What Alix Earle knows about business that many of my Harvard Business School students don’t get

Reza Satchu is a Managing Partner at Alignvest Management Corporation, a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and host of The Founder Mindset podcast, produced by HBS Foundry.

When Alix Earle’s publicist called to ask whether she could come to Harvard Business School—to sit in on my class, be the subject of a case study, and speak to some of the sharpest young minds in business—my first instinct was to decline. I pulled up her TikTok. I saw someone having fun, looking glamorous, going to parties. I hung up and called my daughters, and they didn’t hesitate: “Dad, you want her there.”

They were right, and I was wrong. And the fact that I was wrong is itself a lesson worth examining.

Every year, I ask my students at Harvard Business School a version of the same question: what does it actually take to be a founder? Many of them say some version of “know your customer.” Alix Earle, at 25, said something on my podcast, The Founder Mindset, that landed differently: I am the customer. My students understand that concept analytically. She understood........

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