Yesterday Podcast

Yesterday
  • 5.0 (3)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Interviews on inspiring life stories. yesterdayy.substack.com

  1. Aaron Levie | He Cold Emailed Mark Cuban To Invest in His Startup (Now They’re Worth $5B)

    10/17/2025

    Aaron Levie | He Cold Emailed Mark Cuban To Invest in His Startup (Now They’re Worth $5B)

    Episode #18 of Yesterday:Aaron Levie is the co-founder and CEO of Box (NYSE: BOX), a cloud storage company used by over 100,000 businesses worldwide, including 67% of the Fortune 500. He co-founded Box in 2005 while a student at USC, initially funding it with online poker winnings before securing an investment from Mark Cuban off a cold email. Under Aaron’s leadership, Box grew from a dorm-room startup to a publicly traded company with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and over 2,000 employees. In this episode, Aaron shares the unfiltered journey behind that growth: The early pivot from a consumer product to an enterprise-first model, to navigating the “innovator’s dilemma” He also discusses how the iPhone and the broader mobile revolution reshaped Box’s product strategy and accelerated enterprise adoption. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:34 Box Origin Story 04:24 Funding the Company with Online Poker 05:46 The Cold Email That Landed Mark Cuban 07:06 Dropping Out of College for the Dream 09:52 Advice From Mark Cuban 11:12 Enterprise vs. Consumer 12:50 Using the “Innovator’s Dilemma” 15:59 The iPhone Launch 17:46 The ChatGPT Moment 21:02 AI Pivot 26:05 SORA Video Generation 29:45 Why Most Companies Are Failing 33:12 Agents Automating Everything 35:50 Jack Dorsey’s Favorite Entrepreneur 38:13 Advice for Young Founders Presented by Rho: Rho is the all-in-one banking platform for startups, used by Perplexity, Product Hunt, and thousands of other companies. You get everything you need to manage your startup’s cash & a team that’s obsessed with helping founders beat industry giants. Learn more at rho.co/yesterday Sponsored by The Cannon Project (TCP): TCP recruits founding GTM and engineering teams for startups like Ramp, Cursor, and Decagon while investing through their flagship venture fund, TCP 1. Apply for roles and learn more at thecannonproject.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    46 min
  2. Jonathan Neman | How Sweetgreen Became a Multi-Billion Dollar Salad Chain

    10/15/2025

    Jonathan Neman | How Sweetgreen Became a Multi-Billion Dollar Salad Chain

    Episode #17 of Yesterday:Jonathan Neman is the co-founder and CEO of Sweetgreen, Inc. (NYSE: SG), the mission-driven restaurant brand redefining fast food through fresh, seasonal, and sustainable meals. Born in Los Angeles and a graduate of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business (’07), Neman co-founded Sweetgreen with classmates Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru shortly after graduation, opening the first location in Georgetown, D.C. in 2007. Under his leadership, Sweetgreen has grown from a single salad shop into a nationwide company with hundreds of locations, a leading digital platform, and a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:41 Parents Fled a Revolution for the American Dream 04:00 The One Rule Dad Had 08:33 Selling Ads in High School 14:49 The 25,000-Person Music Festival 17:03 Escaping the “LA Bubble” 21:41 The Australian Cafe That Inspired Sweetgreen 24:23 The Hated Consulting Job 26:45 The Partner Who Told Me to Quit 29:23 The Complaint That Sparked Sweetgreen 36:24 Raising $300k from $5,000 Checks 37:23 The Co-Founder Who Quit 45:15 The Power of Doing One Thing Perfectly 47:50 The #1 Rule for Running a Business 50:52 From Dishwasher to Head Coach 55:25 Building a Restaurant App 58:32 Revolutionizing Takeout 1:11:18 The Reality of a Founder’s Life 1:13:42 Happiest vs. Unhappiest Moments Presented by Rho: Rho is the all-in-one banking platform for startups, used by Perplexity, Product Hunt, and thousands of other companies. You get everything you need to manage your startup’s cash & a team that’s obsessed with helping founders beat industry giants. Learn more at rho.co/yesterday Sponsored by The Cannon Project (TCP): TCP recruits founding GTM and engineering teams for startups like Ramp, Cursor, and Decagon while investing through their flagship venture fund, TCP 1. Apply for roles and learn more at thecannonproject.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    1h 16m
  3. Zach Sims | The Codecademy Story: A $525M Exit That Almost Didn't Happen

    10/02/2025

    Zach Sims | The Codecademy Story: A $525M Exit That Almost Didn't Happen

    Zach Sims co-founded Codecademy with Ryan Bubinski after dropping out of Columbia. And over a decade later in 2021, they sold to Skillsoft for $525M. We discuss his family, scrappy upbringing that led to Columbia, and early life stories before Codecademy. We also discuss YC, growing to hundreds of thousands of users in a few days, the reason they exited, and much more. Zach’s on the precipice of a new chapter in his life & work, and it was a pleasure to profile his life up until now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    1h 7m
  4. Joe Lonsdale | From Chess Prodigy to Co-founder of Palantir, 8VC

    09/23/2025

    Joe Lonsdale | From Chess Prodigy to Co-founder of Palantir, 8VC

    Joe Lonsdale co-founded Palantir (now worth ~$400B) and went on to found venture firm 8VC, the University of Austin, OpenGov, Addepar, and several other companies. In this wide-ranging conversation, Lonsdale traces his life story from deep family roots and early childhood to the present day. He shares the formative experiences that shaped his thinking, his years at Stanford, and the lessons learned from macro investing with Peter Thiel, especially digging into U.S. and Japanese bond markets. We explore chess, philosophy, and warfare; the courage to invent and build talent clusters; the founding stories behind Palantir and Formation 8 (now 8VC); and the vision behind the University of Austin. A rare look at one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific founders & investors, and one of my favorite conversations we’ve recorded so far. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    58 min
  5. Gordon Ritter | The Story of Silicon Valley's Most Extreme Investor ($8B In Returns)

    09/16/2025

    Gordon Ritter | The Story of Silicon Valley's Most Extreme Investor ($8B In Returns)

    Gordon Ritter co-founded Emergence Capital, backing iconic brands like Salesforce, Veeva Systems, Zoom, and more. We cover his life story in great detail — ranging from his father’s bloody face on the New York Times front page to founding Emergence in 2003. How did he realize $8 billion in fund returns, co-found a company with @benioff, AND run 250 miles across the Swiss Alps? This conversation is a great example of the culture core to Gordon and Emergence, all underpinned by a relentless drive for competition and optimism.In the best way possible, Gordon is an animal. He grew up moving from a suburb of Manhattan to a small seaside town in Maine. His parents, both reporters for Life Magazine, instilled in him a deep sense of curiosity, conviction, and courage. After a successful but unfulfilling stint in banking he left to found two startups before a fateful partnership with Marc Benioff in the earliest days of Salesforce. Seeing the immense, non-consensus potential of the cloud, Gordon then co-founded Emergence. Throughout his life, he’s been driven by a philosophy of "doing hard things," not just in business but in his personal life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    1h 9m
  6. Akshay Kothari | $90M Acquisition to Co-Founding Notion ($10B+ Valuation)

    09/16/2025

    Akshay Kothari | $90M Acquisition to Co-Founding Notion ($10B+ Valuation)

    We discuss the life story of Notion’s co-founder, Akshay Kothari. Notion is a productivity tool, valued at $10B+ with over 100M users. Akshay grew up in Western India in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state of Gujarat. He has two brothers, Nikunj & Pranav, and is the middle child. Their family business centered around finance and loan-giving, common for some Indian families at that time. Early on, Akshay was quite terrible at school… once all-consumed by the desire of being a cricket player. A pursuit that his loving mom supported, with the caveat that he must work & practice accordingly if that was his dream. After realizing cricket wasn’t going to be his calling, Akshay took inspiration from his older brother Pranav and made his way to the USA to study engineering at Purdue. Through a series of unfortunate, yet equally fortunate, circumstances Akshay made his way to Stanford for a graduate degree. On his first day, Lehman Brothers collapsed in the Great Financial Crisis. Later in his Stanford tenure, he founded a news reader app called Pulse. That same year, Steve Jobs announced them as his favorite iPad app on stage at WWDC. Later, Pulse was acquired by LinkedIn for $100M. This prompted Akshay’s move to India to spearhead LinkedIn’s growth there, and also a series of angel checks. The first of which was Notion. For four years, the company made minimal progress. When they finally started seeing PMF, Akshay joined as a co-founder alongside Ivan and Simon. Fast forward to the present day, Akshay has been at Notion for just over 7 years. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    36 min
  7. Dwarkesh Patel | The $10,000 Email Behind Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella and Marc Andreessen

    08/15/2025

    Dwarkesh Patel | The $10,000 Email Behind Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella and Marc Andreessen

    This week, we cover the life story of Dwarkesh Patel, host of The Dwarkesh Podcast. Dwarkesh grew up in India until the age of eight, when his family moved to the United States for his father's medical career. His childhood was marked by frequent moves across the country, from Bismarck, North Dakota, to West Virginia and West Texas. While in college, he became deeply interested in intellectual ideas, which led him to start his podcast by sending a cold email to his first guest, economist Bryan Caplan. The podcast was nearly a short-lived experiment. As Patel was about to graduate with no job lined up, he received a cold email from Anil Varanasi offering him $10,000 to keep the project alive for six more months. Soon after, a blog post he wrote earned a public comment from Jeff Bezos, who told him to "please keep it up," cementing his decision to pursue it full-time. Today, The Dwarkesh Podcast is one of the top interview shows in the world, where Patel speaks with leaders in tech and science—including Mark Zuckerberg, Ilya Sutskever, and Patrick Collison—to develop a better model of the world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    50 min
  8. Guillermo Rauch | The man behind Netflix, Ebay and More

    08/15/2025

    Guillermo Rauch | The man behind Netflix, Ebay and More

    This week, we cover the life story of Guillermo Rauch, the founder and CEO of Vercel. Rauch grew up in Lanús, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He taught himself to code and by 11, he was freelancing online for clients abroad. In his teens, he became well-known for creating several influential open-source projects, including Socket.IO and Mootools. Rauch then dropped out of high school to work in Switzerland, and after a stint there, he moved to San Francisco. Around 2015, he founded Vercel (originally called ZEIT) out of Dogpatch Labs with the vision of radically simplifying frontend deployment through tools like Next.js, which his team also maintains. Today, Vercel powers the websites of Netflix, MrBeast, Supreme, and many more… and valued multiple billions of dollars. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com

    49 min
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5
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About

Interviews on inspiring life stories. yesterdayy.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Yesterday
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Yesterday
  • Show Website
    Yesterday Podcast

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