What does it take to build—and sell—a thriving business born from resilience and clarity of purpose? Few stories capture it as powerfully as Shirin Behzadi’s. At 17, Shirin fled Iran alone during the revolution, arriving in the U.S. with little money and no family. She started as a gas station cashier—and eventually rose to become CEO of Home Franchise Concepts, the parent company behind Budget Blinds and several other national home-service brands. Under her leadership, the company more than ...
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What does it take to build—and sell—a thriving business born from resilience and clarity of purpose? Few stories capture it as powerfully as Shirin Behzadi’s. At 17, Shirin fled Iran alone during the revolution, arriving in the U.S. with little money and no family. She started as a gas station cashier—and eventually rose to become CEO of Home Franchise Concepts, the parent company behind Budget Blinds and several other national home-service brands. Under her leadership, the company more than ...
After the Idea: Julia Austin on Building Startups That Last
Strategy at Scale
37 minutes
1 month ago
After the Idea: Julia Austin on Building Startups That Last
Most founders obsess over the spark of an idea—but the real test begins after the idea. Julia Austin knows this better than most. As an operator at Akamai, VMware, and DigitalOcean, an advisor to hundreds of startups, a faculty member at Harvard Business School, and now the author of After the Idea, she’s seen what truly drives sustainable growth. In this episode of Strategy at Scale, Julia challenges the “move fast and break things” mindset and offers a grounded, evidence-driven playbook for...
Strategy at Scale
What does it take to build—and sell—a thriving business born from resilience and clarity of purpose? Few stories capture it as powerfully as Shirin Behzadi’s. At 17, Shirin fled Iran alone during the revolution, arriving in the U.S. with little money and no family. She started as a gas station cashier—and eventually rose to become CEO of Home Franchise Concepts, the parent company behind Budget Blinds and several other national home-service brands. Under her leadership, the company more than ...
