First Text with Cory Levy

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This week, Cory speaks to self-made billionaire, owner of the Houston Rockets and chairman of a hospitality and entertainment empire encompassing over 600 restaurants, various casinos and even amusement parks. Some of his famous restaurants you may of heard of include Morton’s Steak House, Chart House, Dos Caminos, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and more. Fertitta shares the secrets to his success in his new business book, Shut Up and Listen! In this week's episode, he talks about his...

Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. As co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix, he laid much of the groundwork for a service that’s grown to 150 million subscribers, and fundamentally altered how the world experiences media. He also served on the Netflix board of directors until retiring from the company in 2003. Marc’s career as an entrepreneur spans four decades. He’s founded or co-founded six other successful startups, mentored hundreds of early...

This week, Cory speaks to renowned psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant. Adam is Wharton's top-rated professor and one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and a member of Fortune's 40 under 40. He's also the author of three New York Times bestsellers such as Give and Take, Option B and Originals, which combined have sold over a million copies. In this week's episode, Adam talks about how to strive for an extraordinary career, the science of becoming well-known,...

In this episode we hear from technology executive and entrepreneur Marissa Mayer, who is known for formerly serving as the President and CEO of Fortune 500 giant Yahoo and being the 20th employee of Google. She is currently the co-founder of Lumi Labs, an early stage technology incubator. Marissa recently gave a keynote address at Internpalooza 2018, an event which is the largest gathering of Silicon Valley interns, young engineers and STEM students, which was founded by Cory Levy. It was a...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and angel investor Daniel Gross. Daniel is the founder of Pioneer (an experimental fund that breaks down barriers to find the next great humans through tournaments and mentorship) and runs YC AI. Prior to this, he co-founded Cue, a personal search engine that was acquired by Apple. He is also a successful angel investor being involved with Coinbase, Cruise Automation, Github, Opendoor and more. In this week's episode, he talks about being admitted into...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, technology executive and angel investor Elad Gil. Elad has assisted in the growth of tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Instacart, Coinbase, Stripe, and Square as they've developed from small companies into global brands. Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved that Elad has packaged into a repeatable playbook called "High Growth Handbook.” In this week's episode, Elad talks about why he invested in...

This week, Cory speaks to author and keynote speaker Alex Banayan. Banayan is the author of the highly anticipated book release of “The Third Door,” which covers a decade-long journey tracking down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg and dozens of the world’s most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers. The Third Door is available in bookstores everywhere, including Amazon, iBooks, Audible and thirddoorbook.com. In this week’s episode, Banayan...

This week, Cory Levy speaks to entrepreneur JD Ross, co-founder of OpenDoor, a company that makes it possible to sell a home in minutes. Opendoor has raised a total of $320 million in venture funding and has surpassed a multi-billion dollar annual revenue run rate. Before Opendoor, Jd started 2 successful businesses during college and went on to lead growth as the VP of Product at Addepar. In this week’s episode, JD and Cory talk about JD’s college experience, avoiding bankruptcy, landing...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, author and early-stage investor Scott Belsky, who is well known for co-creating the online portfolio platform Behance, which later sold to Adobe in 2012 and wrote top-selling books ‘Making Ideas Happen’ and ‘Maximize The Middle’. Scott is currently the co-founder of referral network startup Prefer, he is the Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President at Adobe and a Venture Partner at Benchmark. He is also a seed investor with over 100...

Dear Old People, Meet Today’s Teenager “THEY (TEENS) WILL CREATE MASSIVE CHANGES IN THE WORLD OVER THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS, AND FOR US TO BE ABLE TO TEACH AND INFLUENCE THEM AS THEY BEGIN TO MAKE THOSE CHANGES, WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THEM.” Today’s teenagers are part of what many call Generation Z, a group that is now the largest segment of people in the U.S. with over 26% of the population. With their recent success advocating for stricter gun laws and spreading awareness of issues that are...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and author Kathryn Minshew, the founder and CEO of The Muse. The Muse is the fastest growing career discovery platform for 50+ million professionals a year and helps over 700 companies looking to hire talent and grow. Kathryn is also the co-author of “The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career,” available on Amazon and other retailers. In the episode, Kathryn tells us about going from working in international relations to...

This week, Cory Levy speaks to three guests from different backgrounds in life who have each experienced depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. They are also willing to talk about it and to share how they’ve overcome their lowest points through entrepreneurship and technology. We hope this episode will help anyone listening who is going through a similar experience. If you are, you’re not alone. There is hope and people here to help. If you would like to speak with...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, bestselling author, and philanthropist Adam Braun, who is best known for being the Founder of Pencils of Promise, a non-profit organization that builds schools and increases access to education for children in the developing world. He also wrote a New York Times best selling book The Promise of a Pencil and more recently the co-founder of one-year debt-free college alternative called MissionU. In this weeks episode, Adam talks about his personal...

This week, Cory speaks to Catherine Hoke, the founder of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) and Founder and CEO of Defy Ventures. Defy is a national organization that transforms the lives of business leaders and people with criminal histories through their collaboration along the entrepreneurial journey. Before quitting her corporate job to start PEP, Catherine was an associate at private equity firm Summit Partners and went on to become the Director of Investment Development at...

This week, Cory speaks to author, marketer and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday, who is well known for being a controversial media strategist, particularly when he was the Director of Marketing at American Apparel and founder of creative consulting firm Brass Check Marketing. Ryan, in addition, is a bestselling author of six books, including “The Obstacle Is the Way”, “Ego Is the Enemy” and “The Daily Stoic” and has written for several of the worlds largest publications while being a media...

This week, Cory speaks to journalist, author and startup analyst Billy Gallagher, who is well known for covering early-stage startups at TechCrunch and being an analyst at Khosla Ventures. Billy attended Stanford and was in the same fraternity as Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel, which he has now written a new book out today on Amazon titled ‘How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars’ covering the events that lead to its skyrocketing multi-billion dollar success. In this week’s episode, Billy talks...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, investor, author, speaker, influencer and future owner of the New York Jets Gary Vaynerchuk, who is well known for being the CEO and founder of digital agency giant VaynerMedia, athlete representation agency VaynerSports, venture capital firm VaynerRSE, host of the popular DailyVee show and a 4x New York best seller. Prior, he grew his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million in revenue and was an early investor in multi-billion dollar...

This week, Cory speaks to the Hollywood psychiatrist and author Phil Stutz, who is well known for his client list boasting top writers, actors, producers, and CEOs. Together with Barry Michels, Phil is coauthor of Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression, and Unleash Your Soul’s Potential and The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower—and Inspire You to Live Life in forwarding Motion, a New York Times bestseller. In this weeks...

This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur and investor James Hong, who is best known for having founded fun viral project turned multi-million dollar dating property HotOrNot. He’s also an active angel investor and has invested in more than 80 startups. In this weeks episode, James talks experiencing virality back when it was rare, the importance of understanding peoples motives when designing products, the drastic differences in scaling today vs 2000’s, what it was like turning down...