Inspired with Alexa von Tobel

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.

Bryan came up with the idea for his first startup on the back of a cocktail napkin—and went on to sell the resulting business, WHI solutions, to eBay. Now, he's at the helm of Breather, the company providing flexible workspaces that are as easy to book as an Uber. Breather has expanded to more than 10 cities to date and is poised to grow even faster as commercial real estate evolves in a post-Covid world. Bryan shares how he quickly put together a "get back to work" task force, why he believes crises accelerate disruption, and the importance of being a leader in service to your team.

Chriselle Lim built a fashion empire—replete with a YouTube channel that has gotten more than 29 million views, a collection at Nordstrom that sold out in 48 hours, and a Barbie modeled after her. But after becoming a mom, she realized how hard it was to be present both at work and as a parent. Now, she's the co-founder of Bumo, the startup working to make parenting easier. Chriselle shares her vision for co-locating work and daycare, how she navigated the challenge of convincing investors that she was ready to do something new, and why flexibility is the most important trait of startup employees.

At age 7, he learned to code. At 12, he started his first company. Now, 19-year-old Shane Curran is working to make data privacy simple and accessible for everyone through his startup Evervault. With seed funding from the likes of Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, the Dublin-based entrepreneur is poised to be a major player in the future of safety on the internet. Shane shares why he believes privacy is a fundamental right, how he learned to interview despite never having held a job before, and why the best founders embrace the macro over the micro.

Austen spotted a major disconnect: a labor market in need of specialized talent and inaccessible education programs to train future employees. Enter Lambda School, a fully remote tech school with Income Share Agreements (ISAs) at its center. Rather than pay up front, students pay a portion of their income after they're hired. Austen shares how a customer survey led him to a brand-new business model, how growing up in small-town Utah has given him a unique view on scalability, and what it feels like when your role models become your peers. 

As a D1 athlete, Will Ahmed became obsessed with the idea of recovery. How do you unlock human performance, and what data would you need to do so? This interest led to the creation of WHOOP, the next gen wearable technology. Will started WHOOP in 2012, immediately after graduating from Harvard College. Since then, he's raised over $100M in funding, saw 7x member growth in the last year alone, and has been worn by the likes of Lebron James and Michael Phelps. Will shares how the product was born out of his own over-training as an athlete, why he believes WHOOP is fundamentally a data company, and why the most important part of being a CEO is figuring out who to listen to—and when.Note: This episode was recorded in early March, just as the Covid-19 outbreak took hold of the U.S. Since then, WHOOP has been leveraging their data to aid in health research. 

Armed with a lifelong passion for cosmetics, Marla Beck saw an opportunity to transform the makeup shopping experience. In 1999, she founded Bluemercury, and then went on to scale the company into hundreds of stores and multiple product lines—while surviving several recessions—before being acquired by Macy's in 2015. Marla shares why omnichannel customers are most valuable for retail businesses, how she implemented a radical HR model, why she hires for "skill, will, and fit," and why she believes entrepreneurship isn't about risk-taking—it's about risk management.

From a career as a successful wedding photographer to launching one of the top-five highest-grossing photo apps in the App Store, Joel Flory's trajectory is a noteworthy one. As the co-founder and CEO of VSCO, Joel's work centers on his passion for photography, design, and technology. VSCO went viral from the start: Its first product launch grossed north of $250K in the first 24 hours, and its debut app gained a million followers in the first week. Joel shares how to build something people are willing to pay for, why moving forward is one of VSCO's core values, and why he believes the future will be defined by the "experience economy."