Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2018 i Entrepreneur's Startups

In the fall of 2008, after years of beating himself up playing football and lacrosse, Joe Kudla took up yoga. But he couldn’t find much to wear. “Out of 17 million people doing yoga, six million were men—the fastest-growing demographic,” says the 40-year-old Kudla. “Yet there was not one brand targeting that market.” It was a weird contrast to, say, surfing, an activity for which Kudla says four million surfers are served by 50 clothing brands. So Kudla did some napkin math, borrowed $300,000 from family, friends, and the bank, and, in spring 2015, launched the startup Vuori (“mountain” in Finnish) to produce men’s yoga clothes—moisture-wicking, quick-drying tops, shorts, and pants. “Our plan was to create clothes to move and sweat in, but styled for everyday life, like Lululemon and…

Two years ago, Alaia Williams used a run-of-the-mill email signature: title, company, phone number. But as a business systems strategist, she wondered if she was overlooking an obvious opportunity. So she started adding to her signature, piece by piece. She placed social media icons to link to her Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. She added a sign-up for her mailing list. She even threw in a head shot and info on her product line. The results? Her followers and opt-in rates immediately increased. “I’m getting inquiries and referrals from people who don’t even know me well,” she says. Williams’ instinct was spot-on, it turns out. Email signatures are no longer just an afterthought; they’re a valuable marketing opportunity. That’s because they typically come from a trusted source (or at least…

Strapped for cash? You’re not alone. The business press may make it seem like every startup rakes in millions from VC firms, but in reality, many more entrepreneurs build without any cash infusion. And that often makes them smarter and scrappier. “The idea of bootstrapping is positive in the sense that it forces you to sell before you build,” says Patrick FitzGerald, a lecturer at the Wharton School and a serial entrepreneur. He sees an increasing number of his students bootstrapping—some to keep control of their company vision, and others because they’re buried in business-school debt and can’t fathom taking on another loan. He sympathizes. “I myself have always bootstrapped,” FitzGerald says. “My parents are teachers, so I’ve never had the luxury of not bootstrapping.” On the following pages, we…

Some may be surprised to learn that Jessica and Andrea Perez, at just 25 and 22 years old, respectively, are the owners of a Wing Zone franchise in San Antonio. But to the young women, it’s unremarkable: Entrepreneurship is in their blood. Before their family moved to the United States from Mexico in 2005, their parents owned a laundromat, a close cousin owned a hair salon, and other members of the family ran everything from restaurants to marketing firms. The practicality of providing a service that people would always need was drilled into the Perez sisters’ heads as a smart, safe road to success. Which is why in May 2017, they took ownership of what they hope will be the first of multiple Wing Zone units. It wasn’t easy, but…

The NBA season just ended, which in years past would have left me drained and disoriented. I would have just come off a season-long fanaticism—tuning in for my beloved Miami Heat’s games, or watching on my phone if I was out. I’d even follow games on Twitter. This goes back to childhood. I was obsessed. But this year, I didn’t watch a single Heat game. I probably couldn’t name half the players on the team. And I missed the entire playoffs. Why? Because I was forced to make a decision. My life had become too busy. Something had to go. That thing was basketball. So when people ask me how I do so much, that’s my answer. I quit basketball. I’ve taken on a lot recently. I run this magazine,…

Daniel Miller is at a disadvantage. As the cofounder of Empowered Staffing, a boutique recruitment firm in Evanston, Ill., he has to go head-to-head with giant rivals who have greater name recognition and a bigger media presence—not to mention resources that his tiny team of seven will never be able to match. To keep his pipeline filled, he has to get creative. When Miller kept seeing the same jobs being posted by one big rival over and over again, he decided to find out why. After some sleuthing, he discovered that his rival was having problems. It was assigning inexperienced recruiters, who, Miller says, weren’t getting adequate training, to large client accounts. As a result, the candidate selection was consistently missing the mark, causing the job searches to drag on…

What do people really not want to see in your email signature? Below, a ranking of the 12 MOST IRRITATING ITEMS, according to a survey of 1,006 adults conducted by Ipsos for Entrepreneur. As we said, a little goes a long way. A lot? Well, you’ve been warned. 1 Home address 2 Award you’ve won 3 Home phone number 4 Facebook link 5 Instagram handle 6 Head shot 7 Twitter handle 8 Personal website link 9 Cellphone number 10 Higher-education degrees 11 Blog link 12 Inspirational quote or mantra…

1 Have awkward conversations. “Before you spend time and money building a product or service, make sure people want it. Have awkward conversations with your target customers. If people are excited, then sell your organs and build the thing.” 2 Forget the 9 to 5. “It’s a common mistake to take on a full-time job while you’re bootstrapping. There goes 50 percent of your day. It’s a recipe for failure.” 3 Call Mom and Dad. “Move in with your parents. I did it. I went from making six figures as an attorney to living in my mom’s house for six months. It was humbling, but I saved a ridiculous amount of money. And Mom cooked!” 4 Sell your crap. “It’s tough, but sell your stuff. Your car. Things you have…

JOHN HINNEN always wanted to make things. A born tinkerer, the son of Illinois spent the better part of his 20s designing toys and novelties in his parents’ garage. He created a line of greeting cards and peddled them all around downtown Chicago in his cowboy boots. He created an elaborate child’s educational toy that got good feedback but was so complicated to build that he couldn’t make the economics work. He had a little wooden toy that twisted from a heart to an egg that, he says, he “thought was the next pet rock.” It wasn’t. Life would go on. He married. In May of 1989, he and his wife were expecting their first child. “I had to get real,” he says. He got a job at the Diamond-Star…

Entrepreneurs always need more—more help, more time, more insight. So we asked: What’s the one product you wish someone would create to help your business? Now maybe someone (you?) will make it. 1 EMAIL 911 “Spending too much time on your email is toxic, but we all do it. The joke is that ‘achieved inbox zero’ could be carved on someone’s tombstone, and it hits a little close to home. Rather than trying to banish email, though, or hoping to replace it with some other tool, I wish someone would simply build a smarter inbox—one that ingests emails and the important stuff in them, organizes conversations, and marries them to projects, chats, files, to-dos, and events in an intelligent way.” —GREG COHN, cofounder and CEO, Burner 2 DO-GOOD DATABASE “I…

Glenn Kelman thought of himself as a software guy. He loves software. He cofounded a company called Plumtree Software. “When I applied for a passport or had to fill out my tax forms, I wrote down that I was a software entrepreneur,” he says. So when he became CEO of a real estate startup called Redfin, he had a natural direction: “I wanted to solve every real estate problem with software.” This would create a years-long crisis for the company. And for Kelman, it would come to highlight an often-unspoken business challenge: Entrepreneurship means exploring unknown paths, and sometimes that leads an entrepreneur somewhere different from where they started. The result can challenge not just their business philosophies but also their very sense of identity. A company’s future may end…

Chelsea Hirschhorn was in a bind. Her infant-products company, Fridababy, was profitable. But for the business to grow, she needed more products. The problem was, she had no design experience, no R&D staff, no money, and no time. Like we said: a bind. She hadn’t started as an entrepreneur. In law school she did a stint with the New York Mets. Then she was a bankruptcy attorney during the recession. After that, she moved to south Florida and landed a gig with the Miami Marlins. One night in 2013, while Hirschhorn was pregnant with her first child, a neighbor told her about a product she was importing from Sweden, the NoseFrida. It was “an oral nasal aspirator”—that is, a tube parents use to suck snot out of their babies’ congested…

Robin Mainer was a longtime commissioned salesperson for an insurance company. But by the time she turned 51, those commissions had dried up. She needed to figure out what, as she says, she wanted to do when she grew up. Mainer and her friend and coworker Kimera Shepler decided to think hard on it and come back with a plan. “I went home and prayed about it,” Mainer says. “I said, I want a clear direction. I’ll do whatever you want, but I need a direction.” The next day, she went to get her oil changed—not expecting it to be part of that new direction. And for a while, it wasn’t. The man who checked her in took her keys and told her to sit down next to two other…

WHEN POKÉWORKS opened in midtown Manhattan in December 2015, its cofounder Kevin Hsu wondered if he had made a huge mistake. “The first evening, no one stepped foot inside, apart from two drunk college kids asking if we sold shark,” remembers the 36-year-old entrepreneur. The answer was no. His fast-casual eatery served the traditional Hawaiian bowl of marinated raw fish. “I thought maybe we were trying to introduce a food that the masses were just not ready for. No one had a clue what poke was or how to say it.” (“Poke” rhymes with “OK,” for the record.) “WE’VE BEEN WATCHING IT GET CRAZY IN L.A.,” SAYS AN EARLY ENTRANT TO THE MARKET. “MANY CHINESE OR KOREAN PLACES ARE TURNING INTO POKE RESTAURANTS OVERNIGHT.” But business picked up once nearby…

Kurt and Melissa Godwin didn’t have much in common—at least, not professionally. Kurt was an airline pilot, and Melissa had spent decades working for the state of Pennsylvania. But the married couple wanted to take control of their careers and spend more time with family. By running their own business, they figured, they’d be able to accomplish both. So they decided to focus on a subject they each had experience with: outdoor pests. Melissa is a self-described “mosquito magnet”—she avoids spending time outside on summer nights—and Kurt’s oldest son twice battled Lyme disease from tick bites. In 2013, the Godwins signed on as franchisees of Mosquito Joe, a provider of outdoor mosquito, tick, and flea treatment services. Today they own six territories throughout the Baltimore and Annapolis areas. In 2017…