The Robinhood Biography is a podcast about the 13 year history of how two Stanford Graduates (Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt) created the world's first mobile-first trading app, ushered in the age of retail-investing and slowly built out a super app. Robinhood today is worth over $120 Billion but after going public in 2021 at a $32 Billion valuation, the company stock dropped 80%!  This is, the history of Spotify, told in a narrative form in under 105 minutes.   Follow me on Twitter: https://x.com/WouterTeunissen  Read the newsletter:  https://biography.beehiiv.com/     

In this episode, Wouter Teunissen sits down with Dylan Fox, the founder of AssemblyAI, to unpack how he built one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies from scratch. For decades, speech recognition was stuck in the past, clunky APIs, outdated models, and enterprise-only access. Dylan saw it up close while working as an engineer at Cisco. The tech was powerful, but it was buried under layers of friction. Developers wanted to build with voice, but everything about the process made it painful. Instead of waiting for the giants to fix it, Dylan left his job and started AssemblyAI as a solo founder. lone. The vision was to allow developers to easily tap into world-class speech models with a simple API call. Ensuring transcription, summarization, and audio intelligence were as easy to integrate as Stripe or Twilio. The journey wasn’t glamorous. Dylan bootstrapped early models from his apartment, competing with Big Tech on compute, data, and talent. But through persistence and a relentless focus on developer experience, AssemblyAI began to win. Today, the company has raised over $110 million, powers products used by millions of users, and is setting the standard for voice intelligence. I really loved my conversation with Dylan. It was thoughtful and he shared lots of great frameworks and stories about company building. We talk about Dylans journey and how he built a deep-tech company from zero, the discipline required to go head-to-head with giants, and why, 'the only thing that matters is building something developers truly love.' Follow: Dylan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanbfox/ Assembly AI: https://www.assemblyai.com Wouter - https://x.com/WouterTeunissen Biography Newsletter - https://biography.beehiiv.com

This episode is about Daniel Ek and the lessons I have learned from studying his life and the creation of Spotify. If you want to learn how to apply leverage to your company and life, how to create a product so compelling you turn an entire industry around from losing billions, to new all time highs…. then I think you’ll enjoy this.   Follow me on Twitter  Read the newsletter The Almanack of Naval   Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:00  Technology for Technology's sake. 07:04 Work backwards from the customer experience. 10:54 You must have an opinion on the future (even if it’s flexible) 12:25 If you have conviction. Self-Fund your project 16:27 Constraints = Growth  18:41 Assistants hold the keys to the kingdom  20:25 Partner up when necessary 22:38 Great ambition attracts great talent. 24:00 Running a great meeting,  24:20 Leadership,   25:57 Time (Energy) Management,  27:52 Incentives and motivating people,  28:40 Financial Engineering Genius 30:01 The power of showmanship. 32:09 What you should listen to next.

The Spotify Biography is a podcast about the 20 year history, of the unlikely story of how two Swedish founders (Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon) created the most valuable music company in the world, against all odds. Turning Spotify into a $100 Billion Company, and saving the music industry against all odds.  This is, the history of Spotify, told in a narrative form in under 90 minutes

In this episode, Wouter Teunissen sits down with Nicolas Sharp to talk about his bold mission to reinvent how companies fundamentally operate. CRMs have been around for years—bloated, slow, and not built for makers. Nick saw the pain firsthand.After working in VC and starting a vertical CRM , he knew the tools meant to drive growth were actually slowing teams down. Most people tolerated them out of necessity, not love.Instead of accepting that status quo, Nick went back to first principles.   What if a CRM wasn’t just a database but a living system—fast, flexible, and designed like the best consumer apps?   What if teams could collaborate in real time, building workflows as easily as spreadsheets, but with the power of a true system of record?With that vision, he founded Attio. It wasn’t an easy sell. Reinventing a category dominated by billion-dollar incumbents meant years of skeptical investors and complex engineering problems.Today, Attio has raised over $116 Million and is proving that the CRM doesn’t have to be a graveyard of contacts and forgotten notes. It can be a living, breathing hub for building relationships as a company scales.   Follow: Nick - https://x.com/nicolasosharp?lang=en Attio - http://attio.com/ Wouter - https://x.com/WouterTeunissen Biography Newsletter - https://biography.beehiiv.com/     Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:39 Why Attio spent 3 years building their product before launch 5:05 The Power of Building Systems, Not a Box of Features 9:05 How to know when it’s time to launch 13:30 Nick’s Playbook For a Killer Product Launch 18:09 How To Go From an Investor to a Founder 23:05 How Failure Led to Attio's Big Break 28:07 Why startups need to hire "Hidden Gems," 34:05 Fundraising 49:36 Why Attio Invests In Inexperienced Talent 55:07 The Case For Not Hiring Software Engineers (& Who You Should Hire Instead) 1:02:46 The 8 Persona Hiring Framework1:09:05 How Attio doesn’t use OKR's 1:27:11 Where does Nick's Ambition and Grit come from? 1:36:59 How Attio is Building CRM from First Principles for the AI era 1:45:29 How to Successfully Market In A Crowded Industry 1:51:10 Breaking Down Attio’s Viral Marketing Strategies 2:02:15 The Change That Had The Biggest Impact on Customer Conversion 2:05:04 Why Attio created A “Reverse Trial” 2:10:16 Why Nick is building from London, not Silicon Valley 2:22:48 The 10-Year Vision for Attio

In this episode, Tyler Denk sits down with Wouter Teunissen to talk about the incredible founder journey he has had starting beehiiv. After graduating college with $120K in student debt, Tyler Denk faced a tough choice: follow the safe path or take a leap of faith. Broke and living in his parents’ basement , he said yes to a freelance opportunity from a childhood friend—building early tech for the newsletter Morning Brew. With just 49 cents in his bank account, he bluffed his way into the role, pulling all-nighters to teach himself what he didn't know and barely holding it together. But he didn’t quit. He built fast, listened hard, and proved himself through execution, not credentials. When Morning Brew offered him a full-time role, Tyler turned down a signed Deloitte offer, a girlfriend, and a lease in D.C. for a shot at something riskier—but more meaningful. He chose asymmetric upside over certainty. That mindset—betting on himself, learning through doing, and minimizing regret—became his foundation as an entrepreneur. From building Morning Brew’s referral engine to founding Beehiiv, Tyler’s journey is proof that high agency beats pedigree. It's not just about chasing success—it's about designing your own luck through relentless ownership and speed. His story isn’t a blueprint for life; it’s a challenge for you to stop optimizing for safety and start optimizing for growth. Follow:Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on XBiography Newsletter - https://biography.beehiiv.com/Tyler -  @denk_tweets on XTyler's newsletter -  https://www.bigdeskenergy.com/beehiiv: https://www.beehiiv.com/ Timestamps:(0:00) Intro(0:46) Graduating College with $120k in Debt(16:36) Why you need to realise that everything is a tradeoff(25:33) Principles in Hiring Talent – Looking for High Agency(37:04) Communication as a Founder is of paramount importance(45:56) The importance of feature-led marketing to get organic marketing(53:20) The Importance of the early Morning Brew Days(1:04:28) Why Tyler left Morning Brew to Join YouTube Music(1:15:28) The Nights and Weekends Project that became Beehiiv(1:27:10) How Tyler Fundraised A $2.6M Seed Round in 30 days(1:32:32) Why You Should Build in Public(1:48:27) Rejecting $30M Within 18 Months of Work

Before Blockworks became a $150 million media force, Jason Yanowitz was just a kid flipping baseball cards on eBay - discovering early what it meant to build leverage online. Raised in a countercultural, entrepreneurial family, Jason never saw the traditional nine-to-five as the only path. In 2017, Jason went to an event that'd change his life, as a result he quit his job, partnered with co-founder Mike Ippolito, and within 60 days, BlockWorks hosted its first event. Every success since has been iterative: from cold-emailing thousands of people to sell tickets, to surviving an 80% revenue drop, to now to raising $12M to go all-in on building at the intersection of media and tech. Blockworks was bootstrapped and survived and has become a $150M powerhouse. I sat down to talk to Jason about his founder journey, lessons for company builders, frameworks for hiring and scaling a company and how BlockWorks is on a clear trajectory to do over $100M a year in revenue. Follow:Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on XJason - @JasonYanowitz on XBlockworks - @Blockworks_ on X Timestamps:(0:39) What its like growing up in an entrepreunerial family(15:06) When to Double Down on an Opportunity(20:22) The Blockworks Origin Story(29:32) Why booking bigger speakers mattered (37:29) How BlockWorks survived an 80% Revenue Drop(57:15) Jason’s Advice for New Entrepreneurs(1:01:49) Identifying Which Data is Valuable Data(1:07:20) What is the (Clear) Path to $100m/Year in Revenue?(1:10:40) The Account-Based Seller Structure(1:14:54) How to Hire as a fast growing startup (1:21:17) Do Things That Don’t Scale ;)

Before launching How to Take Over the World, Ben Wilson struggled with a job that drained him and a question that wouldn’t go away: What does it take to achieve greatness? He nearly failed out of high school, skipped SAT prep to play basketball, and had no grand plan - only a deep desire to stay free, follow his curiosity, and avoid the soul-crushing conformity of traditional paths. In college, he hustled. He double-majored in political science and economics, ran a scrappy but successful campaign for student body VP, and found that success often comes not from being the smartest, but from knocking on more doors, both literally and figuratively. But after several years across consulting and marketing roles, that spark faded. He was relying on stimulants to focus, sleeping pills to recover, and still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was drifting further from a life that mattered. Then, one morning in 2018, while reading a biography of Napoleon and listening to a podcast, he felt a visceral, painful energy - what Aristotle once called zelos: the ache of seeing someone like you achieve what you haven’t yet. That moment sparked How to Take Over the World, the podcast that would change his life. Ben’s journey isn’t about smooth ambition. It’s about false starts, deep sincerity and finding the courage to lower the boats—even when no one’s watching. Follow:Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on XBen - @BenWilsonTweets on XHTTOTW - @HTTOTW on X Timestamps:(0:39) How growing up with an idyllic childhood affected Ben(2:29) What are the Two Father-Son relationships of great men?(5:50) What taking responsibility for yourself really means.(9:23) Why you should value Engineering hardship(14:47) Lowering the Boats – Consistently going all-in (25:10) Why being only ‘adequate’ can crush your soul(31:52) “I can’t go on like this” (34:59) The Three Types of Work(39:55) Ambition Porn and Zealous Pain(46:13) What would Alexander the Great be if he didn't conquer? (50:13) Why it's better to flame out than burn out  (51:49) If you’re willing to to eat sh*t – It’s really easy to do whatever you want(57:19) What can we learn from Napoleon (1:02:35) Ask yourself: Have you failed twice as much as the reasonable person?(1:07:10) How to Pivot (in life)(1:13:59) “You don’t get experience with time” y(1:14:59) Learning from Mr. Beast (1:23:27) Self-Awareness (1:35:01) How to tell an immersive story (1:41:15) The HTTOW Vision

In less than 6 years, Ramp has become many companies go-to tool to help their business run more efficiently. “Time is money. Save both.” is the beautiful Ramp slogan, and that’s a key theme in all of Erics startups. In this episode I sat down with Eric Glyman, CEO and Co-Founder of Ramp, one of the hottest fintechs out there. And I believe, a company that will become one of the biggest in the world. I talk with Eric about what it was like growing up in Las Vegas, his first retail job where he learned about the misalignment of incentives. We talk about Eric's time at Harvard, being rejected by YC, his first startup Paribus and it’s ups and downs along with the founding story of Ramp. Eric’s journey reminds us that the best ideas often come not from chasing trends, but from staying curious, noticing what others ignore, and having the guts to follow frustration to innovation. If you’re serious about improving your business this is a 2 hour masterclass. Follow:Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on XEric - @Eglyman on XRamp - @tryramp on X  Timestamps:(0:29) Growing Up in Vegas and Eric’s First Retail Job(5:59) Going to Harvard(10:29) The Importance of Intentionality in Unlocking Your Golden Handcuffs(16:03) The Story of Paribus (Eric’s First Company)(31:29) Breaking Down the exact Paribus Growth Loop(38:34) How Eric Used TV for Viral Consumer Marketing(42:49) How Do You Survive an 80% Drop in Revenue Overnight?(49:00) Getting Acquired by Capital One(1:00:33) Why Ramp Started with Corporate Credit Cards(1:12:29) Landing Keith Rabois as an Investor(1:16:13) Zero to $100M in Transaction Volume(1:25:41) How Ramp is using AI(1:31:05) How Ramp Created a Superbowl Ad in 7 Days(1:33:42) Using Internal Data for Marketing(1:39:09) Study. Your. Industry (And listen to Founders Podcast) to be Great

The version of Andrew Wilkinson that made his first million wasn’t the same one who could actually enjoy it. Living on the constant desire “to make everything 20% better”, Andrew is a born entrepreneur. But that doesn’t mean he has always had things figured out. At one point, he was running five businesses and was at the end of his rope. Only then did he start figuring out what he really wanted his life to look like. Andrew shares the decisive mindset shifts that helped him attract opportunity instead of having to chase it. A key takeaway? The biggest opportunities to make money are in relationships. Andrew explains how going out of your way to meet the right people and creating a friendship funnel radically transforms your trajectory as a founder. He also gets real about how he breaks down his week to stay productive, purposeful, along with all of the tech and tools he uses. If you’ve ever struggled with burnout, fear of failure, or uncertainty about your next steps, this episode will be really valuable for you and your business. Whether you’re scaling your company or still side-hustling your way forward, Andrew’s journey is a reminder that clarity, discipline, and faith are business assets too. Andrew didn’t find peace when things got easier - he found it when he stopped needing them to. In doing so, he built not just a purposeful business, but a purposeful life. Because in a world obsessed with outcomes, Andrew’s real breakthrough was learning to stay in the process. Follow:Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on XAndrew - @awilkinson on X or sign up for his newsletter Timestamps:(01:52) Using Money In Interesting Ways to Make Your Life Better(06:00) Creating a Friendship Funnel for Exponential Growth(22:07) Why Every Business Should Be a Lifestyle Business(30:52) Why Andrew Decided to Become an Investor(42:21) Auditing Your Life and Building Narratives as a Coping Mechanism(53:43) Andrews Productivity Stack Using AI, Lists and Tools(1:15:54) Why The Biggest Opportunity to Make Money is in Relationships(1:28:43) The AI Revolution(1:49:07) Andrew’s $100 Million Framework(2:16:53) Philanthropy

Season 1 of Biography goes deep with six founders on the real story behind what they built - not the press release version. From being strategically broke to burning out, reinventing, and finding traction, this trailer previews what’s ahead. Featuring: Andrew Wilkinson, Shaan Puri, Tyler Denk, Ben Wilson, Jason Yanowitz, and Eric Glymann. New episodes weekly. Video on Spotify.