Ro's Recz

How I Built This is a podcast produced by NPR and hosted by Guy Raz. Raz is one of the most popular and well-known podcast hosts around, and is well deserving of his recognition.

How I Built This interviews founders of major companies, and each episode goes into detail about the origin story and troubles they faced along the way. They have interviewed founders from a ton of major companies in varying industries such as Instagram, Riot Games, Wikipedia, Ben & Jerry’s, AirBNB, etc.

It is so interesting listening to each episode because each founder has a different reasoning for wanting to found his/her company. Some of them seem like they have been predestined to do it from the beginning, in the sense that they have incredible business minds and have always seemed to have the skills to do it; however, many, if not most of the founders, stumbled into their companies through a lot of trial and error or from simply exploring their own passions. Each origin story teaches you something new about the process of founding a company, and you can learn from the founder’s mistakes. Almost every person interviewed on the show has some sort of story about how his/her business almost failed, or how they were going to quit before they started; yet, in the end, all of these companies turned into major “successes” down the road.

As I mentioned before, Raz does an incredible job of coaxing out the best information and stories from each founder he interviews, and you will hear things you would have never imagined before. If there is a company that you are interested in learning more about, definitely start from that episode; if not, you can really listen to any episode because they are all great!