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 aftershocks of Covid. His fist luggage company, Tumi, was inspired by his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru. Charlie began by importing hand-crafted leather duffels from South America, but quickly pivoted into more durable and distinctive ballistic nylon bags. Business travelers loved them,...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 430
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 pair of creators who create content for other creators. (We know, pretty meta.) The creator economy barely existed a decade ago, but has quickly become a multi-billion dollar industry with a massive global reach. Colin and Samir discuss their 10-year business journey, and share insights on ho...
Jul 21, 2022•39 min•Ep. 429
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 something Emmett instinctively understood: he and his co-founder Justin Kan had been playing them together since they were kids. Emmett built a user base on Twitch by asking streamers exactly what they wanted and giving it to them: revenue opportunities, streamer fan clubs, customizable emo...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 428
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 as a way to keep track of her spending habits and get her financial life back on track. She called it “The Financial Diet.” This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy talks with Chelsea about how she turned that blog into the multimedia personal finance business it is today. Plus, Chelsea shares...
Jul 14, 2022•39 min•Ep. 427
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 TaskRabbit, an online errand service that matches users with “taskers” to do deliveries and other chores. When Leah left her IBM job to start coding the service, the peer-to-peer economy was still in its infancy. But she saw that three important developments—mobile, location services, and social media—were ...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 426
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 adult traveling the country with the Obama for America campaign, Donnel saw countless homes and apartments wasting power and jeopardizing resident safety because of dated infrastructure. He founded BlocPower in 2014 to address this precise problem, focusing on low-income communities so often...
Jul 07, 2022•47 min•Ep. 425
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 gave Shazi her initial idea: why not make organic pureed baby food, and sell it frozen instead of jarred? People told her she was crazy to take on Gerber, but she convinced dozens of friends and family to invest in Happy Baby. Nearly 20 years later, the brand is known as Happy Family Organic...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 424
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 addition to reducing emissions, we also need to remove 6 to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by 2050. This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy talks with Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and CEO of Climeworks. They discuss how Jan and his team built the world’s larges...
Jun 30, 2022•38 min•Ep. 423
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 books, and creates products you never knew you needed, like all-day pajamas and “hands high” jerseys that show the name of your favorite team in the armpit. As a kid, Jimmy was obsessed with perfecting his impressions of Richard Pryor and Steve Martin, with the goal of one day starring on Saturd...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 422
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 videos they were creating for fun would eventually lead to full-fledged careers co-founding and leading their own media company. But building to where they are now, with over 2 million subscribers and counting, didn’t exactly come with a blueprint… This week on How I Built This Lab, Kelsey and B...
Jun 23, 2022•43 min•Ep. 421
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 building companies – so much so that he actually fell into a dark place after leaving PayPal. He didn’t fully find himself until years later, when he rediscovered his passion for the “hard, valuable, fun” problems of fintech. Now, Max runs another billion-dollar company: Affirm, a “buy now, pay late...
Jun 20, 2022•58 min•Ep. 420
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 until now. This week on How I Built This Lab, Mark joins Guy to talk about what he’s been up to since he was last on the show. They discuss his interest in NFTs and how his latest business, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, is looking to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry. Listen to Mark...
Jun 16, 2022•34 min•Ep. 419
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 PayPal Mafia—and Max Levchin was one of the leaders. A computer genius from Soviet Ukraine, Max joined Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and others as they grew PayPal into a massively successful online payment service. Along the way, they encountered almost every start-up challenge imaginabl...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 418
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 person: Sundar Pichai. This track record in product development ultimately landed Sundar the CEO role at one of the biggest, most innovative companies in the world. This week on How I Built This Lab, Sundar reflects on the unique journey that led him to Google, and the values that inspire and ...
Jun 09, 2022•35 min•Ep. 417
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 wrote about indie music because he loved it, and recruited like-minded friends to do the same. In 2000, a rhapsodic review of Radiohead’s “Kid A” got huge attention online, and soon Ryan’s site began to attract tens of thousands of users—building a reputation for pointed reviews that could ma...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 416
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 chance meeting at a dinner party led to a deep friendship focused on working together to change the world. Through regular Saturday morning brainstorming sessions, they settled on pursuing a scientific approach to growing meat for human consumption. This week on How I Built This Lab, Aryé and ...
Jun 02, 2022•42 min•Ep. 415
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, preferring to foster Houzz as a lifestyle business and pushing back when experts told her it could grow into something much bigger. But as Houzz morphed into a go-to site for users to get ideas for home improvement and connect with industry professionals, Adi decided to go all-in. She walked awa...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 414
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 course, Andy’s entrepreneurial journey wasn’t without its challenges. Under the surface were much darker struggles that he largely kept hidden… This week on How I Built This Lab, Andy returns to the show to talk to Guy about his new book, Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind. In t...
May 26, 2022•37 min•Ep. 413
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 much longer. As business partners, they seem perfectly matched: he’s the hard-charging visionary, she’s the practical, business-minded one who sometimes has to talk him out of a bad decision. But in 1985, Arran made a very smart move: seeing how organic food was starting to take off, he mixed ...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 412
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 talking to more than 200 doctors, researchers, and neuroscientists around the world, Johann came to a sobering conclusion: the human race is in the middle of an attention crisis. He examines this societal challenge in his new book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deepl...
May 19, 2022•30 min•Ep. 411
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 high profile partnerships with celebrities like Kanye West and Beyonce. But he was also known for his focus on sustainability. It was Eric who pushed Adidas to commit to using only 100% recycled polyester in its clothing by 2024. This week on How I Built This Lab, Eric joins Guy to talk about t...
May 16, 2022•28 min•Ep. 410
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 and fitness studios across the world, and ClassPass was relying on virtual events and wellness offerings in order to stay afloat. This week on How I Built This Lab, Payal returns to talk with Guy about leading ClassPass through the worst of the pandemic and eventually selling the company to Mi...
May 12, 2022•31 min•Ep. 409
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 recruited him to help launch a company to build 911 call systems. After that business sold, Pete began to think about new problems to solve – like a better way to move and store our stuff. In 1998, he began disrupting the self-storage industry with PODS, a system that brings storage containers to the c...
May 09, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 408
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 multi-million dollar entrepreneurial portfolio, which has grown to include her POPFLEX apparel brand, additional product lines at Target, a Pilates certification program and more. This week on How I Built This Lab, hear about the risks Cassey took to defy cultural expectations in pursuit of...
May 05, 2022•34 min•Ep. 407
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 compete with one another. But it was just too early: software engineers said it couldn't be built, and investors didn't want to take the risk. So the two founders wound up launching an entirely unrelated business, one that was so perfectly timed that it led to a successful IPO a few years later. S...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 406
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 masks. Most masks at the time were made in Asia, and when supply chains started to break down that March, many Americans had a really hard time finding them. This week on How I Built This Lab, Lloyd walks us through the whirlwind journey of launching a mask manufacturing business at the height ...
Apr 28, 2022•31 min•Ep. 405
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 toast, and coleslaw. After he and his partner Craig Silvey got rejected from every bank in Baton Rouge, Todd set out to fund his dream by working two treacherous jobs; first at an oil refinery and then on an Alaskan fishing boat. With roughly $150,000, he remodeled an old bike shop and open...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 404
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 2019, WeWork’s tide began to turn. Investors raised concerns about the company’s rapid expansion and unsustainable spending. Miguel’s co-founder Adam Neuman faced accusations of mismanagement and was forced to resign. The company withdrew a long-anticipated IPO filing, and not long after, M...
Apr 21, 2022•29 min•Ep. 403
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 a few years later, she began accumulating lessons from the successes and failures she observed while working at Yahoo and other young companies. In 2013, she and a former colleague applied many of those lessons to their own startup: an online registry designed to make wedding planning easie...
Apr 18, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 402
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 Chaudry, or better known as YouTubers Colin and Samir—a pair of creators who create content for other creators. (We know, pretty meta.) The creator economy barely existed a decade ago, but has quickly become a multi-billion dollar industry with a massive global reach. Colin and Samir discuss thei...
Apr 14, 2022•37 min•Ep. 401
