Guy Louzon - a Podcast about business

The origin story of Airbnb is not a story of inevitable success. It is, rather, a story of desperation, creativity, and the willingness of three people to do something slightly insane when their conventional product wasn’t working. It is the story of how a design problem—”how do we pay rent?”—became a multibillion-dollar business that fundamentally reshaped lodging, travel, and the concept of the...

Stack Overflow: The Internet's Most Valuable Accident More stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

AMD: The Forty-Year Overnight Success ! more stuff here https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Youtube ! More stuff here: Https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

IBM: A Century of Dominance, Adaptation, and the Weight of Legacy more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Spotify: How a Swedish Programmer Built the Future of Music by Learning to Say "Yes" to Piracy more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The Rise of Ridesharing: How Uber and Lyft Built the $100B Taxi Disruption more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

From snowboards to reinventing e-com: Shopify more interesting stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The Story of McDonald's ! more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Harvey: When an O'Melveny Litigator and a DeepMind Researcher Built AI's Most Ambitious Legal Startup more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Nubank: How a Colombian Outsider Built the World's Largest Digital Bank and Is About to Reshape American Banking This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

How a Failed Game Became a $27.7B Digital Headquarters for the World: The Slack Origin Story This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Automattic: How Open Source Code and Philosophical Design Created a $10 Billion Publishing Empire This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Part I: The Founders—Refugees, Programmers, and Dreamers Ali Ghodsi: From Tehran to UC Berkeley The story of Databricks begins, improbably, with a child’s flight from revolution. In 1984, when Ali Ghodsi was just five years old, his family had approximately 24 hours to escape Iran. The country was in upheaval, torn by the revolution and the early years of the Iran-Iraq War. His parents, both physi...

The Man Who Wanted to Democratize Computing: How Ivan Zhao Built Notion into a $10 Billion Idea Factory This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Telegram: The Encrypted Messenger That Chose Geopolitics Over Growth This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The Cursor Story: Four MIT Prodigies Built a $29 Billion Coding IDE in 24 Months more interesting stuff here https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The Prophecy markets: How Polymarket and Kalshi Built a Billion-Dollar Industry on the Price of Truth more stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com cdwywo8a3vrzKwbXErZw This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Oscars bonus - The rise and fall and MGM This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The story of online education’s rise reads like venture capital mythology: visionary founders, global problems solved by technology, network effects creating unstoppable platforms. But it’s also a story about how two genuinely brilliant solutions to the same problem ended up competing so directly that, by 2025, both found themselves wounded and forced into an embrace neither had anticipated. In De...

The story of The Paypal Mafia ! The founders, their origin story before and after Paypal More interesting stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The LinkedIn Story ! More interesting stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

OpenAI: From a Dinner at Rosewood to the Most Consequential Company in the World More stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

The Robinhood Origin Story: Democratizing Finance or Disrupting Wall Street? More interesting stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com

Rocket Lab ! More interesting stuff here: https://guylouzon.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guylouzon.substack.com