DeafMetal: From a whisper to a scream
Finnish designer Jenni Ahtiainen built Deafmetal after hearing loss began changing the way she moved through the world. What started at a workbench in Helsinki now reaches customers in more than 30 countries.
That time Pussy Riot opened for the Creative Business Cup
Afterward, she leaned over and handed me a small box. Inside was a pair of Donald Trump underwear. She looked at me and said, “Americans are not going to like having a dictator.”
Building a more inclusive future for startups
“Everything starts with story,” Santiago says. “Your greatest asset is not AI. It’s not Claude code. It’s your story.”
For entrepreneurs trying to build companies in the middle of an AI boom, that remains his clearest advice.
Be so damn good they can’t ignore you
She is a woman in sports and media and branding, which means she has spent plenty of time in rooms where a man doing the exact same things would be called driven while she gets called “too much, too loud, too aggressive, too confident.”
The Shoe Dogs
Some founders arrive with pitch decks and market analysis. Tammy and Ludo arrived with a camper van, a few decades in the footwear business, and the suspicion that the industry had drifted too far into disposable fashion.
Starr Hall never learned to sit still
Starr Hall has this formula and it repeats like clockwork: She builds things. She makes a shit ton of money. She exits. She gets bored. She moves on.
“I know after two years, I’m out,” she says. “I’ve done what I can do. I need something new.”
Drink the fucking wine
Scott Halford on leadership, clarity, the human brain, and how great founders learn to slow down and question assumptions.