
Finding Founders
A podcast about vulnerability and entrepreneurship — learn from the life stories of founders 🚀, activists ✊, and even drug lords 💊 Our aim is to inspire you and let's face it... you aren't inspired when you hear about success. Real inspiration comes from hearing someone's lowest moment, and rising with their success. Using music, sfx, and voiceover, we interview the founders of companies, movements, and even drug cartels to reveal vulnerability so you can learn from victory. I’m your host, Samuel Donner, and together with my team we aim to inspire and educate a global community of leaders.
Show episodes

From $0 to $25M Jewelry Events: Reinvention, Resilience & AI Storytelling w/ Theresa Bruno - #225
In this emotional and inspiring episode, Theresa Bruno recounts her extraordinary journey from Juilliard-trained concert pianist to award-winning creative director and founder of a multi-million-dollar fine jewelry brand. After a career-ending injury, she pivoted into advertising, secured major clients like Regions Ban

The Joy-Driven Inventor — Kevin Surace on Building 5 Companies, Revolutionizing Tech & AI Video #224
In this episode, we sit down with Kevin Surace, a legendary inventor, keynote speaker, and the man credited with creating the world’s first virtual assistant—technology that would eventually power Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. With 94 patents under his belt and a track record of turning vision into billion-dollar

How an Attorney Became a NYT Best-Selling Author…With a Cookbook- #153 Joanne Molinaro | Creators
Only a year after joining social media, Joanne Molinaro would become a New York Times bestseller for “The Korean Vegan Cookbook”— but when she was crying in her car, stressed about her job, her divorce, and future, this eventual reality seemed like a fantasy. Now, Joanne is one of leading voices in the cooking world wi

How France's #1 Song Became a Fart Themed Ringtone - #154: Christian Buttner | Creators
We all start somewhere…and for christian, that start was a best-selling, chart-topping, fart-themed ringtone. Now, with over 1.7 billion views on YouTube, 6 million subscribers, and 3 million monthly Spotify listeners, Christian-better known as TheFatRat- has outgrown this early legacy and made an extraordinary impact

Lessons from Losing a Mentor: Omar Alvarez on Startups, AI Family Stories & Life | #223 Kinnect
In this episode, Omar Alvarez, founder of Kinnect, shares his incredible journey from growing up amid gang violence in Chicago to breaking into Nike’s ultra-competitive hiring pipeline—beating a 0.5% acceptance rate. He dives into his experiences as a Division 1 athlete, surviving a Twitter mass layoff before even star

Why 20 Subs is Enough to Quit Your Job And Pursue YouTube- #142: Hunter Williams | Creators
Hunter Williams witnessed his mother’s diagnosis, prognosis, decline, and passing in the span of only two months and two weeks. And at the end of the summer of 2016, he suddenly found himself stranded in the middle of his life, unable to move forward in any direction. Fast forward to today and Hunter Williams is a full