From Start-Up to Grown-Up

David is the creator of Ruby on Rails, Co-Owner of 37signals, best-selling author, Le Mans class-winning racing driver, antitrust advocate, investor in Danish startups, frequent podcast guest, and family man. He writes regularly on HEY World and speaks on The REWORK Podcast .  Hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world have built amazing applications using Ruby on Rails , an open-source...

Bob Young co-founded Red Hat, the first company to build a successful business around open source software, and helped shape the modern internet in the process. In this episode, Bob shares the story of how Red Hat went from a CD in a Ziploc bag to a billion-dollar business that inspired GitHub, Coinbase, and much of the cloud infrastructure we use today. But this conversation is about more than ju...

Jonathan Wolf is the co-founder and CEO of ZOE, the science-based nutrition company using data to transform how people eat. In this candid conversation, he joins Alisa to explore what it takes to build a mission-driven company, how to lead with more clarity and transparency, and why the way we eat is more broken and more fixable than most people think. ZOE’s origin story is as unconventional as it...

Kass and Mike Lazerow are serial entrepreneurs, seasoned investors, and co-authors of the upcoming book Shoveling Sh!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success . They join Alisa to share an unfiltered look at what it really takes to build companies, navigate chaos, and stay married through it all. Known for founding Golf.com and Buddy Media, which they sold to Salesforce for $7...

David Ko is the CEO and board member of Calm, the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and mindfulness. A former healthcare executive and tech operator, David previously served as COO of Zynga, held senior roles at Yahoo!, and founded a healthtech company acquired by Calm. He is the bestselling author of Recharge , and has been recognized by TIME, LinkedIn, RockHealth, and NYU Stern for his leadership in...

Mike Seckler is a two-time entrepreneur and tech startup founder who led a company through the dot-com boom and bust, and now leads the charge as CEO of Justworks, the HR tech company focused on uplifting small businesses. In this conversation, he shares hard-earned lessons from building one of the earliest SaaS HR startups, navigating turbulent markets, and guiding Justworks through major transit...

Jeff Byers is the co-founder and CEO of Momentous, a high-performance wellness company delivering science-backed products used by elite athletes, military operators, and high-performers worldwide. A former NFL player and two-time USC football captain, Jeff brings both personal and professional insight to optimizing performance and building values-driven companies. What you’ll learn: Why Jeff says...

Kevin Evers is a Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review, where he shapes groundbreaking research and develops award-winning and bestselling books on high performance, creativity, innovation, marketing, and digital disruption. He’s also written popular essays on brain science, persuasion, unpredictability, and the power of storytelling. Kevin holds degrees in English and Film Studies, and his for...

Eddie Kim is the CTO and cofounder of Gusto, which serves 400,000+ small and medium-sized businesses nationwide by helping them onboard, pay, insure, engage, and provide benefits for their teams, in one integrated, friendly, and easy-to-use platform. Eddie’s career has been shaped by chance encounters, a passion for software, and a deep commitment to growth. Before Gusto, he launched his first com...

In this episode of From Start-Up to Grown-Up , host Alisa Cohn sits down with Daniel Yanisse , co-founder and CEO of Checkr, to discuss the exhilarating rise and the challenges of sustaining a high-growth company. Checkr revolutionized the background check industry, scaling from a $1M revenue run rate in just three months to processing millions of background checks annually. But with hypergrowth c...

Peter Attia, MD, is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan. He is the host of The Drive, one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health and medicine. Dr. Attia received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of M...

Isabelle Freidheim is the founder and managing partner of Athena Capital. She is the youngest chairman of a publicly traded company in the U.S. In her role as managing partner of Athena Capital, Freidheim oversees the company's strategic direction and leads its efforts in identifying and investing in technology companies. Freidheim is an entrepreneur and investor with more than 15 years of ex...

During his 15+ years at Amazon, Ethan Evans helped invent Prime Video, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Merch by Amazon, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce. He led global teams of over 800 and holds more than 70 patents. Ethan has reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, made 1,000+ hires, and was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for t...

Chip is the founder of the Modern Elder Academy (MEA), where a new roadmap for midlife is offered at a beautiful oceanfront campus in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and forthcoming campuses in Santa Fe, NM. His five books have made him a leading authority at the intersection of psychology and business.  Chip had tons of wisdom to share in this talk, including how to use regret as fuel for the future...

Gary Vaynerchuk , also known as "GaryVee," is a serial entrepreneur, the Chairman of VaynerX , and 5x New York Times Best Selling Author. He is a leading global mind on what's next in culture, relevance, and the internet. Gary possesses an uncanny ability to recognize trends and patterns early to help others understand how these shifts impact consumer behavior. He is one of the most...

Colin Bryar is a business advisor and technology leader whose career has focused on optimizing business strategy, technology, and operations. He is a former top-level executive at Amazon, where he spent more than 12 years – much of it in the early aughts during the company’s period of unmatched innovation – serving as a tech VP, leading the operations for IMDb.com, as well as shadowing and working...

David is the creator of Ruby on Rails, Co-Owner of 37signals, best-selling author, Le Mans class-winning racing driver, antitrust advocate, investor in Danish startups, frequent podcast guest, and family man. He writes regularly on HEY World and speaks on The REWORK Podcast .  Hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world have built amazing applications using Ruby on Rails , an open-source...

Shegun Otulana is a seasoned entrepreneur, advisor, mentor and investor. Drawing from his experience as a bootstrapped startup founder who found incredible success, his mission is to empower the next generation of builders by sharing his lessons learned to guide their entrepreneurial journeys. In addition to mentoring founders in his community – many of whom have gone on to launch successful compa...

Jake Schwartz is a serial entrepreneur, investor and advisor. Until 2020, Jake Schwartz served at CEO of General Assembly (GA), the global leader in education and career transformation, which he co-founded in 2011. He grew GA to over 1,000 employees on five continents. In 2018, GA was acquired by The Adecco Group. Jake Schwartz co-founded and serves as Chair of Brave Health, a mission-driven compa...

Jake Kloberdanz is the founder of ONEHOPE, a pioneering wine brand with a mission to create a positive social impact. Under his leadership, ONEHOPE has donated tens of millions of dollars to over 40,000 non-profits and grown from zero to producing over one million bottles per year. The company boasts a world-class vineyard in Napa Valley and has garnered more than 30 wines with 90+ point ratings....

Susan McPherson is a serial connector, angel investor, and corporate responsibility expert. As the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, a communications consultancy focused on brands and social impact, she brings over 30 years of experience in marketing, PR, and sustainability communications. Susan is the author of The Lost Art of Connecting and a sought-after speaker at major events like the...

Jeff Shiner is the CEO of 1Password, a leader in human centric security and privacy. Since joining in 2012, Jeff has grown the company from 20 people to a 900-employee global organization with a $6.8 billion valuation. Today, 1Password enables over 100,000 businesses and millions of individuals to navigate the digital world without fear or friction when logging in – and in less time. The company h...

Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 20 best-selling books, including The Dip , Linchpin , Purple Cow , Tribes , and What To Do When It's Your Turn (And It's Always Your Turn). His book, This is Marketing , was an instant bestseller in countries around the world. Though renowned for...

David is Nash Squared's Group Technology Evangelist. He crafts podcasts, hosts video debates, speaks, moderates conferences, and chairs keynote stages. He's a passionate advocate for technology, dissecting its challenges and opportunities.  David has worked at Nash Squared since 2007, where he has developed a deep understanding of the technology and talent markets. Recognised as Computin...

Kim Scott is the author of Radical Respect and Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Being able to hold a candid and caring conversation with someone is an essential part of leadership.   My next guest on From Start-Up to...