What’s Your Problem? 
Reshma Shetty is co-founder and chief operations officer of Ginkgo Bioworks. Her problem: How do you turn cutting-edge science into a sustainable business? Ginkgo is a synthetic biology company. The idea is to make industrial products — fragrances, or food, or whatever — by genetically engineering DNA, sticking it into a yeast or bacteria, and … Read more
Will Marshall is the co-founder and CEO of Planet, a private company with a fleet of tiny satellites that takes photos of the entire Earth every day. Will’s problem: How do you turn all those images into useful data? In today’s episode we talk about shooting smartphones into space, turning a million-dollar antenna into a … Read more
Joy and Raft Hollingsworth run The Hollingsworth Cannabis Company. Their problem: How do you help more Black people get into the legal weed industry? They faced this problem from the very beginning as they tried to start a marijuana farm from scratch in rural Washington. The Hollingsworths lived their entire lives in downtown Seattle and … Read more
Noubar Afeyan is the co-founder of Moderna and the founder of Flagship Pioneering. His problem: How do you turn the chaotic hero’s journey of entrepreneurship into a repeatable, systematic process? Noubar created Flagship Pioneering to solve the problems he saw with entrepreneurship. Flagship’s mission: To create new companies in a systematic, repeatable way. On today’s … Read more
Rafael Ilishayev is the co-founder of the instant delivery company Gopuff. His problem: How do you deliver everything from bananas to hot coffee in around 30 minutes — and still make a profit? On today’s show, Jacob Goldstein surprises Rafael with a live Gopuff order. And they discuss the problems the company is working on … Read more
Luis von Ahn is the founder and CEO of the language app DuoLingo. His problem: How do you teach people to speak a language — really speak it — using only an iPhone app? On the surface, DuoLingo looks warm and fuzzy. Underneath the hood, it’s a serious tech company built on artificial intelligence. But … Read more
Aicha Evans is the CEO of Zoox. Her problem: Designing a car that knows what to do when it pulls up to a 4-way stop. AI is transforming the way cars work. But AI still struggles with predicting the behavior of human drivers. To build a car that can truly drive itself, Aicha and the … Read more
Keenan Wyrobek is the co-founder of Zipline. His problem: How do you fill the skies with delivery drones and keep them from crashing into each other? Zipline’s drones already make hundreds of deliveries a day in Ghana and Rwanda. But to expand to the U.S. he has to solve a fundamental problem. Americans’ love of … Read more
Ramon van Meer is the CEO of Alpha Paw. His problem: How do you grow a niche business (ramps for weiner dogs!) when a pandemic blows up your supply chain and Apple ruins your targeted ads? Ramon has sold over $30 million worth of dog ramps. That’s a lot of dog ramps. But in order … Read more
Former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks to entrepreneurs and engineers about how they’ll change the world — once they solve a few problems. Coming March 17th. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.