Samuel Insull: how one of America's greatest industrialists died broke

Founders February 1, 2024

• Built the modern electric utility industry; died completely penniless at 79
• Invented mass production, regulated monopoly, and open-ended mortgages
• Borrowed $200 million in a single Depression year and lost everything

Growing a side business: TikTok live, fear, and accountability

GaryVee February 1, 2024

• TikTok live is the biggest discovery arbitrage in social media right now
• Not posting is why your side business isn't growing — not your day job
• Fear of judgment from family kills more dreams than failure ever does

How ICON is using 3D printing to make homes faster and cheaper

How I Built This with Guy Raz February 1, 2024

• Concrete's lifetime carbon footprint beats stick-built homes, despite production emissions.
• Only robots running 24/7 can house a billion people within a generation.
• Noise ordinances — not the technology — are now ICON's biggest cost barrier.

How to build a free tool hub that ranks on Google

Ahrefs January 31, 2024

• One backlink to any tool lifts your entire hub's rankings
• Build SEO tools in minutes using ChatGPT — no coding needed
• Outcompete rivals by adding a feature none of them have

How to hire a COO: scorecard, search, and interview process

Cameron Herold January 31, 2024

• Wrong COO hire costs up to 15x their annual salary
• Top candidates are employed — you have to poach them
• Know everything about your hire before day one, or you interviewed badly

Founding an AI startup: five lessons from a $200M exit

EO January 31, 2024

• Customers don't care about AI — only about getting the job done.
• How to narrow a list of pains down to one hair-on-fire problem.
• Raising on AI hype alone gives you two years before the gap shows.

Live streaming is the biggest underestimated opportunity in 2024

GaryVee January 31, 2024

• Live streaming is where social media was in 2014: ignored but massive.
• TikTok Live grows your audience the longer you stream; Instagram shrinks it.
• Lawyers, accountants, and shop owners should be streaming their workday now.

Fear of others' opinions and what stoicism gets right about the self

The Daily Stoic January 31, 2024

• Why letting strangers decide your worth is the real poison
• Elite performers use a personal standard stricter than scoreboard or crowd
• Stoicism's neglected fourth virtue — justice — demands compassion, not detachment

How successful founders learn from rejection and turn no into fuel

Masters of Scale January 30, 2024

• A chorus of no's often signals a genuinely contrarian, valuable idea.
• Quality of objections matters more than quantity — friction is signal.
• Knowing when to say no yourself is as critical as handling rejection.

How a 19-year-old built a $1.5M AI audio SaaS in seven days

Brett Malinowski January 30, 2024

• Launching before you're ready into an existing community beats polished cold launches
• A cease-and-desist forced a pivot that made the product far more defensible
• Distribution is scarcer than code — find the audience before the developer

How Noah Kagan built AppSumo to $80M and what it cost him

Startups For the Rest of Us January 30, 2024

• Chasing the wrong market turned a $30M exit into a seven-figure regret.
• Doubling down beats diversifying — one channel, one customer, one product.
• Presell before building to validate in 48 hours without money or code.

How a visionary found the right integrator after one failed attempt

EOS Worldwide January 30, 2024

• Hiring an integrator who mirrors your personality creates overlap, not complement
• Tolerating a wrong seat isn't kindness — it's freeloading off the other 99%
• Industry experience ranks third; core values and GWC matter far more

What Key Dates in February Does HR Need to Know?

HR Party of One January 30, 2024

Seven Stoic leadership lessons for military and beyond

The Daily Stoic January 30, 2024

• Ego — not external threats — is what collapses leaders and empires.
• Courage only counts when the cause is right; hollow bravery is just risk.
• Be strict with yourself, tolerant with others — never the reverse.

Tom Blomfield: building two billion-dollar fintech startups from scratch

Y Combinator January 30, 2024

• Left GoCardless after three years because the problem wasn't personal enough
• Monzo reached 1m customers in 2.5 years with zero advertising spend
• A £100m funding round collapsed 72 hours before close when COVID hit