Episodes

Stephen Starr built a restaurant empire without ever caring about food. Starting from Atlantic City boardwalk sales and comedy clubs, he launched STARR Restaurant Group in 1995 and now runs more than 40 acclaimed venues including Buddakan, Le Diplomate, and Makoto. His secret? Treating dining as theater and obsessing over every sensory detail, from lighting to music to the greeting at the door. The result is nine of the 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in America.

Shazi Visram, founder of Happy Family Organics, joins Guy Raz to coach three early-stage founders on scaling, distribution, and investment. Daisy weighs expanding her UK barefoot shoe brand into the US, Rachel debates private labeling her protein sprinkle concept, and Andrew contemplates raising capital for his scented soil additive. The conversation balances practical go-to-market advice with Shazi's philosophy that entrepreneurship is one of the most creative outlets a person can have.

A former shoe executive turned retail on its head by founding Build-A-Bear Workshop in 1997, creating a global brand where kids stuff their own stuffed animals. Maxine Clark shares how the make-your-own concept evolved from a simple mall kiosk into a billion-dollar experience brand, the strategic bets that defined its culture, and why emotional connection - not transactions - built the company's most durable competitive advantage.

In this episode of How I Built This, Guy Raz talks with Christina Tosi, the James Beard Award-winning pastry chef and founder of Milk Bar, about building a dessert empire from a single idea. Christina shares how she turned unconventional ingredients like cornflakes and potato chips into iconic treats, the challenges of scaling a creative business, and her philosophy of blending childhood nostalgia with sophisticated technique. She also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs on embracing imperfection, staying authentic, and building a brand that connects with people on an emotional level.

Guy Raz revisits his 2019 conversation with Tobias Lütke, the German-Canadian programmer who transformed a snowboard shop into Shopify, the e-commerce engine behind millions of online stores. From living in his in-laws' basement to leading a $150 billion public company, Lütke reveals how luck, timing, and relentless iteration built a platform that now powers over a trillion dollars in sales. This episode is a masterclass in turning a personal frustration into global infrastructure.

Tim Ferriss joins Guy Raz for a live Advice Line session, taking calls from three entrepreneurs navigating very different growth challenges. Lauren Menard scales GOB's mycelium earplugs across music venues and DTC while raising a seed round. Emily Bordner decides between wholesale expansion and brick-and-mortar growth after a viral Taylor Swift moment. Kimberly Becker contemplates shifting K. Becker Designs to a pre-order model. Ferriss offers frameworks on parallel verticals, low-cost experiments, and redefining success beyond revenue.

Brian Smith turned a $500 boot import into UGG, one of the most recognizable footwear brands in the world. In this episode, he shares how a surfer's eye for a product gap, repeated near-bankruptcies, and a refusal to compromise on authenticity built a global icon. From Southern California surf trunks to Deckers' billion-dollar empire, it's a story about resilience, brand building, and betting on a product no one else believed in.

Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation, joins the HIBT Advice Line to discuss building a mission-driven business grounded in a Native American principle. He explains the origin of the company's name, the early obstacles of bringing sustainable household products to market, the operational crisis that nearly ended the company, and what he learned from eventually leaving the CEO role to let the business enter its next phase.

From waiting tables to launching Justin’s Nut Butter, Justin Gold shares his scrappy, unplanned journey to reinventing mainstream peanut butter. He breaks down testing small-batch nut butter recipes in his Denver kitchen, spotting the market gap for additive-free spreads, and navigating early scaling hurdles to turn his personal hobby into a nationwide CPG staple. Viewers walk away with actionable lessons on building a values-driven, ingredient-transparent food brand from the ground up.

Guy Raz brings back Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of M.M. LaFleur, to field real-time questions from founders navigating self-doubt, pricing perception, and shifting consumer behavior. Two callers pitch their businesses - a muscle-recovery soap and tick-protective socks - and Sarah offers practical, hard-won advice drawn from rebuilding her own brand through COVID, a bank collapse, and near-failure.

Jensen Huang sits down to recount how NVIDIA went from selling 250,000 defective chips and laying off two-thirds of its staff to building the most dominant company in the world by market capitalization. Guy Raz unpacks the near-collapse, the $5 million bet with Sega, and Jensen's decade-long wager on CUDA when every investor was running for the exits. It's the story of what it actually costs to build something most people said couldn't be done.

Boxed founder Chieh Huang joins Guy Raz to coach three founders navigating product expansion. Christina Latraverse of Seagrass Pottery debates scaling physical studios versus wholesale. Hernan Lopez of Wondery guides Jim Kersley through the retail versus direct-to-consumer tradeoff for Lemur Strap. David Neilman helps William Carroll of Tool Club think through shifting consumer behavior around tool rentals. Every call explores the same question: how to grow without losing what makes the business work.