What I Know

Hiring and retaining the right team to help your company grow is essential at all stages of a well-run business. This episode offers detailed advice on how to build and retain a highly effective leadership team, from what roles to prioritize hiring for to how to find the best talent to meet your company's needs. It also features hard-earned wisdom from a founder, Seth Goldman, who has worked at all life cycles of a company from launch fresh from business school to exit to rebuilding again. Seth Goldman is Co-Founder of Eat the Change®, a planet-friendly snack and drink company that recently launched Just Ice Tea, a line of organic bottled tea to go along with the company's Cosmic carrot snacks. Seth and his co-Founder, Celebrity Chef Spike Mendelsohn are also co-founders of PLNT Burger, a plant-based quick-serve restaurant that offers delicious burgers, fries, and soft-serve. Seth is also the Co-founder of Honest Tea and Chair of the board of Beyond Meat. In 2023 he took on a new role as Chair of the Mission Guardians for Tony's Chocolonely, an international chocolate company committed to creating an exploitation-free supply chain. He has been widely recognized for his entrepreneurial success and impact, including the Washington DC Business Hall of Fame, Partnership for Healthier America's CEO of the Year, and EARTHDAY.ORG's Climate Visionary of the year. He is a graduate of Harvard College (1987) and the Yale School of Management (1995). Seth and his Honest Tea co-founder, Barry Nalebuff are the authors of The New York Times bestselling comic book, Mission in a Bottle.

Today's episode comes from the Your Next Move vault and is a conversation between Lindsay Blakely and Gail Becker. Gail is the CEO and Founder of CAULIPOWER -- a food company that started with frozen pizzas with cauliflower crust.  This company, that started in Gail's kitchen, quickly grew into a full line of vegetable-based frozen foods that can be found in Whole Foods, Walmart, and Target.

Building the right narrative about your brand can be the difference between success and failure for your business—no matter how strong a product you are offering. This episode offers detailed advice about building a successful brand narrative. It also features wisdom from the founder of Farmer's Fridge, whose work as a traveling salesman motivated him to create a company to solve the problem of finding healthy food options while on the road.

In the past couple of years, TikTok has provided a platform for budding entrepreneurs to connect with their consumers. But how effective is this method, and can it lead to a new level for success for founders? In a panel discussion for Inc.'s Founders House at SXSW, Diana Ransom posed this question to FYSH Foods founder Zoya Biglary, Hot Take co-founder Gabrielle Brulotte, and Bloom Nutrition founder and president Mari Llewellyn. They discuss the importance of putting a face on your brand, being personable for your audience, and how TikTok is an effective marketing tool-provided your approach is on target.

Today's episode comes from the Your Next Move vault and is a conversation between host Bea Dixon and guest Melissa Butler. Melissa is the CEO and Founder of The Lip Bar -- a vegan lipstick company catering directly to women of color.  In their conversation, they cover Melissa's transition from the corporate ladder to becoming a lipstick chemist. Plus, her experiences with retail chains and direct to consumer marketing, and what it means to be focused on African American women while remaining inclusive to all.

Whether you're crowdfunding, getting a bank loan, or seeking venture capital, you need to be able to pitch yourself and your business successfully. Today's episode features some of the biggest lessons learned from the founder of clean fragrance brand MOODEAUX, who has secured funding in an incredibly challenging market.

Whether you're crowdfunding, getting a bank loan, or seeking venture capital, you need to be able to pitch yourself and your business successfully. Today's episode features some of the biggest lessons learned from the founder of clean fragrance brand MOODEAUX, who has secured funding in an incredibly challenging market.

Karen Robinovitz and Sara Schiller had each been through multiple traumas when they found reinvention and joy through the unlikeliest of substances: slime. Yes, slime. They explain to hosts Diana Ransom and Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how they channeled their newfound joy, and passion for sensory play, into a business, the Sloomoo Institute. Sloomoo is a growing slime-museum business with four locations that makes some 600 gallons of slime each day. This episode was recorded live on-site in SoHo, New York, at the Sloomoo Institute Links: Inc.com article: www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/from-the-ground-up-sloomoo-institute-karen-robinovitz-sara-schiller-grief-as-startup-fuel.html Episode transcript: www.inc.com/transcript-from-the-ground-up-podcast-sloomoo-institute-founders-karen-robinovitz-sara-schiller.html The Sloomoo Institute: https://sloomooinstitute.com/pages/new-york-2-0?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic Slime play and care (PSA about slime removal!): https://sloomooinstitute.com/pages/slime-care *note to listeners: The concepts of death and depression, are mentioned in this episode, as is the fact of a school shooting, though none are discussed in depth.

The impact of AI on finance departments will be huge.

How artificial intelligence is shaping the product journeys from procurement to end customers.

In this podcast, leaders in HR and AI reveal what it will take for businesses to get their staff on board.

The so-called “fifth quarter” could be your opportunity to give your business a competitive edge. Hear directly from successful small business owners Lauren Petrullo, of Mongoose Media, and John Wai of John Wai Martial Arts Academy about how they use the post-holiday season to grow their businesses. In this podcast, the entrepreneurs are joined by Meta executive Becky Bui to explain how this so-called “fifth quarter”—a period often overlooked by businesses as a slow season—can be the key to unlocking new cost-effective, quality leads that lead to sales, while building meaningful connections with customers.

The so-called “fifth quarter” could be your opportunity to give your business a competitive edge. Hear directly from successful small business owners Lauren Petrullo, of Mongoose Media, and John Wai of John Wai Martial Arts Academy about how they use the post-holiday season to grow their businesses. In this podcast, the entrepreneurs are joined by Meta executive Becky Bui to explain how this so-called “fifth quarter”—a period often overlooked by businesses as a slow season—can be the key to unlocking new cost-effective, quality leads that lead to sales, while building meaningful connections with customers.

Working together within a marriage can require give and take, but imagine working in the same company too. Melissa Ben-Ishay, co-founder and CEO of Baked by Melissa, and Adi Ben-Ishay, its director of technology and innovation, met by happenstance—to be honest, it was something out of a romance novel. Now, they're married with two kids and still running Baked by Melissa. How do they make this work? We sat down with them to discuss how they met, how they support each other, and how they iron out their disagreements while raising children and working to grow their business.

From the outside, founders seem to have so much freedom in running their own businesses. But how much control do they really have? When is it an advantage to retain control over decisions, and when is it time to let go? Christene Barberich, cofounder of Refinery 29 and author of the newsletter, A Tiny Apartment; and Rebecca Minkoff, founder of her own fashion brand, sat down to talk through the nuances of working with cofounders, selling a company, and watching it grown beyond a single person's control.

The company's director of finance explains how her job goes well beyond accounting. Tina Hetzer, director of finance at Pink Lily, is one of the rising financial stars who are helping to bring their businesses to the next level. She built Pink Lily's finance team from scratch and has helped the company become one of the fastest-growing retailers in the country. In this podcast, part of the SAP-sponsored Growth Agents series, Hetzer discusses the cash-flow challenges unique to fashion retailers and explains how working at a smaller, founder-run company can fuel greater collaboration across the organization.  

Diana Ransom and Scott Omelianuk talk with Stacy Spikes, Kathryn Minshew and Taryn Langer about how founders should approach dealing with the media. Stacy Spikes is the co-founder and CEO of MoviePass. Kathryn Minshew is the co-founder and former CEO of The Muse. Taryn Langer is the founder and president of Moxie Communications Group.

Duolingo's freemium subscription model, beloved brand and strategic investments have allowed it to execute its educational mission and become a cultural touchstone. Matthew Skaruppa, CFO of Duolingo, is one of the rising financial stars who are helping to bring their businesses to the next level. Since he joined the company in 2020, Duolingo has grown its base of monthly active users by more than 80%. Each month, 75 million users hone their language skills on the Duolingo app. In this podcast, part of the SAP-sponsored Growth Agents series, Skaruppa discusses how his analytical background has allowed to him to be a more strategy-oriented CFO. For him, that has meant balancing big aspirations and finite resources, and turning the uncertainties of tomorrow into action today.

Inc. Executive Editor Diana Ransom and Editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk pull back the curtain on the world of entrepreneurship with some of the most successful founders in the world. Inc. Uncensored features frank and unfiltered conversations about what makes business leaders tick, the trends founders need to know to be successful, and the secrets that nobody really tells you before you start a business.

Mitch Reback, CFO of Sweetgreen, is one of the rising corporate financial stars who is helping to take their companies to the next level. When he started, Sweetgreen had 25 stores; today, there are more than 220—and Reback says the company is still in its “infancy.” In this podcast, part of the SAP-sponsored Growth Agents series, Reback takes a deep dive into his role as a growth agent. Capital is the engine that drives growth, and Reback says his job is to make sure the company has adequate capital to grow as well as determining how best to allocate it, including investments in stores, marketing, staff, and technology—or, as he puts it, to push innovation forward in a way that's capital efficient.

Lindsay McCormick found inspiration in her pristine surroundings, back when she'd teach snowboarding in the winter and surfing in the summer. Respect for nature, where she spent so much of her time, led her to try to eliminate plastics and other landfill- or ocean-bound waste from her life, and to find healthy options. While traveling, she realized she was using a lot of tiny toothpaste tubes, and became fixated on trying to find a better way to brush, free from non-recyclable waste. What she ended up creating and selling in tiny, adorable glass apothecary jars online was Bite toothpaste bits. Over the years, she became committed to creating change for the planet, she tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. Today, her company sells much more than sustainable toothpaste–including a whole suite of oral care, and even soap and deodorant–which went viral on TikTok. Today, the company, whose name stands for Because Its The Earth, has 10 employees and more than $10 million in sales.

After the birth of her second daughter, she began feeling marginalized in the workplace–even though she was a seven-figure sales exec. Stephanie Nadi Olson felt the drive to create a legacy for herself and for her daughters–and named her new flexible-employment community We Are Rosie after her youngest. That was 2018, and since, the company has grown to a platform with 17,000 flexible workers signed up, more than 60 full time employees, and a three-year growth rate of 2,267 percent. We Are Rosie is No. 232 on the 2022 Inc. 5000. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin speaks with Olso about her vision for the future of work, and how she built a truly inclusive, diverse workforce.

Cotopaxi, the Salt Lake City-based outdoor-apparel company, wasn't Davis Smith's first business. But it was his first business inspired by a mission to do more than just sell stuff. In fact, the vision for giving back came before the company. And the mission to build a public-benefit corp with strong values came before he ever sold one technicolor backpack. He tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about the inspiration for, and the making the “gear for good” company Cotopaxi, which now has more than 300 employees, and whose revenues have surpassed $100 million.

Shivani Siroya had worked in microfinance around the world for major banks–and saw a lot of structural issues with lending to unbanked or non-traditional entrepreneurs in small doses. Before launching her own company to fix those, she went back to school–and also worked in Kenya, for the UN Population Fund. It was there she began lending her own money to small-business owners–and learned firsthand how to establish trust in lending. When she founded Tala in 2013, she also learned the value of risk–or, as she calls it, “taking the first risk.” She explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how the company took many audacious leaps through its growth to 6 million customers–including one that shook Tala to its core during the pandemic. 

Since he was a grade-schooler, Stu Landesberg dreamed–as odd as it sounds–of starting a sustainable home-products company. When he founded it, in 2012, he called it ePantry, and it didn't exactly soar. Investors were lukewarm–and customers hard to come by. But with a rebrand and reshaped strategy in 2016, Grove Collaborative started finding lots of eco-minded consumers online and over social media. This year, as the San Francisco-based company turned 10 years old, it was valued at $1.5 billion. In June, it went public with help from a Richard Branson-backed SPAC. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin speaks with Landesberg about his journey, from struggling to keep the lights on to running a public company with hundreds of employees–and his promise to the future to be entirely plastic-free by 2025.

By the time he teamed up with Harvard geneticist George Church to found Colossal Biosciences, Ben Lamm had founded, built, and sold five companies. This one would be the most audacious yet: Its goal is to create disruptive conservation technologies, including, to de-extinct the woolly mammoth. Yes, it is actively working to edit elephant genes to create a cold-hearty herbivore to help decelerate melting of the arctic permafrost, and, thus, prevent release of 600 tons of carbon a year. It's also working with existing species-conservation efforts globally–and hopes to apply its technology to save animal populations from going extinct. But with the audacious mission comes a lot of questions–and many critics. Lamm told host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin that he learns more from his detractors than from his supporters–and he welcomes both hearing from them, and, in a couple cases, he's actually hired them to work with him.

His company grew 1,131 percent over the past three years–and he realizes that kind of fast pace isn't for everybody, even with an important mission in mind. Xiao Wang in 2017 had founded Boundless Immigration, a Seattle-based tech company that helps individuals and families navigate immigration paperwork and processes through data, and through its online platform. Today its process has a 99 percent success rate, and the company has helped more than 70,000 individuals file for green cards or citizenship. To keep growing at its rate, Xiao maintains an “adapt and evolve” strategy, and realizes that perfection is sometimes the enemy of progress. He tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin that his company's culture of fast-growth and constant change isn't for everyone–just like black licorice. 

We return to speaking to Joseph Haughney about his hopes for the Arpanet. We ask other founders how they feel about what the internet has become. We also speak to internet early founder Hans Werner Braun's daughters about how they reconcile themselves the world their father helped create.

When the U.S. baby formula shortage hit, Bobbie was still a startup, scaling its own operations and customer-base. But it had to make its most important decision: How to answer that crisis for its own customers. It decided to stop growing, in favor of serving its existing subscribers. Turns out: It wasn't the first crisis the young startup had overcome. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin interviewed Bobbie co-founder and CEO Laura Modi about how she made that extremely challenging decision–and how she built a company of parents, by parents–with world-class benefits for employees.

It is the late 1970s and early 1980s and the Arpanet is in decline. NSFnet is on the rise in its place. Why did the Arpanet get eclipsed by other networks, and is that OK?

Nina Vaca is the chairperson and CEO of Pinnacle Group, an IT and staffing firm based in Dallas, which has grown so fast it has made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies thirteen times. It was named the fastest-growing woman-owned business in the United States by the Women Presidents Organization in 2015–when her company crossed a billion dollars in revenue, and again in 2018. Nina founded it 25 years ago, when she was just out of college, with just $300. In part, it seemed natural: he'd been schooled in entrepreneurship by her family, which emigrated from Ecuador when she was little. She tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin what she's learned about entrepreneurship along the way–and takes a bird's eye view on what's changed, and what hasn't.

Louis Pouzin is a French academic who some experts say really invented the Arpanet. But is that true, and should any one person be given all the credit?

It started as a side-hustle, pouring wax for candles at his dining-room table in the evenings. But what Matthew Herman began selling was soon attracting the attention of major fragrance houses…and customers around the world. In building his brand, Herman burned through his savings in 18 months…and that was before the pandemic hit. But during it, direct-to-consumer sales took off. But so much interest all of a sudden almost broke the business. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke with Matthew about his innovative approach to branding, naming candles, and designing concepts that embrace complex dualities–and add up to a brand that's helping to blur the gender binary in retail.

It's the 1970s and both the government and academia are doing everything they can to spread the word of the Arpanet. But as the Arpanet gains popularity everywhere after its 1972 coming-out ball in Washington, D.C., through its new phone book, it also faces detractors who don't want it to be available to all.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Evan Horowitz and Geoffrey Goldberg, founders of the Los Angeles-based brand-marketing firm Movers+Shakers. Movers+Shakers is #78 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 list.

Many historians say the Arpanet (and ultimately the internet) was born on October 29, 1969. But is that really when the Arpanet began, and who should be given credit for this key moment in internet history?

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin interviews Fawn Weaver, the CEO and founder of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, bestselling author, and serial entrepreneur, about how she built her brand and company after setting out to tell the remarkable story of Nearest Green, the first known African-American master distiller and man who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.

After World War II, the U.S. had to change the way it communicated if it was going to keep up with the Soviets in the Cold War, especially once Sputnik was launched. It was the vision of a Missouri boy called Lick that would solve those communication issues and spark the creation of the internet.  

In the summer of 2021, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin interviews Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of womenswear brand M.M. LeFleur. Sarah discussed how she started, the lessons she learned from her mother, how she grew her business, and guided it through Covid-19's most turbulent period. 

There's Silicon Valley's playbook…and then there's Trinity Mouzon Wofford's radical bootstrapping. The founder of Golde, the maker of superfood powders that can be blended to make lattes or facemasks, and which is sold at Target and Goop, as well as direct-to-consumer. Trinity explained how she built her company herself, mixing turmeric lattes in her kitchen, and pounding the pavement of New York City trying to get her self-designed pouches of blends onto cafe shelves. As a super-small, scrappy, brand, growth was happening naturally–online, and off–and the level of control she had over it was not something she wanted to give up. Trinity told host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about how she reacted when investors came calling–and when major retailers proposed deals. 

When Kara Goldin launched her fruit-flavored water company, Hint, in 2005, she'd worked in media and tech--but never in consumer products, much less beverage creation or distribution. But armed with curiosity and verve, when she lacked know-how, she asked the right questions. And perhaps what she didn't know was the most valuable asset of all--because the immense challenges that would come didn't seem impossible. Goldin chatted with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about her biggest moments of doubt, including when Hint's biggest customer, Starbucks, canceled its orders, which amounted to 40 percent of the company's sales.

Is AI coming for our jobs?? ‘Fast Company' senior staff editor Max Ufberg explains that it is . . . but that it's not all bad news. And Yaz chatted with Loom CEO Joe Thomas—Loom is essentially TikTok for business, which sounds crazier than it is—about how video conferencing is here to stay. Also, a special thanks to Marfa Public Radio for helping us out with some recording on this episode! 

The five-time founder and author of Happier and The Awesome Human Project is known both for her public speaking and her research into what truly makes us happy. But when she was building her last company, she herself was anything but happy. Instead, she was prioritizing everything and everyone aside from herself–and that led to her spiraling into a really dark place. She spoke to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about how she learned to rebuild her emotional health–and what other founders can learn about emotional fitness being a key to keeping their company healthy, too.

We're taking a look back on our interview with Emily Hikade. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke with Emily about the inspiration for, and challenges of starting up, Petite Plume, her fast-growing luxury sleepwear business.

Here's a look back at Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's interview with Jesslyn Rollins. Rollins' dad created a product in secret. She brought it to the masses. What would it take for him to let her run the company? They chatted about the electrolyte beverage company, Biolyte, that saw a remarkable three-year growth rate of 1,052 percent. The first in our season series exploring the stories behind fascinating companies that made the 2022 Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing businesses.

This is the untold history of how the internet almost didn't happen. It's an ode to fathers and daughters. And it's a tale about the origins of the man-computer symbiosis that's still profoundly relevant to our society today. Host Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, an editor-at-large at Inc., is a James Beard Award-winning journalist who has worked for NBC News as well as three of the nation's largest newspapers, and who created the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Rotten. Dare-Bryan's connection to the story is deeply personal—her father, Joseph Haughney, was one of the internet's founding fathers. By looking to the past, Computer Freaks dives into modern debates: Could we have prevented online harm from the start? What is the balance between free speech and online content moderation? How much human work should be delegated to technology and A.I.? And what direction should this growing labyrinthine network of computers take? Computer Freaks tells the dramatic, untold history of the internet straight from the mouths of its pioneering inventors: Len Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, Charley Kline, Steve Crocker, Vinton Cerf, and Bob Metcalfe, among many others. Exclusive interviews uncover hidden stories found nowhere else about the Arpanet, online harm, hacking, authentication, cybersecurity, Ethernet, TCP IP, packet switching, queuing theory, and the early contributions of women in tech.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin interviewed Melissa Bernstein, the co-founder of $500 million toy company Melissa & Doug and the author of a new book about mental health, LifeLines, about her own journey to building a company while suffering from depression.

Emily Hikade is not a household name. That's by design. She couldn't be, for years. That's because no one, not her family, not her friends, knew her actual job. It wasn't until recently, after she'd started her own company, and after she'd had her cover lifted that they found out she'd been a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. And it was while she was a case officer abroad that she had a near-death experience that inspired her to start her own business. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin speaks with Emily about the inspiration for, and challenges of starting up, Petite Plume, her fast-growing luxury sleepwear business.

Davis Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Cotopaxi, founded his Salt Lake City-based outdoor apparel and gear company in 2014. He already had started a family–and he not only set out to found a company with a purpose…but with a sense of balance for himself and his employees. In this bonus episode, I ask him about heading out into the wilderness…and getting into survivalist mode–and he explains how he makes his family the priority, so his colleagues know they can feel comfortable doing the same.