Leap Forward

Nathan Blecharczyk turned a social experiment into Airbnb: a company that would remake travel. But first, it had to survive.Before it reshaped an industry, Airbnb looked like an idea that shouldn’t work. In this episode, Nathan retraces the moments that almost killed the company: convincing people to trust a stranger in their home, handling their first major crisis, and watching 80% of their business evaporate in a global pandemic. But with each emergency, he developed the philosophies that would engineer real trust in the company. Alongside Sam Angus, the first advisor who believed in their idea, Nathan shares how they overcame one of humanity’s most instinctual fears and built something that refused to die. 

After more than a decade of mixed success with tech startups, Immad Akhund decided to try something even harder: starting a bank.Today, Mercury is valued at $3.5 billion and serves thousands of startups. But the road to get there was long and rocky. Immad shares how moving from Pakistan to the U.K. left him struggling to belong, how a string of failures nearly led him to leave entrepreneurship altogether, and what kept pulling him back. We also hear from the person who believed in him - really believed in him - long before anyone else: his mom. 

Paul Graham, programmer, essayist, and co-founder of Y Combinator, and Jessica Livingston, co-founder and community-builder, recount YC’s origin story. They discuss starting YC, designing rapid interview processes, and how Jessica shaped its communal events and culture. They reflect on early applicants, the founders-first mentality, and the surprising scale and impact of what they built.

Leap Forward is a show about founders and the people who believed in them before anyone else. Each episode traces the real story behind a company you might know, both from the perspective of the founder, and someone who believed in them before anyone else, like a first boss, early investor, college roommate, or even a parent. Through candid conversations we uncover the story of how companies actually get built, and why it rarely looks the way you might expect.