Inspired with Alexa von Tobel

Duolingo’s freemium subscription model, beloved brand and strategic investments have allowed it to execute its educational mission and become a cultural touchstone. Matthew Skaruppa, CFO of Duolingo, is one of the rising financial stars who are helping to bring their businesses to the next level. Since he joined the company in 2020, Duolingo has grown its base of monthly active users by more than...

Athena Calderone is a multi-hyphenate creator through and through. She is widely known as an interior designer, author, chef, and entertaining expert. Since she launched EyeSwoon in 2012, she's grown the brand from editorial platform into an e-commerce destination and hit major milestones along the way: earning over a million Instagram followers, writing two best-selling books, and launching a col...

Mitch Reback, CFO of Sweetgreen, is one of the rising corporate financial stars who is helping to take their companies to the next level. When he started, Sweetgreen had 25 stores; today, there are more than 220—and Reback says the company is still in its “infancy.” In this podcast, part of the SAP-sponsored Growth Agents series, Reback takes a deep dive into his role as a growth agent. Capital is...

In 2010, after a bad customer support experience for a TV delivery, Girish Mathrubootham decided to build a better solution. He launched Freshworks as the first multichannel customer support system. Today, the product has evolved into a robust suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams. Freshworks now has three offices across eight countries with over 5,000 employees and more than...

What if brands were empowered to deliver personalized experiences online, just as well as they could do in a store? That's the idea that underpins Klaviyo, the leading customer and marketing automation platform. Andrew Bialecki cofounded Klaviyo in 2012 and now serves over 100,000 brands, helping them generate $28 billion in revenue for its customers in 2021 alone. Andrew shares why he bootstrappe...

Michael Brown started his career in investment banking, meeting two colleagues who would go on to become his co-founders. After some time in finance, he set out on a new challenge: acquiring and running small businesses. Along the way, he identified a huge mission and plans to dedicate his whole career to this singular focus—helping thousands of small businesses become employee-owned. In 2019, Mic...

What if someone told you they could help you communicate better? That's the mission Max Lytvyn, co-founder of Grammarly, has been on since 2009. After working on plagiarism detection technology, Max realized that the root of plagiarism was people's desire to be better writers. The company was incredibly early to use AI to aid in communication and now has grown to over 30 million daily users and a...

Euan Blair started his career in finance, but he had a nagging interest at the intersection of education and employment. In 2016, Euan launched Multiverse, a tech startup on a mission to create a diverse group of future leaders by building an alternative to university and corporate training: apprenticeships. Today, Multiverse helps over 1,000 organizations hire apprentices to close skill gaps and...

In 2012, Saji Wickramasekara took a bold leap: he took a leave of absence from his undergraduate studies at MIT to start Benchling. A computer scientist by training, Saji had also worked in labs and realized just how much was still run on pen and paper. Today, Benchling's technology powers the biotechnology industry, used by more than 200,000 scientists at over 1200 companies and 7,500 research in...

At his core, John Colgrove, aka "Coz," doesn't consider himself an entrepreneur. He sees himself as an engineer who loves to build things. But despite that, he is the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Pure Storage, a company that uncomplicates data storage—and has a market cap over $11B. Coz co-founded Pure Storage in 2009 to empower every organization to get the most from their data and has...

To build one successful company is a feat. But to do it over and over again? Over the course of his career, Godard Abel has built repeat successes as a serial entrepreneur. Today, he is co-founder and CEO of G2, the world's largest and most trusted software marketplace used by over 80 million people. But he is also the founder of Big Machines (acquired by Oracle) and SteelBrick (acquired by Salesf...

Growing up, V watched his older brother suffer an accident and struggle to access the intensive physical therapy he needed to recover. V has since dedicated his career to solving pain for the 2 billion people around the globe who suffer each year. In 2015, he started Sword Health to free the world from pain and has helped thousands of people along the way. Sword's digital therapist is proven to ou...

Melinda is the Founder of Pivotal Ventures in addition to co-chairing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has spent much of her life dedicated to promoting gender equality, having invested, donated, and committed $1B to just this cause. Already, she has invested over $65 million in comprehensive federal paid family and medical leave, and they have launched a Future of Longevity Accelerator...

As a serial tech entrepreneur, Greg Jackson entered a new arena in his career in 2016. He decided to shift his focus to the green energy revolution, pursuing a lifelong passion of his to protect the planet. The London-based founder started Octopus Energy Group, which has become the second largest energy supplier in the UK and has expanded operations to 14 countries and 5.1 million customers global...

At some point in every tech employee's career, one likely comes into contact with an Atlassian product, from Jira to Confluence to Trello. Scott co-founded Atlassian back in 2001 along with his university friend, Mike Cannon-Brookes, to help unleash the potential of every team. The iconic collaboration company now has over 240,000 customers around the globe and a market value over $40 billion. Sco...

Vikram has spent much of his career as an engineer, managing database storage at Oracle and earning several patents. But in 2015, he officially took on the title of cofounder, starting Lacework to build the security layer for the cloud. The company's thesis hinges on the idea that security problems can be solved through the right datasets. In 2021, Lacework raised a $1.3B Series D round, the large...

For decades, Kurt House, a Ph. D. in Earth and Planetary Science, has been at the forefront of climate tech. He decided to dedicate his career to helping transition the energy economy into a renewable one—and realized that a critical material shortfall would be one of the biggest hurdles in electric vehicle adoption. So in 2018, he co-founded KoBold, an AI-driven mineral exploration company. KoBol...

In 2006, Julia Hartz and her cofounders launched Eventbrite, the global self-service ticketing platform for live experiences. Since its start, the company has empowered event creators with seamless technology to bring more events to life. Last year alone, Eventbrite was home to 1.7 million paid events generating $3.3 billion in gross ticket sales. Julia shares how an early focus on self-service he...

In 2019, serial founders Leif Abraham and Jannick Malling came together to launch Public.com, the popular investing platform that allows everyone to invest in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and alternative assets. They set out to build a community around the stock market, and in just a few years, they've scaled to 3 million members. Leif started as a fintech outsider, but took his entrepreneurial experienc...

Do you know your neighbors? When Nextdoor was founded in 2008, 50% of Americans knew one or none of their neighbors. Fast-forward and Nextdoor now connects 81 million neighbors across 11 countries, building both digital and real-world connections. Sarah Friar joined Nextdoor as CEO in 2018 and took the company public in 2021 under the ticker symbol KIND. Sarah shares how her childhood in Northern...

For anyone who's ever smelled one of her iconic scents, Jo Malone needs no introduction. Described as an "English scent maverick," Jo has created some of the world's most-loved fragrances. Her first company, Jo Malone London, gained cult status around the world and was sold to Estée Lauder, and in 2013, she launched her Jo Loves, a global fragrance brand. Jo shares how scent has been a superpower...

In 1998, Sara Blakely set out with a big idea to revolutionize the undergarment industry. Overnight, she went from being a frustrated consumer to the brilliant inventor of SPANX. Sara acted as the product's number one salesperson, using her skills honed in fax machine sales to get SPANX everywhere from the shelves of Neiman Marcus to Oprah's Favorite Things. Sara was named one of the 100 Most Infl...

What does the rise of video-forward platforms like TikTok and Snapchat mean for how we work? That's the question Joe Thomas and his co-founders set out to solve at Loom, the video communication platform for async work. They started Loom in 2015, long before the pandemic, and have scaled the platform to 21 million users and more than 215 million "looms" recorded. Joe shares why it took a few produc...

Julie Rice is no stranger to building massive brands. In 2006, she co-founded the fitness phenomenon, SoulCycle, with her business partner Elizabeth Cutler. They scaled SoulCycle from a small dance studio to 60 spin studios across the country, attracting Equinox as a buyer. Along the way, they realized while people came for the workouts, they stayed for the community. Julie and Elizabeth are back...

In 2021, Dave Rogenmoser got access to the OpenAI beta. He quickly spotted a giant opportunity: using GPT-3 to help people write great content more quickly. He co-founded Jasper and in under two years, scaled the company to over 100,000 users and a valuation of $1.5 billion. Today, Jasper is an AI-powered content platform working with increasingly large enterprises. Dave shares how AI-powered cont...