What’s Your Problem?

  • Machiavelli’s Tips for Getting Ahead at Work

    Stacey Vanek Smith is the author of “Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace.” Her problem is this: How do women get ahead in a workplace that is stacked…


  • Google’s Journey to the Edge of Search

    Cathy Edwards is vice president and GM of Search at Google. Cathy’s problem is this: how do you teach computers to tell people what they want to know, even if they don’t know how to…


  • Paying People to Turn Off the Fridge

    Matt Duesterberg is co-founder and president of OhmConnect. Matt’s problem: How do you build a business around getting people to save energy? Not all that much. And not all the time. But just enough, at…


  • Turning Writers into Publishers

    Chris Best is co-founder and CEO of Substack. Chris’s problem: How do you help writers make a living from a thousand true fans? Substack is a company that helps writers send subscription-based email newsletters. Which,…


  • Shopify: The Business That Helps Build Businesses

    Harley Finkelstein is the president of Shopify. He may love entrepreneurship more than anyone we’ve ever met. Harley’s problem: How do you aggregate the power of millions of small businesses to help them compete against…


  • Putting Carbon Back Into the Ground

    Shaun Kinetic is co-founder and chief scientist of Charm Industrial. Shaun’s problem: How do you put billions of tons of carbon back into the ground? Charm Industrial is fighting climate change in a giant but…


  • Patching Together a Quilting Empire

    Al Doan is the executive chairman of the Missouri Star Quilt company. Al’s problem is this: How do you combine low tech and high tech to turn a niche hobby into a wildly successful company?…


  • Revealing How Much Health Care Really Costs

    Chris Severn is the co-founder and CEO of Turquoise Health. Chris’s problem is this: How do you figure out the real price trip of a trip to the hospital — before it happens? People have…


  • Saving the World with Poop

    Mariana Matus is co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics. Her problem: How do you turn sewage into useful public health data? When she and her co-founder launched the company, wastewater epidemiology was a niche field…


  • Building an Empire on Free Code

    Matt Mullenweg co-created WordPress, the open-source software that powers more than 40% of all the websites in the world. He’s also the founder of a for-profit company called Automattic. Matt’s problem is this: How do…