Inc. Founders Project With Alexa Von Tobel

What if lawyers could work 10x more efficiently? That's the problem Jason Boehmig set out to solve in 2014 at Ironclad, a leading legal software provider that helps businesses create and manage contracts. But as AI's capabilities have grown, Jason now has his sights set on making legal work 1,000x more efficient. Jason transitioned from corporate attorney to founder, and Ironclad now has over 1,000 customers and a $3.2 billion valuation. Jason shares why Ironclad invested in the legal community early on, how the company is closing the "access to justice gap," and why he starts off every year by reading a poem to the whole company.

Today, Webflow is a company valued at over $4 billion. But it took Vlad and his cofounders repeated attempts to get the company off the ground. In 2012, they started gaining steam for their vision to allow people to create websites with no coding experience. The company now brings the power of software engineering to designers through an intuitive visual interface and has grown to over 3.5 million users. Vlad shares how Webflow has made its user community a superpower, why having two kids when he started the company gave him extra motivation to succeed, and how he predicts no-code and generative AI will intersect. 

While in business school, Jeff Raider co-founded Warby Parker and watched the iconic glasses company take off. So when his friend, Andy Katz-Mayfield, G-chatted him one day with an idea to reimagine mens' razors, Jeff was intrigued. In 2013, the duo started Harry's to create exceptional shaving and personal care products that better meet the needs of modern men. The company has since reached tens of millions of people and become the #2 men's shave brand in the country. Jeff shares how they signed on a German factory to manufacture a million blades before writing a business plan, how their first referral program led to over 100,000 email sign-ups in a week, and how he found the silver lining when the FTC blocked a planned acquisition of Harry's in 2020.

At fourteen, Reese Witherspoon’s acting career kicked off. In the ensuing decades, she has become an A-list star, earning an Academy Award for her performance in Walk the Line and starring in iconic films like Legally Blonde and Election. But despite her success, she found herself underwhelmed by the quality of roles for women. In 2016, she started Hello Sunshine, a cross-platform media brand and content company, to drive the production of female-centric content. Hello Sunshine was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies and was acquired for $900M in 2021. Reese shares why female collaboration fuels creativity, how Hello Sunshine has found success across so many media platforms, and what she learned from her first business (a custom barrette company in the third grade). 

Jyoti Bansal is a serial entrepreneur, through and through. In 2008, he first made the leap from startup engineer to CEO with AppDynamics, a company that was acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion just under a decade later. After giving retirement a shot, he returned to the founder seat: he started software delivery unicorn Harness, cybersecurity platform Traceable, startup accelerator BIG Labs, and VC firm Unusual Ventures—and has more than 25 US patents under his name. Jyoti shares his simple formula for finding product-market fit, why ringing the Nasdaq closing bell was part of his Cisco negotiation, and how he's learned not to stress about things outside of his control.

Over his decade-plus at Microsoft, Eugenio Pace became an expert in cloud computing and identity management, co-authoring several books on the topic. His drive to solve the problem of identity management for fellow developers inspired him to start a company of his own, Auth0, in 2013. Over eight years, he scaled the company into a trusted global brand, leading to a 2021 acquisition by Okta in a $6.5 billion dollar deal. Today, Eugenio is the President of Customer Identity at Okta, serving Auth0's and Okta's combined customer base. Eugenio shares why they decided to offer parts of Auth0 for free, why he attributes his success to a CEO development program, and why he felt like it was the right moment to sell his company—even though Okta started courting him years prior.

In 2009, Tim Chen found himself laid off from his Wall Street job and was trying to figure out his next move. But a simple question from his sister about finding the right credit card turned into the core idea for NerdWallet, the company on a mission to give consumers clarity around all of life's financial decisions. NerdWallet started as a tool to help people shop for credit cards, but has scaled to serve over 19 million users. In 2021, Tim led NerdWallet through an IPO. Tim shares why they raised venture capital only after the company was profitable, why he loves the Jeff Bezos quote that very few decisions are irreversible, and how his parents instilled Tim's entrepreneurial drive.

While a sophomore at Harvard, James Hirschfeld put lots of time into planning his 21st birthday party—but when it came time to figure out invitations, there was no option that spoke to him, between expensive stationery and clunky online tools. He started Paperless Post in 2009 along with his sister, Alexa, and has since reimagined the experience of sending and receiving invitations for over 175 million users. James shares why it was an uphill battle convincing investors that consumers wanted premium tools for digital communication, how they turned the business impact of the pandemic (the worst thing that could happen to a company centered on events) into an investment in the future, and why user trust and loyalty is sacred.

In 2012, George Fraser teamed up with his lifelong friend, Taylor Brown, to build Fivetran. Their initial vision was completely different from what Fivetran is today: a fully managed automated data integration provider, valued at over $5 billion. But the two listened to customer conversations and realized that they could build a viable business around a singular pain point. Fivetran now serves thousands of customers and hundreds of leading brands across the globe. George shares how his PhD in Neurobiology impacts his style as a founder, why fear of failure is an underrated motivator, and why they got creative with a major acquisition in order to build a full-spectrum offering overnight. 

Allon Bloch is no stranger to starting companies, but when he launched K Health, he was new to healthcare. Before K Health, he was the CEO of website publishing platform Wix and car retailer Vroom. But his father's health struggles inspired him to turn his focus to delivering high quality medicine at scale. He co-founded K Health in 2016 and has scaled the platform into the #1 downloaded app in the medical category, covering over 6 million people. Allon explains how K Health leveraged AI early on to teach a machine the language of medicine, why he believes it's a great time to be a healthcare entrepreneur, and why he attributes his success to the partnership of strong co-founding teams.

Nearly twenty years ago, Anthony Casalena was a student at the University of Maryland who wanted to build himself a website. Finding no easy platform in the market, he created his own. Today, Squarespace is an all-in-one website building and ecommerce platform used by more than 4.2 million people. Anthony worked as a team of one for the first few years, but now has over 1,800 employees and took Squarespace public in 2021. Anthony shares how he got his idea off the ground with a $30,000 investment in servers and Google AdWords, why it still feels surreal to see a Squarespace ad at the Super Bowl, and how running a public company is completely different than what he expected.

Growing up, Ara saw firsthand how hard his father worked as a contractor running a trade business. When he met Vahe Kuzoyan, a fellow Armenian immigrant whose family worked in the trades, they saw an opportunity to help their own families work more efficiently and grow their businesses. Over time, word spread and they decided to go all in on building ServiceTitan. With a valuation over $9B, ServiceTitan helps thousands of customers in the trillion dollar trade industry. Ara shares how his dad wandering the aisles of Barnes & Noble kicked off his coding skills, why the two victories of B2B software are making customers money or saving them money, and how he and Vahe strive to cultivate a winning culture.

Co-founder dynamics can be notoriously challenging. But Waseem Daher and his co-founders, Jeff Arnold and Jessica McKellar, are now building their third business together. Their most recent company is Pilot, which they started in 2016 to solve a pain point they experienced as founders: how time-consuming it can be to manage company finances. Pilot is now the largest startup and SMB bookkeeper in the United States, serving over 1,900 clients. Waseem shares why speed is the most critical advantage for startups to leverage, how he learned to delegate in later stages, and why a founder's strongest ethical obligation is to their customers and team. 

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 bootstrapped the business until profitability, how early partnerships can be a key to efficient customer acquisition, and why he feels like he's only achieved 1% of Klaviyo's potential.

After business school, David Velez moved to Latin America to become a venture capitalist. But after finding a dearth of startups to invest in, he founded one of his own. Since then, Nubank has grown into the largest independent digital bank in the world. The Brazil-based company has over 39 million users and a valuation north of $25 billion. David shares how Nubank built a waitlist of over a million people in just 18 months, why the company's first product was a purple credit card, and how waking up at 5am every day makes him a better founder. (Original Air Date: Jun-9-2021)

In 2013, a team of academics at UC Berkeley was working to solve massive data challenges that were impacting the tech companies in their backyard. Fast-forward and that team now represents the co-founders of Databricks, a data and AI company used by more than 5,000 organizations worldwide. In 2016, Ali Ghodsi stepped into the CEO seat and the company is now valued at $28 billion. Ali shares why he prioritizes building leaders over making decisions, how he sees the future of AI, and how he navigates the unique experience of having six co-founders. (Original Air Date: 3-17-2021)

Just a year into medical school at Harvard, Sean Duffy decided to pursue a new route toward healthcare delivery. In 2011, he started Omada Health to explore how design and technology could make a difference in healthcare. Today, Omada Health is a virtual-first care provider that blends clinical protocols with behavior science to help people with chronic conditions achieve long term improvements. The company now serves over 700,000 members and has facilitated over 13 million messages between members and care teams. Sean shares why Omada chose to focus on in-between-visit care, how the pandemic accelerated digital adoption by a matter of years, and why his most helpful read as he started a company was The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law.

Today, millions of users know Noom as the most-installed weight loss app of 2020. But it took countless pivots and many years for the consumer-led digital health company to turn its mission—of helping people live healthier, happier lives—into a product users are obsessed with. Saeju's intense desire to help people dates back to childhood in South Korea, growing up in a family of doctors. He started working on what would become Noom in 2007, but it took nearly a decade for the company to hit its stride. Saeju shares why he's hyper-focused on preventative healthcare, why he would have been shocked as an early founder to learn he'd be in the weight loss business, and how becoming a father made him realize the value of his parents' unconditional love.

Harley Finkelstein first encountered Shopify as a user. Back in 2006, while in law school, he was one of the first merchants to use the platform. He joined the company in 2010 and now serves as President, helping to scale Shopify to millions of daily active users across 175 countries driving $444B in global economic activity. Today, Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business—and is second only to Amazon as the largest online retailer in the US. Harley shares why the future of e-commerce is just the future of commerce, why his favorite motto is "how you do anything is how you do everything," and how being a power extrovert has made him a stronger leader.

It has been nearly two decades since Sebastian Siemiatkowski started Klarna, based on the simple idea of enabling customers to pay how they'd like. Today, Klarna is a fintech giant on a mission to revolutionize the retail banking industry. Headquartered in Sweden, Klarna is now a fully licensed bank operating across 45 markets. The company has scaled to over 150 million active consumers and over 450,000 merchant partners. Sebastian shares why he thinks of Klarna as a digital assistant that saves people time and money, why he thinks the banking industry will shrink (making Klarna a larger player in a smaller industry), and how growing up as a Polish immigrant in Sweden gave him a hunger for entrepreneurship.