Teaching at Princeton might have been the capstone of a three-decade-long career in academia, but after eight years it wasn’t enough for Alexander Arkadyevich Migdal. “If you look at it one way, it was a paradise,” says the 71-year-old physicist, acknowledging that teaching the same class every semester wasn’t too taxing. “But some people don’t […]

The first time David Ball toured London’s WeWork South Bank, the building was still a construction site. No matter how much he stared at blueprints and walked around floors still lacking furnishings, lights, or even walls, he had trouble picturing this new kind of workspace. “I couldn’t see it,” says Ball, founder of the cutting-edge […]

Mitch Jacobson got a lot of ribbing earlier this year when he took home a prize at the Austin Under 40 Awards. For one thing, he’s 58. “People kept joking about why I had so much gray hair,” says Jacobson, who was honored for being best mentor. For the past seven years, he’s been a […]

When Simon Douglass was considering whether to start his own business, a former boss offered to front him the money. “I realized that I already had enough money saved up,” says Douglass. “That gave me the confidence I needed to strike out on my own.” So in 2014, Douglass used his life savings to launch […]

“My path through life has been fabulously strange,” says Michael C. Bryan, who at one time or another has been an actor, a motivational speaker, and an executive assistant to some big names in the entertainment industry. “People tell me, ‘Wow, you’ve had a really interesting journey to where you are.’” And where he is […]

Cycling enthusiast Stuart Johnson is the perfect person to test out his company’s first product, a high-performance helmet with all the features of a smartphone. “Last night while I was riding, I answered two phone calls from my girlfriend and turned on my GPS because I got freaking lost, all using my helmet,” says Johnson. […]

For Carmen Daniels Jones, a car accident her junior year of college changed her life. A spinal cord injury meant that from that point forward, she’d have to get around with a wheelchair. When the marketing major graduated from Virginia’s Hampton University—not too far behind schedule—she didn’t receive any job offers. Instead, she began working […]

Entrepreneur Ramon Ray was feeling like a million bucks—or, more accurately, a few hundred thousand bucks, which is the amount he got when he sold his third company. But his biggest success was not worth mentioning, as far as business publications are concerned. “Magazines like Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company—so many of them focus on who’s […]

By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. That means 2.8 billion people will be moving to cities that are already struggling to keep up in terms of housing, transportation, and infrastructure. That’s where Jerry Hultin, cofounder of the Global Futures Group, comes in. His consulting company, based in New […]

“I absolutely love being a mom,” says Wendy Clifford. “I mean, I love my two daughters to the ends of the earth. But I always had the feeling it wasn’t the only thing I was meant to do.” So after eight years as a stay-at-home mom, Clifford decided to go back to work. She had […]

“I’m a little older than the average startup founder,” admits Mike Nguyen, who didn’t launch his first company until he was in his forties. But he and his business partner Allen Lee made up for lost time by selling it a few years later. At Syllabus Software, their second startup, they’re developing a platform that […]

It’s not like Mike Hanson was looking for a new job. He had already spent 23 years working at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory and “could easily have worked there for another 20 years.” But then a chance meeting with one of the founders of Elysium Industries—a young company dedicated to building nuclear power plants that […]

Bianca Jade says her parents sometimes struggle to tell people what she does for a living. “My mom sometimes tells people: ‘My daughter has a blog,’” Jade says, laughing. “I tell her that it might have been true eight years ago, but now it’s not.” The fashion, fitness, and wellness expert says she’s had to […]

If you’ve ever been asked to sign a contract filled with page after page of the most incomprehensible legalese, then you’ll appreciate the work of Seth Redniss. The attorney, a member at WeWork Soho, is the creator of Level. Instead of starting from complex long-form documents, Level’s software makes sure that people considering working together […]

Justin Kifer is traveling almost the entire length of Italy, but he’s doing it the hard way. Kifer is starting off with hiking from the base of the Matterhorn into Northern Italy, then he’s setting off by bike for 1,300 miles to the country’s southernmost tip. After swimming across the Strait of Messina, there’s another […]

A quartet of sleek bags—two backpacks, a tote, and a sling—just propelled a camera accessories company called Peak Design onto the list of most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history. On its last day, the campaign pushed past the $6.5 million mark, knocking former record holders like the Bring Back Mystery Science Theater 3000 campaign out of the […]

Even Lord Voldemort couldn’t beat Harry Potter. But David Zinczenko did it with a book. It wasn’t even a magic book. It was Zinczenko’s newly released Zero Belly Smoothies, which knocked Harry Potter and the Cursed Child out of the top spot on the bestsellers list at Amazon. “We were on the top of the […]