Episodes
The Hired CEO with Founder Mode | Marten Mickos (MySQL, HackerOne)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show , I sit down with Marten Mickos, a serial tech CEO who has been at the forefront of some of the most transformative moments in open-source technology. From leading MySQL through its groun...
How To Raise $125M Pre-Revenue and Why Harder Can Be Easier | Celine Halioua (Loyal)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I'm joined by Celine Halioua, founder and CEO of Loyal, a groundbreaking biotech startup developing drugs to extend dogs' healthspan and lifespan. Celine's journey combines her passion f...
Inside UiPath’s $1.5B ARR Journey – Bootstrapping the company, hiring challenges, and the billion-dollar pivot (Daniel Dines)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Daniel Dines, the Founder and CEO of UiPath, a company that started in robotic process automation (RPA) and is now making a bold shift into agentic AI. Dubbed “the boss o...
From Bootstrapping to $400 Million – The Hustle Behind Hipcamp with Alyssa Ravasio
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show , I’m joined by Alyssa Ravasio, CEO and Founder of Hipcamp. Hipcamp is the platform that has revolutionized camping, with a mission to “get more people outside.” By making it easier for p...
MBA thinking killed my startup, lessons on losing 98% of users, and being fired as a co-founder | Gagan Biyani (Udemy and Maven)
In today’s episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Gagan Biyani, Co-Founder and CEO of Maven, a platform that’s redefining online education with cohort-based courses. Before Maven, Gagan co-founded Udemy, now one of the ...
Lessons on creating a $17 billion learning company, going viral with an owl, and ditching short-term thinking with Luis von Ahn (Duolingo)
In today’s episode of The Eric Ries Show , I am joined by Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo . With Duolingo, his mission was simple: make language learning accessible to everyone—not to build a for-profit company. ...
He turned down $11 billion, here’s why | Craig Newmark (Craigslist Founder)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show , I sit down with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist—one of the internet’s most influential platforms. Despite its massive impact, Craigslist has remained intentionally minimalist, ...
Redefining Education in the Age of AI with Amir Nathoo (Outschool)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Amir Nathoo, Co-Founder and CEO of Outschool, an education platform offering live online classes for K-12 learners. Amir’s own childhood inspired Outschool—while he went to...
Lessons on building a unicorn used by 84% of the Fortune 100 | Emil Eifrem (Neo4j)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Emil Eifrem, Co-Founder and CEO of Neo4j , an open-source graph database. Neo4j enables organizations to unlock the business value of connections, influences, and relations...
How She Built a Marketplace for a Million Nurses | Iman Abuzeid (Incredible Health)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show , I’m joined by Iman Abuzeid, the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a platform transforming how healthcare systems hire nurses. After earning an MD, Iman pivoted to business and te...
Hard-Won Secrets for Scaling Innovations in Finance, Gaming, and AI with Siqi Chen (Runway, Zynga)
In this episode of The Eric Ries Show , I’m joined by Siqi Chen, a four-time founder and the CEO and CFO of his latest venture, Runway. Runway offers a modern, user-friendly platform for financial modeling, headcount planning...
Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks has spent his entire life at the intersection of robotics, computers, and AI. When the Roomba vacuum cleaner launched in 2002, his company, iRobot, brought all three into millions of people’s homes. iRobot had a...
Longevity Over Hypergrowth: A New Vision for Startups with Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad)
The story of the digital content-sharing platform Gumroad challenges every aspect of the received wisdom about building successful companies. After it almost went under, founder and CEO Sahil Lavingia decided to pare down to ...
Risks, Rewards, and Building the Unicorn Chip Company Taking on Nvidia | Inside Groq with Jonathan Ross
The story of Groq, a semiconductor startup that makes chips for AI inference and was recently valued at $2.8 billion, is a classic “overnight success that was years in the making” tale. On this episode, I talk with founder an...
AI’s Human Backbone: The Hidden Hands That Shape The Technology | Wendy Gonzalez (Sama)
Wendy Gonzalez is the CEO of Sama, an ethical AI company that provides training and jobs with equitable pay and benefits to those who face the greatest barriers to stable employment. Among the companies it provides AI develop...
Mission Over Money: How Sal Khan changed EdTech forever
Sal Khan arrived at the idea for Khan Academy truly organically. While working at a hedge fund, he took time in the evenings to tutor a younger cousin in math over the phone. Soon, a family tutoring network was in place, and ...
Contrarian by Design: Wade Foster’s Vision Behind Zapier’s $5B Business
Founded in 2011 in the distinctly non-Silicon Valley location of Columbia, Missouri, software integration company Zapier hit profitability in 2014. Today, the company is valued in the billions, and is poised to keep thriving ...
The Oracle Of Silicon Valley Shares How to Create More Value Than You Capture | Tim O’Reilly
What is the relationship between technology and society? What happens to idealism over time? I’m fortunate to have discussed these questions and many more with Tim O’Reilly for this episode of The Eric Ries Show. Tim is the f...
The Art of Pivoting: How TaskRabbit Reimagined the Gig Economy | Stacy Brown-Philpot (Google, TaskRabbit, HP, Nordstroms)
Stacy Brown-Philpot is a unique voice in Silicon Valley. She began her career as a public accountant and worked at Goldman Sachs before landing at Google. She was the COO and then the CEO of TaskRabbit, which she saw through ...
Reid Hoffman challenges your thinking on AI, governance, and politics
The latest episode of The Eric Ries Show features my conversation with Reid Hoffman. Executive Vice President of PayPal, co-founder of LinkedIn, and legendary investor at Greylock Partners are just a few of his official roles...
How to build trust and win your customer’s attention with Seth Godin
This episode of The Eric Ries Show is all about the relationship between trust and success. I can’t think of anyone better to talk about it with than Seth Godin, author of the classic Permission Marketing , the best-seller Th...
Inside Kickstarter: Co-Founder Yancey Strickler on Building the Crowdfunding Giant
Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the founder of Metalabel, a platform for releasing collective work. He’s also the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World...
How to Scale Trust Into a Billion Dollar Business | Ritu Narayan (Zum)
For this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sat down with Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, which has had incredible success in the field of student transportation. The company began as a private service to tackle a problem...
Lessons From Co-Founding Facebook, And Now Asana | Dustin Moskovitz
Welcome to The Eric Ries Show. I sat down with Dustin Moskovitz, founder of not one but two iconic companies: Facebook and the collaborative work platform Asana. Needless to say, he’s engaged in the most intense form of entre...