Inspired with Alexa von Tobel

At his core, Jack is a creator. While his musical group Pomplamoose had taken off on YouTube, he realized that the mechanism for turning his fans' attention into dollars was broken. So, he built Patreon, a membership platform that makes it easy for creators to earn salaries directly from their biggest fans. Since its launch in 2013, Patreon has paid out more than $1 billion to creators on its platform. Jack shares why the myth of the starving artist is over, why he's willing to work harder than the competition, and how all creators should think about engaging their fans.

Why isn't it easy to securely prove your identity online? That's the big question Blake Hall is working to solve with ID.me, the next-generation digital identity network, that is now used by government agencies, healthcare organizations, and retailers alike. A third-generation soldier, Blake started his post-college life leading a reconnaissance platoon in Iraq, for which he was awarded two Bronze Stars. With a Harvard MBA in hand, he set out to build ID.me and has scaled it to over 24 million users. Blake shares the big pivots he took in his early startup years, what his military career taught him about leadership, and why ID.me has credentialed 30% of all nurses in the country to give back during Covid-19.

Julie Bornstein is a seasoned e-commerce executive, who has spent her career building major retailers online, including Nordstrom, Sephora, and Urban Outfitters. After scaling Stitch Fix to over $1 billion in revenue as COO, Julie has launched The Yes - the digital department store of the future. Julie shares what it's been like to launch during COVID, how she has gained the confidence to set out on her own, and why she believes shopping should be more like browsing on Spotify.

After their day jobs wrapped, Wade and his co-founders spent their nights building what would eventually become Zapier, the workflow automation tool. Originally based in Missouri, they decided to put their full focus onto their budding startup by joining the Y Combinator accelerator. Zapier is now one of the highest valued companies to come out of the program. Today, it has millions of users and connects to more than 2,000 apps. Wade shares how he got his first beta customer from a cold email, how the company's formula for scaling is a blend of data and intuition, and the surprising upsides of having relied on a fully remote team from the earliest days.

When he was a child, he set up a stand in front of his house to sell his mom's clothes. In college, he ran an airline miles business with 17 friends working out of his apartment. And post-college, he started Brightstar, which became the world's largest global wireless distribution company, with over $10 billion in revenue. Marcelo Claure's career accomplishments run deep. He led Sprint through its historic merger with T-Mobile and now serves as COO of SoftBank and executive chairman of WeWork. Marcelo shares how he picks new pursuits (like doubling down on WeWork), why his current goal is to set the world record for being the oldest soccer player in a professional match, and why his latest venture is leading SoftBank's new Opportunity Fund, which will invest $100 million in companies led by people of color.

Zach Reitano, entrepreneur focused on personalized healthcare, shares how Covid accelerated telemedicine adoption, the importance of building trust with patients, and the impact of Ro's commercial featuring his dad.

After co-founding the top organic baby food brand in the country, Jessica Rolph got her second startup idea from an unlikely source: a doctoral thesis on child development. Jessica launched Lovevery in 2015 to offer products to help parents feel confident they're delivering the tools their children need. The company has taken off, with backers like Maveron and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Jessica shares why becoming a serial entrepreneur is scarier than it looks, why she chose to build Lovevery in Boise, Idaho, and what tips she swears by to help us all parent better during COVID and beyond.

When you sit down to work, do you often find yourself starting at a blank page? Adam and his team at Almanac are trying to fix that. Just as Github has allowed engineers to access a database of code, Almanac is doing the same for knowledge workers and documents. With user growth doubling month over month and a roster of investors that includes 100 expert startup operators, Almanac is on a mission to democratize access to knowledge. Adam shares why we're at an inflection point of businesses going fully digital, why he measures success by users outside of silicon valley, and how an internship at Apple made him realize he wanted to be a founder.

After co-founding and selling ad-tech platform Yodle, serial entrepreneur Milind Mehere had identified a new pain point. After Seeing his investments plummet during the last recession, he wanted to create a digital wealth-management platform that would get people on the road to financial independence. So, in 2014, Milind he launched YieldStreet—which has since been cited on the Inc. 5000 as the fastest-growing company in New York City. on the Inc. 5000 list. Milind shares how YieldStreet educates consumers about the alternative investments space, why founders should personally be involved in a company's first 100 hires, and why he believes the next decade will be the golden age of fintech.  

Steven had a big realization: Selfies with celebrities are the new autograph. With strong conviction in his idea, he and his co-founders set out to launch Cameo, the marketplace that allows fans to book video shoutouts from a library of over 30,000 celebrities. The company has taken off—with more than 850,000 Cameos recorded, over $65M in VC funding, and an astounding 1,000 percent increase in bookings during the Covid pandemic. Steven shares how Cameo came back from "the worst product launch of all time," why the best businesses grow via word of mouth, and why he requires a whiteboard and marker in interviews for future Cameo employees.