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Latest Episodes
Season 1: What We Learned
This summer, Leap Forward is a short break. We’ll be back this fall with more episodes. Listen for a look back on Season 1 and a taste of what’s next, including a family crisis over a wiped thesis, and some very big ambitions to change the way we think about energy.
The Strange Origins of Live Streaming: Twitch's Michael Seibel & His Co-founder Justin Kan
Live streaming feels inevitable now. But it started as what Michael Seibel called a "dumb idea." In this episode, Michael traces the unlikely path from a post-Yale road trip to a 24-hour streaming experiment called Justin.tv. Years of pivots and spin-outs later, it grew into Twitch and created the $...
From Design Thinking to $1 Billion Healthcare IPO: Omada’s Sean Duffy + His Former Boss
When Sean Duffy was a medical student interning at IDEO, he came face to face with a hard truth: millions of Americans with chronic disease weren’t getting the support they needed to actually get healthier. In this episode, Sean tells the story of how an unlikely mix of medicine and design thinking ...
About the Show
David Rusenko interviews the founders of companies like Airbnb, Y Combinator, and Twitch, alongside the people who first believed in them. A mom. An early boss. A college roommate. Together, they reveal the intimate, unpolished stories of how successful companies actually get built, and why it rarely looks the way you might expect.
About the Host
David Rusenko is a founder turned investor. When he was 20, he started Weebly, which he grew to over 350 employees, hundreds of millions in revenue, and a $365 million acquisition by Square. Today, over fifty million small businesses and entrepreneurs have used Weebly to start and grow their businesses online.
In 2023 David started Leap Forward Ventures to invest in early stage startups making real-world systems cleaner, more adaptable, and more intelligent.
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