Guy Raz
Guy Raz is a journalist, author, and the host of How I Built This.
Trina Spear and Heather Hasson say FIGS spent $40 million to beat an $800 million lawsuit
The FIGS founders turned a scrubs company into a public brand, but their sharpest story is about the price of refusing to be scared off by an incumbent.
Seth Berkowitz says Insomnia Cookies is aiming for 1,800 bakeries without franchising
The Insomnia Cookies founder’s growth plan is basically: become huge, but do not hand the cookie oven to strangers.
Loren Castle says Sweet Loren’s became profitable after allergen-free cookie dough outsold every original flavor in six months
The cookie dough company’s breakthrough was not making a slightly healthier Toll House rival, it was realizing the supposedly niche allergy aisle was the main event.
Tara Bosch says food startups should try natural grocery before mass retail
The SmartSweets founder's advice is less glamorous than a Target endcap and more useful: natural grocery can give tiny CPG brands room to prove they deserve the shelf.
Tim and Karrie League say Alamo Drafthouse was almost named The Tasty Burger because of a $5,000 neon-sign budget
The Alamo Drafthouse name, it turns out, was less Texas destiny than phone-book strategy, salvage-yard economics, and one rejected sign.
Thrive Market CEO Nick Green says paying influencers in equity is the secret to avoiding venture capital
The e-commerce founder warns that outside money ruins as many businesses as it helps, and offers a highly specific alternative to fund a consumer brand.
Jensen Huang says he would absolutely not start NVIDIA again if he knew how hard it would be
On How I Built This's 10-year anniversary, the NVIDIA founder's answer cuts through the usual founder mythology with a very expensive no thank you.
Jamie Siminoff says UV-protection shirts should be sold in sunscreen bottles, not the apparel aisle
The Ring founder’s advice was either retail genius or the kind of founder brain that turns every aisle at CVS into a battlefield.
Alan Newman says his 23 percent of Seventh Generation paid him about $200,000 before its $700 million Unilever sale
The How I Built This replay turns an eco-brand origin story into a very expensive co-founder breakup.
Danny Meyer says a business is not a family because families don't fire people
The Shake Shack and Union Square Hospitality Group founder has a cold little corrective for warm workplace language.
Brian Rudolph says Banza sales dropped 30 percent in one week after a glyphosate report
The Banza founder frames the 2024 pesticide scare as a brutal lesson in food trust, lab timing, and why a CEO now has to live in Reddit threads.
Michelle Wahler says founders don't need to raise money because investors make the exit the focus
The Beyond Yoga co-founder, who sold the brand to Levi’s for about $400 million, made the least Silicon Valley argument imaginable: build something sustainable before you start worshipping the cap table.
Karissa Bodnar says an iPhone eyeliner ad took Thrive Causemetics from $150 days to $30 million in months
The founder’s version of the Thrive Causemetics breakout story is less girlboss magic than inventory anxiety, unpaid labor, and one very lucky eyeliner ad.
Kip Tindell says The Container Store hasn't done well since he retired
The Container Store co-founder blames a painful post-retirement slide on new owners, Amazon, and a retail world that forgot how much good salespeople matter.
Kim Vaccarella says she turned down over $100 million rather than sell control of Bogg Bag
The Bogg Bag founder says she walked away from life-changing money, spiraled afterward, then sold a smaller stake after the company hit $50 million in annual sales.
Ben Goodwin says Olipop is well over a half billion dollars in gross revenue and aiming for $1 billion
The Olipop co-founder used his Advice Line return to put a real number on the prebiotic soda race, and to argue that selling after Poppi’s PepsiCo deal is not the only acceptable ending.
Nicole Bernard Dawes says Late July would have failed if its organic tortilla chips flopped after a $3.5 million loan default
The Late July founder tells Guy Raz that crackers and cookies left the brand exposed, then tortilla chips turned a near-default into a $100 million snack business.
Daymond John says big-box retail puts more small brands out of business than it puts in business
The FUBU founder told a Chicago salsa company that the dream of getting on big-store shelves can become a margin-crushing trap.
Roy Seiders says YETI raised prices 15 percent after its manufacturing partner was murdered and blamed raw materials
The YETI origin story has bootstraps, bears, and a very expensive cooler, but the revealing part is a crisis price hike that became proof of real pricing power.
Carlton Calvin says hacky sacks are coming back in a huge way, and Razor is already shipping them
The Razor founder is trying to turn his kid-culture radar into a system, which is either founder wisdom or the world's strangest succession plan.
Laura Modi says Bobbie’s FDA recall got the only U.S. formula contract manufacturer to make its product
The Bobbie founder’s best origin-story twist is that the disaster that could have killed the company became the thing that made it manufacturable.
Bobbi Brown says not every business has to be a rocket ship
On How I Built This, Brown pushed young founders away from Target envy and viral growth panic, and toward the unsexy religion of testing small.
Salma and Nima Fotovat say MadeGood's first factory hand-wiped wrong date codes off 200,000 Costco bars
Before MadeGood became an organic snack giant, its founders were in a new factory trying to rescue a massive Costco order one alcohol wipe at a time.
Sarah LaFleur says premium kidswear brands should skip influencers and sell through trunk shows
The M.M.LaFleur founder gave the quiet luxury kidswear playbook a very offline answer: find the elegant school-drop-off parent, not the algorithm.
Lily Kanter says a rescue deal made it impossible for Serena & Lily to raise another dollar
The prettiest crib bedding company in America got dragged into the ugliest corner of startup finance.
Chris Riccobono says tariffs pulled $9 million from UNTUCKit’s bank account
The UNTUCKit founder turned an advice episode into a grim little postcard from the new retail math.
Chuck Surack says Sweetwater sales engineers can make nearly $500,000 a year in Fort Wayne
The Sweetwater founder’s best argument against Amazon is not nostalgia for phone calls, it is a sales job that looks more like a paid residency for music gear obsessives.
Curt Richardson says OtterBox revenue fell after a $1.1 billion peak, but profit rose
The OtterBox founder gave the rare founder update that actually explains what happens after a breakout product becomes boring.
Susan Griffin-Black says EO Products went from a $30,000 packaging account to owing $2 million after COVID sanitizer whiplash
The EO Products founder turned a sanitizer surge into a warning about the ugly math behind sudden growth.
Joey Shamah says a fake Bloomingdale's buyout rumor sent e.l.f. from 300 orders a week to 18,000 a day
The e.l.f. co-founder says the strangest growth hack in the brand's history was not a hack at all, just a chain email, a price panic, and a logistics nightmare.
Aman Narang says Toast's revenue fell over 90 percent during COVID before it cut 55 percent of staff
The Toast CEO's survival story is a reminder that being essential software for restaurants is fantastic right up until restaurants are legally unable to be restaurants.
Ronnen Harary says Spin Master became too rigid after he stopped being co-CEO
The PAW Patrol co-founder’s most revealing advice was not for a caller, it was the quiet admission that a hit-making toy company can get housebroken.
Krishna Kaliannan says he first coated Catalina Crunch cereal in a washing machine
The Catalina Crunch founder's weirdest manufacturing hack is also the cleanest explanation of why making a modern keto cereal is much harder than making a pitch deck.
Jeni Britton says seed oil panic is too fad-like to build a frozen-fry brand around
The Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams founder told a beef-tallow fries startup to sell taste first, not online wellness panic.
Kenneth Cole says wholesale won't build your brand if you don't own the customer relationship
On How I Built This, Cole gave a very department-store-era warning to modern founders: revenue through retailers can look like momentum while quietly leaving the brand in someone else's hands.
Tom Rinks says he would have settled the Taco Bell Chihuahua lawsuit for $200,000 before a $30.1 million jury award
Before Sun Bum became a sunscreen juggernaut, Rinks says Taco Bell could have ended the Chihuahua fight for a fraction of what a jury later awarded.