“You just have to really, really, really care.” – Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI When Alexandr Wang dropped out of MIT at 19 to launch a startup, he didn’t have a perfectly polished AI business plan. What he had was obsession — a burning drive…
After building and selling a successful business, Justin Wilhelms took a leap into his true calling—helping overwhelmed business owners regain control. In this edition of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur Spotlight, Justin shares how he evolved into…
If you’re an early-stage founder or wantrepreneur, here’s the unfair advantage you can start building today: a tight personal brand attached to a simple, scalable business model. That’s the spine of Daniel Priestley’s operating system, plus the dece…
If software is eating the world, Replit’s bet is to hand everyone a fork. In his recent interview with Lenny’s Podcast, Replit co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad laid out a future where product managers, designers, and even non-technical founders can sh…
“You don’t have to be a CEO to lead. Leadership is deciding to step up and drive something forward that wouldn’t have happened without you.” — Wes Kao In a world flooded with performative leadership and LinkedIn soundbites, Wes Kao is the real …
After discovering the transformative power of leadership coaching, Kelly Kienzle took a bold leap from working within corporate frameworks to forging her own path. Through one-on-one and team coaching, she empowers mission-driven leaders to reclaim …
“You can’t have a great product without a great team.” — Cameron Adams, Co-Founder & CPO of Canva *In his recent 45-minute AI Product Masterclass on the Behind the Craft podcast, Cameron Adams* shared how, just days before Canva’s launch, he wa…
“Ten, Eighty, Ten.” That’s how Gary Vaynerchuk scales billion-dollar ambitions. In his words, “I open and close. The middle is the problem.” It’s one of many frameworks he’s developed over a lifetime of building — from a basement wine store in New…
Garrett Paul went from feeling professionally adrift to co-founding a fast-growing accounting firm with childhood friend and CPA, Matt Jones. While Matt leads on the technical front, Garrett drives client relationships, business development, and str…
In the pantheon of Silicon Valley origin stories, few are as personal—and quietly revolutionary—as that of Drew Houston. The Dropbox co-founder and CEO didn’t set out to create a billion-dollar company. He just wanted to avoid forgetting his thumb d…
“If You Don’t Know Who You Are, Mastery Will Be Misery.” For decades, Robert Greene — author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature — has been the modern-day Machiavelli for entrepreneurs, creatives, and ambitious souls …
“Operating out of fear is always losing.” — Julie Wainwright In her recent interview on the Success Story Podcast, Julie Wainwright opened up with striking honesty about public failure, personal collapse, and what it really took to build a bill…
“Your tone is how the prospect interprets your intention behind everything you say.” — Jeremy Miner If you’ve ever been ghosted by a prospect, dropped from a sales process, or treated like a commodity despite offering something genuinely valuab…
"If you take everything from me, I still have the motivation to start over again and build something." — Diplo When you think of Diplo, you probably think of the Grammy-winning DJ who’s headlined global festivals, broken genre boundaries, and produ…
When you hear Neil Patel — digital marketing entrepreneur and co-founder of NP Digital — talk about building companies, one theme keeps coming back: focus beats diversification. In a recent interview on the Success Story Podcast, Patel dismantled o…
After being laid off, Tomas Franc chose not to job hunt—he chose to build. With a background in SaaS and a long-standing passion for fixing knowledge gaps in fast-moving teams, Tomas launched NextKS: an AI-powered Slack-native platform that turns re…
“The future belongs to those who can steal attention.” – Codie Sanchez In a world where AI is eating jobs, algorithms change weekly, and competition for eyeballs is relentless, Codie Sanchez has quietly (and then loudly) built a $10M+ content m…
After trading the grind of underpaid academia for the thrill of entrepreneurship, Kristin Clark found her calling by helping others share their stories. As the founder of Elite Content Creation, a boutique ghostwriting and hybrid publishing agency, …
When Daniela Amodei left OpenAI with six colleagues including her brother, Dario, to co-found Anthropic, they were chasing a mission: put safety and human values at the center of generative AI. Three years later, Anthropic’s Claude is used by milli…
After years of working under someone else's banner, Angel Ortiz made a bold leap during a business presentation—unveiling ZITRO Construction Services LLC to a room full of peers. What followed was a journey fueled by deep family inspiration, unwaver…
When Neal Mohan first walked into YouTube’s New York offices as its CEO, he brought with him a career that had already shaped much of the platform’s monetization backbone. But in his candid conversation with Colin and Samir, Mohan revealed that his …
In an interview for First Block, Notion’s founder-focused series, Michael Truell — co-founder and CEO of AnySphere — retraced Cursor’s unlikely path to becoming one of the fastest-growing AI developer tools in the world. Before Cursor, Truell and h…
“People don’t want to eat broccoli. But if you hide the broccoli in sugar, they’ll eat it.” That’s how Ivan Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Notion, explains the early pivot that saved the company. In a rare, deeply personal conversation on Lenny’s Pod…
In 2020, Hala Taha’s podcast wasn’t yet making money. By 2024, Young and Profiting is projected to generate over $1 million in podcast revenue alone. But that’s just the surface. Behind the mic, Taha has quietly built a $7 million+ business ecosy…