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 […]

Entrepreneur TJ Loeffler was doing some soul searching. After three years of working on Wall Street, he realized he wasn’t interested in climbing the corporate ladder. Finance just wasn’t his passion, he decided. It was faith. “My faith has been private, but it became more a part of who I was on the outside as […]

A “complete and utter failure” is how Pranav Ramanathan describes his first entrepreneurial effort. That was almost 30 years ago, when he rounded up neighborhood kids in Bangalore, India to be part of a cricket club. After collecting money to buy equipment and hire a coach, “there was sort of a mutiny, and I was […]

When she started a career in publishing in the late 1970s, New Yorker Nancy A. Shenker found it hard not to be envious of friends who were investment bankers. They were living in luxurious apartments while she was trudging up the steps of a walk-up infested with roaches and mice. So she answered an ad […]

To some people, pursuing law after receiving an English literature degree might seem like an unusual choice. But for Zev Hardman, it was “pretty effortless—a no-brainer.” The attorney explains himself: “I’ve always been interested in words, and communication, and how two people can remember the same conversation in two different ways, if not more than […]

Every day is special for entrepreneur Jane Hoffman, founder of the public relations and marketing firm All Things Possible. It’s not just her work, although when you talk with her it’s clear she is enthusiastic about what she does for a living. Last year, after being diagnosed with hepatitis C, she decided that treatment was […]

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. […]