Inc. Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel Inc. Magazine

After business school, David Velez moved to Latin America to become a venture capitalist. But after finding a dearth of startups to invest in, he founded one of his own. Since then, Nubank has grown into the largest independent digital bank in the world. The Brazil-based company has over 39 million users and a valuation north of $25 billion. David shares how Nubank built a waitlist of over a million people in just 18 months, why the company's first product was a purple credit card, and how waking up at 5am every day makes him a better founder.

(Original Air Date: Jun-9-2021)

In 2013, a team of academics at UC Berkeley was working to solve massive data challenges that were impacting the tech companies in their backyard. Fast-forward and that team now represents the co-founders of Databricks, a data and AI company used by more than 5,000 organizations worldwide. In 2016, Ali Ghodsi stepped into the CEO seat and the company is now valued at $28 billion. Ali shares why he prioritizes building leaders over making decisions, how he sees the future of AI, and how he navigates the unique experience of having six co-founders.

(Original Air Date: 3-17-2021)

Just a year into medical school at Harvard, Sean Duffy decided to pursue a new route toward healthcare delivery. In 2011, he started Omada Health to explore how design and technology could make a difference in healthcare. Today, Omada Health is a virtual-first care provider that blends clinical protocols with behavior science to help people with chronic conditions achieve long term improvements. The company now serves over 700,000 members and has facilitated over 13 million messages between members and care teams. Sean shares why Omada chose to focus on in-between-visit care, how the pandemic accelerated digital adoption by a matter of years, and why his most helpful read as he started a company was The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law.

Today, millions of users know Noom as the most-installed weight loss app of 2020. But it took countless pivots and many years for the consumer-led digital health company to turn its mission—of helping people live healthier, happier lives—into a product users are obsessed with. Saeju's intense desire to help people dates back to childhood in South Korea, growing up in a family of doctors. He started working on what would become Noom in 2007, but it took nearly a decade for the company to hit its stride. Saeju shares why he's hyper-focused on preventative healthcare, why he would have been shocked as an early founder to learn he'd be in the weight loss business, and how becoming a father made him realize the value of his parents' unconditional love.

Harley Finkelstein first encountered Shopify as a user. Back in 2006, while in law school, he was one of the first merchants to use the platform. He joined the company in 2010 and now serves as President, helping to scale Shopify to millions of daily active users across 175 countries driving $444B in global economic activity. Today, Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business—and is second only to Amazon as the largest online retailer in the US. Harley shares why the future of e-commerce is just the future of commerce, why his favorite motto is "how you do anything is how you do everything," and how being a power extrovert has made him a stronger leader.

It has been nearly two decades since Sebastian Siemiatkowski started Klarna, based on the simple idea of enabling customers to pay how they'd like. Today, Klarna is a fintech giant on a mission to revolutionize the retail banking industry. Headquartered in Sweden, Klarna is now a fully licensed bank operating across 45 markets. The company has scaled to over 150 million active consumers and over 450,000 merchant partners. Sebastian shares why he thinks of Klarna as a digital assistant that saves people time and money, why he thinks the banking industry will shrink (making Klarna a larger player in a smaller industry), and how growing up as a Polish immigrant in Sweden gave him a hunger for entrepreneurship.