business
Hosted by David Rusenko · business · EN-US
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.
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
29%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchDavid 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.
Leap Forward is hosted by David Rusenko. The show has published 13 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "What could happen if we electrified everything? Sam Calisch & His Mentor Saul Griffith" (21 October 2026, 40 minutes), "How Reddit Was Born, Sold, Broken…and Rebuilt: Steve Huffman & first employee Chris Slowe" (7 October 2026, 51 minutes), and "Season 1: What We Learned" (8 July 2026, 5 minutes).
Leap Forward publishes roughly every two weeks, with episodes averaging 36 minutes across 13 episodes.
Booking probability for Leap Forward is 29%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Leap Forward requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Leap Forward's contact route on record: verified email.
The strongest fits for Leap Forward are Business & Management Consulting and Holding Companies & Corporate HQs. Leap Forward has a business audience.
David Rusenko hosts Leap Forward, a business podcast with 13 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Leap Forward
<p>In 2021, the book Electrify offered one of the most detailed, practical maps yet for America’s decarbonization. It went viral in climate & policy circles and helped shape the Inflation Reduction Act. Then one of its...
Episode #1
<p>Today, Reddit is the sixth largest website in the world. But it almost stopped existing. A few times. In July 2015, more than 2,000 subreddits went dark, the CEO resigned, and Reddit looked like it might not survive...
Episode #10
<p>This summer, Leap Forward is going on a short break. We’ll be back this fall with more episodes. <br><br>Listen for a look back on Season 1 and a taste of what’s next, including a family crisis over a wiped thesis...
Episode #9
<p>Live streaming feels inevitable now. But it started as what Michael Seibel called a "dumb idea."<br><br>In this episode, Michael traces the unlikely path from a post-Yale road trip to a 24-hour streaming experiment...
Episode #8
<p>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...
Leap Forward
<p>Scribd took off fast - then hit a wall that nearly broke the company. In this episode, Trip Adler tells the story of building the “Netflix for books,” only to face the moment every founder dreads: when everything...
Episode #6
<p>It’s common for a tech startup employee to start their own tech startup. It’s rarer for a startup employee to go on to build a baby formula company. <br><br>When Laura Modi showed up at Walgreens at 11pm to buy baby...
Episode #5
<p>Jimmy Douglas didn’t learn how to fundraise in business school. He learned it at 14, selling vacuum cleaners on commission to help pay the bills after his father - an entrepreneur who once ran a semiconductor company...
Episode #4
<p>Peter Reinhardt co-founded the analytics firm Segment, and built it into a company that sold for $3.2 billion. But before it worked, everything else they tried didn’t. </p><p>In this episode, Peter and his...
Episode #3
<p>Nathan Blecharczyk turned a social experiment into Airbnb: a company that would remake travel. But first, it had to survive.<br><br>Before it reshaped an industry, Airbnb looked like an idea that shouldn’t work. In...
Episode #2
<p>After more than a decade of mixed success with tech startups, Immad Akhund decided to try something even harder: starting a bank.<br><br>Today, Mercury is valued at $3.5 billion and serves thousands of startups. But...
Episode #1
<p>Y Combinator is the legendary startup program that has launched more than 5,000 companies, collectively worth over a trillion dollars. Household names like Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Stripe. And...
Leap Forward
<p>Leap Forward is a show about founders and the people who believed in them before anyone else. Each episode traces the real story behind a company you might know, both from the perspective of the founder, and someone...
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