Introducing Inc.'s Founders Project

This year, Inc. is matching 40 aspiring founders with 40 experienced mentors. Meet the first pairing: Stonyfield Farm co-founder Gary Hirshberg and Wheyward Spirit founder Emily Darchuk.

- Leigh Buchanan

Activision, the first third-party creator of video games, was launched in 1979 by disgruntled Atari employees. In its first decade, it grappled with a patent-infringement suit, the collapse of the console game market, a failed merger, an ill-starred CEO, and the founders’ departure. It survived to become Activision Blizzard, the fifth-largest video game company, with revenue topping $6 billion and monster hits like Call of Duty.

Visitors to the Love Money website can search for “the most famous company founded the year you were born.” Inc. was also born in 1979, and, for us, Activision is it. Cool. Conceived in dissatisfaction with the status quo, resilient and adaptable in the face of turmoil, endlessly innovative, ultimately triumphant—Activision exemplifies the entrepreneur’s journey.

We at Inc. may have become experts in that journey, but everything we know we’ve learned from our subjects: founders, who are often the smartest—and always the most fascinating—people in business. Our readers have learned from them through our magazine, our digital presence, and our events. In 2019, things will be getting more intimate.

To celebrate our 40th, we’re launching the Founders Project, in which 40 of America’s most accomplished entrepreneurs (and experts in related fields) will mentor 40 promising upstarts. Their interactions will play out in our magazine, on our website, in videos, and at events. You’ll see it all in real time: the blocking and tackling, the strategizing and hedging, and the occasional tear or fist bump.