From Start-Up to Grown-Up

To build a media business as an independent journalist, you need more than a great newsletter. You need to see what your audience wants before anyone else does, then move fast. If you’ve ever talked yourself out of a big leap, waited for the perfect launch date, or wondered when your solo project becomes a real company, this conversation is for you. You’ll hear how a side event planned around a bachelor party became Cerebral Valley, an invite-only AI summit which has spawned numerous connecti...

Most people don’t know that producing a Broadway show is like building a startup. That’s what Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Ken Davenport has learned over his decades producing hits. He has to find the product, raise the capital, build the team, and get 1,000 to 2,000 people through the door eight times a week, for years. And when founders tell him their business is different, he tells them every business runs on the same principles. Ken is a Tony and Olivier Award-winning ...

What if the most valuable asset you can build as an entrepreneur is not your company, but your relationships? Jayson Gaignard built one of Canada’s largest ticket-wholesaling businesses, only to realize he had created a company he hated. When circumstances left him approximately $250,000 in debt, with a six-month-old daughter and a new marriage, he began investing in the one thing no one could take from him: his relationships. That decision eventually led Jayson to create MMT, an invite-only ...

How did Joe Thomas and his co-founders keep building Loom when they had maxed-out credit cards and only 14 days of runway left? Before Loom became one of the most recognizable asynchronous video platforms, Joe Thomas, Vinay Hiremath, and Shahed Khan spent nine months testing ideas, making major pivots, and listening closely to early users. Their persistence eventually transformed a struggling user-feedback product into a new way for people to communicate at work. In this encore episode of Fro...

What if the biggest mistake CEOs are making with AI is trying to improve the company they already have? Seth Levine believes leaders need to ask a more radical question: If you were building your company from scratch today, how would you design it? Seth is a founder, investor, author, and co-founder of Foundry, the venture capital firm he built alongside Brad Feld and their partners. After decades of working with founders, boards, and leadership teams, he has seen what separates businesses th...