Best Bob Hamel Podcasts (2025)

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How to move beyond bureaucracy, not waste talent, and innovate faster | Michele Zanini & Gary Hamel 1:37:17

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5d ago1:37:17

1:37:17

Bureaucracy was once a breakthrough. Today, it’s become a costly drag on innovation, human potential, and business impact. In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, authors of Humanocracy, to explore how organizations can move beyond outdated management models and unlock true human thriving. Hamel and Zan…

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From Blacksmith to Billionaire: The Making of Patagonia’s Ethos 1:28:48

19d ago1:28:48

1:28:48

Patagonia has always been different. While so many companies lose their way when profits come before people, the planet, or even their own products, Patagonia continues to stay true to its values. In today’s episode of The Eric Ries Show, I speak with journalist David Gelles, author of Dirtbag Billionaire, his new book about founder Yvon Chouinard.…

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“AI Will Break the Internet” — Cloudflare CEO’s Big Prediction 1:18:58

1M ago1:18:58

1:18:58

What if your company’s mission turned out to be bigger than you imagined? In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I speak with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, now a $70 billion company defending 20% of all internet traffic. We trace how Cloudflare’s mission wasn’t declared at the start, but discovered through a series of principled…

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Inside Vercel: The $3B giant that’s changed coding forever 1:19:17

2M ago1:19:17

1:19:17

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel—a company powering the front end of the internet for brands like OpenAI, Nintendo, Chick-fil-A, and many more. Guillermo’s journey began far from Silicon Valley, in Argentina, where a Red Hat Linux CD changed the course of his life. We talk about how ope…

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How GitLab scaled to 30M users with transparency, remote work, and the ultimate employee handbook | Sid Sijbrandij 1:33:29

3M ago1:33:29

1:33:29

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder and Executive Chair of GitLab—one of the world’s most radically transparent and values-driven software companies. Sid shares how GitLab evolved from an open-source side project into a publicly traded DevOps platform, all while remaining deeply aligned with its values. F…

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Turning down $200 million and the big bets that led to powering 40% of the internet 1:10:48

3M ago1:10:48

1:10:48

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, the open-source platform that now powers 43% of the internet. Recorded on the 20th anniversary of Automattic, our conversation is a deep dive into what it takes to build enduring companies on top of open infrastructure. We explore Mat…

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The playbook for fixing toxic culture, pointless friction, and broken systems | Bob Sutton (Stanford, NYT bestselling author) 1:27:34

4M ago1:27:34

1:27:34

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Bob Sutton, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author of several influential books on leadership, behavior, and workplace culture, including his latest: The Friction Project. We explore insights from across his body of work, including real-world examples of large organizat…

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The pitch that changed air travel forever: $3B in preorders, Richard Branson’s backing, and the return of supersonic flight | Blake Scholl (Boom Supersonic) 1:26:59

4M ago1:26:59

1:26:59

What does it take to challenge a century-old status quo in aviation? In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, a company on a mission to bring back supersonic air travel—sustainably and affordably. Blake doesn’t come from aerospace. He’s a computer scientist and former Amazon engineer w…

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The Hidden Costs of Pay Inequality, And How Leading Companies are Solving It | Maria Colacurcio (Syndio) 1:13:57

5M ago1:13:57

1:13:57

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Maria Colacurcio, Co-Founder and CEO of Syndio, a workplace equity analytics platform. Syndio helps companies close pay gaps and build high-trust organizations. Maria has had a long career in leadership, previously co-founding Smartsheet and serving as a senior leader at Starbucks, where she focu…

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Lessons on co-founding Twitter, Medium and Blogger with Ev Williams 1:22:17

6M ago1:22:17

1:22:17

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Ev Williams—someone whose work has profoundly shaped the modern internet. Ev co-founded Twitter, created Medium, and before all that, built Blogger, the original blogging platform (and the one where my own blog, Startup Lessons Learned, still lives today). We cover a wide range of topics, but a…

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The playbook for building a business to $1M/month with 3 employees, hiring great leaders, and rejecting Silicon Valley’s rules | Jess Mah (Rahway) 1:24:29

6M ago1:24:29

1:24:29

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I'm joined by Jess Mah, an extraordinary entrepreneur who launched her first six-figure business in middle school and went on to co-found more than 10 companies collectively valued at over $1 billion. Jess rose to public acclaim and earned a spot on Forbes' 30 Under 30 while privately facing the reality that h…

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The Hired CEO with Founder Mode | Marten Mickos (MySQL, HackerOne) 1:32:37

6M ago1:32:37

1:32:37

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Marten Mickos, a serial tech CEO who has been at the forefront of some of the most transformative moments in open-source technology. From leading MySQL through its groundbreaking journey to guiding HackerOne as a pioneering bug bounty platform, Marten's career is a masterclass in building innov…

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How To Raise $125M Pre-Revenue and Why Harder Can Be Easier | Celine Halioua (Loyal) 1:40:25

6M ago1:40:25

1:40:25

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I'm joined by Celine Halioua, founder and CEO of Loyal, a groundbreaking biotech startup developing drugs to extend dogs' healthspan and lifespan. Celine's journey combines her passion for animals with a bold scientific mission that looks beyond pets to potentially transform human longevity as well. Our conver…

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Inside UiPath’s $1.5B ARR Journey – Bootstrapping the company, hiring challenges, and the billion-dollar pivot (Daniel Dines) 1:35:37

7M ago1:35:37

1:35:37

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Daniel Dines, the Founder and CEO of UiPath, a company that started in robotic process automation (RPA) and is now making a bold shift into agentic AI. Dubbed “the boss of bots” by Forbes, Daniel has led UiPath from its humble beginnings to a $6.65 billion company that’s reshaping the future of…

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From Bootstrapping to $400 Million – The Hustle Behind Hipcamp with Alyssa Ravasio 1:28:47

7M ago1:28:47

1:28:47

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Alyssa Ravasio, CEO and Founder of Hipcamp. Hipcamp is the platform that has revolutionized camping, with a mission to “get more people outside.” By making it easier for people to find camping on public lands—and then expanding to include private lands—Hipcamp significantly increased the supply o…

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MBA thinking killed my startup, lessons on losing 98% of users, and being fired as a co-founder | Gagan Biyani (Udemy and Maven) 1:32:56

7M ago1:32:56

1:32:56

In today’s episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Gagan Biyani, Co-Founder and CEO of Maven, a platform that’s redefining online education with cohort-based courses. Before Maven, Gagan co-founded Udemy, now one of the largest online education marketplaces, and Sprig, a meal delivery startup. Gagan started his entrepreneurial journey at just …

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Lessons on creating a $17 billion learning company, going viral with an owl, and ditching short-term thinking with Luis von Ahn (Duolingo) 1:29:04

8M ago1:29:04

1:29:04

In today’s episode ofThe Eric Ries Show, I am joined by Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo. With Duolingo, his mission was simple: make language learning accessible to everyone—not to build a for-profit company. Fast forward to today, and Duolingo has grown into a $17 billion business with a reported 90% of the online daily active users i…

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He turned down $11 billion, here’s why | Craig Newmark (Craigslist Founder) 1:10:34

8M ago1:10:34

1:10:34

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist—one of the internet’s most influential platforms. Despite its massive impact, Craigslist has remained intentionally minimalist, resisting the hyper-monetization strategies common in tech. Craig attributes his success to being in the right place at the ri…

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Redefining Education in the Age of AI with Amir Nathoo (Outschool) 1:24:10

8M ago1:24:10

1:24:10

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Amir Nathoo, Co-Founder and CEO of Outschool, an education platform offering live online classes for K-12 learners. Amir’s own childhood inspired Outschool—while he went to traditional schools, his parents always encouraged his self-driven coding projects at home. Outschool is about empowering ki…

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Lessons on building a unicorn used by 84% of the Fortune 100 | Emil Eifrem (Neo4j) 1:24:44

8M ago1:24:44

1:24:44

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Emil Eifrem, Co-Founder and CEO of Neo4j, an open-source graph database. Neo4j enables organizations to unlock the business value of connections, influences, and relationships in data. In our conversation today, we talk about the following topics: • The origin story of Neo4j and why they chose op…

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How She Built a Marketplace for a Million Nurses | Iman Abuzeid (Incredible Health) 1:27:22

9M ago1:27:22

1:27:22

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Iman Abuzeid, the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a platform transforming how healthcare systems hire nurses. After earning an MD, Iman pivoted to business and technology. She spent some time working in New York before enrolling at The Wharton School, where she earned her MBA. After grad…

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Hard-Won Secrets for Scaling Innovations in Finance, Gaming, and AI with Siqi Chen (Runway, Zynga) 1:35:31

10M ago1:35:31

1:35:31

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I’m joined by Siqi Chen, a four-time founder and the CEO and CFO of his latest venture, Runway. Runway offers a modern, user-friendly platform for financial modeling, headcount planning, and departmental budgeting—proudly branding itself as “the finance platform your team doesn’t hate.” With its distinctive ma…

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Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks 1:25:20

10M ago1:25:20

1:25:20

Rodney Brooks has spent his entire life at the intersection of robotics, computers, and AI. When the Roomba vacuum cleaner launched in 2002, his company, iRobot, brought all three into millions of people’s homes. iRobot had already succeeded with robots for space exploration, mine detection, search missions, and military applications. However, afte…

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Longevity Over Hypergrowth: A New Vision for Startups with Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad) 1:39:24

10M ago1:39:24

1:39:24

The story of the digital content-sharing platform Gumroad challenges every aspect of the received wisdom about building successful companies. After it almost went under, founder and CEO Sahil Lavingia decided to pare down to the essentials rather than walk away. Then he took his characteristic counter-intuitiveness further and left Silicon Valley f…

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Risks, Rewards, and Building the Unicorn Chip Company Taking on Nvidia | Inside Groq with Jonathan Ross 1:15:13

11M ago1:15:13

1:15:13

The story of Groq, a semiconductor startup that makes chips for AI inference and was recently valued at $2.8 billion, is a classic “overnight success that was years in the making” tale. On this episode, I talk with founder and CEO Jonathan Ross. He began the work that eventually led to Groq as an engineer at Google, where he was a member of the rap…

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AI’s Human Backbone: The Hidden Hands That Shape The Technology | Wendy Gonzalez (Sama) 1:27:41

11M ago1:27:41

1:27:41

Wendy Gonzalez is the CEO of Sama, an ethical AI company that provides training and jobs with equitable pay and benefits to those who face the greatest barriers to stable employment. Among the companies it provides AI development data to are Microsoft, Ford, Walmart, Google, and many others. But before its current incarnation, Sama was a very diffe…

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Mission Over Money: How Sal Khan changed EdTech forever 1:00:59

12M ago1:00:59

1:00:59

Sal Khan arrived at the idea for Khan Academy truly organically. While working at a hedge fund, he took time in the evenings to tutor a younger cousin in math over the phone. Soon, a family tutoring network was in place, and from there, it was only a few years before Sal realized that the kind of help he was giving his family could – and should – b…

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Contrarian by Design: Wade Foster’s Vision Behind Zapier’s $5B Business 1:23:26

1y ago1:23:26

1:23:26

Founded in 2011 in the distinctly non-Silicon Valley location of Columbia, Missouri, software integration company Zapier hit profitability in 2014. Today, the company is valued in the billions, and is poised to keep thriving as AI becomes a normal part of everything we do online. My guest on this episode of The Eric Ries Show is co-founder and CEO …

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The Oracle Of Silicon Valley Shares How to Create More Value Than You Capture | Tim O’Reilly 1:40:23

1y ago1:40:23

1:40:23

What is the relationship between technology and society? What happens to idealism over time? I’m fortunate to have discussed these questions and many more with Tim O’Reilly for this episode of The Eric Ries Show. Tim is the founder of O’Reilly Media, which has provided countless programmers and technologists with foundational information for doing …

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The Art of Pivoting: How TaskRabbit Reimagined the Gig Economy | Stacy Brown-Philpot (Google, TaskRabbit, HP, Nordstroms) 1:20:08

1y ago1:20:08

1:20:08

Stacy Brown-Philpot is a unique voice in Silicon Valley. She began her career as a public accountant and worked at Goldman Sachs before landing at Google. She was the COO and then the CEO of TaskRabbit, which she saw through its sale to Ikea. Today, she’s on a number of corporate boards including HP, Nordstrom, StockX, Noom, and Black Girls CODE. S…

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Reid Hoffman challenges your thinking on AI, governance, and politics 1:57:50

1y ago1:57:50

1:57:50

The latest episode of The Eric Ries Show features my conversation with Reid Hoffman. Executive Vice President of PayPal, co-founder of LinkedIn, and legendary investor at Greylock Partners are just a few of his official roles that have changed our world. He’s also been a mentor to countless founders of iconic companies like Airbnb, Facebook, and Op…

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How to build trust and win your customer’s attention with Seth Godin 1:02:01

1y ago1:02:01

1:02:01

This episode of The Eric Ries Show is all about the relationship between trust and success. I can’t think of anyone better to talk about it with than Seth Godin, author of the classic Permission Marketing, the best-seller This Is Marketing, and many other books, as well as a fantastic daily blog that has been going strong since the early days. He a…

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Inside Kickstarter: Co-Founder Yancey Strickler on Building the Crowdfunding Giant 1:38:48

1y ago1:38:48

1:38:48

Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the founder of Metalabel, a platform for releasing collective work. He’s also the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. I’m thrilled to share our recent conversation in this episode. Yancey started out as a music journalist before applying his…

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How to Scale Trust Into a Billion Dollar Business | Ritu Narayan (Zum) 1:17:05

1y ago1:17:05

1:17:05

For this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sat down with Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, which has had incredible success in the field of student transportation. The company began as a private service to tackle a problem Ritu was facing herself: how to function as a working parent dealing with erratic pickup and drop-off schedules. Before long…

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Lessons From Co-Founding Facebook, And Now Asana | Dustin Moskovitz 1:11:23

1+ y ago1:11:23

1:11:23

Welcome to The Eric Ries Show. I sat down with Dustin Moskovitz, founder of not one but two iconic companies: Facebook and the collaborative work platform Asana. Needless to say, he’s engaged in the most intense form of entrepreneurship there is. A huge part of what he’s chosen to do with the hard-earned knowledge it gave him is dedicate himself an…

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How to Disrupt an Industry: Lessons from James Reinhart (ThredUp) 1:28:30

1+ y ago1:28:30

1:28:30

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I talk with James Reinhart, founder of the second-hand resale platform ThredUp. A history major in college, James started his career as a teacher. That might not seem like it has much to do with fashion, but, as he explains, his early education and experiences actually led him not only to be a dual degree stud…

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His First Company Went Public For $3.5 Billion, Now He’s Reversing Type 2 Diabetes For 100 Million 1:35:35

1+ y ago1:35:35

1:35:35

In this first episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with serial entrepreneur and intrepid explorer, Sami Inkinen. Sami has co-founded two companies: Trulia and Virta Health. After Trulia was acquired by Zillow for $3.5 billion, he rowed from California to Hawaii with his wife, unassisted. What can’t this guy do? Now, he’s on a mission to revers…

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Welcome To The Eric Ries Show 2:15

1+ y ago2:15

2:15

For too long, company builders have been told that purpose and profit are at odds -- that trading one for the other is inevitable. A burgeoning group of founders is proving that wrong, creating organizations whose commitment to their mission inspires the trust of customers, employees, investors, and other partners, leading to serious competitive ad…