To bring you the latest Trends, we talk to founders who can’t give up the chase

Find out who’s inspiring us, what we look forward to and why we continue to chase trends. 

In 2015, Matthew McConaughey, in the midst of a professional renaissance,  won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club. During his acceptance speech, he told the audience that every day, he needed these three things to succeed —  something to look up to, something to look forward to, and someone to chase. 

Since then, he’s starred in more films, served as Creative Director at Wild Turkey, become a film professor and the Minister of Culture at The University of Texas, but it’s this speech that some of us here at Trends still think about because the same three things that he needs, are the same three things that you need to grow your business. 

So, who do we look up to? 

At Trends, we spend a good amount of our time learning about how other people succeed. That’s why we interview world-class founders and builders of business to find out what they did to get where they are and turns out, they’re not much different than us. So, we thought we’d tell you a little more about who’s inspiring us, the founders who continue to chase success and build the businesses that will define their generations. 

MAX MULLEN, Founder of Instacart Max 

As the Co-Founder of Instacart, Mullen built on what he learned while growing his career at startups including Schematic. At Instacart, Mullen is re-inventing what convenience means and offering customers time to focus on what they care about most. Hint: It’s not grocery shopping. 

ANDY DUNN, Founder of Bonobos

Little did Andy Dunn know it at the time, but he would be the pioneer in internet-driven direct to consumer retail. When he started Bonobos, he just wanted to eliminate “Khaki Diaper Butt.”  Bonobos now offers a full line of better-fitting menswear with a better shopping experience. 

BRIAN SCUDAMORE, 1-800-GOT-JUNK

Brian Scudamore got his idea while waiting in line at the drive-thru at McDonald’s. While indulging in a little junk food,  he noticed a junk removal truck and thought, “Hey, I could that.” And with that, he invested $700 to buy his own hauling truck and 1-800-GOT-JUNK was born. Turns out, other people’s trash definitely can be your treasure. 

ANDY PUDDICOMBE, Founder of Headspace

A former Buddhist Monk and Circus Arts degree holder, Andy Puddicombe also had another passion — meditation. With the hope of making “meditation and mindfulness accessible, relevant and beneficial,” he co-founded Headspace to demystify meditation and make it accessible to everyone. 

PAYAL KADAKIA, Founder of Classpass

Corporate life was wearing Payal Kadakia out. So in 2011, this MIT grad left her job and gave herself exactly 14 days to come up with her own business idea and in two short weeks, Classpass was born. Her best advice: everyone has ideas, but only those who are willing to act on their passion will succeed. 

JUSTIN KAN, Founder of Twitch

Justin Kan got his start by literally streaming his life which led to streaming other questionably more entraining programming through Twitch which he sold to Amazon for nearly $1b. Not bad for a guy who graduated with dual degrees in physics and philosophy.  

MAX LYTVYN, Founder of Grammarly

Max Lytvyn hates plagiarizers. While in college, he noticed his fellow students downloading essays and passing them off as their own so he started his first business that caught cheaters cheating. His next move? Grammarly, making writing easier so people don’t feel the need to cheat in the first place. 

SAM YAGAN, Founder of OkCupid

Meaningful connections. That’s what Sam Yagan is all about. So, did you know that the guy who started SparkNotes also started OkCupid? If you think about it, it’s not all that strange. OkCupid is dedicated to helping people find love through meaningful connections and SparkNotes helped students everywhere meaningfully connect to literature. It all starts with a spark. 

MIGUEL MCKELVEY, Founder of WeWork

Miguel McKelvy knows a little about communal spaces — he was raised within a five-mother collective in Oregon — so it makes sense that WeWork is his brainchild. By creating communal offices you actually want to work in, he tapped into a primal need – community. We bet his moms are proud. 

JEN RUBIO, Founder of Away

Rubio founded Away with the mission to get more out of every trip and sometimes that means going your own way. She may have dropped out of Penn State, but Rubio did have a purpose, proving that you don’t need an MBA to found a billion-dollar company. 

Sometimes you can create a billion-dollar business by wanting to make the world a better place.  For Quest Nutrition founder Tom Bilyeu, that means ending metabolic disease and offering options that help people make better choices. 

JEFF CHAPIN, Founder of Casper

For Casper founder Jeff Chapin, if you want good ideas, you gotta get moving, but what if you don’t have the energy?  Believing that a good night’s sleep is all that stands between us and more fulfilling lives, Chapin’s Casper mattresses are paving the way to a brighter, less bleary-eyed future. 

TOM BILYEU, Quest Nutrition

Sometimes you can create a billion-dollar business by wanting to make the world a better place.  For Quest Nutrition founder Tom Bilyeu, that means ending metabolic disease and offering options that help people make better choices.

What do we look forward to? 

Every year, The Hustle hosts HustleCon, where we invite some of tech’s most successful founders to share their stories — from how they got their start to the “why” that keeps them moving forward — it’s an inspiring two days. If we’re being honest, they’re two of our favorite days of the year. 

And what are we chasing? 

Trends. In the end, even if you surround yourself with people you look up to and have events you look forward to, you’ve still got to have something to chase. Whether it’s getting your business off the ground or scaling your business to new heights — we have the trends you need and the know-how to find the opportunities that can further your business.

Ready to find out what you need to take your business to the next level?  Readers of The Hustle receive a two week trial of Trends for just $1. Act now because as we add more features the price will increase. Sign up for Trends today.