What I Know

The founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle company Cruise is busy testing his company’s driverless robotaxis on the streets of San Francisco. And managing more than 1,000 employees. But that doesn’t mean he’s too busy to get into the back seat. Here’s how he allocates his time every week to put himself in a user’s shoes–and why he thinks it’s so important that leaders make the time to understand ev...

The founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise has finally done it: His company’s robo-taxis are picking up passengers in San Francisco. It’s been almost a decade since he founded his company with the audacious vision to take on Google and create autonomous driving vehicles. He and cofounder Dan Kan pursued that vision–one small step at a time. He spoke with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin...

The Golden Globe Award-winning actress is also a three-time founder of companies. More than a decade ago, she launched Fabletics, the membership-model activewear brand, and more recently, she’s launched King St. Vodka and wellness-supplement brand In Bloom. But before becoming an entrepreneur, Hudson did plenty of endorsement deals–and wanted more out of them than just being a salesperson. She tho...

On this week’s episode of Woman Inc., I sat down with Tala Akhavan, COO of Pietra, a platform that makes it possible to launch the brand you've always dreamt of. Tala, a former Uber executive, joined the creator economy platform with the mission to democratize access for female entrepreneurship via the platform’s capabilities.     As a first time mother, Tala talked about the struggle of wanting t...

The author of The Awesome Human Project and CEO of Happier is a natural at public speaking. Known for her TED talks and corporate speaking engagements, as well as coaching, she’s not one to usually experience stage fright. But she does have a secret to calming nerves before large speaking engagements, which she explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. First: Don’t tell yourself not to be nervou...

Stacey Abrams is known as a politician, a lawyer, and a voting rights activist. Her voter rights organizing in Georgia has been credited with increasing turnout in the state, including during the 2020 presidential election, in which President Biden narrowly won Georgia. Abrams is also a three-time founder–and author of three New York Times bestsellers. In her latest book (Level Up: Rise Above the...

The five-time founder and author of Happier and The Awesome Human Project is known both for her public speaking and her research into what truly makes us happy. But when she was building her last company, she herself was anything but happy. Instead, she was prioritizing everything and everyone aside from herself–and that led to her spiraling into a really dark place. She speaks to host Christine L...

The bestselling author and business advisor Daniel Pink has written about everything from human motivation to the powerful negative emotion, regret. He has lots of ideas. The one for his latest book, The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, came to him while he was already contracted to write an entirely different book. How does he keep track of his ideas? He explains his system...

The bestselling author didn’t intend to write about the powerful negative emotion, regret, but then he experienced it himself and dug in. He explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin what his worldwide study on regret illuminated–and how it has a place in your company, both culturally, and in the way leaders connect on a personal level.

The co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite is a visual thinker. She tells Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she uses her abilities to visualize data points to solve problems or find places to innovate within her online event-ticketing company.

She co-founded the event-ticket site Eventbrite in 2006, took the role of CEO 10 years later, and then did what few women leaders have done: took her company public. Then, the pandemic hit–and with live events canceled globally, she stared into a terrifying future. Julia Hartz explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she led her team through a harrowing crisis, as well as her unique view of...

The founder and CEO of Lively left Victoria’s Secret–and took it on with her inclusive intimates brand. These days, she does a lot of media and big meetings, and her secret to preparing is to not overdo it. She explains to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. 

In order to launch her intimates and loungewear brand, Lively, Michelle Cordeiro Grant decided to do everything a little differently. In fact, some of her strategy turned convention on its head. She built up a community of fans and advocates before she had a product to sell–and made several other counterintuitive business decisions along the way to an $85 million acquisition very early in her star...

The co-founder and President of LTK, the influencer-shopping ecosystem, Amber Venz Box, works with a personal assistant. But that hasn’t always been seamless, she tells Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. Her simple collaboration tool was right under her nose.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Amber Venz Box--co-founder and president of LTK--about being an introvert, founding a company with her significant other, and the power of delegating.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia and chairman of Vayner X.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin continues her conversation with Ryan Breslow and asks him about how he interviews potential employees.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with the founder and CEO of the company that ranked No. 64 the 2021 Inc. 5000, Ryan Breslow. The company is called Bolt, and it is one-click checkout for retailers. Ryan started Bolt in 2014 as an offshoot of his cryptocurrency research at Stanford, and after years of product development and fundraising and slow growth, the company has hit an inflection point and is...

This week, Kara Goldin, the founder and CEO of Hint Water, explains how her ability to put herself in another person’s shoes--even when that person has a completely different set of needs and desires than her--helped her learn to negotiate

When Kara Goldin launched her fruit-flavored water company, Hint, in 2005, she’d worked in media and tech--but never in consumer products, much less beverage creation or distribution. But armed with curiosity and verve, when she lacked know-how, she asked the right questions. And perhaps what she didn’t know was the most valuable asset of all--because the immense challenges that would come didn’t...

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Michael Dell about how to secure a huge customer in this segment of What I Know BEST.

One of America’s best-known entrepreneurs, Michael Dell, founded his eponymous company out of a University of Texas dorm room. More than three decades later, he’s led his company through multiple transformations, including taking it private, and taking on $50 billion in debt to complete a major acquisition. Dell Technologies is in a new phase of its life--and Dell explains his leadership philosoph...

Our new segment, What I Know Best, hones in on a superpower of the founders and thought leaders from our biweekly, longform interviews. This week, Kim Lewis, the CEO and cofounder of CurlMix, explains how to sell anything, when face to face with a potential customer.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Kim and Tim Lewis, founders of Curl Mix, about their circuitous funding journey and landing at No. 93 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 after attaining more than 4,000 percent growth over the past three years.

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Rosie Mattio, founder and CEO of Mattio Communications, about saying yes and taking a risk on a burgeoning industry.