How I Built This with Guy Raz

John Gabbert, founder of Room & Board and former leader at his family’s furniture business, built a modern American-made brand without outside investors. He talks about his IKEA revelation, a decade-long family rift after a failed buyout, trading shares to go independent, choosing slow, principled growth, and eventually transferring ownership to employees.

Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed and viral-media pioneer, discusses scaling seasonal businesses, defending viral physical products from copycats, and marketing healthy food to busy parents. He also talks about BuzzFeed’s reinvention through AI apps, community-driven products, and new ways to build durable media-powered brands.

Gregg Renfrew, founder and former CEO who built Beautycounter into a major clean-beauty brand, tells a roller-coaster story of building, selling, losing, buying back, and rebuilding her company. She discusses creating a movement with direct sales, the risks of growth-at-all-costs, being ousted from her own business, and the hard work of starting again as Counter.

David Neeleman, serial airline founder behind JetBlue, Azul, and Breeze Airways, shares his aviation and startup chops. He explains Breeze’s service and fleet choices. He breaks down airline economics and fuel pressures. He offers practical succession, growth, and product-strategy advice to small-business callers.

Shep Murray, co-founder who turned a seaside necktie idea into a national retail brand, and Ian Murray, his brother who scaled the ties business into a family-owned lifestyle company. They recount quitting corporate jobs, inventing colorful, island-inspired designs, cold-calling manufacturers and stores, bootstrap growth tactics, guerrilla PR wins, retail growing pains, and surviving the 2008 crisis to keep control of their brand.

Christina Pang, founder of Haven Beauty (allergen-free fragrance and skincare), calls in for marketing and trust-building tips. Eric Ryan, serial entrepreneur (co-founder of Method) turned investor at Graycroft, offers advice on positioning, sampling, clinical validation, customization as marketing, and when to raise capital. Short, practical conversations about building credibility, brand experience, and community.

Daniel Lubetzky, entrepreneur who built KIND from PeaceWorks to a multibillion-dollar snack brand. He tells how a peace-driven start collided with retail realities. He explains designing a visible whole-nuts bar, the risky pivot after a distribution loss, the power of checkout placement, and lessons from scaling, sampling, and major retail missteps.

Chieh Huang, founder of Boxed and creator of Pelgo to help people through career transitions, weighs in on founders’ dilemmas. Alec of Surfing Cow asks about scaling beef-tallow skincare production. Discussions cover when to move to co-manufacturing, protecting formulas, cautious fundraising, retail pitfalls, and tweaking coffee and pet products for broader distribution.

Colin Angle, co-founder and longtime CEO of iRobot who turned research robots into consumer products. He recounts early survival-mode years, pivoting from military and toy contracts to inventing the Roomba, the Cheerios demo that won retail buyers, a viral ad that spiked sales, scaling manufacturing and IPO, and how competition and a failed Amazon deal changed everything.

Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle and serial restaurateur, offers quick-fire advice on building restaurant concepts and operations. He discusses lessons from closing a robot-powered sandwich project and why human touch still matters. He helps founders stand out with place-driven products, smart packaging, and targeted marketing to reach younger customers.