Vlad Magdalin didn’t set out to build a marketing case study. He set out to fix a broken invoice. Translating Photoshop files into HTML by hand, earning near minimum wage…
A brother’s text message about Hillary Clinton recording a podcast doesn’t usually turn into a case study. But that’s exactly what happened with Riverside. I’ve watched a lot of companies…
Most founders bury their worst day. Sahil Lavingia put his on TechCrunch’s homepage and then, four years later, wrote three thousand more words about it. That decision is the whole…
Tyler Denk had $2.50 in his bank account and $120,000 in student debt. He was living in his parents’ basement. Six years later, he’d built a company generating $15 million…
Two guys getting fired from their own company usually isn’t the origin story of a multi-billion-dollar business. But that’s exactly what happened to Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri after Oracle…
Nobody at Y Combinator in 2019 thought international payroll was a hot idea. Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang pitched it anyway. Seven years later, that “boring” idea is worth $17.3…
Two friends splitting a currency swap over Skype is not how most billion-dollar companies start. But that’s exactly how Wise began. I’ve spent years building marketing programs for companies trying…
Most founders think their product is their moat. I’ve managed enough campaigns and enough budgets to tell you that’s rarely true. Features get copied. Pricing gets matched. Buffer’s story is…
David Cancel had just helped take HubSpot public. He was rich, respected, and locked in with golden handcuffs. That should have felt like winning. Instead, it felt like a trap.…
Four engineers in Dublin built a side tool just to talk to their own customers. That tool became Intercom. Sixteen years later, it sold to Salesforce for $3.6 billion. I’ve…