The Eric Ries Show

Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy and author of 'Brave New Words,' shares his journey from tutoring a cousin to creating a global educational platform. He discusses the power of nonprofit education, emphasizing mission over profit and the ethical implications of AI in learning. Sal advocates for incorporating AI to enhance student engagement while pushing back against fears of technology. He also stresses the importance of balancing work and values, promoting a culture of curiosity and lifelong learning among students and educators.

Wade Foster, Co-founder and CEO of Zapier, shares insights from building a multibillion-dollar software integration company. He emphasizes the importance of staying close to customers and prioritizing financial sustainability over traditional startup norms. Wade discusses how a unique company culture enables their remote team of 750 to thrive and how product and marketing should work hand in hand. The conversation touches on harnessing AI for growth, the emotional journey of entrepreneurship, and the necessity of genuine customer feedback in achieving product-market fit.

Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media and a guiding light in tech for decades, discusses the interplay between technology and society. He emphasizes the importance of long-term thinking, ethical practices, and creating value for all stakeholders instead of merely maximizing profits. O'Reilly explores AI's multiple facets, critiques the current focus on shareholder value, and calls for an economy that sustains vital services. His insights challenge tech leaders to prioritize ethics amidst profit pressures and redefine the true purpose of the metaverse.

Stacy Brown-Philpot, former CEO of TaskRabbit and a notable board member at companies like HP and Nordstrom, dives deep into the gig economy and compassionate leadership. She shares insights on Google’s cultural evolution and the shift from 'Don't be Evil' to reality. Stacy discusses TaskRabbit’s strategic pivots, including its transition to home services and the acquisition by Ikea, emphasizing mission-driven decisions. Her stories reveal the importance of diversity and integrity in leadership, encouraging others to stand for what they believe in.

In this engaging discussion, Reid Hoffman, influential executive and investor known for co-founding LinkedIn, shares his insights on AI's role in shaping our future. He recounts how he facilitated the meeting that sparked the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership. Hoffman emphasizes the need for ethical governance in technology, advocating for a human-centered approach. He explores the transformation AI brings as a 'meta tool' and the importance of leadership in tech during politically charged times, highlighting the balance between optimism and caution in innovation.

Seth Godin, a renowned author and co-founder of Squidoo and Yoyodyne, dives deep into the essence of trust in marketing. He highlights the shift from traditional advertising to permission-based communication crucial for lasting relationships. Godin critiques the short-sighted nature of many business practices and emphasizes the need for storytelling in building trust. He also discusses the transformative impact of AI on production methods and explores the intertwining of passion and purpose in work, advocating for a more ethical approach in today’s tech-driven landscape.

Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the founder of Metalabel, a platform for releasing collective work. He’s also the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. I’m thrilled to share our recent conversation in this episode. Yancey started out as a music journalist before applying his talents to helping the world share its creative pursuits. For him, creativity and humanity are implicitly connected, and so he’s been a forerunner in thinking about how to build companies that bring good things into the world and are also successful without devolving into extractive behaviors. Not that any of this is simple. As Yancey says, “Everything is harder than you think. To do anything well is so hard. [But] if you put in the work, you don't need to fear it.” We talked about the founding and growth of Kickstarter, which has been profitable since it’s 14th month, the power of humility, past mistakes and future hopes, why he started Metalabel, and more including:  • The innumerable inventions that make up our world  • Crisis hopping in Kickstarter’s early days • The challenges of funding speculative projects • Being one of the first Public Benefit Corps • Creativity and self-knowledge • Company building as an art • Collective creativity • The Bento Method  — Brought to you by: Mercury – The art of simplified finances. ⁠⁠Learn more⁠⁠. DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. ⁠⁠Sign up⁠⁠. Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader. ⁠⁠Learn more⁠⁠. — Where to find Yancey Strickler: • X: https://x.com/ystrickler • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yancey-strickler-486b4557/ • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ystrickler/ Where to find Eric: • Newsletter: ⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠  • Podcast: ⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠  • X: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠  • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠  • YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠  — In This Episode We Cover: (00:36) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show (04:44) The invention of the high five. (07:22) Our world is the product of innumerable inventions (08:22) The story of Kickstarter (13:48) The difference between a fad and a trend (15:50) The early days, and difficulties, at Kickstarter (17:24) How Kickstarter introduced standards (18:58) The a-ha moment: “Kickstarter is not a store” (20:42) The need for company sacrifice (22:06) The tension between risk and failure (24:16) Kickstarter’s early days and how Yancey became CEO (27:12) Mistakes, burnout, and stepping down. (30:05) Yancey without Kickstarter (31:45) Disentangling from the old and starting anew (35:21) Public Benefit Corps and why Kickstarter was among the first ones (39:19) The challenges of running a good company that makes a profit (42:07) Crowdfunding and creativity (46:31) The future of creative work (47:12) MetaLabel (48:48) The curator role (50:26) Moving from solo to cooperative work (52:04) The Leaders Guide on Kickstarter (54:30) Doing work for yourself, in a community of peers (57:29) Self-knowledge as an entrepreneurial asset (59:35) Organization building as an artistic discipline (1:04:30) Humility, fearlessness, and hard work (1:06:25) The Royal Society (1:10:04) Rejecting the extractive model (1:14:50) Succession planning and deprioritizing financial maximization (1:19:52) A new version of the hockey stick graph (1:21:20) The Bento Method: women vs. men (1:26:48) The Golden Ratio (1:30:18) The Dark Forest (1:33:27) How the internet has redefined individuality  (1:36:49) Online institutions of the 21st century — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠⁠jordan@penname.co⁠⁠  Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

For this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sat down with Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, which has had incredible success in the field of student transportation. The company began as a private service to tackle a problem Ritu was facing herself: how to function as a working parent dealing with erratic pickup and drop-off schedules. Before long, it became clear that there was a far larger opportunity to change pretty much everything about how all kids get to and from school. Pivoting to working with school districts and a fleet of electric buses, the company set out to “modernize student transportation to make it safe, sustainable, and accessible for all.” To say it’s been a success is an understatement. Zum now serves thousands of schools in multiple states, and in February 2024, it hit unicorn status with a valuation of over a billion dollars. As Ritu says in our conversation, “the service is for everybody.”  We also talked about everything from carbon-neutral buses to cracking the procurement system of public school districts, the invaluable asset of parental peace of mind, scaling care, and more, including:  • How Ritu came to entrepreneurship • Scaling trust • How coming from the outside allowed the company to transform the industry • Shifting from a B2C company to a B2B company • Zum’s values: customer obsession, doing things the right way, thinking big and executing meticulously, and building better communities. • How a clear mission makes alignment easier • Zum’s “Five Step People Program” to reinforce culture and behaviors — Brought to you by: Mercury – The art of simplified finances. ⁠Learn more⁠. DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. ⁠Sign up⁠. Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader. ⁠Learn more⁠. — Where to find Ritu Narayan: • X: https://x.com/ritun  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritunarayan/  • Zum: https://www.ridezum.com/ Where to find Eric: • Newsletter: ⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠  • Podcast: ⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠  • X: ⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠  • LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠  • YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠  — In This Episode We Cover: (00:31) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show (01:09) Meet our guest Ritu Narayan (04:32) Ritu describes how Zum has reinvented the school transportation field  (06:50) The Zum origin story (08:01) Zum’s pivot from private service to school district partner (11:17) Scrambling to meet the demand and understand the RFP process (13:17) Zum’s amazing growth from one contract to unicorn (19:48) How Ritu got started as an entrepreneur (21:09) Being a woman engineer in her family, college and the workforce. (22:06) How being a working parent showed her the multi-generational problem she wanted to solve (27:59) Establishing trust and placing it at the center of the company (33:28) Being a child-centric company (35:13) The deep care that transportation directors showed towards their students (40:00) The Zum pivot (41:43) Reconciling long-term vision with a flexible strategy (44:28) Expanding from private to public schools as the result of raising a round (47:20) Shifting from B2C to B2B (51:54) How gaining clarity of mission brings the right people into alignment  (55:01) Zum’s four pillar values and the narrative they uphold (57:05) The five steps to restructuring the company after the pivot (58:58) The value of Zum from the parent perspective (1:02:05) Zum’s climate impact (1:06:19) Reconciling the vision of sustainable transportation and equality with profit (1:09:34) The advantages of tackling a huge problem instead of a narrow one (1:13:08) Working with mission-aligned investors (1:15:02) Ritu’s advice for founders who want to build purpose-driven companies that are also  for-profit — Production and marketing by ⁠https://penname.co/⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠jordan@penname.co⁠  Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Dustin Moskovitz, Founder of Facebook and Asana, shares insights on investing in employees' mental health and communication skills. Topics include flow state, preserving culture, leadership style, using AI, collaboration platforms, mental health for founders, evolution of Facebook, and alignment with investors.

James Reinhart, Founder of ThredUp, discusses the value of a hard mission, predicting future trends, and building a culture around humane principles. He reflects on his entrepreneurial journey at Harvard, the benefits of a mission-driven business in secondhand clothing, and maintaining organizational alignment when going public. Reinhart also explores the decision to list on the Long-Term Stock Exchange, redefining success through innovative work models and AI integration, and the government's role in promoting sustainability in business.