The Growth Show

Learning to write is a painful process. Here's how it typically goes: You spend hours crafting something you think will be a good piece. You submit it to someone else who's in charge of giving you feedback. They tear your piece apart. You make changes to your piece based on their suggestions. Rinse and repeat with new pieces until you're a proficient writer. Becoming a better writer isn't easy. Nor is it fast. But what if technology could make this whole process a little easier?

Some things in life are easy to turn down. Offered a boiling cup of coffee in the middle of the summer? That's an easy thing to pass on. But some decisions in life aren't so clear-cut. In this episode of The Growth Show, we hear about the most difficult situations three of our past guests (Radical Candor's Author Kim Scott, Wistia's Co-Founder Chris Savage, and Everlane's Founder Michael Preysman) have been presented within their careers - and why they walked away from them.

When Mike Wilner first set out to build his tech startup, there was a huge elephant in the room: He had no idea how to code. To make matters worse, the company didn’t have a technical founder, either. Not one to let his background hold him back, Mike set out to build his dream company using the skills and resources he already had. The result? Six figures in sales, and enough product-market fit to attract a technical co-founder to the team.

For many, cooking is a chore. After a long day of work, you come home to throw together an easy-yet-healthy-enough meal. After whipping it up and scarfing it down, you're on to the next thing: Family time, unresolved emails, or a quick episode of Netflix before you pass out. ChefSteps wants to change all that. With a vibrant community, a plethora of creative recipes, and most recently, a shiny new piece of hardware, the company plans to change the way regular people feel about cooking at home.

It was snowing. A lot. Boston was in the midst of a blizzard, receiving the most snow ever in recorded history. Kyle and Jessica Waring were stranded in their apartment, racking their brains for something to do. Then, they landed on an idea. What if they sold the snow outside their apartment and shipped it to anyone in the country?

When Payal Kadakia quit her job at Warner Music Group, she didn't have a backup plan. She knew she wasn't happy in her job, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to do next. After a few weeks of soul-searching, she decided on her next move: She was going to start a fitness search engine to help people uncover new classes in their area. Three years and several pivots later, Payal's landed on a business model that works.

Most people would agree: Luck is an integral ingredient to success. The tough part is, getting lucky is all up to chance. You can't predict it. You can't manufacture it. Or can you? In this special episode of The Growth Show, we hear stories from three of our past guests (Chris Savage of Wistia, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff of Mozilla, and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood) about a time they got lucky in business - and find out if getting lucky really comes down to chance.

When was the last time you held back valuable feedback for fear of being mean? We've all done this before. We think we're being kind. But, we aren't. Turns out, this behavior can have drastic consequences when you do this at work - especially when you're a manager.

We all want to be the one to uncover the next big thing - the next big app, the next big trend, the next big growth strategy. We take big bets. We tell our boss that surely this is the thing that's going to take off. If we don't pay attention now, we could be left behind. The truth is, uncovering the next big thing can be very difficult - but it's a necessary skill when you're tasked with growing a company. So how do you go about figuring out which trends are about to take off, and which ones will be duds?

Everlane isn't like many other contemporary fashion brands. While others drive profits by discretely marking up low-cost goods, Everlane discloses the line-by-line costs for producing their products - and how much money they make on each transaction. While others obscure details about their supply chain, Everlane devotes a whole section of their website to photos and information about their factories. How'd the company build such a transparent and nimble brand?

When you're up against companies with household names and centuries of experience, how do you win market share? It's simple: Find out what they don't do well ... and then do that thing very well. That philosophy is what has made Robinhood a fierce competitor in their space. They created a mobile app that makes it easy to buy and sell stocks - for free. In an industry where people typically pay $10 per transaction, Robinhood is quickly gaining traction with both brand new and experienced investors.

In the beginning, Wistia had just a few guys working out of an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It took them a year to make their first dollar, and then another year to sign on 10 customers. But the folks at Wistia never gave up. Nearly 10 years later, the company's persistence has paid off in spades: They have 200,000 customers using their video marketing platform, and they've hired more than 60 people to grow the company even more.

Pink mustaches. Fist bumps. A seat up front. These quirks help differentiate Lyft as the friendly, human option in an uber-competitive industry. And it's working. Today, the company is one of the fastest-growing ride-sharing apps on the market. We chat with Lyft CMO Kira Wampler about surviving (and thriving) in a competitive industry, scaling non-scalable parts of a company, and hiring the best people for a high-growth team.

Ah, company culture. It's the management buzzword du jour. And it's often the overlooked, compartmentalized, and misunderstood element to building a hyper-growth company. How should you actually go about building a company culture people love? To find an answer, we spoke with Zappos' Jon Wolske. Listen to this episode to learn about the company's unique approach to management, organizational structure, and most importantly, culture.

Kai Kight's background is anything but typical. When he was three, he began learning the violin, later going on to perform in places like the White House and the Great Wall of China. Then, he went on to earn an engineering degree from Stanford University's d. school where he was entrenched in the entrepreneurship community of Silicon Valley.

It began as a bet in a bar. A group of friends got together and decided to see who could grow the coolest mustache. Over a decade later, this bet has blossomed into a global movement called Movember. Each November, millions of men all over the world grow mustaches to raise awareness and funds for men's health initiatives.

Visual content: Everyone knows they need it, but many people lack the skills or tools to do it well. That is, until Canva entered the picture in 2013. The company created an easy-to-use design platform to help the average person create beautiful content. Two years later, it's acquired nearly 7 million users and secured famous investors like Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson. How'd Canva grow so darn fast?

Would you ever start a company that competed with Google? Back in 2007, that's exactly what Gabriel Weinberg did. He created DuckDuckGo, an alternative search engine to Google, and has been chipping away at Google's massive market share ever since. In the past two years, DuckDuckGo has grown nearly 600% and even reached profitability. How does DuckDuckGo successfully compete against one of the biggest and most recognizable companies in the world?

In a world where attention spans are shortening and there's more and more content than ever, how should a company grow its brand online? Enter Medium. Part platform and part publisher, the company's out to change the way people create and discover content on the web. This week, we chat with Sophie Moura, the head of B2B partnerships at Medium, to get tips for leaders on building a content strategy on the platform.

Technology has completely changed the way people work -- especially leaders at high-growth companies. How should managers approach hiring, growth, and management today? This week, we sit down with Charlene Li, Founder and CEO of Altimeter Group, to chat about her philosophy on these top leadership concerns.