Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Inc. Magazine

If there's a common trait among the entrepreneurs featured in this year's Female Founders 250, it is grit. Mika Shino of candymaker Issei encountered setback after setback while trying to manufacture mochi-style gummies, and ended up rolling and cutting 3,000 pounds of candy by hand to fulfill a major order from Whole Foods. Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare suddenly found herself front and center when her internet security and services company got the call to restore websites that went dark in the early days of the IsraelHamas war. Then there's BJK Enterprises founder Billie Jean King, who has spent much of her career fighting for equality on and off the tennis court, becoming a legend in both realms. Despite the challenges, these three women—and the 247 others on our list—persisted. Executive…

When growing her inclusive underwear brand, Woxer, Alexandra Fuente (above) turned to an unexpectedly effective casting strat egy. “For our first six months of business, we were on a shoestring budget,” she says. “We found models by sending Instagram DMs to locals—but we soon exhausted that method. So, my girlfriend, Steph Fuentes, who is our art director, got on Tinder. Her first image showed her with a camera, and her bio said she was looking for models for the brand. She got about 100 matches; 60 were very responsive and 20 participated in photo shoots, in exchange for free product. That brought diversity to the brand and helped us create a sense of community. Now, we do open-call auditions for paid talent.”…

“I started reading the book almost immediately after it came out, but never ended up finishing it,” says founder and CEO Gaurav Banga (left) about On Intelligence, JeffHawkins's 2004 exploration of the human brain and how it relates to machine intelligence. A decade later, Banga started thinking about cyber risk management and wondered if AI might help that sector. So he revisited the book—which inspired him to launch his San Jose, California-based cyber risk management startup, Balbix, in 2017. “The book describes how everything we do is performed by thousands of models inside our brain. It made me realize I shouldn't have been searching for one AI algorithm that solves every problem in cybersecurity. The Balbix Brain—my company's product—has exactly 106 AI models working in an ensemble. They all contribute…

With no data and no prototype—just a team of engineers and sketches from the UCSD library—Molly He, Michael Previte, and Matthew Kellinger sold investors on Element Biosciences. Their San Diego-based startup promised to democratize genomic sequenc ing, a fundamental tool scientists use in biology and medicine. It would reinvent all elements of a DNA sequencing platform by creating a cross-functional product and software service that would cost less than those of competitors. Feedback from investors helped the trio shape the company as it grew—and eventually helped it amass a whopping $406 million in funding.…

IN 2019, MY COMPANY had about 40 full-time employees; it was growing just fine, but I was in search of inspiration. I read one of Bill Gates's year-end recaps in which he reflected on his achievements over the previous year. He wrote about his penchant for regularly taking stock of his work and personal life. It reminded me of an article I had read several years prior about his famous biannual “think weeks.” This stuck with me, the idea of taking stock, and taking time to really think. It occurred to me I hadn't done either—maybe ever. I also thought, well, if this guy who has run a very successful company—and has one of the greatest philanthropic organizations in the world—if he does that, then there's something to it. I…

For Shelley Zalis, the easy way isn't worth it. She's a lifelong solar eclipse chaser, jetting from China to the Galápagos Islands to Turkey's Black Sea coast as required just for the chance of glimpsing this rare phenomenon. And in her career, she's set similarly celestial goals. She pioneered consumer research on the internet with her first company, Online Testing Exchange, selling it to Ipsos in 2010 for $80 million. Now, she's founder and CEO of the Female Quotient, a media, events, and consulting business focused on closing the gender gap in the workplace. To date, the company has built a digital community of more than three million working women globally. But in blazing her trail of business success, Zalis—a wife and mother of three—toiled in a constant calculus of…

SUCCESS often breeds success—but triumphs also arise out of necessity. Consider that Airbnb, Uber, and Rent the Runway started during the Great Recession. In many ways, the past year was defined by similar tumult. While the U.S. never technically entered a recession, the retrenchment in investment and ad spending paired with the psychological—if not direct—toll of tech layoffs yielded tough times indeed. But female founders are nothing if not resilient, and their achievements defied the conditions they faced, giving us cause to expand our list to 250 of them. They're not ranked, but they are organized around themes. In the pages that follow, you'll find snapshots of courage from women who've overcome trials—such as keeping the internet running in war zones, coping with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, or…

Founder of Billie Jean King Enterprises One detail you may not know about tennis icon Billie Jean King: She's long been a savvy businessperson. Before she made history more than 50 years ago for trouncing former men's tennis champion Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, King coowned several tennis tournaments. She was then in her 20s, and her portfolio included the Oakland Pro Championships and the Billie Jean King Invitational, which was part of the all-women Virginia Slims series. A year earlier, in 1972, King refused to play in the next year's U.S. Open unless all the women playing got paid the same as the men. However, she didn't just protest; she actively worked behind the scenes to secure a sponsor. “I did that so I could go…

26 SEALING THE DEAL Going Fishing for Sharks FOUNDER AND CEO OF PRESSED ROOTS Piersten Gaines's first real pitch, to Shark Tank‘s “Mr. Wonderful,” Kevin O'Leary, did not go well. To start, her concept for Pressed Roots—a Dallas-based salon chain focused on curly and textured hair—was pretty far out of his comfort zone. “He had no idea what I was talking about. He doesn't even have hair,” Gaines says, laughing. She notes O'Leary also didn't get that her target market spanned well beyond professional Black women. “I had to explain to him that textured hair goes across every single race,” says Gaines, 35. “And [it's not just] that top echelon. Black women think about their hair differently from other demographics: It's not a luxury, it's a priority.” Gaines ultimately fine-tuned…

Ever since Alan Turing posed the question “Can machines think?” in 1950, fellow scientists have thrown themselves into programming machines to take over tasks traditionally considered to require human cognition. The central question of his defining “Imitation Game” paper is more essential than ever. After OpenAI launched its shot across the bow with the November 2022 release of ChatGPT, kicking off a ferocious AI arms race, startups across industries from supply chains to SaaS, and major players including Amazon and Google, accelerated their AI product rollouts. Investors were quick to fan the flames. In 2023, they directed $1 of every $3 into AI companies. The first quarter of 2024 is expected to keep pace, per PitchBook analyst Brendan Burke. Paris-based OpenAI competitor Mistral, not even nine months old, fetched a…

Insider Expert advice from Inc.'s inner circle The question Chloe Songer always gets is, “Isn't recycling a hoax?” Certainly, it has its challenges, as she and her co-founder, Stuart Ahlum, discovered after they launched their fully recyclable shoe brand, Thousand Fell, in 2018. With the cost of recycling each part surpassing $30 per pair, the economics just didn't make sense. But, the duo hypothesized, they could solve for that if they put the right systems in place. Now, SuperCircle, their two-year-old circular supply chain company—which has grown 4x year-over-year—stands to make textile waste a thing of the past. Songer explains: “In 2021, the fashion brand Reformation approached us about a footwear collab, and we realized there was a bigger opportunity. Brands had made circularity commitments, but there was no critical…

Countless companies have elevated everyday items to iconic: Apple upgraded the nerdy MP3 player, Nest turned thermostats into real estate selling points, and Aesop made hand soap a status symbol. Ryan Babenzien and Arjan Singh, founders of NYCbased Jolie, set out to do the same for the showerhead, transforming a basic plumbing fixture into a $165 wellness tool to be coveted. The founders knew their new product had to look alluring—but it also had to appeal to customers’ vanity. It does so, albeit indirectly, with an internal filter that removes contaminants the company says can undermine skin and hair health. Beauty obses sives are buying it. Jolie has sold more than 200,000 units to date and brought in $28 million in revenue in 2023 with no venture funding. For design…

The most stressful part of Pistola founder Grace Na's day isn't what you'd expect for the founder of a denim company with 40 employees and a factory right in Los Angeles. It's placing a lunch order for her head of tech and pattern and her head financier. They are, after all, her in-laws-and the reason she launched her L.A.-based denim brand in 2013. When Grace married her husband, Kevin, she joined the family business, a white-label denim company called Eunina, that Esther and Yoon Na had launched in 1989, 10 years after immigrating to the U.S. from South Korea. But Grace dreamed of starting a brand of her own. So, she incubated Pistola under Eunina's umbrella and, after a few profitable years, branched off, bringing the Nas along with her.…

Rohit Bhargava | INC.'S NON-OBVIOUS BUSINESS BOOKS The founder of the Non-Obvious Company, Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator and best-selling author of nine books. What vibe do people most want from their place of work? Answer: coffee shop cozy. This isn't a conclusion based on my personal experience (though I am a coffee shop regular). It comes from the 2023 Gensler Global Workplace Survey, which asked 14,000 workers in nine countries about the workplace experiences they like best. Having an office modeled after a coffee shop was among the top three choices in every nation and came out first in several, including the U.S. This is one of many interesting insights into the future of the places we inhabit sprinkled throughout Design for a Radically Changing World, a new…

Co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare Almost immediately after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that led to the war in Gaza, another battle was brewing. Hackers first went after the Israeli internet with DDoS attacks, deluging websites that provide critical alerts and information to civilians. Cyberattackers then went after Palestinian sites, too—particularly in the banking sector. Michelle Zatlyn, 44, was on the virtual frontlines. Within 12 minutes of the initial rocket assaults, the San Francisco-based company she co-founded, Cloudflare, detected and began mitigating attacks from hackers, presumed to be state actors, as well as civilians and so-called hacktivists, according to legal experts. In the weeks that followed, the company, which provides cybersecurity services to about 20 percent of the world's websites, automatically identified and stopped DDoS attacks that…

4 Making BoozeFree Drinks Pop With more chart-topping singles than Diana Ross, Katy Perry, 39, has proved she can craft a hit. The American Idol judge is now imbuing that Midas touch into De Soi, a nonalcoholic apéritifs maker she co-founded alongside Morgan McLachlan in 2020. The two met through a mutual friend that year while they were both pregnant. McLachlan, 44, had already founded the liquor company Amass, but more recently had begun experimenting with nonalcoholic options. That resonated with Perry, particularly as hangovers were just hitting differently than they did in her 20s. The moms-to-be mind-melded, and De Soi was born—just as the $11 billion no-alcohol opportunity was catching fire with younger generations. With McLachlan as the alchemist and Perry as De Soi's self-proclaimed chief opinion officer—she gives…

On July 5 of last year, Judge Keathan Frink of the 17th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida logged on to Zoom to preside over a hearing and found himself staring at a man with an American flag cape wrapped around his shoulders, an American flag bandanna around his head, and a picture of Abraham Lincoln (also wearing a flag bandanna) on his T-shirt. With a thick beard and fair skin, he looked like Randy Savage, the irascible 1980s professional wrestler. He introduced himself as Reverend Justice. Florida has a reputation for eccentrics, but this one stood out, in shades of MAGA, Parrothead, and hippie counterculture all blended together. He'd shown up at a Fort Lauderdale civil rights rally three days earlier, marching in the rain with thousands of social justice…

Think you don't have enough time to keep up with email? Don't try that excuse with Mark Cuban. The billionaire investor and founder—most recently—of the public benefit corporation Cost Plus Drugs is still filming episodes of Shark Tank, still a minor ity stakeholder in the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise—and still legendary for returning cold emails. He tells Inc. he receives around 700 emails a day and estimates that he responds to around 200 of those. And he does it in the same 24 hours the rest of us have. How? We reached out to the master entrepreneurial multitasker to ask for his top three tips to manage your inbox. Via email. 1 | Answer your emails as quickly as possible. “An unread email staring you in the face is annoying,”…

“The first few years, we weren't really a tech business. We were a sales and marketingdriven business. We called people who were selling stuff online to get them to add our payment method. “None of us cofounders were engineers, so when we started hiring them, that was a big challenge. How do you manage something that you don't understand yourself? If I were managing a salesperson—since I've done sales myself—it would be easy to evaluate: Are they good? Are they bad? What should they improve? When I talked to our engineers, I was dumbstruck. I was constantly asking myself, ‘Is this supposed to take this long to code?’ I had no idea. ‘Should it take this much time to build a product?’ I had no clue. “Eventually, I sat down…

Esther Perel has heard it all. There's the tale of a marriage born of the Iraq War and the one about a twice-married (to each other) couple. And, of course, there's the classic couple's dilemma: She wants change, and he can't let go. Perel has explored these stories and more in her podcast Where Should We Begin? While her work with couples sealed her pop-culture notoriety (she played herself on The Morning Show), she's also an author, a valued consultant to companies, an adviser to founders and leaders, and a sought-after speaker. Her 14-person media company manages all of it—as well as her online relational-intelligence courses, and her conversation-inducing card game. Here's how Perel, 65, finds order in it all—and helps others make sense of the unexpected. 1 WIDEN YOUR…

Founder of Issei Despite debuting her company's all-natural, vegan Mochi Gummies at 170 Whole Foods locations just eight months after starting up, Mika Shino's path to retail success was anything but assured. While Shino, 52, had grown up in Japan eating mochi, traditional Japanese cakes made from pounded sweet rice and water, the former professional dancer and mom of two found herself out of her depth when it came to launching a business to turn her favored childhood treat into a candy. “I didn't even know how to make a barcode. I didn't know what SKU meant,” says the Bethesda, Maryland-based entrepre neur. “Every single bit of the packaging I had to Google and figure out.” But she learned—fast. In late 2021, Shino sent Whole Foods candy buyers a prototype…

Karen Robinovitz & Sara Schiller Stirring Up Hope in Unexpected Places KEEPING IT TOGETHER Co-founders of the Sloomoo Institute TWO things helped Karen Robinovitz, 52 (near right), and Sara Schiller, 53, overcome the most devastating periods in their lives: friends and slime. In 2015, a series of strokes left Schiller's husband disabled and made her the sole caretaker of their two daughters, one of whom has special needs and requires assistance with daily activities like eating and getting dressed. A year later, Robinovitz's husband of 14 years passed away at 51; and, in short order, her cousin was killed in the Parkland high school shooting. “I didn't know a human could carry that much pain and grief,” she says. “I did not think I would recover.” A glimmer of hope…

After nearly two decades defending owners of small to medium-size businesses, Minneapolis-based attorney Aaron Hall understands the pain points of litigation and has a few words of advice on avoiding the financial strain. Set a budget In Hall's experience, businesses typically allocate 1 percent of annual revenue to legal expenses. He says most small and medium-size businesses deal with litigation every 10 to 15 years. Get coverage Hall advises buying employment practices liability insurance to cover legal expenses for suits brought by employees. “An EPLI policy covers all of your attorney fees and whatever you're liable for,” he says. Lawyer up early Having a lawyer from the beginning of your business can be a money saver, says Hall. When you're hit with a lawsuit, what would have been a 1…

Joe Thomas and his co-founders were two weeks away from running out of money for their software startup when, in 2016, they launched a new product and went all in on prerecorded videos as a workplace communication tool. That product generated thousands of sign-ups within a week, literally saving the business. In 2023, after raising $200 million in funding and attracting clients such as LinkedIn and Uber, San Francisco-based Loom was acquired by collaboration software company Atlassian for $975 million. We sat down with Thomas, Loom's CEO, to hear about joining forces with an 11,000-person organization. “In 2019, the co-CEO of Atlassian reached out, saying he would love to meet. We had just raised our Series B, so I told him we were going to keep building independently. Still, we…