What’s Your Problem? 
Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder and CEO of the crypto exchange FTX. His problem: How to spend billions of dollars to save humanity. Sam is one of the most interesting people in crypto — in large part because he doesn’t think crypto is the most interesting thing in the world. He got into the business … Read more
Katherine Sizov is the founder and CEO of Strella Biotech. Her problem: Tons of food is wasted before it ever gets to the consumer. Katherine started working on this problem in 2018, when she was a junior in college. Her idea: imitate the natural world and build a device that detects when fruit is ripening. … Read more
Anna Katrina Shedletsky is co-founder and CEO of Instrumental. Her problem: How do you make electronics manufacturing more efficient and less wasteful? Anna started her career as a design engineer at Apple. It was her job to visit the factory when a new device was about to go into production and try to figure out … Read more
Today we’re sharing a preview from another podcast we love, Slate Money. Every week, Felix Salmon of Axios is joined by Emily Peck, also of Axios, and Slate Pay Dirt columnist Elizabeth Spiers to chat about the latest in business and finance news. In this episode, Felix and Emily sit down with Alexandra Roberts, professor … Read more
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