Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2021 i Inc. Magazine

When I was a kid, I worked as a laborer for a carpenter. I made minimum wage: four bucks an hour. After school and on weekends, and six days a week during the summer, digging ditches, hauling cinder blocks, and running to the lumberyard. And that was enough money, along with a small scholarship—which fortunately, required only mediocre grades-to pay for what was then a pretty pricey private college. I couldn’t do that today—and not just because my back would hurt. The average private college costs four times what it did for me, yet the minimum wage has not even doubled. Even working full time for the federal minimum would pay only about one-third of the bill. But that’s not just my hypothetical problem. Today, many adults—not just school-age kids—previously…

THE ENTREPRENEUR Taly Matiteyahu Co-founder and CEO of audio-only dating app Blink Date In 2012, while living in Tel Aviv, I ate dinner at a restaurant that operated in total darkness as a way to call attention to the experience of blind people. This gave me the idea for a nonvisual approach to dating that relied on personality to match people, rather than physical appearance. Then, in February 2020, Netflix launched Love Is Blind, a reality show founded on a similar premise, which helped inspire me to pursue my nearly decade-old idea and create a “blind” dating service: Blink Date. Currently, my co-founder, Laura Ciccone, and I have around 400 enthusiastic beta testers lined up to make an audio-fueled connection. But we need more trial users to ensure matches, to…

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t When we were doing research for my third book, Good to Great, I was dubious of anything having to do with “lead ership.” I had long believed that if you observe a successful company over time, you find its success is not the result of a single leader. As extraordinary as Steve Jobs was, Apple has succeeded beyond him—meaning it’s ultimately about building a company that doesn’t depend on a single leader, right? The founders of our country understood that. So I was deeply skeptical of studying leadership at all. But my research team revolted. They told me that, in studying the inflections of companies that went from “good” to “great,” it was…

Recruiting, hiring, and retaining the right team members have always been top challenges for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). They face stiff competition from larger companies targeting the same pool of talent and bringing greater resources to the fight. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has only compounded the situation. To succeed in this environment, SMBs must leverage all the tools at their disposal. Fortunately, they have many options. “Pre-pandemic conditions saw the tightest labor market in history, making it very challenging for employers to find the talent needed to support their growth plans,” says Claudine Zachara, president and COO of ThinkWhy, a firm that forecasts employment trends and talent supply and demand. “Interestingly, post-COVID conditions are no different, depending on the industry you serve. Industries like professional services, technology, and finance…

Whole Foods: Slumming It in Aisle 3 THE HIPPIES HAD AN IDEA. It was 1978, and college dropout John Mackey had been living in a vegetarian co-op in Austin when he and his girlfriend, Renee Lawson Hardy, decided to open a small natural-foods store. They were 25 and 21, respectively, and borrowed $45,000 to get their dream off the ground. Calling their venture Safer Way, the couple rented an old house and converted the first floor into the market, the second floor into a cafe, and the top floor into their apartment. When the land-lord discovered they were storing merchandise in their living quarters, they lost the apartment, leading them—naturally—to bunk among the soybeans and red lentils in the store itself. There was no shower in the market so—naturally—they used…

Shelly Bell knows an acquisition can be a game changer for an organization. “In the world of investment, to be valued is to be acquired,” says the founder and CEO of Black Girl Ventures, a Fort Belvoir, Virginia-based funding community for Black and Brown women entrepreneurs. An attachment to a bigger company can give you more leverage to scale. Plus, every payout that goes to an underrepresented founder helps build generational wealth, she says. So, in 2019, when a group that similarly works with Black and Brown women entrepreneurs approached her about a sale, she was both intrigued and flattered. “I was actually excited that I had built something valuable enough to be acquired,” says Bell. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, we’ve built something that people want to buy.’…

PAM Stanczewski wasn’t the least bit surprised by the dead moose on the front porch. Several years ago, she and her husband had traveled from Ohio to visit her hometown in Canada. When they arrived at her grandmother’s house, the massive moose was lying, frozen, on the porch. Her husband was stunned; she herself took it in stride. Her grandmother was many things-including a skilled hunter who would use the animal for everything from stew to moosehide mukluks. “Similar to Alaska” is how Stanczewski describes where she grew up-Hay River, a town of roughly 3,500 in the Northwest Territories, on the edge of Great Slave Lake- which is at least partly frozen for eight months of the year. Today, Stanczewski is the founder and CEO of Central Point Partners, a…

“As someone once said, ‘Never waste a crisis.’ We used the pandemic to build, meet more people via Zoom, plug any gaps, and reassess existing assumptions. Now we’re going to be expanding into new formats. We’re excited to take our app out of beta and launch podcasts.” SNIGDHA SUR Founder and CEO The Juggernaut Sur founded the Juggernaut, a media company focused on South Asians, in 2018. Last year, she was an Inc. Female Founders 100 honoree. “People who tried a product for the first time during the pandemic and had a good experience with it will continue using it. We’re seeing that the people who used Capsule for the first time in March and April and May 2020—when they were really vulnerable and needed it—are actually using Capsule more…

Ironside HR succeeded by hiring from outside the industry and supporting staff needs Sometimes getting fired can be a good thing. Doug Carter was fired a year into running a startup's staffing division. “They did me a favor,” he says. His former employer struggled for several years, then shut down. Carter decided it was time to make his dream of starting a business a reality. He and his wife Kara Carter co-founded Ironside Human Resources, a health care staffing company, in 2011. They focused on giving great service to a handful of clients seeking permanent job placements. They remained at two employees until 2017, when joining the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, which required having at least three employees. “We went from $450,000 in revenue at the end of…

Digital communications and PR agency EvolveMKD nearly doubled revenue in 2020—a testament to the results it delivers for clients and its unique company culture Before Megan Driscoll founded EvolveMKD, a New York City-based public relations and digital marketing agency, she asked herself, “Why does the world need another PR agency?” The answer came down to feedback she has received her entire career. Clients value her expertise, but the true differentiator is how she treats their businesses like her own. At EvolveMKD, Driscoll and her team make every decision with a client's best interest at heart, even if it is at the detriment of the bottom line. Since its launch in 2014, EvolveMKD has expanded beyond PR to offer digital and social media marketing, infl uencer relationship management, brand strategy, and…

This founder and CEO overcame her health struggles with natural remedies, then started Pink Stork to help others do the same. Pink Stork Founder Amy Suzanne Upchurch did not have easy pregnancies—at least not with her first three children. While her husband was in the military, she was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe type of nausea and vomiting. “I was juggling moving around the country, being pregnant, living in and out of hospitals; and my husband was gone. It was just a challenging time across every area of my life,” she says. After spending weeks in the hospital, Upchurch, only three months into her first pregnancy, contracted a life­threatening blood infection. Doctors told her she had 24 hours left to live. Her husband came straight from military training to…

Roger West Creative & Code drives results for its clients and attracts top talent to its award-winning workplace Combine hustle and talent, and good things happen. Underscore your work with a focus on service, and good becomes great. That is the formula Roger West Creative & Code uses to drive results for clients, in turn, fueling its own revenue growth. CEO Michael Westafer founded the full-service digital marketing agency in Tampa, Fla., in 2007. At the time, blending creative, design, and technology under one roof was a novel concept. Westafer, a designer by trade, knew he could create an atmosphere that inspired creatives to do their best work while cultivating collaboration between departments. “I always say the good stuff happens in between disciplines,” he notes. Today, there are thousands of…

IN 2005, FOUR BANKS told Laura Spaulding (above, center) her business plan wasn’t good enough for a loan. So she told the fifth bank she needed a home equity loan to replace her windows—and used the $15,000 to start her business. “I never got windows,” Spaulding says. Instead, she’s spent the 15 years since renovating other people’s homes (sort of) in her role as founder and CEO of Tampa-based Spaulding Decon—her biohazard and crime scene cleanup business. As a patrol officer in Kansas City, Missouri, Spaulding got the idea for the business (which also cleans up meth labs and hoarder lairs) after learning that the families of homicide victims often had to take care of the mess themselves. From that original $15,000, Spaulding has grown the business to 37 franchises…

“THIS YEAR SHOWED US THAT PEOPLE ARE EMOTIONALLY CONNECTED TO TRAVEL—IT’S ESSENTIAL TO WHO WE ARE.” How will travel change over the next year? We’ll see the continued prioritization of domestic travel, as people explore their own cities, venture out on weekend getaways, and visit friends and family across the country. Hygiene and sanitation will remain front-of-mind, and vaccine passports will likely be required for international travel. Travel-focused businesses should continue to ingrain public health protocols, and create more contactless experiences to put consumers at ease. What will change over the next five years? Global travel will continue at its pre-pandemic rate of acceleration. The need for vaccine passports will have become a relic of the past. But traveling for business is going to look very different. It is hard…

AS THE HOST of MTV’s 20-season-strong Ridiculousness, former pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek is best known for making people laugh. But he is also a serial entrepreneur and investor; his venture studio, Dyrdek Machine, has exited five companies at $450 million total. Dyrdek’s recipe for success? Organization, exercise—and brain training. Dyrdek wakes up every morning and settles into a Somadome (pictured here), which uses colors, binaural beats (Google it), and a choice of ambient noise or guided meditations with titles like “love” and “heal.” Dyrdek prefers “manifest.” Before buying the Somadome (for a not-insignificant $25,000), Dyrdek says, meditation “was so hard for me to even think about, let alone do.” The Somadome, he says, has solved all that, and has even helped him make business decisions and plan for the future.…

I’m a big fan of children’s literature. In terms of sage advice for entrepreneurs, it’s hard to top Aesop’s fable about the dog and his bone. And Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle can’t be beat for conveying an invaluable lesson about how to treat the other turtles in your pond. But then there’s The Giving Tree. Some people view it as a beautiful tale of a tree’s selfless love. Who are they kidding? Shel Silverstein’s story about a tree that gives up everything it has to a self-centered boy is one of the most depressing children’s books ever. Unfortunately, it also happens to be a pretty accurate representation of many relationships between venture capitalists—the boy—and founders who give away more and more equity until there’s nothing left. At our firm,…

Sometimes, all you need to come up with a brilliant business idea is a little peace of mind. In 2013, after 30 days of meditation and journaling, Nnenna Stella identified a gap in the fashion accessories market: stylish head wraps. The Brooklyn-based waitress had been scouring the internet for a fashionable wrap after a “transformative” experience wrapping up her hair, but couldn’t find anything that appealed to her. “I wanted to express some thing new, beyond lipstick and earrings, so I put on a head wrap, and I loved the feeling,” Stella says. “I didn’t know a piece of fabric had the power to do that.” In 2014, she founded the Wrap Life, a hair accessories brand that sells head wraps, bandies, and turbanettes. And now, what began as a…

“Not sure what that says,” Michael Dubin swirls his finger at a scribble of graffiti on a pair of garage doors. “But, anyway, this is it.” It’s late March, and the co-founder and longtime CEO of Dollar Shave Club has brought me to an alley in Venice, California. To the place where it all started. In January, Dubin announced his departure as CEO of the company he’d sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2017. A week later, he signed off on an all-hands Zoom, closed the laptop, and entered the life of an entrepreneurial empty nester. “I was like, ‘So, good luck, everybody,’” Dubin recalls. Now he stands before padlocked doors, behind which lies not some industrial-chic office space or bustling warehouse, but an actual two-car garage that was…

FOR a company that offers unsecured loans and other financing-more than $7 billion to date-to doctors, lawyers, and architects, you’d figure that trust is important. And trust certainly suffuses the culture of Bankers Healthcare Group, a professional practice lender with headquarters in both Syracuse, New York, and Davie, Florida. Co-founder Eric Castro lived it in the Marine Corps, which he says emphasized the idea of “developing a level of trust through a certain level of vulnerability.” Castro now calls himself the “common sense officer” -co-founder Albert Crawford is chairman and CEO-which is kind of a promotion for the former grunt and M1 tank driver. “That experience gave me everything I needed,” he says, “to recognize what an ecosystem looks like in order to develop the type of bond that I…

The endodontist-owned and led management team makes Endo1 Partners different from other dental service organizations The key for nearly every service business's success is investing time in its highest value activities. For dentists, that activity is patient care. Every minute spent on administrative and management tasks means less time to treat patients. Recognizing this as dentists themselves, co-CEOs Drs. Daryl Dudum and Matthew Haddad, and co-chief clinical officers (co­CCOs) Drs. Mark Haddad and Darron Rishwain, established the dental partnership organization Endo1 Partners. Of the more than 200,000 dentists in the U.S., less than 3 percent are endodontists, or specialists in root canals. Despite their rarity, these dental professionals need the same kind of business support that many other dental practices require. That includes everything from marketing to accounting to human…

OP2 Labs optimizes collagen proteins to hasten healing for medical injuries and athletes When Alexander Kunz and Jeff Byers were Navy SEALs, they were always pushing their bodies to the limit. The commercial supplements they used to assist in healing training injuries were focused on building muscle, not aiding in recovery. “We learned there wasn’t an existing supplement market to provide a true, full-body benefit,” Kunz says. They decided to create their own, cofounding OP2 Labs in 2012. CEO Kunz says that while American companies primarily focused on whey protein, they homed in on collagen. After two years of research and development, they launched their supplements in 2014. ONE FORMULATION, TWO BRANDS While their products all use the same unique nano-hydrolyzed collagen base, OP2 Labs created two brands for two…

Black Bear Technology Solutions uses strategic partnerships for growth Rapid growth doesn't always equal success. A company too focused on winning contracts can lose sight of what initially made the company successful. Characteristics like flexibility, responsiveness to client needs, and attention to detail ultimately set your business apart, says Black Bear Technology Solutions' founder and CEO Kevin Andres. Andres founded the company to tailor solutions, processes, and procedures to clients and their mission requirements. The strategy has worked well. “We're fortunate that a large part of our business development is answering the phone,” Andres said, as referrals and recommendations drive new partnerships. Though widely known as a technology company, Black Bear's capabilities are more diverse, and the company teams up with strategic partners for any roles it can't fill internally.…

Jumpem is a marketing-department-for-hire, providing strategy, design, and SEO Chris Gardner and Dennis Plunkett were using SEO and digital marketing tactics for several of their own businesses when they decided to help others. “We saw an opportunity to replicate our success and leverage our experience to help other businesses,” says Gardner, co-founder and managing partner of Jumpem. They wanted to provide better client service and a higher return on investment to companies using digital marketing. Their focus the first few years was on several industries in their local, central-Florida community. But in 2016, they began working with one of the country's largest off -campus student housing developers. That initial success led to Jumpem expanding heavily in that sector, and they now serve clients in this industry across the country. “But…

Wholesale pricing and stellar customer service fueled a decade of growth for Automotive Avenues—with more expansion underway Some car dealers get a bad rap. Automotive Avenues, on the other hand, has a 4.8-star rating on Google, based on nearly 5,000 reviews. Since 2010, the Wall Township, New Jersey-based used car dealer has been coupling wholesale pricing with first-class customer service—a “winning formula,” says Bill Solko, founder and dealership principal. Automotive Avenues is the largest independent used-car dealership in the state of New Jersey, according to IHS Automotive, and has ranked on the Inc. 5000 for the last three years. Despite the pandemic, the company continued to grow, earning the No. 86 spot on the 2021 Inc. 5000 regionals list. Now, Solko is expanding to support more inventory and more satisfied…

“HELLA COCKTAIL CEO AND CO-FOUNDER JOMAREE PINKARD: “Jack Belsito and I played pickup basketball together for probably a decade before either of us figured out what the other did off the court. There was never any talk about careers (hoops is the great equalizer), so I didn’t know what Jack did for a living. But others referred to him as Snapple Jack, and by 2015, I’d realized he was the former CEO of Snapple. I’d been running Hella Cocktail—which sells craft beverages, premium bitters, and cocktail mixers-for three years. So naturally I told Jack this when I found out he’d run Snapple. I can’t remember who asked whom, but one day we ended up at Jack’s office to talk without all the basketball noise. And we’ve been meeting for breakfast…

Trimming a roster of products and services can feel antithetical to entrepreneurial vision. Success is often synonymous with expansion. But downsizing could be the best way to get funding and save your brand. “Many startups are surprised to learn we prefer companies that have perfected one product or service line,” says Kyle Asman, managing partner of Backswing Ventures. “We advise them to focus on aggressive growth with a single product before increasing their offerings. But if they do need to correct for adding on too quickly, it helps to see reducing those items as a shrewd business move rather than as a mistake.” Here are a few tips for cutting back-and catching the eye of investors. DECLUTTER YOUR SHELVES “More buying options often require greater consumer effort,” says Gautham Vadakkepatt,…

Even before my company, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, began 2021 with our 10th-straight quarter of triple-digit gains, our competitors might have been tempted to assume we were working on borrowed time. With meteoric growth comes challenges. Among them: It’s often difficult to sustain a company culture that retains team members. Instead, “churn ’em and burn ’em” ensues. What my competitors don’t know: I learned early on that the cost of losing a team member is higher than what many CEOs have calculated. In 1999, four years after founding my first company, I partnered with a celebrity chef to back the opening of his first restaurant. It was an immediate success; guests with reservations often experienced 45-minute waits. Chefs classically trained in France, however, can have a penchant for curse words…

THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC and subsequent recession have brought many companies to the brink. At the same time, the fortunes of the 1 percent continue to rise, widening the racial and gender wealth gaps. Depending on which side of the issue you’re on, it’s either the most crucial or the most fraught moment ever to address a long-simmering debate: What’s a livable wage? And how responsible are employers for paying one? The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t budged since 2009-the longest the U.S. has delayed an increase since the inception of the minimum wage in 1938. And while a hotly contested $15 national wage did not wind up in the latest stimulus package, the issue isn’t going away; President Biden will likely pursue it later in his…

THE ICY WEATHER SYSTEM that trundled up the Atlantic Seaboard and glazed New York City on February 14, 2007, was nasty, but not the worst that airlines had ever confronted. Mainline carriers such as American and Delta knew the drill. They canceled flights in anticipation while moving equipment and crews to sidestep the storm and minimize disruptions. The newer kid on the tarmac, JetBlue, flew into the storm face first. And flopped. The low-cost carrier was barely seven years old, growing rapidly and happily because customers loved its panache, pricing, and product—comfortable seating, free satellite TV, and freewheeling yet attentive flight crews. Concentrating its fleet in New York and Boston made the carrier more vulnerable to winter weather, though, and as the storm began to wreak havoc on operations, JetBlue…

FREE coffee is one of the most common perks at companies around the world, but you won’t find it at Venice, California-based Mud\Wtr (pronounced “Mud Water”). The direct- to-consumer beverage brand makes a coffee alternative derived from a powdered blend of masala chai, chaga mushrooms, and other ingredients. For co-founder and CEO Shane Heath, Mud\Wtr’s core product represents a rejection of the “always-on” Silicon Valley work culture that, in his mind, leads to burnout for countless tech workers. Heath would know. As an art director and designer at a number of tech startups in the Bay Area, he drank three to four cups of coffee per day. Anxiety and jitters ensued. “Hustle culture and the ‘sleep when you’re dead’ mentality led me to believe that coffee was going to allow…

ORIENTATION for new hires at the software company Greenlight Guru begins with co-founder David DeRam saying the same five words: “We’re gonna get weird here.” During the next 90 minutes, DeRam, also the company’s CEO, talks about the “vibrations” the company gives off and how that attracts people with a specific kind of “energy.” If that sounds too fluffy for an organization that makes quality-management software for medical device companies, you may not be Greenlight Guru material. The firm, founded in 2013 and based in Indianapolis, operates under the premise that culture determines results, and the culture of Greenlight Guru is one that allows employees to feel emotionally supported. Part of the foundation for this support is the company’s mindset coach, Kevin Bailey, who has worked with Greenlight’s employees since…

More than 3,000 companies vied for the honor of being named to Inc.’s 2021 Best Workplaces list. We calculated engagement scores and benefits scores for each of them, in six size categories, based on the number of employees. Benefits and perks included health insurance and 401(k)s, child care, and paid-leave offerings, and were assigned a 1 to 4 weighting. These are the companies that exceeded our threshold score: the 2021 Best Workplaces honorees. AchieveIt ACI Transport Affinity AgAmerica Lending AgBiome AgileAssets AIM Consulting Alation Aleon Pharma International AlertMedia ALKU Allego Alloy Alterra Advisors The Anti Appcast Applause Aqueduct Technologies ARGI Financial Group The Art of Education University Asana Ashling Partners ATB Technologies Atrium Attentive Avèro Advisors Avicado Construction Technology Services Axis Security Aytm Backblaze Bankers Healthcare Group beam Beam Dental…

Wireless industry solution provider Live Wireless shows what it takes to make it in a competitive industry: nimbleness, patience, and balance No single decision or factor fueled Live Wireless's explosive growth. “It was 19 years of learning, failing, and not giving up,” says President and Founder Mike Orlando. The Toms River, New Jersey-based business provides products and services to wireless companies and distributors, including asset management, device refurbishing, and buyback and trade-in programs so they can keep up with the soaring demand for mobile devices. For Orlando, the recipe for longevity includes staying nimble and lean, understanding market trends, and always providing value to clients. Over the years, Orlando learned to use the company's size to its advantage, focusing on niche client pain points larger competitors overlook. Live Wireless stores…

Creative Digital Agency grows fast with an audience-first approach to its market niche San Francisco entrepreneur Jin Kim launched Creative Digital Agency (CDA) in 2017, after leading the services team at a mobile marketing firm. Starting his agency in the hyper-competitive San Francisco Bay Area, Kim opted to rely on the hands-on operational knowledge he and his founding team brought to the startup, rather than hire veteran business managers to steer the launch, and he says it’s the best move he could have made. Instead of spending big bucks to bring high-level executives on board, CDA was built by people who understood how to do the actual work: running ad campaigns, producing videos, and working with clients day to day. By 2020, CDA’s year-over-year revenue had increased by more than…

Product design agency Funsize wins with a partnership-driven approach After establishing product design careers in New York City during the early days of the mobile boom, husband and wife Anthony and Natalie Armendariz returned to Austin, Texas, to start something of their own. In 2013, they founded Funsize, a product design agency focused on serving enterprise design teams and startups through a long-term partnership approach they call the “Allied Team Model.” OPPORTUNITIES EARNED THROUGH TRUST Having spent time on both the in-house and agency sides of design, Anthony and Natalie believe that the successful agencies of the future will be those that can best serve the individual needs of in-house design leaders and their teams. To do that, Funsize provides services that extend beyond the typical scope of digital product…