How I Built This with Guy Raz

From a coffee cart parked uneasily in a grocery parking lot, Travis and Dane Boersma grew Dutch Bros into a sprawling chain of 700-plus beverage restaurants. Before they got started in Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1992, Dane had never tried espresso, and neither brother knew how to make it. But with the help of nearby experts, they learned the craft—and even improvised their own recipes, like mocha mad...

When Donnel Baird was a child, his parents would regularly use the oven to heat their Brooklyn apartment -- a dangerous and energy-inefficient practice that’s unfortunately not unique to New York City. As an adult traveling the country with the Obama for America campaign, Donnel saw countless homes and apartments wasting power and jeopardizing resident safety because of dated infrastructure. He fo...

When Chris Ruder set out to revive a ball-and-net game from his childhood, he was pretty sure he would fail. He wasn’t really into sports and had never run a business. But after 15 years, Spikeball has grown into a thriving brand with a global following. Spikeball is a two-on-two game where players hit a rubber ball onto a circular net. Invented in 1989, it never took off. But in 2003, when childh...

Palm oil is a wonder ingredient, used in almost everything from toothpaste and oat milk to biodiesel and laundry detergent. But to keep pace with rising global demand, producers have burned down millions of acres of rainforests to create more palm oil plantations, worsening climate change and making the air hazardous for entire countries in the process.  C16 Biosciences has a plan to save tho...

Two college-era friends set out to change the face of shaving—and in the process, took on one of the biggest companies in the world. In 2011, Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider realized they shared a common frustration with an everyday purchase: razors. Locked behind counters like diamond bracelets, they were inconvenient to buy and expensive to replace, with branding that seemed more suited to Ja...

Millions of American households rely on oil for heat. Growing up in New Hampshire, Kathy Hannun was familiar with this decades-old and environmentally-taxing approach. As part of Google’s innovation lab, X, she began unearthing a solution — indeed from underground... This week on How I Built This Lab, Kathy discusses how her company, Dandelion Energy, has made geothermal energy accessible for heat...

Tory Burch didn’t set out to make her name into a brand; she didn’t even set out to get into fashion. As a matter of fact, she sort of gave up any fashion ambitions when her first designs were rejected by Ralph Lauren. But after noticing there were plenty luxury brands and plenty of affordable brands but nothing in between, Tory began to see a gap that she could fill. She tried to revive a dormant...

“Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with.” - Seth Godin Yearning to find community as a Swiss transplant in New York City, Tina Roth-Eisenberg was so moved by these words that she transformed an old office into a fresh co-working space for creatives. From that space, Tina would incubate her would-be biggest project yet: CreativeMornings, an event series that...

Thomas Keller is one of the best—and best known—chefs in America, but it took him 40 years to get there. He took a long, winding path through the culinary arts; from whisking his first hollandaise sauce at the Palm Beach Yacht Club, to learning the painstaking art of pastry at one of the finest restaurants in France. He also worked in some of America’s most demanding kitchens, and failed...

Drive. Docs. Chrome. Maps. Gmail. Android. What do these products have in common? Of course, they’re all Google, but what you may not know is that they all came to fruition under the management of the same person: Sundar Pichai. This track record in product development ultimately landed Sundar the CEO role at one of the biggest, most innovative companies in the world.   This week on How...

In the early 1990’s, Tim League spent $50,000 in savings to lease an abandoned movie theater on the wrong side of the tracks—a shaky experiment that eventually grew into a thriving national chain. As Tim and his wife Karrie built theaters in Austin and beyond, they made a name for themselves by offering dinner with the movie, creative pairings (like sake with Godzilla ), and roadshows where m...

Davis Smith has spent the last nine years building the outdoor gear and clothing brand, Cotopaxi. The company’s slogan, Gear for Good, encapsulates everything about the way they do business, from using recycled and remnant materials to donating a portion of their revenue to nonprofits that fight poverty. It’s a story that Davis told when he was first on How I Built This in 2020 . This week on How...

For Monique Rodriguez, hair care was a hobby; she never thought she could build a business. In fact, after high school, Monique followed her mother’s advice to find a solid, recession-proof career, and she went into nursing. However, Monique realized it was not for her, and she pursued side gigs selling everything from Mary Kay to cable subscriptions. But when a devastating loss turned Monique’s w...

Pricey down payments have put homeownership out of reach for many Americans, especially those who don’t have access to intergenerational wealth. This issue is particularly acute in cities, where the salaries of essential workers like educators, healthcare professionals, and municipal service providers haven’t kept pace with skyrocketing home values.   An introductory finance course got A...

In 2010, Justin McLeod was in business school, still trying to get over a bad breakup that had happened years before. Determined to solve his own problem and convinced that the best way to meet people was through friends of friends, he built an app to replicate that experience. Gradually, Hinge grew into a streamlined swiping platform that yielded mixed results: good dates, bad hookups, mismatched...

What would it take to build America’s first solar-powered town? What about a town that could withstand a direct hit from a hurricane? In the early 2000s, Syd Kitson, a former NFL football player and real estate developer, set out to do both at the same time. The result was a community in southwest Florida called Babcock Ranch. This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy talks with Syd about how he nego...

When Fokke de Jong started selling suits out of his dorm room in Amsterdam in the late 90's, he wasn’t planning on becoming the next Tom Ford—he just wanted to supply luxury suits at an affordable price. But he was so successful that around 2000, Suitsupply went from his side hustle to his full-time gig. Fokke sourced the best fabrics and production in Italy, and grew the business by selling his w...

Lily Hevesh never could have imagined that the videos of domino tricks she started posting for fun at 10 years old would eventually evolve into a thriving business. Fast forward to today and Lily’s YouTube channel, Hevesh5, has almost 4 million subscribers. Her videos, which showcase the toppling of countless intricately designed domino setups, have more than a billion views and counting... This w...

Peter Sterios discovered yoga by accident when he was in college, and wound up—also by accident—launching a multimillion-dollar business around it. He used yoga to ease neck strain and loosen his hamstrings, but eventually became a serious practitioner and teacher, running his own studio in central California. In the late 1990’s, before the proliferation of yoga brands, Peter came across a mat tha...

Joe Laurienti, a former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineer, launched Ursa Major in 2015 with the idea that 3D printing could revolutionize the production of rocket engines. The timing was right: Russia had invaded Crimea the previous year. American sanctions and strained political relationships threatened the supply of Russian rocket engines, which the U.S. had relied on for space missions since the...

In one of the most remarkable feats ever performed by a frozen dessert, Halo Top ice cream became the best-selling pint in America just six years after launch. Its founder Justin Woolverton was a frustrated lawyer who developed the recipe in his Cuisinart, mixing Stevia, egg whites and fruit into a low-calorie treat that tasted good enough to sell. Many recipes later—some runny, some rock-hard—Jus...

It’s hard not to love cheese: feta, brie, gruyère, parmesan, pepper jack, mozzarella, asiago...it’s all delicious! But there’s a downside — cheese production is quite taxing on the environment, with dairy cows being one of the leading contributors to carbon emissions worldwide.  That’s where Matt Gibson and Inja Radman step in. They’re the founders of New Culture, a company developing real da...

Ellen Latham would probably have been happy teaching classes at her popular fitness studio in south Florida until she turned ninety. After being fired from her dream job as a spa director, she’d found stability with her own small business, and began developing a workout program that incorporated strength and cardio for all fitness levels. But then, well into her fifties, Ellen was offered an...

In 2016, Nuseir Yassin quit his cushy tech job to embark on a journey around the globe. The idea was simple: post a one-minute video every day for 1,000 days to show the world from his perspective.  The execution, of course, was much more challenging... This week on How I Built This Lab, Nuseir recaps his experience building a worldwide following as the creator behind Nas Daily, and how Nas C...

When Jeff Lawson co-founded Twilio in 2008, he had already been through a series of start-ups. Some succeeded, others fizzled out—but each provided insights that led him to build one of the most extensive communication platforms in business. Fueled by his frustration juggling customer calls while trying to run a surf and skate store in LA, Lawson realized he could use his coding skills a...