New Delhi, May 18 -- Reese Witherspoon built one of Hollywood's most valuable independent media companies not because an opportunity was handed to her, but because she went looking for one and found an industry that had written women out of the story entirely.

When the actress sat down for a recent episode of Founder Mindset, a podcast produced by Harvard Business School's Reza Satchu, she laid out with unusual candour the frustration, financial pressure and calculated risk-taking that led her to co-found Hello Sunshine, the media company she eventually sold at a valuation of roughly $900 million. Fortune, which reported on the interview, described the account as less a celebrity success story than a window into how a performer with no f...