Welcome back to Small Empires, our look at life inside startups. Alexis Ohanian, creator of such things as Reddit, HipMunk and BreadPig, has returned as our inimitable host. This season we are expanding beyond New York City, traveling across the U.S. and even across the border to Canada, to meet with awesome companies shaking things up. Keep it locked here for deep dives into the joys and pains of startup life and conversations with entrepreneurs trying to reinvent industries and solve massive problems.
Dec 18, 2014
Small Empires: Can Vimeo build a big business without selling out?
Long a favorite of indie creators, Vimeo is now competing with Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu
Dec 11, 2014
Small Empires: Can an app really get Americans to care about their government again?
Capitol Bells keeps constituents alert to what their elected representatives are voting on, or not
Dec 4, 2014
Small Empires: Meet the man behind one of the web's most popular, and controversial, sites
WorldstarHipHop.com has built a massive audience with its mix of music, humor, and extreme violence
Dec 2, 2014
Small Empires: meet the startup that makes your startup look cool
Sandwich has become the most sought-after producer of videos for tech companies large and small
Nov 25, 2014
Forget your keys? There's an app for that
The August Smart Lock can create disposable key codes for your friends to use
Nov 20, 2014
Small Empires: Vidyard demonstrates the time-honored art of the startup pivot
The team at Vidyard had to learn two lessons that many startups come to embrace over time: being creative is difficult to scale, and they're actually much better engineers than they are artists.
Nov 18, 2014
Small Empires: can Wattpad's DIY writing empire survive an invasion by Amazon?
Wattpad is a community of writer and readers working together on serialized stories. Last month Amazon announced it was creating a competitor, WriteOn, tied to it huge audience of readers. Let the games begin.
Nov 11, 2014
Can a brewery be a platform for anyone to program their own beer?
Two Roads Brewing Company in Stratford, Connecticut has an interesting take on making craft beer. It built a brewery way bigger than its brand, and are opening up the facilities for other small brewers to plug their recipes into its system.
Nov 10, 2014
Small Empires Season Two
The best startup profiles and conversations are back for another round
Nov 4, 2014
Small Empires - Miami: the $120 million bet on 24/7 language lessons
Open English has found widespread success. But can its human workers compete against a pure software approach?
Oct 28, 2014
Small Empires Season 2: hunting for spare parts and seed funding with Partpic
An Atlanta based visual search company is looking to reinvent the hunt for replacement parts. Can they convince investors to give them the seed capital they need to grow?