Finding Founders

In this emotional and inspiring episode, Theresa Bruno recounts her extraordinary journey from Juilliard-trained concert pianist to award-winning creative director and founder of a multi-million-dollar fine jewelry brand. After a career-ending injury, she pivoted into advertising, secured major clients like Regions Bank, and later launched a jewelry business that caught the attention of The New Yo...

In this episode, we sit down with Kevin Surace , a legendary inventor, keynote speaker, and the man credited with creating the world’s first virtual assistant—technology that would eventually power Siri, Alexa , and Google Assistant . With 94 patents under his belt and a track record of turning vision into billion-dollar industries, Kevin walks us through his unconventional path from tinkering wit...

Only a year after joining social media, Joanne Molinaro would become a New York Times bestseller for “The Korean Vegan Cookbook”— but when she was crying in her car, stressed about her job, her divorce, and future, this eventual reality seemed like a fantasy. Now, Joanne is one of leading voices in the cooking world with 3 million followers on tiktok, nearly 1 million Youtube subscribers, and more...

We all start somewhere…and for christian, that start was a best-selling, chart-topping, fart-themed ringtone. Now, with over 1.7 billion views on YouTube, 6 million subscribers, and 3 million monthly Spotify listeners, Christian-better known as TheFatRat- has outgrown this early legacy and made an extraordinary impact on the electronic music scene. But how did this German artist get his start? Bef...

In this episode, Omar Alvarez , founder of Kinnect , shares his incredible journey from growing up amid gang violence in Chicago to breaking into Nike’s ultra-competitive hiring pipeline—beating a 0.5% acceptance rate . He dives into his experiences as a Division 1 athlete , surviving a Twitter mass layoff before even starting his job , and eventually launching Kinect , an AI-powered platform pres...

Hunter Williams witnessed his mother’s diagnosis, prognosis, decline, and passing in the span of only two months and two weeks. And at the end of the summer of 2016, he suddenly found himself stranded in the middle of his life, unable to move forward in any direction. Fast forward to today and Hunter Williams is a full time YouTuber known for his sharp, well edited video essays on the business of...

In this episode, Yehuda Niv , founder of Spines and Niv Publishing , shares his entrepreneurial journey from a struggling musician to a publishing disruptor . Yehuda details how he built Israel’s largest publishing house, scaling it to over 1,200 books a year , and later transitioned into AI-powered publishing with Spines , securing $16M in Series A funding . Key takeaways include: Navigating fail...

In this episode, we sit down with Chris Miles , CEO of Money Ripples , who shares his journey from financial advisor to financially free entrepreneur – twice. Chris opens up about how he built a successful career, lost it all in the 2008 financial crisis, and came back stronger by developing cashflow-based wealth strategies that break the traditional financial planning mold. Key discussion points...

In this episode, we dive deep into the mind of Remy Abode , the creator of Gemini Home Entertainment , a critically acclaimed YouTube horror anthology series with over 348,000 subscribers and 14.4 million views . We explore Remy's early inspirations , including his childhood fascination with horror soundtracks, his early experiments in filmmaking with his siblings, and the pivotal moment when he d...

Derek Ting began his entrepreneurial journey in high school, founding two companies: TorrentReactor, a torrent-sharing platform, and WoolNet, a web hosting service. He later earned a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo. In 2008, Derek launched TextNow to provide free texting, inspired by his own struggles to afford phone bills as a student. Despite early challenges Derek...

Linda has experienced a lot. She’s traveled the world as an army brat, played piano and sung in Led Zeppelin's tour bus, explored drugs as an “X rated hippie”, and worked to understand her Latin American, Chicano, and Indigenous roots through her art. Through these various paintings, sculpture, and ceramic work Linda embraces her brownness and the world has taken notice. Her work has been shown gl...

You just heard from Jimmy Edgerton about a crucial time in his entrepreneurship career, a moment when it seemed like his new startup was going down in roasted chickpea flames. Luckily, these hard times didn’t last forever, since today I’m presenting a special episode, a podcast swap with seasoned entrepreneurs and business consultants Jimmy Edgerton and Julie Meyer from AugMentors. Before they tau...

Trey Ferro, CEO of Spot Pet Insurance, turned a lifelong love for animals into a mission to revolutionize pet care. From mimicking animal sounds as a toddler to raising millions in funding for Spot, Trey’s journey blends personal passion with innovative leadership. Using AI and celebrity partnerships with names like Cesar Millan and MrBeast, he’s made Spot one of North America’s fastest-growing pe...

Tech has always been a part of Jeremy Toeman’s life. Loving math at a young age allowed Jeremy to want to continue his career path in the tech industry. Jeremy learned basic C++ programming during elementary school. Today he owns Augie Studio, a programmed AI system able to make videos for marketing as well as social media purposes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite having two hit book series under her belt, it was at this moment that Kimberly caught a glimpse of the publishing industry’s true nature. The world of literature had a short term memory and she was only as good as her most recent book’s sales. No matter how proud she was of her stories or how many book tours she’d finished, it felt like maybe she would never get the chance to reach the sam...

You just heard Ali describing one of her breaking points, where a battle for a copyright claim over one of her creations caused her to file a lawsuit. Now, Ali Spagnola, musician, comedian, and artist, has proved herself to be a creator you can’t look away from. With her eccentric dedication to living “outrageous”, Ali has won over 1.4 million tiktok followers and more than 400k subscribers on You...

Writer, Halloween expert, paranormal historial, and bookseller, Lisa Norton’s entire life is defined by the genre she has devoted her career to. Beginning as a young child in Pasadena consuming a large amount of horror content, she now loves to set her prose in her hometown, creating stories of suspense and supernatural happenings. Lisa is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award for both her fi...

Alex Mufson has always been an entrepreneur, from her first imaginary business she began at the age of three years old to a very real horse training company that she ran nearly a decade. But after experiencing deep frustration with the medical system, she felt led to build a values based business to help support others battling similar situations. Without any investors, Alex built the company from...

Somehow David has repeatedly found himself at the center of disaster. His most life changing trip through Asia was during the Asian financial crisis, his first big writing opportunity was during the 2008 financial crisis (which resulted in him losing his day job), this earthquake in Japan cemented that position as a writer, and now post covid the world needs the kind of community David is building...

Zach put 40 hours into his YouTube debut only to get 10 views and a spam comment. That left him to question his online identity; was this the end of his short-lived YouTube career? I mean there wasn’t much in his favor. He was starting at the height of covid and the worst of med school just around the corner. I’m sure Zach was questioning whether juggling his work and his passion would amount to a...

Kyukei Goto was saddled with massive responsibility from birth. He was the first born son to his father of 50, meaning Goto would have to carry the weight of a tradition going back 28 generations. He comes from a lineage that has perfected the art of Kamakura Buri which is a method of carving wood and then coating lacquer to make sculptures, plates, tea sets, cutlery and other household items. But...

Growing up near the beach in Rio de Janeiro, Ivan Moreira lived for the water, first learning how to surf at 5 years old. He was a lifelong amateur surfer, but when his dog Bono joined him on his surfboard, the world took notice. At first it was just something fun for the pair of water loving creatures to do together, but now they travel the world together surfing. The duo has won 5 world champion...

Disheartened by the 37 rejection letters in his back pocket, Daniel was shocked when a hasty bar-pitch landed him with a $40,000 publishing deal. After all, he was still relatively unknown…and his children’s story was odd to say the least. What kind of kid would want to read a faux (FOE) gothic novel about three orphans with a bloodthirsty relative out for their inheritance”? If this plot is sound...

Kobe Earthquake 1995. At 5:46 in the morning, the city was struck by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, leaving 6,000 casualties and 45,000 others homeless. Nobu Okada was only just out of college when he witnessed this scene of devastation and decided to turn his life towards a path of action and purpose. But what career would he turn to next? Now, we know Nobu as the founder of Astroscale, a company wo...

  Damion Lupo has always been a hard worker since the age of 11. His first business started when he wanted to buy video games for himself. When he went to college he started another business of selling books at a cheaper price than his school bookstore. Damion was kicked out of college for outselling his school bookstore shortly after. Damion found a love for real estate. However during the 2008 f...