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.
How to communicate your value proposition as an early-stage founder
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 19, 2026
Copywriting
9
Customer discovery
8
Branding
7
- Lead with the problem your product solves, not the product itself.
- Tactile or unfamiliar products need demos — or copy that does the same job.
- Your first hire should fill your weakest skill gap, not mirror your strengths.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Aaron Krause turned a shelved hand scrubber into Scrub Daddy
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 16, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Iteration & feedback loops
7
Niche selection
6
- The sponge sat boxed and unsold for years before its kitchen use was discovered.
- Hanging up on 3M's finance team mid-call unlocked a far better acquisition price.
- Shark Tank, QVC reruns, and clean-tok influencers compounded into a billion-dollar brand.
How to grow a consumer brand: DTC, naming, and storytelling
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 12, 2026
Business models
9
Content marketing
8
Branding
7
- Retail packaging in 26,000 stores is your cheapest DTC acquisition channel.
- Change your brand name while it's young — before explaining it becomes a habit.
- Narrative moves a product out of commodity territory into enterprise value.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Bobo's: how a single mom built a $100M oat bar brand
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 9, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Bootstrapping
7
Business models
6
- Divorced at 40 with no career, she turned a daughter's recipe into a brand.
- Shared a kitchen and employees with Justin's Nut Butters to survive early years.
- Refused every food trend — timeless, imperfect bars beat the market anyway.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Scaling a niche brand: advice from WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 5, 2026
Founder interviews
9
Content marketing
7
Niche selection
7
- The brand story you omit is the sale you lose.
- Build content for every grief-moment search query, including AI assistants.
- Good unit economics mean spend more — not find a new channel.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Kettle Chips: how a small Oregon brand conquered the UK first
How I Built This with Guy Raz
March 2, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Pivoting
7
Bootstrapping
6
- Why Kettle expanded to the UK before the US East Coast
- A rancid oil disaster nearly killed the brand at launch
- Princess Di's grocery bag photo beat any marketing campaign
Founder interviews
Podcast
Paperless Post founder Alexa Hirschfeld advises three early-stage founders
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 26, 2026
Founder interviews
9
Branding
7
Niche selection
7
- When a collaboration outgrows both parent brands, go standalone.
- Outsource only once demand is predictable — hire part-time first.
- Lead with the product benefit, not the unfamiliar concept.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Jim McKelvey co-founded Square after losing a $2,000 sale
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 23, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Business models
7
MVP & prototyping
5
- The payment system excluded any merchant with under $100k in sales.
- Listing 140 failure reasons turned VC pitches from combat into collaboration.
- Amazon copied 3 of Square's 14 innovations — the other 11 destroyed them.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How I Built This Advice Line: Three food and lifestyle founders get scaling advice
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 19, 2026
Founder interviews
9
Business models
7
Processes & SOPs
6
- Getting into a big retailer is the easy part — staying in isn't.
- Lures sell out faster than they're made: the clearest go-full-time signal.
- Chomps's 13-year build: patience, focus, and a painful product recall with no regrets.
Closing techniques
Podcast
How John Osher built and sold Spin Brush to P&G for $475M
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 16, 2026
Closing techniques
8
MVP & prototyping
8
Market research
7
- A $5 electric toothbrush built from lollipop-motor expertise.
- Scrapping 400,000 defective units saved the entire business.
- Fake licensing pitch engineered P&G into asking to buy the company.
How to turn content and community into a sustainable product business
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 12, 2026
Business models
9
Content marketing
8
Community building
6
- YouTube audiences and product buyers are often entirely different customers.
- Print magazine growth on a shoestring: three-layer strategy for parents and kids.
- Reframe slow baking as the product, not the friction — then host events.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Reed Hastings on building Netflix: from DVD mail-order to streaming giant
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 9, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Business models
8
Culture building
7
- Why Netflix nearly sold itself to Blockbuster for nothing in 2000
- The keeper test: adequate performance earns a generous severance package
- How a failed spinoff taught Reed Hastings the cost of unchallenged conviction
Founder interviews
Podcast
Jon Stein of Betterment on focus, pricing, and scaling channels
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 5, 2026
Founder interviews
10
Long-term planning
8
Pricing strategy
6
- Pursuing multiple channels at once dilutes focus enough to stall all of them.
- Raise prices before taking on debt — skilled makers are systematically underpriced.
- Treat retail and Chewy as marketing spend, not just revenue lines.
HOKA: How two French alpinists built a $2B running shoe brand
How I Built This with Guy Raz
February 2, 2026
Case studies
10
Product-market fit
8
Business models
7
- A quad-destroying 101-mile race revealed a solvable engineering problem
- Going twice as soft as industry standard foam unlocked the rocker breakthrough
- Deckers partnership provided legal cover before Nike could copy the design
Mark Cuban's advice to early-stage founders: margin over sales
How I Built This with Guy Raz
January 29, 2026
Pricing strategy
9
Cash flow management
9
Outsourcing & delegation
7
- Why big-box retail too early destroys founder-owned businesses
- Raising VC while owning just over 50% puts you in a trap
- AI tools are the great equaliser for cash-strapped entrepreneurs