Asana CEO Plans Balanced Growth, Trivago CEO Talks Reopening, Design Guru on Crypto Wallets +More

Risk taking at the right moments is an important ingredient in success and fulfillment, and my conversations with founders and executives remind me of that again and again.

This week I talked to Kevin Bethune, a product designer and entrepreneur who trained as an engineer. I sought him out when I became aware of Keevo, a physical wallet for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Bethune cofounded the company behind it, and before that he was a product designer for Nike and others. He now leads his own design firm, dreams design life in Southern California. He took risks pursuing an MBA, and leaving Nike to go deeper in his study of design. Those moves seem to be paying off.

Speaking of moves paying off, I also spoke with Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz, who also cofounded Facebook alongside Mark Zuckerberg. His current company is worth more than $6 billion, and growing.

I got plenty more insights on the state of the economy and innovation, too. Happy to share. Read (and watch) on:

Will Companies Replace the Business Press? On the Other Hand

Hot stocks AMC Theatres, Coinbase, Tesla and other companies are amping up their direct communication with an investor fanbase. Is it a healthy trend? I weighed in, in the latest edition of On the Other Hand, on CNBC's Squawk Box:

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Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz Plans Balanced Growth Beyond Strong Quarter

I talked to Dustin Moskovitz, founder and CEO of Asana (and cofounder of Facebook), about the company's earnings beat, customer momentum, the culture of work and more:

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Keevo Cofounder and Design Guru Kevin Bethune on Multidisciplinary Creativity

Square CEO Jack Dorsey this past week said he's considering making a crypto wallet. Kevin Bethune has already done that, and a lot more. We talked design, innovation, and being a Black cofounder and creative in a fast-moving industry:

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Trivago CEO Axel Hefer on Travel's Rebound, and Why He Still Lives in His Hometown in Germany

CEO Axel Hefer took the helm of travel company Trivago just before the pandemic hit. The journey since has been about survival and change. We'll talk about the outlook for travel for the rest of the year, the new mindset for adventurers, and his career journey:

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Outreach CEO Manny Medina on Hiring, $200M Funding Round, $4.4B Valuation

I love having Fortt Knox alums on CNBC as their businesses tackle new challenges. Outreach Cofounder and CEO Manny Medina, who sat (or really stood ... he's always standing) for a Fortt Knox 1:1 a year ago, joined me on air this week with a great perspective on how customers are adopting software to drive sales:

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PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada: Large Customers Doing Bigger Deals

Investors were cool on the financial guidance PagerDuty CEO Jenn Tejada provided, but Tejada sounded bullish about the long term. The company also has an analyst meeting and a conference coming up later this month; I'll be interviewing her there. I'm especially curious how smaller players in the DevOps space are faring versus the giants:

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CEOs of Domestic Manufacturer, Digital Freight Manager on U.S. Supply Chain

On a special CNBC evening program, On the Edge, I spoke with Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen and American Giant CEO Bayard Winthrop. The topic: the trouble we're having ensuring good supply of so many things during a pandemic and a surge in ransomware attacks:

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HP Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri: Hardware As A Service Expanding

When Hewlett Packard Enterprise reported earnings, I spoke to CEO Antonio Neri about the company's move toward hardware as a service. I talked to Michael Dell about a similar theme earlier this spring, and wanted to know what types of workloads HPE is mainly targeting:

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If you know me, you know that I like projects. I put a lot of thought into things that are important to me, at it's not limited to Fortt Knox. My company, Fortt Media, is the home of The Black Experience in America: The Course, a curriculum I researched, designed, taught and then built into an interactive experience. I'm still building it, and crafting teacher training to increase its impact.

To share what I've learned from the process so far, and to learn from others who are passionate about Black history education, I'm participating in the Teaching Black History Conference, hosted by the Carter Center for K-12 Education at the University of Missouri, led by LaGarrett King. My presentation will be 7/23 at 8 a.m. ET. It's $99 to attend (virtually). Register here:

Speaking of The Black Experience in America: The Course ... I've finished crafting another major interactive lesson, and added another discount bundle for purchase. Please check them out here: