The Founder Hour

Mark Gainey, co-founder of Strava, discusses his upbringing, early career, and what inspired him to start the company. They also explore the changing mindset of athletes influenced by media, the significance of perspective, and the challenge of balancing personal aspirations with social media validation. Gainey reflects on embracing struggle, building a great team, and their pivot from building a virtual locker room to developing software for managing customer emails.

Gordon Segal is co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Crate & Barrel, an internationally recognized, multichannel home furnishings retail chain. He led the company as CEO from 1962 until his retirement in 2008. Today, he is managing director of Prairie Management Group, a private investment firm.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Akash Nigam is the co-founder and CEO of Genies and General Partner of Humans.Genies is an avatar technology company that is building the future of digital identities. We had a super interesting conversation with Akash all about his background, what inspired him to start Genies, his thoughts on Web 3.0 and the metaverse, and more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Björn Öste is the co-founder of Oatly, a Swedish food company that produces alternatives to dairy products from oats. He’s also the founder of Good Idea Drinks.He started Oatly in 1994 along with his brother, Rickard Öste, a food scientist and the inventor of oat milk. In 2021, the company IPOed at a $10 billion valuation.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Jim McCann is the founder and chairman of 1-800-Flowers, one of the first companies to pioneer and popularize the use of both toll-free telephone numbers and Web sites in the early days of the Internet to sell goods and services directly to consumers.What started as a flower shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1976 has since grown into a publicly-traded company worth over $2 billion with thousands of employees.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Alex Wilcox is the co-founder and CEO of JSX, formerly known as JetSuiteX, an independent air carrier based in the United States that describes itself as a “hop-on jet service” offering short-haul flights between and within Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Utah.Before JSX, Alex founded JetSuite (not to be confused with JetSuiteX). He also worked at several different airlines and was a founding executive of JetBlue Airways.We spoke with Alex all about his upbringing, the various jobs he had and the lessons he picked up along the way, his experience managing a rock and roll band early in his career, what he hopes to accomplish with JSX, the behind the scenes of launching an airline startup, his vision for the future of aviation, and more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Emily Schuman is a blogger, author, designer, and founder of Cupcakes and Cashmere, the premier destination for fashion, food, and lifestyle inspiration. What started out as a blog in 2008 as a way for Emily to document the things she loved has since grown into a brand that also carries hand-selected jewelry, accessories, gifts, and more.We spoke with Emily all about her upbringing and early career in advertising, why and how she launched her first blog, what ultimately led to it taking off, her thoughts on networking vs. building genuine relationships, and much more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

If you’ve been on Twitter or read any news about the world of crypto in the last 6 months, you’ve probably heard of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. At a basic level, an NFT is a digital asset that links ownership to unique physical or digital items, such as works of art, real estate, in-game items, music, or videos. Some of the most popular NFT projects include CryptoPunks, Art Blocks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoKitties, with more and more launching every day.In this episode, we sit down with Roham Gharegozlou. He’s the founder and CEO of Dapper Labs, the team behind CryptoKitties, Cheese Wizards, NBA Top Shot, Flow Blockchain, and more, and an early pioneer of the NFT movement. Formed in February 2018, Dapper Labs was spun out of Axiom Zen, a venture studio that Roham launched, to bring the benefits of decentralization to the first billion consumers through the power of play, fairness and true ownership. The company recently raised a funding round of $250 million at a $7.6 billion valuation.We covered a ton of topics including Roham’s upbringing and early career, how he fell into crypto and NFTs, why he created CryptoKitties, his vision for the future, and much more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Gagan Biyani is the co-founder and CEO of Maven, an online platform where top creators teach cohort-based courses. Prior to Maven, Gagan founded Sprig, a food delivery startup, and also co-founded Udemy, the world’s largest marketplace for teaching and learning with over 155,000 courses and 40 million students worldwide.We spoke with Gagan all about his upbringing, his early career and founding Udemy, why he ended up getting fired from the company, his thoughts on the higher education system in America, why he started Maven and what he hopes to accomplish, and much more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

Anthony Katz is the founder and President of Hyperice, a holistic high-performance wellness brand with a mission to help everyone on Earth move and live better. For more than a decade, Hyperice has led a global movement at the confluence of recovery and wellness, specializing in percussion (Hypervolt line), dynamic air compression (Normatec line), vibration (Vyper and Hypersphere lines), thermal technology (Venom line), mind technology (Core by Hyperice) and contrast therapy (Hyperice X). Hyperice works with the worlds best athletes including Naomi Osaka, Patrick Mahomes, Ja Morant, and Erling Haaland, and has partnerships with leagues and teams around the globe including the NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA TOUR and UFC, alongside the Los Angeles Lakers, Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks, New Zealand All Blacks, Tottenham Hotspur and Kaulig Racing.We spoke with Anthony about his childhood, how his passion for history has helped him be a better entrepreneur and visionary, what inspired him to start Hyperice, his unique relationship with the late great Kobe Bryant, his thoughts on innovation and competition, what the future of the company looks like, and much more.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.x.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour