Business Leadership from Successful Founders

Course details

Business Leadership from Successful Founders presents a dozen case studies of highly successful enterprises. In each of the 7-12 minute case studies, the company founders will share their stories, philosophies, advice and inspiration, covering topics such as business planning, marketing, people management, sales, and more. These highly crafted segments are the result of hours of on location shooting with each of the founders.

The companies featured cover a wide array of market areas, such as consumer products, food, law, accounting, ecommerce, advertising, retail, and others. While some content contains industry specific advice, the case studies assume no prior industry knowledge and all feature practical business guidance that will prove useful to everybody from a student to a CEO.

Titles include:

BirchboxStarted in 2010 by two business school students, Birchbox is a leading online subscription service that sends its over 1 million subscribers 4-5 samples of beauty products a month. The company now generates over $125 million in revenue and is valued at $485 million.

Blinds(dot)comAs the world's largest online seller of blinds and window coverings, Home Depot subsidiary blinds(dot)com embraced technology to grow a mom and pop blinds store into a close to $200 million a year business, while still staying true to its original culture of service.

Brafman and Associates A strong work ethic drove Benjamin Brafman from his humble beginnings asthe son of working class Holocaust survivors to being one of the most renowned criminal defense attorneys in the world. His firm Brafman and associates has represented prominent figures such as Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jennifer Lopez, and Michael Jackson. New York Magazine has named him as the best criminal defense lawyer in New York.

Bronner Group, TheGila Bronner, president and CEO of the Bronner group, has leveraged minority set asides to expand her professional services firm from a one woman business to over 10 offices, practicing in a dozen states and 400 jurisdictions.

CommunispaceDiane Hessan has grown the online focus group service Communispace from an idea to a company that sold to the world's largest advertising agency Omnicom for over $100 million. Communispace now has over 200 clients and 500 employees. Diane now teaches people how to gain employment and thrive in a startup environment through her role as the CEO of the Startup Institute.

Honest TeaAs the nation's number one organic bottled tea, Coca-Cola subsidiary Honest Tea generates over $100 million in revenue, while still maintaining thesocial values that it was founded upon. It is currently found in over 100,000 stores across the US.

LIDSAs a Junior in college Ben Fischman started LIDS, which grew from a hat cart in a mall to over 1,000 locations and $800 million in revenue. He sold his members only online shopping service Rue La La for over 350 million dollars. He's now created Launch, an ecommerce business incubator that aims to create 1-3 e-commerce companies a year.

Project RegenerationAt just 21 years of age, Bed-Stuy native Barnabas Shakur founded project regeneration, a non-profit that provides over 500 at-risk youth an alternative to the streets, through educational workshops, job training,and martial arts classes. Participants in this social entrepreneurship venture generate the revenue to fund many of these programs by cleaning the exteriors of homes for property owners in the neighborhood.

Pursuit of ExcellenceLeaving a corporate job to take more control of her life, Marie Diaz has grownher human capital management company Pursuit of Excellence from a one woman business to a company with hundreds of employees and millions in revenue.

WazeWith over 50 million  users, the leading real time traffic navigation app Waze was acquired by Google for over a billion dollars. Co-founder Uri Levine has now moved on to another venture, FeeX, a website that helps users track financial service provider fees.

WeWork  Israeli born Adam Neumann helped grow WeWork from a single co-working office location in 2010 to over 50 locations and 40,000 members in the US and abroad. The rapidly growing company is now valued at over $16 billion. He is number one on Forbes' 40 under 40 list.

ZapposAfter selling his internet advertising network Link Exchange to Microsoft for $265 million, Tony Hsieh grew the online shoe and apparel site Zappos from $1.6 million in revenue in 2000 to over a $1 billion in 2009 through his innovative approaches to customer service and company culture.