From Start-Up to Grown-Up

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From Start-Up to Grown-Up

Alisa Cohn

104 episodes

1 week ago

Patrick Lee is best known as the co-founder and founding CEO of Rotten Tomatoes, the groundbreaking review platform that reshaped how audiences connect with movies and television. What started as a side project born out of his love for film became a global authority that continues to influence critics, fans, and the entertainment industry. In this conversation, Patrick shares his journey from running a small web design firm to creating one of the most recognizable brands in pop culture. He op...

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Entrepreneurship

All content for From Start-Up to Grown-Up is the property of Alisa Cohn and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Patrick Lee is best known as the co-founder and founding CEO of Rotten Tomatoes, the groundbreaking review platform that reshaped how audiences connect with movies and television. What started as a side project born out of his love for film became a global authority that continues to influence critics, fans, and the entertainment industry. In this conversation, Patrick shares his journey from running a small web design firm to creating one of the most recognizable brands in pop culture. He op...

Show more...

Entrepreneurship

Episodes (20/104)

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#103 Patrick Lee— Rotten Tomatoes founder: the secrets to building an enduring business.Building Rotten Tomatoes, Managing Fame, and Staying True to Your Mission

Patrick Lee is best known as the co-founder and founding CEO of Rotten Tomatoes, the groundbreaking review platform that reshaped how audiences connect with movies and television. What started as a side project born out of his love for film became a global authority that continues to influence critics, fans, and the entertainment industry. In this conversation, Patrick shares his journey from running a small web design firm to creating one of the most recognizable brands in pop culture. He op...

1 week ago

1 hour 16 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#102 Robert Glazer — Serial Entrepreneur on the Most Important Tool for Success

Robert Glazer is the founder of Acceleration Partners, a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and a leading voice on how values shape leadership. In this episode, Bob shares why stepping down from the company he built triggered a surprising crisis of meaning, how that experience led him to write The Compass Within, and how helping people clarify their core values has become his new personal mission. Bob opens up about the link between pain and passion, the power of writing and brand-build...

3 weeks ago

1 hour 7 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#101 Nick Huber — Building Wealth in “Boring” Businesses

Nick Huber is an entrepreneur and real estate investor who resides in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and three children. He owns Somewhere.com, Bolt Storage, RE Cost Seg, and several other businesses. His real estate portfolio currently includes sixty-eight self-storage properties, covering two million square feet. His portfolio of companies employs over 325 people and makes over $35 million annually. He’s the author of “The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things.” Where ...

1 month ago

1 hour 10 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#100 Arvind Jain, Founder of Glean — From Technical Leader to First-Time CEO, the Business Case for Culture and Selling as a Founder’s Superpower

Arvind Jain is the founder and CEO of Glean, the Work AI platform that connects to all your company’s data so you can find, create, and automate anything. In this episode, Arvind shares his journey as a second-time founder and first-time CEO, reflecting on the challenges of moving from a deeply technical role into leading an organization. He talks about why selling is one of the most important skills for founders, the importance of hiring for desire and cultural fit, and how company culture a...

1 month ago

53 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#99 Naveen Verma — From Princeton Professor to Venture-Backed CEO, Fundraising Without a Network, and Leading Firmly and Empathetically

Naveen Verma is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton and the co-founder and CEO of EnCharge AI, a startup building radically energy-efficient computers for artificial intelligence. In this episode, Naveen shares how his academic research into in-memory computing evolved over six years into a venture-backed company that’s rethinking the physical limits of AI computers. Naveen explains why traditional computing models can’t keep up with the energy demands of AI, how i...

2 months ago

1 hour 7 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#98 3-time founder Craig Walker — From Selling Door-to-Door to 3-time founder; Building Google Voice; and the Real Trade-offs of Entrepreneurship

Craig Walker is the founder and CEO of Dialpad, a business communications platform powered by AI. A former M&A lawyer turned serial entrepreneur, Craig previously co-founded GrandCentral (acquired by Google and relaunched as Google Voice) and sold his prior company to Yahoo. In this episode, Craig shares how his career unfolded from door-to-door dictation sales to running a 1,500-person company, and how AI became central to Dialpad’s strategy long before the hype cycle. Craig opens up abo...

2 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#97 Brad Feld, Founder of Techstars - Lessons from Techstars, why you should have “random” meetings, and the value of the “Give First” mentality.

Brad Feld has spent over 40 years building companies, mentoring founders, and investing in the startup ecosystem. He’s the co-founder of Techstars, a prolific venture capitalist, and the author of nine books. In this episode, Brad opens up about the mental reset that came with turning 60, why he stopped chasing “more,” and what led him to dust off a book draft about mentorship that had been sitting on the shelf. We go deep into his new book Give First, his belief in non-transactional ge...

3 months ago

1 hour 8 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#96: David Heinemeier Hansson, Co-Owner of 37signals— Creating with first principles, acting with courage, and working in a world with no managers (Repost)

David is the creator of Ruby on Rails, Co-Owner of 37signals, best-selling author, Le Mans class-winning racing driver, antitrust advocate, investor in Danish startups, frequent podcast guest, and family man. He writes regularly on HEY World and speaks on The REWORK Podcast. Hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world have built amazing applications using Ruby on Rails, an open-source web framework he created in 2003, and continues to develop to this day. Some of the more famo...

3 months ago

1 hour 20 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#95: From Startup to Grown-Up: Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat - The origin of Open Source; the key to life and startup success, and how failure can fuel you.

Bob Young co-founded Red Hat, the first company to build a successful business around open source software, and helped shape the modern internet in the process. In this episode, Bob shares the story of how Red Hat went from a CD in a Ziploc bag to a billion-dollar business that inspired GitHub, Coinbase, and much of the cloud infrastructure we use today. But this conversation is about more than just software. Bob opens up about betting his family’s finances on Red Hat, the moment he realized ...

4 months ago

1 hour 15 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#94: From Startup to Grown-Up: Jonathan Wolf, co-founder and CEO of ZOE - The growth of a founder, the most important leadership skills, and how to raise 7 million euros in 3 weeks.

Jonathan Wolf is the co-founder and CEO of ZOE, the science-based nutrition company using data to transform how people eat. In this candid conversation, he joins Alisa to explore what it takes to build a mission-driven company, how to lead with more clarity and transparency, and why the way we eat is more broken and more fixable than most people think. ZOE’s origin story is as unconventional as it is inspiring. After scaling Critéo into a billion-dollar business, Jonathan stepped away with no...

4 months ago

44 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#93: From Startup to Grown-Up: Kass and Mike Lazerow, Serial founders; co-founders of Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce for $750M) - How to survive a failed acquisition, stay married to your co-founder, and enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship.

Kass and Mike Lazerow are serial entrepreneurs, seasoned investors, and co-authors of the upcoming book Shoveling Sh!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success. They join Alisa to share an unfiltered look at what it really takes to build companies, navigate chaos, and stay married through it all. Known for founding Golf.com and Buddy Media, which they sold to Salesforce for $745 million, Kass and Mike have also backed more than 100 early-stage startups. Their portfolio inc...

5 months ago

1 hour 28 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#92: From Startup to Grown-up: David Ko, CEO of Calm — from gaming to mental health, tools to combat burnout, and the rituals you can use in your own meetings

David Ko is the CEO and board member of Calm, the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and mindfulness. A former healthcare executive and tech operator, David previously served as COO of Zynga, held senior roles at Yahoo!, and founded a healthtech company acquired by Calm. He is the bestselling author of Recharge, and has been recognized by TIME, LinkedIn, RockHealth, and NYU Stern for his leadership in digital health. What you’ll learn: How David transitioned from gaming to healthcare through miss...

5 months ago

52 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#91: From Startup to Grown-up: Mike Seckler, CEO of Justworks — how to run a great board process, how to avoid self-inflicted wounds, and the value of taking big risks early in your career

Mike Seckler is a two-time entrepreneur and tech startup founder who led a company through the dot-com boom and bust, and now leads the charge as CEO of Justworks, the HR tech company focused on uplifting small businesses. In this conversation, he shares hard-earned lessons from building one of the earliest SaaS HR startups, navigating turbulent markets, and guiding Justworks through major transitions. We dive into founder resilience, building high-functioning boards, scaling culture in a hyb...

6 months ago

1 hour 21 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#90: From Startup to Grown-Up: Jeff Byers, Co-founder and CEO of Momentous — Transitioning from NFL player to CEO, managing cultural clashes during a merger, and navigating the high-pressure world of growth-stage leadership

Jeff Byers is the co-founder and CEO of Momentous, a high-performance wellness company delivering science-backed products used by elite athletes, military operators, and high-performers worldwide. A former NFL player and two-time USC football captain, Jeff brings both personal and professional insight to optimizing performance and building values-driven companies. What you’ll learn: Why Jeff says effort and attitude are the only things you can control—and how they ground him in tough momentsT...

6 months ago

1 hour 11 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#89: From Startup to Grown-Up: Kevin Evers, author of There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift — unpacking Taylor Swift’s rise to the top; when to take big risks; and how to build a rabid fan base

Kevin Evers is a Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review, where he shapes groundbreaking research and develops award-winning and bestselling books on high performance, creativity, innovation, marketing, and digital disruption. He’s also written popular essays on brain science, persuasion, unpredictability, and the power of storytelling. Kevin holds degrees in English and Film Studies, and his forthcoming book with HBR Press, There’s Nothing Like This, offers a strategic analysis of Taylor Sw...

6 months ago

54 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#88: From Startup to Grown-Up: Eddie Kim, Co-founder and CTO of Gusto - Wearing different “hats” as a leader; learning to get his hands off the keyboard and enable others instead; and how to build a growth mindset

Eddie Kim is the CTO and cofounder of Gusto, which serves 400,000+ small and medium-sized businesses nationwide by helping them onboard, pay, insure, engage, and provide benefits for their teams, in one integrated, friendly, and easy-to-use platform. Eddie’s career has been shaped by chance encounters, a passion for software, and a deep commitment to growth. Before Gusto, he launched his first company—an experience that ultimately led him to reconnect with his future co-founder, Josh Reeves. ...

7 months ago

43 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#87: How Daniel Yanisse Scaled Checkr to $700M+ and Overcame the Post-Hypergrowth Crisis

In this episode of From Start-Up to Grown-Up, host Alisa Cohn sits down with Daniel Yanisse, co-founder and CEO of Checkr, to discuss the exhilarating rise and the challenges of sustaining a high-growth company. Checkr revolutionized the background check industry, scaling from a $1M revenue run rate in just three months to processing millions of background checks annually. But with hypergrowth came intense operational, cultural, and leadership challenges. Daniel shares how he navigated: Hirin...

7 months ago

42 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#86: Peter Attia, MD, Founder of Early Medical — improving your lifespan and healthspan, the centenarian decathlon, and the process of making major life changes (Repost)

Peter Attia, MD, is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan. He is the host of The Drive, one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health and medicine. Dr. Attia received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and trained for five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery, where he was...

8 months ago

44 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#85: Isabelle Freidheim, Founder of Athena Capital — The benefits of being an only child, creating opportunities for women in finance, and unlocking hidden talent

Isabelle Freidheim is the founder and managing partner of Athena Capital. She is the youngest chairman of a publicly traded company in the U.S. In her role as managing partner of Athena Capital, Freidheim oversees the company's strategic direction and leads its efforts in identifying and investing in technology companies. Freidheim is an entrepreneur and investor with more than 15 years of experience in venture capital, private equity, SPACs and IPOs. She founded Athena in 2020. Athena Capit...

8 months ago

1 hour 9 minutes

From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#84: Ethan Evans, Executive Mentor and Former Amazon VP — Managerial myths debunked, how to create a safety net for your career, and why everyone should write online

During his 15+ years at Amazon, Ethan Evans helped invent Prime Video, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Merch by Amazon, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce. He led global teams of over 800 and holds more than 70 patents. Ethan has reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, made 1,000+ hires, and was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for training and maintaining Amazon's group of interview outcome facilitators.Ethan helped advocate fo...

9 months ago

51 minutes