How I Built This with Guy Raz

Reel is a digital savings platform that helps people people make big purchases without racking up credit card debt. CEO and co-founder Daniela Corrente says the company has added new savings plans during the pandemic in response to consumers looking for new ways to buy and save. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrep...

There were so many interesting moments in Guy's conversation with the co-founders of Riot Games that we decided to put them into this short bonus episode. In it, Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill talk about kids, screens, and the importance of boredom. They answer Guy's questions about why some gamers engage in toxic behavior, and how Riot Games is trying to address it. To hear the whole story of the...

At USC in the late 1990s, Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck were bonding over video games and noticing that free, player-made modifications for the game Warcraft III were becoming wildly popular online. The two friends were so impressed by these mods that they decided to create their own multiplayer strategy game with an unusual twist: they'd offer the game for free, but charge players money for new c...

Emily Powell is the third generation owner and president of Portland, Oregon's iconic independent bookseller, Powell's Books. After having to let go of 90% of her staff in early March, Emily is focused on bringing people back and showcasing Powell's Books' unique in-store experience online. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founder...

When he was 8 years old, Joel Clark loaded bags of his mom's whole grain pancake mix into a red wagon to sell door-to-door. By the mid-90s, he and his older brother had upgraded to selling the mix out of a Mazda sedan and calling it Kodiak Cakes. As he tried to scale the business, Joel made some risky business decisions and almost went bankrupt, but eventually got the brand into Target—a major tur...

The former CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh has died. He was 46 years old. We are grateful that Tony shared his story with us in 2017 and we are republishing it as a tribute to his life and career. Tony was a computer scientist whose first company made millions off the dot-com boom. But he didn't make his mark until he built Zappos—a customer service company that "happens to sell shoes." Tony stepped dow...

Dr. Iman Abuzeid is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a digital platform that helps streamline the hiring process for nurses and recruiting hospitals. After seeing an increased demand for nurses in April, and a shift to hiring digitally, the platform has now been able to expedite the hiring process to 15 days or less, compared to an industry standard of 90 days. These conversations are...

While working long hours as a Wall Street analyst, Melissa Butler started making lipstick in her kitchen as a hobby. But it soon turned into an obsession, costing thousands of dollars. She was frustrated by the lack of diversity in the cosmetics industry, and as a Black woman, wanted to create lipstick colors that complimented her complexion and style. So in 2010, she launched The Lip Bar, with bo...

Father Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, one of the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in the world. He speaks with Guy about how the Los Angeles based organization has adapted to continue training and employing people during the pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and...

Kenneth Cole launched his shoe business out of a forty-foot truck in midtown Manhattan and quickly became known as an up-and-coming designer with an eye for street fashion. In 1986, he made a bold move by associating his nascent brand with a controversial issue at the time: the AIDS crisis, and the vital need for research. Through the 1990s and 2000s, Kenneth grew the company into a $500M brand, l...

In 2006, Drew Houston got on a bus from Boston heading to New York. He planned to use the three-hour ride to get some work done, so he opened his laptop, and realized he had left his thumb drive with all of his work files at home. Drew decided he never wanted to have that problem again. On that bus ride, he started writing the code to build a cloud-based file storage and sharing service he called...

Guy talks with Varshini Prakash, co-founder of Sunrise Movement, a grassroots organization that's fighting to make climate change a top priority in the US. The group launched in 2017 and has since grown into one of the largest youth movements in the country. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders about how they're navigating th...

Growing up in 1960's Chicago, Dave Anderson didn't eat much deep dish. Instead, his dad took the family to the South Side for barbecue, and those memories—and aromas—stayed with him. For years, Dave tinkered with his own recipes for sauces and sides while working as a salesman and business advisor to Native American tribes. Finally in 1994, he opened his first barbecue shack in the last place you...

Justin Gold is the founder of Justin's, known for its nut butters and chocolate peanut butter cups. He talks about how he started by pulverizing peanuts in his home blender, and describes how his customers are shopping differently during the pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're na...

Do Big Things is a Black woman-led, mission-driven digital agency that works with companies like Google, Etsy, and the NAACP, and has a staff that's 50% people of color. The agency's CEO and founder Cheryl Contee says having a diverse team is a strategy for authentic engagement. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrep...

After Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John made the extraordinary discovery that they were half-sisters, they formed a deep bond and discovered a mutual dream: to create a wine company that would demystify wine culture and attract a wider audience. In the mid-2000s, they staked their life savings on an importer's license and began selling New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to high-end restaurants, event...

Fluenz helps English speakers learn new languages, both online and with in-person immersion programs. With travel restrictions and a global pandemic, CEO and founder Sonia Gil had to scrap her in-person immersion programs, and create a new system for teaching students remotely. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepr...

When we first spoke with Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John, we were so blown away by their story that we decided to turn it into two episodes. With hardly any money or connections, they built one of the biggest Black-owned wine companies in the world — a journey that began with an extraordinary family discovery: Robin and Andréa are half-sisters who didn't know of each other's existence until...

In the late 1990s, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan took on the notion that "green doesn't clean" by setting out to make soap that could clean a bathtub without harming the environment. Adam started experimenting with baking soda, vinegar, and scented oils, while Eric worked on making sleek bottles that looked good on a kitchen counter. Just a few years later, Adam and Eric were selling Method cleaning pr...

When a Sports Illustrated article exposed internal abuse and harassment in the Dallas Mavericks organization, owner Mark Cuban knew he had a culture problem. So he hired Cynt Marshall as CEO, and she tells Guy how she started to turn things around, and how she's leading the organization through this unprecedented moment. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, wher...

Aishetu Dozie had a successful career in finance before she took a leap and launched Bossy, a makeup brand that has exploded in popularity over the past six months, despite the challenges of the pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times. Order the How I Built...

Working at a high-end beauty salon in the south of England in the early 1970's, Mark Constantine concocted natural shampoos and conditioners in a tiny room above his kitchen, and soon met another young entrepreneur who was eager to buy his products: Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. Their partnership flourished for a while, then soured; so Mark went on to start a mail-order cosmetics business with h...

January Ventures is an investment firm that is trying to address the unique challenges and biases faced by entrepreneurs often under-represented in business, including women and people of color. The firm's co-founder and managing partner Jennifer Neundorfer says that despite more attention in the recent months, great ideas from these diverse groups have always been there. These conversations are e...

Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman says his leadership team anticipated a "nuclear winter" after the pandemic hit. But as businesses start to re-open, and ad revenues on the site creep back up, Yelp is bringing back furloughed employees and adding Covid-conscious features to its listings. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and...

In 2012, Daina Trout, her husband Justin, and her best friend Vanessa Dew were sitting around a kitchen table spit-balling possible business ideas. Their biggest contender seemed to be a natural product to treat hair loss. Turns out, it's harder than they thought to make one, so they landed on something completely different: a brand of homemade kombucha they called Health-Ade. After nine months of...