 25

Advice Line: Growing up on a Coffee Farm? Giving Back with Jewelry? Making the Perfect Pecan Pie?

Former guest Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest Whiskey, joins Guy for an “Advice Line” edition of HIBT Lab. Three early-stage entrepreneurs call in for advice on telling their brand story. In this...

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2024 / 4 / 25

Advice Line with Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey

Former guest Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest Whiskey, joins Guy for an “Advice Line” edition of HIBT Lab. Three early-stage entrepreneurs call in for advice on telling their brand story. In this...

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2024 / 4 / 22

YouTube Creator and Cookbook Author: Rosanna Pansino

With over 14.5 million subscribers, Rosanna Pansino has one of the most popular baking channels on YouTube But she never would have imagined her success back in 2010 when she started making videos as a...

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2024 / 4 / 18

Healing through food with Danielle Walker of Against All Grain (2022)

Growing up, Danielle Walker’s family often convened for big meals prepared by her Italian grandmother, Grandma Marge. Back then, Danielle enjoyed a wide variety of food without restriction; but she began...

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2024 / 4 / 15

CrunchLabs: Mark Rober

As one of the most successful creators on YouTube, Mark Rober doesn’t see what he does as a business. Instead, it’s a way to celebrate science in the most joyful way possible. While working as an...

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2024 / 4 / 11

AI is smarter than you think with Shane Legg of Google DeepMind

For decades, Shane Legg has anticipated the arrival of “artificial general intelligence” or AGI. In other words: an artificial agent that can do all the kinds of cognitive tasks that people can typically...

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2024 / 4 / 8

Mythical: Rhett and Link

Best friends Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal started out as “comedians for Christ,” and grew their partnership into one of the most successful YouTube platforms in existence. During college they created silly...

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2024 / 4 / 5

Listen Now: Business Wars

From Wondery, Business Wars is a podcast about the biggest corporate rivalries. In the newest season, host David Brown tracks the power struggles and philosophical differences within OpenAI that culminated in...

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2024 / 4 / 5

Listen Now: Business Movers

Behind every successful business is a story. It starts with a vision and a leap of faith. Along the way, leaders make bold decisions, ride booms and busts, and sometimes, they reach new heights. From Wondery,...

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2024 / 4 / 4

Less competition, more creation with Renée Mauborgne

Best-selling author and economics professor Renée Mauborgne thinks that too many entrepreneurs focus on the wrong things—consumed with making their companies outperform one another as they fight for a greater...

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2024 / 4 / 1

Whole30: Melissa Urban

Whole30 began as a dietary experiment: For 30 days, Melissa Urban went without grains, dairy, legumes, alcohol and added sugar. She was trying to address several health problems, and the results were so...

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2024 / 3 / 28

“Beaming” people anywhere in the world with David Nussbaum of Proto

The popular science fiction idea of beaming someone instantly to another location was part of David Nussbaum’s inspiration to design a “holoportation box.” His company, Proto, invented a device the size of a...

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2024 / 3 / 25

MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian

Isaac Larian moved from Iran to Los Angeles at age 17 with just a few hundred dollars, and went on to build one of the biggest toy companies in the world. Along the way, he took on Barbie with a wildly...

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2024 / 3 / 21

Achieving greater things with Adam Grant

“Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop.” That’s what organizational psychologist and podcast host Adam Grant believes, and he offers a new framework on how we...

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2024 / 3 / 18

Weee!: Larry Liu

If you told 19-year-old Larry Liu that his hobby re-selling used electronics “for fun” would someday help him build a multi-billion-dollar company, he probably would have laughed. He was an electrical...

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2024 / 3 / 14

AI that can be your second brain with Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri of Humane

Imran Chaudhri and his wife Bethany Bongiorno are responsible for bringing some of the most widely-used screened products to market—like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. And while these devices have...

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2024 / 3 / 11

Primal Kitchen: Mark Sisson

Mark Sisson made a big bet on mayonnaise, and won: four years after launching his Paleo-friendly condiment company Primal Kitchen, he sold it for $200 million. He succeeded partly because he drew lessons...

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2024 / 3 / 7

Supercharging Lithium-Ion Batteries with Gene Berdichevsky of Sila Nanotechnologies

Gene Berdichevsky and his team have been working for over a decade to solve a major problem: Lithium-ion batteries are not getting any better. They power our cell phones and laptops and nearly every other...

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2024 / 3 / 4

Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey: Fawn Weaver (2021)

In 2016, Fawn Weaver became fixated on a New York Times article telling the little-known story of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel—yes, that Jack Daniel—how to make...

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2024 / 2 / 29

The peril (and promise) of AI with Tristan Harris: Part 2

What if you could no longer trust the things you see and hear?Because the signature on a check, the documents or videos presented in court, the footage you see on the news, the calls you receive from your...

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2024 / 2 / 26

Poshmark: Manish Chandra

When the iPhone 4 was released in 2010, Manish Chandra was dazzled by its picture quality, and saw an opportunity for a new type of mobile marketplace. A year later, he and three co-founders launched...

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2024 / 2 / 22

The peril (and promise) of AI with Tristan Harris: Part 1

When Tristan Harris co-founded the Center for Humane Technology in 2018, he was trying to educate tech leaders and policymakers about the harms of social media.But today, he’s sounding the alarm about a...

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2024 / 2 / 19

Sonos: John MacFarlane

In 2002, John MacFarlane and his co-founders began tinkering on what was then an ambitious idea: create a new way to enjoy music throughout the home, without wires. At the time, streaming and the iPod were...

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2024 / 2 / 15

Powering cars with solar energy with Steve Fambro of Aptera Motors (2023)

There’s a new car coming to market that will probably make its owners search out the sunniest spots in the parking lot… Aptera Motors is designing and manufacturing this car: a plug-in electric hybrid that...

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2024 / 2 / 12

Magic Spoon & Exo: Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz

Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz founded Magic Spoon to create a sugary breakfast cereal without the sugar. If that sounds daunting, consider their first business: protein bars made with cricket flour. Riffing on...

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2024 / 2 / 8

Building a decarbonization army with Shashank Samala of Heirloom

Cutting emissions alone will not be enough. To avoid the worst effects of global climate change, Heirloom CEO and co-founder Shashank Samala believes we’ll also need to pull a lot of carbon out of the...

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2024 / 2 / 5

Parachute Home: Ariel Kaye

In 2012, Ariel Kaye saw a tantalizing opportunity, but wasn’t sure she was the one to seize it. She’d never started a brand and didn’t think of herself as an entrepreneur, until she noticed how frustrating it...

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2024 / 2 / 1

3D printing a housing revolution with Jason Ballard of ICON

“If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, then we’re going to get what we’ve got—and what we got ain’t working.”ICON Co-founder/CEO and proud Texan Jason Ballard believes that a radically different approach to...

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2024 / 1 / 29

Drunk Elephant: Tiffany Masterson

Tiffany Masterson was a stay-at-home mom in her 40s when she launched her skin care brand, Drunk Elephant, in 2013. Six years later, she sold it for $845 million to the Japanese beauty giant Shiseido. Just...

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2024 / 1 / 25

Brewing creativity with Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company

When Jim Koch created Samuel Adams Boston Lager in 1984, American craft beer was still in its infancy. But forty years and thousands of new craft breweries later, both the competition and Jim’s drive to...

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2024 / 1 / 22

Liquid Death: Mike Cessario

Mike Cessario came up with the idea for a viral water brand by asking himself “What is the dumbest possible idea we could have?” His answer was Liquid Death: an aluminum can of water that looks like a cross...

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2024 / 1 / 18

Doing the bees’ work with Thai Sade of BloomX

Thai Sade is the co-founder and CEO of BloomX, a company that has developed crop-pollinating technology to replicate natural pollinators like bees and other insects. So much of what we eat depends on...

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2024 / 1 / 15

Primary: Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard

The apparel industry - be it high fashion or everyday wear - is a crowded and noisy market to crack. Just think about the sheer number of athletic shoes or jeans available at both ends of the price spectrum!...

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2024 / 1 / 11

Designing shoes for women's feet with Wes and Allyson Felix of Saysh (2023)

Allyson Felix is the most decorated American track and field athlete of all time. She’s also a mother. Those two identities came into conflict in 2018 when negotiating a contract renewal with her shoe...

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2024 / 1 / 8

Calendly: Tope Awotona (2020)

After emigrating from Nigeria to the US to attend college, Tope Awotona worked as a door-to-door salesman and eventually set out to become a tech entrepreneur. He launched a series of e-commerce businesses...

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2024 / 1 / 4

Sharing the 2023 HIBT Lab Highlight Reel

A special look back at some of our favorite How I Built This Lab episodes of 2023. Hear how Pinky Cole built the vegan fast food chain Slutty Vegan after a devastating fire destroyed her first restaurant....

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2024 / 1 / 1

Aviator Nation: Paige Mycoskie

In 2006, Paige Mycoskie walked into one of the most exclusive boutiques in LA, wearing her handmade clothes and hoping to get a meeting with the buyer. And why not? On the street, people seemed to love her...

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2023 / 12 / 28

Charging up the electric vehicle market with RJ Scaringe of Rivian

Rivian’s all-electric vehicles have been in high demand thanks to their unique look and handy features. But soon after hitting the market, a series of supply chain snarls led to a backlog of orders and a...

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2023 / 12 / 25

KiwiCo: Sandra Oh Lin

KiwiCo founder Sandra Oh Lin took an after-school pastime and turned it into a multi-million-dollar business. After quitting a high-powered job in tech, she dived into doing after-school projects with her...

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2023 / 12 / 21

Shooting for the moon with Steve Altemus of Intuitive Machines

Our modern way of life requires more resources than ever before — resources that are becoming increasingly scarce and environmentally taxing to extract. Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve...

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2023 / 12 / 18

reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn (2020)

In 2000, Luis von Ahn was starting his PhD in computer science when he attended a talk and happened to learn about one of Yahoo's biggest problems: automated bots were signing up for millions of free Yahoo...

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2023 / 12 / 15

Tell us your favorite HIBT episode and you might hear your voice on the show! Here’s how.

Take a listen to this message from Guy, then email us the file at HIBT@ID.Wondery.com. We'll play some of your favorites in the ad breaks of future episodes!See Privacy Policy at...

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2023 / 12 / 14

Framing the future of eyecare with Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa of Warby Parker

Warby Parker co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa broke their scrappy startup into the eyewear industry in 2010—putting legacy manufacturers on notice by offering stylish glasses at much lower prices. But...

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2023 / 12 / 11

Wondery: Hernan Lopez

When Hernan Lopez founded Wondery in 2016, podcasts were just starting to go mainstream. Five years later, his team had scored a number of hit shows and sold to Amazon for a reported $300 million. Not bad for...

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2023 / 12 / 7

Full body preventive health care with Andrew Lacy of Prenuvo

Andrew Lacy is the co-founder and CEO of Prenuvo, a company offering full body scans that have the potential to detect disease early and before symptoms. When Andrew was introduced to radiologist Rajpaul...

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2023 / 12 / 4

Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020)

In 2010, a tragic personal event changed the trajectory of Nancy Twine's life. Suddenly, her promising job at Goldman Sachs no longer seemed fulfilling; she wanted something more.Drawing inspiration from the...

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2023 / 11 / 30

The surprise that's saving food with Lucie Basch of Too Good To Go (2023)

Collaboration is the new competition: that was French entrepreneur Lucie Basch’s philosophy when she approached a group of Danish founders who happened to be working on a similar food waste reduction...

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2023 / 11 / 27

CAVA: Ted Xenohristos and Brett Schulman

When Ted Xenohristos and two childhood friends opened their first sit-down Greek restaurant in 2006, they had no idea it would eventually grow into CAVA, a sprawling national chain that serves stuffed pita...

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2023 / 11 / 23

The Future of Driving is Autonomous with Dmitri Dolgov of Waymo

Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov is convinced that his company’s vehicles are better at driving than any human. Dmitri has spent thousands of hours riding in them, and recently Guy had the chance to try one out as...

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2023 / 11 / 23

The future of driving is autonomous with Dmitri Dolgov of Waymo

Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov is convinced that his company’s vehicles are better at driving than any human. Dmitri has spent thousands of hours riding in them, and recently Guy had the chance to try one out as...

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2023 / 11 / 20

Everlane: Michael Preysman

When Michael Preysman founded Everlane, he knew nothing about fashion–he just wanted to see if he could build an online platform that would generate buzz around anything. He started with a cotton T-shirt, and...

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2023 / 11 / 16

Literally unearthing a climate solution with Cody Finke of Brimstone

When it comes to carbon emissions, there’s a major culprit you might not have heard about: cement. The production of cement emits almost as much carbon dioxide as cars do - but Brimstone CEO and co-founder...

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2023 / 11 / 14

Listen Now: Six Trophies with Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion

Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion are back! And this time they’re combing through all the NBA news from the past week and handing out six pop culture-themed trophies to six basketball-related activities....

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2023 / 11 / 13

Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner

Priority Bicycles founder Dave Weiner quit his job as a software CEO to pursue a risky idea: building a new kind of bike. In 2014, he started sourcing parts to make his first low-maintenance model, with...

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2023 / 11 / 9

When a robot cooks your lunch with Steve Ells of Chipotle and Kernel

Steve Ells changed the restaurant industry once when he founded Chipotle in 1993. His idea for fast, freshly prepared food became the model for today’s “fast casual” format. It’s a story he told when he was...

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2023 / 11 / 6

Kona Ice: Tony Lamb

Kona Ice founder Tony Lamb had a knack for sales since he was a teenager - a skill that served him well when he decided to sell Hawaiian-style shaved ice in Kentucky, where people had barely heard of it....

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2023 / 11 / 2

The art of letting go with Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn of Dang Foods

How does a brand live on after its founders leave the company – especially one that was inspired by their family and their culture? That’s the question Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn have had to answer...

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2023 / 10 / 30

Etsy: Rob Kalin

Rob Kalin founded Etsy for people like him: makers and hobbyists. In 2005, he was kicking around New York trying to find buyers for his hand-made furniture, when he noticed that other craftspeople had the...

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2023 / 10 / 26

Love’s next chapter with Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

The past few years have challenged Whitney Wolfe Herd like never before. The Bumble CEO kept the company afloat as the pandemic halted in-person meetups, then became the youngest female founder ever to take a...

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2023 / 10 / 23

Sir Kensington's: Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan

Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan were only college students when they created Sir Kensington’s, a $140-million-dollar condiment brand – with a backstory that’s completely made up.These days, it seems like...

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2023 / 10 / 19

Leading through radical change with Julia Hartz of Eventbrite

Back as the show’s first-ever ‘three-peat’ guest is Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite. The events industry has been transformed by the past three years, giving Julia the opportunity to evolve...

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2023 / 10 / 16

Herschel Supply Co.: Jamie and Lyndon Cormack

Brothers Jamie and Lyndon Cormack founded Herschel Supply Co to sell modern bags with a timeless feel. While working in the sports and apparel industry, they realized they couldn’t find backpacks and totes...

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2023 / 10 / 12

Unlocking the renewable energy revolution with Ramya Swaminathan of Malta Inc.

Ramya Swaminathan is the CEO of Malta Inc, a company that spun out of Google’s moonshot factory in 2018 to work on an energy storage solution using the existing power grid. One thing holding the world...

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2023 / 10 / 9

Freshpet: Scott Morris

Freshpet co-founder Scott Morris helped transform pet food by sidestepping traditional kibble and cans, and making slice-and-serve meals that almost looked palatable enough for humans. When Scott and his...

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2023 / 10 / 5

A biometric smart gun with Kai Kloepfer of Biofire

Biofire founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer believes there’s at least one way to decrease gun deaths in America. Early next year, his company will begin shipping the world’s first handgun with an electronic firing...

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2023 / 10 / 2

Vuori: Joe Kudla

Vuori founder Joe Kudla built a 4-billion-dollar company on a risky idea: that men actually cared about the clothes they worked out in. When Joe launched Vuori in 2015, women’s athleisure brands like...

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2023 / 9 / 28

When your dinner is printed with Eshchar Ben-Shitrit of Redefine Meat

Refefine Meat co-founder and CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit long had aspirations to lead a company, though he never imagined taking the risk to start his own. But learning about the environmental harms of mass beef...

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2023 / 9 / 25

Yasso: Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington

Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington are childhood friends, and co-founders of Yasso; they defied the advice of experts by creating a recipe for frozen Greek yogurt treats, and building Yasso into a $200 million...

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2023 / 9 / 21

A climate-resilient ancient grain with Pierre Thiam of Yolélé (2022)

Pierre Thiam is a renowned chef, restaurant owner, cookbook author, and co-founder of Yolélé – a company working to introduce the world to fonio, an ancient West African grain built for climate change.But it...

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2023 / 9 / 18

ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay (2021)

By her early thirties, Ava DuVernay was already a successful entrepreneur, having founded her own film publicity agency in Los Angeles. But after years of watching other people make films, she started to get...

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2023 / 9 / 14

Reclaiming food waste with Jasmine Crowe-Houston of Goodr (2022)

Millions of Americans don’t have enough to eat — a startling fact considering 40% of the food produced in the U.S. gets thrown away. And a lot of that food… from restaurants, supermarkets, office buildings...

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2023 / 9 / 11

Jack Black Skin Care: Curran and Jeff Dandurand

In 1998, Curran Dandurand and a colleague from Mary Kay Cosmetics came up with an unorthodox idea: a premium skincare brand for men. Despite the prevailing wisdom that American men would never want to...

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2023 / 9 / 7

Threading the future of circular fashion with Peter Majeranowski of Circ

Over one hundred billion garments will be produced this year, but they don’t have to be. Peter Majeranowski says we have all the clothes we need to make all the clothing we’ll ever need, and his company,...

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2023 / 9 / 4

Air Lease Corporation: Steven Udvar-Hazy

Before Steven Udvar-Hazy was out of high school, he started working as an airline consultant. You could do that sort of thing back in the 1960’s, if you knew the industry—which indisputably, he did. Born in...

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2023 / 8 / 31

When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable

Our brain activity can reveal a lot about our physical and mental health. And thanks to Ramses Alcaide and his team at Neurable, we’ll soon be able to glean insights from our brainwaves in our own homes —...

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2023 / 8 / 29

Listen Now: The Big Flop

Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be an even bigger failure?Each week on Wondery’s new podcast The Big Flop, host Misha Brown is joined by different...

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2023 / 8 / 28

Supergoop!: Holly Thaggard (2020)

In 2005, the trajectory of Holly Thaggard's life completely changed when a good friend of hers was diagnosed with skin cancer. Holly realized that most people weren't taking sunscreen seriously, so she...

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2023 / 8 / 24

Electrifying aviation with Kyle Clark of BETA Technologies

Not only is BETA Technologies completely changing the flying experience with its all-electric aircraft, it’s upending the logistics of shipping altogether... This week on How I Built This Lab, founder...

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2023 / 8 / 21

Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea

Kinko’s copy shops were once so ubiquitous that the name became a kind of shorthand for photocopying. Paul Orfalea started the first shop in 1970 in a tiny converted hamburger stand near UC Santa...

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2023 / 8 / 17

Making garbage useful with Tom Szaky of TerraCycle

Tom Szaky runs a recycling company, but he’d rather live in a world where recycling was obsolete... Today, his company recycles everything from shampoo bottles and makeup containers to snack wrappers and...

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2023 / 8 / 14

Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan

Over a nine-year period, Spencer and Jeff Jan grew Solo Stove from a DIY project into a 9-figure brand. Their original idea was modest: work a four-hour week and earn a passive income from a DTC camping...

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2023 / 8 / 10

When our phones are just phones with Kai Tang and Joe Hollier of Light

Most of us are dependent on our smartphones. In fact, Americans spend an average of three hours a day on these devices — devices that only came into existence relatively recently. Designers Kai Tang and...

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2023 / 8 / 7

Orgain: Andrew Abraham

A life-threatening diagnosis changed the course of Andrew Abraham’s career and led him to found some of the most popular nutritional drinks and powders on the market. After recovering from his illness and...

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2023 / 8 / 3

Powering cars with solar energy with Steve Fambro of Aptera Motors

There’s a new car coming to market that will probably make its owners search out the sunniest spots in the parking lot...Aptera Motors is designing and manufacturing this car: a plug-in electric hybrid that...

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2023 / 7 / 31

The Tetris Company: Henk Rogers

Tetris is one of the most popular video games of all time, and Henk Rogers helped make it happen. He first discovered the game at a convention in 1988, and immediately saw how elegant and addictive it was. As...

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2023 / 7 / 27

When AI is your personal tutor with Sal Khan of Khan Academy

The COVID-19 pandemic changed education forever. But Sal Khan says an even bigger educational revolution is just around the corner …This week on How I Built This Lab, Sal returns to the show to talk about a...

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2023 / 7 / 24

MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson

A relentless hunt for their favorite foods and drinks led Scott and Ally Svenson into launching not one but two multi-million dollar businesses. The first came about in 1990s London when they discovered that...

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2023 / 7 / 20

When trucks drive themselves with Chris Urmson of Aurora

Chris Urmson is one of the founding fathers of the autonomous vehicle industry. He participated in three DARPA self-driving vehicle challenges before joining the team that launched Google’s self-driving car...

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2023 / 7 / 17

Grindr: Joel Simkhai

On the premise that a smartphone could vastly improve his love life, Joel Simkhai built one of the most popular dating apps in the world. In 2008 he was living in LA and looking for an easy way to meet...

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2023 / 7 / 13

Delivering the future in drones with Keller Rinaudo Cliffton of Zipline

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton thinks we’re already experiencing the technology of tomorrow, just that it’s not evenly distributed...About a decade ago, Keller transformed his smartphone robot company into Zipline,...

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2023 / 7 / 10

Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner

While working as a psychologist in the Bay Area helping people with their problems, Mary Waldner discovered one of her own; at the age of 43, she was diagnosed with celiac disease. The foods she’d been eating...

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2023 / 7 / 6

When robots recycle with Matanya Horowitz of AMP Robotics

Matanya Horowitz is not above dumpster diving in the name of innovation. His company, AMP Robotics, has developed robots to help waste management facilities better sort through incoming trash and separate...

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2023 / 7 / 3

The Lip Bar (TLB): Melissa Butler (2020)

While working long hours as a Wall Street analyst, Melissa Butler started making lipstick in her kitchen as a hobby. But it soon turned into an obsession, costing thousands of dollars. She was frustrated by...

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2023 / 6 / 29

Reimagining seafood production with Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck of Wildtype (2022)

When Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck met in 2011, they had no intention of starting a business. Aryé was a cardiologist, and Justin was a diplomat who had lived in countries all over the world. But their...

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2023 / 6 / 26

Dutch Bros. Coffee: Travis Boersma

From a coffee cart parked uneasily in a grocery parking lot, Travis and Dane Boersma grew Dutch Bros into a sprawling chain of 700-plus beverage restaurants. Before they got started in Grants Pass, Oregon, in...

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2023 / 6 / 22

Reinvesting in our cities with renewable energy with Donnel Baird of BlocPower (2022)

When Donnel Baird was a child, his parents would regularly use the oven to heat their Brooklyn apartment -- a dangerous and energy-inefficient practice that’s unfortunately not unique to New York City. As an...

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2023 / 6 / 19

Spikeball: Chris Ruder

When Chris Ruder set out to revive a ball-and-net game from his childhood, he was pretty sure he would fail. He wasn’t really into sports and had never run a business. But after 15 years, Spikeball has grown...

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2023 / 6 / 15

Saving the f#$%ing rainforests with Shara Ticku of C16 Biosciences

Palm oil is a wonder ingredient, used in almost everything from toothpaste and oat milk to biodiesel and laundry detergent. But to keep pace with rising global demand, producers have burned down millions of...

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2023 / 6 / 12

Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider

Two college-era friends set out to change the face of shaving—and in the process, took on one of the biggest companies in the world. In 2011, Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider realized they shared a common...

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2023 / 6 / 8

Tapping the heat beneath your feet with Kathy Hannun of Dandelion Energy

Millions of American households rely on oil for heat. Growing up in New Hampshire, Kathy Hannun was familiar with this decades-old and environmentally-taxing approach. As part of Google’s innovation lab, X,...

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2023 / 6 / 6

Listen Now: Spellcaster: The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

From Wondery and Bloomberg, the makers of The Shrink Next Door, comes a new story of incredible wealth, betrayal, and what happens when “doing good” goes really, really bad.When nerdy gamer Sam Bankman-Fried...

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2023 / 6 / 5

Tory Burch: Tory Burch

Tory Burch didn’t set out to make her name into a brand; she didn’t even set out to get into fashion. As a matter of fact, she sort of gave up any fashion ambitions when her first designs were rejected by...

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2023 / 6 / 1

Cultivating a creative community with Tina Roth-Eisenberg of CreativeMornings

“Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with.” - Seth GodinYearning to find community as a Swiss transplant in New York City, Tina Roth-Eisenberg was so moved by these...

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2023 / 5 / 29

Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller is one of the best—and best known—chefs in America, but it took him 40 years to get there. He took a long, winding path through the culinary arts; from whisking his first hollandaise sauce...

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2023 / 5 / 25

HIBT Lab! Google: Sundar Pichai (2022)

Drive. Docs. Chrome. Maps. Gmail. Android. What do these products have in common? Of course, they’re all Google, but what you may not know is that they all came to fruition under the management of the same...

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2023 / 5 / 22

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League

In the early 1990’s, Tim League spent $50,000 in savings to lease an abandoned movie theater on the wrong side of the tracks—a shaky experiment that eventually grew into a thriving national chain. As Tim...

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2023 / 5 / 18

HIBT Lab! Cotopaxi: Davis Smith

Davis Smith has spent the last nine years building the outdoor gear and clothing brand, Cotopaxi. The company’s slogan, Gear for Good, encapsulates everything about the way they do business, from using...

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2023 / 5 / 15

Mielle Organics: Monique Rodriguez

For Monique Rodriguez, hair care was a hobby; she never thought she could build a business. In fact, after high school, Monique followed her mother’s advice to find a solid, recession-proof career, and she...

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2023 / 5 / 11

HIBT Lab! Landed: Alex Lofton

Pricey down payments have put homeownership out of reach for many Americans, especially those who don’t have access to intergenerational wealth. This issue is particularly acute in cities, where the salaries...

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2023 / 5 / 8

Hinge: Justin McLeod (2021)

In 2010, Justin McLeod was in business school, still trying to get over a bad breakup that had happened years before. Determined to solve his own problem and convinced that the best way to meet people was...

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2023 / 5 / 4

HIBT Lab! Babcock Ranch: Syd Kitson

What would it take to build America’s first solar-powered town? What about a town that could withstand a direct hit from a hurricane? In the early 2000s, Syd Kitson, a former NFL football player and real...

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2023 / 5 / 2

Wondery Presents - Flipping the Bird: Elon vs Twitter

When Elon Musk posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter HQ carrying a white sink along with the message “let that sink in!” It marked the end of a dramatic takeover. Musk had gone from Twitter critic to...

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2023 / 5 / 1

Suitsupply: Fokke de Jong

When Fokke de Jong started selling suits out of his dorm room in Amsterdam in the late 90's, he wasn’t planning on becoming the next Tom Ford—he just wanted to supply luxury suits at an affordable price. But...

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2023 / 4 / 27

HIBT Lab! Hevesh5: Lily Hevesh

Lily Hevesh never could have imagined that the videos of domino tricks she started posting for fun at 10 years old would eventually evolve into a thriving business.Fast forward to today and Lily’s YouTube...

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2023 / 4 / 24

Manduka: Peter Sterios

Peter Sterios discovered yoga by accident when he was in college, and wound up—also by accident—launching a multimillion-dollar business around it. He used yoga to ease neck strain and loosen his hamstrings,...

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2023 / 4 / 20

HIBT Lab! Ursa Major: Joe Laurienti

Joe Laurienti, a former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineer, launched Ursa Major in 2015 with the idea that 3D printing could revolutionize the production of rocket engines.The timing was right: Russia had...

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2023 / 4 / 17

Halo Top Ice Cream: Justin Woolverton

In one of the most remarkable feats ever performed by a frozen dessert, Halo Top ice cream became the best-selling pint in America just six years after launch. Its founder Justin Woolverton was a frustrated...

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2023 / 4 / 13

HIBT Lab! New Culture: Matt Gibson and Inja Radman

It’s hard not to love cheese: feta, brie, gruyère, parmesan, pepper jack, mozzarella, asiago...it’s all delicious! But there’s a downside — cheese production is quite taxing on the environment, with dairy...

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2023 / 4 / 10

Orangetheory Fitness: Ellen Latham

Ellen Latham would probably have been happy teaching classes at her popular fitness studio in south Florida until she turned ninety. After being fired from her dream job as a spa director, she’d found...

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2023 / 4 / 6

HIBT Lab! Nas Company: Nuseir Yassin

In 2016, Nuseir Yassin quit his cushy tech job to embark on a journey around the globe. The idea was simple: post a one-minute video every day for 1,000 days to show the world from his perspective. The...

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2023 / 4 / 3

Twilio: Jeff Lawson

When Jeff Lawson co-founded Twilio in 2008, he had already been through a series of start-ups. Some succeeded, others fizzled out—but each provided insights that led him to build one of the most...

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2023 / 3 / 30

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Climeworks: Jan Wurzbacher

According to the 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world needs to cut carbon emissions drastically to avoid the worst effects of global warming. But that’s not all. In...

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2023 / 3 / 27

Sun Bum: Tom Rinks

Tom Rinks not only understands the art of branding, he can explain it with the passion and precision of a master teacher. In 2009, he came up with the look of Sun Bum sunscreen, drawing on influences as...

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2023 / 3 / 23

HIBT Lab! Slutty Vegan: Pinky Cole

It’s hard to miss a Slutty Vegan when you’re driving past one. No, we’re not talking about a person… We’re talking about a fast-casual burger chain — and a vegan one at that! Since launching Slutty...

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2023 / 3 / 20

Food52: Amanda Hesser (2021)

In the early 1990s, as Amanda Hesser's college friends were interviewing for their first cubicle jobs, she chose a different path; one that led straight into the kitchens of Europe, where she cooked...

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2023 / 3 / 16

HIBT Lab! Saysh: Wes and Allyson Felix

Allyson Felix is the most decorated American track and field athlete of all time. She’s also a mother. Those two identities came into conflict in 2018 when negotiating a contract renewal with her shoe...

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2023 / 3 / 13

Xero Shoes: Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix

In 2007, Steven Sashen went on a 5K run in his bare feet, an experience that felt so surprisingly natural that it led him to launch one of the best-known minimalist shoe brands in the world. After...

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2023 / 3 / 9

HIBT Lab! Too Good To Go: Lucie Basch

Collaboration is the new competition: that was French entrepreneur Lucie Basch’s philosophy when she approached a group of Danish founders who happened to be working on a similar food waste reduction...

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2023 / 3 / 6

Michael Kors: Michael Kors

As a teenager, Michael Kors filled his notebooks with dress designs and doodles of his own initials—casual sketches that would eventually fuel the launch of a global fashion brand. Michael grew up with a love...

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2023 / 3 / 2

HIBT Lab! The Confess Project: Lorenzo Lewis

Barbers have played a central role in the Black community throughout American history. Haircutting was one of the first jobs that Black men were allowed to hold after the Civil War, and barbershops were often...

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2023 / 2 / 27

Politico & Axios: Jim VandeHei

Before Jim VandeHei co-founded the media company Politico, the only thing he’d managed was the night shift at Little Caesar’s pizza in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. An early passion for politics and...

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2023 / 2 / 23

HIBT Lab! Boom Supersonic: Blake Scholl

Commercial air travel has been stuck below the sound barrier for about 20 years, since the Concorde’s last flight in 2003. While the technology exists to fly about twice as fast as we do now, conventional...

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2023 / 2 / 20

Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer

With a passion for design and a skill for sewing, Mike Pfotenhauer grew a bespoke backpack business into one of the world’s most popular outdoor brands. He got his start in the 1970’s, when it was hard to...

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2023 / 2 / 16

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! OpenAI: Sam Altman

Artificial Intelligence was once the realm of science fiction. But over the last several years, advances in machine learning and deep neural networks have moved us closer to a reality where computers can...

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2023 / 2 / 13

The Ringer: Bill Simmons

Wherever Bill Simmons is, he’s obsessed with helping his team win. During 14 tumultuous years as a creative force at ESPN, that meant launching a slew of influential projects that blended sports and pop...

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2023 / 2 / 9

HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli

Biobot Analytics founders Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli first met in a poop lab. Yep, you read that correctly...Their company has been working with government and corporate clients since 2017 to analyze...

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2023 / 2 / 6

Zumiez: Tom Campion

Working as a manager for nine years at JCPenney, Tom Campion learned a critical lesson about how to succeed in retail: you have to keep close track of inventory. Tom’s experience navigating the ebb and flow...

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2023 / 2 / 2

HIBT Lab! The Sioux Chef: Sean Sherman

Chef Sean Sherman is on a mission to revitalize and reimagine Native American cuisine. Growing up on a reservation in South Dakota, Sean ate a lot of highly processed foods provided by the U.S....

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2023 / 1 / 30

Chomps: Pete Maldonado and Rashid Ali

When steaks don’t sell you shift to sticks; that’s how Chomps was born. After several failed ventures—one of which left him bankrupt—Pete Maldonado decided to take another chance on launching a business....

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2023 / 1 / 26

HIBT Lab! Osmo Salt: Nick DiGiovanni

Do you know who holds the record for making the world’s largest chicken nugget? How about the world’s largest sushi roll?If you know Nick DiGiovanni, then you know the answer to those questions. Each week,...

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2023 / 1 / 23

Tarte Cosmetics: Maureen Kelly

Let’s say you had a passion but thought of it only as a hobby; certainly never the seed of a billion-dollar company. Plus, you are studying for a career in something unrelated to business. That’s Maureen...

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2023 / 1 / 19

HIBT Lab! Nuro: Dave Ferguson

When you think about self-driving cars, you might imagine relaxing in the back seat while a vehicle carries you to your destination. But according to Dave Ferguson, nearly half of all car tips that Americans...

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2023 / 1 / 16

Complexly: Hank and John Green

In 2007, brothers Hank and John Green lived thousands of miles apart, so they started posting video blogs to each other on a strange new platform called YouTube. People began tuning in, and the daily...

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2023 / 1 / 12

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid

On October 9, 2012, Shiza Shahid’s life changed forever. It was on that day that 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, capturing the world’s attention....

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2023 / 1 / 9

Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout (2020)

In 2012, Daina Trout, her husband Justin, and her best friend Vanessa Dew were sitting around a kitchen table spit-balling possible business ideas. Their biggest contender seemed to be a natural product to...

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2023 / 1 / 5

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Financial Diet: Chelsea Fagan

Chelsea Fagan got her first credit card when she was a senior in high school. She quickly maxed it out, racking up debt that would burden her through her early twenties. Then, in 2014, Chelsea started a blog...

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2023 / 1 / 2

Kodiak Cakes: Joel Clark (2020)

When he was 8 years old, Joel Clark loaded bags of his mom's whole grain pancake mix into a red wagon to sell door-to-door. By the mid-90s, he and his older brother had upgraded to selling the mix out of a...

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2022 / 12 / 29

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright

YouTubers Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright – better known as The Sorry Girls – have always had an affinity for production. When they met as film students back in 2010, little did they know that the DIY...

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2022 / 12 / 26

I.R.S. Records: Miles Copeland

As a music industry mogul and founder of I.R.S. Records, Miles Copeland prided himself on making deals that were easy to say “yes” to. With a mixture of shrewd business skills, swagger, good taste and great...

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2022 / 12 / 22

HIBT Lab! Immunai: Noam Solomon

According to the CDC, 6 in 10 adults in the U.S. have a chronic disease like cancer or diabetes. Meanwhile, the process for discovering new drug treatments is critically expensive and inefficient. About 90%...

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2022 / 12 / 19

Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva

Working as a Hollywood makeup artist in the early 2000s, Rea Ann Silva designed a sponge that reshaped the face of beauty. She'd been looking for a technique to simplify makeup touch-ups without worrying...

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2022 / 12 / 15

HIBT Lab! mitú and SUMA Wealth: Beatriz Acevedo

It was a love for Ricky Martin that started it all...Beatriz Acevedo thought that if she could only become a DJ, she could get his attention and marry him. While marriage to Ricky was not in the cards, an...

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2022 / 12 / 12

Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez

With no formal training in business or computer design, Nelson Gonzalez and his cofounders decided to do what almost no other company was doing in the mid-1990’s: make personal computers specifically for...

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2022 / 12 / 8

HIBT Lab! Gro Intelligence: Sara Menker

Growing up in Ethiopia in the 1980s and ‘90s, Sara Menker saw the devastating effects of drought and famine firsthand. Later as a commodities trader on Wall Street, Sara realized that a major driver of food...

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2022 / 12 / 5

Famous Dave's: Dave Anderson (2020)

Growing up in 1960's Chicago, Dave Anderson didn't eat much deep dish. Instead, his dad took the family to the South Side for barbecue, and those memories—and aromas—stayed with him.For years, Dave tinkered...

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2022 / 12 / 1

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Babish Culinary Universe: Andrew Rea

Growing up, Andrew Rea dreamed of becoming a Hollywood filmmaker. But the special effects production job he landed after college left him feeling…uninspired. After a series of creative defeats and mounting...

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2022 / 11 / 28

Guayakí Yerba Mate: David Karr and Chris Mann

In the mid-1990’s most Americans had probably never even heard of yerba mate, but when David Karr and Chris Mann were first introduced to the South American drink, they were hooked. Together with three other...

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2022 / 11 / 24

HIBT Lab! Goodr: Jasmine Crowe-Houston

Millions of Americans don’t have enough to eat — a startling fact considering 40% of the food produced in the U.S. gets thrown away. And a lot of that food… from restaurants, supermarkets, office buildings...

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2022 / 11 / 21

Wondery Presents: This Job is History

Where the oddest jobs from the past meet a comedian from the present… and it’s awkward! On this weekly show, Chris Parnell (SNL, Rick and Morty) welcomes guests who have held some of human history’s most...

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2022 / 11 / 21

Roku: Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood helped transform the media landscape…twice. First, in the early 2000’s, when he invented a device that let you record, pause, and re-watch live TV. The DVR was a game-changer, but the...

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2022 / 11 / 17

HIBT Lab! Tala: Shivani Siroya

‘This is not our customer...’ That was the common justification banks used to deny loans to the entrepreneurs Shivani Siroya supported through her work with the United Nations. While it’s not unusual for...

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2022 / 11 / 14

Chobani: Hamdi Ulukaya

As a newly arrived immigrant from Turkey, Hamdi Ulukaya learned to be resourceful, determined, and even stubborn when he needed to be. All those traits would serve him well as he began to navigate the...

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2022 / 11 / 10

HIBT Lab! Tomorrow.io: Shimon Elkabetz

Our planet is warming, and many parts of the world are not equipped to accurately predict the heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and floods that are becoming more frequent and intense due to the...

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2022 / 11 / 7

Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho

When you think of pizza, the first place that comes to mind probably isn’t Finland…or Scotland. But that’s where the two founders of the outdoor pizza oven brand Ooni grew up. In 2012, Kristian Tapaninaho was...

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2022 / 11 / 3

HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee

“Right now I have approximately 70-ish subscribers,” declared a teenage Marques Brownlee at the beginning of his 100th YouTube video back in 2009. Marques recorded his first of many product reviews earlier...

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2022 / 11 / 1

Wondery Presents: The Old Man and the Three

If you’re a basketball fan, The Old Man and the Three podcast is mandatory listening. Former NBA sharpshooter and Duke legend, JJ Redick, sits down with basketball greats like Grant Hill and Gary Payton - and...

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2022 / 10 / 31

Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer

Steve Kaufer got the idea for Tripadvisor in 1998 after spending way too many hours online, trying to figure out if a resort in Mexico was really as good as its brochure. When he launched a travel guidance...

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2022 / 10 / 27

HIBT Lab! Cruise: Kyle Vogt

Most of us are familiar with rideshare apps at this point. We tap a few buttons on a phone and...voila! A vehicle arrives to take you virtually anywhere you want to go. But what if these vehicles could...

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2022 / 10 / 24

Bluemercury: Marla and Barry Beck

The story of Bluemercury is packed with business lessons—for starters, it’s always good to have a backup plan. That’s what Marla and Barry Beck discovered in 1999, when they realized their startup online...

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2022 / 10 / 20

HIBT Lab! Universal Hydrogen: Paul Eremenko

Commercial air travel has connected humans across the globe in extraordinary ways. This connection, however, comes with a cost: about a billion tons of carbon emissions annually. There’s been major progress...

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2022 / 10 / 17

Culver's: Craig Culver

Craig Culver says that when he opened the first Culver’s restaurant in a small Wisconsin town, there were three cars in the parking lot on a good day – and two of them were his family’s. Those early...

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2022 / 10 / 13

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Blogilates: Cassey Ho

Cassey Ho is the face of Blogilates, best known for its free online workout videos which have more than a billion views on YouTube alone. As impressive as that is, digital content is just one part of Cassey’s...

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2022 / 10 / 10

Wirecutter: Brian Lam

When Brian Lam walked away from a high-profile job at Gizmodo to launch a product review blog, he had no plan for how it would make money. He just knew what he wanted: a user-friendly site with reviews that...

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2022 / 10 / 6

HIBT Lab! Against All Grain: Danielle Walker

Growing up, Danielle Walker’s family often convened for big meals prepared by her Italian grandmother, Grandma Marge. Back then, Danielle enjoyed a wide variety of food without restriction; but she began...

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2022 / 10 / 3

ButcherBox: Mike Salguero

Back in 2015, when Mike Salguero set out to buy some grass-fed beef for himself and his wife, he had to meet a farmer in a parking lot, who handed him the beef in a trash bag. Naturally, Mike figured there...

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2022 / 9 / 29

HIBT Lab! OpenAI: Sam Altman

Artificial Intelligence was once the realm of science fiction. But over the last several years, advances in machine learning and deep neural networks have moved us closer to a reality where computers can...

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2022 / 9 / 26

HOORAE: Issa Rae

Obsessed with TV and passionate about writing, Issa Rae sent an unsolicited script to CBS’s Cosby when she was still in middle school. By her 20's, she realized there was a certain type of character...

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2022 / 9 / 22

HIBT Lab! Wonder: Marc Lore

Picture this: you just wrapped a long day of work and you are starving! You open a delivery app and place an order from your favorite restaurant. About an hour later, you get a notification that your meal has...

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2022 / 9 / 19

Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg

David Heath and Randy Goldberg saw an opportunity to disrupt a long dormant—and arguably boring sector...socks. They met at a startup in their 20s, each already had their own side hustles before they...

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2022 / 9 / 15

HIBT Lab! SOURCE Global: Cody Friesen

Water is all around us–quite literally, there is enough water in the air we breathe to meet all of humanity’s needs and then some. Engineering professor Cody Friesen invented a solar-powered device that...

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2022 / 9 / 12

Rivian: RJ Scaringe

When you consider the risk of doing business, it doesn’t get much bigger than starting a car company: competition is formidable, startup costs are in the billions, and very few people believe you can pull it...

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2022 / 9 / 8

HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid

On October 9, 2012, Shiza Shahid’s life changed forever. It was on that day that 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, capturing the world’s attention....

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2022 / 9 / 5

S'well: Sarah Kauss (2020)

In 2009, Sarah Kauss had a well-paying job in real estate development, but she was itching to do something more. On a hike in Tucson with her mom, she got an idea for a business while swigging warm water from...

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2022 / 9 / 1

HIBT Lab! Bored Ape Yacht Club: Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow

You might not expect a deep friendship to bloom from an argument about favorite authors...in a Miami bar...during spring break. Yet that’s exactly how Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow’s long journey to becoming...

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2022 / 8 / 29

Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer (2019)

In 1970, George Zimmer was a college graduate with no real job prospects and little direction. That's when his father, an executive at a boy's clothing company, asked him to go on an important business trip...

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2022 / 8 / 25

HIBT Lab! Yolélé: Pierre Thiam

Pierre Thiam was robbed within days of arriving in New York City. It was 1989, and he had just traveled to the U.S. from Senegal to study chemistry and physics. This chance incident, however, set Pierre’s...

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2022 / 8 / 22

Jo Loves: Jo Malone CBE (2020)

As a girl in 1970s London, Jo Malone learned how to make face creams by going to work with her mom at a private skin care clinic. By the time she was in her 20's, Jo was running her own skin care and...

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2022 / 8 / 18

HIBT Lab! Babish Culinary Universe: Andrew Rea

Growing up, Andrew Rea dreamed of becoming a Hollywood filmmaker. But the special effects production job he landed after college left him feeling…uninspired. After a series of creative defeats and mounting...

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2022 / 8 / 15

Roblox: David Baszucki

In 2003, David Baszucki wanted to go viral. He had already sold a company that made educational software, and now he wanted to build something with mass appeal; with build-your-own avatars and myriad...

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2022 / 8 / 11

HIBT Lab! Universal Standard: Polina Veksler

In 2014, friends Polina Veksler and Alex Waldman went clothes shopping at a major department store. To Polina’s surprise, Alex’s options were quite limited, and tucked away in one of the store’s less-traveled...

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2022 / 8 / 8

Noom: Saeju Jeong

When Saeju Jeong moved from South Korea to the U.S. in his mid-20's, he barely knew anyone, didn't speak much English, and had only $5,000 in savings. Today, he's the CEO of Noom, one of the most popular...

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2022 / 8 / 4

HIBT Lab! Quaise Energy: Carlos Araque

Growing up in Colombia, Carlos Araque and his father liked to take apart bicycles and motorcycles then put them back together. This love of tinkering led Carlos to study engineering at MIT and eventually...

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2022 / 8 / 1

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery: Sam and Mariah Calagione

Sam and Mariah Calagione started dating in high school, and have been on a wild ride ever since. Their biggest, craziest adventure? Founding Dogfish Head Brewery and forever changing the landscape of American...

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2022 / 7 / 28

HIBT Lab! IDEO: David Kelley

It wasn’t unusual for David Kelley to take calls from Steve Jobs in the middle of the night. This came with the territory, as David worked on designing dozens of products for Apple over the years – including...

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2022 / 7 / 25

Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford

Over nearly 50 years in the luggage business, Charlie Clifford has built two premium brands and weathered three existential crises: the recession of 1982, the travel slowdown post- 9/11, and the extreme...

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2022 / 7 / 21

ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Colin and Samir: Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry

This week on How I Built This Lab, we're throwing it back to our very first Lab episode.In this episode, Guy sits down with Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, or better known as YouTubers Colin and Samir—a...

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2022 / 7 / 18

Twitch: Emmett Shear

In 2011, when Emmett Shear pivoted the live streaming service Justin.tv into the video game platform Twitch, people warned him that gaming was just a niche. But unlike his first two ventures, video games were...

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2022 / 7 / 14

HIBT Lab! The Financial Diet: Chelsea Fagan

Chelsea Fagan got her first credit card when she was a senior in high school. She quickly maxed it out, racking up debt that would burden her through her early twenties. Then, in 2014, Chelsea started a blog...

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2022 / 7 / 11

TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan

One snowy night in Boston, Leah Solivan ran out of dog food for her 100-pound yellow lab. She wondered: shouldn’t I be able to resupply Kobe without going to the store? That was the origin of...

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2022 / 7 / 7

HIBT Lab! BlocPower: Donnel Baird

When Donnel Baird was a child, his parents would regularly use the oven to heat their Brooklyn apartment ⁠— a dangerous and energy-inefficient practice that’s unfortunately not unique to New York City. As an...

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2022 / 7 / 4

Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram (2020)

While she was a student at business school, Shazi Visram ran into an old friend—a new mother of twins. The friend confided she felt like a bad mom because she had no time to make her kids healthy meals. That...

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2022 / 6 / 30

HIBT Lab! Climeworks: Jan Wurzbacher

According to the 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world needs to cut carbon emissions drastically to avoid the worst effects of global warming. But that’s not all. In...

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2022 / 6 / 27

The Tonight Show & Electric Hot Dog: Jimmy Fallon

Jimmy Fallon may talk like a comedian, but he thinks like a restless entrepreneur. In addition to his day job as host of The Tonight Show, he runs a TV production company, writes best-selling children’s...

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2022 / 6 / 23

HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright

YouTubers Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright – better known as The Sorry Girls – have always had an affinity for production. When they met as film students back in 2010, little did they know that the DIY...

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2022 / 6 / 20

Affirm: Max Levchin (Part 2 of 2)

After PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, Max Levchin could have relaxed on a beach for the rest of his life. But that’s not the kind of person he is. He isn’t happy unless he’s coming up with new ideas and...

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2022 / 6 / 16

HIBT Lab! Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company: Mark Cuban

Serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban was one of the very first guests on How I Built This, way back in 2016. Mark has been founding and investing in startups for decades, but he’s never put his name on a company...

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2022 / 6 / 13

PayPal: Max Levchin (Part 1 of 2)

During its formative years in the late 1990's, Paypal attracted an extraordinary group of young entrepreneurs, who then went on to build some of the best known companies in tech. They became known as The...

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2022 / 6 / 9

HIBT Lab! Google: Sundar Pichai

Drive. Docs. Chrome. Maps. Gmail. Android. What do these products have in common? Of course, they’re all Google, but what you may not know is that they all came to fruition under the management of the same...

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2022 / 6 / 6

Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber

While working at his local record store at age 20, Ryan Schreiber dreamt that his scrappy music review webpage might one day grow into an influential music publication. Working out of his parents’ house, he...

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2022 / 6 / 2

HIBT Lab! Wildtype: Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck

When Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck met in 2011, they had no intention of starting a business. Aryé was a cardiologist, and Justin was a diplomat who had lived in countries all over the world. But their...

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2022 / 5 / 30

Houzz: Adi Tatarko

When Adi Tartako and her husband started the home design and renovation website Houzz in 2009, they had no expectation that it would grow into a global business. In fact, Adi was a hesitant entrepreneur,...

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2022 / 5 / 26

HIBT Lab! Burn Rate: Andy Dunn

From the outside, it seemed like Andy Dunn was living the dream. His menswear company, Bonobos, was acquired by Walmart for $310 million in 2017 — the same year he married the love of his life, Manuela. Of...

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2022 / 5 / 23

Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens

Starting a business with your spouse can either bring you closer together or tear you apart. For Arran and Ratana Stephens, their business has lasted for nearly 40 years, and their marriage has thrived for...

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2022 / 5 / 19

HIBT Lab! Stolen Focus: Johann Hari

Like so many of us, author Johann Hari noticed that the more time he spent looking at screens and switching from device to device, the harder it became for him to concentrate and achieve his goals. After...

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2022 / 5 / 16

HIBT Lab! UNLESS Collective: Eric Liedtke

Eric Liedtke spent 26 years at Adidas, working his way up from an entry level position to Executive Board Member and Global Brand President. During that time, he helped revitalize the Adidas brand through...

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2022 / 5 / 12

HIBT Lab! ClassPass: Payal Kadakia

When Payal Kadakia first appeared on How I Built This in June of 2020, the future of ClassPass, a subscription service for in-person exercise classes, seemed very uncertain. The pandemic had shuttered gyms...

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2022 / 5 / 9

PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst

Pete Warhurst probably would not have picked “entrepreneur” as a career when he was growing up. He loved his job as a firefighter and paramedic and might have done it for life, had a colleague not...

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2022 / 5 / 5

HIBT Lab! Blogilates: Cassey Ho

Cassey Ho is the face of Blogilates, best known for its free online workout videos which have more than a billion views on YouTube alone. As impressive as that is, digital content is just one part of Cassey’s...

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2022 / 5 / 2

Strava: Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath

Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath were two friends from college with a good idea and bad timing: in 1995, they set out to create a digital community where athletes could chart their progress and actively...

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2022 / 4 / 28

HIBT Lab! Armbrust American: Lloyd Armbrust

Lloyd Armbrust spent the bulk of his career in newspaper operations and advertising...until early 2020 when he started hearing about the spread of a dangerous new virus and a critical shortage of surgical...

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2022 / 4 / 25

Raising Cane's: Todd Graves

By his early 20s, Todd Graves knew exactly what he wanted to do—open a restaurant near Louisiana State University that would make four things better than anyone else: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas...

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2022 / 4 / 21

HIBT Lab! WeWork: Miguel McKelvey

When Miguel McKelvey was first featured on How I Built This in 2017, his company was growing at an astounding rate. WeWork was considered the unicorn of unicorns. But after reaching a $47 billion valuation in...

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2022 / 4 / 18

Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma

In a way, Shan-Lyn Ma started attending business school when she was 11 years old and hasn't stopped since. She was hooked on entrepreneurship after winning her first business competition in grade school; and...

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2022 / 4 / 14

HIBT Lab! Colin and Samir: Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry

Introducing: How I Built This Lab, a sandbox where we explore all kinds of ideas around entrepreneurship. For our very first episode of How I Built This Lab, Guy sits down with Colin Rosenblum and Samir...

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2022 / 4 / 11

Florentine Films: Ken Burns

As a boy, Ken Burns was captivated by the power of film and dreamed of being the next Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford. But in college, he discovered that stories about American history could be just as dramatic...

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2022 / 4 / 4

Bonobos: Andy Dunn (2019)

When Andy Dunn was in business school, his housemate Brian Spaly created a new type of men's pants: stylish, tailored trousers that fit well in both the hips and thighs. Together, they started the men's...

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2022 / 3 / 28

Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Home Furnishings: Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

After working in the furniture and home goods industry for over a decade, Mitchell Gold took a risky bet and decided to start his own furniture company. In 1989, he went into business with his romantic...

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2022 / 3 / 21

WordPress & Automattic: Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg turned his early passion for blogging into a flourishing business and an unshakeable idea: that users should be able to share and tweak the code that powers their websites, and that most...

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2022 / 3 / 14

Sukhi’s Gourmet Indian Food: Sukhi Singh and Dalbir Singh

With no strategic plan and very little money, Sukhi Singh figured out a way to sell Indian food at scale across the U.S.—but it took her almost 20 years to do it. In the early 1990's, she shuttered...

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2022 / 3 / 7

Discord: Jason Citron

During his early career, Jason Citron stepped away from two stalled businesses and pivoted—twice—to something far more successful. The second time he did it, he created one of the most popular...

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2022 / 2 / 28

Live Episode! Walker & Company: Tristan Walker (2019)

The very first time Tristan Walker shaved, he woke up the next morning with razor bumps all over his face. "I was like, what is this?" he remembers saying. "I am never shaving again—ever." He soon discovered...

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2022 / 2 / 21

Live Episode! Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP: Angie & Dan Bastian (2019)

Angie and Dan Bastian weren't trying to disrupt an industry or build a massive company, they just wanted to put aside some money for their kids' college fund. In 2001, Dan stumbled across an internet ad...

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2022 / 2 / 14

Telfar: Telfar Clemens and Babak Radboy

As he started to gain a name as a New York fashion designer in the 2010s, Telfar Clemens often joked that he was "constantly emerging." At least, that's how the establishment fashion press saw him: a child of...

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2022 / 2 / 7

Goodreads: Otis and Elizabeth Chandler

As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. When he decided to launch his own site just for book lovers, a respected colleague told him there...

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2022 / 1 / 31

Leatherman Tool Group: Tim Leatherman

Most entrepreneurs expect it will take at least a few years for their businesses to gain traction. But Tim Leatherman waited 7 years to make a single, $175 sale. In the late 1970s, he had set up shop in his...

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2022 / 1 / 24

Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn

Vincent Kitirattragarn grew up in a Thai-Chinese-American household, which meant eating congee and lemongrass chicken, while also ordering chicken McNuggets with his younger brothers. He dreamed of opening...

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2022 / 1 / 17

Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks

In the 1980s—the early days of cable television—John Hendricks got stuck on an idea he couldn't shake: to create a channel that would teach people cool things in an entertaining way. In college he had seen...

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2022 / 1 / 10

M.M.LaFleur: Sarah LaFleur (2020)

When she was working corporate jobs in New York City, Sarah LaFleur hated getting dressed in the morning; the choices in her closet felt overwhelming, many items didn't fit right or wore out too quickly. So...

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2022 / 1 / 3

Headspace: Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson (2019)

Andy Puddicombe is not your typical entrepreneur—in his early twenties, he gave away everything he owned to train as a Buddhist monk. But after ten years, he decided he wanted to bring the benefits of his...

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2021 / 12 / 27

Tate's Bake Shop: Kathleen King (2019)

Kathleen King was 11 years old when she started baking cookies to sell at her family's farm stand on Long Island. After college, she opened a small bake shop, and eventually started selling her cookies to...

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2021 / 12 / 23

Bonus Episode! Ask Guy Anything: December 2021

What makes a good How I Built This story? Why do our episodes take weeks to produce? How does Guy prepare for an interview? As a bonus this week, Guy wanted to take some time and answer a bunch of your...

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2021 / 12 / 20

Spin Master/PAW Patrol: Ronnen Harary

Ronnen Harary built a 4 billion dollar toy company without relying on market research or focus groups. Instead, he believed wholeheartedly in intuition: the "ah-hah" moment that comes from thinking like a...

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2021 / 12 / 13

Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler

In 2010, rocket scientists Robbie Schingler and Will Marshall set an ambitious goal for themselves: to launch an aerospace mission with the speed and agility of a Silicon Valley startup. They set up shop in...

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2021 / 12 / 6

Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan

As college students in the late 1980s, Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan launched two projects that came to define their trajectories as entrepreneurs: the "punky but poppy" band Chunk, and the scrappy record...

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2021 / 11 / 29

Live Episode! Tofurky: Seth Tibbott (2019)

Seth Tibbott may be the only founder in the world who grew his business while living in a barn, a teepee, and a treehouse. His off-the-grid lifestyle helped him save money as he started to sell tempeh, a...

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2021 / 11 / 22

Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri

As a mother of three, Kat Nouri was dismayed at the amount of single-use plastic she was using to pack her kids' school lunches. She had already launched a successful brand called Modern Twist, which sold...

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2021 / 11 / 15

Coinbase: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong wanted to be a tech entrepreneur since he was in high school, but his first serious venture—a tutoring website—never quite took off. Around 2010, while looking to get a job in Silicon Valley,...

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2021 / 11 / 8

Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez

In 2009, Berkeley seniors Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez started to geek out over something they'd heard in a lecture: you can grow a healthy crop of mushrooms on used coffee grounds. Intrigued by the...

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2021 / 11 / 1

Audible: Don Katz

Before mp3 players came along in the mid 1990's, listening to audiobooks was a pain. The number of titles was tiny, narration was dull, and if you wanted to listen on the go, you had to juggle a bunch of...

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2021 / 10 / 25

Live Episode! Milk Bar: Christina Tosi (2019)

For Christina Tosi, baking wasn't just a delicious childhood hobby—it was a daily creative outlet and a way to blow off steam. After college, she went to culinary school and honed her pastry technique at...

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2021 / 10 / 18

Title Nine: Missy Park

As an avid athlete and college basketball player, Missy Park was lucky to grow up during the early era of Title IX, the 1972 law that created new opportunities for young women to play sports. But in the years...

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2021 / 10 / 11

Moderna and Flagship Pioneering: Noubar Afeyan

In the field of bio-tech, it can take 10 years and millions of dollars to see if an experimental idea might turn into a life-saving treatment—if it ever does. Noubar Afeyan fully understood those risks when...

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2021 / 10 / 4

Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey: Fawn Weaver

While traveling abroad with her husband in 2016, Fawn Weaver became fixated on a New York Times article telling the little-known story of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel—yes,...

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2021 / 9 / 27

KAYAK: Paul English

Paul English is a perpetual founder. Since high school, he's started 3 philanthropies and 8 companies—ranging from e-commerce, to gaming, to GetHuman, a site that helps users access human customer support....

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2021 / 9 / 20

Dude Perfect: Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney

As Texas A&M students in the mid 2000's, Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney and their housemates spent countless hours playing hockey in the living room and attempting trick shots in the backyard. A spontaneous bet...

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2021 / 9 / 13

inov-8: Wayne Edy

After more than 20 years working in the shoe business, Wayne Edy decided to strike out on his own, risking most of his savings to launch his own brand. Knowing he was entering a crowded field, he focused on a...

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2021 / 9 / 6

Lynda.com: Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin

After falling in love with the first Apple Mac computer in 1984, Lynda Weinman found a new career: using the new technology to teach web graphics. She published a best-selling book on the topic, and...

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2021 / 8 / 30

Springfree Trampoline: Keith Alexander & Steve Holmes (2019)

In the late 1980s, a New Zealand engineer named Keith Alexander wanted to buy a trampoline for his kids. After his wife said they were too dangerous, Keith set out to design his own—a safer trampoline,...

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2021 / 8 / 26

Live From The HIBT Summit: Rashad Robinson

We have our final main stage event from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit, and it's Guy's conversation with Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, the nation's largest leading racial justice...

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2021 / 8 / 23

Burt's Bees: Roxanne Quimby (2019)

In the 1970s, Roxanne Quimby was trying to live a simpler life – one that rejected the pursuit of material comforts. She moved to Maine, built a cabin in the woods, and lived off the grid. By the mid-80s, she...

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2021 / 8 / 19

Live From The HIBT Summit: Adam Grant

We have another episode from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit, and it's Guy's interview with organizational psychology professor and author Adam Grant. He's known for his books Think Again, Give and...

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2021 / 8 / 16

Logic: Logic & Chris Zarou (2018)

In 2010, Logic the rapper—born as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II—released his first official mixtape titled "Young, Broke & Infamous." At 20 years old, Logic certainly was young and broke, and while crashing on a...

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2021 / 8 / 12

Live From The HIBT Summit: Brené Brown

We have another episode from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit, and it's Guy's interview with professor, author, and host of the Unlocking Us podcast, Brené Brown. In this live conversation, Brené...

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2021 / 8 / 9

Stacy's Pita Chips: Stacy Madison (2019)

In the 1990's, Stacy Madison and her boyfriend Mark Andrus were selling pita sandwiches from a converted hot dog cart in Boston. They decided to bake the leftover pita into chips, adding a dash of parmesan or...

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2021 / 8 / 5

Live From The HIBT Summit: Gary Vaynerchuk

We have another episode from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit, and it's Guy's interview with internet content guru Gary Vaynerchuk. In this live conversation, Gary talks about his innovative...

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2021 / 8 / 2

Serial Entrepreneur: Gary Vaynerchuk

Growing up in New Jersey in the 1980's and 90's, Gary Vaynerchuk honed his business skills trading baseball cards and selling wine at his dad's liquor store. He discovered the potential of Youtube early on...

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2021 / 7 / 26

Robert Reffkin: Compass

Robert Reffkin had a hard time fitting in when he was growing up: raised by a single mom in Berkeley California, he was both bi-racial and Jewish, and had to learn to "feel comfortable with being...

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2021 / 7 / 22

Live From HIBT Summit: Payal Kadakia, Tristan Walker, and Perry Chen on Innovation

Our second episode from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit is from our innovation panel with Payal Kadakia of ClassPass, Tristan Walker of Walker and Company, and Perry Chen of Kickstarter. In this live...

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2021 / 7 / 19

Bobbi Brown Cosmetics: Bobbi Brown (2018)

Bobbi Brown started out as a makeup artist in New York City, but hated the gaudy color palette of the 1980s. She eventually shook up the industry by introducing "nude makeup" with neutral colors and a natural...

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2021 / 7 / 12

Mailchimp: Ben Chestnut

In the late 1990s, Ben Chestnut was a struggling young designer interning at an appliance company, when somebody suggested that he try designing for the internet instead. A few years later, Ben and two...

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2021 / 7 / 5

Numi Organic Tea: Reem Hassani and Ahmed Rahim

When they were in their 20s, Reem Hassani and her brother Ahmed Rahim were not the kind of people you'd expect to launch a multi-million dollar business. Reem was a California artist moonlighting as a...

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2021 / 6 / 28

Casper: Philip Krim

In the early 2000's, Philip Krim launched an e-commerce business out of his college dorm, selling everything from window blinds to eczema cream to yes, mattresses. Years later, inspired by online successes...

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2021 / 6 / 24

Live From The HIBT Summit: Cynt Marshall, Chieh Huang, and Sadie Lincoln on Leadership

Our first episode from the 2021 How I Built This Virtual Summit is from our leadership panel with Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, Chieh Huang, CEO and co-founder of Boxed, and Sadie Lincoln, CEO...

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2021 / 6 / 21

ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay

By her early thirties, Ava DuVernay was already a successful entrepreneur, having founded her own film publicity agency in Los Angeles. But after years of watching other people make films, she started to get...

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2021 / 6 / 14

Expedia & Zillow: Rich Barton

In the early 90s, Rich Barton arrived to work at Microsoft just as the world wide web was taking off. He wound up pitching Bill Gates on an idea that was transformative at the time: to let everyday travelers...

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2021 / 6 / 7

Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci

Carla Bartolucci grew up in an Italian-American household, eating fresh gnocchi and ravioli made by her mother, and lobster caught by her father. She met her husband Rodolfo while studying abroad in Italy;...

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2021 / 5 / 31

JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman (2019)

In the mid-90s, David Neeleman wanted to launch a new airline. He had already co-created a regional airline out of Salt Lake City that was acquired by Southwest. And despite his admiration of Southwest's...

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2021 / 5 / 25

Meet The HIBT Fellows: Dinesh Tadepalli & Jennifer Zeitler

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to all of them. In this episode: Dinesh Tadepalli is the co-founder of Incredible Eats,...

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2021 / 5 / 24

Policygenius: Jennifer Fitzgerald

Some of the world's biggest industries sell products that we all need...but don't want to think about. That's what drew Jennifer Fitzgerald to insurance: she wanted to help people understand the often...

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2021 / 5 / 20

Meet The HIBT Fellows: Kaitlin McGreyes & Nicole Argüelles

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to each of them. In this episode: Kaitlin McGreyes founded Be Her Village to be a gift...

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2021 / 5 / 18

Meet The HIBT Fellows: Mark Atlan & Zach Correa

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to each of them. In this episode: Mark Atlan co-founded ZappCare to help make sure that...

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2021 / 5 / 17

Diapers.com & Jet.com: Marc Lore

Around 2003, after forays into banking, baseball cards, and—believe it or not—bobsledding, Marc Lore landed on an idea for an e-commerce business: a website to make it simple for parents to order diapers. The...

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2021 / 5 / 13

Meet The HIBT Fellows: Katie Mitchell & Celena Gill

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to them over the next couple weeks. In this episode: Katie Mitchell and her mother Katherine...

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2021 / 5 / 11

Meet The HIBT Fellows: Pierre Paul & Toby Egbuna

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to them over the next couple weeks. In this episode: Pierre Paul, founder of a company...

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2021 / 5 / 10

Cisco Systems & Urban Decay: Sandy Lerner (2018)

In the pre-Internet 1970's, Sandy Lerner was part of a loosely-knit group of programmers that was trying to get computers to talk to each other. Eventually, she and Len Bosack launched Cisco Systems, making...

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2021 / 5 / 6

Live Episode! Clubhouse: Paul Davison and Rohan Seth

After selling both of their social app companies and rethinking their day jobs, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth knew they should not get into the volatile business of social media again. Despite exploring more...

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2021 / 5 / 3

Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm

Daniel Humm dropped out of school at 14 to become a competitive cyclist, and supported himself by cutting vegetables and making soup stock at fine restaurants in Switzerland. When he eventually realized he'd...

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2021 / 4 / 29

Live Episode! Wellness Coach and Podcaster: Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty was living the life of a rebellious teen in London when a friend talked him into attending a talk by a Hindu monk. It was a life-changing event, and started Jay on a path to become a monk himself...

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2021 / 4 / 26

Pipcorn: Jennifer and Jeff Martin

While working at a farmers market in Chicago, Jennifer Martin had a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk moment—a chance encounter with some tiny kernels, which wound up growing into a small giant of a business: Pipcorn,...

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2021 / 4 / 22

How I Built Resilience: Bayard Winthrop of American Giant

Bayard Winthrop is the CEO and founder of American Giant, known for its American-made hoodies, t-shirts and jeans. When the pandemic brought on production holds and storefront closures, Bayard found himself...

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2021 / 4 / 19

SoulCycle: Julie Rice & Elizabeth Cutler (2019)

Before Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice met, they shared a common belief: New York City gyms didn't have the kind of exercise classes they craved, and each of them wanted to change that. A fitness instructor...

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2021 / 4 / 15

How I Built Resilience: Lindsay Peoples Wagner of The Cut

Lindsay Peoples Wagner got her first taste of the fashion industry interning at Teen Vouge, where she cleaned massive closets filled with the season's latest trends. She eventually went on to serve as the...

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2021 / 4 / 12

Robinhood: Vlad Tenev

Before Robinhood became one of the most loved and most hated stock trading platforms in the U.S., it was just another tech startup, launched by two mathematicians with an audacious idea: make stock trading...

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2021 / 4 / 8

How I Built Resilience: Ethan Diamond of Bandcamp

In the early 2000s, the online music community was defined by MySpace, illegally downloaded music, and poorly made band websites. Then came Bandcamp – a music marketplace where fans can directly and easily...

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2021 / 4 / 5

Food52: Amanda Hesser

In the early 1990s, as Amanda Hesser's college friends were interviewing for their first cubicle jobs, she chose a different path: one that led straight into the kitchens of Europe, where she cooked...

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2021 / 4 / 1

How I Built Resilience: Kara Goldin of Hint

After giving up diet soda, Kara Goldin started adding fresh fruit to her drinking water to make it more fun. This inspired her to create Hint water, a line of unsweetened flavored water beverages that are now...

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2021 / 3 / 29

UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan

As a product developer, Bob Monahan worked with some iconic brands: the Pump at Reebok, the Taurus and Mustang at Ford. When he moved on to work at a baby products company, he happened to discover another set...

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2021 / 3 / 25

How I Built Resilience: Vivian Ku, Restaurateur

Vivian Ku is a Taiwanese-American restaurateur who owns three different Taiwanese restaurants in Los Angeles. After the pandemic halted her plans for expansion, Vivian decided to close her two restaurants...

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2021 / 3 / 22

Hinge: Justin McLeod

In 2010, Justin McLeod was in business school, still trying to get over a bad breakup that had happened years before. Determined to solve his own problem and convinced that the best way to meet people was...

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2021 / 3 / 18

How I Built Resilience: Lisa Baird of National Women's Soccer League

Lisa Baird stepped in as commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League in March 2020 and just two days into her job the entire multi-billion dollar sports industry went dark. Lisa talks with Guy about...

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2021 / 3 / 15

Siete Family Foods: Miguel and Veronica Garza

Miguel and Veronica Garza grew up in Laredo, Texas, in the kind of family that did almost everything together. So when Veronica realized that a grain-free diet was helping her cope with debilitating health...

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2021 / 3 / 11

How I Built Resilience: Shan-Lyn Ma of Zola

With the wedding industry dramatically impacted by the pandemic, co-founder and CEO of Zola, Shan-Lyn Ma decided to pivot. Instead of just wedding planning, Zola would expand to include livestreaming virtual...

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2021 / 3 / 8

Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves

Rick Steves spent the summer after high school backpacking through Europe on two dollars a day—sleeping on the floor, sneaking into museums, and subsisting on a diet of bread and jam. When he came home, he...

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2021 / 3 / 4

How I Built Resilience: Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief of Morning Brew

Six years ago, Morning Brew started out as a fun business newsletter Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief wrote for their classmates out of their University of Michigan dorm room. The company now has over 2.5...

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2021 / 3 / 1

Canva: Melanie Perkins (2019)

When she was just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins dreamt of transforming the graphic design and publishing industries. But she started small, launching a site to make yearbook design simpler and more...

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2021 / 2 / 25

How I Built Resilience: Troy Carter of Q&A (June, 2020)

Music manager and entrepreneur Troy Carter spoke to Guy last June, as the pandemic was worsening and the country was shaken by racial unrest. Troy spoke about the profound impact of these events on him...

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2021 / 2 / 22

Boxed: Chieh Huang

Over the course of ten years as a founder, Chieh Huang bet twice on the ubiquity of the smartphone. The first time was in 2010 with Astro Ape, a mobile gaming company that he founded with a few friends out of...

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2021 / 2 / 18

How I Built Resilience: Beverly Leon of Local Civics

After retiring from professional soccer, Beverly Leon shifted her focus in a big way. In 2018 she founded Local Civics, an ed-tech start-up that uses game-based learning to encourage kids to strengthen their...

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2021 / 2 / 15

Simple Mills: Katlin Smith

In 2012, 22-year-old Katlin Smith was growing restless at her consulting job, so she started experimenting with grain-free, paleo-friendly muffin recipes in her Atlanta kitchen. A buyer at a nearby Whole...

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2021 / 2 / 11

How I Built Resilience: Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey of Strava

Strava is a social fitness platform with more than 76 million users in nearly every country worldwide. Co-founders Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey spoke with Guy about the recent surge in users joining their...

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2021 / 2 / 8

Atlassian: Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes sent an email to his college classmates in Sydney, asking if anyone was interested in helping him launch a tech startup after graduation. Back then, entrepreneurship wasn't a...

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2021 / 2 / 4

How I Built Resilience: M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan spoke with Guy as part of NPR's Storytelling Lounge at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Night is known for writing, producing and directing blockbuster films like The Sixth Sense,...

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2021 / 2 / 1

Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali

When Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration in the 1960s, she never expected to become a designer. So when a job as an airline clerk came along, she was glad to accept it—along with the perk of dirt-cheap...

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2021 / 1 / 28

How I Built Resilience: Loren and Lisa Poncia of Stemple Creek Ranch

Fourth generation cattle rancher Loren Poncia and his wife Lisa transformed Stemple Creek Ranch into one of the few carbon neutral livestock ranches in the United States, and have since made their ranch...

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2021 / 1 / 25

Seventh Generation: Alan Newman and Jeffrey Hollender

With its eco-friendly paper towels, diapers, and cleansers, Seventh Generation was one of the first—and most successful—green household brands to hit the market. But in the early 1990s, just a few years after...

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2021 / 1 / 21

How I Built Resilience: Elisa Villanueva Beard of Teach For America

After starting her career at Teach For America in 1998, Elisa Villanueva Beard has served as the CEO of the non-profit for the last five and a half years. Elisa spoke with Guy about how the organization has...

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2021 / 1 / 18

Jazzercise: Judi Sheppard Missett

Judi Sheppard Missett wandered into her first dance class when she was 2, and hasn't stopped dancing since. In the late 1960s, she was teaching jazz dance in Chicago and her students—mostly young...

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2021 / 1 / 11

Patreon: Jack Conte and Sam Yam

As part of the band Pomplamoose, musician Jack Conte had a sizeable fan base in the late 2000s and was making thousands of dollars a month from iTunes sales. But when streaming services like Spotify took over...

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2021 / 1 / 4

Chipotle: Steve Ells (2017)

In 1992, Steve Ells was a classically trained chef working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. But after eating a burrito at a local taqueria, he got an idea: to sell burritos and earn enough money to...

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2020 / 12 / 28

ActOne Group: Janice Bryant Howroyd (2018)

In the late 1970s Janice Bryant Howroyd moved to Los Angeles and began temping as a secretary. She soon realized there were many other young people in situations similar to hers. So with $1,500 in her pocket,...

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2020 / 12 / 23

How I Built Resilience: Morra Aarons-Mele of Women Online

Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of Women Online and hosts The Anxious Achiever podcast. Morra shares how her agency pivoted during the pandemic after losing 30% of its business overnight, and how anxious...

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2020 / 12 / 21

Author and Podcaster: Tim Ferriss

By the time he turned 30, Tim Ferriss had figured out how to succeed at things that many people fail at—from growing a business to dancing the tango to marketing a best-selling book. He approached these and...

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2020 / 12 / 17

How I Built Resilience: Daniela Corrente of Reel

Reel is a digital savings platform that helps people people make big purchases without racking up credit card debt. CEO and co-founder Daniela Corrente says the company has added new savings plans during the...

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2020 / 12 / 15

Riot Games: Bonus Episode

There were so many interesting moments in Guy's conversation with the co-founders of Riot Games that we decided to put them into this short bonus episode. In it, Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill talk about kids,...

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2020 / 12 / 14

Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill

At USC in the late 1990s, Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck were bonding over video games and noticing that free, player-made modifications for the game Warcraft III were becoming wildly popular online. The two...

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2020 / 12 / 10

How I Built Resilience: Emily Powell of Powell's Books

Emily Powell is the third generation owner and president of Portland, Oregon's iconic independent bookseller, Powell's Books. After having to let go of 90% of her staff in early March, Emily is focused on...

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2020 / 12 / 7

Kodiak Cakes: Joel Clark

When he was 8 years old, Joel Clark loaded bags of his mom's whole grain pancake mix into a red wagon to sell door-to-door. By the mid-90s, he and his older brother had upgraded to selling the mix out of a...

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2020 / 11 / 30

Remembering Tony Hsieh of Zappos

The former CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh has died. He was 46 years old. We are grateful that Tony shared his story with us in 2017 and we are republishing it as a tribute to his life and career. Tony was a...

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2020 / 11 / 25

How I Built Resilience: Dr. Iman Abuzeid of Incredible Health

Dr. Iman Abuzeid is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a digital platform that helps streamline the hiring process for nurses and recruiting hospitals. After seeing an increased demand for nurses in...

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2020 / 11 / 23

The Lip Bar: Melissa Butler

While working long hours as a Wall Street analyst, Melissa Butler started making lipstick in her kitchen as a hobby. But it soon turned into an obsession, costing thousands of dollars. She was frustrated by...

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2020 / 11 / 19

How I Built Resilience: Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries

Father Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, one of the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in the world. He speaks with Guy about how the Los Angeles based...

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2020 / 11 / 16

Kenneth Cole: Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole launched his shoe business out of a forty-foot truck in midtown Manhattan and quickly became known as an up-and-coming designer with an eye for street fashion. In 1986, he made a bold move by...

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2020 / 11 / 9

Dropbox: Drew Houston

In 2006, Drew Houston got on a bus from Boston heading to New York. He planned to use the three-hour ride to get some work done, so he opened his laptop, and realized he had left his thumb drive with all of...

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2020 / 11 / 5

How I Built Resilience: Varshini Prakash of Sunrise Movement

Guy talks with Varshini Prakash, co-founder of Sunrise Movement, a grassroots organization that's fighting to make climate change a top priority in the US. The group launched in 2017 and has since grown into...

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2020 / 11 / 2

Famous Dave's: Dave Anderson

Growing up in 1960's Chicago, Dave Anderson didn't eat much deep dish. Instead, his dad took the family to the South Side for barbecue, and those memories—and aromas—stayed with him. For years, Dave tinkered...

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2020 / 10 / 31

How I Built Resilience: Justin Gold of Justin's

Justin Gold is the founder of Justin's, known for its nut butters and chocolate peanut butter cups. He talks about how he started by pulverizing peanuts in his home blender, and describes how his customers...

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2020 / 10 / 29

How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things

Do Big Things is a Black woman-led, mission-driven digital agency that works with companies like Google, Etsy, and the NAACP, and has a staff that's 50% people of color. The agency's CEO and founder Cheryl...

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2020 / 10 / 26

McBride Sisters Wine (Part 2 of 2): Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John

After Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John made the extraordinary discovery that they were half-sisters, they formed a deep bond and discovered a mutual dream: to create a wine company that would demystify...

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2020 / 10 / 22

How I Built Resilience: Sonia Gil of Fluenz

Fluenz helps English speakers learn new languages, both online and with in-person immersion programs. With travel restrictions and a global pandemic, CEO and founder Sonia Gil had to scrap her in-person...

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2020 / 10 / 19

McBride Sisters Wine (Part 1 of 2): Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John

When we first spoke with Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John, we were so blown away by their story that we decided to turn it into two episodes. With hardly any money or connections, they built one of the...

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2020 / 10 / 12

method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan (2018)

In the late 1990s, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan took on the notion that "green doesn't clean" by setting out to make soap that could clean a bathtub without harming the environment. Adam started experimenting...

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2020 / 10 / 10

How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks

When a Sports Illustrated article exposed internal abuse and harassment in the Dallas Mavericks organization, owner Mark Cuban knew he had a culture problem. So he hired Cynt Marshall as CEO, and she tells...

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2020 / 10 / 8

How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics

Aishetu Dozie had a successful career in finance before she took a leap and launched Bossy, a makeup brand that has exploded in popularity over the past six months, despite the challenges of the pandemic....

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2020 / 10 / 5

Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine

Working at a high-end beauty salon in the south of England in the early 1970's, Mark Constantine concocted natural shampoos and conditioners in a tiny room above his kitchen, and soon met another young...

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2020 / 10 / 3

How I Built Resilience: Jennifer Neundorfer of January Ventures

January Ventures is an investment firm that is trying to address the unique challenges and biases faced by entrepreneurs often under-represented in business, including women and people of color. The firm's...

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2020 / 10 / 1

How I Built Resilience: Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp

Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman says his leadership team anticipated a "nuclear winter" after the pandemic hit. But as businesses start to re-open, and ad revenues on the site creep back up, Yelp is bringing...

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2020 / 9 / 28

Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout

In 2012, Daina Trout, her husband Justin, and her best friend Vanessa Dew were sitting around a kitchen table spit-balling possible business ideas. Their biggest contender seemed to be a natural product to...

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2020 / 9 / 26

How I Built Resilience: John Zimmer of Lyft

This year has brought unexpected challenges to Lyft, starting with a 75 percent drop in rideshares at the beginning of the pandemic. But co-founder John Zimmer says ride-hailing is returning, and the company...

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2020 / 9 / 21

Khan Academy: Sal Khan

In 2009, Sal Khan walked away from a high-paying job to start a business that had no way of making money. His idea to launch a non-profit teaching platform was ignited five years earlier, when he was helping...

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2020 / 9 / 19

How I Built Resilience: Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

Last year, the dating app Bumble launched a video chat feature that was initially slow to take off. But that changed after the pandemic hit. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd tells Guy that many Bumble users are...

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2020 / 9 / 17

How I Built Resilience: Bert and John Jacobs of Life is Good

Bert and John Jacobs had just come off a $100 million year for their Boston-based apparel company, Life is Good. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended business as usual, forcing the brothers to invest in...

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2020 / 9 / 14

Calendly: Tope Awotona

After emigrating from Nigeria to the US to attend college, Tope Awotona worked as a door-to-door salesman and eventually set out to become a tech entrepreneur. He launched a series of e-commerce businesses...

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2020 / 9 / 12

How I Built Resilience (Special Edition): Guy Raz

On this special episode, Stacey Vanek Smith interviews Guy about his brand new book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Stacey asks Guy about...

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2020 / 9 / 10

How I Built Resilience: Pokimane

Imane Anys—who goes by the online moniker Pokimane—is the leading female streamer on Twitch, a popular streaming platform for gamers. Pokimane spoke with Guy about garnering more than 20 million followers...

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2020 / 9 / 7

Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh

Growing up in rural Northern California, Mike Radenbaugh hated biking to high school—it was a 16 mile slog; hilly and tiring. So he scrounged up a battery and a motor, rigged them to an old mountain bike and...

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2020 / 9 / 5

How I Built Resilience: Sandra Oh Lin of KiwiCo

KiwiCo delivers science and arts projects to kids on a monthly basis. Sandra Oh Lin founded the company nine years ago, and her team has scrambled to meet demand during the pandemic. These conversations are...

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2020 / 9 / 3

How I Built Resilience: Luke Holden and Ben Conniff of Luke's Lobster

COVID-19's impact on the seafood industry hit Luke Holden and Ben Conniff hard; in March they closed their restaurants and laid off 300 employees. Since then, Luke's Lobster has been able to stay afloat by...

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2020 / 8 / 31

Chilewich: Sandy Chilewich

One night in 1978, for fun, Sandy Chilewich and her friend, Kathy Moskal, tried bleaching their black cotton shoes, and dyeing them a new color. They were just fooling around in their Manhattan loft, but that...

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2020 / 8 / 29

How I Built Resilience: Niraj Shah and Steve Conine of Wayfair

Despite the economic crisis, Wayfair has seen an 84 percent sales spike, leading them to profitability during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, co-founders Niraj Shah and Steve Conine have also dealt with...

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2020 / 8 / 27

How I Built Resilience: Ajay Prakash and James Joun of Rinse

Rinse is a laundry and dry-cleaning app started by college friends Ajay Prakash and James Joun in 2013. Since March, Rinse's dry cleaning service has seen a drop in orders, but their laundry arm has remained...

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2020 / 8 / 24

Wayfair: Niraj Shah & Steve Conine (2018)

After selling their first small business and shuttering their second, former college roommates Niraj Shah and Steve Conine thought about getting "normal" jobs. But in the early 2000s, they stumbled across an...

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2020 / 8 / 17

Zocdoc: Oliver Kharraz

In 2007, three friends set out to address a common frustration: the long waits and scheduling hassles of booking a doctor's appointment. But soon after launching their online scheduling platform Zocdoc,...

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2020 / 8 / 15

How I Built Resilience: Samantha Bee of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, has been filming her show from her backyard in upstate New York since March. While Samantha remains unsure about returning to the studio, she's...

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2020 / 8 / 13

How I Built Resilience: Brian Chesky of Airbnb

In the early stages of the lockdown, Airbnb was in a freefall: it lost 80 percent of its business and laid off a quarter of its staff. But CEO Brian Chesky tells Guy that as people start to travel again—in...

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2020 / 8 / 10

Briogeo: Nancy Twine

In 2010, a tragic personal event changed the trajectory of Nancy Twine's life. Suddenly, her promising job on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs no longer seemed fulfilling; she wanted something more. Drawing...

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2020 / 8 / 8

How I Built Resilience: Jessie Woolley-Wilson of DreamBox

Guy speaks with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox, an online math learning program for K-8 students. The platform has added two million new users during the lockdown, but that rapid growth has created...

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2020 / 8 / 6

How I Built Resilience: Alberto Perlman of Zumba

Within weeks after the pandemic lockdown, the fitness program Zumba rapidly shifted gears and launched its own online workout platform. Co-founder Alberto Perlman says it's helping keep the community...

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2020 / 8 / 3

Vita Coco: Michael Kirban

So—no joke: two guys really do walk into a bar. While sharing a few drinks on a winter night in New York City, best friends Michael Kirban and Ira Liran met two young women from Brazil. That chance encounter...

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2020 / 8 / 1

How I Built Resilience: Sarah Harden and Lauren Neustadter of Hello Sunshine

Hello Sunshine—a production company founded by Reese Witherspoon—has created TV shows Little Fires Everywhere, The Morning Show, and Big Little Lies. Fresh off 18 Emmy nominations, Hello Sunshine's CEO Sarah...

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2020 / 7 / 30

How I Built Resilience: Taha Bawa of Goodwall

As COVID-19 continues to affect the global economy, college graduates are entering a job market reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis. Taha Bawa is hoping to help with Goodwall, the social networking site...

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2020 / 7 / 27

The Laundress: Lindsey Boyd

In the late 1990s, while working in high-end fashion in NYC, Lindsey Boyd came to despise the weekly ritual of dry-cleaning; not only was it expensive, but it often did damage to her clothes. So she and...

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2020 / 7 / 25

How I Built Resilience: Jeremy Zimmer of United Talent Agency

With live events canceled and sound stages shuttered, the entertainment industry has to look for new ways to create content while cutting costs. Guy talks with Jeremy Zimmer, CEO and co-founder of United...

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2020 / 7 / 23

How I Built Resilience: Songe LaRon of Squire

When Songe LaRon founded Squire in 2016, his mission was to use modern technology to help run barbershops, which are using his app in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. With a recent funding round of $34 million,...

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2020 / 7 / 20

La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti

When Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti met at a grunge concert in Seattle in the 1980s, they were an unlikely pair. But they shared a love for great coffee, and the two friends began to dream about opening a...

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2020 / 7 / 18

How I Built Resilience: Live with John Foley

While upending many businesses, the pandemic has benefited fitness brands like Peloton, which saw a surge in demand in mid-March. Peloton founder John Foley talks with Guy about the unique challenges and...

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2020 / 7 / 16

How I Built Resilience: Live with Julia Hartz

Founder Julia Hartz is reckoning with COVID-19's impact on the live events industry, which uses her company, Eventbrite, to sell tickets and market events. While her users are quickly pivoting to virtual...

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2020 / 7 / 13

Tatcha: Vicky Tsai

In 2008, Vicky Tsai walked away from a startup job and set out to rediscover herself on a trip to Japan. In Kyoto, she had an unforgettable meeting with a geisha, and learned about the face creams and...

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2020 / 7 / 11

How I Built Resilience: Live with Morgan DeBaun

Morgan DeBaun founded Blavity as a media platform for Black millennials to convene and connect online. Today, amidst an economic crisis and a reawakening of concern over racial justice, Blavity's mission is...

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2020 / 7 / 9

How I Built Resilience: Live with Sharon Chuter

In 2018, Sharon Chuter left her job at a legacy beauty brand to start UOMA Beauty, a cosmetics company that caters to a wide variety of skin tones. She recently launched a social media campaign called Pull Up...

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2020 / 7 / 6

Tempur-Pedic: Bobby Trussell (2018)

At age 40, Bobby Trussell's promising career in horse racing hit a dead end. With bills to pay and a family to support, he stumbled across a curious product that turned into a lifeline: squishy-squashy memory...

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2020 / 6 / 29

ClassPass: Payal Kadakia

In the late 2000s, Payal Kadakia was working a corporate job and running an Indian dance company on the side. When a search for a ballet class yielded a confusing jumble of computer tabs, she had an idea:...

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2020 / 6 / 27

How I Built Resilience: Live with Melanie Perkins and Bill Creelman

This week, the online design platform Canva closed a new round of funding, bringing the company's valuation to $6 billion. Founder Melanie Perkins is also focused on helping her employees work from home,...

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2020 / 6 / 25

How I Built Resilience: Live with Deval Patrick

Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick talks to Guy about how the protests for racial justice have resonated with him personally, and how this moment can spark meaningful change for African Americans —...

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2020 / 6 / 22

Ring: Jamie Siminoff

Jamie Siminoff spent much of his twenties and thirties as a serial entrepreneur, launching three tech businesses you've probably never heard of. When he finally landed on a breakthrough idea, he didn't...

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2020 / 6 / 20

How I Built Resilience: Live with Sadie Lincoln

While 70 percent of Barre3's locations remain closed, founder Sadie Lincoln is noticing a surge in subscriptions for their online workout platform. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built...

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2020 / 6 / 18

How I Built Resilience: Live with Cathy Hughes

Cathy Hughes is the founder of Urban One, the largest African American-owned broadcast network with 54 radio stations around the United States. Cathy spoke with Guy about the impact of the Black Lives Matter...

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2020 / 6 / 15

Shake Shack: Danny Meyer

Back in 2001, as part of an initiative to revitalize Madison Square Park, Danny Meyer set up a simple hot dog cart. At that time, he had been a leader in New York City's fine dining scene for years, and the...

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2020 / 6 / 13

How I Built Resilience: Live with Y-Vonne Hutchinson

Y-Vonne Hutchinson is the founder of ReadySet, a consulting firm that helps companies make authentic commitments to diversity and inclusion. Y-Vonne spoke with Guy about the progress she's starting to see on...

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2020 / 6 / 11

How I Built Resilience: Live with Kevin Hart

Actor and comedian Kevin Hart speaks to Guy about the Black Lives Matter protests and offers advice to future activists, entertainers and entrepreneurs. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built...

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2020 / 6 / 8

Supergoop!: Holly Thaggard

In 2005, the trajectory of Holly Thaggard's life completely changed when a good friend of hers was diagnosed with skin cancer. Holly realized that most people weren't taking sunscreen seriously, so she...

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2020 / 6 / 6

How I Built Resilience: Live with Troy Carter

Troy Carter, the founder of Q&A and Atom Factory, speaks to Guy about the painful events of the past few months—and especially the past two weeks—and how they've affected the music industry and him...

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2020 / 6 / 4

How I Built Resilience: Live with Jenn Hyman

As Rent the Runway faces the economic challenges of the pandemic, co-founder Jenn Hyman is focused on recovery and empowering women's lives through clothing. These conversations are excerpts from our How I...

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2020 / 6 / 1

Sub Pop Records: Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman

Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman were two rock-and-roll fans who met at exactly the right time and place: Seattle in the early 1980s, where a raw hybrid of metal and punk was finding its voice in dingy...

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2020 / 5 / 30

How I Built Resilience: Live with Alli Webb and Andy Puddicombe & Rich Pierson

Alli Webb, co-founder of Drybar, talks with Guy about why she believes that investing time into fashion and beauty is still worthwhile, even though many of us aren't going out much. Founders of the meditation...

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2020 / 5 / 28

How I Built Resilience: Live with Kyle Connaughton and Daniel Humm

Kyle Connaughton's restaurant has been impacted by wildfires, floods, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic. Kyle spoke with Guy about keeping SingleThread Farms afloat while giving back to his community with free...

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2020 / 5 / 25

reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn

In 2000, Luis von Ahn was starting his PhD in computer science when he attended a talk and happened to learn about one of Yahoo's biggest problems: automated bots were signing up for millions of free Yahoo...

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2020 / 5 / 23

How I Built Resilience: Live with Sarah LaFleur

When Sarah LaFleur started M.M.LaFleur, she wanted to help women dress efficiently and comfortably for the office. Now that most of her customers are working from home, Sarah has to rethink her brand and her...

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2020 / 5 / 21

How I Built Resilience: Live with Tony Xu and Marcia Kilgore

When Tony Xu started DoorDash in 2013, he wanted to help local restaurants stay afloat by introducing them to online delivery. Today, his quest remains the same, now that DoorDash has become an essential...

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2020 / 5 / 18

Jo Loves: Jo Malone CBE

As a girl in 1970s London, Jo Malone learned how to make face creams by going to work with her mom at a private skin care clinic. By the time she was in her 20's, Jo was running her own skin care and...

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2020 / 5 / 16

How I Built Resilience: Live with Tobias Lütke and Jon Stein

When Tobias Lütke started Shopify, he wanted to empower merchants to start small and build resilience. Tobi spoke with Guy about the relevance of those principles in 2020, as he explains the rise of Shopify...

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2020 / 5 / 14

How I Built Resilience: Live with Samin Nosrat and Alice Waters & Fanny Singer

Samin Nosrat, the author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, talks with Guy about unintentionally writing the ultimate quarantine cookbook, and how she's been inspired by the camaraderie among fellow home cooks. Chez...

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2020 / 5 / 11

Impossible Foods: Pat Brown

When he was nearly 60, Pat Brown left a dream job to pursue an ambitious mission: to create delicious meat from plants. As a biochemist, he'd become alarmed at the destructive impact of meat production on the...

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2020 / 5 / 9

How I Built Resilience: Live with Stewart Butterfield and Steve Holmes

Slack's co-founder Stewart Butterfield wonders what the future of work will look like for his 12 million customers. Springfree Trampoline's co-founder Steve Holmes says the company has seen a 300 percent...

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2020 / 5 / 7

How I Built Resilience: Live with Christina Tosi and Gary Erickson & Kit Crawford

Since March, only five of Milk Bar's 18 locations have been up and running, but founder Christina Tosi tells Guy she is determined to bring the joy of baking to the doorsteps of family, friends, and...

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2020 / 5 / 4

Cotopaxi: Davis Smith

By his mid-30's, Davis Smith had co-founded two businesses. The first ended well, but the second was such a disappointment that he wondered if he should even bother trying again. But he did. In 2014, he...

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2020 / 4 / 30

How I Built Resilience: Live with José Andrés

When chef José Andrés isn't running Michelin-starred restaurants, he's feeding the masses through World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit he founded that brings food to people during humanitarian crises. The...

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2020 / 4 / 27

Fitbit: James Park

In 2006, James Park had what he describes as a "lightning bolt" moment when he first used a Nintendo Wii. Fascinated by its motion-tracking controller, James wondered if you could take the technology out of...

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2020 / 4 / 23

How I Built Resilience: Live with Simon Sinek

Each week, Guy is hosting online conversations with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating these turbulent times. Today's conversation is with Simon Sinek, whose books about business —...

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2020 / 4 / 20

Brooklinen: Vicki and Rich Fulop

On the first day of their Vegas vacation in 2012, Rich and Vicki Fulop sat down on their hotel bed and immediately had the same thought: "These sheets are really nice!" The fabric was the perfect blend of...

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2020 / 4 / 16

How I Built Resilience: Live with David Neeleman and Tristan Walker

Each week, Guy will be hosting brief online conversations with founders and members of the How I Built This community about how they're navigating these uncertain times. This past week, Guy spoke with two...

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2020 / 4 / 13

Sweetgreen: Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman

Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman met at Georgetown University in 2003 and quickly bonded over their frustration at the lack of healthy food on campus. So during their senior year, along with a third friend,...

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2020 / 4 / 9

How I Built Resilience: Live with Susan Griffin-Black

Each week, Guy will be hosting brief online conversations with founders and members of the How I Built This community about how they're navigating these uncertain times. This past Friday, Guy spoke with Susan...

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2020 / 4 / 6

S'well: Sarah Kauss

In 2009, Sarah Kauss had a well-paying job in real estate development, but she was itching to do something more. On a hike in Tucson with her mom, she got an idea for a business while swigging warm water from...

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2020 / 4 / 2

How I Built Resilience: Live with Jeni Britton Bauer

Each week, Guy will be hosting brief online conversations with founders and members of the How I Built This community about how they're navigating these uncertain times. This past Friday, Guy spoke with Jeni...

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2020 / 3 / 30

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company: Ken Grossman

Ken Grossman was experimenting with beer before he was old enough to buy it. As a high school student in the late 1960s, he bought his first home brewing kit and mixed the ingredients in a bucket, hiding his...

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2020 / 3 / 23

Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield (2017)

In the mid-1970s two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield decided to open an ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont. Their quirky little shop packaged and sold unusual flavors like Honey Coffee,...

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2020 / 3 / 16

Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp

When Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna launched Birchbox from business school in 2010, they set out to disrupt the beauty industry by delivering monthly samples in a box. Even though people told them the idea...

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2020 / 3 / 12

Live From The HIBT Summit: Stacy Madison of Stacy's Pita Chips

Our ninth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Stacy Madison, co-founder of Stacy's Pita Chips. In this live conversation with Guy, Stacy explains how pita chips became a passion--even...

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2020 / 3 / 9

Stripe: Patrick and John Collison (2018)

Brothers Patrick and John Collison founded and sold their first company before they turned 20. They created software to help eBay users manage inventory online, which set them on a path to help make...

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2020 / 3 / 2

Video Artist: Casey Neistat

When Casey Neistat was a teenager, the odds were against him; he had dropped out of high school, was washing dishes to pay rent, and was a father by age 17. But he eventually scraped together enough money to...

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2020 / 2 / 27

Live From The HIBT Summit: Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Our eighth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. In this live conversation with Guy, Jeni talks about maintaining authenticity...

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2020 / 2 / 24

Lululemon Athletica: Chip Wilson (2018)

After noticing more and more people sign up for yoga in the late 1990s, Chip Wilson bet everything on an athletic apparel company aimed toward young professional women. What started as a small pop-up store in...

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2020 / 2 / 17

Eventbrite: Julia Hartz

In the early 2000s, Julia Hartz was helping develop TV shows for MTV and FX Networks, and seemed headed for a promising career in television. All of that changed in 2003 when she went to a wedding and found...

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2020 / 2 / 13

Live From The HIBT Summit: David Neeleman of JetBlue Airways

Our seventh episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue Airways. In this live conversation with Guy, David talks about the benefits of having ADD, and why he...

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2020 / 2 / 10

Panera Bread/Au Bon Pain: Ron Shaich (2018)

In the early 1980s, Ron Shaich bought a small, struggling Boston bakery chain called Au Bon Pain, and built it out to 250 locations nationwide. Ron then saw an opportunity to build something even bigger:...

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2020 / 2 / 3

M.M.LaFleur: Sarah LaFleur

When she was working corporate jobs in New York City, Sarah LaFleur hated getting dressed in the morning; the choices in her closet felt overwhelming, many items didn't fit right or wore out too quickly. So...

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2020 / 1 / 30

Live From The HIBT Summit: Stewart Butterfield

Our sixth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr and Slack. Both companies emerged out of failure. In this live conversation with Guy, Stewart...

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2020 / 1 / 27

Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales (2018)

During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, Jimmy Wales was running an internet search company. That's when he began to experiment with the idea of an online encyclopedia. In 2001, Wales launched Wikipedia, a...

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2020 / 1 / 20

Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram

While she was a student at business school, Shazi Visram ran into an old friend-- a new mother of twins. The friend confided she felt like a bad mom because she had no time to make her kids healthy meals. ...

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2020 / 1 / 13

Spindrift: Bill Creelman

Bill Creelman graduated from college in 1996 with a business plan — to sell smoked fish from Nantucket. But over time, that idea morphed unpredictably into a brand that sold cocktail seasonings and supplies....

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2020 / 1 / 9

Live From The HIBT Summit: Marcia Kilgore

Our fifth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore, founder of Bliss, FitFlop, BeautyPie and more. The animating question behind all of Marcia's business ideas...

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2020 / 1 / 6

Dell Computers: Michael Dell (2018)

Before it became fashionable to start a tech company in your dorm room, Michael Dell did exactly that. In 1983, he began selling upgrade kits for PC's out of his dorm at UT Austin. A few months later he...

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2019 / 12 / 30

Chicken Salad Chick: Stacy Brown (2018)

For many of us, chicken salad is just another sandwich filling, but Stacy Brown turned it into a $75 million business. In 2007, she was a divorced mother of three looking for a way to make ends meet. So she...

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2019 / 12 / 26

Live From The HIBT Summit: Tariq Farid Of Edible Arrangements

Our fourth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Tariq Farid, founder of Edible Arrangements. In a live conversation with Guy, Tariq talks about flowers, fruit, and family—and how he wouldn't...

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2019 / 12 / 23

Steve Madden: Steve Madden (2018)

Steve Madden fell in love with the shoe business in the 1970's, when he sold platform shoes at a neighborhood store in Long Island, New York; that was in high school. About 15 years later, he struck out on...

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2019 / 12 / 19

Live From The HIBT Summit: Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger Of Instagram

Our third live episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, co-founders of Instagram. They talk to Guy about what they've been doing since they stepped down from the...

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2019 / 12 / 16

Tate's Bake Shop: Kathleen King

Kathleen King was 11 years old when she started baking cookies to sell at her family's farm stand on Long Island. After college, she opened a small bake shop, and eventually started selling her cookies to...

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2019 / 12 / 12

Live From The HIBT Summit: Troy Carter

Our second episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features founder and investor Troy Carter, who re-started his career in the music business after becoming Lady Gaga's manager. In a live conversation...

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2019 / 12 / 9

Minted: Mariam Naficy (2018)

In 2000, Mariam Naficy sold her first company, an online cosmetics store called Eve.com, for $110 million. Several years later, she got the entrepreneurial itch once again: she founded Minted.com, an online...

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2019 / 12 / 5

Live From The HIBT Summit: Sara Blakely Of Spanx

Our first episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx. In front of a live audience, she tells Guy how she stayed confident in the earliest days of building the...

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2019 / 12 / 2

Live Episode! OtterBox: Curt Richardson

In the 1980s and 90s, Curt Richardson started making simple plastic boxes in his garage in Fort Collins, Colorado. They were originally designed to keep small items dry while you're fishing or skiing, and...

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2019 / 11 / 25

Outdoor Voices: Tyler Haney

In 2013, Tyler Haney was a 24-year-old graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York. One day on a jog, she realized that her workout outfits looked, and felt, like they were made for competitive...

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2019 / 11 / 21

Remembering Jake Burton Carpenter

The founder of Burton Snowboards, Jake Burton Carpenter, has died. He was 65 years old. We are grateful that Jake shared his story with us in 2017 and we are republishing it as a tribute to his life and...

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2019 / 11 / 18

Crate & Barrel: Gordon Segal (2017)

In 1962, Gordon Segal—with his wife Carole—opened a scrappy Chicago shop called Crate & Barrel. That store turned into a housewares empire that has shaped the way Americans furnish their homes. PLUS in our...

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2019 / 11 / 11

Evite: Selina Tobaccowala

At the height of the first dot-com boom, Selina Tobaccowala and college friend Al Lieb were determined to start a tech company. After a few false starts, they landed on the idea for Evite—an on-line...

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2019 / 11 / 7

Live Episode! Luke's Lobster: Luke Holden and Ben Conniff

Luke Holden grew up in Maine, working on lobster boats and in his father's lobster processing plant. But his parents pushed him to find a more stable career, so after college, he moved to New York and got a...

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2019 / 11 / 4

FUBU: Daymond John (2018)

Daymond John grew up during the 1980s in the heart of hip hop culture: Hollis, Queens. In his early 20s, he was working at Red Lobster and trying to figure out how to start a business. Eventually, he stumbled...

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2019 / 10 / 28

LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken (2018)

In 2000, Lara Merriken was 32, recently divorced, and without a job when she decided to make energy bars by mixing cherries, dates, and almonds in her Cuisinart. Eventually, she perfected the recipe and...

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2019 / 10 / 21

Gimlet Media: Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber

Alex Blumberg made his early career by helping build two of the most successful shows in radio and podcasting: Planet Money and This American Life. In 2014, convinced that podcasts could make money, he walked...

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2019 / 10 / 14

Live Episode! Milk Bar: Christina Tosi

For Christina Tosi, baking wasn't just a delicious childhood hobby – it was a daily creative outlet and a way to blow off steam. After college, she went to culinary school and honed her pastry technique at...

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2019 / 10 / 7

The Knot: Carley Roney & David Liu (2018)

When Carley Roney and David Liu got married, they had a seat-of-the-pants celebration on a sweltering Washington rooftop. They never planned to go into the wedding business, but soon saw an opportunity in the...

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2019 / 9 / 30

Live Episode! Walker & Company: Tristan Walker

The very first time Tristan Walker shaved, he woke up the next morning with razor bumps all over his face. "I was like, what is this?" he remembers saying. "I am never shaving again—ever." He soon discovered...

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2019 / 9 / 23

Headspace: Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson

Andy Puddicombe is not your typical entrepreneur – in his early twenties, he gave away everything he owned to train as a Buddhist monk. But after ten years, he decided he wanted to bring the benefits of his...

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2019 / 9 / 16

Stitch Fix: Katrina Lake (2018)

In 2010, Katrina Lake recruited 20 friends for an experiment: she wanted to see if she could choose clothes for them that accurately matched their style and personality. That idea sparked Stitch Fix, an...

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2019 / 9 / 9

Dippin' Dots: Curt Jones

In the late 1980s, Curt Jones was working in a Kentucky lab, using liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze animal feed. He wondered if he could re-invigorate his favorite dessert by pouring droplets of ice cream into...

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2019 / 9 / 2

The Life Is Good Company: Bert and John Jacobs

In the late 80s, brothers Bert and John Jacobs were living as nomads, traveling from college to college selling t-shirts out of their van. It wasn't a sustainable living – until one day, they created a new...

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2019 / 8 / 26

Aden + Anais: Raegan Moya-Jones (2019)

Cotton muslin baby blankets are commonplace in Australia, where Raegan Moya-Jones grew up. But when she started a new life and family in NYC, she couldn't find them anywhere. So in 2006, she started the baby...

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2019 / 8 / 19

Stonyfield Yogurt: Gary Hirshberg (2017)

In 1983, two hippie farmers decided to sell homemade organic yogurt to help raise money for their educational farm in New Hampshire. As the enterprise grew into a business, it faced one near-death experience...

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2019 / 8 / 12

Serial Entrepreneur: Marcia Kilgore (2018)

After high school, Marcia Kilgore moved to New York City with $300 in her pocket and no real plan. One step at a time, she became a successful serial entrepreneur. First, she used her high school bodybuilding...

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2019 / 8 / 5

Shopify: Tobias Lütke

In 2004, German programmer Tobias Lütke was living in Ottawa with his girlfriend. An avid snowboarder, he wanted to launch an online snowboard shop, but found the e-commerce software available at the time to...

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2019 / 7 / 29

Live Episode! Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP: Angie & Dan Bastian

Angie and Dan Bastian weren't trying to disrupt an industry or build a massive company – they just wanted to put aside some money for their kids' college fund. In 2001, Dan stumbled across an internet ad...

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2019 / 7 / 22

Dyson: James Dyson (2018)

In 1979, James Dyson had an idea for a new vacuum cleaner — one that didn't use bags. It took him five years to perfect the design, building more than 5,000 prototypes in his backyard shed. He then tried to...

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2019 / 7 / 15

EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black

In the early 1990s, Susan Griffin-Black was working for Esprit in San Francisco. On a business trip to London, she walked into a Covent Garden apothecary shop, picked up a bottle of lavender oil and took a...

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2019 / 7 / 8

Teach For America: Wendy Kopp (2017)

In 1989, college senior Wendy Kopp was trying to figure out how to improve public education in the US. For her senior thesis, she proposed creating a national teaching corps that would recruit recent college...

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2019 / 7 / 1

Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl

Dave Dahl's entrepreneurial journey began in prison. In 1987, he was addicted to drugs and incarcerated for home burglary. For 15 years he bounced from one sentence to the next. But in the mid-2000s, Dave...

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2019 / 6 / 24

Yelp: Jeremy Stoppelman

In 2004, two former Paypal engineers, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons, were spit-balling new internet ideas. Out of their brainstorm came a site where you would email your friends asking for local business...

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2019 / 6 / 17

Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu (2017)

Twenty-five years ago, after Mei Xu emigrated from China to the U.S., she loved going to Bloomingdale's to gaze at their housewares. She eventually started making candles in her basement with Campbell's Soup...

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2019 / 6 / 10

Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger

Growing up, Tim Brown discovered he was very good at two things: design and soccer. While playing professional soccer in New Zealand, he was turned off by the flashy logos on most athletic gear. He started...

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2019 / 6 / 3

Live Episode! Tofurky: Seth Tibbott

Seth Tibbott may be the only founder in the world who grew his business while living in a barn, a teepee, and a treehouse. His off-the-grid lifestyle helped him save money as he started to sell tempeh, a...

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2019 / 5 / 27

Stacy's Pita Chips: Stacy Madison

In the 1990's, Stacy Madison and her boyfriend Mark Andrus were selling pita sandwiches from a converted hot dog cart in Boston. They decided to bake the leftover pita into chips, adding a dash of parmesan or...

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2019 / 5 / 20

Zappos: Tony Hsieh (2017)

Computer scientist Tony Hsieh made millions off the dot-com boom. But he didn't make his mark until he built Zappos — a customer service company that "happens to sell shoes." Now Zappos is worth over a...

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2019 / 5 / 13

Belkin International: Chet Pipkin

Chet Pipkin was the kind of kid who loved to take things apart and put them back together. As a young man in the early 1980s, he started hanging out in mom-and-pop computer shops, where he realized he could...

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2019 / 5 / 6

Framebridge: Susan Tynan (2017)

Susan Tynan's experience in the ephemeral e-market of LivingSocial made her want to start a business that she could touch and feel. After being charged $1600 to frame four posters at her local framing store,...

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2019 / 4 / 29

Live Episode! Peloton: John Foley

John Foley started climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder at a young age, first as a fast food server and eventually as an e-commerce executive. Still, at 40, he couldn't climb out of bed fast enough to...

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2019 / 4 / 22

Bumble: Whitney Wolfe (2017)

At age 22, Whitney Wolfe helped launch Tinder, one of the world's most popular dating apps. But a few years later, she left Tinder and filed a lawsuit against the company alleging sexual harassment. The...

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2019 / 4 / 15

Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer

In 1970, George Zimmer was a college graduate with no real job prospects and little direction. That's when his father, an executive at a boy's clothing company, asked him to go on an important business trip...

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2019 / 4 / 8

Chez Panisse: Alice Waters

In the 1960s, Alice Waters studied abroad in France – and discovered a culinary world far from the processed food popular in America. When she returned to California, she tried to find restaurants to recreate...

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2019 / 4 / 1

Springfree Trampoline: Keith Alexander & Steve Holmes

In the late 1980s, a New Zealand engineer named Keith Alexander wanted to buy a trampoline for his kids. After his wife said trampolines were too dangerous, Keith set out to design his own — a safer...

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2019 / 3 / 25

Compaq Computers: Rod Canion (2019)

In 1981, engineer Rod Canion left Texas Instruments and co-founded Compaq, which created the first IBM-compatible personal computer. This opened the door to an entire industry of PCs that could run the same...

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2019 / 3 / 18

Away: Jen Rubio

In early 2015, Jen Rubio was racing through an airport to catch a flight when her suitcase broke, leaving a trail of clothing behind her. She tried to replace it with a stylish, durable, affordable suitcase —...

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2019 / 3 / 11

Logic: Logic & Chris Zarou

In 2010, Logic the rapper, born as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, released his first official mixtape titled "Young, Broke & Infamous." At 20 years old, Logic certainly was young and broke, and while crashing on...

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2019 / 3 / 4

Squarespace: Anthony Casalena

Like many classic technology stories, Squarespace started in a college dorm room. In 2003, 21-year-old Anthony Casalena created a website-building tool for himself. But after hearing some positive feedback...

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2019 / 2 / 25

Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher (2017)

In 1983, Eileen Fisher signed up for a fashion trade show with no experience, no garments, no patterns or sketches – nothing but a few ideas for a women's clothing line focused on simplicity. Within three...

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2019 / 2 / 18

Burt's Bees: Roxanne Quimby

In the 1970s, Roxanne Quimby was trying to live a simpler life – one that rejected the pursuit of material comforts. She moved to Maine, built a cabin in the woods, and lived off the grid. By the mid-80s, she...

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2019 / 2 / 11

TOMS: Blake Mycoskie (2019)

Blake Mycoskie started and sold four businesses before age 30. But only in Argentina did he discover the idea he'd want to pursue long term. After seeing a shoe drive for children, he came up with TOMS — part...

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2019 / 2 / 4

JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman

In the mid-90s, David Neeleman wanted to launch a new airline. He had already co-created a regional airline out of Salt Lake City that was acquired by Southwest. And despite his admiration of Southwest's...

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2019 / 1 / 28

Canva: Melanie Perkins

When she was just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins dreamt of transforming the graphic design and publishing industries. But she started small, launching a site to make yearbook design simpler and more...

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2019 / 1 / 21

Bonobos: Andy Dunn

When Andy Dunn was in business school, his housemate Brian Spaly created a new type of men's pants: stylish, tailored trousers that fit well in both the hips and thighs. Together, they started the men's...

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2019 / 1 / 14

Five Guys: Jerry Murrell (2019)

Jerry Murrell's mother used to tell him, you can always make money if you know how to make a good burger. In 1986 — after failing at a number of business ideas — Murrell opened a tiny burger joint in Northern...

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2019 / 1 / 7

SoulCycle: Julie Rice & Elizabeth Cutler

Before Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice met, they shared a common belief: New York City gyms didn't have the kind of exercise classes they craved, and each of them wanted to change that. A fitness instructor...

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2019 / 1 / 4

Remembering Herb Kelleher

The co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, has died. He was 87. We are grateful Herb shared his story with us in 2016. We are republishing it as a tribute to his life and career, in...

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2018 / 12 / 31

Kickstarter: Perry Chen (2018)

In the early 2000s, Perry Chen was trying to put on a concert in New Orleans when he thought, what if fans could fund this in advance? His idea didn't work at the time, but he and his co-founders spent the...

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2018 / 12 / 24

The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017)

Years after his father created a hit singing group of anthropomorphic rodents called The Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. made it his mission to revive his dad's beloved characters. Over the last 40 years,...

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2018 / 12 / 20

Lisa Price Of Carol's Daughter At The HIBT Summit

It's our final episode in our series from this year's How I Built This Summit! Today, we're featuring Lisa Price of the beauty brand Carol's Daughter. When Lisa sat down with Guy Raz in October, she described...

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2018 / 12 / 17

Live Episode! Dollar Shave Club: Michael Dubin

At the end of 2010, Michael Dubin was working in marketing when he met a guy named Mark Levine at a holiday party. Mark was looking for ideas to get rid of a massive pile of razors he had sitting in a...

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2018 / 12 / 13

Stitch Fix's Katrina Lake At The HIBT Summit

Today we have another live episode from the How I Built This Summit, featuring Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix. Katrina sat down with Guy Raz in front of a live audience in San Francisco in October to discuss...

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2018 / 12 / 10

Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter (2017)

In 1977, 23-year-old Jake Carpenter set out to design a better version of the Snurfer, a stand-up sled he loved to ride as a teenager. Working by himself in a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, he sanded and...

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2018 / 12 / 6

Airbnb's Joe Gebbia At The HIBT Summit

Next in our series of episodes from the How I Built This Summit: Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb. Joe sat down with Guy Raz in front of a live audience in San Francisco, and talked about why he and his...

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2018 / 12 / 3

ActOne Group: Janice Bryant Howroyd

In the late 1970s Janice Bryant Howroyd moved to Los Angeles and began temping as a secretary. She soon realized there were many other young people in situations similar to hers. So with $1,500 in her pocket,...

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2018 / 11 / 29

Lyft's John Zimmer At The HIBT Summit

Next up in our series of episodes from the How I Built This Summit: John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft. John sat down with Guy Raz in front of a live audience in San Francisco last month to talk about Lyft's...

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2018 / 11 / 26

Live Episode! Glossier: Emily Weiss

In 2010, while working as a fashion assistant at Vogue, Emily Weiss started a beauty blog called Into The Gloss. She quickly attracted a following of devoted readers hooked on the blog's intimate snapshots of...

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2018 / 11 / 22

Method's Adam Lowry And Eric Ryan At The HIBT Summit

This episode from the How I Built This Summit features Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, co-founders of Method cleaning products. Adam and Eric joined Guy Raz live on stage at the Summit in San Francisco, to talk the...

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2018 / 11 / 19

Whole Foods Market: John Mackey (2018)

In 1978, college drop-out John Mackey scraped together $45,000 to open his first health food store, "Safer Way." A few years later he co-founded Whole Foods Market — and launched an organic food revolution...

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2018 / 11 / 15

Rent The Runway's Jenn Hyman At The HIBT Summit

Our first episode from the How I Built This Summit features Jenn Hyman, co-founder of Rent The Runway, a designer clothing rental service that pulls in $100 million a year. When Jenn sat down with Guy Raz for...

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2018 / 11 / 12

DoorDash: Tony Xu

In 2013, Tony Xu was brainstorming ideas for a business school project when he identified a problem he wanted to solve: food delivery. For most restaurants, it was too costly and inefficient, leaving most of...

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2018 / 11 / 5

Barre3: Sadie Lincoln (2017)

Sadie Lincoln and her husband, Chris, had what seemed like the perfect life – well-paying jobs, a house in the Bay Area, two kids. But one day they decided to sell everything and start a new business called...

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2018 / 10 / 29

Betterment: Jon Stein

When Jon Stein realized he couldn't stand the sight of blood, he gave up the idea of becoming a doctor. Instead, he went into finance, but soon grew restless with "helping banks make more money." So he...

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2018 / 10 / 22

Tempur-Pedic: Bobby Trussell

At age 40, Bobby Trussell's promising career in horse racing hit a dead end. With bills to pay and a family to support, he stumbled across a curious product that turned into a lifeline: squishy-squashy memory...

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2018 / 10 / 15

Rent The Runway: Jenn Hyman (2018)

Jenn Hyman got the idea for Rent the Runway in 2008, after she watched her sister overspend on a new dress rather than wear an old one to a party. Jenn and her business partner built a web site where women...

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2018 / 10 / 8

method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan

In the late 1990s, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan took on the notion that "green doesn't clean" by setting out to make soap that could clean a bathtub without harming the environment. Adam started experimenting...

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2018 / 10 / 1

Cisco Systems & Urban Decay: Sandy Lerner

In the pre-Internet 1970's, Sandy Lerner was part of a loosely-knit group of programmers that was trying to get computers to talk to each other. Eventually, she and Len Bosack launched Cisco Systems, making...

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2018 / 9 / 24

Power Rangers: Haim Saban (2017)

As a refugee growing up in Tel Aviv, Haim Saban remembers not having enough money to eat. As an adult, he hustled his way into the entertainment business, writing theme songs for classic cartoons like...

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2018 / 9 / 17

Bobbi Brown Cosmetics: Bobbi Brown

Bobbi Brown started out as a makeup artist in New York City, but hated the gaudy color palette of the 1980s. She eventually shook up the industry by introducing "nude makeup" with neutral colors and a natural...

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2018 / 9 / 10

Live Episode! New Belgium Brewing Company: Kim Jordan

In 1991 newlyweds Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch took out a second mortgage on their home in Fort Collins, Colorado to start a craft brewery in their basement. Jeff had been inspired by the fruit and...

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2018 / 9 / 3

WeWork: Miguel McKelvey (2018)

In 2007, architect Miguel McKelvey convinced his friend Adam Neumann to share an office space in Brooklyn. That was the beginning of WeWork: a shared workspace for startups and freelancers looking for an...

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2018 / 8 / 27

TRX: Randy Hetrick (2018)

In 1997, Navy SEAL Randy Hetrick was deployed in Southeast Asia, where he was stationed in a remote warehouse for weeks with no way to exercise. So he grabbed an old jujitsu belt, threw it over a door, and...

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2018 / 8 / 20

Angie's List: Angie Hicks (2016)

In 1995, Angie Hicks spent months going door-to-door in Columbus, Ohio, trying to get people to sign up for a new home services referral business. Today, Angie's List is a household name, referring millions...

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2018 / 8 / 13

Live Episode! RXBAR: Peter Rahal

In 2013, Peter Rahal was obsessed with CrossFit, but noticed it didn't sell any snacks to align with its pro-paleo philosophy. So instead of joining his family's business, Rahal Foods, he recruited his friend...

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2018 / 8 / 6

Carol's Daughter: Lisa Price (2018)

Lisa Price worked in television but had a passion for beauty products. At her mother's suggestion, she began selling her homemade moisturizer at a church flea market. Twenty years later, Carol's Daughter is...

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2018 / 7 / 30

Slack & Flickr: Stewart Butterfield

In the early 2000s, Stewart Butterfield tried to build a weird, massively multiplayer online game, but the venture failed. Instead, he and his co-founders used the technology they developed to create the...

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2018 / 7 / 23

Drybar: Alli Webb (2017)

A decade ago, full-time mom Alli Webb noticed a gap in the beauty market: there was no place that just focused on blow-drying hair. Now with more than 100 locations, Drybar is testament to Webb's motto: Focus...

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2018 / 7 / 16

Steve Madden: Steve Madden

Steve Madden fell in love with the shoe business in the 1970's, when he sold platform shoes at a neighborhood store in Long Island, New York. That was in high school. About 15 years later, he struck out on...

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2018 / 7 / 9

Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler (2017)

In 1972, Maureen and Tony Wheeler bought a beat-up car and drove from London "as far east as we could go." They wound up in Australia, by way of Afghanistan, India and Thailand. Their notes on how to travel...

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2018 / 7 / 2

Chicken Salad Chick: Stacy Brown

For many of us, chicken salad is just another sandwich filling, but Stacy Brown turned it into a $75 million business. In 2007, she was a divorced mother of three looking for a way to make ends meet. So she...

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2018 / 6 / 25

Lyft: John Zimmer (2017)

In 2006, John Zimmer was a college student and ride-hailing wasn't yet "a thing." But a class on green cities got him thinking about the glut of underused cars on the road. Eventually, he co-founded Lyft, a...

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2018 / 6 / 18

Lululemon Athletica: Chip Wilson

After noticing more and more people sign up for yoga in the late 1990s, Chip Wilson bet everything on an athletic apparel company aimed toward young professional women. What started as a small pop-up store in...

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2018 / 6 / 11

Honest Tea: Seth Goldman (2017)

In 1997, after going for a long run, Seth Goldman was frustrated with the sugar-filled drinks at the corner market. So he brewed up a beverage in his kitchen, and turned it into Honest Tea. PLUS, for our...

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2018 / 6 / 5

Remembering Kate Spade

We are incredibly saddened by the loss of the brilliant designer and entrepreneur Kate Spade. We are grateful she and her husband Andy Spade shared their story with us in 2017. The origins of the Kate Spade...

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2018 / 6 / 4

Minted: Mariam Naficy

In 2000, Mariam Naficy sold her first company, an online cosmetics store called Eve.com, for $110 million. Several years later, she got the entrepreneurial itch once again: she founded Minted, an online...

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2018 / 5 / 28

Lady Gaga & Atom Factory: Troy Carter (2018)

As a kid, Troy Carter dreamed of being a rapper, but soon discovered he was a better manager than a musician. He took Lady Gaga from obscurity to stardom – helping shape both her music and her brand. Then he...

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2018 / 5 / 21

Bob's Red Mill: Bob Moore

In the 1960s, Bob Moore read a book about an old grain mill and was inspired to start his own. Using giant quartz stones from the 19th century, he made dozens of different cereals and flours, positioning his...

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2018 / 5 / 14

Real Estate Mogul: Barbara Corcoran (2017)

Barbara Corcoran grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family in Jersey – with nine brothers and sisters. But she used her charisma to conquer the streets of Manhattan and build the real estate company,...

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2018 / 5 / 7

Stripe: Patrick and John Collison

Brothers Patrick and John Collison founded and sold their first company before they turned 20. They created software to help eBay users manage inventory online, which set them on a path to help make...

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2018 / 4 / 30

Panera Bread/Au Bon Pain: Ron Shaich

In the early 1980s, Ron Shaich bought a small, struggling Boston bakery chain called Au Bon Pain, and built it out to 250 locations nationwide. Ron then saw an opportunity to build something even bigger:...

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2018 / 4 / 23

Dermalogica: Jane Wurwand (2016)

Jane Wurwand moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase and a beauty school diploma. She started what would become Dermalogica, an international beauty empire that set the standard for skin care. PLUS in our...

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2018 / 4 / 16

Wayfair: Niraj Shah & Steve Conine

After selling their first small business and shuttering their second, former college roommates Niraj Shah and Steve Conine thought about getting "normal" jobs. But in the early 2000s, they stumbled across an...

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2018 / 4 / 9

FUBU: Daymond John

Daymond John grew up during the 1980s in the heart of hip hop culture: Hollis, Queens. In his early 20s, he was working at Red Lobster and trying to figure out how to start a business. Eventually, he stumbled...

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2018 / 4 / 2

Stitch Fix: Katrina Lake

In 2010, Katrina Lake recruited 20 friends for an experiment: she wanted to see if she could choose clothes for them that accurately matched their style and personality. That idea sparked Stitch Fix, an...

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2018 / 3 / 26

Atari & Chuck E. Cheese's: Nolan Bushnell (2017)

Before he turned 40, Nolan Bushnell founded two brands that permanently shaped the way Americans amuse themselves: the iconic video game system Atari, and the frenetic family restaurant Chuck E. Cheese's....

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2018 / 3 / 19

LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken

In 2000, Lara Merriken was 32, recently divorced, and without a job when she decided to make energy bars by mixing cherries, dates, and almonds in her Cuisinart. Eventually, she perfected the recipe and...

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2018 / 3 / 12

The Knot: Carley Roney & David Liu

When Carley Roney and David Liu got married, they had a seat-of-the-pants celebration on a sweltering Washington rooftop. They never planned to go into the wedding business, but soon saw an opportunity in the...

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2018 / 3 / 5

1-800-GOT-JUNK?: Brian Scudamore (2018)

Brian Scudamore didn't dream of a life hauling away other people's trash. But when he needed to pay for college, he bought a $700 pickup truck, painted his phone number on the side, and started hauling. Now...

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2018 / 2 / 28

Live Episode! Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams: Jeni Britton Bauer

Even as a kid, Jeni Britton Bauer knew she was going to start a business one day. But she had no idea that her love for perfume would inspire her to start experimenting with ice cream. After years of...

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2018 / 2 / 26

Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales

During the dot com boom of the late 1990s, Jimmy Wales was running an internet search company. That's when he began to experiment with the idea of an online encyclopedia. In 2001, Wales launched Wikipedia, a...

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2018 / 2 / 19

Warby Parker: Dave Gilboa & Neil Blumenthal (2016)

In 2008, it was nearly impossible to buy a fashionable, affordable pair of glasses online. That simple frustration inspired the idea behind Warby Parker – and disrupted the eyewear industry. PLUS for our...

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2018 / 2 / 12

Dyson: James Dyson

In 1979, James Dyson had an idea for a new vacuum cleaner — one that didn't use bags. It took him five years to perfect the design, building more than 5,000 prototypes in his backyard shed. He then tried to...

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2018 / 2 / 5

Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016)

Melissa and Doug Bernstein's first success was a wooden 'fuzzy puzzle' of farm animals. Today, Melissa & Doug makes over 2,000 kinds of toys and serves as an antidote to the rise of digital toys. PLUS for our...

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2018 / 1 / 29

Dell Computers: Michael Dell

Before it became fashionable to start a tech company in your dorm room, Michael Dell did exactly that. In 1983, he began selling upgrade kits for PC's out of his dorm at UT Austin. A few months later he gave...

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2018 / 1 / 22

Serial Entrepreneur: Marcia Kilgore

After high school, Marcia Kilgore moved to New York City with $300 in her pocket and no real plan. One step at a time, she became a successful serial entrepreneur. First, she used her high school bodybuilding...

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2018 / 1 / 15

LinkedIn: Reid Hoffman

In the early 1990s, Reid Hoffman had a vision for the future of the Internet: people would connect through social networks using their real names, and their online lives would be completely merged with their...

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2018 / 1 / 8

Kate Spade: Kate & Andy Spade (2017)

We're hard at work planning our next live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Kate Spade. A 1991 conversation at a Mexican restaurant led Kate & Andy Spade to ask, "What's missing in...

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2018 / 1 / 1

Clif Bar: Gary Erickson (2018)

We're taking a break for the holidays, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Clif Bar. Gary Erickson asked his mom, "Can you make a cookie without butter, sugar or oil?" The result was an energy...

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2017 / 12 / 28

Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank

In 1978, Arthur Blank and his business partner Bernie Marcus were running a successful chain of hardware stores called Handy Dan – but then, they were unexpectedly fired. The next year, they conceived and...

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2017 / 12 / 25

Patagonia: Yvon Chouinard (2016)

We're taking a break for the holidays, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Patagonia. In 1973, Yvon Chouinard started the company to make climbing gear he couldn't find elsewhere. Over decades...

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2017 / 12 / 18

LearnVest: Alexa von Tobel

When Alexa von Tobel was just 14, her father passed away unexpectedly, leaving her mother to manage the family's finances. The tragedy made Alexa determined to understand money – and help others plan for...

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2017 / 12 / 14

Live Episode! Black Entertainment Television: Robert Johnson

In 1979, Robert Johnson was a lobbyist for the burgeoning cable industry. That's when he got an idea for a channel called Black Entertainment Television. He started small, just a few hours of programming a...

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2017 / 12 / 11

Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell

In 1970, Tom Chappell took out a $5000 loan to launch a natural products company called Tom's of Maine. Working out of a warehouse in Kennebunk, Maine, he created soaps, shampoos, and toothpaste free from...

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2017 / 12 / 4

Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Zumba. Zumba began as a mistake: aerobics teacher Beto Perez brought the wrong music to class, then...

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2017 / 11 / 27

Framebridge: Susan Tynan

Susan Tynan's experience in the ephemeral e-market of LivingSocial made her want to start a business that she could touch and feel. She got her idea after experiencing sticker shock at her local framing...

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2017 / 11 / 20

Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield

In the mid-1970s two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield decided to open an ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont. Their quirky little shop packaged and sold unusual flavors like Honey Coffee,...

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2017 / 11 / 13

Instagram: Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live shows, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Instagram. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched their photo-sharing app with a server that crashed...

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2017 / 11 / 6

Eileen Fisher: Eileen Fisher

In 1983, Eileen Fisher signed up for a fashion trade show with no experience, no garments, no patterns or sketches – nothing but a few ideas for a women's clothing line focused on simplicity. Within three...

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2017 / 10 / 30

Chipotle: Steve Ells

In 1992, Steve Ells was a classically trained chef working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. But after eating a burrito at a local taqueria, he got an idea: to sell burritos and earn enough money to...

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2017 / 10 / 23

Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter

In 1977, 23-year-old Jake Carpenter set out to design a better version of the Snurfer, a stand-up sled he loved to ride as a teenager. Working by himself in a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, he sanded and...

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2017 / 10 / 16

Bumble: Whitney Wolfe

At age 22, Whitney Wolfe helped launch Tinder, one of the world's most popular dating apps. But a few years later, she left Tinder and filed a lawsuit against the company alleging sexual harassment. The...

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2017 / 10 / 9

Teach For America: Wendy Kopp

In 1989, college senior Wendy Kopp was trying to figure out how to improve American public schools. For her senior thesis, she proposed creating a national teaching corps that would recruit recent college...

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2017 / 10 / 2

Stonyfield Yogurt: Gary Hirshberg

In 1983, two hippie farmers decided to sell homemade organic yogurt to help raise money for their educational farm in New Hampshire. As the enterprise grew into a business, it faced one near-death experience...

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2017 / 9 / 28

Live Episode! Starbucks: Howard Schultz

During his first visit to Seattle in 1981, Howard Schultz walked into a little coffee bean shop called Starbucks and fell in love with it. A few years later, he bought the six-store chain for almost 4 million...

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2017 / 9 / 25

Southwest Airlines: Herb Kelleher (2016)

We're hard at work planning more live shows, so we bring you one of our favorites from last year: Southwest Airlines. In 1968, competitors sued to keep Herb Kelleher's new airline grounded. After a 3-year...

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2017 / 9 / 18

The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman

Years after his father created a hit singing group of anthropomorphic rodents called The Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. made it his mission to revive his dad's beloved characters. Over the last 40 years,...

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2017 / 9 / 11

Barre3: Sadie Lincoln

Sadie Lincoln and her husband, Chris, had what seemed like the perfect life – well-paying jobs, a house in the Bay Area, two kids. But one day they decided to sell everything and start a new business called...

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2017 / 9 / 4

VICE: Suroosh Alvi (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: VICE. Suroosh Alvi was a recovering addict when he started a scrappy underground magazine in Montreal. It...

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2017 / 8 / 31

Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman

With $12,000 and a mascot named Snoo, two former college roommates designed a web site they hoped would become "the front page of the Internet." Today, despite growing pains, personal issues and persistent...

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2017 / 8 / 28

Airbnb: Joe Gebbia (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Airbnb. A chance encounter with a stranger gave Joe Gebbia an idea to help pay his rent. That idea grew...

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2017 / 8 / 21

Edible Arrangements: Tariq Farid

When Tariq Farid was 12, he emigrated from Pakistan to the U.S. – and quickly found a job at a local flower shop. Eventually he opened his own shop, which eventually led to the crazy idea to make flower...

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2017 / 8 / 14

Radio One: Cathy Hughes (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live show, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Radio One. As a kid, Cathy Hughes practiced her DJ routine while her siblings banged on the bathroom door....

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2017 / 8 / 7

Rent The Runway: Jenn Hyman

Jenn Hyman got the idea for Rent the Runway in 2008, after she watched her sister overspend on a new dress rather than wear an old one to a party. Jenn and her business partner built a web site where women...

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2017 / 7 / 31

Kickstarter: Perry Chen

In the early 2000s, Perry Chen was trying to put on a concert in New Orleans when he thought, what if fans could fund this in advance? His idea didn't work at the time, but he and his co-founders spent the...

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2017 / 7 / 27

Live Episode! BuzzFeed: Jonah Peretti

In 2001, when most of us had no idea what it meant to "go viral," Jonah Peretti shared an email prank among his friends — and saw it spread to millions. That began his fascination with how information...

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2017 / 7 / 24

Samuel Adams: Jim Koch (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live shows, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Samuel Adams. In 1984, Jim Koch felt suffocated by his cushy but boring corporate job. So he left, dusted...

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2017 / 7 / 17

Aden + Anais: Raegan Moya-Jones

Cotton muslin baby blankets are commonplace in Australia, where Raegan Moya-Jones grew up. But when she started a new life and family in NYC, she couldn't find them anywhere. She was sure Americans would love...

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2017 / 7 / 10

Rolling Stone: Jann Wenner

After being involved in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, Jann Wenner wanted to start a publication to capture the exploding counterculture scene of the 1960s. The result was Rolling Stone, a gritty music...

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2017 / 7 / 3

Spanx: Sara Blakely (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live shows, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Spanx. At 27, Sara Blakely was selling fax machines and desperate to reinvent her life. So she came up...

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2017 / 6 / 26

TRX: Randy Hetrick

In 1997, Navy SEAL Randy Hetrick was deployed in Southeast Asia, where he was stationed in a remote warehouse for weeks with no way to exercise. So he grabbed an old jujitsu belt, threw it over a door, and...

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2017 / 6 / 19

WeWork: Miguel McKelvey

In 2007, architect Miguel McKelvey convinced his friend Adam Neumann to share an office space in Brooklyn. That was the beginning of WeWork: a shared workspace for startups and freelancers looking for an...

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2017 / 6 / 12

Carol's Daughter: Lisa Price

Lisa Price worked in television but had a passion for beauty products. At her mother's suggestion, she began selling her homemade moisturizer at a church flea market. Twenty years later, Carol's Daughter is...

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2017 / 6 / 5

Five Guys: Jerry Murrell

Jerry Murrell's mother used to tell him, you can always make money if you know how to make a good burger. In 1986 — after failing at a number of business ideas — Murrell opened a tiny burger joint in Northern...

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2017 / 5 / 29

TOMS: Blake Mycoskie

Blake Mycoskie started and sold four businesses before age 30. But only in Argentina did he discover the idea he'd want to pursue long term. After seeing a shoe drive for children, he came up with TOMS — part...

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2017 / 5 / 22

Compaq Computers: Rod Canion

In 1981, engineer Rod Canion left Texas Instruments and co-founded Compaq, which created the first IBM-compatible personal computer. This opened the door to an entire industry of PCs that could run the same...

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2017 / 5 / 15

Whole Foods Market: John Mackey

In 1978, college drop-out John Mackey scraped together $45,000 to open his first health food store, "Safer Way." A few years later he co-founded Whole Foods Market — and launched an organic food revolution...

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2017 / 5 / 8

Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler

In 1972, Maureen and Tony Wheeler bought a beat-up car and drove from London "as far east as we could go." They wound up in Australia, by way of Afghanistan, India and Thailand. Their notes on how to travel...

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2017 / 5 / 1

Lady Gaga & Atom Factory: Troy Carter

As a kid, Troy Carter dreamed of being a rapper, but soon discovered he was a better manager than a musician. He took Lady Gaga from obscurity to stardom – helping shape both her music and her brand. Then he...

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2017 / 4 / 24

Real Estate Mogul: Barbara Corcoran

Barbara Corcoran grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family in Jersey – with nine brothers and sisters. But she used her charisma to conquer the streets of Manhattan and build the real estate company,...

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2017 / 4 / 17

1-800-GOT-JUNK?: Brian Scudamore

Brian Scudamore didn't dream of a life hauling away other people's trash. But when he needed to pay for college, he bought a $700 pickup truck, painted his phone number on the side, and started hauling. Now...

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2017 / 4 / 10

Instacart: Apoorva Mehta

App developer Apoorva Mehta almost gave up on being an entrepreneur until he figured out what he really wanted to do: find a hassle-free way to buy groceries. Five years after launch, the grocery delivery app...

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2017 / 4 / 3

AOL: Steve Case

When Steve Case started out in the tech business in the mid-80s, the idea of the internet — as we think of it today — didn't exist. But with AOL, Case saw an opportunity to connect millions of people, through...

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2017 / 3 / 27

Power Rangers: Haim Saban

As a refugee growing up in Tel Aviv, Haim Saban remembers not having enough money to eat. As an adult, he hustled his way into the entertainment business, writing theme songs for classic cartoons like...

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2017 / 3 / 20

Kendra Scott: Kendra Scott

Ever since she was a little girl playing dress-up in her aunt's closet, Kendra Scott loved fashion. Her first business was a hat shop, which she started at 19 – it failed. A few years later, she started a...

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2017 / 3 / 13

5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava

After living as a monk in India and running a plastics company in Florida, Manoj Bhargava decided to launch something new: a one-shot energy drink in a bright, battery-shaped bottle. Today, 5-Hour ENERGY is...

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2017 / 3 / 6

Chesapeake Bay Candle: Mei Xu

Twenty-five years ago, when Mei Xu emigrated from China to the U.S., she loved going to Bloomingdale's to gaze at their housewares. She eventually started making candles in her basement with Campbell's Soup...

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2017 / 2 / 27

Atari & Chuck E. Cheese's: Nolan Bushnell

Before he turned 40, Nolan Bushnell founded two brands that permanently shaped the way Americans amuse themselves: the iconic video game system Atari, and the frenetic family restaurant Chuck E....

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2017 / 2 / 20

Crate & Barrel: Gordon Segal

In 1962, Gordon Segal — with his wife Carole — opened a scrappy Chicago shop called Crate & Barrel. That store turned into a housewares empire that has shaped the way Americans furnish their homes. See...

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2017 / 2 / 16

Live Episode! Beyond Meat: Ethan Brown

As founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown believes he can turn peas and lentils into protein that tastes — and feels – exactly like beef and chicken. He says they're not quite there yet, but after 8...

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2017 / 2 / 13

Lyft: John Zimmer

Ridesharing wasn't a thing 12 years ago when John Zimmer was in college. But a class on green cities got him thinking about the glut of underused cars on the road, and eventually led him to co-found Lyft, a...

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2017 / 2 / 6

Kate Spade: Kate & Andy Spade

A 1991 conversation at a Mexican restaurant led Kate & Andy Spade to ask, "What's missing in designer handbags?" Kate's answer was a simple modern-shaped handbag that launched the iconic fashion brand: Kate...

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2017 / 1 / 30

Virgin: Richard Branson

Richard Branson took a record shop and built it into a label, a bank, an airline, space tourism, and 200 other businesses — all under the name Virgin. But the serial entrepreneur has also had his share of...

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2017 / 1 / 23

Zappos: Tony Hsieh

Computer scientist Tony Hsieh made millions off the dot-com boom. But he didn't make his mark until he built Zappos — a customer service company that "happens to sell shoes." Now Zappos is worth over a...

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2017 / 1 / 16

Honest Tea: Seth Goldman

In 1997, after going for a long run, Seth Goldman was frustrated with the sugar-filled drinks at the corner market. So he brewed up a beverage in his kitchen, and turned it into Honest Tea. See Privacy...

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2017 / 1 / 9

Drybar: Alli Webb

A decade ago, full-time mom Alli Webb noticed a gap in the beauty market: there was nowhere that just focused on blow-drying hair. Now with 70 locations, Drybar is testament to Webb's motto: Focus on one...

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2017 / 1 / 2

Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman

Zumba began as a mistake: aerobics teacher Beto Perez brought the wrong music to class, then improvised a dance routine to go with it. For his students, it was more fun than work — and it eventually grew into...

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2016 / 12 / 26

Warby Parker: Dave Gilboa & Neil Blumenthal

In 2008, it was nearly impossible to buy a fashionable, affordable pair of glasses online. That simple frustration inspired the idea behind Warby Parker – and disrupted the eyewear industry. See Privacy...

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2016 / 12 / 19

Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein

Melissa and Doug Bernstein's first success was a wooden 'fuzzy puzzle' of farm animals. Today, Melissa & Doug makes over 2,000 kinds of toys and serves as an antidote to the rise of digital toys. See Privacy...

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2016 / 12 / 12

Patagonia: Yvon Chouinard

In 1973, Yvon Chouinard started Patagonia to make climbing gear he couldn't find elsewhere. Over decades of growth, he has implemented a unique philosophy about business, leadership and profit. See Privacy...

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2016 / 12 / 5

Serial Entrepreneur: Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban made millions off of tech startups, then billions off of stocks — and later went on to buy and revive the Dallas Mavericks. He has come to define the persona of the serial entrepreneur. See...

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2016 / 11 / 28

Angie's List: Angie Hicks

In 1996, Angie Hicks spent hours reading contractor reviews to members over the phone. Today, the online review and referral service, Angie's List, is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. See...

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2016 / 11 / 21

Southwest Airlines: Herb Kelleher

In 1968, competitors sued to keep Herb Kelleher's new airline grounded. After a 3-year court fight, the first plane took off from Dallas. Today Southwest Airlines operates nearly 4,000 flights a day. See...

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2016 / 11 / 14

Celebrity Chef: José Andrés

As a kid, José Andrés tended fires for his father's backyard paella cookouts. Later, he trained with the best Spanish chefs, and began building a restaurant empire that would transform the way many Americans...

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2016 / 11 / 7

Music Mogul: L.A. Reid

L.A. Reid began his music career as a drummer. Then he co-founded LaFace Records, discovering dozens of future pop superstars. Reid is now one of the most influential executives in the music industry. See...

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2016 / 10 / 31

Samuel Adams: Jim Koch

In 1984, Jim Koch felt suffocated by his cushy but boring corporate job. So he left, dusted off an old family beer recipe, started Sam Adams, and helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America. See...

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2016 / 10 / 24

Dermalogica: Jane Wurwand

Jane Wurwand moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase and a beauty school diploma. She started what would become Dermalogica, an international beauty empire that set the standard for skin care. See Privacy...

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2016 / 10 / 17

Airbnb: Joe Gebbia

A chance encounter with a stranger gave Joe Gebbia an idea to help pay his rent. That idea turned into Airbnb — a company that now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world. See Privacy Policy...

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2016 / 10 / 10

VICE: Suroosh Alvi

Suroosh Alvi was a recovering addict when he started a scrappy underground magazine in Montreal. It grew into VICE Media — a multi-billion dollar company that has shaken up the world of journalism. See...

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2016 / 10 / 3

Clif Bar: Gary Erickson

Gary Erickson asked his mom, "Can you make a cookie without butter, sugar or oil?" The result was Clif Bar, an energy bar named after his dad — now one of the most popular energy bars in the U.S. See Privacy...

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2016 / 9 / 26

Radio One: Cathy Hughes

As a kid, Cathy Hughes practiced her DJ routine while her siblings banged on the bathroom door. As an adult, she founded Radio One, the country's largest African-American owned broadcasting company. See...

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2016 / 9 / 19

Instagram: Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched their photo-sharing app with a server that crashed every other hour. Despite a chaotic start, Instagram became one of the most popular apps in the world. See Privacy...

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2016 / 9 / 12

Spanx: Sara Blakely

At 27, Sara Blakely was selling fax machines and desperate to reinvent her life. So she came up with Spanx — hosiery that eliminates panty lines — and set to work building her business. See Privacy Policy at...

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2016 / 9 / 2

Coming Soon: How I Built This

On September 12, NPR launches a new podcast, How I Built This, hosted by Guy Raz. The show features innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.See Privacy Policy at...

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