Inc. Uncensored

Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes of Levain Bakery were pioneers in the cookie industry. And their journey from owning a neighborhood bakery into running a nationally revered brand would take 30 years. The first inflection point came in 1997, when Amanda Hesser wrote in The New York Times that Levain made "the largest, most divine chocolate chip cookies in Manhattan." Following that, their business grew rapidly, with lines forming around the corner from their original location. In 1998, they launched a website to capitalize on their newfound success, and over the next decade, the mail-order business for Levain cookies grew by 1,600 percent. By the early 2000s, investors began to show interest as well. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom recently sat down with Weekes and McDonald to discuss their friendship, their business relationship, their early venture into e-commerce, brand and store expansion, and—perhaps most important—why their cookies weigh in at a hefty six ounces. Additional research and informati

The online deception economy is rife with romance scams, financial fraud, and even violence. In just four years, $75 billion has been lost to pig butchering scams, where fraudsters use fake identities, like the scammers who infamously posed as Brad Pitt. In the U.S., one in 10 dating profiles is estimated to be fake, and with advances in AI, falsified information is even more difficult to detect. In this episode, host Abigail Bassett sits down with Kalie Nitzsche, founder and CEO of Fuzzy, and Jaqi Saleem, founder and CEO of Qualified Digital, to learn how these two visionary female founders are leveraging the power of collaboration to create revolutionary technology to solve this global issue. Discover how their new brand empowers everyone to stay safer online.

As the Trump administration closes out its first 100 days, significant changes have taken place. The Small Business Administration has cut at least 20 percent of its workforce, while Trump has tasked the agency with managing student loans. Meanwhile, the IRS is in turmoil, as some 7,000 employees have been laid off, and it’s at risk of losing tens of thousands more. In addition, we have witnessed a resurgence in cryptocurrency, and surges and flip-flops in tariffs, and we are beginning to see the impact of Trump’s trade war with China on the global economy. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom recently hosted a roundtable discussion with senior staff writer Jennifer Conrad, policy correspondent Melissa Angell, and staff writer Brian Contreras to share the latest updates from their reporting during the first 100 days. Additional research and information: To read more Inc. coverage on Trump’s first 100 days: Trump’s First 100 Days of Tax Policy: A Lot of Ideas—and Waiting First 100 Days of Tariffs: Who’s H

Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks, is perhaps best known for his appearances on Shark Tank. But much of his focus these days is on expanding his Builders Movement, the initiative he co-founded that aims to bring together “builders” from around the world to help replace extremism with practical problem-solving. Lubetzky is trying to counter the political polarization that is taking over our culture and discourse, and to build better communities by promoting compromise and efforts to find common ground among people who disagree. Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke to Lubetzky about Shark Tank, his investment firm Camino Partners, his business philosophy, and how Builders Movement got started. He told From the Ground Up: “We need to bring a builder’s mindset to all conversations by relying on curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage.” He said that, while founders, and leaders, are important to the process of change, it’s an anti-authoritarian movement that he’s trying to spur.

Over the past 13 months, venture capitalist Arian Simone has been tested. A federal court case against her Fearless Fund, which backs under-resourced entrepreneurs such as women of color to ensure they have the support they need to succeed in business, became one of the most closely watched anti-DEI lawsuits in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. Those months of litigation meant substantial costs for Fearless Fund, including the loss of two-thirds of its team and stymied fundraising efforts. That's not to mention the emotional toll on Simone and her remaining team. However, in September 2024, the case was settled and she remains optimistic despite the continuing challenges facing DEI. As part of our 2025 Female Founder’s series, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Arian to talk about her upbringing, the federal court case, and how to pursue a mission-driven venture. She even spoke about her family’s relationship with civil rights legend Rosa Parks.   Addi

Former finance executive Cate Luzio founded and self-funded the professional-network platform Luminary in late 2018 with the mission to uplift, upskill, and propel women and allies forward through all phases of their professional journeys. Luminary is a gender inclusive B2C and B2B global professional education and networking platform. Today the company has more than 15,000 members globally across 30 countries and leads more than 20 workshops, programs and events each month in person and virtually.  Not only did Cate appear on our Female Founders list in 2019 and 2021, but in 2024 and this year she also joined our Female Founders board of advisers and helped review the 2025 list.  Our hosts, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, sit down with Cate in a special roundtable discussion to wrap up our Female Founders 2025 series. They chat about the state of women in entrepreneurship, why women are the masters of bootstrapping, and how founders–and we as a culture–

Babba Rivera, the founder and CEO of clean-beauty company Ceremonia, is a cover subject of Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founder issue. Her heritage is both an inspiration and a driving force for her brand.  When Babba Rivera was growing up, her Chilean family moved to Sweden to escape the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. She spent her early career working at startups in both Sweden and the U.S., at Uber and at the luggage upstart Away, where she was director of marketing. During that time, Babba was spending an hour every morning styling her hair with really “toxic, unhelpful products.” As a Latinx woman, she didn’t see any products that were designed with her heritage or type of hair in mind. So, in 2020, she founded Ceremonia, an aspirational natural-ingredient brand that seeks to fill a void in the beauty market for her fellow Latinx consumers. For Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 series, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Babba to chat about her background and where the seeds for Ceremonia t

Half of Americans live in child care deserts. For many more, child care is unaffordable. Paid leave for parents is far from universal. Reshma Saujani is on a mission to change all this.  Reshma is best known for having founded Girls Who Code in 2012 during her run for the U.S. Congress. She has raised $100 million and taught 670,000 girls programming skills over the past decade. Now, Reshma has turned her sights on building her second nonprofit, Moms First, which focuses on making women’s lives better in the workplace through paid family leave, improved child care, and pay equity for moms. Today, Moms First is a community of 1.1 million. For Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 series, Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin sits down with Reshma to chat about how she is bringing everything she learned from scaling Girls Who Code into her new venture, the potential lasting impact of the war on DEI programs, and the ongoing fight against the rising cost of child care in this country. Along with Inc. exe

In this episode, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin host a roundtable discussion with some of the reporters who contributed to Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founders issue. They are joined by freelancer writer Issie Lapowsky and senior editor Rebecca Deczynski to discuss how the state of female entrepreneurship is rapidly changing in this political moment. In putting together the 2025 Female Founders issue of Inc., Diana noticed an interesting phenomenon: There were a significant number of women entrepreneurs who’d bought back their businesses or returned to the helm of their startups after having stepped away. What’s going on? We discuss. Also: The challenges—and remarkable innovations—of women-founded companies in health care. And finally! Celebrity business overload! Could 2025 see a shift in strategy, with brands leaning more on social media influencers and fans to reduce their reliance on costly A-list celebrities? What industries are still ripe for celebrit

The serial founder says the legacy pasta brands have made their beds. So she made a new one.   Jen Zeszut’s mac and cheese brand, Goodles, is designed not just to stand out in the aisle—with rainbow-hued packaging amid a sea of beige and blue—but also to carve out a new customer for the classic pasta recipe: young adults who like convenience, but who aim to eat something healthier than your standard boxed fare.   This meant changing adopting new market strategies in addition to creating a nutrient-packed mac and cheese. Jen is not a first-time founder, nor is she a stranger to the consumer packaged goods landscape. She left her role as CEO of the baby food company Cerebelly to launch Goodles in 2021, and the brand has been on the rise ever since. Today, it’s the fastest-growing mac and cheese in the U.S. and the seventh-fastest-growing natural food brand in the U.S. grocery category.   For our mini-series highlighting Inc.’s 2025 Female Founders honorees, executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Jen to dis

To kick off our fourth season of From the Ground Up, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin are speaking with founders who will be appearing on Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 list. Our first guest is serial entrepreneur Jeni Britton.   She’s best known for rethinking flavor creation in ice cream, and is the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which has close to 100 scoop shops around the country and over $150 million in revenue.   During the pandemic, Britton took a step back from day-to-day management of her company—and that got her thinking about her own health. Christine sat down with Jeni to talk about the mental and physical health inspirations for her new business, Floura. Starting up a second time wasn’t the plan—but Jeni explains what her prior experience in retail and culinary experimentation armed her with for this next journey, and what she knows will still be a challenge. Plus: We get a peek into the burgeoning ecosystem of upcycled food, as Jeni

Ah, 2024. So much to say! For our last episode of the season, we analyze the biggest small-business and workplace topics of the past year and highlight what’s on the horizon for 2025. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Chrsitine Lagorio-Chafkin sat down with senior editor Tim Crino, and staff writer Sarah Lynch to discuss the annual changes that have taken place here at Inc., the massive layoffs in the tech sector, DEI backlash, and the generational workplace mismatch between managers and Gen Z employees. Also, we look ahead to Trump’s proposed tariffs and the new wave of crypto hype and scams. Don’t worry, we are optimistic about a few things in the startup landscape, though. Additional research and information:  To read more from our Inc. 5000 coverage: How Tiny Changes Have Reaped Enormous Results at America’s Fastest-Growing Company   How Inflation Shaped the Companies of the Inc. 5000 To read our coverage from the tech layoffs: Employees Are Still Worried About Layoffs The 202

If you grew up in the ’90s, the “¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!" chihuahua commercial was inescapable. Remember the vital-to-surfers sunscreen Sun Bum? Both of these memorable branding moments were created by serial entrepreneur Tom Rinks.   Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Tom for this episode of From the Ground Up to discuss his unusual path to becoming a branding whiz—and what he’s learned about identifying human desire along the way. His early job of selling furniture taught him how to read people, and his first branding deal, with the University of Michigan’s Fab Five, immersed him in the skills needed to identify talent. Diana and Tom discuss the complex art of brand-creation, company-building, and finding the niche audience who will fiercely love your product. They also discuss Tom’s most recent branding venture, the oral-care line Made by Dentists. Additional research and information: Visit: Made By Dentists Visit: Made by Dentists’s profile Visit: Made by Dentists’s educational page Vis

Honing one's craft. Dedicating many, many hours to perfecting a skill set. Entrepreneurship can, in some ways, resemble the work life of a professional athlete. Ayesha Curry is certainly focused on her burgeoning lifestyle and culinary brand, Sweet July, and the multiple businesses within it—but that’s where she might say the similarities she has with her husband, NBA star Stephen Curry, end. Whereas Steph brings a calm sense of logic to business and philanthropic decisions, Ayesha says she’s the kind of creative founder who brings passion to a project. In this interview with Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, Ayesha describes how, when building Sweet July, she built in soul: It is designed to empower and celebrate women and BIPOC creators, and multiple arms of the business were inspired by her family’s Jamaican heritage. Ayesha explains to Christine how she’s navigated her career from aspiring chef to business owner, including the early tumultuous moments in the company, how she delegates respon

Have you ever wondered what happened to your favorite kettle chip brand or kombucha in your local supermarket? Don’t see your favorite cranberry sauce for the holidays? For this episode, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke with editor-at-large Tom Foster about his recent article, “Why Are So Many Supermarket Brands Losing Shelf Space?” By the end of last year, the total amount of early-stage venture-capital funding for consumer-product brands was down about 60 percent from its 2021 high. And new product launches were down about 70 percent in the same period, according to consumer-products data provider Spins. What’s going on? Is it a CPG rupture? Paul Voge, co-founder of the sparkling water brand Aura Bora, told Tom that getting on store shelves “is astronomically harder today.” He adds that “I had a smaller, worse business in 2019, and it was easier to run than my larger, better business today.” One thing’s clear: Gone are the days of consumer-product bran

You’ve seen the headlines: Gen-Z Getting Fired. Employers Avoiding Hiring Gen-Z Employees. Perhaps to understand the generational struggle in American businesses today, we need to look back to March 2020. Simon Sinek, the author and speaker on business leadership, says the emotionality and intensity of the early pandemic taught him a great deal about himself and his relationships—in and out of the office—and even how to lead a new-era employee.   These moments contributed to the creation of the Optimism Company, Sinek’s digital learning platform, which helps companies inspire and develop their employees. Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Sinek for what resulted in a deep discussion about how we think about emotion in the workplace, grappling with unproductivity, the complex relationship between friendship and entrepreneurship, the meaning of confidant ignorance, and, the question on so many leaders’ minds, how do we actually manage Gen-Z?

This is a special segment in collaboration with our partner at Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Inc. Editor-in-Chief Mike Hoffman spoke with Smarsh Founder Stephen Marsh about his remarkable journey, the legacy he has built, and the honor of being the first recipient of the inaugural Legacy Award presented by Glenfiddich at this year's Inc. 5000 gala.

It’s a young company, but its legacy spans generations. And thanks to Fawn Weaver, the story and legacy of her whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest, is becoming ever more expansive. Its most recent chapter: The company reached a $1.1 billion valuation in 2024. However, none of this would have been possible without Weaver, Uncle Nearest’s founder and CEO, who envisions herself as not just an executive and leader, but also as the company’s chief historian. She’s made it her mission to build a brand honest to the legacy of a man named Nearest Green, or Uncle Nearest, the formerly enslaved laborer who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. Weaver has spent much of the past decade researching and piecing together the story of Nearest Green. Her book Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest was released in June. Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin sat down with Weaver recently to discuss her legacy as well: This year s

The shapewear brand that exploded onto the scene with the most famous pitchwoman in the business as a co-founder recently hit a major milestone: Kim Kardashian’s Skims is now a unicorn four times over. Writer Max Berlinger sat down to talk with Kardashian for his feature article in our September issue of Inc. magazine—so Christine and Diana sat down to talk with Max to get the behind-the-scenes. He delivered. Kardashian launched her shapewear brand, Skims, in 2019 in Los Angeles, and over the past three years, the company more than quintupled its annual revenue to nearly $713 million in 2023. That landed it at No. 1,168 on our annual Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies. Just over a year ago, Skims raised a round of funding that catapulted its valuation to $4 billion. Kardashian created Skims out of personal need—with the side benefit that it might just change people’s perspectives on shapewear. She wanted to make the brand fun. Cheeky, even. It is all about owning the shape of your body.

Before Monte Deere joined Kizik, the hands-free shoe brand, as chief executive, he had zero experience in selling consumer products–—and no experience in footwear. Heck, he’d never been a CEO before. But Kizik’s Kizik founder Mike Pratt had worked with Deere previously– and took a bet on him. Deere was tasked with recruiting a dream team of executives with experience at brands such as Hoka, Converse, and Nike--"—“shoe dogs,”" as he likes to call them, a reference to Nike founder Phil Knight's Knight’s memoir--—to complement the “"cool contingency of innovators”" led by Pratt. This year, Kizik is #No. 407 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest fastest-growing companies in America. In 2023, its revenue was more thanover $100 million. In an interview with Inc. editor editor-at at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, Deere explains Kizik’s pandemic-era brand transformation, how it found its loyal customers, and its expansion into DTC and wholesale–—plus its fascinating collaborations. Monte believes that soon 10% perce