Welcome back to Grit & Growth from Stanford Graduate School of Business. In Season 4, you’ll hear tales of entrepreneurial trials and triumphs, obstacles and opportunities, and, of course, plenty of grit and growth. Plus, we share insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to avoid the pitfalls of growth and achieve success.

Meet Mir Shahrukh Islam, cofounder and CEO of Bondstein Technologies Ltd. in Bangladesh. He created his IoT, or internet of things, company at a time when very few in Bangladesh even knew the term. Today, that future-focused, risk-taking spirit still defines and inspires his entrepreneurial journey.

Meet Raj Prakash, cofounder of Zifo, a science informatics company in India. While growing revenues is on almost every entrepreneur’s mind, Prakash believes building a thriving culture should be too. Hear how creating a great place to work is helping his company achieve great results.

Meet Grace Macharia, a speech and language therapist and founder of SLT Support in Nairobi, Kenya. She created a social enterprise with a mission to support not only her patients, but also the profession of speech therapy in Kenya as a whole.

If/Then is a new podcast from the Stanford Graduate School of Business that we think will be of great interest to Grit & Growth listeners. This episode features Stanford GSB Professor Jonathan Levav analyzing the premise, “If we want to generate better ideas, then we need to get people back to the office.”

Meet Sakshi Kapahi, head of Omam Consultants, an HR consultancy in India, and a mother on a mission to balance home and work life for herself and her employees. Hear about Kapahi’s journey — the hurdles and highlights — as she grew both her family and the business her father started over 40 years ago.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on friction — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Robert Sutton, Stanford professor in the School of Engineering and best-selling author, has stories and strategies to help you identify the causes of friction, eliminate it, and even learn how to use friction intentionally to create more space for success. From having the right mindset to using the right language, Sutton provides tips on how you can be a friction fixer rather than creator.

Stanford GSB professor shares insights on how to create a growth mindset and environment of psychological safety to remove the stigma of failure and increase your success.

Does your team tell you what you need to hear? Or just what you want to hear?

We're excited to announce that Stanford Seed has a new advisory board member: Andreata Muforo. We are thrilled to have Andreata on our team! To celebrate, we're bringing back one of our favorite episodes from Season 1, "Raising Capital in Africa", which featured Andreata as a guest. Enjoy! Meet Elo Umeh, Managing Director and CEO of Terragon Group, a Nigerian digital marketing and data insights company, and Andreata Muforo and Ido Sum from TLcom Capital, and learn how to make the most of...

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on spontaneous communication — those unplanned moments when you’re called on in a meeting, asked to give feedback, or introduced to a potential investor. Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer in strategic communications, has tips and tricks to overcome anxiety, gain confidence, and make sure you’re ready to speak when you least expect it.

Creating a compelling strategy is step number one for every business. But almost no one gets it right on the first try. Aniket Doegar and “Guns” Ganapathy, co-founders of the Indian social enterprise Haqdarshak, pivoted multiple times while remaining focused on financial sustainability and their mission: eliminating generational poverty in India through access to social security.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on strategy, featuring Jesper Sørensen’s insights on how to build a strategy for success and accept the inherent uncertainty of it all. This Stanford Graduate School of Business professor tells you what you need to know: from defining what a strategy is — and is not — to deciding who to involve and how to debate constructively.

Almost every entrepreneur dreams of becoming a market leader. But a business's greatest potential for success happens with market creation. Andela, led by co-founder and CEO Jeremy Johnson, did just that by unlocking access to a global labor market — for both job seekers and companies in need of great talent. Hear Andela’s market-making journey and gain insights on this kind of disruptive innovation from Efosa Ojomo, director of Global Prosperity at the Christensen Institute and co-author of...

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on coaching, featuring Laurie Fuller, a certified executive coach, who believes entrepreneurs can benefit from having a collaborator, connector, and cheerleader by their side. Fuller provides practical tips on what to look for in a coach plus tried-and-true techniques she uses to help her clients transform themselves, their teams, and their companies.

An activist and a business owner make a BOLD fashion statement by standing up for LGBTQ rights.

Do you have a strategy? Or do you just have a plan? Understanding the difference and how to define and execute on both is essential to transforming your business. Abhishek Rungta, founder and CEO of INT, realized he had been running his business without a strategy for far too long. Hear his journey and gain strategic insights from Jesper Sorensen, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on why strategy is all about managing uncertainty.

Entrepreneurs aren’t meant to solve all their business problems alone, but all too often they try. Kunaal Rach, CEO of Healthy U, was no exception … until he met Laurie Fuller, a certified business coach, who helped transform his leadership—and his business. Hear from both coach and coachee on how coaching can help provide the strategic, moral, and emotional support every entrepreneur needs.

Starting a business is hard enough. But growing it can be exponentially harder— especially when crossing borders and continents and in a business as fickle as fashion. Wandia Gichuru is experiencing it all as founder and CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Gichuru thinks about her business beyond simply selling clothes. We can be “warriors for economic growth,” she explains. Hear her story of lucky breaks and quick pivots, strategic growth and purposeful passion.

Meet Gaurav Khemani, CEO of Prestige Ice Creams, based in Kolkata. Faced with COVID-19 shutdowns, a cyclone, supply chain pains, and more, Khemani believes personal and professional discipline will help make his entrepreneurial dreams come true. Hear about his journey from a career at big retail companies to leading a small business that he hopes will soon become a billion-dollar company.

Meet Delia Stirling, CEO of Brown’s Food Co. in Nairobi. She and her team are on a mission to spark consumer demand for foods made from indigenous Kenyan crops. Hear how their efforts are also helping small family farms and educating consumers about the environmental, economic, and taste benefits of eating locally grown food.

Her father’s cancer diagnosis led one woman to discover an unmet need for imaging services in Botswana – and then to fill that need.

Meet Divya Yachamaneni, CEO of Naandi Community Water Services, a for-profit social enterprise bringing safe drinking water to rural communities across India. Hear how this mission-led company made a strategic pivot to get the “urban rich” to help subsidize and ultimately scale its impact.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on marketing, featuring Jonathan Levav, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor of, you guessed it, marketing. Levav provides insights and advice on the psychology of customer marketing so you can learn how to get into the heads and hearts of your customers, influence their decision-making, and get them to choose your brand over the competition.