From Start-Up to Grown-Up

Alexi Robichaux is the Co-Founder and CEO of BetterUp , the first leadership development platform to connect coaching to sustainable behavior change. Prior to BetterUp, Alexi was Director of Product Management at VMware. Alexi is Chairman of Youth Leadership America (YLA), a nonprofit he co-founded in 2003, to foster peer-to-peer leadership development and civic engagement in high school students....

Oleg Rogynskyy is the Founder and CEO of People.ai I was introduced to Oleg by Robin Matlock, who has also appeared on this podcast ! Oleg is an incredibly thoughtful and intentional leader in how he builds his company. In our conversation, we talk about specifics for board management,  why he hires people that are "way out of his league," and his strategy to maintain and grow his extens...

Jon Stein is the Founder and Chairman of the Board at Betterment. Jon was the first person I interviewed for my book, From Start-Up to Grown-Up! We start at the beginning of his journey that led him to founding Betterment, then discuss how important culture is to the success of the company. Later on, we got into why he stepped down as CEO, and how he would end up finding his successor. To stay up...

Paul English is the co-founder and CEO of Boston Venture Studio. Paul has been a founder for multiple companies and organizations, one of his companies being Kayak. Paul shares how he found his co-founder Steve Hafner and how they decided to build Kayak together.  He is also a master of the hiring process, and shares step by step his process for determining whether to hire someone and how he does...

Kara Goldin is the co-founder and CEO of the beverage company Hint Inc. She discusses co-founding Hint with her husband Theo, why and when she decided to bring in outside investors after bootstrapping for so long, and why singer-songwriter John Legend became an investor. To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her newsletter! If you like what you hear, please s...

Julien Smith is the Founder and CEO of Practice, a WSJ bestselling author, and former CEO and Founder of Breather. He discusses what he learned stepping away from his former company, Breather, how he strengthens his co-founder relationships, and the insight he gained watching another CEO operate. To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her newsletter! Learn mor...

Ilan Twig is the Co-Founder and CTO of TripActions. Ilan talks about how his first company was acquired after nine months, how the pandemic nearly ruined their business, how they leaned on their mission and culture to create and survive, and why a diagnosis helped define his leadership style. To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her newsletter! Learn more ab...

Sid Viswanathan is the Co-Founder and President of the digital health platform, Truepill. This was such a rich conversation! We talked about how he was reverse-pitched on his first startup, founder market fit, how company culture evolves as your business grows, and how when he solves a problem, it's a failure. To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her ne...

Ragy Thomas is the Founder and CEO of the social media and customer management company, Sprinklr. We really got into it in this discussion, from how he grew up in a family that looked down on business, becoming a multi-time entrepreneur, his abundance mindset, and the advice that changed his life. To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her newsletter! Connect...

Rahul Vohra is the Co-Founder and CEO of Superhuman. Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO at Superhuman. According to Crunch Base, he is also a Technical Advisor at Boldstart Ventures, an investor and advisor at Partender, and an investor of sendwithus and Easy Post. He received his bachelor of arts in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. Rahul shares the lessons he learned from being a...

Robin Matlock was the former CMO of VMware, an independent Board Director of startups including People.ai and Cohesity. Robin is a seasoned Silicon Valley GTM executive with over 30 years of marketing, sales and business development experience in the enterprise software and services market. Currently an Independent Director with Iron Mountain (NYSM: IRM), serving on Technology, Compensation and Ri...

Gregory Galant is the co-founder and CEO of Muck Rack, a platform enabling PR teams to work together to find the right journalists for their stories, send customized pitches, build meaningful relationships with the media, monitor news and quantify their impact. It’s used by thousands of organizations, including Taco Bell, Pfizer, Golin, International Committee of the Red Cross, Knight Foundation,...

David Sax is the author of The Soul of an Entrepreneur . An award winning writer, journalist, and keynote speaker, David has been at the forefront of reporting and dissecting the intersection of business and culture for nearly two decades, including four internationally bestselling books, articles and appearances in nearly every major global news outlet, and dozens of keynote speeches to audiences...

Rick Nucci is the Co-Founder and CEO of Guru . Rick Nucci is co-founder and CEO at Guru. Rick brings twenty years of experience in creating category-leading software solutions and companies. Prior to Guru, Rick was the founder and chief technology officer of Boomi, which defined and led a new segment as the first-ever cloud integration platform-as-a-service. Boomi was acquired by Dell in 2010, whe...

Jennifer Dulski is the Founder and CEO of Rising Team and author of the WSJ bestselling book Purposeful . Jennifer Dulski has a wide range of executive experience including leadership roles at Facebook, Google, and Yahoo!, and founder, CEO, and president roles at early stage and scaling startups. She is currently CEO and founder of Rising Team, a company that provides tools, data, and community to...

Jeff Wald is a serial entrepreneur,  Board Member, Best Selling author, Keynote speaker and investor.   Jeff is co-founder and Chairman of two new technology startups, Bento Engine (toolkit for financial advisers) and Sonero (AI tool that provides summaries and action items from meetings).  Jeff’s previous company, Work Market, an enterprise software platform that enables companies to manage freel...

Sadie Lincoln is the co-founder and CEO of the fitness franchise company, Barre3. Sadie is on Inc.’s Female Founders 100 list and the MO100 Impact list , has been featured on NPR’s How I Built This , and speaks regularly on the topics of mindful leadership, the power of body wisdom, and the movement to redefine what success in fitness means. Beyond running her company and being a global spokespers...

Chris Hsu is the CEO & Co-Founder of Azibo, a VC-backed real estate fintech startup focused on simplifying the rental property experience. Prior to Azibo, Chris served as an Advisory Partner at a16z and previously was CEO of Micro Focus, a $4B enterprise software company. He also was COO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he successfully led the largest corporate separation in history. Chris...

Jake Stein is the cofounder and CEO of Common Paper. Previously, he was the co-founder of RJMetrics (acquired by Magento, then Adobe) and Stitch (acquired by Talend). Before RJMetrics, Jake worked in venture capital, started a landscaping business in high school, and was the 44th ranked table tennis player under 21 in New Jersey; achievements of which he is equally proud. In this episode, Jake dis...

Zvi Band is the co-founder and CEO of Contactually, which has been acquired by Compass. He is also the author of Success is In Your Sphere. His new venture is called Talk Social, which is focused on bringing humanity back together. In this episode, Zvi and I had a conversation about how he got onto the path of entrepreneurship, how he learned to see himself as the leader, and the limits of transpa...

Matt Blumberg is the founder and CEO of Bolster, a new talent marketplace for on-demand executives launched in 2020. Before Bolster, he was the CEO of Return Path. He has authored two books, namely: The Startup CEO and The Startup CXO. In this episode, Matt will take us through his entrepreneurship journey. He will give us in-depth details on how they founded Return Path, how they built the compan...

Learn about Alisa's new podcast, From Start-Up to Grown-Up, where she interviews founders about the journey from their beginnings as a fledgling business to thriving companies that are leading the way. Connect with Alisa! Follow Alisa Cohn on  Instagram: @alisacohn Twitter: @alisacohn Facebook: facebook.com/alisa.cohn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisacohn/ Website: http://www.alisac...