Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. <em>How I Built This</em> weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built. Order the <em data-stringify-type="italic">How I Built This</em> book at https://www.guyraz.com<br /><br /><em>How I Built This Plus is a great way to support the show and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/howibuiltthis</em>
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 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 later” service that’s transforming how we purchase things on credit. This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Max; to hear the story of PayPal, be sure to listen to part 1!
06/20/22
HIBT Lab! Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company: Mark CubanSerial 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.
06/16/22
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 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 imaginable, including the emotional ouster of Elon Musk as CEO. After PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, Max couldn't sit still, so he launched a startup lab that eventually led to another successful fintech company: Affirm. Guy will talk to Max about Affirm next week, in the second episode of this two-part series.
06/13/22
HIBT Lab! Google: Sundar PichaiDrive. 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.
06/09/22
Pitchfork: Ryan SchreiberWhile 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 make or break careers. In 2015, Pitchfork joined The New Yorker and Vogue when it was acquired by Condé Nast, one of the most prestigious magazine publishers in the world.
06/06/22
HIBT Lab! Wildtype: Aryé Elfenbein and Justin KolbeckWhen 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.
06/02/22
Houzz: Adi TatarkoWhen 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 away from a promising career in finance to become the CEO of Houzz, helping lead it to a platform that now has 65 million users worldwide.
05/30/22
HIBT Lab! Burn Rate: Andy DunnFrom 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…
05/26/22
Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana StephensStarting 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 up his first batch of Manna bread in a bathtub and started selling it, eventually expanding to national distribution. From there, he and Ratana pivoted to breakfast cereal, initially purchasing a factory that couldn’t make a single cornflake. Today, Nature’s Path sells organic cereals, tortilla chips and other snacks in more than 50 countries around the world.
05/23/22
HIBT Lab! Stolen Focus: Johann HariLike 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 Deeply Again.
05/19/22
HIBT Lab! UNLESS Collective: Eric LiedtkeEric 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.
05/16/22
HIBT Lab! ClassPass: Payal KadakiaWhen 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.
05/12/22
Introducing Business Wars: Häagen-Dazs vs. Ben & Jerry'sIn business, competition is the key to success. Every product you own, from the shoes on your feet to the phone in your hands, got there because of cutthroat business decisions. And Wondery’s podcast Business Wars brings you stories about the most well-known in the world, and how the decisions they make shape what you buy and how you live.
05/11/22
PODS & Red Rover: Pete WarhurstPete 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 consumer, then transfers them to a warehouse. The business quickly spread from Clearwater, Florida to franchises across the country, eventually selling for about $450 million. But Pete still thought there was a better way to schlep your stuff to a storage facility, so he launched yet another business—Red Rover—that now competes with PODS.
05/09/22
HIBT Lab! Blogilates: Cassey HoCassey 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.
05/05/22
Strava: Mark Gainey and Michael HorvathMark 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. Still, Michael and Mark couldn't shake their original idea, and in 2008, they launched a website where cyclists could map and monitor their rides, and compete with riders across the country. The prototype was clunky—Mark jokes that "we wanted to make it as hard to use as possible"—but the timing was perfect, and Strava was born. Today, it’s a mobile app used by 100 million athletes in nearly 200 countries around the world.
05/02/22
HIBT Lab! Armbrust American: Lloyd ArmbrustLloyd 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.
04/28/22
Raising Cane's: Todd GravesBy 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 opened his first restaurant in 1996. As word spread, Todd began building more restaurants, fueling the expansion on a rickety system of loans, and dreaming of making Cane’s as ubiquitous as McDonald's. Over the years, he has retained ownership of the business and watched it grow to over 600 stores, with 3 billion dollars in sales projected this year.
04/25/22
HIBT Lab! WeWork: Miguel McKelveyWhen 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, Miguel left the company he had worked so hard to build.
04/21/22
Zola: Shan-Lyn MaIn 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 easier and more personal. Still, Shan had a lot more to learn—starting with how to convince dubious investors that the world needed another wedding registry. Today, despite the gut-punch of COVID, Zola has grown into a robust wedding-planning platform, valued at $600 million in 2018.