Mike Hofman
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Editor in Chief at Inc. Magazine (he/him)
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Articles by Mike Hofman
Who Sets the Pace at Your Company?
Inc. 5000METHODOLOGY Managing a company experiencing fast growth is its own unique leadership challenge—one that pits a founder’s desire to win against a company’s limits. BY MIKE HOFMAN @MIKEHOFMAN Aug 11, 2026 Photos: Unsplash Listen to this ArticleMore info 0:00 / 0:00 Tom First has only ever known life at a fast-growing company.
If Your Business Doesn’t Offer Workers a 401(k) Plan, Maybe Now Is the Time
Human Interest CEO Jeff Schneble talks about the future of retirement savings, and why he left venture capital to run this fast-growing digital 401(k) provider. The business of retirement savings has been going through some major changes lately. Financial services companies are seeking to grow the pie aggressively, by getting more employees to invest in 401(k) plans and similar savings accounts.
Facing GLP-1s, This Ice Cream Brand Is Betting the Company on Fro-Yo
Subscriber Exclusive Early on, CEO Ben Van Leeuwen braved big pivots. Now he reveals his biggest lessons learned as he leads his fast-growing ice cream company through another big shift. BY MIKE HOFMAN @MIKEHOFMAN Jun 12, 2026 Ben Van Leeuwen. Photography by Krista Schlueter Listen to this ArticleMore info 0:00 / 0:00 Eighteen years into building the premium ice cream business he co-founded, Ben Van Leeuwen has hardly settled into his role as CEO. “I’m nervous. I’m anxious.
How important is control to you?
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How Important Is Control to You?
Many founders are pushing back in negotiations with investors to maintain control as their companies grow. “Control your destiny or someone else will.” So said Jack Welch, the legendary General Electric chairman and CEO.
Is AI worth what it costs? 10 marketing CEOs share how to find out
While big tech vies for AI domination, smaller companies have a growing need to show a solid return on their AI investment. It remains true as we move through 2026 that AI is both a generationally enormous technological advancement and probably a bubble, a sea change that has nevertheless been hyped up too much. For Google, launching Gemini and AI-powered search, AI has proved to be a dynamo.
Is AI Worth What It Costs? 10 Marketing CEOs Share How to Find Out
While big tech vies for AI domination, smaller companies have a growing need to show a solid return on their AI investment. It remains true as we move through 2026 that AI is both a generationally enormous technological advancement and probably a bubble, a sea change that has nevertheless been hyped up too much. For Google, launching Gemini and AI-powered search, AI has proved to be a dynamo.
Are You Ready to Be a Leader of Leaders? How to Get Started
Jay Shetty, the co-founders of Eventbrite and Poppi, and an 18-time Inc. 5000 entrepreneur share how they develop and empower ‘full-stack leaders.’ Every founder who finds traction with their business faces an inevitable evolution in how they spend their time, from being the person who does everything (sales, tech support, emptying the garbage) to being primarily a people manager.
Even Nobu Founder Drew Nieporent Is Shocked by How Expensive Restaurants Are Becoming
If you’ve splurged on a fancy, expense-account dinner in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, or L.A. at any time over the past 40 years, chances are good that you have been a customer of Drew Nieporent’s. As the co-founder of the Nobu Hospitality Group, and of such legendary restaurants as Tribeca Grill and Montrachet, Nieporent has been the business muscle behind star chefs such as Nobu Matsuhisa and David Bouley, and has counted Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, and Mikhail Baryshnikov among his partners.
"Quiet Power": How Taiwan Semiconductor Drives AI Innovation, from Apple to Nvidia
What does it take to not only adapt to the new business dynamics in AI innovation—let alone dominate them? In this article, paid subscribers will learn this through a case study from the semiconductor business, which includes: How Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), an AI innovation company that is hardly a household name, and yet it has powered many top AI players—from Apple to Nvidia.
What U.S.-China Trade Talks Mean for Your Business
The U.S. and China have bounced between a full-fledged trade war and a shaky truce marked by negotiations that seem relatively civil, with tariff rates to be paused through August (maybe) and bilateral negotiations to ensue. But is this a genuine rapprochement or something less solid? And what should the plan be for the many, many American companies that rely on China either as a source of goods or as a growth market? Jennifer Hendrixson White has some thoughts.
What Kind of World Do Silicon Valley Billionaires Want to Create?
The world’s richest entrepreneur and its most powerful political leader have joined forces. What comes next is unknown. Source link
What Kind of World Do Silicon Valley Billionaires Want to Create?
The world’s richest entrepreneur and its most powerful political leader have joined forces. What comes next is unknown. BY MIKE HOFMAN @MIKEHOFMAN FEB 24, 2025 WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 20: (L-R) Priscilla Chan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, businessman Jeff Bezos, Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai, and businessman Elon Musk, among other dignitaries, attend the United States Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Beehiiv’s Tyler Denk on knowing your customer by being your customer
The founder and author of the Big Desk Energy newsletter, shares his thoughts on how to write an amazing email subject line, and more. BY MIKE HOFMAN @MIKEHOFMAN JAN 27, 2025 Tyler Denk is off to a fast start this year. His newsletter company, beehiiv, has already announced a new website building tool and is building up a creator collective in a bid to compete with rivals like Substack.
Don’t Overlook This Sales-Growth Superpower
Inc.’s editor-in-chief reveals the channel that powers many of the fastest-growing companies in America. BY MIKE HOFMAN @MIKEHOFMAN OCT 25, 2024 Socium Media founder and CEO Owen Loft at an Inc. 5000 CEO dinner in New York City in September. Photography by Nathan Bajar I recently asked a group of Inc. 5000 CEOs which marketing channels were performing best this year in terms of sales conversion.
Why Gen-Z Will Transform Workplace Culture for the Better
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Why Gen-Z Will Transform Workplace Culture for the Better
By From the September 2024 issue of Inc. Magazine Claudia and Carolina Recchi are sisters who run EdSights, a tech platform that enhances student retention, and one of the fastest-growing companies in America. But today, as I speak to them over Zoom, they are sitting at a single laptop in a darkened apartment in a northern suburb of Rome, where they grew up, the windows shut tight to keep out the sweltering summer heat.
5 Reasons Why You Should Check Out Inc. Premium
Hello! I'm Mike Hofman, Inc.'s editor-in-chief, and today I'm writing to introduce to you Inc. Premium, our new subscription-only journalism offering. (If you're an avid reader, perhaps you've already seen that we've been publishing more exclusive, subscriber-only articles over the past few weeks.) When you subscribe to Inc., you'll receive instant access to all of the Inc. Premium content, which includes exclusive company profiles, engaging feature stories, in-depth business reporting, and more.
How Gap’s latest ad campaign starring Tyla signals the brand’s new strategy under CEO Richard Dickson Original
By Mike Hofman3 minute Read If you grew up shopping at Gap, you can likely remember some of the great moments in its brand marketing history, from ads featuring a young Spike Lee in the 1980s to the slogan “For every generation” to the famous “Who Wore Khakis” series of print ads, featuring unexpectedly preppy styling from the likes of Miles Davis, Picasso, and James Dean.
This democracy activist describes her own, personal experience with voter suppression
This democracy activist describes her own, personal experience with voter suppression By Mike Hofman November 07, 2023 Like it or not, we’re now one year away from the 2024 election, which at this point promises—alarmingly—to be a referendum on the value of democracy itself. As the CEO of Vote.org, it’s Andrea Hailey’s job to closely track developments in voting access and voter suppression.
This democracy activist describes her own, personal experience with voter suppression
By Mike Hofman5 minute Read Like it or not, we’re now one year away from the 2024 election, which at this point promises—alarmingly—to be a referendum on the value of democracy itself. As the CEO of Vote.org, it’s Andrea Hailey’s job to closely track developments in voting access and voter suppression. Her organization’s nonpartisan mission is to help voters everywhere register to vote, and then follow up at the polls. She and her team have been very busy lately.
Showtime’s ‘Fellow Travelers’ recalls a time when you could lose your job for being gay
By Mike Hofman6 minute Read We talk a lot these days about not having to choose between your career and living an authentic life, but this is a relatively young concept–as viewers of the new Showtime series Fellow Travelers are bound to learn. Adapted from Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel, the series follows the story of two gay men who meet at work at the State Department in the 1950s.
To redesign democracy, the U.S. should borrow an idea from Dublin
By Mike Hofman7 minute Read In the winter of 2013, two men found themselves on a surprising journey. Finbarr O’Brien, a traditionalist Catholic in his late fifties from rural Ireland, and Chris Lyons, a gay man in his early thirties from Dublin, were both randomly chosen from the Irish electoral register.
J.C. Leyendecker's iconic illustrations visualized the all-American ma
The once-idealized image of the all-American man, that preppy, sporty Ivy Leaguer who played football, golfs, and rowed crew in college? Turns out he was invented by a gay advertising genius. The illustrator, J.C. Leyendecker, found fortune and success in the first half of the 20th century—all the while coding queer messages in his advertising and editorial work.
How much do we charge to our Delta Air-American Express cards? (It’s a lot.)
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian recently shared a head-turning statistic about just how much the company’s customers spend—but he wasn’t talking about flights or airfare. The amount of money consumers charge to Delta’s co-branded line of American Express credit cards, Bastian revealed on an earnings call in late June, approaches 1% of the U.S. GDP. “These are, like, crazy big numbers when you think about it,” Bastian acknowledged. It wasn’t merely hyperbole, either.
When it comes to making EVs sound good from the inside, Bose’s Rashaan Josey is all ears
What does your car sound like? And what should it sound like? These are the questions Rashaan Josey is working hard to answer. Josey oversees a division at the audio giant Bose (the company is based in Boston, though Josey is near Detroit) that is developing new ways to achieve the ideal “in-cabin” sound environment in the age of EVs, which are forecast to account for half of all car sales by 2035.
Anderson Cooper talks loss, ambition, and podcasting his way through grief
For a person more accustomed to reporting the news than being the news, Anderson Cooper has been in the headlines a fair amount this past year as tumult at CNN has shined a bright and at times uncomfortable spotlight on the veteran newscaster. Cooper has experienced a great deal of dislocation in his personal life, too, which grew into All There Is, a tender and important new podcast project.
This specific kind of stress makes managers less effective
“My team is constantly in fire-fighting mode,” Gavin shared with us. As part of a service team in global software organization, Gavin (not his real name) had been coaching his team to try to better advocate for themselves when they were inundated with requests for their time, both from him, as their manager, and from the other parts of the organization that they served.
The 10 most innovative companies in film and TV of 2023
Explore the full 2023 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 540 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 54 categories, including advertising, beauty, design, and more. Hollywood’s approach to innovation featured more than a whiff of existential desperation this year, as companies across the film and TV industry grappled with all kinds of disruptive forces.
SoulCycle’s Julie Rice says workaholism nearly ruined her marriage—and was even worse for her business partnership
Lenovo’s “Think Report 2022” shows how new approaches to thinking can be potentially transformative and will be built on human-centered technology.
Eric Ripert: I learned the hard way that you don’t get better results if your team is scared
My greatest mistake was leading from anger. When I was a young chef at Le Bernardin in 1992, hired to run the kitchen by brother-and-sister owners Gilbert and Maguy Le Coze, I had a really bad temper. It was my first chef position, and I was acting up a lot in the kitchen. I was screaming at staff, breaking plates, throwing food on the floor when I didn’t think it was good enough. I was miserable and was making my staff miserable, too.
Tesla owners didn’t buy a car: We bought a set of beliefs Elon is trashing
When travel began picking up again several months into the pandemic, the hospitality industry breathed a collective sigh of relief. Not every brand in the industry went back to business as usual, though. Marriott, for one, saw an opportunity. Leisure travel was on the rise, and many customers who once traveled mostly for work were now taking longer trips that combined business with leisure. To meet the shifting needs of its customers, the company had to embrace new tactics.
Sollis CEO Brad Olson on why you need to take a break from work in ord
My greatest mistake? Not understanding the value of disconnecting from work. I started my post-college career in management consulting in Chicago. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made: I worked alongside incredibly smart (and fun) colleagues, engaged on a wide variety of business challenges across industries, and built analytic skills that have served me throughout my career. One of my best friends moved to China after college and invited me to spend time traveling the country with her.
How being sarcastic in a pitch meeting nearly ruined my career
One of the biggest mistakes I made completely changed how I interact with people. There’s that quote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” You could have the best of intentions, but you have to be aware of how you show up. I learned that the hard way. I had started out in business as a dead-broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards. I started studying marketing because I needed to eat and survive, but then I fell in love with it.
Shuggie's Trash Pie, where everything on the menu is made from trash
By and Adele Peters3 minute Read Every week for the past six weeks, the menu has changed at a San Francisco restaurant and wine bar called Shuggie’s Trash Pie. That’s because the ingredients depend in part on what farmers plan to throw out on any given day: The restaurant’s mission is to fight food waste.
How 'Sort Of' star Bilal Baig turned the idea of visibility inside out
This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022. Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. The desire to be seen is a profound human need, and yet we sometimes yearn to avoid recognition, too. It’s a paradox that manifests itself in that small joy we feel in an empty elevator, or the relief when the chatty neighbor doesn’t realize you’re behind them in the checkout line at the supermarket.
This ad creative steers brands through difficult conversations about race and social justice
This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022. Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. Shannon Washington has become a go-to creative mind for corporate brands that want to weave no-nonsense, inclusive messaging into their campaigns.
Michael R. Jackson reveals the genius behind his hit musical ‘A Strange Loop’
This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022. Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. On the evening last June when Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop won Best Musical at the Tonys, Broadway fans were hardly surprised. For months, the musical had been generating buzz—and $6 million at the box office—on rave reviews and a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Delta variant cancels big events, just as the events industry was preparing for a comeback
After more than a year of virtual conferences, both the New York International Auto Show and New Orleans's Jazz Fest were recently canceled over concerns about the fast-spreading Delta variant.
On Effective Communicators | An Inc.com Interview With Peter Guber | Inc.com
Persuasive talkers tend to do well in business, and yet we don't typically think of storytelling as a professional discipline. Hollywood producer Peter Guber is on a crusade to remedy that. In his new book, Tell to Win, the CEO of Mandalay Entertainment takes a look at the way people use stories to do business. He spoke with Inc.com's Mike Hofman. Your book looks at the power of purposeful stories. So, what exactly is a purposeful story? A story you tell with a specific purpose in mind.
Just How Badly Can the Coronavirus Mess Up the Stock Market?
What modern epidemics like Ebola and SARS can teach us about the possible impact of the coronavirus on global markets Traders work through the closing minutes of trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange floor on February 25, 2020 in New York City. Photo: Scott Heins/Getty Images Global stock markets plunged this week as the coronavirus outbreak continued to spread, stoking fears of global pandemic and an economic slowdown. While we can’t predict the future, we can try to learn from the past.
The Critical Mistake Almost Every New Entrepreneur Makes
An excerpt from the classic business book ‘The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It’ Photo: PeopleImages/Getty Images Where were you before you started your business? (Or, if you’re thinking about going into business, where are you now?) If you’re like most of the people I’ve known, you were working for somebody else. What were you doing? Probably technical work, like almost everybody who goes into business.
Is It End of the Initial Public Offering Market as We Know It
Is It End of the Initial Public Offering Market as We Know It
Is It the End of the IPO as We Know It?
Founders, companies, and investors are rebelling against the investment banks — and taking matters into their own hands This story is part of The New Rules of the IPO, a multi-part special report. Illustrations: James Clapham By all accounts, 2019 was a terrific year for the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising by more than 22% and the S&P 500 up nearly 29%.
Best Friends in D.C.: Insider Tips [Audio]
What does it take to get your way in Washington? Executive Editor Mike Hofman offers some advice on making friends inside the Beltway.
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