Introducing: How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their iconic brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success. How I Built This is a master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership and how to navigate challenges of all kinds. New episodes on Mondays and Thursdays for free. Listen 1-week early and to all episodes ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hello, this is Guy Raz and welcome to How I Built This.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  I will come up with these ideas and think, I can't do that. And then I'll think, whoa, come on, I have to do that. And then I'll think, God, if I don't do that fast, somebody else is gonna do it.

• 0:13Guy Raz?

  It's a show about founders and visionaries and how they built some of the best-known brands in the world.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  You know, he asked me about a focus group. I said, I did do a focus group. I put it on the dining room table. My mother looked at it and said, oh, my God, honey, this is gonna be big.

• 0:26Guy Raz?

  You'll get a free masterclass in business from hundreds, literally hundreds, of founders of brands like Instagram, Chipotle, Airbnb, Starbucks, and Chobani.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  I wanted to make it something that, something that they've never seen before.

• 0:41Guy Raz?

  And what you'll love about these stories is that so many successful founders start out totally clueless, you don't know what you're talking about.

• 0:49Speaker 04

  We were kind of getting busier and busier and losing more and more money.

• 0:54Speaker 05

  And there were definitely a lot of products that we opened up and sort of looked at and were like, this doesn't look great.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  And we didn't really know what a pallet was. And I got a super angry call from my doorman saying, what the hell did you get shipped here? He's like, there's a pallet on the sidewalk. What am I supposed to do with this?

• 1:11Guy Raz?

  My guests share stories that don't appear in their official bios or anywhere else.

• 1:16Speaker 06

  I never loved my business. Your business is an instrument to make you happy, and you own it, it doesn't own you.

• 1:24Guy Raz?

  And always on How I Built This. I saw that. I knew it. I could feel it. The sheer joy of creating something from nothing.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, my God, like, we did it. Like, someone in the world is using this thing out in the wild. That feeling, like seeing someone using your product and loving it, is like way more rewarding than any amount of money in the world.

• 1:47Guy Raz?

  So check out How I Built This. Follow us on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.