This episode takes us into the world of Estée Lauder, a $32B beauty empire built by one of the most charismatic figures in business history. What drew us to the story wasn't just the impressive numbers, but the sheer magnetism of Estée herself. She embodies that rare combination of innovator who understood both product excellence and the art of selling. Her journey isn't just about founding a company, it's a masterclass in building something extraordinary against all odds. Her...

Why are we doing an episode about ASML, a business that the BBC referred to in 2020 as "a relatively obscure Dutch company,"?  It started with host, Eeke's, curiosity about an iconic company from her homeland of the Netherlands. But the deeper we descended into the ASML world of semiconductors, chips, and lithography, the more we all realized that we had something pretty special on our hands.  ASML owns 100 percent of the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) market. These are the machines...

Today we are going deep on Trader Joe's and I'll kick things off with a quote from their employee handbook.  "Why do customers shop at Trader Joe's? Our people are warm and friendly. It's fun and an adventure. They find unexpected products. They'll experience cheap thrills. Our people are helpful and knowledgeable.They know that we have tested each product to ensure quality and satisfaction. They trust us. You're going to have to be a special person to make sure that when every customer...

We are back for part two of the GE story. In the first episode, we covered GE as a company that effectively embraced research and invention within a broader organization.  In this episode, we're going to talk about everyone's favorite or least favorite topic: Capital M Management.  How did GE develop a practice of management that was copied by every CEO at the time? Why did companies like Honeywell, Boeing, 3M, ABB, Medtronic, Home Depot, Twilio, and almost Uber, come to GE for their CEOs?...

It’s easy to think about GE as a company in decline–after all, it’s about to be broken up officially into tiny pieces. But there are two big themes that make the story of GE relevant for today’s companies–and what got us excited to dig in. First, GE is a company founded on invention. GE is a research lab plus company that managed to commercialize its research. We have so many AI research lab style companies today, but it’s worth remembering that GE was the most successful in this model. It...

Marriott has hotels in 139 places including the Faroe Islands, Rwanda, Greenland, and Kathmandu. They employ over 148 thousand people. That’s more than twice as many people as Facebook! And they have a $73B market cap. But what got us curious about Marriott is not the fancy hotels, although we love those too, it’s that Marriott didn’t fundamentally invent any new technologies or new products. How did it become so big and ubiquitous? As ladies who built out careers in Silicon Valley, where...

How the Red Queen Podcast got its name. We're not just glamorous ladies into chess. Our inspiration comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Specifically, the moment where Alice meets the Red Queen...

Space is so back. And it’s not just because everyone’s favorite billionaires are getting in the ring. There are real scientific, technological, and military implications of our presence in space and it got us wondering–what is the history of the organization that first got us there–NASA? And what do we have to learn from an institution that undertook one of the most ambitious scientific and technological feats of all time…and then bogged itself down in so much bureaucracy that it promptly...

Everyone has a LEGO story, but not that many people know the story of LEGO. So while we’ve always loved the toy, it wasn’t until we started researching for this episode that we became obsessed with the (still entirely family owned!) company. Yes, LEGO is the biggest and most profitable toy company in the world–nearly twice the size of Mattel. But what makes LEGO so lovable is how from day zero they have taken kids seriously and believed in learning through play. This vision is as real now as...