How I Built This with Guy Raz
About this creator
How I Built This with Guy Raz shares founder stories, company-building lessons, and practical insights from entrepreneurs behind iconic businesses.
Why they're in the library
Included for practical lessons from founder stories, company-building decisions, and candid reflections from entrepreneurs behind iconic businesses.
Showing 222 digests for How I Built This with Guy Raz.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Paul English built KAYAK into a $1.8B travel search engine
How I Built This with Guy Raz
July 15, 2024
Founder interviews
10
Business models
8
Product-market fit
7
- A thin UI layer beat giants: simplicity was the real product.
- Lost 80 cents per user until 70% returned directly by name.
- Bipolar diagnosis at 25 shaped his management style for decades.
Building a small business without losing your mind: advice from Kona Ice founder Tony Lamb
How I Built This with Guy Raz
July 11, 2024
SEO
9
Founder interviews
9
Product-market fit
8
- A candy store hit $400k year one — now, should it franchise?
- Bigger isn't better: the real cost of unchecked business growth
- Marketing an unknown product category from zero budget
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Ouidad Wise built a curly hair empire from a single salon
How I Built This with Guy Raz
July 8, 2024
Founder interviews
9
Branding
7
- Products started by accident: relocated clients ordered her in-house formula by mail
- Lived apart from husband and kids five days a week for 16 years to run the business
- Beauty industry ignored curly hair for decades — that gap was the entire opportunity
Founder interviews
Podcast
Brett Schulman of CAVA gives advice to early-stage founders
How I Built This with Guy Raz
July 4, 2024
Founder interviews
9
Resilience & grit
7
Long-term planning
6
- Imposter syndrome signals self-awareness, not incompetence — embrace it.
- Doing fewer things better is what turns around a struggling business.
- Raise capital only after defining exactly what you want the business to become.
Building American Giant: making premium US-manufactured apparel profitable
How I Built This with Guy Raz
July 1, 2024
Case studies
9
Unit economics
7
- A viral article generated 100 orders per second, creating a three-year backlog.
- Domestic manufacturing becomes price-competitive at scale — a $15 US-made t-shirt is possible.
- Flannel shirts took seven years to produce domestically due to lost yarn-dyeing capability.
Advice Line: positioning, sampling, and growth for early-stage consumer brands
How I Built This with Guy Raz
June 20, 2024
Case studies
10
Branding
8
Niche selection
7
- Swell hit $100M revenue with zero marketing spend before going viral.
- Novel products need shelf placement where their actual buyers shop.
- Grow fast or stay profitable? Do both — running out of cash kills brands.
Expanding beyond your core community: marketing advice for niche brands
How I Built This with Guy Raz
June 13, 2024
Branding
9
Niche selection
7
Growth hacking
6
- Borrow community, don't buy it — find authentic connective tissue first.
- Fix your story before spending a dollar on digital marketing.
- Unknown products need cheap tests, not a perfect strategy upfront.
Brand storytelling advice from Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey
How I Built This with Guy Raz
June 6, 2024
Branding
9
Vision & mission
6
Social media
6
- Story gets customers in; product quality keeps them coming back.
- Own your domain first — social media is rented, not owned.
- Break your story into sections; match each section to its audience.
Building brand visibility on a tight budget: advice from Tarte Cosmetics
How I Built This with Guy Raz
May 30, 2024
Branding
9
Growth hacking
8
Content marketing
6
- Clarify your differentiator first — it's useless if buried on your site.
- Personalized athlete seeding beats paid ads for early-stage consumer brands.
- Consistent content marketing compounds into authority and inbound leads.
Branding and growth advice for early-stage consumer product founders
How I Built This with Guy Raz
May 23, 2024
Branding
9
Growth hacking
7
Niche selection
6
- Customers buy on feeling — your brand must deliver it first
- Radical niche focus beats broad appeal for early-stage brands
- Military families are the overlooked goldmine for a recordable book device
Advice line: three founders get help with marketing and investment
How I Built This with Guy Raz
May 16, 2024
Copywriting
9
Pitching investors
6
Fundraising & VC
5
- If a 10-year-old can't grasp your product, rethink your messaging
- Investors want velocity in fewer stores, not wide weak distribution
- Micro-influencers beat celebrity ads for capital-constrained food brands
Founder interviews
Podcast
Gary Erickson of Clif Bar advises three early-stage founders
How I Built This with Guy Raz
May 9, 2024
Founder interviews
9
Competitive analysis
7
Bootstrapping
5
- Attack a named competitor directly — lawsuits can become free PR.
- Co-op ownership gives Etsy rivals a story; gifts give them a hook.
- A demo product that sells itself still needs one great sales hire.
Retail partnerships and DTC strategy for early-stage food brands
How I Built This with Guy Raz
May 2, 2024
Niche selection
9
Branding
7
Supply chain
6
- Getting on the shelf is easy — staying there requires velocity proof.
- Serve a customer the big players ignore; incrementality beats competition.
- Year one D2C: build repeat customers, not just first-season sales.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Dhar Mann: from broke fraudster to 60-billion-view media studio
How I Built This with Guy Raz
April 29, 2024
Founder interviews
10
Business models
8
Delegation
6
- Three failed businesses, a fraud charge, and a Ponzi scheme before age 30.
- One viral Facebook video about a stay-at-home mom built a global studio.
- Removing himself from the videos was the key to scaling the brand.
How to build a brand story that resonates and scales
How I Built This with Guy Raz
April 25, 2024
Branding
9
Community building
7
Social media
5
- Own your online real estate before scaling — social media is rented.
- Lead with product quality; story becomes the surprise that builds loyalty.
- Break your story into sections — match the slice to the audience.