Social commerce is a rapidly emerging industry, reaching over $600B annually in China and rapidly emerging in the US. The leading platform for social commerce in the US is WhatNot. They recently raised a $260M Series D, and might be the fastest growing marketplace ever. In this conversation we chat with Whatnot founder Grant Lafontaine about the or…

The components manufacturing industry is the perfect example of a legacy niche ripe for disruption. But it has some interesting nuances to it, ones that Gearflow has worked hard to understand. Initially setting out as a two-sided marketplace business leveraging long-tail search to drive distribution, they quickly learned that rather than going arou…

The stigma around couples therapy is largely gone. People are more willing than ever to talk with someone who can help them process their issues. And yet many couples reserve it for then things get really bad. While they might recognize the benefits of a more proactive approach to couples counseling, the logistical headaches and cost make it someth…

Almost every organization would benefit from having better processes. But for most companies getting standard operating procedures, handbooks and other materials documented is firmly in the category of important but never urgent. The barriers of getting that content created, organized, and in front of the right people at the right time is no small …

Nearly 1 in 6 adults struggle with some form of infertility. And yet while the pregnancy journey is pretty well defined and understood, the process of conceiving is not. It is full of misinformation, often magnifies the feelings of shame, inadequacy, and loneliness that many people already are struggling with, and starts from the incorrect premise …

While most industries have already realized the benefits of assembly-line-based, automated manufacturing processes, home building continues to be slow, built one-at-a-time, using largely the same materials we’ve used for decades. Boxabl is looking to change that. By creating a factory borrowing from many of the principles of automotive manufacturin…

Only 4 in 10 employees use all of their Paid Time Off each year, leaving over 750 million days unused annually in the US. Unused PTO either sits on the balance sheet of companies as a liability, or is forfeited by employees - representing a staggering $65B in lost compensation each year. PTO Exchange is out to fit this problem. Through their platfo…

Creating a new company in the food and beverage space is no small feat. While it’s relatively easy to get started, securing shelf space, managing margins, and outmaneuvering extremely large and resourced incumbents create considerable barriers to entry. Lemon Perfect has been bucking that trend, having raised over $37M and achieving national distri…

Forward Health is a heavily tech-enabled concierge healthcare provider that is reimagining the way healthcare is provided. I’ve been a member for several years, and routinely have used them as an example of creating delightful customer experiences. There’s no waiting room. The physician isn’t typing into a laptop but is focused on you. As you talk …

Companies have rapidly embracing the idea of a truly distributed global workforce, and opportunities to work from anywhere are now common. But access to great training and education remains unevenly distributed, so while digital nomads and people living in developed economies are able to benefit, many people from emerging economies lack similar opp…

The pandemic impacted many startups over the last few years. And while some failed and others survived, a few actually thrived coming out of it. One of those companies was crafty, which helps companies manage their food and beverage programs. Crafty managed to not only survive a world shaking event for their business, but actually stumbled upon a b…

In the fitness and life hacking communities, ketones and ketogenesis have become an increasingly hot topic of conversation. The benefits of getting your body into ketosis and using ketones as fuel are many and varied. But the problem historically has been the amount of lifestyle change required to benefit from ketones. Health via Modern Nutrition i…

In the last few years, there has been an enormous increase of interest in the science of sleep. Sleep has become recognized as a primary tool for optimizing human performance. As a result, high performers who used to pride themselves on how little sleep they get now go to great lengths to optimize the duration and quality of their sleep. One of the…

The advent of syndicates, roll up vehicles, and social networking have torn down many of the gatekeepers and walls in traditional venture. And a new wave of hyper-connected operator angels and emerging managers are taking advantage. A great example is Paige Finn Doherty, who in an extremely compressed timeframe has built an incredibly broad network…

Most of the new tokens being launched in the DeFi ecosystem leverage what is called Proof of Stake as the mechanism to secure the networks. And critical to the Success of Proof of Stake protocols are the Stakers themselves, who lock up their tokens to secure the network in exchange and earn more tokens in the process. My guest today is Andrew Cronk…

Metabolic health measures how effectively our body processes energy. Measuring glucose is the primary way we assess one’s metabolic health. And there is mounting evidence that poor metabolic health leads to many chronic conditions like diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. The problem historically has been our tools for measuring glucose have been t…

Amit Gupta is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was one of the early pioneers of the coworking movement, he created a photography company called Photojojo that enjoyed a rabid following and was eventually acquired. And now he’s working on Sudowrite, an AI enabled writing assistant. In this conversation we get into Amit’s backgrou…

There’s an idea in startup land around “building in public”. The idea is that taking people behind the scenes can be a fantastic way to build trust, create authenticity with your brand, and create an enthusiastic base of early customers. When I’ve talked to founders or my students at Northwestern about building in public, the example I’ve most freq…

The future of education is a hotly debated topic, one that was only exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Parents, educators, and policy makers are all asking themselves what students need to learn to compete and thrive in a rapidly changing future. One company trying to solve this is Synthesis School, an online school spun out of Space X that focuses…

The trends around quantified self, and productivity optimization have been around for years. But when COVID arrived, many people started to reflect on their lives. One of the themes that seems to have emerged from that has been a shifting emphasis to simply hustling or working harder, to pursuing balance. Brian Fioca is the Founder of RescueTime an…

It’s been said that 2020 was the year of Decentralized Finance, and 2021 the year of NFTs. It’s likely that 2022 will be the year of the DAO. DAOs represent a fundamentally different way of organizing human and financial capital, and depending on who you ask have the potential to disrupt the traditional idea of a corporation. But they can be hard t…

Today is a big day for us, because today we’re unveiling our new company. It’s called Manifold, and it combines our advisory practice, formerly known as Digital Intent, our venture investing activity, and new incubation studio. This reorganization is several years in the making, and the goal is to create what we call a perpetual machine for value c…

Ross Gordon is the founder of Catch Co, creating amazing fishing brands, products, & shopping experiences for the modern angler. It originally started as Mystery Tackle Box, a subscription service sending lures and other gear to fishing enthusiasts. But he has since grown it into something much larger. He designs and manufactures his own fishing pr…

Welcome back to season 3 of the disruptors podcast. Steve Sinclair is the Senior Vice President of Product at Mojo Vision, a company that is absolutely on the bleeding edge of augmented reality. And for the last several years they’ve been working on a contact lens equipped with a display that is no larger than a grain of sand. It sounds straight ou…

Video games have obviously taken the world by storm. But when most people think of video games they think of something folks do as purely entertainment, with little practical value to their lives. But the promise of games goes way beyond mere distraction - the modalities and mechanics of games can actually be used to develop skills in ways that wou…

Professional services firms have undergone dramatic shifts in the last 10 years, and many are predicting complete disruption in the next 20. As automation, broader access to information and other trends converge, smart professional service firms are looking to aggressively transform themselves. Perhaps one of the more ambitious firms in this regard…

Many of the students in my class at Kellogg come from the world of big consulting, but have been bitten by the startup bug. But how do you successfully leave the relatively stable, comfortable, prestigious walls of corporate America and successfully launch your new venture? My guest is Jennifer Fitzgerald, and after helping financial services organ…

Nearly everyone is in agreement that healthcare is an industry that desperately needs transformative change. But the legacy technologies, interrelationships between providers and mayors, and other systemic issues typically keep such transformation from happening. One exception is Jefferson Health, which has transformed itself dramatically in dozens…

For most organizations working on innovation, their emphasis is on incremental, horizon one types of initiatives. Far less common are truly disruptive, moonshot initiatives that can transform industries if successful. My guest today is Kathy Hannun, and for 7 years she was a product manager for the rapid evaluation team at Google[X], tasked with pr…

Privacy is a hot topic these days, as people for the first time are starting to realize the extent and magnitude of the data companies are gathering on them. And not everyone is okay with it. My guest today is Richard Stokes, founder of Winston Privacy. And in this discussion we talk about the genesis of Winston and how he’s trying to help consumer…

How do you innovate inside a company with decades of rich history, with business models that are firmly entrenched, delivering on a product people have consumed effectively the same way for centuries? My guest today is Maja Thomas, Chief Innovation Officer for Hachette Livre, one of the largest book publishers in the world, and the Director of the …

One of the most consistent issues with organizations looking to innovate is the idea of change management. How do I get an organization that’s used to doing things a certain way to embrace change and bake innovation into its DNA? My guest today is Jillian Chown. Jillian teaches at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in the Manage…

One of the largest trends in enterprise innovation has been the adoption of large platforms like SAP and Salesforce. But many organizations don’t realize the full potential of what these platforms are capable of, and don’t know how to extract that value. Salesforce has tried to help their top-tier customers innovate more effectively with Salesforce…

Many organizations talk about improving customer experience as one of their primary innovation initiatives. But what does it look like to create a truly transformative experience that is orders of magnitude better than anything else out there, and to do so at scale? My guest today is John Padgett. John is the Chief Experience and Innovation Officer…

The Design Sprint methodology has spread like wildfire, both in the startup community and the world of enterprise innovation. My guest today is John Zeratsky, one of the creators of the Design Sprint methodology and coauthor of The Sprint Book and Make Time. In this episode we dig into how the Design Sprint methodology came about and how it’s evolv…

The common wisdom around creating a marketplace business is to start with supply. The logic is that without the supply side you can't capture the demand side, which is typically how a marketplace business monetizes. Jessica Messinger is the head of growth at Cameo, and previously grew the supply side of both Uber and Twitch. And in this episode we …

The LEGO Ideas initiative is perhaps the most famous example of successful community building and open innovation. In this episode we talk with Tim Courtney, who helped run the LEGO Ideas community for over 7 years. We discuss the history of the LEGO Ideas movement, the characteristics that make community building efforts successful, pitfalls to av…

Welcome to Season 2 of the Disruptors Podcast. How is technology going to transform the way we choose where to live? Chad Curry is currently the Director of Technology Partnerships for eXp Realty, and formerly the Managing Director of CRT Labs, the think tank for the National Association of REALTORS. In this episode we discuss: - How autonomous veh…

How do you scale something 10x and then scale it again? The answer is surprisingly simple, and yet very few organizations have the discipline to do it. My guest today is Elan Mosbacher, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Spothero. In this conversation we talk about how Elan and his team made went about growing SpotHero to the large…

One thing many startups have in common is the growth team - a multi-disciplinary group tasked with moving bottom line product metrics. Unlike traditional marketers that focus on acquisition, they are tasked with iterating on the product to improve things like retention, referral, and average revenue per user. Mike Rome leads growth at Eat Street, a…

The financial services industry impacts us in broad sweeping ways, perhaps more than any other industry. And technology is forcing legacy institutions to adapt while juggling massive compliance, security, and legacy platform concerns. In this discussion with Jason Henrichs we talk about how financial services companies can adapt more successfully, …

Amazon has developed a unique culture that allows them to execute across a variety of industries. My guest today is Chris Durbin, as a product designer for Amazon she's seen first hand what makes Amazon's approach unique. In this episode we discuss what she learned leading the design for the Apple Watch app, why Amazon's culture of writing is the k…

The hotel industry is full of opportunities to leverage innovative new technologies. My guest today has made it his mission to help hotels navigate the hundreds of solutions out there and provide objective, unbiased advice. His name is Jordan Hollander and he’s the cofounder of Hotel Tech Report www.hoteltechreport.com. In this episode we talk abou…

Data science has infiltrated most enterprise organizations. But it’s also being used to improve the efficacy of organizations in the social sector. My guest today is Andrew Means. Founder of Data Analysts for Social Good and Big Elephant Studios. Co-founder of BrightHive. Previously he was the founding executive director of Uptake.org and Associate…

In this episode, DI partner Sean Johnson discusses why politics often get a bad wrap inside of organizations, and why they're vital to making your innovation initiatives happen. He then discusses 20 specific strategies you can leverage to build influence, break logjams and move ideas through your organization. We'd love to hear what you think about…

Welcome to the Disruptors podcast. In this episode, DI partner Sean Johnson explains why so many digital products fail, and outlines 11 specific, actionable ways you can make smarter product decisions to maximize the likelihood of success.By Sean Johnson @ Manifold