Today’s guest is Steve Blank, an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. Steve is widely regarded as the father of modern entrepreneurship. Prior to academia, Steve’s career spanned eight different startups. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the go...
Sep 04, 2024•56 min
Today’s guest is Jessica Rolph, cofounder and CEO of Lovevery , a subscription brand that sells early-childhood development play kits and solutions. To date, Jessica has raised over $132 million for Lovevery from top-tier investors, including, TCG, Google Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Lovevery has 350,000+ active subscribers. It has been named one of Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies" and has been recognized on TIME's list of "Best Inventions"....
Jun 23, 2024•44 min
Today’s guest is Brian Lee, a rock-star serial entrepreneur. Brian has cofounded several companies worth over a billion dollars each, such as Legalzoom with Robert Shapiro, The Honest Company with Jessica Alba, ShoeDazzle with Kim Kardashian and Arena Club with baseball legend Derek Jeter. Brian is also the cofounder and managing partner of BAM Ventures , an early-stage VC firm. Brian wrote the first investment check into Honey, which went on to sell to PayPal for $4B. Brian was formerly an atto...
Jun 07, 2024•46 min
Today’s guest is Magnus Grimeland, founder and CEO of Antler , one of the world’s largest day zero investor. Antler’s pre-seed strategy canvasses 27 countries, more than 1000+ portfolio companies, 8,000+ founders, and over 100,000 annual applications. Magnus previously co-founded Zalora , Southeast Asia’s largest fashion e-commerce company. It was later acquired by Global Fashion Group (GFG), where Magnus served as COO and Managing Director, rolling out the firm’s marketplace across 26 countries...
May 30, 2024•44 min
Today’s guest is Emily Hikade, founder and CEO of the luxury sleepwear brand Petite Plume . Emily launched Petite Plume in 2015 and it has been profitable since its first year. The company has also doubled its revenue every year since launch, and it has reached almost $100 million in revenue. Petite Plume pajamas are coveted by the Royal Family, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anderson Cooper, Miranda Kerr, and Kourtney Kardashian, just to name a few. Prior to founding Petite Plume, Emily worked for the CIA as...
May 20, 2024•44 min
Today's guest is Emmanuel Straschnov, founder and co-CEO of Bubble , a platform that empowers users to create powerful web apps without writing code. To date, Emmanuel has raised over $106 million for the company from the likes of Insight Partners, SignalFire, and Box Group, to name a few. In this episode, we dive into: How Emmanuel started Bubble with Josh What makes a great cofounder relationship The early days of Bubble Why it took Emmanuel 5 years to hire the first employee How Emmanuel boot...
May 12, 2024•47 min
Today’s guest is Larry Gadea, founder and CEO of Envoy . Envoy is a workplace platform that helps companies welcome visitors, keep employees safe, book desks and conference rooms, and manage deliveries in over 16,000 locations around the globe. To date, Larry has raised over $170 million for Envoy from a16z, Menlo Ventures, Brookfield Growth, Marc Benioff, Elad Gil to name a few. Prior to Envoy, Larry started his career as a software engineer at 17, having been recruited by Google out of high sc...
Apr 23, 2024•54 min
Today's guest is Daniel Goleman , one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion. Daniel is the author of Emotional Intelligence , a blockbuster book that sold more than 5 million copies in about 40 languages. Apart from his writing on emotional intelligence, Daniel has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, eco-literacy and the ecological crisis. His latest book, Optimal, shows why emotional intelligen...
Apr 09, 2024•40 min
Today’s guest is Liz Elting , cofounder and former CEO of TransPerfect , the world’s largest language solutions company, with over $1.1 billion in revenue and offices in more than 100 cities worldwide. In 2018, Liz left TransPerfect after being there for 26 years and now she’s running Elizabeth Elting Foundation , which advances economic social and political equality for women and marginalized people. Liz received the 2019 Charles Waldo Haskins Award for business and public service from NYU’s St...
Jan 26, 2024•47 min
Today’s guest is Isabelle Freidheim , founder and managing partner of Athena Capital , a technology fund that focuses on bringing high-performing, mission-driven companies to the market. Isabelle is the youngest female chairman of a publicly traded company in the U.S. Under her leadership, Athena has raised more than $1.2 billion. Before founding Athena Capital, Isabelle co-founded and acted as CEO of Magnifi, the AI and machine-learning fintech company. Isabelle led Magnifi's early growth as on...
Jan 10, 2024•43 min
Today’s guest is Doug Conant , an internationally respected business leader. Doug served as the President of Nabisco from 1999-2001, served a decade as President and CEO of The Campbell Soup Company and then spent three years as Chairman of Avon Products . In 2011 he founded ConantLeadership, a consulting company focused on championing leadership that works in the 21st century. Doug is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a To...
Dec 22, 2023•46 min
Today’s guest is Hristo Borisov, cofounder and CEO at Payhawk , a financial system that combines credit cards, payments, expenses, and cash into one integrated experience. Hristo has raised over $236 million with Payhawk from Lightspeed Ventures, Greenoaks, QED investors, and many more. Today, Payhawk is valued at US$1 billion, making it the first Bulgarian startup to achieve Unicorn status. Prior to founding Payhawk, Hristo worked at Telerik as software engineer and a product manager. In this e...
Nov 20, 2023•38 min
Today’s guest is Hap Klopp, founder and former CEO of The North Face , one of the world's biggest apparel companies. Hap was CEO of The North Face for 20 years. During that time The North Face was honored with many awards for being the best managed company in its industry, including being lauded by Business Week Magazine for providing one of the highest quality products of any company in the United States. Hap is also an author of two highly acclaimed books "Conquering The North Face" and “ Almo...
Nov 17, 2023•43 min
Today's guest is Gary Klein , a cognitive psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on human decision making. He has spent the last 50 years studying how and why people make the decisions they do. He is the author of six books, including the popular Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights ; Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. His latest book "Snapshots of the Mind " is available now. Gary pioneered the naturalistic decision-making movement and is the fou...
Sep 20, 2023•51 min
Today’s guest is Rahul Vohra, founder and CEO of Superhuman , the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from the ground up creating the fastest email experience ever made. To date, Rahul has raised over $108 million from some of the best in the business including a16z, IVP, First Round, Tiger Global Management and from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Will Smith and Arianna Huffington. Rahul previously founded Rapportive, a much-loved product that added social profiles to Gmail; it became the fi...
Aug 22, 2023•44 min
Today’s guest is Yoni Assia , cofounder and CEO of eToro , the world’s largest social investment network. Yoni has raised over $412 million with eToro from ION group, SoftBank, Velvet Sea Ventures, Spark Capital and many more. Prior to founding eToro, Yoni was the cofounder of CDRIDE, an on-ride video technology company that was acquired by Kodak in 2006. Yoni was included by Financial News in its prestigious Fintech 40 ranking and by City A.M. as a Fintech 100 top influencer and by Fortune busi...
Aug 08, 2023•40 min
Today’s guest is Bill George , one of the world’s best-known experts on leadership. Bill was the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest medical technology company Medtronic, which grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion in market cap, under Bill’s leadership. After working 13 years at Medtronic, he then became a professor at Harvard Business School, where he taught Leadership for over 19 years. Bill has written nine books; most notably, True North and now True North, Emerging Leader Edition . Alo...
Jul 14, 2023•45 min
Today’s guest is Jason Fried, one of the pioneers in software as a service (SaaS). Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals , makers of Basecamp and HEY . He’s also the author of the hugely bestselling book “ Rework ”. In this episode, Jason talks about his journey through building 37Signals, scaling a company without external funding and the number one thing he looks for when recruiting and hiring remote workers. Jason packs quite a punch in this interview and you are going to get a ton of ...
Jun 29, 2023•57 min
Today’s guest is Luca Ferrari, cofounder and CEO of Bending Spoons , one of the world's largest mobile app developers. The company’s apps are currently being used by more than 100 million people every month, with over 500 million app downloads to date. Its apps include popular video editing tool Splice , AI based photo editor Remini and the prominent note-taking app Evernote . Luca has raised over $600 million from Banco BPM, Intesa Sanpaolo, Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper, Eric Schmidt and many ...
May 17, 2023•41 min
Today’s guest is Hubert Palan, who is the founder and CEO of Productboard , a product management system that enables teams to get the right products to market faster. Since 2015, Productboard has raised over $262 million from Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Index to name a few. Today, ProductBoard is valued at US$1.725 billion, making it the second Czech startup to achieve Unicorn status. Hubert was previously the VP of product management at GoodData, where he played an instrumental role in their scal...
Apr 05, 2023•43 min
Today’s guest is John Kim , who is the co-founder and CEO of Sendbird , the number 1 in app chat API. Sendbird latest funding round priced the company at $1.05 billion and to date, John has raised over $220 million with Sendbird from ICONIQ, Tiger Global, SoftBank and many more. Prior to founding Sendbird, John was the founder of Paprika Lab, a social gaming company that was acquired by Japanese gaming firm GREE in 2012 and John was South Korea’s all time no.1 pro gamer in Unreal Tournament. In ...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr
Today’s guest is BJ Fogg , one of the world’s most renowned experts in forming new habits. BJ is a behavior scientist who founded and directs the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University . On today's episode, BJ shares his breakthrough method that will help you design your habits and make them stick. Whether you want to de-stress, or be more productive - you can apply the Tiny Habits framework to your life immediately. Start small and get big results! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...
Mar 09, 2023•50 min
Today’s guest is Michael Gronager, who is the co-founder and CEO of Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform. Chainalysis latest funding round priced the company at a reported $8.6 billion in May 2022 and to date, Michael has raised over $537 million for the company from the likes of Accel, Addition, Benchmark, GIC and more. Prior to founding Chainalysis, Michael was the co-founder and COO of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. In this episode, we talk about Michael entre...
Feb 28, 2023•43 min
Today’s guest is Ivan Misner, who is the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. Ivan is also known as the “Godfather of Networking” and is considered one of the top networking experts in the world. Ivan is also a New York Times best-selling author who has written 27 books. Among his many awards, he has been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Red Cross and has been the recipient of the John C. Maxwell Leadership Award. In this episod...
Jan 13, 2023•46 min
Today’s guest is Sam Zaid, who is CEO and cofounder of Getaround, the world’s first connected carsharing marketplace. It operates in more than 1000 cities across the United States and Europe. To date, Sam has raised over $600 million for Getaround from some of the best including Softbank, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Partners, and General Catalyst to name a few. Before co-founding Getaround, Sam founded Apption, an enterprise software consultancy, and 360pi, a retail price intelligence platform that...
Dec 08, 2022•39 min•Ep. 20
Today’s guest is Kim Scott, who is the author of the revolutionary New York Times bestsellers Radical Candor and Just Work. She co-founded two companies that help organizations put the ideas in her books into practice. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. Kim previously held leadership roles at Apple and Google. Earlier in her career Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. On this episode, Kim talks about ...
Nov 19, 2022•52 min•Ep. 19
Phil Libin is on the podcast this week. Phil is a software engineer turned serial entrepreneur. He immigrated to the United States as a child from the Soviet Union and went on to build the popular note-taking app Evernote. The company grew to have more than 150 million users and a $1 billion valuation while Phil served as CEO, a position he stepped down from in 2015. He then took a detour as a venture capitalist at General Catalyst. Now he’s a founder again. He’s the CEO of Mmhmm, a video softwa...
Nov 03, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Joining us on Luminate this week is Felix Ohswald. Felix is the Co-Founder and CEO of GoStudent, Europe’s first Edtech unicorn. GoStudent is a company that provides tailored, high quality video-based tuition for students of all school levels and for all school subjects. To date, Felix has raised over $600 million with GoStudent from some of the best including Softbank, Tencent, Dragoneer and Prosus. GoStudent’s latest round valued them at a reported $3.4 billion. Felix is also an investor on TV ...
Oct 10, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Today, I’m excited to be here with Jim McKelvey, he’s the co-founder of Square along with Jack Dorsey. Square is a payment processing company that lets anyone accept credit cards. Square went public in 2015 and the company is worth over $100 billion! In December 2021, Square changed its name to Block. In 2009, Jim designed a card reader, which, in 2011, was inducted in the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to Square, Jim has founded several other companies such as Visibly, LaunchCode and Third D...
Sep 18, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Paul English is on the podcast this week. Paul is a serial entrepreneur, since high school he has founded 8 companies and 4 philanthropies ranging from gaming to fintech to GetHuman, a site that helps users access human customer support. Paul is best known for disrupting the travel industry with online travel search engine Kayak, which he sold to Priceline in 2012 for $1.8 billion. If you have any inkling of starting your own business, you wanna listen closely to Paul, because in this conversati...
Aug 31, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 14
