Suno founder and CEO Mikey Shulman is building the future of music creation. A Harvard PhD physicist who led machine learning at Kensho before it was acquired by S&P Global, Mikey had a realization in 2022 that audio was a backwater in machine learning—despite being everywhere in human life. He turned that realization into $2.5B company Suno, which grew from zero to over 100 million users. Mikey shares how Suno scales to users generating seven million tracks a day, why music's format will change as dramatically in this era as it did in the shift from vinyl to streaming, and how AI is democratizing creativity for billions of people who never thought they could make music.

What You'll Learn:

• How growing up in a loving, stable environment with parents who encouraged following your passions shaped Mikey's leadership style
• Why audio was overlooked in machine learning and how Suno made it a first-class citizen
• How Suno went from zero users to 100 million and zero revenue to $200 million in under three years
• Why a quarter of songs on Suno are remixes of other songs on the platform
• The difference between creation and consumption in music and why that boundary is disappearing
• How Suno is growing the entire pie of music rather than just splitting existing revenue
• Why the business model for music will change when the format becomes interactive
• What Mikey learned about speed versus craft when building for billions of users

Chapters:
01:52 Growing Up: Following What You Love
03:45 From Physics to a PhD at Harvard
05:30 Kensho and the Path to Machine Learning
09:30 Teaching Machine Learning at MIT Sloan
12:10 The Birth of Suno
15:30 Why Audio When Everyone Chose Text
16:25 Zero to 100 Million Users in Three Years
18:55 Xania Monet: The First AI Billboard Artist
21:55 Stories That Keep the Team Going
24:15 Music Was Invented to Be Social
27:27 The Business Model for Interactive Music
29:44 Reshaping the Music Industry
32:45 New Boundaries of Music Creation
35:00 The Future: Interactive Albums and Fan Fiction
37:35 Growing the Pie for All Creators
40:00 Will There Be Agentic AI Stars?
41:15 Building Teams That Move Fast
43:30 Speed and Craft: The Cultural Balance
45:30 What's Coming Next at Suno
46:30 Guardrails in a Lower Stakes Domain
47:47 Managing Chaos as a First-Time CEO at Scale
49:55 Quickfire Round

Follow Suno and Mikey:

• Suno Website
• Suno Instagram
• Mikey's LinkedIn
• Mikey's Twittter

Follow Inspired:

• ⁠⁠Website⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠X⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠Substack⁠

Dylan Taylor, founder and CEO of Voyager Technologies, is building the infrastructure that will define humanity's future in space. Through defense, space solutions, and Starlab, Voyager is working on some of the most ambitious aerospace projects of our generation. In this conversation, Dylan takes us from watching Star Trek as a kid in Idaho to becoming a publicly traded space company CEO. He shares what it's actually like to reach space aboard Blue Origin, why we're living through the biggest space boom in human history, and how space will transform our global economy.

What You'll Learn:

• Why space isn't an industry but humanity's eighth continent
• His experience going to outer space
• How perfect real-time information about Earth will create trillions in economic value
• Projects that Voyager is working on
• How ambition shifted from personal glory to reflected glory through leadership
• Predictions for the space industry
• The frontier innovations that will enable humans to live and work in space

Chapters:
01:52 From Star Trek Dreams to Space Reality
04:37 What is Voyager Technologies?
07:02 Winning the Contract to Build Starlab
09:40 Going to Space on Blue Origin
16:36 The Overview Effect and What Astronauts Feel
20:10 How Space Shifted Dylan's Perspective on Risk and Ambition
22:40 The Henry Crown Fellowship and Leadership Transformation
23:40 Inside Voyager Technologies' Projects
26:50 The Purpose of Starlab as a Microgravity Laboratory
31:00 Space Predictions
35:23 Space as the Eighth Continent
36:55 Perfect Real-Time Information About Earth
38:50 What Keeps Dylan Up at Night About Space's Future
41:07 Frontier Innovations in Quantum Computing and Beyond
45:15 Quick Fire Round
47:52 Outro

Follow Voyager Technologies and Dylan:

• Voyager Website
• Voyager LinkedIn
• Voyager X
• Voyager Insta
• Dylan's LinkedIn

Follow Inspired:

• ⁠Website⁠
• ⁠Instagram⁠
• ⁠LinkedIn⁠
• ⁠X⁠
• ⁠Substack

Axion founder Daniel First is building the command center for American manufacturing that detects product failures before they reach customers. His AI-powered observability platform links IoT data, technician reports, and customer feedback across aerospace, medical devices, and consumer products to identify emerging issues manufacturers don't even know exist. Born from watching enterprise AI pilots fail at McKinsey, Axion is architecting customer-centric manufacturing where products iterate in real time based on what's breaking in the field.

What You'll Learn:

• The trillion-dollar quality crisis plaguing American manufacturing and how AI is solving it
• Why most enterprise AI fails and what makes the rare successes different
• The future of American manufacturing competing on speed of customer learning
• How real-time field data is transforming product development cycles
• Unconventional founder habits that enable exceptional speed and deep thinking 

Chapters:

2:00 From Orthodox Debates to Independent Thinking
3:00 Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Human Flourishing
6:00 The Pivot from Academia to Industry
7:20 Predicting AI as the Next Cultural Mania
8:10 What Axion Actually Does for Manufacturers
10:35 The Invisible Quality Crisis Costing Trillions
13:30 Surprising Multi-Department Platform Adoption
16:02 Surgery Equipment Failure With Two Root Causes
16:47 Why Axion's Organization Looks Different
18:00 Building an Ecosystem Across Product Lifecycle
20:28 How Quality Data Drives Product Innovation
21:58 American Manufacturing Winning on Empathy
26:00 How Axion Succeeded Where 95% Fail
28:50 Why Robotics Will Create More Quality Issues
31:10 What Enterprise Leaders Think About AI
32:50 Data Centers and Manufacturing Tailwind
34:09 The Experimental Mindset Driving Speed
36:30 Why 2010s Advice No Longer Applies
38:40 The Vertical AI Revolution
39:55 Quick-fire Questions

Follow Axion and Daniel:

• ⁠Axion Website⁠
⁠• ⁠Axion LI ⁠
⁠• ⁠Daniel LI

Follow Inspired:
• ⁠Website⁠
• ⁠Instagram⁠
• ⁠LinkedIn⁠
• ⁠X⁠
• ⁠Substack

Interior designer Nate Berkus is one of the most recognizable names in design. He started his firm at 24 with nothing but authenticity and hustle, building an empire spanning TV, books, product lines, and high-end interiors that's landed him on the AD100 list for a decade. His journey includes 12 years as Oprah's design expert, surviving the 2004 tsunami, and building a life with Jeremiah Brent as one of TV's first openly gay families. With his new book Foundations releasing November 18th, Nate reflects on what it takes to stay creatively obsessed for 30 years and build a household name in design.

What You'll Learn: • How he started his firm at 24 and convinced clients to take a chance on him • Working with Oprah and his strategic approach to media • How surviving the 2004 tsunami fundamentally changed him and his reflections on that experience • Why he believes design is part magic, part alchemy, and part sociology • How he and Jeremiah Brent collaborate as both partners and business collaborators • The future of design and how AI will reshape the industry

Chapters: 02:30 Intro 03:15 The Origin of His Design Obsession 06:10 Why Design Is Sociology 08:27 Starting a Firm at 24 With Nothing But Authenticity 14:28 How Surviving the 2004 Tsunami Changed Everything 19:50 The Strategy Behind Using TV as a Platform 23:00 A Funny Oprah Story 24:46 Why TV Was Always a Means to an End 28:40 How He Stays Creatively Obsessed After 30 Years 32:38 Never Stop Learning and Do What Feels Effortless 34:07 Partnership With Jeremiah as Parents and Business Partners 39:30 Why He Wrote Foundations and What It Means 42:15 How AI Will Impact the Future of Design 46:44 His Approach to Curation in the Creator Economy 50:05 Reflecting on His Biggest Life Moments 52:02 Quick-fire Round

Follow Nate Berkus:

• Nate's Website

• Nate's Instagram

Follow Inspired and Alexa:

• Website

• Instagram

• LinkedIn

• X

• Substack

Writer CEO May Habib is building the future of enterprise AI. Born in Lebanon as the oldest of eight kids, May grew up navigating chaos, multiple languages, and cultures, skills that shaped her into a founder willing to challenge assumptions. After pivoting from Qordoba, she built Writer's own foundational models and spent a decade solving real AI problems for Fortune 500 companies. Now leading a $2B+ company, May shares her bold vision for where AI is headed, from self-evolving LLMs that proactively guide us to why work in 2030 will be unrecognizable.

What You'll Learn:

• How growing up as the oldest of eight in a Lebanese family shaped May's leadership style
• Why Writer focuses on highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services
• The critical difference between generative AI and agentic AI
• How self-evolving AI will proactively prompt you instead of waiting for commands
• Why execution is going from scarce and expensive to abundant and on-demand
• What the average knowledge worker's job will look like in 2030
• Why narrow job specs are dead and career lattices are the future
• The two disruptive forces that will make work unrecognizable in 30 years
• Why May believes there's no AI bubble

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:50 Growing Up as the Oldest of Eight in an Immigrant Family
05:30 Why Language Shapes Who We Become
09:05 The Decision to Leave Finance and Start Qordoba
12:05 The Risky Pivot from Qordoba to Writer
17:45 What Problem Writer Actually Solves for Enterprise
21:05 Building Trust at Scale in Regulated Industries
24:30 How Writer Stays Maniacally Focused
28:10 Writer's Vision for Self-Evolving AI
35:00 Why Narrow Job Specs Are Dead
37:30 What Work Looks Like in 2030 and the Two Unknowns Shaping the Future
39:26 What Most People Misunderstand About AI
41:44 The Book That Changed May's Life
43:06 Is There an AI Bubble?
43:15 May's One-Word Mantra: Forward
43:49 How May Manages Stress
44:00 Beyond AI: What Excites May the Most

Follow Writer and May:

• Writer Website

• Writer LinkedIn

• May's LinkedIn

Follow Inspired:

• Website

• Instagram

• LinkedIn

• X

• Substack

Atria Health Institute founder Alan Tisch is rebuilding America's healthcare system from the ground up. After two near-death experiences in his mid-20s revealed how broken preventive care truly is, Alan made it his life's mission to tackle a system designed to profit from sick people rather than keep them healthy. With a multidisciplinary team of 15 medical specialties and cutting-edge diagnostics, Atria is pioneering the preventive healthcare movement to extend not only lifespan but healthspan.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the healthcare system profits from keeping you sick instead of healthy
• How a $150 test can prevent heart attacks 20 years before they happen
• The difference between healthspan and lifespan and why it matters
• Why team-based care across specialties beats the traditional siloed approach
• How to think about preventive diagnostics like whole body MRIs and genetic testing
• Why now is the most exciting time for healthcare

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:40 Early Influences and Family Background
06:38 Lessons from Building Spring
10:25 The Birth of Atria Health Institute
16:07 Why Healthcare Incentives Favor Sick Care
20:20 What It's Like to Be an Atria Patient
23:50 The Four Step Framework for Disease Prevention
25:49 Health Fads: Overhyped vs Underhyped
28:50 Genomics and Full Body MRI Scans for Everyone
34:50 The Two Sides of Atria: Clinical Care and Research
39:07 The Future of Healthcare
43:58 Healthspan vs Lifespan
47:03 One Thing You Should Do Tomorrow
49:05 AI in Preventive Care
52:00 Book That Changed Alan's Life
52:46 Health Habit Alan Has Adopted

Follow Atria:

• Atria Website: https://www.atria.org/
• Atria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atria-institute/

Follow Inspired and Alexa:

• Website: ⁠⁠https://www.inspiredcapital.com/ 
• Substack: https://alexavontobel.substack.com/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital/
• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners/
• X: https://x.com/inspiredcap

ShopMy co-founders Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky are building the most sophisticated three-sided commerce platform that revolutionizes how creators monetize authentic recommendations, how brands scale through trusted advocates, and how consumers discover products through curated networks they actually trust. Powered by intricate product graph technology and advanced data infrastructure that maps millions of products across retailers, they're architecting the future of commerce driven by intentional curation rather than algorithmic impulse buying.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the "curator economy" matters more than the "creator economy"
• How their Circles feature creates personalized shopping through trusted networks
• The product philosophy of minimizing "calories" in user experience design
• How they thought through scaling ShopMy’s audience
• Why authentic recommendations outperform traditional performance marketing
• How complementary co-founder skills drive success
• The "sweep the floors" mentality that keeps leadership embedded in daily work

Chapters:
01:53 Intro
03:30 From Boston Foodies to Engineering Complementary Backgrounds
10:08 The ShopMy Genesis Solving Creator Monetization
14:18 Breaking Down ShopMy Three Core Constituencies
18:39 Introducing Circles Personalized Shopping Through Trust
25:27 The Three Phases of Building ShopMy
26:35 Product Philosophy Minimizing Calories in User Experience
32:38 Cutting Through the Noise Where Shopping Journeys Begin
34:32 Opportunities Scaling Creator Performance Marketing
36:25 The Role of AI in Taste and Personalization
37:49 From Creator Economy to Curator Economy
44:10 Funding Strategy Building for the Long Term
46:10 Building the Team The Sweep the Floors Leadership Philosophy
52:20 Personal Discoveries What the Founders Buy Through Circles

Follow ShopMy: • ShopMy Website: https://shopmy.us/home • ShopMy Linkedin: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/shopmy-/ • ShopMy Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/shopmy/ Follow Inspired and Alexa: • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital/ • Linkedin: ⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners/ • X: https://x.com/inspiredcap • Website: ⁠⁠https://www.inspiredcapital.com/

World quantum expert and professor Jeff Thompson, founder of Logiqal, shares his journey from academia (at Yale, Harvard, MIT, and Princeton) to now building the first scaled quantum computer. He explains why the world needs this breakthrough, how Logiqal’s neutral atom technology makes it possible, and what it could unlock for medicine, materials, and the future of innovation.

What You’ll Learn:

• What is quantum?
• Why the world needs a scaled quantum computer
• Jeff’s journey through Yale, Harvard, MIT, and now running a lab at Princeton
• Why failure drives scientific discovery
• How Logiqal is using neutral atom technology and ytterbium
• What quantum could unlock for medicine and materials
• How Jeff balances academia and entrepreneurship
• How he sees the global race for quantum computing

Chapters:
01:58 Intro 
08:04 Quantum 101: Bits, Qubits, and Schrödinger’s Cat
09:40 The State of Quantum Today: Early Days, Big Potential
13:19 What Really Counts as a Quantum Computer?
14:35 How Many Qubits Does It Take to Change the World?
19:11 The Quantum Hardware Wars
24:00 Why Yttrium is the Chosen Atom
26:33 Rydberg Gates: Turning Interactions On and Off
28:39 Founding Logiqal: The Challenge of a Lifetime
31:01 Unlocking Quantum: From Pharma to Materials to Mars
37:05 Quantum + AI: Partners, Not Competitors
40:28 What Gets Jeff Out of Bed Every Morning
41:07 Books That Shaped a Quantum Founder
42:17 The Time for Quantum is Now

Follow Jeff and Logiqal:

• Jeff Linkedin: ⁠http://bit.ly/46fkFav⁠
• Logiqal Linkedin: ⁠http://bit.ly/48aizLA⁠

Follow Inspired and Alexa:

• Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital⁠⁠
• Linkedin: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners⁠⁠
• X: ⁠⁠https://x.com/InspiredCap⁠⁠
• Website: ⁠⁠https://www.inspiredcapital.com/⁠⁠ 

Dr. Becky Kennedy from Good Inside shares her journey from private practice psychologist to building the #1 consumer parenting tool on the planet. She reveals how blending emotional connection with practical action helps parents raise resilient kids and become sturdier themselves.

What You’ll Learn:

• How Dr. Becky built Good Inside into a global parenting movement

• The secret to becoming a “sturdy parent” and raising resilient kids

• Why parenting feels hard even for good parents and how to navigate it with confidence

• How to break cycles of shame and foster deep connection at home

• The lessons Dr. Becky learned while scaling a mission-driven brand

• Good Inside’s future 

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

1:58 Becky’s Origin Story

5:34 Parenting Genres of Our Generation

9:38 Early Career and Education

14:11 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Explained

17:19 Private Practice to Parenting Work

21:15 Instagram and the First Viral Posts

27:39 Founding Good Inside

30:34 Parenting as the Last Frontier

39:15 The Good Inside App and Vision

52:30 Broader Societal Impact of Parenting

56:04 Two Mantras Dr.Becky Uses

59:30 One Habit Dr. Becky Does

Follow Dr. Becky and Good Inside:

• Instagram: https://bit.ly/3H9UWIa 

• Website: https://www.goodinside.com/ 

Follow Inspired and Alexa:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners 

• X: https://x.com/InspiredCap 

• Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/

What if the secret to solving impossible problems isn't avoiding failure, but learning to leverage it? Serial entrepreneur and inventor Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X (Alphabet's Moonshot Factory), discovered this counterintuitive truth growing up in a family where intelligence was everything. The grandson of Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Astro learned that being smart wasn't enough. He had to develop his creativity into his philosophy of "being yourself on purpose." Today, Astro is responsible for steering X’s projects—like Waymo, Dandelion, and Verily—through the bumps and scrapes they meet along the road to reality. In this episode, Astro shares how childhood stories of the Manhattan Project's creative community inspired X's culture, why he transformed from trying to outsmart employees to becoming a "culture engineer," and why intellectual honesty is the real key to turning science fiction into reality.

What if we could predict infrastructure failures before they happen instead of scrambling to fix them after disaster strikes? Serial entrepreneur Alex Hawkinson quips that the Romans would be laughing at us if they saw our current approach to managing the critical systems that power our world. Known as the father of IoT for creating SmartThings—a platform supporting over one billion connected devices before its acquisition by Samsung—Alex is now tackling his most ambitious challenge yet: awakening America's crumbling infrastructure through physical AI. With nearly 500,000 sensors already deployed across water, energy, and essential services, BrightAI is shifting entire industries from reactive maintenance to proactive intelligence. In this episode, Alex shares how BrightAI's observability layer creates an unbreakable competitive moat, how his "swing big" philosophy attracts world-class talent, and why transforming infrastructure management represents humanity's next great technological leap forward.