How do you buy a ski mountain? How much does it cost? And how do you turn it into the biggest ski resort in North America - Powder Mountain?That’s the kind of thing we wanted to know when we sat down with Elliott Bisnow, who shot to startup fame as Co-Founder of Summit, a now legendary events series which attracted speakers like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Jessica Alba.He’s now the proud Co-Founder of Powder Mountain which is insanely cool. And not bad for a college dropout, although, to be fair, that’s now a pretty common trend on this podcast: drop out of university to start something and make it big.We have a lot of dreamers on this show but Elliott’s dreams are legitimately crazy. Find out how he turns them into a reality and: The book that changed his life Homeschool Building a business with your Dad The tiny first Summit event The real value of co-founders Buying Powder Mountain The most difficult feedback to hear --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

It’s not often you meet real life prodigies but Kieran O’Neill might just be one. By the time he was 19 he’d been sued by Disney and his company had been bought by Carl Page, the brother of Google Co-Founder Larry Page. And then he dropped out of university to start another successful business, because, why not?“At that point I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life - build things. And I began building a tool that would track which of my housemates was best at a particular game.”Today Kieran is the Co-Founder and CEO of Thread.com, a place where you can get clothes that actually suit and fit you - a reaction to the typical online shopping experience which often results in loads of returns. Plus, plenty of people don’t back their own style - including Kieran. “I keep a text file with various ideas in. And at this point had about 10 that were on not a shortlist, but a medium shortlist. Nine of them were for other people, problems they had but problems I didn't have personally. The problem I had myself was that I wanted to dress well and have good clothes, but found shopping to be really frustrating.”Find out how he took this personal problem and turned it into high growth business. --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Building a successful startup is about lots of things but a tonne of people get the first step wrong - picking the right business to launch. So how do you pick the right one? Well, our host and the Co-Founder of Heights Dan Murray-Serter is in the hot seat today answering that very question. This is the second episode in our semi-regular series with Dan, showing what it’s really like to be a Founder, warts and all. The first episode was released on January 18 and we left things at a critical point for Dan and his Co-Founder Joel.Dan wasn’t motivated by what his company had pivoted into. They wanted to give the money back to investors. But things didn’t go the way they planned…--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

One of the extraordinary things about the startup ecosystem is the kind of company that gets celebrated. Most of the time, they don’t make money. They bounce from one funding round to the next, and only a tiny % eventually make it. They’re the kinds of businesses that would’ve made our grandparents shake their heads.Today’s guest, Tom Leathes, the Co-Founder and CEO of used car marketplace Motorway, is different. The first few companies he built were bootstrapped, profitable and he sold them for more money. Which is basically how business worked for centuries.But then Tom found himself leading a VC-backed startup and things didn’t go so well. It was the first time he and his Co-Founders had failed. So after that experience they re-set and they’ve come back fighting with another VC-backed business, Motorway, which was just valued at over a billion pounds.Find out about the key learnings that have made him successful - and lead to a different outcome for Motorway.--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

If you’re in the UK and you like your peanut butter, you’ve probably come across Pip & Nut, the brand named after its Founder and today’s guest, Pip Murray.Pip started the business when she was 24, at her kitchen table, with a blender and some nuts. But plenty of people start businesses like that so what makes her special? How has she managed it? Oh, and we’ve also got the return of the king, Rich Martell, Co-Founder of Secret Leaders, who went to university with Pip and was one of her early investors. He couldn’t resist the chance to join Dan in the interview chair - and so he could ask Pip the difficult questions.Like how do you actually get your product listed at Tescos? --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

It’s amazing how important business seems until something really important happens, like a war breaks out.For Aleksandr Volodarsky, Founder of Lemon.io, which connects companies with software engineers, although he and his colleagues had gotten used to operating in a conflict situation since 2014, he was still stunned when Russia invaded. And the most useful thing he can do now is to keep the business going so it can support the war effort - including his employees who’ve gone off to fight. Find out what it’s like in his shoes right now. What’s going on with his team. What’s it like on the ground.--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Former CEO of MedMen, Adam Bierman, reflects on the rise and fall of the cannabis industry's first unicorn. He discusses the decline of MedMen's value, personal financial losses, leaving the company, and lessons learned from the experience.

What’s particularly shocking about Nick Telson’s success with DesignMyNight is how deliberate it all seemed. They set themselves a target each year, achieved it and moved onto the next one until they’d hit the numbers they needed for the exit they wanted. How many businesses do that? And it was the first startup he’d ever founded…Nick explains how they sold the business - the actual steps they took - which isn’t a process that most people know about unless they’ve been lucky enough to go through an exit themselves. And in classic startup style, it looked like the whole deal was going to collapse on the day of signing until an unlikely hero stepped up.Since exiting DesignMyNight, Nick has founded Horseplay Ventures, and more recently Trumpet, a mixture of Squarespace and Canva and Slack for sales decks. It sounds like something I would use, tbf.Despite his success, throughout his time leading DesignMyNight, Nick kept one aspect of himself relatively hidden - his sexuality. Find out why and what he’s doing about it now. --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

It’s the stuff entrepreneurs dream of. Houzz, a marketplace for home renovations, evolved from an evenings and weekends passion project into a multi-billion dollar company with investors queuing up to get a slice of their proverbial pie. So how did the two Co-Founders, husband and wife Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen, do it?“I think, in retrospect, delaying it and bootstrapping it, the way we bootstrapped it without even understanding that this is what it is back then helped us tremendously down the road.”“Go invest the first six months and validate and see that this idea can really scale, people will really use it, you're really invested in it, and you really love it. And then you will not need to prove these things to investors.”Find out how they secured an investment from legendary investor Mike Moritz in a matter of days - and what they did next to dominate their category.--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Life is the sum of your choices, says Jeffrey Kolovson, COO and Co-Founder of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace for retailers and brands. At the end of the day, it’s not what you say, it's what you do and the choices you make and the accumulation of those over time that matters. “I once had a mentor tell me that the prize for winning the donut eating competition is more donuts. And that kind of stuck with me, as things don't necessarily get easier. And the more you do, the more you have to do.”Jeff isn’t one for taking the easy route. He’s made quite a few interesting choices over the years. Like the time he had to build 60 futons in 36 hours, or the time he left Square to start Faire only to have to leave Faire in its infancy, before returning once more to Faire a few years later. Now, having just raised $400 million in their last funding round off the back of a $12.4 billion valuation, why did Jeff have to leave Faire in the first place? Well, for very good reason - to protect his mental health.“And so you both have to one: figure out how to be at peace with the unrelenting nature of it and two: how you don't let it overwhelm you at any given time. One of the tricks I do is that I like to think about the problems from a year ago or two years ago, how quaint they seem to me now.”The thing is, says Jeff, when you put your head down and work hard, you have to be able to enjoy it. There has to be enough about what you’re doing and the people you’re doing it with, that you derive enjoyment from what you’re doing, otherwise, what’s the point?--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes