Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2021 i Inc. Magazine

I’ve hit the one-year mark working at Inc. And aside from meeting many of you—which is always an honor and often an education—circumstances have sure made my job something of a carnival ride. Some days it feels like I’ve been here only a week, and some weeks it feels like it’s been a decade, but certainly my time at Inc. has not resembled anything I imagined—won—derful or worrisome—the night before my first day on the job. Maybe the past 12 months have made you feel the same way about your business. After all, who could have predicted them, starting with a global pandemic, swerving into social upheaval, pivoting to insurrection, and then hitting the backstretch with Texas icier than Alaska and Alaska toastier than Texas? That’s the thing, right? We…

The pandemic, the grim economy, and the stress of remote work have made employees’ physical, mental, and financial well-being more important than ever. At the same time, bosses are trying to meet their employees’ needs on a tighter budget. One solution? Voluntary benefits. They’re not as sexy as onsite gyms and free lunches, and the term is a bit of a misnomer. It typically refers to insurance products (separate from health coverage) that workers can buy at lower group rates via payroll deductions. But it can also apply to benefits that are funded all or in part by employers. Voluntary benefits cover familiar things, like long-term disability care, and novel ones, like legal services, identity theft protection, financial counseling, and veterinary bills. Keep in mind that voluntary benefits are just…

Teaming out is a characteristic behavior of the most effective executive teams, and one that my research institute has decoded as a high-return practice. Through 20 years of coaching, I’ve seen it speed collaboration and accelerate growth. Teaming out also helps mitigate unrecognized risk—in Fortune 500 companies, midmarket brands, and startups. Here’s how it works. CURATING RELATIONSHIPS Most of us still see our teams as the people who report to us—an outdated way of thinking. The real question is, whom do you need to get the job done? In my first book, Never Eat Alone, I proposed relationship action planning. We all have financial plans. We all have a to-do list. But where is your relationship action plan? Your team is an undercurated entity, and you need to identify the…

HIS STARTUP IS ABOUT TO DOUBLE IN SIZE SHE’S HELPING HIM KEEP THE CULTURE VENTURE capitalist Theresia Gouw has trailblazing in her blood. When she was 3, her family left Indonesia to escape persecution under the Suharto dictatorship and start a new life in the U.S. “When I think about the risks my parents took and how much they gave up so my sister and I could have the opportunities we have, that’s what really drives me,” Gouw says. Gouw’s personal drive has helped bring much-needed change to the venture capital industry. In 2014, she left the venture firm Accel, where she was the first female managing partner, and co-founded one of the first female-led VC firms, Aspect Ventures. Five years later, Gouw co-founded her second venture firm, Acrew Capital,…

Lay out the stakes. The crisis must be real, or at least mostly so. If it’s positioned as an exercise or something that doesn’t feel true (“An asteroid is coming!”), people won’t commit. Use an actual event—a big meeting, signals from a competitor—and tweak the timetable to boost the team’s adrenaline. Give people control. Fend off fear and unconstructive behavior by clearly defining the goals, the tools that the team has at its disposal, and the endpoint. Give people something to do, even if it’s small, so that they feel they’re part of the collective effort. “People are scared of starving,” says McBride, “but not of fasting.” That’s because fasting is in their control. Limit the scope. Your crisis should not be armageddon; if people fear for their jobs, they’ll…

Time, money, and mental health are just a few of the big-ticket items that founders put up as collateral against the pursuit of their dreams. But as our Inc. 5000 Regional honorees have found: Get it right, and the rewards can compound with lightning speed. After four decades celebrating the fastest-growing private companies in America in the form of the Inc. 5000 list, we expanded this hallmark awards franchise last year to include the Inc. 5000 Regionals. If the Inc. 5000 represents the big league, the Inc. 5000 Regionals are the AAA level—pitting local favorites against one another on a proving ground for national stardom. While the Inc. 5000 recognizes growth across four years, the Regionals keep score across just three, with a focus on firms in the New York…

OPEN WATER CHICAGO NICOLE DOUCET 2,470% A 2009 documentary on the proliferation of plastic waste left Nicole Doucet and Jess Page, then University of Miami students, infuriated. They spent the next five years developing Open Water—100 percent recyclable and reusable aluminum bottles and cans of purified water. In 2020, it became the world’s first carbon-neutral bottled-water company. With the tag line “more ocean, less plastic #byebye-plastic,” it’s a favorite of organizations such as the Field Museum in Chicago and the New York Aquarium, and has cruise line, gym, food-service, and corporate clients like InterContinental Hotels. As the pandemic hit those businesses hard, Open Water cracked into retail—and is looking forward to 2021. Jess and I started looking at a bunch of different materials, everything from glass to plant-based plastics to…

Feeling less productive than usual right now? It’s not your fault. Neuroscience shows that the part of the brain that helps you focus shuts down in times of ongoing stress and uncertainty. The good news? Science also shows that by focusing on the rising and falling of your breath for 60 seconds, you can reduce the amount of stress hormones in your body. It’s one example of a micro-step—a small, science-backed action you can take immediately to start building habits that will significantly improve your life. For more, read my book Your Time to Thrive: End Burnout, Increase Well-Being, and Unlock Your Full Potential With the New Science of Microsteps.…

In 1927, my German grandmother was born in an orphanage 15 kilometers east of Munich in the small market town of Kirchseeon. With blond hair and blue eyes, she was classified as Aryan, which her nation’s soon-to-be chancellor, Adolf Hitler, would declare the “master race.” Still, she fell in love with a Black American GI in World War II. He brought her to the States—but not before they married and had a biracial child, my uncle, in a Germany defined by Hitler’s ideals. My grandmother was one of my earliest examples of leadership. She spoke her mind freely and knew exactly who she was, not looking for or requiring the approval of others. As a child, I saw a parallel between her strength and my own. At this point, I’ve…

1 ACCOUNTABILITY TO CORE VALUES Establishing core values at your company is critical, but it’s just a first step. After stating what these core tenets are, you must hold the entire company accountable to them. It will help unify the team. Gusto, the human resources software company, conducts a valuesand motivations-based assessment of candidates. For CEO Josh Reeves, embedding company values into the evaluation process makes it clear to all employees how serious the company is about what it stands for. 2 DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES Data proves that companies perform best when there is gender and ethnic diversity at the executive and board levels. At the data visualization software company Observable, co-founder Melody Meckfessel has always found greater creativity, better products, and the ability to ship faster when leading diverse teams…

Here is an uncomfortable truth: In time, everything in your life, as you know it, will perish. This is true of your relationships, your jobs, and, perhaps especially so, your business. It’s not nihilism; it’s just reality. But rather than taking this state of affairs as a defeat, I propose instead that it is actually a wonderful phenomenon. In mathematics, it’s referred to as the S-curve. Essentially, the S-curve describes the predictable pattern of anything that develops over time: You’re born, you grow—first gradually and then more quickly—you slow down as you mature, and then you fade out. This trajectory is true for people, organizations, cities, countries, and civilizations. Every single one of us is somewhere within the bounds of our own unique S-curve. To see the whole world from this…

Not long into building Map Mojo, an interactive map tool that endorsed local businesses, Austin-based Yodle founder John Berkowitz realized the firm’s A.I. recommendation engine was more powerful than its business model. Today, his current company, Ojo Labs, is a real estate power house that fuses machine and human intelligence to match home buyers with brokers. It has more than 500 employees in five regions. In 2020, Ojo completed two acquisitions, raised $62.5 million, and reported nearly $30 million in revenue. It predicts it will have 250 percent growth by year’s end. But when the company started in 2015, Berkowitz was in a personal slump after selling Yodle; he wasn’t convinced that real estate was the place for his technology. The challenges of 2020 lit new fires. I was generally unfulfilled…

After high school, entrepreneurship teacher Erin Meagher read about coconut oil’s health benefits, and she saw an opportunity. In 2009, few U.S. companies sold coconut oil. The products weren’t organic, and brands didn’t share sourcing information. She launched Beneficial Blends, her own coconut oil brand, initially relying on an outside manufacturer to produce and bottle her product. But mistakes and late orders became problems. To retain complete product control, in 2014, she opened her own manufacturing facility in Tampa. When Meager’s retail customers heard about the facility, they wanted in. Beneficial Blends’ white label product business was born, as the company started blending oils, customizing formulations, manufacturing, and packaging their products, staying with the “beneficial for you” product theme. SMALLER MEANS RESPONSIVE AND INNOVATIVE About 60 percent of Beneficial Blends’…

TWO-TIME SELLER Lissy Hu SCHOOL PROJECT » Hu co-founded CarePort Health, which makes software to help hospitals create post-stay care plans for patients, for a Harvard Business School competition in 2012. FIRST MOVE » In October 2016, she sold the Boston-based company to health tech giant Allscripts, but retained her CEO title. STILL IN CHARGE » In December 2020, Hu led CarePort through a $1.35 billion sale to health tech company WellSky, while again maintaining operational control. Less than a decade ago, Lissy Hu was struggling to raise venture capital. Today, she’s one of the rare entrepreneurs who have gotten the same company acquired multiple times—and she has some vital advice for any founder who’s thinking about selling. What are the biggest differences between your first acquisition and the one…

PREZI CEO JIM SZAFRANSKI: “I took a course on technology strategy while at Stanford’s business school. The professor was Andy Grove, the late former CEO, president, and chairman of the board, and the first hire, of Intel. Andy taught me to take big, risky bets when you’re already successful. Much of his teachings centered on strategic inflection points—when the fundamentals of a business are changing significantly. Now we all know that Intel became legendary at making microprocessor chips, helping ignite the personal computer and internet industries. But most of us don’t realize how unlikely that result was, given that it required Intel to exit a business it was dominating—making and selling memory—and take on a whole new set of challenges and unknowns. Outside of the classroom, Andy invited us to…

In 2014, Sarah Lee (right) and Christine Chang (far right) left their marketing jobs at L’Oréal to launch Glow Recipe, a modern Korean skin care brand, with just $50,000 in savings. One of two initial products, a watermelon mask, was inspired by their grandmothers, who’d rub watermelon wine on heat rashes during summer months in Korea. The mask quickly became a cult favorite, so the co-founders launched an entire line of watermelon products. Lee and Chang say that creating a winning skin care formula comes down to texture, scent, and results. Customers respond well to novel textures—like bouncy and elastic gels—scents that resemble real fruit, and effects that appear overnight. The New York City-based company became profitable after three months of business (which allowed it to politely decline a Shark…

Most every startup begins with one or two people and an ember of an idea they are trying to spark to life. The dream of an established company, one churning with employees and team lunches and office perks, might be out there. But in those first days, hiring people—taking on salaries and benefits and the overhead of an actual real-life staff—seems rather insane. Soon enough, though, if your idea takes hold, you’ll need help. That means hiring. Two options here. The first is to make a wish-list org chart and start filling in the blanks with specific roles and precise duties to be assigned to exceptional and experienced candidates. The second is to go broad: Bring on people with various skills, lots of enthusiasm, and endless energy to learn. Let’s…

JONATHAN McBRIDE knows something about how teams behave in a crisis. For five and a half years, he had a ringside seat in the Obama White House as an oil spill swamped the Gulf Coast and an earthquake devastated Haiti; as the H1N1 virus and Ebola threatened the U.S.; as the government shut down. Same at BlackRock, in the high-stakes sway of the financial markets, and, before that, as a co-founder of a small business where dramas unrolled every day, from cash-flow squeezes to personnel flare-ups to can-this-really-be-happening-now? tech failures. In those tense, swirling moments, he’s seen plans botched, messages mishandled, and opportunities squandered. But he’s also watched as teams responded to a crisis in ways that were flat-out exhilarating: Communication quickened, hierarchies flattened, turnaround-time evaporated, talent blossomed, MacGyver-like fixes…

GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW, the trajectory of Jeff Bezos seems almost inevitable. The founder and CEO of Amazon has been relentless in his pursuit of building the most dominant, customer-focused enterprise in modern history. It’s fitting, considering he first thought to name his company Relentless.com. Looking backward, however, it can be easy to forget that relentless did not mean inevitable, at least not in the early years. But as Amazon’s execution began to match Bezos’s vision, an extraordinary company emerged—one that changed our lives. Bezos leaves his CEO role as one of the most important business leaders of his generation, having taken his company from zero to nearly $1.7 trillion, the market value of Amazon today. Along the way, the man behind “The Everything Store” gave us some of…

Rebuilt by the pandemic Brandon Chasen started his real estate career by opening CrossFit gyms and flipping houses. On a mission to revitalize neighborhoods in Baltimore, the Chasen Companies build boutique-style apartments, some with co-working properties, while maintaining a historic vibe. The pandemic has had an amplifying effect on his small team—just 14 core employees manage more than 300 units, owning 32 buildings and taking in $13 million. Our business definitely thrived. It’s strange to talk about in that sense. We were buying buildings and vacant lots at lower basis prices than we've seen in the past 10 years. What 2020 showed us is that the size of our projects and our buildings really benefited us during the pandemic. With our boutique luxury model, we really fit into this standard…

IN 2010, ENTREPRENEUR and venture capitalist Tony Conrad sold About.me, a network of personal-profile websites, to AOL for a reported $35 million. Two years later, Conrad, who stayed on as CEO, bought back the business for a fraction of that amount. AOL had planned to integrate About.me into its existing products, but the integration didn’t pan out. Founder buybacks aren’t common, but they happen. Last May, Krave Jerky founder Jon Sebastiani reacquired the snack brand through his growth equity firm, Sonoma Brands. Sebastiani had sold Krave to Hershey’s in 2015 for $232 million. In 2017, Cindy Eckert, the founder behind “female Viagra,” regained control of Sprout Pharmaceuticals two years after selling the company to Valeant Pharmaceuticals for $1 billion. Regardless of the sale price, it’s common for founders to experience…

AT THE HEIGHT of his addiction, when Stephen Hays desperately needed a dopamine hit, he’d open up his laptop and start a new Excel spreadsheet. The Dallas-based venture capitalist would spend days meticulously planning a Las Vegas binge weekend in color-coded 24-hour blocks and 30-minute increments. It was a business plan of debauchery, unspooling at speed … Noon: Land at McCarran. 1 p.m.: VIP suite at the Wynn. 1:10: Craps (three and a half hours, $500 a roll; up $15,000—hot!). 4:45: 90 minutes at the Cosmo (Jane: blond, implants, girl-next-doorsy). 6:15: Shower. 6:30: Craps at the Cosmo (75 bets an hour: roll, roll, Red Bull and vodka, roll; drop $22,000). 10:30: Wynn steakhouse bar (filet, bloody; potatoes, gratinéed). 11:30: Upstairs for dessert (three lines of coke). Midnight: Eight-top with bottle…

When it comes to digital marketing experience, Ajay Gupta’s background is decidedly varied. As a teenager, he ran a wrestling website. Later, after graduate school, he briefly joined Hillary Clinton’s 2008 run for President of the United States. When he co-founded Stirista, he wanted to create a marketing company that would put that wide-ranging digital marketing experience to work for his clients. A key selling point for using data analytics in marketing is that it is more efficient than relying on mere hunches about what prospective customers want, Gupta notes. “It helps save a lot of money that gets wasted because companies are spending money targeting people who would have no potential interest in their product,” he says. “It used to be about data, but it’s increasingly about identity marketing.”…

The U.S. may be one of the last countries to move away from post-paid cell phone contracts to prepaid options, explains serial entrepreneur Parvez Jasani, CEO of Zulie Venture Inc., which does business as CellPay. “Only America had a post-pay contract,” says Jasani, whereas “if you go to the U.K., Europe, India, Pakistan, or even Mexico, they’ve always been prepaid-only.” Until roughly 2014, the assumption in the U.S. was that prepaid mobile phone contracts were for consumers with bad credit who couldn’t qualify for a typical contract, Jasani says. Prepaid was perceived as less attractive than typical contracts, though in other parts of the world that was not true. Most consumers prepaid for cell phone service, with the benefit that they knew exactly how much their bill was going to…