For Starters with Alexa von Tobel

While Trevor Martin was an undergraduate at Princeton, he decided on a whim to take a class called Integrated Science, a course dedicated to encouraging students gifted in physics, math, or computer science to pursue an academic focus in biology. Unbeknownst to him, this class would end up being the catalyst that led him to his successful career as a biotech entrepreneur. After receiving his PhD from Stanford in 2017, Trevor founded Mammoth Biosciences, the platform revolutionizing CRISPR-based synthetic biology products across therapeutics and diagnostics, with the ultimate mission of finding permanent cures for diseases. Trevor shares his favorite mantra: “Le...

As the world of work becomes increasingly global, how can technology fuel the transfer of funds around the world? In 2022, Nami Baral started Niural, on a mission to build a generational product that enables businesses to manage payroll, HR, benefits, payments and compliance in 150+ countries—all in one powerful system. Nami is no stranger to leveraging AI in financial services. Prior to Niural, Nami founded Harvest, a fintech company that built the first AI superagent to reduce debt for American consumers. Harvest was acquired by Acorns in 2021. Nami shares how her upbringing in Nepal taught her that dreams should ha...

From selling everything he owned to meet payroll to achieving a $2.7 billion valuation, Jett McCandless' journey with leading logistics company—project44—has been a story of grit and determination. Founded in 2014, project44 now operates the world's most trusted end-to-end visibility platform that tracks more than 1 billion shipments annually for over 1,300 of the world’s leading brands across 170+ countries. Jet shares how global supply chains could be weaponized amidst an increasingly hostile geopolitical climate, why communication, accountability, and resourcefulness are non-negotiables when it comes to hiring, and how a $120 donation changed the trajectory of his life.  

Growing up on a farm in Finland and training as a physicist, the path to entrepreneurship might not have been an obvious one for Sami Inkinen. But to date, he has founded two companies: Trulia, the online real estate marketplace that IPOed and eventually sold to Zillow Group in 2015, and Virta Health, the modern healthcare solution on a mission to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people. If that weren’t enough, Sami is an endurance athlete who has completed seven ironmans and set a record for rowing 2,750 miles from California to Hawaii to raise awareness about the dangers of th...

When Jes Wolfe was in highschool her dad and grandfather taught her how to invest. Fast forward to today, Jes contributes much of her success to that early encouragement that she belonged, and in fact, had a knack for business. After more than a decade of various finance and strategy roles, she set out on a new challenge as CEO of Rebel Girls: raise the most confident and inspired generation of girls the world has ever seen. With Jes at the helm, Rebel Girls’ mission is to reach 100 million girls by 2030. Jess shares how she navigated a new role as...

Armed with a PhD in computational neuroscience, Naveen Rao has built not one, but two, AI companies at the forefront of his field. In 2014, he started deep learning company Nervana Systems, which was acquired by Intel. And in 2020, he started MosaicML to enable developers to maintain full control over the AI models they build. Just last year, Databricks acquired MosaicML in a $1.3 billion dollar transaction. Naveen shares his framework for evaluating an exit opportunity, how his parents' immigration to the United States shaped his perspective on risk-taking, and his insights into the plausibility of autonomous robots transcending science fiction.<...

There are a special few founders whose contributions are so prolific that they are better known as inventors. Melissa Bernstein is one of those founders. She spent 30 years at the helm of iconic toy company, Melissa & Doug, where she designed over 5,000 innovative products for children of all ages and sold billions of dollars of toys around the world. Having been bit by the bug of a mission a second time around, she is now Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Lifelines, reinventing well-being products for adults and helping them strengthen their resilience, spark joy and creativity, and unlock their fu...

After five seasons, sometimes a rebrand is in order. Join host and repeat entrepreneur Alexa Von Tobel for a new season of podcasts with a new title: What was The Founders Project is now For Starters with Alexa von Tobel.

You can expect the same deep-dive into the journey of being a founder, from future insights to "pinch me" moments to big wins.

Join us each Wednesday. New episodes start on April 3. And if you haven’t already, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. See you there!

Shiza's career path has been one of pivots: she went from a childhood in Pakistan to college at Stanford. Post-college, she started off at McKinsey, but left for the non-profit world, co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. And then in 2019, she co-founded Our Place,a mission-driven startup reimagining kitchenware for the modern, multiethnic, global kitchen. Our Place’s designs have resulted in more than 140 patents, waitlists of over 30,000 people and more than 1000 press headlines. The iconic Always Pan has sold out more than 30 times. Shiza shares how learning to cook led her to reimagine the kit...

As the co-founder of Atomic, a venture fund that builds new companies, Andrew was no stranger to being a founder. But starting Hims in 2017 proved to be his biggest swing yet. He launched Hims to tackle the largest industry in the country that had not yet been touched by modern technology: healthcare. Today, Hims and Hers is a leading consumer health platform powering nearly 9 million medical visits and enabling access for millions of people to a broad range of care, including for mental health, sexual health, and dermatology. Just four years after launching, $HIMS debuted on the New York...