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Search the database below to find stories and insights from hundreds of founders who have filled out our Small Biz Database Survey.
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Small Business Database July 2020
| Company Name | Industry | Description | Backstory | Years in Business | Hours / Week | # Employees | Full-Time | Cost to Launch | Year 1 Revenue | Current Operating Cost | Current Revenue | Profit Margin | How did you get your first customer | What's the biggest challenge founders in your industry face | Where do you wish you'd spent money sooner | Where do you see exciting and untapped potential |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Txtrev | Information Services | 1 | 10 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 700 | 0 | 2,000 | 0 | 0 | no customers yet | Procuring customers, competing with big guys like Google or Amazon | Advertising | For small to medium businesses with a social media presence | ||
| Hamilton Marketing | Marketing & Advertising | 19 | 50 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 50,000 | 75,000 | 300,000 | 75 | Referral | Cash flow and exit plan | Software | Helping companies and people not familiar with direct mail, printing and data. | ||
| 1984 LLC | Computer Software | 2 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 25,000 | 40,000 | 10,000 | 200,000 | 95 | I built a prototype augmented reality app and put it on the App Store – people found me through that. | Right now? Reduced budgets – few companies are looking to build shiny, new, augmented reality things post-COVID. | Latest hardware to build and test augmented reality products. | Finger controls in augmented reality. Real-time multiplayer augmented reality. | ||
| Skin Grip | Hospital & Health Care | 2 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 500,000 | 80 | Selling on ebay | FDA regulations | a bookkeeper | Everywhere | ||
| Entire Productions | Events Services | We create bold events that drive guest engagement and brand evangelism. | I was a classical violinist and a jazz vocalist with a lot of bookings for private events. Instead of turning down events on dates that I was already booked for I would explain to the client that I can bring in a group that is as good as I am and possibly better and manage them. This mushroomed into a lot of jazz and classical ensemble requests but then quickly grew to include bands, DJs, aerialists, cigar bars, models, dancers, etc. our main business is providing talent for high and social and corporate events, but now we are also planning those events from end to end, a recently new division of our company as of three years ago. Clients are Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Apple... entireproductions.com | 19 | 50 | 12 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 4,200,000 | 1,250,000 | 5,000,000 | 75 | Word of mouth | Pre-covid was access to the talent pool- very expensive in SF | Business Development | Right now due to COVID a lot of businesses are going to go out of business. It's a great time for acquiring. |
| JSY PR & Marketing | Public Relations & Communications | 12 | 50 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 1,500 | 85,000 | 85,000 | 150,000 | 43 | Through a referral from a friend. | PR is hard to quantify and measuring its impact is borderline impossible. | ahrefs.com | Analysis of why a PR or marketing brand message does not work. | ||
| SoFlo Tutors | Education Management | Skype SAT Tutoring | soflotutors.com I'm Adam Shlomi a Georgetown senior and the founder of SoFlo SAT Tutoring. I hired a bunch of my other smart friends from top schools to Skype with students from around the world. We also provide expert test prep to students who can and can't afford test prep through our SoFlo Scholarship Program. This first year of operations we will break 6 figures in revenue, but only 6 months ago I started SoFlo while I was in bed recovering from ankle surgery with doctors saying I may never walk again. | 1 | 25 | 25 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 1,000 | 150,000 | 150,000 | 350,000 | 57 | Craigslist Post | Finding More Customers | Youtube Influencers | AI Tutors who identify a student's weaknesses and strengths combined with video explanations. |
| Valbridge Property Advisors - Central California | Education Management | 2 | 60 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 70,000 | 0 | 1,000,000 | 1,500,000 | 33 | hustle | industrial knowledge | education | old retiring | ||
| SwagUp LLC | Marketing & Advertising | SwagUp brings simplicity and quality to the world of branded swag. We focus on creating high-quality swag packs for employee welcoming, client gifting, event attendees, and more. We pair this with our warehousing and fulfillment services to ensure your swag gets where you want it, when you want, without you having to break a sweat. | I met the Michael Martocci on 2016 when a buddy of mine randomly DMed him and figured that we would get along. We had dinner and spoke about business. He was working with a former NFL player at the time helping him build his brand. At only 19 years old he really impressed me with his ability to listen and analyze situations. I knew I would want to build something together. He came up with the idea for SwagUp based on what he saw in the promotional product market. I started to advise him for the first 12 months on the side till the company grew to a scale large enough to require my full time attention. Our third partner Helen Rankin was also advising him and came on board at the same time. As someone that started out in this country on food stamps and welfare when my mother came here in 1995 with my brother, my great grandmother (age 92) and grandmother (age 60). I feel very grateful to be able to impact the economy in such a way. SwagUp is my latest and greatest venture but I've been building businesses for the last decade (mostly in retail and hospitality) for more of my story you can visit artemmashkov.com now back to SwagUp! www.swagup.com We’re not printers, we’re not promotional products salesmen, and honestly, up until about 3 years ago, we couldn’t even tell you what a vector file was. At our core we are a marketers, branders, entrepreneurs, and technologists who understand growing businesses and the unique challenges they face. We noticed that branded swag, while incredibly important for companies, was broken. So in May 2017 we set out to create the swag company we would want would want to work if we were running a growing company. This company would need two be fun, relatable, have a great taste in products and design, and understand the (evolving) challenges that companies face on daily basis as it relates to swag. Fast forward to today and we have become one of the fastest growing companies in this industry through our unconventional approach and focus on solving problems for customers. The SwagUp story has just begun. | 3 | 60 | 45 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 168,000 | 4,000,000 | 12,000,000 | 67 | Friends and Family | Dragging vendors to adapt technology | Talent | 25B TAM no single corp controls more than 1B and 95% are under 2M |
| Assault Forward | Apparel & Fashion | 1 | 60 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 1,500 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 120,000 | 17 | Social Media | Brand awareness / recognition | Email marketing | When we connect with our target audience, we win. Need more opportunities through digital marketing and in person events to do that. | ||
| Noms Bake Shop | Food Production | Corporate gifting company | Www.getnoms.com My father is a retired computer programmer and loved to bake. He created gift baskets for the neighborhood and in 2015, was convinced to come out of retirement and start selling these at farmers markets. My sister helped with the baking and on-site sales, while I focused on Business Development and scaling the company. We moved into a food production facility 2 years ago (capable of producing 50,000 cookies a day, we are currently at 3,000) and just opened a 12,000 sqft fulfillment center that will reduce our corporate gift customization lead times down to 2 hours (laser-etched wood boxes and full-color printed sleeves). I think we sent you guys a box congratulating you on the opening of Trends; let me know if you want another one. | 3 | 75 | 15 | Yes (full-time) | 3,000,000 | 20,000 | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 0 | Farmers market | Being big enough to land and support an enterprise client | Jesus Christ - A SALES PROCESS | Everywhere. This industry is antiquated. Technology, allowing consumers to personalize gifts for themselves online, is #1. Turnaround time is #2 |
| Avadel Agency | Marketing & Advertising | We're the premier Facebook advertising agency that utilizes outrageous video creative to drive business results. | One of my first jobs out of college I was elevated to overseeing all digital advertising for a $400 million dollar company. I began to have regular meetings with the CMO and CEO about the agencies we were working with and what we could do to get more out of our relationships with them. All of my experience was marketing in-house at different companies and NGOs, but I kept seeing inept advertising agencies service our accounts. I was continually frustrated with the lack of transparency and reporting. So, like most entrepreneurs, I decided to start my own company to do it better. We've built a brand around ROI based advertising and world-class reporting. The result? Our average return on ad spend is 7.5 to 1. We've become a better investment for our clients than any stock or individual they can hire. As Facebook continues to evolve so do we. We're pioneering the way companies advertise on Facebook with outrageous, noise cutting video production that stands out to our target audiences. | 6 | 70 | 9 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 106,000 | 300,000 | 7,000,000 | 96 | I begged and pleaded a family friend who we delivered a crazy scope of work to in order to get our first client. | A lot of companies are running their own agencies via in-house teams. Ad agencies rarely compete with one another but do compete with in-house teams 78% of the time and that number is growing. | Acquiring other ad agencies. Acquisitions has led to so much growth for us, not only via revenue and clients but our talent, processes, and service is greatly elevated. | I see a lot of growth opportunities for ad agencies to take small minority ownership in medium sized businesses. I also see there are amazing opportunities in capturing OTT audiences with ad experiences that are more intuitive to that form of consuming media. |
| Mango Vans | Construction | 2 | 80 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 100,000 | 150,000 | 225,000 | 33 | Built my own camper van and someone asked to buy it from me | building a product efficiently for a profit that is also high quality, distinct from other competitors, but still suits a wide audience's tastes | better facility, tools and skilled laor | lithium battery technology powering high draw amenities like air conditioners and induction cooking | ||
| Sureshot | Information Technology & Services | 9 | 50 | 19 | Yes (full-time) | 12,000 | 300,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,200,000 | 9 | Referral sale | Product market fit | VP level talent | Challenging How older platforms operate | ||
| Kick Ash Basket | Consumer Goods | 6 | 40 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 6,000 | 88,000 | 1,070,000 | 1,400,000 | 24 | Word of mouth | Copy cats from China stealing ideas and selling on Amazon | I could say marketing since we just started with a great company in the last 8 months..... However, we started small, smart and realistic by reinvesting into our company using social media and a simple website. I called it the Pork Butt business plan.... meaning we were grilling or growing it low n slow like you cook a pork butt. Too much too early on marketing may have meant faster growth than we were ready for. | Simplifying ideas is something that I am always interested in. | ||
| Red Clay Creative | Marketing & Advertising | We are a branding company that focuses on logos, business cards, and websites. | Starting my latest company is one of the best decisions I've ever made. Today is actually the 1 year anniversary (July 1)! I originally wanted to create ads (like in Mad Men) but when I started studying Marketing I thought it was too vague. I switched to Finance because it clicked with me and I realized I could apply it to any business. I thought this would lead me into corporate finance but I ended up being a financial advisor. It was all commission and my thinking was there's no better time to take a risk than now. I'm so happy I took that job because it gave me discipline, I learned sales tactics (because people aren't always stoked about retirement planning...) and soaked up everything I could from the people around me. After 3 years of doing that I was burnt out and wasn't able to balance everything. I tried hiring an admin but I couldn't find the right one. Then my friend asked me if I could help him with his company. He started a marketing company, was doing everything himself, and was getting burnt out too. I thought, "this is my chance to apply my business knowledge and help other businesses." Even though he started the company, we decided to be 50/50 partners. He would focus on advertising and design services, I would focus on websites and running the business, and we both would do sales. After about a year together we started to build a small team. We hired a developer and an admin that could do a bit of everything. I thought this was what we needed to be successful - that's what other companies do! Ha this was one of the best lessons. Don't hire before you're ready and recruit the right people. Problem 1: We hired them on sales we had already made, but didn't have a clear process to get more sales. Problem 2: We hired the wrong people. The developer was just out of a development bootcamp and was looking for other jobs. I found out while she was on a screenshare with me... The admin was enthusiastic about the company but we were trying to put him into a role that wasn't the right fit for him. We ended up letting both people go over the course of 9 months. Then it was just the 2 of us again. I was working overtime because I wanted to keep building, but my partner was lethargic after we let them go. Maybe he felt like we failed. I was working too much and my patience was thin, then my partner started to pick up the slack, and it looked like we were on an upswing. We were bringing on a sales guy and had an intern for the summer. I walked into a meeting one day and he told me he wanted to switch control of the company. I was blindsided. He did it in front of those 2 other employees. He thought he was bringing in more business and didn't understand why I was working so much. Even though I knew that was just his perception (remember I'm the numbers guy), I also knew there was no point in trying to convince him of my side. A few days later I told him I was leaving and going to start my own company. The only way to prove my side was to leave him in charge of his own actions. The new company is going great! The first few months were crazy, but then I started getting things off my plate. I realized we don't have to build a local team anymore. I can find great people all over the country who only work for me part-time and have their own freelance business. I'm working on hiring my first full-time employee but it's contingent on winning an upcoming contract. I'm no longer doing what I think makes a good business, I'm relying on the numbers and my processes to guide me in the right direction. Looking forward to the next 12 months! redclaycreative.com | 1 | 70 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 61,678 | 30,000 | 120,000 | 75 | Networking | We are a branding agency, so the business only stays alive if you keep working at it every week. | Not sure - the biggest issue I struggle with is time and delegation. | There's a lot of untapped potential in creating branding, design, and website products. There are lots of solutions in this space, but it's a creative world. |
| Alter Endeavors | Marketing & Advertising | 8 | 60 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 125,000 | 500,000 | 750,000 | 33 | Running a Thai food/sushi bar in Lakeway, TX. Annoying regular by the name of Jay Lucas sits down at the bar, and I wind up serving him. He made a comment off-hand that social media was stupid. I told him he was stupid. We got into a massive, loud, embarrassing argument that made other customers leave. Turns out he was the former president of CCIM and founder/president of CCIM Technologies (CRE education group). At the end of it we scheduled a meeting for the next day. He taught me how to write a contract. Signed and hired me and then got me my second contract with his buddy Jeff Hinson, who was the CFO of Univision when they went public. That’s my first. | Relevancy and sustainability. We are an agency model with employees that have been with us for 5+ years and growing. How do we compete as a small, but effective, marketing agency, keep up with the complexity, demand and evolution of this space both technologically and fundamentally? | Coaching for both sales and operations. | Assessment marketing (it’s why we built Catch Engine) and also bringing fundamentals of marketing back to the technologies that are being constantly introduced. Also, authority marketing, what we build with our sister agency Zilker Media (look up Rusty Shelton, my business partner). Also, building e-learning, academy and membership platforms on the backbone of that concept of authority marketing. There is more, but can expound on that. | ||
| Eagle's Nest Ventures, LLC | Architecture & Planning | Hurricane Storm Surge Barrier development | I have developed new concepts as to how to design Hurricane Storm Surge Barriers, concepts that are revolutionary, simple, and environmentally friendly. They use large quantities of otherwise difficult to dispose of recyclable materials. They are easily adaptable to any shallow-water area, such as exists for the entire length of the Gulf Of Mexico, and The Atlantic coastline. I have the approval and cooperation of Clark Stanage, the leading UASCofE Water Control Engineer. | 14 | 40 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 0 | 15,000 | 0 | 0 | not yet | Convincing people to recognize the need | Travelling | Unlimited |
| Sach Foods- we make artisanal, organic paneer in 3 creative flavors. | Food & Beverages | We make organic paneer- a delicious hi -protein fresh cheese. Our product is 100% natural, Keto. | Jas and I are the founders of Sach Foods. We are an Oakland, California based healthy food company focused on creating delicious hi-protein, portable vegetarian foods. Our first product is organic and flavored paneer — a fresh, non-melting cheese of Indian origin. We are taking an innovative take on Paneer, an age-old nutritious food, and introducing it with a variety of different flavors Some of which include Mint Chutney, Turmeric Twist, Spicy Habanero, & The Original. You can find out more about us at sachfoods.com and on our Instagram (We are updating our website and should launch in the next 2 weeks). We partner with artisanal cheese maker in Oregon for our product and source our organic milk from a farm nearby as well. Both of our partners are second generation small to medium producers and devoted to making environmentally sustainable products for consumers. Our products are available in over 10 top retail stores in the SF and East Bay and should be in 20 in next few weeks. We've also recently collaborated with Cheeseboard Pizzeria in Berkeley. Forbes covered them before and have a few more unique partnerships on the way. We are the original, and so far, the only flavored organic paneer company in the US. We are both first generation immigrants, boot strap entrepreneurs and also husband and wife. We started with an idea, tested with small pop-ups in SF and hustled a lot to get here. While testing the idea, we were tireless working to navigate the very complex work visa process in the US. We have 2 jobs and host on airbnb on the side to fund our dream. We are now starting to see the results of our work. We think that the American dream is still alive and we want to be living examples of that. We'd love to connect and see if you can help bring our story out to the rest of the world. As we re-launch our website in the next 2 weeks, we figured it would a good time to reach out and connect. We would be more than glad to send you some product so you can try. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to hearing from you. | 1 | 50 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 20,000 | 7,000 | 160,000 | 300,000 | 47 | My wife Jas and I started with a concept in our kitchen. We are vegetarians and struggled to find high protein, low carb options. We were on keto diet. We missed the high quality and fresh Paneer that we grew up with and used to be our primary Protein source. We started creating a better paneer in our 1br apartment in SF. We hustled and cold called every strategic/popular restaurant and grocery store in the SF Bay Area that could be interested in our product. We called them relentlessly, showed up at random times in person until till we could meet the buyer. In the meantime- we flew back and forth to our then manufacturing facility to create samples till we got the product right at a commercial scale. Our first customer was Cheeseboard Pizzeria in Berkeley in Sept 2019. We made the product ourselves in a big creamery as we wanted to fill our first order ourselves. | The barriers to entry are high specially if you are trying to bootstrap your business. It's a catch 22. You can't always find a reliable production solution at the beginning until you know how much you can sell. But how would you know how you can sell if you are a new product? This is even more complicated when the product has a strict shelf life (in our case). I think validating the product market fit quickly and cheaply is key. We did this with making product at home (literally) and doing pop-ups to understand if consumers liked our product. | Growing our direct to consumer business | I think there's a tremendous opportunity to build a brand with a creative story and high quality products. I think selling perishable products online to consumers is a still quite the challenge but also presents one of the biggest untapped opportunities in the space. |
| Designhawk Innovations | Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | 2 | 60 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 7,500 | 15,000 | 25,000 | 750,000 | 97 | I started consulting for my former employer | High startup cost. Finding good talent is difficult. | Nothing, but I'm growing fairly slowly. I still haven't spent money on sales and marketing but I feel that I need to and once I do, I feel like I'll wish I had done it sooner. | Bringing technology to manufacturing companies. I do engineering and automation (I build the robots that take peoples jobs). A lot of the manufacturing industry is still 10-20+ years behind in technology. A lot of companies would still be using Vista if they could. Finding a way to show how affordable technology is getting and how much it can do for a company is where I am headed. | ||
| SWAT Mosquito & Pest Control | Chemicals | Pest Control | I started my business simply due to a demand for my own needs. When moving into my new home (way back in the woods), the mosquitoes were so unbearable that I would have to run from my truck to the front door in order to not get taken away by them. I knew I had to do something, so I looked into treating for them myself. I was impressed at the results I saw and knew there had to be a money making opportunity with it. I evaluated my local competition and felt like I could offer a higher quality service. Since then, we have had such a positive customer response and have been able to grow the business more than I ever thought imaginable. From the start, it was just myself spraying for mosquitoes in the afternoons after my full-time job. However, the growing demand for additional services required me to hire some part-time help, and then requiring full-time help. We now offer a variety of pest control services and are chasing new opportunities everyday! www.swatpestllc.com | 3 | 30 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 2,500 | 15,000 | 100,000 | 250,000 | 60 | Word of mouth | Competition from big companies | Proper equipment | Commercial construction |
| New Frontiers-Executive Functioning Coaching | Education Management | 7 | 30 | 12 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 30,000 | 50,000 | 650,000 | 1,300,000 | 50 | The first team member brought the client with them from a previous engagement | Low barriers to entry/difficult to stand out | A thoughtful digital marketing campaign | Virtual services becoming more/widely accepted | ||
| Wishbone Watch Stands | Wholesale | Created a popular brand of e-liquid for use in electronic cigarettes. Founded in 2014 | I am a convicted felon. When I was 21 I was caught with 650 lbs of marijuana and got sentenced to 2 1/2 years in. Federal prison. I served the entire time. I came out and started from The bottom, riding the bus and train in LA. I then worked my way to becoming a personal trainer for Equinox gyms. I also smoked cigarettes. I knew I had to quit and I successfully quit with ecigs. After a few years as a personal trainer I was tired of it and I had just flipped a pair of Yeezy red octobers from $245(retail) for $3000. I used that $3000 to invest in supplies(llc,flavoring, labels, bottles, etc) and the rest is history! First year we did 400k in sales, then 2015 we did 5.9 mil, 2016 we did 6.2mil. All off of a pair of yeezy red October shoes. | 6 | 60 | 15 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 400,000 | 100,000 | 500,000 | 80 | 3d mockup | finding competent designers for CAD, metal machinery, etc | prototyping | there is one other competitor in my niche industry. They retail their product at $225 USD, mine will be $79 USD. |
| Pigeon Forge Snow | Entertainment | 2 | 50 | 45 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000,000 | 2,500,000 | 1,500,000 | 3,500,000 | 57 | Building a following on FB | High start up costs | Employee training | Amusement Industry - Most players in the game right now are either in their 70s-80s or corporations. Not a lot of younger people like myself with original ideas | ||
| TechSharp Consulting | Computer Software | 5 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 40,000 | 2,500 | 125,000 | 98 | I was working full-time as a Director of MIS, and I’d had a side hustle for the past several years doing web development work. I decided it was time to start my own freelancing business, so I asked my current company if they would consider letting me leave and work for them as a contractor instead of a full-time employee. They agreed, and I converted one of my other side hustle clients into my first full project client. The rest is history. | Competition from low-cost developers and agencies, especially overseas. You have to learn what value you provide. For example, overseas development can be low cost, but the risk of erroneous code (especially if requirements aren’t super tight) or of the developer or agency dropping off are far greater and can be costly. You can tout your ability to understand and consult on business requirements, the quality of your code without numerous rewrites, and the like. | A standing/cycling desk - I bought it a year in and felt much healthier. | It’s nonstop growth and change. I’m looking forward to seeing how AI and blockchain work their way into mainstream development. | ||
| The Powerhouse Chiropractic Inc | Health, Wellness & Fitness | 4 | 35 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 200,000 | 100,000 | 250,000 | 500,000 | 50 | Put up a sign in the window while we were renovating, talked to people living in our building about what we do, built relationships with the professionals we were working with... one of those was our first customer. | Capital to open their own business and confidence. | Team training | Increase in stress in the population leading to declining health levels | ||
| Paperchase | Financial Services | 9 | 50 | 300 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 82,000 | 4,000,000 | 4,500,000 | 11 | Cold calling and by booking a reservation for dinner which alternatively became our first client | human capital | technology | creating the eco channel powered by technology however focus remains at service level | ||
| CoachNet Global LLC | Professional Training & Coaching | 12 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 12,000 | 45,000 | 200,000 | 325,000 | 38 | One on one sales call | Coaching can be perceived as a luxury and in times like these, luxury items are not pursued as regularly as we might like. | a better website with a better strategy. | marrying data and soft skills | ||
| SafeKeeping Inc | Hospital & Health Care | 2 | 60 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 300,000 | 75,000 | 360,000 | 400,000 | 10 | Cold calling, prospecting | industry is slow to change and innovate | rock star software engineer | We are in long-term care and there are pressures that it catches up with other healthcare areas in terms of technology, innovation and communication. Also, there is a greater possibility that industry regulations will force the kind of change we are driving with our platform. | ||
| GMB Fitness | Health, Wellness & Fitness | Online exercise programs | I met my cofounders on a forum, and when we founded the company, we lived in different countries. I didn’t meet one of them in person until we’d been partners for over a year. “Remote” wasn’t really a thing, but it just made sense to us. We started selling online video programs when people were still buying dvds. gmb.io | 10 | 30 | 20 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 60,000 | 2,000,000 | 3,500,000 | 43 | presold a digital product | Very few think of themselves as "founders." They're coaches or teachers, and all this business stuff came after that. | a full-time ads manager | Community. People still act like fitness is about information, but CrossFit proves differently. |
| Essence Luxe Couture | Cosmetics | 2 | 15 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 15,000 | 40,000 | 47,000 | 65,000 | 28 | Dumb luck. We had just launched and within a week had our first customer. we hadn't even started advertising yet and had no idea what SEO was at the time. It's possible they came from our Instagram. But we didn't know about Google Analytics then... so we can't be sure. Nonetheless, we can confidently say they came from an organic source. | Most of the Founders in this industry get started by selling products to friends and family, and do well. So they attempt to grow by expanding and realize they have no idea how to brand a company or product. Many founders in this industry struggle with creating a unique brand, and conclusively, they struggle to differentiate themselves. | Hight quality product images, lifestyle images and video content. Seems obvious but it actually isn't a standard in the industry, oddly enough. But when I decided to go against the grain, I discovered AMAZING results. | Going beyond ecommerece and building a way for customers to virtually try on hair pieces, especially in light of COVID. There is also alot of potential for a streamlined way to provide customers with fully personalized products. | ||
| LifeClinic | Medical Practice | 18 | 36 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 50,000 | 75,000 | 130,000 | 42 | Referral / Networking | Aquiring new business | Online appointment booking | Integrating healthcare and Fitness space | ||
| GreenForce | Staffing & Recruiting | Workforce Solutions for the Cannabis Industry | https://greenforcestaffing.com/ | 4 | 70 | 100 | Yes (full-time) | 30,000 | 50,000 | 3,500,000 | 5,000,000 | 30 | Word of mouth netoworking | Banking, legalization uncertainty, constant shifts | Business Coach | Federal Legalization and intra-state commerce |
| Mastermatics | Information Technology & Services | 19 | 80 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 12,000 | 25,000 | 350,000 | 93 | Cold Calling | Clients slowing down on spending | More qualified people | Digital marketing | ||
| Chick’nCone | Food & Beverages | 5 | 80 | 30 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 50,000 | 150,000 | 750,000 | 650,000 | -15 | Begging | The capital to grow and take on new opportunities... opportunities are endless, funds are not | Accountant | Robotics | ||
| Peacesake Candles & Co. | Consumer Goods | 3 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 16,000 | 32,000 | 60,000 | 47 | a friend at my old job purchased our first product | oversaturated industry where the bigs guys spend a lot on advertising | trade shows | being an eco-friendly brand has brought us a lot of attention and word of mouth | ||
| General Liability Insure | Insurance | Small business insurance information and online quotes. | https://generalliabilityinsure.com/ We ARE experienced commercial insurance brokers first and foremost, who believe in applying current technology to the commercial insurance brokerage business. We ARE client centric, and our main objective is always to protect our clients from the risks they face everyday - owning and operating their business. We represent our clients first, and hold their needs above all else. We ARE independent, which means we work for our clients, not the insurance companies. We ARE focused on simplifying the small business insurance buying process, to reduce a lot of the 'red tape', and make it as easy as possible for business owners to get the insurance they need. | 3 | 60 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 60,000 | 240,000 | 2,500,000 | 90 | Was an internet lead that I called. | Well funded, VC backed competition | Outsourced office tasks | Helping 'main street' insurance agents to increase revenue by referring business they are not experienced in writing, or don't want to write. |
| Straight Up Podcasts | Media Production | 1 | 100 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 25,000 | 15,000 | 45,000 | 67 | Telling a college professor about my business and being referred to an alumni | Big Money Podcasting | Video Production software | Higher Education Podcasting instead of Zoom Lectures | ||
| True North Apothecary | Cosmetics | In an effort to reduce the amount of chemicals we put on our skin, True North Apothecary offers natural remedies created by a Master Herbalist with positive energy and intent. | I started making natural remedies for myself and family just under a decade ago. A friend gave me a gentle push to start my own business and True North Apothecary was born! We do not have a brick and mortar store, but we do have an Etsy site along with social media outlets. I participate in local events and use those opportunities to take the place of an actual store (a lot less expensive). Lately, I created a partnership with a local distillery, Ironclad, to create hand sanitizers for sale through their bottle shop and our online store. This gives locals an opportunity to purchase items that are currently not available in stores. The hand sanitizer is considered artesian and evokes the smell of an Old Fashioned cocktail, a signature drink at the Ironclad Distillery. Hand sanitizers also include positively charged crystals for good energy. From this partnership, both small business have seen an uptick in sales, something much needed during these uncertain time. www.etsy.com/shop/TrueNorthApothecaryx | 1 | 10 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 2,000 | 4,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 0 | Holistic Tradeshow | Creating authentic, natural products with love and good vibes | N/A, make sure to have your branded marketing in place | Partnerships with in the community and expanded customer base |
| Serendipia Life INC | Real Estate | 3 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 21,000 | 180,000 | 200,000 | 250,000 | 20 | from my friends | right now covid has been a big one | create a set of contracts, an accountant, a brand identity | digitalize rentals | ||
| Aurora Training Advantage | Professional Training & Coaching | 8 | 50 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 12,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,400,000 | 29 | Eventbrite | Competition | Technology | Innovative Products | ||
| Erica's Tax Services | Accounting | 1 | 10 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 2,500 | 500 | 4,000 | 3,500 | -14 | I had been doing taxes for friends and family for years so they all became customers when I officially started my business | Customer recruitment | More resources | My industry is based very much on trust and personality. My style is different than most others in my area so it sets me apart. | ||
| Hemp Crate Co | Consumer Goods | CBD and Hemp Subscription Box | I started the side-hustle with a co-worker in 2018 in response to the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill which legalized industrial hemp products and thus CBD at the federal level. We took 3-4 months to build out the concept and get suppliers, materials and a website built. We believe that a subscription model is perfectly designed for the CBD market and eventually the cannabis industry once legalized at the federal level. We place a heavy emphasis on education and transparency. These are two areas that we feel the industry is desperately lacking in these early days. There are hundreds of low-quality and dishonest CBD vendors which has given the industry this "snake-oil" reputation. However, there are also hundreds of high-quality, honest and reputable brands. We want to give these brands a chance to shine. www.hempcrate.co | 1 | 302 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 20,000 | 50,000 | 400,000 | 500,000 | 20 | Friends and family always | Uncertainty surrounding advertising and inability to advertise on traditional platforms | Finding a good and trusted advertising firm to work with. Vetting them properly takes time though | Complete advertising strategies. There are hundreds and thousands of CBD companies looking for effective advertising |
| Tastachios LLC | Food Production | 1 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 14,500 | 30,000 | 65,000 | 54 | Walked in and introduced the brand. Owner loved them and placed an order right away. | As the business grows, the costs to automate and streamline the packaging process is challenging. | Nothing really. I've build this business without incurring any debt. | Introducing the brand to national chains. As this business grows, we are starting to get noticed. | ||
| Imprint Engine | Marketing & Advertising | We're an end-to-end marketing services firm specializing in printing, swag, branded apparel, e-commerce, and fulfillment. We're a technology company at heart, and work with some of the best known brands in world including Uber, Facebook, GitHub, and many more. Our vision is to | My partners, Travis and Caleb, started our company out of an alcove in their apartment. Travis had a background in promotional products, and Caleb had a background in Technology as the former CTO of Renters Warehouse. They recognized the promotional products industry was ripe for disruption as most of the landscape was crowded with small ma and pa operators and lumbering giants like Staples. Nobody had any decent technology, and everything was very old school. So they created Imprint Engine as a true end-to-end marketing platform that introduced a technology solution to integrate with procurement platforms, CRM's, accounting software, and more. The end result was Imprint Engine (www.imprintengine.com). 8 years later with annual revenue topping $6 Million, we work with some of the best known brands in the world, including Uber, GitHub, GoPro, and more, and have a 22 person full time staff in our Minneapolis, MN headquarters. We're also proud to be partnered with one of our favorite companies in the world, The Hustle, which we started working with by Cold Emailing following Hustle founder Sam Parr's very own playbook. | 8 | 50 | 22 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 30,000 | 3,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 50 | Direct outreach | crowded marketplace | Marketing | Technology |
| J&L Pogonotrophics LLC | Cosmetics | 5 | 40 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 1,705 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 50 | Friend | Overcrowded with DIY/hobbyist sellers | Obtaining registered trademarks | Those who produce quality over quantity, gimmicks, short term trends and an artificial image of luxury | ||
| LIFEAID Beverage | Food & Beverages | 9 | 50 | 75 | Yes (full-time) | 60,000 | 250,000 | 40,000,000 | 46,000,000 | 13 | Sold a golf course in person | Lack of accurate thinking | Specialized legal advice | Customized nutrition | ||
| CleanLots.com | Environmental Services | We maintain commercial properties litter free | I grew a simple, green side hustle I started in 1981 into a lucrative full-time business I still operate. I started with little money, education or skills, but plenty of passion, patience and persistence.I provide a litter cleanup service outside commercial properties for real estate management companies. The work is done on foot using simple hand tools. This way the entire property gets cleaned - sidewalks, parking lot and surrounding landscape. Our business model is successful because we provide a superior service for less money. I scaled this business from a side hustle to a 1 man operation to an army of sub-contract workers. Details at https://www.cleanlots.com | 38 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 250 | 15,000 | 36,000 | 500,000 | 93 | Cold call. In 1981 I called prospects I obtained from the telephone directory - Yellow Pages. | Getting good people to work. | Website | Environmentally conscious demographic seeking green opportunities |
| Criquet Shirts | Apparel & Fashion | 7 | 60 | 15 | Yes (full-time) | 150,000 | 250,000 | 10,500,000 | 11,500,000 | 9 | family | discipline and not comparing yourself to others | developing channels outside of paid social, we did try to do this but were not able to generate similar returns. we are still majority paid social for new customers but are breakeven / profitable on first purchases (this is getting harder as we scale though). i wish we had another channel we could trust to move some budget too. | we are an e-comm business for the most part and so i would say after the initial covid shock the main opportunity is more online commerce and customers not wanting to go to stores. fathers day was up 50% y-o-y in-part because some people that might have bought in-store now need to shop online. | ||
| M Genio | Computer Software | 7 | 50 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 242,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,800,000 | 44 | Relationship /Referral | Saying no | A Sales Engine | new technology adoption | ||
| Dear Survivor | Apparel & Fashion | 4 | 70 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 800 | 55,000 | 50,000 | 120,000 | 58 | I was designing my first collection in my apartment, and a friend stopped by and bought the wallet I was making while I was still sewing it. Over 5 years later and it's still in his back pocket! | The biggest challenge is balancing the fashion calendar. From design to having enough capital to manufacture to seasonal collections to overstock - it's a crazy dance founders have to do. | I hired a business strategist/marketing guru in January 2020 and I'm confident that she's the reason I'm surviving the pandemic. Wish I had started working with her years ago, because every move she's suggested has been key to growth. | Fine jewelry that's sustainable, affordable, and that women actually want to wear. Majority of fine jewelry is designed by men, purchased by men, but worn only by women. The industry needs more standout, accessible designs. | ||
| Faergus Digital Solutions | Design | I design and host websites for local small businesses, create content for Social Media, and hold classes for community members to learn how to make the most of the digital tools available to them. | Faergus.com I'm in a small town (<8,000 people) in Central Montana (>100 miles away from the nearest city over 100,000 people). There are few big, chain businesses and a lot of small businesses, and the cost of putting their business on the internet doesn't seem worth it to many. I have a dream of creating a culture here that embraces and cherishes the opportunities that the internet provides, especially to people so far away, physically, from large sources of customers. I've held classes, created/designed websites, written blog posts, and done everything else I can to drag my community into today's world, and Is till have a long way to go. | 2 | 20 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 200 | 0 | 50,000 | 40 | -124,900 | Word of mouth | Saturation | Advertising | Global business |
| Tango Media, LLC | Marketing & Advertising | 16 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 10,000 | 200,000 | 100,000 | -100 | Word of mouth | Rapidly changing technologies and norms. | Technology. | At this unusual time, it is hard to see where our industry will land but it will be exciting to see it play out. | ||
| Click Control Marketing LLC | Marketing & Advertising | 9 | 60 | 9 | Yes (full-time) | 100 | 50,000 | 530,000 | 608,000 | 13 | Social Media advertising | Hiring and keeping talent | project management software | Generating revenue online has become a higher focus for many businesses since the beginning of the pandemic. We are a Digital Marketing Agency, which is bringing new opportunities. | ||
| Kalypso Wellness Centers | Alternative Medicine | We give low dose ketamine infusions to treat chronic pain and depression/anxiety. | As a practicing anesthesia doctor, I am always trying to help patients have minimal pain. When medical literature started showing the promise of low-dose ketamine infusions helping patients with chronic pain and depresion/anxiety, I was extremely interested. While I use ketamine in the operating room all the time, the public usually has heard about it as the street drug "special K"or that veterinarians use it as a "horse tranquilizer". The medicine, however, is listed on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of "essential medicines" and is the most used anesthetic in the world. After I showed the literature to my brother - who is also an anesthesiologist - and two friends that are traditional pain doctors, we decided to start a company to help these patients where nothing else has worked. In the process, we realized that about 50% of patients had unwanted side effects, so we decided to go outside of the medical literature to research what other medications, in combination with the ketamine, would minimize side effects and potentially have positive synergistic effects. To that end, we developed 5 ketamine formulations that are now patent pending. Our side effect rate is now less than 5%, whereas the medical literature states an average of 40-60% side effects with generic ketamine. And our patient reported benefit is 90%, whereas the medical literature states an average of 70%. This has been the most rewarding thing I have done as a physician as we are helping patients and veterans that have lost all hope of ever feeling better, and have exhausted all of the traditional medicines, therapies and treatments. www.kalypsowellness.com | 4 | 30 | 8 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 10,000 | 120,000 | 2,500,000 | 450,000 | -456 | Referral | Education of treatment | Marketing/relationships | Public awareness and continued medical research |
| Urban Street Window Works | Facilities Services | 7 | 10 | 6 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 110,000 | 410,000 | 425,000 | 4 | Door to door sale | Distinguishing themselves in the market | Marketing | Innovation | ||
| SYNHERGY | Marketing & Advertising | 11 | 65 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 3,000 | 60,000 | 100,000 | 250,000 | 60 | Referral | COVID-19 | Automation software | Social media services are getting smarter and more advanced. Creating and tracking sales is easier. | ||
| Lasting Media | Broadcast Media | 1 | 60 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 25,000 | 191,000 | 242,000 | 21 | Word of mouth | Marketing | Equipment | Subscription models | ||
| Mac Daddy Repairs | Computer Hardware | 6 | 60 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 15,000 | 38,000 | 150,000 | 200,000 | 25 | They searched me out and convinced me to do this business. Or at least got me thinking about it as possible | Check out repair.org. We are up against a manufacturing industry that doesn't want us to be able to fix our own devices. That's what we do every day at Mac Daddy. Apple (and others) makes it very hard to get official replacement parts, much less at a reasonable cost, to keep small mom and pop stores like mine out of the picture as much as possible. | The thing I wish I had plunked down cash early on for, even though I didn't have any cash to spend, would be getting a bigger space. It really made a difference when we moved from the back of the building (in a little Hobbit hole/converted garage) to the front office with all the exposure of being on Main Street. I couldn't afford to get anything bigger than where we started due to my financial situation. But when we made the jump, I could see that it was totally worth the extra $$ (3x+ more rent!!!!). | I see that potential in the youth. The kids today need to be exposed to repairing their electronics and realize that they aren't these impossible things to fix. And it's more than just electronics. There is a lot to repair in our world. | ||
| AXIS | Consumer Electronics | 4 | 100 | 17 | Yes (full-time) | 350,000 | 450,000 | 2,000,000 | 1,500,000 | -33 | Crowdfunding - Indiegogo | Distribution & Awareness | User Testing | Energy conservation by managing solar heat gain via window shades. | ||
| Bourbon & Banter | Publishing | 8 | 30 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 500 | 0 | 10,000 | 30,000 | 67 | Blog | Traffic | Advertising | Home delivery | ||
| Elevate Wireless | Telecommunications | 5 | 40 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 1,300,000 | 875,000 | 1,250,000 | 30 | Took over the business from my dad, so really I adopted my customers | Most customers are living in the past (like the 90s, maybe early 2000s) | Better inventory management software or systems, especially if they integrated with my accounting and payroll software (zoho one would have been nice but didn't exist, also I don't use it so who knows) | Modern marketing automation will be really interesting in this aged market of selling connectivity hardware to industrial markets. | ||
| JangaFX Software | Computer Games | 3 | 12 | 6 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 500 | 2,500 | 360,000 | 950,000 | 62 | They watched a youtube video of our software | Finding competent programmers | Lawyers | Since we make tools, there are a ton of untapped needs in the tools department for artists. | ||
| Building Beats | Education Management | We develop and expand DJ and music programming for underserved youth. | www.buildingbeats.org. We are a non-profit organization based NYC that runs DJ and beatmaking workshops in after-school programs, community center, homeless youth programs and juvenile justice programs all throughout NYC. We are currently working with 30 partners serving around 400 students per week. I am a DJ/music producer turned full-time entrepreneur focusing on scaling our workshops to empower more creative entrepreneurs with our work. | 5 | 40 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 25,000 | 420,000 | 475,000 | 12 | Word of mouth | Bureaucracy of working with state and federal government | Airtable | Online education integrated into public school systems |
| Freeride New Zealand | Photography | 5 | 60 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 35,000 | 8,000 | 20,000 | 70,000 | 71 | Persistence and luck. | Competition from new business and younger players. | Gear that looks after me, rather than just makes money. | Motion, AR/VR, Lean teams, New content and licensing styles. | ||
| ergonofis | Furniture | 4 | 60 | 8 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 230,000 | 1,300,000 | 3,900,000 | 67 | References from acquaintances | Product differenciation | Influencer marketing (on YouTube) | B2B eCommerce | ||
| STERLINGS Mobile Salon & Barber Co. | Consumer Services | Mobile Salon & Barbershop providing services to busy professionals | I (Kush Kapila) who like most busy professionals found the process of traveling and waiting for a haircut often frustrating and time consuming. Following a particularly bad episode that entailed waiting 40 minutes in line for a terrible hair cut, I passed a gourmet food truck on my way home – and the STERLINGS Mobile (www.sterlingsmobile.com) concept was born. These last 7 years have been the most interesting and challenging for me. I had never started a business before and my background is in High Tech (Masters in Computer Science and MBA from Rady-UCSD) so I didn't know the first thing about haircare industry. Now we have multiple trailers, have done tours across the US with companies such as Warner Bros, Walgreens, Intel and are about to get an investment from P&G to scale to the Bay Area and Irvine. I look forward to visiting the Hustle offices when we come up to the Bay Area 🙂 | 7 | 50 | 18 | Yes (full-time) | 180,000 | 50,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 | 40 | Networked with a former colleague and ran a trial | A service that nobody currently has. Hard to change behaviors | Hiring for a business development role | Mobile Events |
| Iron Lion Soap | Retail | 11 | 55 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 18,120 | 150,000 | 195,000 | 23 | Jiu Jitsu Academy Locker Room | Exposure | Website/UX | On demand ordering - Old school milk man style | ||
| Todreamalife | Biotechnology | We solve hard problems in STEM with experimental high-tech | todreamalife.com. After 9 years fighting wildland fires I went back to school. Graduating with an MD I knew I wanted to do high-tech in medicine, we just had terrible software. These days I get to direct 1000 tech drones at whatever behemoth problem in medicine irritates me most. This year its been homelessness with the 'empulse' app, theempulse.com | 7 | 60 | 20 | Yes (full-time) | 4,000 | 35,000 | 2,000 | 60,000 | 97 | told them they were wrong at a scientific conference. | They can't outlast the legacy infrastructure. | An accountant | No one is investing in apprentice models in tech. |
| Otmore | Legal Services | 5 | 50 | 18 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 600,000 | 2,200,000 | 2,600,000 | 15 | Through my business contacts / network | Predictability of revenue and workload, specially in the early stages of the journey. | A proper HR strategy, hiring people that leave after a year or so is expensive in a highly knowledge-based industry such as the legal industry. | Incredible potential can be found in areas where increasing efficiency can lead to saved costs. The legal industry is considered slow and expensive - immagine being able to do the job in 0.5x the time without compromizing the quality of the service - that saves costs and "modernizes" the business, which is very much in-demand as the market has not yet shifted to the even more automated (but often very nieched) legal-tech startups. | ||
| Cinema Detroit | Entertainment | 6 | 80 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 6,000 | 63,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 | 0 | We started a pop-up to test our idea of opening a movie theater. It was in a coffee shop. The first customer for that was someone in the neighborhood, they had seen a flyer and came in. Ten months later, we had a permanent location. The person saw a posting about us on a neighborhood Google group and decided to stop by. He became a regular customer and the first member of our loyalty program. | High barriers to entry. The equipment is very expensive and most of the ticket cost goes back to the distributors. Some distributors don't think they need us (although when they look at their VOD receipts, they generally change their minds). | A liquor license. No question. | Virtual cinema. We could all have our own channels essentially and tap into customers from around the country, if not the world. And I still believe people like to get together in the dark to see a film. We need to re-commit to that being the ideal. | ||
| CMSIntelligence | Computer Software | CMS software, website building and strategic consulting in the enterprise and B2B space. | Developed an easy for end user to use CMS and added science based deployment consulting which helps marketing and operations speak to each other | 10 | 60 | 20 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 100,000 | 700,000 | 2,000,000 | 65 | hustle | Scaling the people/staff to meet demand | We bootstrapped and had/deployed money when we had it | We see lots of it, would be a long list |
| Tavelon Real Estate LLC | Hospitality | Rental Business through Air BnB, VRBO, etc. | Started renting out my own home and saw how relatively easy it was. | 2 | 5 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 25,000 | 30,000 | 35,000 | 14 | Posted to Air BnB site | Zoning, booking correct customers that won't destroy your place, neighbors | Video security system | Growth in rentals if zoning is correct. |
| Tripp Stanford Digital Consulting | Marketing & Advertising | Marketing Consulting & Management for Small Businesses | I started in an in-house digital marketing role, then transitioned to an agency, then transitioned to building my own one-man agency. | 1 | 50 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 80,000 | 3,600 | 80,000 | 96 | Referral | knowledge. digital marketing is constantly changing and every "new agency" needs to truly understand the value they're bringing to their clients. | contractors, i need to learn to delegate projects out. | Building an app to help small business owners manage their own digital marketing opportunities themselves! |
| @#1 Main St. Gallery Inc. (501c3 nonprofit) | Fine Art | Original Art by Local Artists @ Accessible prices | A need to connect a community of artists to the community of families to offer original art and make it accessible | 1 | 25 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 1,500 | 10,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 0 | by showing compelling art work | Labor costs | Advertising & Marketing | A unique proposition to the real estate industry |
| Outflank Inc. | Management Consulting | Companies need to evolve to thrive, but they are naturally structured to resist change and say "no". Outflank Inc helps them to move to "yes" | For the last 3 years I have been thinking about how to help ideas from outside the four walls of an organization get accepted. Companies are normally structured from the Receptionist to Senior Leaders to say no to change. | 1 | 60 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 175,000 | 150,000 | 200,000 | 25 | Word of mouth | Start Up during Covid crisis | Client Acquisition | Creating big beneficial change with small great ideas |
| Sideline Sports | Sports | Digital gameification and fan engagement products for sports and live events. | My father took 7 of us on a baseball trip in 2007. He created Baseball Bingo to keep us entertained - and it was a hit! My youngest sister convinced him (over 6 months) to do it as a business. A year later we handed out 20,000+ cards at Wrigley Field. Now we are digital, have multiple products, and work with over 30 pro teams and 100's of minor league and semi-pro teams. My father, my youngest sister and I run the company. | 12 | 45 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | I don't remember. | the double sell and the amount of choices teams have for fan engagement. | tech. | international markets |
| Semper Fi Bar and Grille | Hospitality | Local Restaurant and Bar honoring veterans and first responders through 5-star service and respect. | 2015 we visited a military themed restaurant and realized it was needed in our community. With ZERO background in hospitality, we made the commitment to make it happen. In August, we celebrate 5 years in business!!! | 5 | 20 | 30 | Yes (full-time) | 180,000 | 900,000 | 200,000 | 1,250,000 | 84 | Word of mouth | Controlling costs, finding and keeping good team members | Air Conditioning | The restaurant industry is going through a major disruption at this time. Opportunities will continue to evolve. We intend on finding and taking advantage of those opportunities. |
| Tropical Bros LLC | Apparel & Fashion | Online eCommerce mens Tropical Lifestyle clothing brand | Traveled the world, lived on a boat in Chicago, got the idea, released sample products, then connected with Shopify and went big | 4 | 30 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 10,000 | 20,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 | 67 | word of mouth, friends | quality products, social media reach | Better website, brand awareness, influencers | Golf market, overseas |
| Renegade Creative | Design | Website & Graphic Designer | Studied art and design at Northern Michigan University. Worked with a program on campus called [email protected] that helped individuals incubate ideas of theirs into small businesses. This entrepreneurial environment inspired me to peruse my own design studio and work for myself. | 2 | 30 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 3,000 | 18,000 | 200 | 45,000 | 100 | Through prior networking with individuals I had worked with before. | Marketing and procurement of new clients. | 3D-Printer | App development and UI/UX design. General use of 3D-Printing. VR software and design. |
| Uber Realty LLC | Real Estate | Real Estate Brokerage | I was always fascinated by house and how much it cost to sell them. I thought I could do it better and for less. | 14 | 58 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 150,000 | 8,000 | 125,000 | 250,000 | 50 | Show them a rental and ask why he did consider a buying | easy entry into the business with no experience. | Marketing | Reducing the cost to the consumer. |
| Orion Belt Company | Apparel & Fashion | We make stylish and awesome belts. | Long story, but a booze infused ‘light bulb’ moment on a beach in Aruba was the catalyst. | 2 | 10 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 3,500 | 44 | 600 | 3,000 | 80 | Networking | Keeping pants on. | Website | Marketing |
| Contentellect | Marketing & Advertising | We write high quality, search-optimized blog content for small businesses. | My co-founder and I both have digital marketing backgrounds. Mine is in Adtech and his is in SEO. After working for some of the most innovative adtech startups in Europe I quickly learn how to write effective content for paid distribution. My co-founder’s SEO experience derived from growing a portfolio of travel websites. To do this he had to teach himself how to write content that ranks in the search engines. By combining these experiences together we were able to launch an agency predicated on writing great content. | 2 | 50 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 150 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 220,000 | 55 | Participating in a Facebook Group | Trying to find stellar writers | Building a database of leads | SaaS |
| RIVALS group / Merchline.com | Apparel & Fashion | We are brand management parters to the entertainment industry. | I got a call from client asking if I could sell merch for them online, and I said "Yes I can." I hung up the phone and hadn't the slightest idea how to. That was in 2002, I bootstrapped the company from my bedroom, and haven't looked back since. | 18 | 60 | 15 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 50,000 | 1,200,000 | 8,000,000 | 85 | Through personal networking. | Maintaining talent. | Hiring talent. | Delivering personalized customization or experiences. |
| Club Pilates | Health, Wellness & Fitness | fitness center | After building and insurance agency we sold it and bought a multi-location franchise fitness business. | 2 | 20 | 25 | Yes (full-time) | 400,000 | 750,000 | 800,000 | 1,000,000 | 20 | staffing | staffing | limited pilates offering in my area | |
| DeGRwear PCC | Apparel & Fashion | We are ambassadors of slow fashion, making 100% handmade clothes and accessories. | I am 21 years old and was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. I knew early on I had a deep interest in international business and after attending plenty of summer programs on sustainability in the USA throughout high school, these two merged and led to my passion for sustainable business. I later came to the states for college and I am graduating this May from St. Lawrence University with a Bachelors degree on Psychology and Communications. These two fields enhanced my knowledge on business by better understanding consumers’ behavior. DGR combines my aforementioned interests along with my passion for fashion. The DGR team starts its action in 2017 in a country, Greece, that is in the center of political,economic and social crisis of our world. DGR decides to act in time, while the local social, political and economic environment is diffusing as an epidemic and spreads its web steadily, more and more the darkness, the despair, depression, withering, distraction, fear, doubt, chaos, bankruptcy, and the destruction. DGR has the courage. It has the vision. Because there is hope for Tomorrow and for a New Sustainable World. As found on our website: DGR, looks forward to develop in a different economic entity/organism that will cater for one of the basic human needs, clothing. Combining a mesh of cooperation and other connected but meanwhile, autonomous entrepreneurial initiatives which will cover the other two basic human needs; food and housing. This will set the foundation through new filters of entrepreneurship, cooperation, creation, quality and value, under one cause; pure sustainability. | 3 | 20 | 5 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | mouth to mouth | how to incorporate sustainability | marketing help | social media use |
| Gym-N-Eat Crickets | Food & Beverages | Sustainable, alternative protein snacks from farm-raised crickets. | Hi! I am Shelby Smith, aka, Mother of Crickets. I am a former college basketball player turned equity derivatives trader turned cricket farmer. I have been raising bugs and convincing people to eat them since 2018! I began my little adventure by raising and selling my crickets exclusively at farmers’ markets. Much to my surprise, I sold out of every single cricket I raised during my first farmer’s market season. People just couldn’t get enough of them. This forced me to expand my production area by 5x prior to my second season, but I still wasn’t able to keep up with growing demand. People love these things! Since then, I have recruited a network of farmers to raise crickets right here in Iowa. I have five contract growers up and running as of July 2020 and two more later this summer. | 2 | 100 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 6,900 | 30,000 | 75,000 | 60 | Farmers' Market | It's farming. Western perception of insects as food. | Processing facility | Pet food! Specifically dog treats. Not legal in all 50 states currently. |
| Bloomtastic | Retail | modern flower shop helping people celebrate life | my family is in horticulture, but I had nothing to do with it. But I was born an entrepreneur; when I was five I painted pictures and went door-to-door selling them(it was the 80's)...one man gave me a whole dollar to never come back! In 1998, as a sophmore at Ohio State Univ, my then boyfriend/now husband and I bought a balloon store and twisted away! In 2004, we purchased a flower shop. Flowers have always been in my blood. We've taken the biz from $87K 2004 sales and no delivery van to $1.1 million 2019 sales and four delivery vans. | 16 | 40 | 8 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 87,000 | 800,000 | 1,100,000 | 27 | since biz was already established and I bought it, some orders were coming in. But I wanted to go after corporate accounts. So when we would have a flower arrangement delivery to a biz, say, BMW Financial Services, I'd call the recipient the next day, ask how they liked the flowers, give care tips, and then ask who within their company orders flowers. That's exactly how I got to pitch for BMW FS and won the account! That was my first major biz account that I won. | Not many ppl want a career as a florist; the talent pool is shrinking fast. So we have to find those with passion and teach them. | Two things: Brand new delivery vans. We kept buying older, used vans and sunk way too much money in them. Finally, we bought brand new in 2015. SECOND: a biz coach. We finally hired one in 2009 and have worked with her off and on since, but wish we'd done in years sooner. | COVID has opened doors for virtual classes (mine sold out every week! We'd deliver the flowers and all jump on a zoom call and design together) and also has made ppl more grateful and appreciative; so I see a huge opportunity for floral gifts to be shared. The messages in the cards recently and have more about how thankful the sender is for the recipient's help than your typical birthday and anniversary. |
| The James Agency | Management Consulting | Consulting and advisor services for company founders and owners. | My career has alternated between playing leadership roles in enterprises, consulting to enterprises, starting businesses, and now advising founders. My experiences have included most of the planning and operating elements for a business, including marketing, sales, operations, financial management, and strategy. I enjoy working with young men either starting a new business or scaling one, helping them avoid pitfalls and balance work with life. | 18 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 200 | 75,000 | 50,000 | 275,000 | 82 | Through my network | Developing new clients | Digital assets | SaaS startups |
| LifeInfusions, LLC | Hospital & Health Care | Ketamine infusion therapy for psychiatric disorders and chronic pain treatment. | As an anesthesia provider, I am well versed in the many uses of Ketamine. Living in a state with such a high rate of depression, I felt compelled to do something. Partnering with OptiMed Health Partners gave us the space and opportunity to bring this necessary treatment modality to our local community and region. | 2 | 20 | 4 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 15,000 | 1,200 | 20,000 | 94 | Website. | Insurers are unwilling to cover this treatment, despite its relatively low cost when compared to other pharmacological treatments . Plus, this treatment is more curative than other treatments available. | Advertising and community outreach/education. | It’s only beginning. Ketamine is starting to be tested and utilized in many various psychological disorders and other various neurological disease states, including possibly autism. | |
| Fraspada Management Inc. | Executive Office | Owns and operates various businesses in various sectors. | My segment of family had opted to take a buyout from our family business after my father passed. We planned to open a business but we weren’t sure what that was. We rented an office while exploring various options until we found the need for a real estate developer for a mixed use project in front of a University in our town. The development was a bit of a challenge due to the demographics so not only did we become the developer we also opened a New York Style Bagel and Coffee shop and franchised a Bennigan’s Restaurant to occupy about 65% of the development. We also formed a construction management company that GC’d the project. Additionally we own and operate an outdoor recreation park, an importing business, which is brining in various beer from Austria, and have a charitable foundation that benefits family members of transplant recipients at the time of their loved ones surgery. | 3 | 55 | 50 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | We opened up the New York Style Bagel shop first and when we opened the doors, that was our very first customer. On the leasing side with the development company we reached out to hundreds of franchises and potential tenants but ultimately had luck with a smaller local franchise that was opening its 3rd location. | There are countless challenges in the food service industry now in the wake of the coronavirus, in addition to the general challenges of the industry. I’m still learning but the biggest challenge that I am noticing is the ability to run effectively while keeping labor costs in line with where they need to be. | On the real estate side, definitely some sort of leasing consultant, and also just more internal employees. It’s a difficult balance though to bring people on when you haven’t generated a single dollar and all your cash is flowing outward | I like to float from industry to Industry, so for me I’m currently exploring 2 different industries, but in the outdoor recreation side of things I think their is a lot of potential for primitive camping and cabins where people can go disconnect and unplug. We are all so overloaded with informing and inputs that I think there is going to be a greater push to able to get away from it all for a bit. |
| MacMyDay, Inc. | Computer & Network Security | We are a Apple Mac, service, sales, consulting and training company | I started as an artist, then started on learning to design on computers in 1992. Interned at a weekly music magazine. Was offered the job as Production director in 1994 (a week before the Northridge Earthquake hit us). And when I asked the Publisher who their IT was, he looked at me at said "you are". So, I requested subscriptions to some Mac magazines, and went to MAcWorld conventions, to keep informed in the IT and trends world. (Luckily I have a mechanical brain that I moved to IT work). When the magazine closed their doors in 2004, I realized I didn't want to do graphic design anymore, and focus on Apple Mac service. Along with another IT person, we started MacMyDay in 2004. And in 2015, I incorporated the company. - A brief history. | 16 | 60 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 200 | 12,000 | 5,000 | 120,000 | 96 | Referral | New client acquisition and accountability | Business consultant | Customer Service. |
| Awards4U | Retail | We provide products that make people feel good about their accomplishments. | I owned a motocross race track when I was 19 (1973). Sold it when I was 21 and was offered a job by the guy I bought my trophies from. Stayed with them 11 years, bought this company in 1987 (then 2 employees, 100 K in sales). We've grown to be international, 30 people, 2 locations, multi-million in sales. | 33 | 60 | 20 | Yes (full-time) | 75,000 | 110,000 | 1,900,000 | 2,600,000 | 27 | Bought existing business, customers included 🙂 | Today, the pandemic. But all the time, online competition | Building a more robust website | Once the pandemic is over there will be a huge growth spurt of recognition of people that helped people survive in various ways...economically, socially, etc. |
| New England Tooling Inc | Aviation & Aerospace | We provide technical support and cutting tools used in manufacturing. | I worked as a machinist, later as a cnc programmer and then a manufacturing engineer. I then went to work for a manufacturer of cutting tools providing technical support. Eventually I was in charge of the technical group in a large section of the Northeast USA. In 2009 I left and founded New England Tooling. Since then we have grown to be the largest in the manufacturer’s rep agency in the Northeast in our industry. We have saved our customers millions of dollars in manufacturing costs and cost of cutting tools. | 11 | 60 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 140,000 | 660,000 | 2,100,000 | 69 | Showed cost savings and productivity gains | Loss of knowledge in customer base | More people | Reconditioning of CBN and ceramic inserts |
| Marshall County Abstract Co. | Commercial Real Estate | We perform title searches, provide title insurance and closings. | I am a fourth generation Abstractor, and 2020 is our 100th anniversary of being a family owned company. | 100 | 60 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 850,000 | 500,000 | 875,000 | 43 | local | Getting the title search process correct and building reliable records. | digitizing our records | oil and gas searches |
| Gameress | Retail | A store celebrating girls and women who play video games. Bringing awareness to the gender disparity gap in eSports. | I'm a woman who plays video games and have joined many communities where girls and women speak about bullying and their struggles feeling comfortable in this space. After looking at the eSports boom I found that their is a lack of gender diversity even though close to half of the gamers are female. | 2 | 20 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 10,000 | 50 | 12,000 | 500 | -2,300 | Facebook advertising | Covid 19 has impacted consumer spending | Site optimization | The gaming industry is growing and with that the number of women who play video games. |
| Zennessee Organics | Alternative Medicine | Zennessee Organics is a modern CBD lifestyle brand for all who desire a natural, plant-based approach to healing. | In 2018, my mother was taking chemo and radiation for lung cancer and we found out about how CBD products could benefit her anxiety, pain and overall health. Our family's life completely changed. After my mom passed away, I began looking for affordable CBD products to help me & my son with our depression and anxiety. My son had been diagnosed back in 2015 and was taking anti-depressants, but did not like the side affects. I was newly diagnosed with depression and anxiety and wanted a natural alternative. So my husband and I along with my brother and 2 close friends decided we would start our own CBD brand. We knew so many other friends and family dealing with the same issues and knew how expensive CBD was. We wanted to make sure everyone had access to premium grade CBD, especially in our community. We have a passion for assisting people with their healing journey because we relate to them. We know what it feels like to deal with anxiety and want people to understand the value of CBD and how it can change lives. So, it was a no-brainer to start our business journey with CBD. This is how Zennessee Organics was born. | 1 | 40 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 0 | word of mouth | advertising restrictions | social media influencers | African American community |
| ATS STATS | Sports | We provide sports analytics from a point spread point of view. | After leaving the military in 1996, I was at a cross road on what to do next in life, after hearing a handicapper named Russ Culver on sportsline.com talk about sports handicapping, I knew exactly that was the field I wanted to be in and bring my twist to the sports betting industry. | 24 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 75,000 | 25,000 | 100,000 | 75 | internet marketing | staying competitive and being innovative | seo writer | video production |
| Elderly Instruments | Retail | Musical Instrument Retailer, specializing in vintage, new & used fretted and stringed instruments. | My father started this company in 1972. I am the second generation and have spent the last 6 years restructuring the business for this decade/with modern business techniques. | 2 | 50 | 40 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 2,000 | 3,440,000 | 8,000,000 | 57 | Word of Mouth - We still keep in touch with our first customer prior to the actual opening of the business in 1972. That man bought a guitar from the attic of where my father and his then partner lived - had heard "some kids were selling great instruments and a reasonable price" I'm told. | Being able to change the backend of the company (technology, processes, protocol, etc) while not changing the old-fashioned customer service aspect. Because money-making wasn't the primary goal (in the 70's) we now face a large hurdle in learning how to handle the finances of a large business while functioning in all other aspects as a small business. | Technology & building maintenance | Online - novice/hobby musicians |
| Ambiance Matchmaking | Accounting | An exclusive matchmaking agency for busy, single professionals. | Ambiance Matchmaking was founded by Leslie Wardman and Taylor Wade. Leslie was working for an international matchmaking agency for most of the 1990’s. It was a large company, 90% of applicants were accepted, and there wasn’t enough time or resources to dedicate to client searches. She thought there had to be a better way. In 2002, Leslie partnered with Taylor and launched Ambiance Matchmaking with one simple goal –to offer a personalized, hands-on matchmaking experience. It would be a small boutique company and only a few applicants would be accepted at a time to ensure time, energy, and resources to dedicate to each client. We launched our first office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We were the town’s personal Matchmaker. Everyone came to us as word-of-mouth so there was a strong built-in referral system. Shortly after, we expanded to include Oklahoma City and Chicago. Leslie, a California native with a strong network, began receiving clients in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. Our California locations quickly grew and is now one of our largest and strongest networks of singles. It’s so strong that we moved our HQ to San Francisco. We most recently expanded to New York City. NYC is quickly becoming one of our fastest growing networks, and is forecasted to reach the size of our San Francisco network in half of the time. Though expanded our geographic reach, we still remain true to our founding value – to provide a personal, hands-on matchmaking experience. Accepting a limited number of clients at one time has allowed us to achieve this. | 19 | 50 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 6,100 | 120,000 | 420,000 | 71 | Word of mouth | Quality leads | Google ads | Artificial intelligence |
| S&S Transmission | Automotive | Transmission shop | My husband s daddy thought him how to build transmission and we decided that my husband wanted to open his own shop and just do transmission and breaks | 15 | 40 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 60,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 50 | Word of mouth | Complications | An air compressor | More customers |
| EmpireOptix | Real Estate | Visuals for the real estate industry | With the Covid-19 pandemic changing the way New York City real estate agents promote and market their listings, I opened an agency providing a full suite of visual tools including 360 Videos permitting buyers to "see" a property without physically visiting. Our business has grown 4-500% percent in the last 90 days! | 1 | 60 | 4 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 3,000 | 300,000 | 10,000 | 300,000 | 97 | Database digital marketing | Becoming an approved vendor with real estate agencies which cover some, or all of the cost of visuals for their agents' listings. | We have spent pretty much in point! (So far) | Providing services and solutions to the rapidly changing realities of real estate sales and leasing in a pandemic-facing marketplace. |
| AnnaKraft.co | Individual & Family Services | Our studio provides a portrait experience for families that creates gorgeous and meaningful framed wall art for their home instead of generic family photography. | Always a creative, the business of being an artist chose me, bit by bit over time. I finally hunkered down and did the hard work of transforming from artist to business person when I started my family - I wanted to take control of my income and shatter the income ceiling of what I was making in my own terms without being told what to do. | 3 | 80 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 80,000 | 50 | From a silent auction | Because photography generally speaking is now seen as a commodity, the hardest part is educating potential clients on what makes a luxury portrait studio different from an amateur who won’t charge them professional prices. There is a lot of rejection then, unless you target the one percent in your marketing, who already have the money and just want an incredible experience. | A Wacom tablet and adjustable desk with a great chair. Carpal tunnel is a thing. | Magazine portraits for families. High fashion, curated women are tired of resorting to the same looking portraits everyone else gets. They are sophisticated and they want the best money can by, and how they appear in images is very important. So, a commercial experience for a private client. |
| Videstra | Broadcast Media | Providing Software & Hardware to TV Broadcasters to show live cameras that highlight their communities | I created a similar product while at Weather Central (a weather graphics production system for TV) - but through multiple sales of that company the product was dropped - thus opening a door for me to step out and start a small business around the concept. | 4 | 55 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 120,000 | 50,000 | 190,000 | 450,000 | 58 | Networking with TV Engineering Management people I knew | Understanding the broadcast production workflow required to make this product both attractive and viable. | Financial management | Since ours is the only product of its kind to provide a natural broadcast production workflow - we look forward to continued growth as television stations adopt our solution. |
| Strategy, content, publishing | Public Relations & Communications | Provide companies strategic counsel for messaging by creating omnichannel content, targeting appropriate channels, leveraging technology and learning from successes. | Years of crisis communications recovery and rebuilding, blended listening via multiple technology stacks, a terrific team who are extremely talented in multi-channel messaging. | 27 | 70 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 6,000 | 100,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 40 | Suggested that I would be a better choice | Understanding what potential clients really need, grasping how long new business takes to complete, cash flow and hiring/firing for success | The right employee | (Data + blended listening) + (customer needs + company solutions) = Mindset Messaging |
| WhatHappensNow.com | Publishing | Mash up of more than 30 real life experiences from people who have lived through it and pros who see it every day. | In 1998, I realized I could give back after many people helped me, so we began publishing good advice from around America so folks don’t have to say “I wish I’d known that then, it could have saved me....(fill in the blank). | 22 | 30 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 0 | 15,000 | 0 | 0 | Offered content to TV stations | Content | Video and images | Content |
| EXACT Technology Corporation | Construction | Providing technology (hardware and software) to monitor construction activities to increase efficiency. | I'm a structural engineer and have spent most of my career working for a general contractor as an internal concrete consultant. Think, designing concrete mixes for the specific application, troubleshooting issues during construction etc. It opened my eyes to the many inefficiencies in construction and one issue I came across was monitoring the temperature within large concrete pours (to ensure they don't get too hot and crack). I approached a friend and we started our business to first solve the issue of concrete monitoring to reduce the amount of labour on site and help teams be proactive vs. reactive. Not our company provides rugged and reliable hardware combined with simple to use software to monitor construction activities across North America. | 3 | 70 | 12 | Yes (full-time) | 70,000 | 0 | 800,000 | 1,500,000 | 47 | Through the current work I was doing within the industry. | Theconstruction industry has been very slow to adapt technology. Some people are just stuck in their old school ways and not willing to change. Codes and standards and clients need to approve of technology before implementing it on projects. | Marketing | There are so many opportunities to use technology to improve processes in construction. We have tackled the concrete side of the industry but now we are trying to expand our scope to other aspects (building envelope, HVAC, cranes and equipment). |
| Boyd Consulting Services Inc. | Information Technology & Services | Boyd Consulting Services is a consulting company that provides IT support and Managed services to small and medium sized businesses | 3 friends of mine who worked in consumer electronics want to start our own company. Eventually that company evolved and split into 2 separate companies. Me and one of the partners formed a second second company. That partner left the business and I inherited his main client that I support to this day. | 20 | 70 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 300 | 5,000 | 35,000 | 35,000 | 0 | I upgraded their computer network from Novell to Windows | Staying current with the latest information and applying it to your current environment. | Training and hiring more people | Developing economic ecosystems |
| Advance Tax & Insurance Svcs | Accounting | Tailored accounting services for businesses & individuals | Got tired of hearing I had reached the glass ceiling at my previous job. Left the firm & started my own business. | 7 | 45 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 15,000 | 80,000 | 200,000 | 60 | Loyalty | how to attract customers | renting an office space | Providing guidance with sba & other loan applications & resources |
| Dem Boyz & A Diva Tow LLC. | Transportation / Trucking / Railroad | We service individual who experience car trouble | My fiance has been helping people since they owned a scrap yard. | 5 | 40 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 25,000 | 34,000 | 7,563 | 60,000 | 87 | Friends | Struggle with staying open client connection | A newer truck | Expanding to more areas to reach more people |
| Penumbra | Marketing & Advertising | We outsource digital marketing from technology companies with a powerful focus on branding strategy and content as differentiators. | There was no company in my country focusing on B2B or technology space. I used to manage B2B channel for Cisco and one day decided to fulfill that need. | 6 | 50 | 8 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 36,000 | 100,000 | 120,000 | 17 | Went to a reseller I knew from my Cisco days and told them how proper marketing and branding could help accelerate their B2B sales. | Cashflow | UX capability | Co-creation for products with product companies where we do Design Thinking, UX and UI |
| oomph | Retail | Luxury Home Furnishings Brand | 3 Friends looking to add a little oomph to their houses. | 10 | 40 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 9,000 | 10,000 | 1,000,000 | 4,500,000 | 78 | ny gift show | Shipping | Website | Outdoor Furniture |
| The Scrunchie Club | Consumer Goods | We partners with womxn and non-binary artists to create unique scrunchies, with 15% of the profits donated to causes you care about. | Our Founder, Alyssa, was shopping for new scrunchies in New York City when she noticed something strange. None of the hair accessories available were celebrating what makes us unique. After that day, she set out to create scrunchies for those who celebrate what makes them different - for those who are weird and know that's what makes them extraordinary. | 0 | 20 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 0 | Friends and family! | Exposure - constantly driving new traffic to our website and finding new community members. | Photography | Providing products that speak to womxns specific interests and values - products that create an actual connection. |
| Smoke-N-Grill BBQ | Food & Beverages | Mobile BBQ serving the very best in Southern BBQ and fresh sides | Barbecuing was a hobby I picked up, until one day I decided to take a the advice I had been receiving and pursue it as a business venture. | 4 | 32 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,500 | 6,000 | 2,500 | 12,500 | 80 | Word of mouth | Permits and Licensing | My equipment | All over Florida |
| The Colonial Agency | Marketing & Advertising | We make action-sport style recruiting ads for the US Military and Defense Contractors. | Like a scene out of War Dogs, I became a defense contractor at age 17 while still a senior in high school. Since then I have worked with the US Special Operations Command, US Army, and National Park Service to plan and produce high production value cinema projects. | 3 | 65 | 8 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 29,000 | 350,000 | 500,000 | 30 | I was awarded my first prime federal contract after 30 failed bids. | Crazy regulations. | Accountant and Attorney. | Connecting federal buyers with high-quality service providers and creative talent. |
| Better Agency | Computer Software | CRM & Marketing Automation Platform for Insurance Agencies | Used to consult implementing software and connecting tools for insurance agents. I had a background in marketing automation. Eventually I just started building the solutions my clients needed, and selling that instead of consulting | 1 | 50 | 11 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 55,000 | 200,000 | 500,000 | 60 | pitched at an event for 'beta' users that would get the app for life free | start up grind - lack of funds/resources - running it full time on a part time salary. building your team. lack of the 'big players' wanting to play ball (integrations, etc.) | i wouldn't change how we launched. we probably could have raised money (we are bootstrapped) and invested more in development before launch, however we followed the lean start up method | solving a specific need for a specific sub-set of customers - be the best at that and then slowly begin solving other specific needs for other specific types of customers, all within the same industry |
| Brutus Broth | Consumer Goods | With a mission to provide nutrition to your pet while giving back to the community, Brutus Broth offers a variety of all-natural bone broth products to enhance canine health. | We are family owned and operated. My sister rescued her dog Brutus from a high kill shelter. He was abused and malnourished. She always added bone broth to his food throughout his life. It was a staple in our home growing up because of all of the health benefits. Throughout Brutus' life people would always ask what she fed him because he lived such a long healthy and active life. He was a 135 pound dog with a life expectancy of 8-9 years. He lived until he was almost 14. Bone broth for dogs was commercially available but it was really expensive and not shelf stable. We did a lot of research and found that over 50% of US households had dogs; people spent more on their dog food than their kids' food and this recession-proof industry was growing. Furthermore, the competitive landscape was fragmented with either cool "mom & pops" who couldn't scale or mega-companies like Purina. There was an opportunity to bring an artesianal product to the market that was scalable. We hired a team of nutritionists that formulate nutrient broths for starving people in 3rd world countries to develop a unique, commercially viable, human grade bone broth for dogs that is infused with joint protecting supplements. We launched in 2018 and are now available online and in over 3000 stores nationwide. | 3 | 80 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 500,000 | 340,000 | 500,000 | 2,000,000 | 75 | We approached 2 retailers to do a beta test. It took a lot of calling around to people in our personal network to get an introduction to the buyer and then calling the buyer several times to get a meeting. Once we were able to get into those retailers onboard, we were able to put case studies together to show to other retailers. It also helped that the first retailer was Wegmans Food Markets because they are so highly respected amongst their peers and we were able to get some compelling data from that beta test. | We are women owned in a very male dominated manufacturing business. We have a co-packer business model so that has been very challenging. They require us to pay in advance, in full and in cash. The other challenge is that we are self funded and we are competing with well capitalized competitors when it comes to marketing. | If we had more money we would spend it on marketing. | marketing collaborations |
| Higher Level Processing | Education Management | we are the H & R Block to the Federal Student Loan Business | I ran Car dealerships and opened a Mortgage company. I had three kids in college and the recession hit. I had to reinvent myself. I kept looking for the money with student loans. i worked on it at night until 2am for 3 months. Figured out it was the Dept. of ED. moving money from one pocket to the next. During this time i researched and learned the Dept. of ED had 63 programs. I wrote a business plan and pitched it to two people and the first one said yes. Nine years later i'm still hear and loving life. It gives me the opportunity to change peoples lives. My clients and my employees. | 9 | 60 | 35 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 350,000 | 1,200,000 | 4,000,000 | 70 | direct mail | no written regulation only implied | nothing | mass markets and net branching |
| Rescue Riders llc | Transportation / Trucking / Railroad | We transport shelter and rescue animals to their new families. | I have supported animal rescue for most of my life. The previous owner of the transport lost her husband and had to sell so it seemed a good time to be a more direct player. | 4 | 35 | 5 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 100,000 | 160,000 | 120,000 | 140,000 | 14 | Came with the business | Rising costs with flat revenue | Marketing for new rescues | No where |
| Portman Law Group | Law Practice | We are a NY State commercial debt collection law firm. | I went to work at a general practice law firm after passing the bar examination. One of the partners showed me what would be my desk. There was a pile of files in one corner. He said: "Those are judgments, turn them into money" and left the room. I figured out how to do that with some mastery and turned it into my own business. | 5 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 40,000 | 3,500 | 65,000 | 95 | I left a law firm where I worked and clients followed | When you start from scratch, it often takes time from placement of a claim to collection of any money. You only earn fees if you collect on accounts. | Getting the word out that I was on my own. | Debt collection within the legal community, for referral fees due between law firms as a result of change of counsel during a matter. |
| Kopa | Hospitality | Kopa is the world's first medium-term housing marketplace | My two co-founders and I moved 52 times in the span of 7 years, mostly for our co-operative education (work-integrated learning resulting in 15 internships). We struggled to find 4-6 month, furnished housing and housemates. We also found existing housing solutions to be transactional. So we created the solution we wanted as our final year engineering project in school (like a thesis). After 2 years of working on Kopa as a side-hustle, we got rejected from YC and decided to make it our full-time hustle that night. We then got into YC on the next attempt (and even have the recording of the acceptance phone call). | 5 | 60 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 500 | 480,000 | 150,000 | -220 | I asked the landlord I rented from to list his properties on Kopa, then shared his listings in our UWaterloo co-op Facebook group to get his spaces booked | Chicken-and-egg problem of starting a marketplace | SEO | The community aspect of moving and renting. There is a huge opportunity to help people get out of their comfort zone, form lasting relationships, and live more fulfilled lives. Currently you have to find the motivation and go through the decision paralysis of choosing what to do in the new area you moved to. We have a unique opportunity to connect like-minded people and offer them an itinerary of things to do since we know who they are and when they're moving. |
| JJS Consulting Group | Marketing & Advertising | We strategically manage the brand and message of clients, big or small. | After working several years in corporate communications in various capacities, I felt I learned enough about each aspect to contract out those services. I created JJS Consulting Group, a strategic marketing and communications agency. There are plenty of agencies out there but not too many communications agencies that encompass both the glamorous components of PR/marketing as well as the deeper ground level stuff like website content and B2B presentations. The idea is to provide the same level of support as a full strategic corporate communications department for less than the cost of a single marketing communications resource. | 2 | 60 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 500 | 2,000 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 90 | Up until 2018, I had only done work with a former partner. This guy I worked with at my day job, Ken, was the first I worked with on my own. He owned a bar and they needed to redo their website, maybe some social marketing. I did both and he and his partners were very happy. He’s still a client. | We haven’t quite worked out global pandemics yet. Aside from that, getting people to understand the breadth of marketing communications work can be a challenge if they don’t have a frame of reference. Getting corporate executives to understand the value is a monumental task, let alone the average person. | My own digital presence. | I feel the world is heading in a direction where it will become increasingly normalized to literally “be” your own company. There’s no real fundamental reason organizations can’t be made up of a bunch of micro-organizations that provide each individual service needed to produce a product or service at a collective profit. A more modular economic infrastructure if you will. As that becomes more of the reality, each of those micro-organizations will need their own individual brands and messages managed by another micro-organization that specializes in marketing communications. Once things stabilize, I believe business will be booming. |
| JRV Wealth Management Group, LLC | Investment Management | We help people retire when they want to with more money than they ever thought they could. | I have been working in the financial services industry since 1997 as a financial advisor/stockbroker. As an African American financial advisor, I knew it would be challenging to build my own business but I always knew I could do it. I learned so much from working with various firms throughout the years and many special people taught me a lot about growing, building, and maintaining clients. I took that same philosophy and work ethic with me when I started JRV Wealth in September of 2008. My thinking in 2008 ( stock market crash) was if I can make it and do well hanging out my shingle and creating my own firm in this market, I'll be fine. Well, I'm still here! | 12 | 85 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 30,000 | 25,000 | 125,000 | 80 | My very first new client was from a previous employer that we had developed and maintained a business relationship for over 8 years. | The biggest challenge we face in our industry is generating new clients. | I would probably say I would have embraced the power of digital marketing and social platforms to get my name and brand out to the public. | My biggest potential is building my business in the underserved African American markets and using the power of digital marketing to communicate with them throughout the U.S. |
| Bare Body Spa | Health, Wellness & Fitness | Laser hair removal | I worked for an engineer, who was looking for a bilingual sales person. I helped with accounts in Mexico, Spain and portugal. His wife was a nurse and did laser hair removal. She always had a very difficult time getting the laser manufacture to schedule repair and maintenance on her machines. This engineer realized if his wife was having this issue, so were a lot of other laser spas. He started manufacturing fibers out of his garage. Outside of the original candela laser enterprise, he grew to became the biggest laser operation for maintenance contracts, repairs, and seller of consumables and refurbished lasers. Curious to see what a typical day was for a laser hair removal technician was, I decided to take the course. I enjoyed the interaction with clients so much more, that I decided to switch gears. I worked for a laser spa in Austin for 2 years, then in Dallas for another 2 years before opening my own spa. I went back to school to learn esthetics in order to add facials, chemical peels and other esthetics to my menu. | 5 | 55 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 65,000 | 60,000 | 60,000 | 165 | -36,264 | groupon | getting clients | another laser | tattoo removal |
| Frenchtown Brewing | Food & Beverages | Production Brewery and Tap Room | Analytical Chemist, Kevin Brown, moved to St. Thomas US Virgin Islands to work on research at the University of the Virgin Islands. Due to lack of good beer on island, the science types at UVI began homebrewing. 25 years later, Kevin opened Frenchtown Brewing in quaint, eclectic Frenchtown on Charlotte Amalie Harbor to the delight of hop heads with years of pent up deprivation. A highly accomplished brewery, the relatively small production is sought after by locals and tourists alike. Now celebrating 5 years of operation. | 5 | 25 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 60,000 | 60,000 | 85,000 | 100,000 | 15 | Opened the door. The buzz created an eagerly awaiting audience. | Locally, we were the first production brewery in the USVI so assisted in writing the procedures. Our brewer is very knowledgeable so could assist. His wife owns an advertising / marketing agency; FBC was well equipped to launch. Others, struggle trying to turn a hobby into a business thinking passion is enough. | We came out of the box looking and being pro. We run other companies so understand what is needed. We would suggest paying a good bookkeeper right off the bat to set up software for good reporting. | It is still a booming industry despite COVID, however St. Thomas depends on tourism which is currently almost non-existent. All excitement is post COVID. |
| The Houston House LLC | Design | Design firm specializing in interiors and exteriors. | For a long time I tried to separate what I "do" and who I "am". I didn't want my line of work to define me as a person. As many know, I am an attorney-turned-designer. Practicing law, I always felt the work I was doing wasn't inwardly reflective. Maybe it was the practice area, maybe it was the specific jobs, the clients, I really don't know. But what I do know is that in my gut it just wasn't right. Something wasn't clicking. I wasn't gelling, and I certainly didn't want my work to be who I was, specifically a line of work I really didn't enjoy. I always pushed that inner voice way down and decided no one likes their job. No one actually enjoys getting up to go to work. Everyone secretly has a dream to do something else. This is totally normal, so suck it up and carry on. And to some extent, that's true. Adulting isn't always (ever?) fun. It's a rat race and we're all participants. But eventually I had to ask myself, at what point is it costing me more than it's providing for me? For my family? After three years of law school, and then three more years in practice, I had my first child. Motherhood changed me in many ways, but one I am forever grateful for is the way it changed my perspective on my career. Being a mom made me realize just how much I wanted a change, and perhaps that voice that kept pestering me wasn't as "normal" as I'd thought and shouldn't be dismissed. You can't make any real money in creative work, right? That's what I told myself. I wanted to be a career woman. I wanted to work at a big lofty firm with a big lofty reputation and have a big lofty job title. And those goals are acceptable and most commendable, except that those weren't my personal goals inwardly. Those were goals I had set for myself outwardly. How I wanted others to see me. How I wanted the world to view me. Those weren't personal goals, those weren't me at all, but I thought somehow if I were impressive to those around me, I'd be filled up on the inside. All the while ignoring that voice that kept telling me this was the wrong profession, the wrong path for me. Now, I'd be lying to you to say it wasn't hard at the time to tell my husband, my family, my friends - "oh hey, yeah that degree I worked tirelessly on, this profession that I've basically dedicated the last 6 YEARS of my life to? Yea, I've decided it's not going to work out. " In law school, any "down" time I had, it was spent reading up on interior design. Home decor. Trends. Styles. Watching HGTV. Flipping through magazines. Designing rooms on paper. Drafting fake house plans. Scrolling through Zillow and flipping houses in my mind. It's funny, looking back now I can remember doing these things from a young age at my dad's drafting table. I can remember building and creating furniture for my Barbies. I can remember changing out my doll's bedding and using building blocks to create new houses. If that isn't thumbprints at an early age, I don't know what is. After law school, I started blogging. I started decorating our first house. Into that home I used all of my spare time pouring my energy. That's when friends and family took notice and started asking me for advice on their own homes. I started designing rooms for people I knew just for the fun. The feeling of pulling together a space for someone completely overwhelmed me, in a good way. The satisfaction that came from this filled up my soul. Seriously. It did. It wasn't for three more years, however, that I finally decided it was time to listen. Time to fully embrace that path. And it was difficult, to be honest. Not just financially difficult. Let's face it, I didn't make the money I was making practicing law. Some days I thought ‘I've done the exact right thing. I've got flexible hours with the kids. It's good’. Other days I wondered where my next job was coming from, and I was hungry for work. We moved from Atlanta to Savannah soon after I decided to step back from the legal profession. I was fortunate to align myself with established designers in the lowcountry. I began working as an Office and Showroom Manager, and then later becoming a Junior Designer for S. Tallevast and Curry & Co. Interiors. I soaked up every ounce of knowledge I could in my three years there before we moved yet again. This time back to our hometown in South Carolina. Fast forward seven years later now, The Houston House LLC is a full service interior and exterior design firm, offering everything from new construction, remodels, paint consults, custom furniture, one day makeover… the list goes on and on. Helping clients from Atlanta, to Savannah, to Charleston and the Columbia Metro area and surrounding suburbs. So, what do I do? I help others achieve a space that makes them proud. I help families organize the chaos. I help friends come home at the end of the day to an environment that’s inviting and warm. That's what I do. | 7 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 500 | 7,000 | 85,000 | 92 | friends | Managing the business side of things. Creatives are not naturally great at numbers. There's also a ton of competition out there. To grow it takes time, reputation, and a lot of hard work. | Opening trade accounts | With Covid and working from home on a rise, bringing home office options more to the forefront. House plans with a dedicated office zone for one or both heads of family to work. |
| DADs Home Inspections, llc | Real Estate | Home and Building inspection service | I am a licensed contractor who moved into the home inspection business to help people know and learn about the new home they are purchasing | 14 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 45,000 | 10,000 | 85,000 | 88 | Realtor | Home sales | Advertisement | |
| Soulful by c2 | Retail | Here at Soulful by c2 we make small batch high quality holistic soy candles, body butters and scrubs. | I’ve always loved candles, but I wanted the candles that I made to have a purpose. Having candles that make you home smell good is great, but a candle that could help with headaches and sleep deprivation is even better. | 5 | 20 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 2,000 | 7,000 | 10,000 | 30 | Word of mouth | Startup capital | Marketing and advertising | |
| Ryan Bitikofer LLC | Education Management | I help people achieve personal success. | I’ve been training individuals and corporations for years. This is a natural extension of my skills. | 3 | 40 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 70,000 | 70,000 | 40,000 | -75 | I left a job and took friends with me. | Training is the last to add and first to cut. | Marketing | Trying the trainers |
| Rogue Toys | Consumer Goods | We buy/sell and trad, vintage toys : Youth Relived | I started at Nike employee store worked my way to WHQ. Recruited BACK into retail as Store Managers for Hurley and J Crew....back at Nike as DJ and consultant to them while running my toy store | 5 | 30 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 500,000 | 90,000 | 225,000 | 175,000 | -29 | Staying relevant and creating content | Infrastructure / operations | Social media / Live Video / Content Creation | |
| Blackwell's Wines & Spirits | Food & Beverages | Ecommerce and "Brick & Mortar" wine & spirits store | My wife and I wanted to leave corporate jobs, and start our own business. We also wanted to do somthing we were "interested" in. Sometimes it does feel like a hobby, or an obsession. . . | 16 | 60 | 6 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 400,000 | 500,000 | 9,000,000 | 94 | opened the doors. | acheiving a profitable volume, managing marketing/technology | website, marketing | The masses of people that do not order online yet |
| Launch Pad Publishing | Publishing | We write and publish books for 6 and 7 figure entrepreneurs who want to build their business and/or become an expert in their field. | In my former life, I was a NY Times bestselling author of 6 books for HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. And I was broke. I then started studying marketing and realized that while writers were for the most part underpaid, writing skills were extremely valuable—especially to those who have great business abilities and could use a book to become an expert in their field. Our first client landed a six-figure spokesperson deal the week the book we wrote for him came out. Our second added $500,000 to his annual bottom line by signing clients who had read his book. We've now helped dozens of others have similar success. | 2 | 60 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 100 | 450,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 | 40 | He found me on Instagram and convinced me to publish his book. | It's an expensive product and with economic insecurity, it's hardly a "necessary" expense (though I would argue that it is because marketing has never been more important and a lot of the traditional marketing efforts aren't very effective anymore). | Advertising | Helping clients grow their businesses once their book is out, whether that's in growing funnels, seeking out higher-end clients or capturing more media attention. |
| Church Media Squad | Graphic Design | Unlimited custom graphic design for churches. | Church Media Squad started as an outflowing of my own freelancing work with churches. I had decided to make a company and system out of it back in September 2017. We started with only three clients and another part-time employee. Ever since we have worked with well over 700 organizations and now have a staff made of up 17 people. | 3 | 35 | 17 | Yes (full-time) | 100 | 300,000 | 200,000 | 1,200,000 | 83 | Our first monthly customer came from a personal contact from a previous freelancing gig. | Understanding and serving client design tastes and preferences in order to get concepts approved faster. | Analytics | Right now I think the biggest area of growth would be the small to mid-sized organizations who know they need quality graphics but don't think they can afford them yet. |
| Jinx | Food & Beverages | Jinx is focused on elevating the way we care and connect with our dogs by creating purposeful products that are 100% dog approved. | We were looking for brands that offered updated nutrition solutions, but the entire category was marketing toward wolves and high-performance dogs. Since we couldn't find a modern brand with an online distribution model, we made our own. | 1 | 70 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 750,000 | 2,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 50 | Through social media promotions. | Running a profitable growth-minded business. | Recruiting! | Through mass online distribution. |
| Wander Hemp Co | Alternative Medicine | We sell through a retail location and online. We create hemp and CBD productions including soap, oil, body butters and beauty products. including | We tried other CBD products and knew there was something better that could be created to be both more natural in terms of ingredients and more beneficial for helping the body to heal. | 2 | 80 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 150,000 | 50,000 | 120,000 | 100,000 | -20 | Retail location | Costs | Marketing | Pets and veterans more consumer beauty |
| Voltage Control | Management Consulting | Voltage Control is a facilitation agency on a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings. | I've been a CTO for most of my career. As founder and CTO of many startups, I learned first hand what was required to create high performing teams. Twyla, my most recent startup, was funded by Google Ventures, which gave me the opportunity to work directly with Jake Knapp on our Design Sprint. After leaving Twyla I began to get asked to run Design Sprints for large enterprises. From there we evolved into different facilitation disciplines and set our sights on transforming companies by improving meetings through facilitated leadership. | 3 | 60 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 1,000,000 | 500,000 | 800,000 | 38 | They came to an event I hosted with Jake Knapp | Sales & Lead Generation | I'm not sure I would change anything. | More cross-pollination across silos. More adoption of facilitation principles in leadership. Better meeting hygeine |
| Taradel | Marketing & Advertising | We provide a web based platform that makes it easy for small businesses to deploy highly targeted, multi-channel, direct marketing campaigns in under ten minutes. | I developed a technique to optimize printing production that made direct mail more affordable. When my existing company showed little interest in it I decided to try selling it on my own. I launched Taradel in 2003. | 17 | 50 | 30 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 675,000 | 5,000,000 | 17,000,000 | 71 | A lead from Paid Search | Generating enough cash flow to finance growth | Hiring in house database and web developers | Millions of SMBs struggle with their marketing. We currently work with over 16,000 of them. We see great potential in collecting attribution data across multiple verticals. We can then can optimize that data in the aggregate to provide much more predictable results and guaranteed marketing ROI. |
| Click Control Marketing LLC | Marketing & Advertising | We are a Digital Marketing Agency located in Flint, MI. | In 1999, I started working for a company that had not been around for long. I believe that I was one of the first fifteen people in the company. Soon after I started, the paid Google Ads platform began rolling out, and I was one of the first advertisers to work within the platform. After nine years, the company that I worked for had grown to over 300 employees and sold to a Fortune 500 company. I took the nine years of experience that I had gained in the paid search arena and started Click Control Marketing. | 10 | 60 | 9 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 110,000 | 530,000 | 610,000 | 13 | running ads online | hiring and retaining good talent | I wished I had hired a Project Manager sooner in the start-up process | With the current Cornovirus pandemic, more businesses are moving online, which continues to provide enormous opportunities for marketing those businesses online. |
| AGOGIE | Apparel & Fashion | Resistance Apparel | Working with NFL players, I saw them struggle to put resistance on the body in a natural way outside of a gym. This was the birth of the resistance apparel idea. | 4 | 60 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 250,000 | 44,000 | 500,000 | 1,300,000 | 62 | Direct sales | Creating a new category of business | Data | Increasing health simply by wearing apparel |
| Active For Good | Health, Wellness & Fitness | We run activity challenges where participants get physically active, burn calories, and then we give those calories to severely malnourished kids in the developing worlds. | A group of us had heard about these amazing peanut butter packets that are used by medical teams in the developing world to treat severely malnourished children. We were compelled to help kids and wanted to figure out a creative way to bridge the gap in funding and serve more kids. Personally, I was running a branding agency at the time and looking for a way to help; I ended up closing the agency in 2014 to ride a bicycle from San Diego to Portland then to New York as a way to raise funds to help malnourished kids. We started Active For Good to help give people a sense of purpose as a motivation to stay active. | 6 | 40 | 4 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 100,000 | 1,000,000 | 100,000 | 250,000 | 60 | Being a non-profit we got a grant from a company that loves the idea and helped us proof the concept. | Surfacing above the noise. | Technology | Small teams or companies that don't have a full wellness program or budget. |
| It’s a Ruff Life Pet Care | Consumer Services | I walk dogs and pet sit for people. | I love walking dogs and decided getting paid to do the same was a great thing. | 2 | 10 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 1,000 | 10,000 | 1,400 | 10,000 | 86 | Word of mouth | Covid: people now working remotely from home | Na | Na |
| E-Bikes Santa Barbara | Retail | We sell electric bikes. | Started out as a dealer carrying one brand only. Branches out and we carry the finest German, Italian and French bikes as well as many others. | 7 | 10 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 75,000 | 25,000 | 400,000 | 500,000 | 20 | Location | Online undercutting msrp | Website | Selling by appointment only |
| Bundle Training | E-Learning | We create bite-sized content for human beings, businesses and well-intentioned initiatives. | I used to manage the communications when companies were replacing their sales, HR or Finance software - and the training was always a huge pain point - people had no idea what to do in these crucial systems and entire functions would grind to a halt. Thought there was a better way to do the training (even if I'd never worked in training myself). | 2 | 55 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 100,000 | 200,000 | 350,000 | 43 | Previous consulting customer | Cash flow. We'd be paid by clients 30-60 days after the end of a project, but the project itself might run for 4-6 months - during which time we'd be paying freelancer day rates and all other project costs etc. | A good accountant | eLearning and Virtual Reality training are potentially going to explode with everyone working remotely. |
| Lamb Creative Group | Marketing & Advertising | Award-winning Marketing & PR Agency servicing clients in Canada, the United States and Europe. | I had worked for over a decade in the Entertainment/TV Industry doing PR/Marketing and after becoming a mom, knew that there was no way I could continue with the burnout lifestyle of work. I decided to quit my job and focus on building a photography business, but about 6 months in, a giant PR client landed on my lap and it was so big I had to hire a team to work on the project. The client was in a different industry (food) and I had relatable experience having worked on food/cooking related TV shows. We blew our client's expectations out of the water in results, landing every major media outlet in Canada. I had a lot of fun and realized I wasn't ready to give up doing Marketing/PR, I had just been burnt out. I wanted to give it a go, and that was how Lamb Creative Group was born! | 6 | 40 | 9 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 | 67 | Through a networking contact | Staying on top of emerging trends and media consumption habits (they are constantly changing). | Google Ads | emerging client industries (ie. cannabis) |
| Convention Electric, Inc | Events Services | Electrical contractor for tradeshows | Family business | 5 | 60 | 8 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 500,000 | 900,000 | 11,000,000 | 92 | Several meetings | Union | Investing in the stock market | Trade shows will comeback stronger |
| StratExAI | Utilities | Business Transformation Program Management | After leading technology-enabled transformations for product companies, I wanted to get closer to strategic stakeholders - sharing the commitment to the outcomes and success - with small teams of experienced consultants driving large scale change. | 10 | 50 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 250,000 | 40,000 | 550,000 | 93 | Direct networking | Repeatability and measurables results | Productized toolkit | Automation and AI |
| pulsd | Hospitality | pulsd is an experiential discovery platform built by New Yorkers for New Yorkers | New York City is a great city but is becoming less and less accessible to more and more people. We wanted to build a platform where more residents could enjoy the city's fabulous offerings (restaurants, events, fitness, beauty) for less. | 7 | 80 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 25,000 | 10,000 | 2,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 67 | Newsletter | COVID - totally destroyed our business given that we are 50% restaurants, 30% events, 10% spa, 5% fitness and 5% other - all gone over the past few months | A robust sales model given the demand is so huge for our product | As New York City recovers, many businesses will need alternate sources of revenue and we believe we can help them achieve this is an economically feasable way. |
| BJs petal Pushers | Retail | Flower and gift shop to help our customers convey all emotions except angee. | We bought the business 4 years ago from the previous owner who was retiring. This is the business 30th year of operation. We want to own a business that has a family heritage and put smile on peoples faces. | 4 | 60 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 77,000 | 365,000 | 200,000 | 390,000 | 49 | Business already had Existing customers. | Paitences | Hiring faster | Funeral business |
| Entire Productions | Events Services | Entire Productions is an event and entertainment productions company in San Francisco | I was a professional classical violinist and jazz vocalist performing for social and corporate events and started an entertainment agency which has over 2000 artists today | 20 | 30 | 6 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 80,000 | 15,000,000 | 4,000,000 | -275 | Referral | Pre COVID was access to affordable employees | Seo | We’re not a sophisticated industry in general, so more systems created is an untapped potential that I’m working on |
| Scribbler | Writing & Editing | We sell goods and services to novelists! | My business partner and I are both bestselling authors (ahem - #1 New York Times bestseller) and wanted to create products to help future aspiring authors. | 2 | 60 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 1,500 | 250,000 | 550,000 | 800,000 | 31 | Preorder marketing campaign | Securing funding as female founders 😉 | Branding | Digital products and branding authors are rockstars vs. hermits. |
| CrateBind | Computer Software | We partner with businesses and build digital products that attract, convert and delight consumers | About 5 years ago, my partners and I tried to start a grocery delivery business (about when Instacart was getting started) and failed miserably. In the process we discovered that we loved coding and creating software, so we made a business out of that and now we have about 30 employees building killer apps for startups and leaders like Roche Diagnostics and AT&T. | 5 | 40 | 30 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 180,000 | 2,500,000 | 3,000,000 | 17 | My mom! | Keeping up with the quickly-changing technology landscape and retaining a top-talent team | Our website and leadership team | I believe our industry will evolve as technology/apps become easier to create. I see a lot of potential in developing "no-code" technology that allows people to quickly prototype and deploy their app idea. Almost everyone has an app idea, and some of them are really good. Would be great to give people the tools to design and build apps quickly and get them in the hands of users without having to spend a ton of money doing it. |
| Easy On Hold | Marketing & Advertising | We help businesses transform their 'music/message on hold' experience into one that educates, upsells, and impresses callers... AKA we make the hold time not suck. | Almost 25 years ago I made a call to a restaurant for a reservation. They put me on hold and were playing the radio, during which I heard an ad for another restaurant. It sounded so good I went there instead. I realized, with my radio and music production background, that I could help businesses keep people on the line and better promote their products/services to a captive audience. Since then we've gotten a lot more advanced, but that's how I came into the industry. | 23 | 50 | 16 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 100,000 | 1,500,000 | 2,500,000 | 40 | Made a lot of phone calls to businesses in the area that I had worked with on radio advertisements. | So many marketing/advertising services are being done within one organization, and it makes it harder to sell one marketing/advertising service to customers who use an agency for everything. We specialize in a niche part of marketing (contact center experience) and it's helped us make a name for ourselves when people want the hold experience done right. | Hiring. Having the right partners with you to grow the brand and envision the future can help lead your company to milestones that are well thought out and set you up for future growth beyond that. | Streaming is something most people experience everyday with Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc. We're the only company really bringing this to the market with an end to end solution for contact centers. Instead of loading files that play in a loop, we feed relevant contact into the system via the internet. This allows marketers to schedule content in advance, randomize the experience, and prioritize important topics while monitoring what each location/department is playing. This may seem trivial, but it opens up a slew of features and benefits for call centers dealing with high call volume (uh, hello pandemic status calls to airlines/retailers/restaurants). |
| TAS textiles India Pvt Ltd | Apparel & Fashion | Garment manufacturing | My grandparents lived in the textile hub of India. With that background, when things went south in my marriage I started exploring what I could do. With the help of friends giving me orders I started off supplying corporate and school uniforms. I met my business partner here. We are 7 years into the business and export to the US and Europe | 7 | 45 | 125 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 250,000 | 200,000 | -25 | Through friends | Quality and on time shipments, quality employees, proper payment from customers | Moving all operations into one premises | New types of natural fibre | |
| Bad Mother Supper Ltd | Entertainment | We offer food pickups by donation, allowing for those affected by covid to have their meals subsidized (during pandemic) - pre pandemic we facilitate private parties with multi course meals and a family atmosphere- not a restaurant, these are private parties run by a chef and wife. | I began as a butcher, and had dreamt of opening a restaurant. When I relocated into a more expensive apartment by necessity, I decided to open up my space, selling tickets to a ltd seating event. It has ballooned in popularity over the years, while I’ve supported myself as a chef, artist, and DJ. When Covid hit, I could no longer host in my space and I knew people were hurting while others prospered. I offered my donation food pickup service to help level my income and also provide amazing quality meals for those in need, subsidized by the community. Proof that we’re all in this together | 4 | 40 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 12,000 | 25,000 | 25,000 | 0 | Word of mouth | Increasing quality of services, and constant self education coupled with attracting clients to a unique business setting. | Better kitchen equipment | I am creating a new type of restaurant, no front of house. All chef run, extremely intimate and exclusive bc of ltd availability. This is a more sustainable lifestyle- I schedule my business and family life so that i am I’m control of my life, not my audience. |
| Cortado | Restaurants | Subscription service for local coffee shops | Serial Entrepreneur | 2 | 100 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 100,000 | 10,000 | 750,000 | 99 | hustle | scale / raising money | n/a | |
| CultureCon | Events Services | connecting humans to inspire positive change around organizational culture | passionate about making work more meaningful, fulfilling, and fun for everyone | 4 | 100 | 6 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 200,000 | 100,000 | 500,000 | 80 | network | We can't have physical events currently that is our main source of income | brand | growing our mission |
| Coconino Federal Credit Union | Banking | Financial Institution | Worked here for 36 years | 15 | 45 | 23 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 125 | 5,000,000 | 0 | 0 | Teachers started the CU | technology | growth | growth |
| Real T lounge fuelled by ChefD | Food & Beverages | Cafe, wood fired pizza, coffee | I have a Catering company (A touch of Class Catering by ChefD). We cater for 2 to 900 and bands like Dianna Krall, Bonnie Raitt, many more. When COVID hit we had to change. So we took over a private Golf Course Food and Beverage Operation and opened the cafe | 10 | 80 | 16 | Yes (full-time) | 15,000 | 650,000 | 450,000 | 9,000,000 | 95 | I catered for someone | How we can work with the new realities in sales and staffing | Social media | With some places closing, rent will be less expensive to try new things |
| Allison Shamrell Pet Photography | Photography | I'm a professional pet photographer, best job ever. | I got into photography in college, and went to a big sports school, so I was constantly shooting football games, basketball, etc - and it was AMAZING, I loved it. But then I graduated & got married, and we moved to a part of the country with no sports teams whatsoever (Pensacola, FL, because my husband was in the Navy). I started looking around for something else to photograph, and around that time we adopted our dog, Bailey. I started taking photos of her, then friends' dogs, and then it blossomed from there into a full-fledged 6-figure business. | 9 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 15,000 | 60,000 | 150,000 | 60 | I met them at "Barktoberfest", a pet event in a local park | Differentiating themselves from the "mom with a camera" - or worse, mom with an iPhone - who will charge a fraction of a living wage | Hiring an accountant | I'm in the midst of a pivot (thanks, covid) to teaching people how to take better photos of their own pets. Because I believe that every pet deserves a beautiful portrait, and not every pet owner is going to hire a professional (or even semi-professional) photographer. |
| Bodies by Ralph | Professional Training & Coaching | Personal training | Worked out of gyms for years until I decided it was time to branch out on my own | 1 | 40 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 2,000 | 3,000 | 0 | 50,000 | 100 | Referral | Pandemic | More equipment | Pivotal year for developing content that can be used virtually |
| Top Hat | Design | Creative marketing agency that once worked entirely in exchange for beer. | Founded by a college kid who skipped classes to meet clients at an office in Pittsburgh. Seven years later, a sought-after 11-person agency with offices in Pittsburgh and St. Petersburg, FL. | 7 | 80 | 11 | Yes (full-time) | 6,000 | 1,500,000 | 600,000 | 1,500,000 | 60 | The founder Ben went up to a car owner at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. Led to a conversation, which led to a business card. The owner happened to be the CEO of the Pittsburgh Auto Show. When Ben founded Top Hat, he cold-called him out of the blue and it went uncharacteristically well and turned almost immediately into business. | Founders/owners in the design industry often don't come from business backgrounds and struggle with the fundamentals like managing their teams, developing scaleable processes, and making good decisions. They run too much like starving artists rather than for-profit entities. | Good talent. | I'd point to a series of emerging markets like cannabis and CBD. Those are just getting established and the density of agencies isn't overcrowded at this point in time. Although it will be before you know it. On the flip side, the beverage space is one that's driven entirely by design and marketing, especially right now. During quarantine you saw breweries especially turn almost entirely to canning their products, which required design and marketing help. The beverage space is hard to crack, so that lends itself well to those with the experience and credibility already. |
| KORE Essentials | Apparel & Fashion | We design and market innovative men's gear. | We saw a need in the marketplace for better quality, innovative gear for guys. So after a year of development and testing, we launched our patented Kore track belts on Kickstarter in May of 2013 and became one of the Top 10 funded projects in the fashion category at the time. Today we offer magnetic sunglasses that lock to your clothes or when not in use, ultra slim RFID wallets and urban assault backpacks with a firearm suspension. We're one of Shopify's top 1% of stores and our customers include the FBI, Secret Service, Border Patrol and Special Forces. | 8 | 60 | 12 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 400,000 | 4,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 20 | Kickstarter | competition and knockoffs | media content | Continuing to design exciting new products that exceed customer expectations. |
| Bean Counting Firm Inc | Accounting | Taxes, accounting, bookkeeping and payroll in one place | I started working for this company in 2003 and within 15 months I bought it. Accounting has always come easy for me, the numbers are a puzzle. When the opportunity arose to own the business, I jumped at it | 16 | 50 | 6 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 145,000 | 450,000 | 500,000 | 10 | Purchased the business but my first on my own was all networking. No advertising | Stereotyping | A business coach | Reaching out to and teaching a younger generation about the ways financial and tax planning (or preparation) can help them in the future. Tax and financial planning should be front and center in education and the lack of those will cripple younger people as they earn and age. |
| Mezzo Labs Ltd | Marketing & Advertising | We help corporates turn their marketing data into customer-winning experiences | I started as a one-man band and bootstrapped my way up, one step at a time. | 14 | 50 | 30 | Yes (full-time) | 200 | 200,000 | 2,400,000 | 3,000,000 | 20 | Through a friend | Access to capital (risk-averse investors) | Codifying everything we did so we could scale faster | Application of AI to automate and accelerate digital experiences |
| Bravo Restoration & Construction | Construction | A group of individuals working together to serve people whose homes have been affected by various adversities | As life would have it, I subsequently landed a job as a receptionist for a local restoration company in 2007. When I started the position, I had an ambition to work in law enforcement, social services or as an attorney (I had a passion for helping others). I instantly fell in love with the restoration industry. Being able to help people through some of their worst times was so exhilarating and fulfilling. I quickly worked my way up from receptionist to Emergency Services Coordinator to Repairs Coordinator and finally to Emergency Services Manager. I loved the long hours, the fast-paced environment, and the ever-changing tasks. I simply loved my job. After I had my first son, Austin, the position I returned back to was much different than the one I left. I chose to leave the company and worked at a landscaping company gaining office manager experience and learning what was needed to run the business side of things. A couple of months later I received a call from a former co-worker who had started his own restoration company. He told me that he couldn’t do it without me and needed my help. I continued working both jobs while going to school full-time; what a busy season! I managed all of this while balancing the demands of being a new mom until the business was growing and ready for my full attention. Five years, two houses, one more child (Bryce), a few hundred tears and lots of laughter later, I purchased the company in 2016. Since then I have been building an empire based on honesty, integrity, trust and team work. Every day our company grows stronger and more efficient, and every person that works there understands that we are heroes to our clients. Property damages can affect your family, income and life itself. It is our duty to alleviate the headaches that come with it. | 4 | 60 | 21 | Yes (full-time) | 850,000 | 2,700,000 | 1,300,000 | 4,000,000 | 68 | cold call | Finding employees, competing with franchises, and government regulations | Management training | There are still a lot of things that are done very "old school" in the service industry and we are working on how to make the experience for our clients more enjoyable and easier on them overall through the use of technology |
| The Bakery LLC | Food Production | Wholesale bakery making breads, rolls, croissants and other pastries. | Got out of the natural beef business into the artisanal bread business after natural beef became a commodity product taking away the "early adopter" revenue premium. | 8 | 45 | 12 | Yes (full-time) | 100,000 | 150,000 | 550,000 | 680,000 | 19 | opened the door | controlling costs and generating revenue | better equipment | unlimited growth due to increasing popularity of healthy comfort foods (like real, true sourdough) |
| Red Queen Gallery | Arts & Crafts | We sell all mediums of art. | Onancock is a small town with a vast number of artists, a place was needed for their works to be seen and sold. | 13 | 25 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 521 | 28,000 | 500 | -5,500 | Opened the door | Those with funds have full walls | Events | New artists |
| Direct Payment Group | Financial Services | We help businesses get paid fast! | In my youth, I’d spend my weekends helping my dad at the chain of retail stores he owned. I got to learn about the many hats he wore as a small business owner and the sacrifices he made to provide for our family. When I entered the financial services space, I spoke with thousands of business owners about their goals and the different methods they used to achieve them. Having the experience from my childhood allowed me to better communicate with them about their needs. It became clear to me that, like my father, many business owners missed out on key sales information that is necessary for growth. That's how my WHY was born. Direct Payment Group is an extension of myself. My goal is to help bring clarity to owners and operators about the services they use and how they can best utilize them to understand and grow their business. We service companies that accept various forms of payments from their customers. | 2 | 50 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 40,000 | 75,000 | 100,000 | 120,000 | 17 | I helped them solve a problem they were having. | Differentiating themselves | Tech | B2B Payments |
| Liberate | Health, Wellness & Fitness | Liberate is a new kind of wellness studio with an emphasis on mental health. | A past version of me dedicated everything I had to physical fitness. It took me a long time to notice the imbalance between my investment in physical vs. mental health. When stress and anxiety kicked in, I craved a safe space where mental health, physical movement, and community worked together as one. It didn’t exist, so we’re creating it here. My goal is to empower you with tools and support to become the best version of yourself. Calm, happy, light. Here you are, here we go. | 1 | 20 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 100 | 3,300 | 1,200 | 225,000 | 99 | social media | Getting individuals out of their comfort zone to try something new | Prospecting to acquire new customers | Mental health is completely untapped in the boutique fitness space. I'm eager to grow mental fitness to be as strong as physical fitness |
| Bat Hats, LLC | Sporting Goods | We sell "hats" for the end of baseball & softball bats. | We saw how popular golf headcovers were, and saw the opportunity to let ball players express themselves the same way. We started it our senior year of college and have been growing it ever since. | 1 | 30 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 8,000 | 20,000 | 5,000 | 50,000 | 90 | Posted in Youth Little League Facebook groups all across America because we didn't have the $ for ad spend. | Awareness. We are a first to market so getting people to understand what we are has been tough. | Physical Marketing Materials, Signage, Branding | Everywhere. From Beer league softball to T-Ball. having fun accenting covers for your bat is an untapped market. |
| Mission: Innovation | Management Consulting | Helps companies bring their innovation ecosystems to life. | I discovered my passion for innovation whilst completing my MBA through Warwick Business School. Whilst consulting at Unilever I also realised that big corporations have a lot to catch up on when it comes to innovation. One of the primary issues is how enterprises engage with external organisations. I help them to build a collaborative operating system which evolves into their innovation ecosystem. | 1 | 45 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 15,000 | 65,000 | 100,000 | 65,000 | -54 | Previous connections | Network | Website | Building a community for informal learning |
| American Guest | Hospitality | Tourism | I entered the business 20 years ago operating hotel concierge desks in New York City. | 20 | 60 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 150,000 | 1,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 80 | business relationships | covid-19 and no one traveling | marketing | consolidation |
| Bizzy Coffee | Food & Beverages | Cold brew coffee for at home use. | Was working at a large food company, fell in love with cold brew, hated paying $5/cup or waiting 18-hours for it to brew. | 5 | 60 | 21 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 187,000 | 2,500,000 | 115 | -2,173,813 | Amazon | High startup cost and low valuations. | PPC ads | Digital merchandising / Instacart etc... |
| Integral | Public Relations & Communications | We are a workforce activation consultancy focused on employee communications, enterprise digital transformation, and organizational culture work. | I spent more than twenty years doing this kind of work in house at IBM and Bloomberg and sa a market need for companies to relate differently to their people now that power dynamics between employers and employees have shifted so much thanks to 'digital.' The pandemic has been a monstrous accelerant of the trandlines we were already advising clients about. | 2 | 50 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 300,000 | 400,000 | 500,000 | 1,000,000 | 50 | Through my relationships -- a lot had to do with the professional society I'm a part of. Also, just a point on the prior question, our growth rate going into the pandemic was like 300%. Now it is 0%. | The variability of spend on consulting. | More robust digital advertising presence to attract more smaller clients rather than hunting whales exclusively. | Engaging people as whole people is something few firms do -- there is enormous strategic benefit in being the kind of place where big thinkers and free thinkers want to work. But you have to be that place in order to communicate that you are that place. You can't communicate the intention first and hope it all sorts itself out. |
| H | Consumer Goods | Vv | Gg | 1 | 20 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5 | 8 | 5 | 8 | 38 | F | C | F | F |
| Outplay | Apparel & Fashion | gender neutral swimwear and sportswear for the sen-assured person who doesn't feel comfortable or represented by traditional activewear brands. | I was a bridal designer for over 10 years when I felt I needed to do something with my art that made a bigger difference in people's lives. I launched a wedding attire business in 2009 that was jackets, vests and pants that you could mix and match depending on your personal style and preference. During the 2 years it took me to get every detail ready to launch, I kept hearing horror stories about swimwear from within the LGBTQ+ community. Every focus group I took my new wedding attire clothes to repeated the same stories. I knew there was a problem I could solve there. In 2014 I closed down the other line and launched Outplay with 2 products and a pre-sale. | 6 | 50 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 6,000 | 9,400 | 360,000 | 420,000 | 14 | I had already built up some following though the clothing line I had launched right before and the market was the same. I had also created wonderful relationships with blogs and influencers that helped me spread the word about Outplay's launch. | getting access to capital without giving up control or equity at a reasonable rate | Google & Facebook ads | the market is open and ready for clothing that can truly be worn by anyone, regardless of gender or size. There's a huge potential in athleisurewear |
| Brainstorm | Design | Design studio and print shop | We started this business after graduating college in 07 08 right into the housing recession when jobs were slim. Making affordable screen printed posters we caught the wave of the Etsy/handmade movement the recession created. Our own body of work started to attract clients and the rest is history. | 12 | 30 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | 180,000 | 72 | in person event | coming up with new designs | outsourcing | more people can become companies of 1 or 2 people using the right tools which can lead to a more fulfilling lifestyle |
| open. clothing | Non-Profit Organization Management | A non-profit inspiring and supporting Arts, Education, and Exploration. | A friend started a clothing company in college to make shirts for our friend group. We both moved out to CA (from NC) post-graduation for full-time jobs, but wanted to do something more with life. We decided to pursue open. as passion project by registering as a 501(c)3 to support local orgs, non-profits, and causes that are promoting positivity and creativity in their communities. | 3 | 30 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 0 | 20,000 | 36,000 | 44 | We have built a small community of like-minded individuals that want to help and inspire others, and are down to support our cause. | Investor access/cash flow. | I will let you know when I find out | Social consciousness and budget awareness. I see a wave of consumer habit that will be defined by more diligence on where and with whom their money is being spent. What organizations are you supporting and who do they support; what are their values? Also, with more awareness on county and city budgets I believe there is an opportunity for reinvestment into education, parks & rec, community programs, and local organizations that are support those initiatives. |
| www.getmodemagic.com | Retail | With ModeMagic you can stop looking for designers or shopify image editors to highlight sales, offers, discounts, new arrivals and more in your Shopify store. Create urgency & fomo to help shoppers make faster purchase decisions and watch your sales grow. | We're a team of brand and content lovers - gen Z's with a sprinkling of millennials. And so, emojis, stickers, bitmojis, GIFs are the way we communicate. While exploring a bunch of online essential brands during this lockdown, someone complained "Why do we have to read thru' so much text to know the ****ed ingredients! Why can't they just use a sticker!" And well, the oldies paused. That IS true. With so many new brands now forced to be on the internet every single day, can we help them move & instantly online speak the language? And ModeMagic was born. | 0 | 60 | 7 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 10,000 | 120,000 | 10,000 | -1,100 | Found us on the shopify app store which is our first channel | becoming channel-agnostic. | design | this industry is rules by great brands and greater content - but that is locked up in the hands of only people who have access to expensive agencies. We know we can democratize that by creating channel specific marketplace and using tech to enable faster content creation. |
| Andy Alexander & Associates | Civil Engineering | We are a structural engineering company providing design for residential, commercial, multi-family, and seismic retrofits. | Growing up, I dreamed about being the first in my family to go to college and eventually owning my own company. As I got older, I was drawn to buildings, people, and problem solving. Structural engineering was a natural fit. I always joked that I worked so much straight out of college because I was trying to get my 10,000 hours of experience into a few years as possible. January 2017 I quit my job, and started on my own. In the last three and a half years, I took on a business partner, and her and I have grown the company from my one man shop, to a company of six employees. Together we have completed over three hundred projects. | 3 | 65 | 6 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 500,000 | 600,000 | 800,000 | 25 | Referral from someone I had previously worked with | Maintaining enough work to transitioning from a one man firm, to a company with employees | IT | Retrofit and remodel of existing structures |
| Decision Point Consultants, Inc. | Entertainment | Live Music Production | High school job turned into career including college. | 30 | 60 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 2,000 | 100,000 | 30,000 | 750,000 | 96 | Reference | Covid 19 | Education | Youth |
| The Bullet | Online Media | Canada's quick shot of daily news with a dose of humour to make it go down easier. | I've been an entrepreneur for over 15 years, with a passion for digital publishing, specifically newsletters. I was a pioneer in bringing the concept to consumers in Canada in 2004 with a company called Sweetspot.ca. The company scaled and was acquired by Rogers Media in 2010. In early 2016, I saw the rising trend of non-traditional news media (like The Hustle) in the U.S. and leveraged the opportunity to create something for Canada. | 4 | 50 | 5 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 30,000 | 300,000 | 400,000 | 25 | Reaching out to clients who I've worked with in the past who value what I bring to the table and the brands that I build. | Scaling without money! | Referral program | Optimizing newsletters |
| Ground Up | Food Production | Healthy nut butters that provide job skills training to women overcoming adversity | My business partner Julie had been overseeing an employment training program for 150 women in Uganda, and returned home to Portland, Oregon looking for work. She quickly realized there was a need for a similar program in her hometown, where there was a homelessness crisis and a lack of resources for women specifically. She needed a product for the women to make though... which is when she met me. I had been making healthy unique nut butters in my home kitchen because I couldn't find any on the market that fit my dietary needs. We combined our two passions, and Ground Up was born. | 4 | 50 | 12 | Yes (full-time) | 2,000 | 40,000 | 650,000 | 1,200,000 | 46 | Persistence! We knocked on the doors of every local grocery store until one of them (New Seasons) finally gave us a chance to pilot in 5 of their stores. Our method was to make sure they tasted our product, in front of us, so that they understood how much better it was than others on the market. | Connecting with grocery buyers and convincing them to carry your product in a saturated industry | More efficient production machinery | Storytelling - Creating a product with a soul behind it and clearly communicating that to customers so that they feel like they're connecting with the maker and a larger story when they enjoy your food product |
| Finiite | Computer Software | Facial recognition platform that drives product recommendations based on predictive AI models. | Got selected in Founder Institute last year. Worked through 14-weeks of rigorous training to solidify the business idea/model. | 1 | 50 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 0 | 150,000 | 0 | 0 | Friends circle | Customer acquisition costs | We are still pre-launch and have many lessons ahead for learning. In the early stages of the business, probably best to ensure your money is spent on setting a proper legal structure for the business and invested in building the technology and infrastructure that will support future revenues. | The world of consumer products is overwhelming. Our platform is for someone who does not want to invest in maintenance but still feel good about themselves. Our app provides haptic feedback through computer vision to create a personalized skincare recommendation for the consumer, where they: 1. Find a curated and clear regimen at their fingertips. 2. It costs them $0 to use it. |
| Amoveo Training | Higher Education | We design and manufacture simulated tissues for healthcare, safety, and tactical medicine programs. | As an educator, I was frustrated with the poor quality of training products for nursing education. They didn't move or respond like real tissue. I felt the world needed something better for student to learn with. | 5 | 3 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 3,000 | 5,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 | 60 | A local helicopter airlift medical business was shooting a new video and wanted us to do the special effects of an accident scene. | Getting the word out there that we exist. | Hiring salespeople | Our products elevate healthcare education and training programs. Because we provide customized products for clients, there is massive opportunity to create unique special effects. |
| Digital Brand | Marketing & Advertising | Creating brands in digital world, websites, message, traffic. | I decided to move to the USA 5 years ago, where I totally changed my career. Going from Land Surveying to cycling coach, after creating my cycling brand I decided to help others with creating their own brands. That's how I come up with Digital Brand. Background in Marketing was helpful as well as WordPress experiance. | 1 | 40 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 50,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 | 60 | Recommendation | Competition | Messages | Outdated websites, wrong message, the problem with getting clients. |
| Right and Good | Non-Profit Organization Management | Nonprofit Social Impact Communications Consulting | Needed work, former experience | 1 | 45 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 50,000 | 2,000 | 75,000 | 97 | Word of Mouth | marketing budget | tools | |
| angel investing | Venture Capital & Private Equity | venture investing | I exited corporate America after witnessing greed, and then went on to sue a large billion dollar private equity firm before becoming interested in crypto-currency, start-up consulting, coding and venture investing. I particularly like businesses aiming to solve social issues. I love great founders and would do anything to help them during the journey. I think the world can be changed. | 2 | 168 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000,000 | 0 | 85,000 | 0 | 0 | Patience, determination, belief, preparation and some luck. A more practical answer, I reached out to as many people as possible that would speak with me. | Overcoming fear and doubt. Raising capital. In that order. | Nothing. I wish I had been more a minimalist and forced myself to learn new tricks. | Everywhere I look. |
| Pearl Valley Cheese | Food Production | We make Swiss and Colby Style cheeses. | I am part of the fourth generation of my family to own and operate the business. My great grandparents were Swiss immigrants who started the business in 1928. | 3 | 5,060 | 55 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 100 | 20,000,000 | 25,000,000 | 20 | ? | Start up costs and getting new customers | Strategic Planning | I think that there is potential for growth in new varieties of cheese, as well as new consumers eating more cheese at home. |
| Crown Pension Actuaries | Financial Services | I do actuarial consulting for pension plan sponsors. | I was a math major and never had any career plans. I tried teaching and heard about the actuarial profession during my first year. Then I gave it a try. | 6 | 40 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 4,000 | 90,000 | 15,000 | 400,000 | 96 | cold emails | building up revenue quick enough for the business to provide sustainable income before running out of money (depends on how much is saved up beforehand, obviously) | maybe using more expensive third party vendors instead of going for the cheapest thing | This specific industry is really quite boring. And it has a false reputation as being a "dying industry" among actuaries. There's not a lot of competition, and the industry seems to be heavily filled with older workers looking to retire in the near future. These things really allow for outstanding potential for someone looking to start their own business. |
| Free Love Organics | Food & Beverages | I created a Sugar Free organic granola | I started baking and everyone loved the granola. I started at the local farmers markets and now I’m in a commercial kitchen with independent accounts and sell all over the country through my website. | 2 | 30 | 1 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 15,000 | 7,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 33 | Farmer’s market | Unknown permits and certifications that you’re unaware of when you get started | Marketing | Sugar free items that are healthy and taste great |
| The Window Shade and Shutter | Retail | Window Treatment Retailer | Worked with a Broker to buy a Franchise, went on my own thereafter | 6 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 60,000 | 15,000 | 140,000 | 250,000 | 44 | direct marketing | Getting customers | Advertising | I don't |
| Pure Momentum Consulting, LLC | Management Consulting | We provide management and operations consulting services to non profit organizations. | When I was growing up, my goal was always to be a high school English teacher. I grew up in impoverished North St. Louis City, Missouri, so I knew that whatever I decided to do, education was going to be my ticket to a new life. Once I graduated from college in undergrad, I moved out to California. Once here, my career experience took me to both the education and non profit/ human services sectors. Turns out that no matter where you put me, or what role I was in, I was always the person who asked the hard, anti- status quo questions like, "Why do we do it this way? How can we make this more efficient?" It wasn't until I learned about my Organizational Leadership doctoral degree, and took classes in which the textbooks held strategy models that I had intuitively drawn on the back of paper napkins over the years, that I realized that Organizational Development (OD) was a THING!! Up until then, my business (academic tutoring and business consulting) had always been my "side hustle", supporting me while I was either in-between jobs, or going back to school to earn another degree. It wasn't until 2017 that I decided to make my business my primary focus, and to use my OD skills to support nonprofits, who provide much needed support for so many societal needs in our communities. I figure that if I can help a nonprofit keep their doors open, operate efficiently, and hold on to their staff, I'm indirectly touching each and every life that they serve. That's what gets me excited each day. That's what motivates me to push myself and my Team. That's what keeps me coming back. | 14 | 40 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 250 | 50,000 | 48,000 | 100,000 | 52 | Word of mouth and flyers | There isn't much support on how to build a viable consulting business brand, that can exist independent of the owner, which is why most Consultants are solo practitioners. Build a Business Not a Job, by David Finkel saved my life. Also, I've found it difficult to get funding for our business because we offer a B2B professional service, as opposed to a tangible product. | Marketing efforts to generate consistent lead generation. As a Consultants, our Team works on a project by project basis. Approaching the end of a current contract, with nothing new on the horizon is nerve wrecking and exhausting. Thank goodness for NOI Digital, our new marketing partner!! Also, I wish I would have done more research and spent the money sooner on choosing a bookkeeping service. Once I switched providers, I immediately saw that my company was actually not making a profit at all, which hurt, but at least I was able to change our operating strategy to become more profitable. | There is an opportunity, particularly with the onset of COVID-19, for an increased working collaboration between Fundraising (Fund Development), and Organizational Development Consultants and firms, in the non profit space. Fundraising obviously focuses on generating and sustaining cash flow for non profits, while organizational development ensures that the donations, grants, and other sources of income are being utilized efficiently and effectively within the organization. To date, as in most industries, these two aspects, both being essential to the healthy and sustainable functioning of non profit organizations, have been operating independently of each other. The present and the "new normal" future indicate that this can no longer be the case... |
| VinoApp | Wine & Spirits | • Our panel of sommeliers blind review Argentine Wines and then we import the highest rated wines to sell through our VinoApp Wine Club in the USA. | • I have had a Global IT Services company for thirty-years and starting spending a lot of time in Argentina. My hobby is wine, so I was ecstatic to try the Argentine Wines, including Malbec. They were so good I would bring back wines and share with friends. I noted that these wines were not sold in the US. A few years later I married an Argentine woman and had a daughter who was born in Buenos Aires. With this connection to Argentina, I decided to share my experience and my passion for these wines with others in the US. | 3 | 50 | 7 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 200,000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | 50,000 | -100 | Friends and family! | • Generating awareness fast enough to be able to share high-quality Argentine wines at fair prices with a larger public. | Professionals with Industry Experience to increase credibility. | • Online wine sales are up 40% due to COVID19. The way consumers are buying wine is changing and VinoApp is ready to offer them a unique and unforgettable experience. |
| Natural State Eco Blast | Consumer Services | Environmenally Friendly alternative to Sand Blasting | It's been a life long dream to be a business owner, and I love to be involved in making things look new again. | 1 | 40 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 55,000 | 0 | 40,000 | 0 | 0 | Family/Friends | Getting the word out about what we do | Nothing yet | Industrial Vehicles |
| Styles Haven/ The Haven Doll House | Cosmetics | Styles Haven and The Haven Doll House is a place where you can feel comfortable being different and unique from trying different hairstyles to wearing great quality bundles. | I created Styles Haven first because of my passion to do hair. As a kid, I didn't know how to take care of my hair by myself and I was tender-headed therefore my mom always had my godmother do it since she could handle the crying. It always hurt to get my hair done so I began to learn step by step how to transition from my perm to my natural hair and style it. I started becoming gifted at braiding and styling and worked my way up from natural hairstyles to protective styles. After a few years of practicing on my mom in middle school, I decided that my goal was to open up my own beauty shop and style hair. I created Styles Haven and began promoting and advancing my business. I wanted to be able to sell my own hair products and bundles at a great quality so I began researching and came up with the idea of creating The Haven Doll House. | 1 | 30 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 53 | 130 | 156 | 240 | 35 | My very first customer was a supportive friend I met in my junior year. She asked who always did my hair and I told her that I was running a hair business. | Most customers aren't interested in you if you're just beginning they are more interested in how advanced you are and your techniques. | I wish I would've spent money on classes and trips to advance my skill. | I see exciting and untapped potential in my hairstyles because I have loyal customers who always want to step out of their comfort zone. They're comfortable with me doing them because I enjoy doing styles nobody has done nor are comfortable doing. |
| MOUSHI | Marketing & Advertising | Squarespace Expert Serving Service Professionals | I had just come off of selling my coffee shop--a business strictly bound by time, and freedom was a value I desired. In 2008, I used to LOVE designing businesses (still do), and originally began using Squarespace as a prototyping tool for service businesses. After around 30 of these prototypes and seeing the platform through many iterations since, thought it would be a good idea to start building a presence for other people. While now my company has evolved more towards consulting, web design as a process for educating clients is still a good chunk of my bread and butter. | 6 | 30 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 200 | 14,000 | 2,500 | 75,000 | 97 | I sent out 5 emails to friends of friends after reading that around 80% of people land a job from an acquaintance, rather than someone they know personally. | The evolution of the industry is moving towards commoditization, so you either specialize or teach. | Not money, but time. Time in really teaching the interns I had how to do things. | Copywriting. |
| The Kelley Group Co | Insurance | A high-touch, full-service, insurance agency operating in 22 states. | I came out of the construction industry and was looking for a change. The local insurance agency was looking for someone to manage the business and grow the agency. This was 9 years ago; I have owned it for 1 year now. | 1 | 50 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 1,250,000 | 600,000 | 300,000 | 650,000 | 54 | I researched all the local construction companies and whether they were compliant with workers compensation and DOL requirements. Then I tailored a letter to each of them outlining how having me as their agent would benefit them. Sent 50 letters, got 2 clients. | Speed of the industry. Agencies are pushing technological boundaries and insurance carriers are not quick to follow suit or keep up. | Hiring | The use of data and analytics in creating instant risk profiles. |
| TastyIslandCrate | Food & Beverages | We sell Caribbean snacks to expats and to adventurous people who want to try new snacks! | I was in college. I know a lot of people Caribbean people live in the USA and they might not have access to certain items. So I decided to provide a service that will satisfy that need of having something from home. I know for me it brings back memories I had growing up in Jamaica. The business has now expanded to people who like to try new things and try new foods. | 3 | 25 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 21,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 | 60 | Marketing. Marketing is the biggest issue for us. Also shipping. As a small business running an e-commerce business, shipping has cut into our profits a lot. The minimum shipping cost for our packages are $8. We sell low cost products. So marketing and shipping has been a challenge. | Marketing. I would have more customers and a wider reach to cover the expenses. | I think in regards to distribution, that can be changed. A lot of us are still using antiquated methods to distribute goods. | |
| SeaGraze Solutions | Renewables & Environment | We feed seaweed to livestock (usually cows) to increase gut health and reduce the amount of methane emitted. | Through my MBA program at Colorado State University | 1 | 30 | 4 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 10,000 | 0 | 50,000 | 10,000 | -400 | Using some of the University connections through the Veterinary College at CSU | Product availability and Government Regulations | Ocean property rights, kelp farming research, end consumer purchasing power/motivations | The race is on for this revolutionary business model. Companies like Symbrosia and Greener Grazing are some of the pioneers but there are still ample opportunities. With a growing awareness of the negative effects of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and recent Government implementations, this market is untapped and will change livestock feed forever. |
| Hello Haus | Real Estate | Australia's leading property negotiation service | 20yrs as a residential selling agent, honed negotiation skills, high level understanding to both sides of the transaction, unique skill set. Goal was to create the first transparent property business whereby the buyer sets the target price and I have to beat it to get paid a performance fee. I get paid from the savings I make them. | 1 | 25 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 10,000 | 60,000 | 20,000 | 150,000 | 87 | social network | niche business, new service model, competition from traditional buyers agents model | referral marketing plan | mortgage broker referrals for the buy side and negotiating for property sellers to pay the lowest commission when choosing an agent to list with |
| The Selling Factory | Staffing & Recruiting | Two large company expenses are 1) Finding great talent, and 2) Growing revenue through sales; The Selling Factory offsets these costs by building a farm system for a company. | After two years of mentoring and coaching all types of businesses, both large and small in the field of sales development, Brad Gamble found that most companies do not have the experience or knowledge to build and manage a high-performing selling environment within their company. With his 15 years of experience at Infinite Energy, eight of which as VP of Sales & Marketing managing the sales and marketing team of ~100 people, he understood the challenges and sought to create a new solution. Rabbi Adam Grossman, who was at the time a CEO of a non-profit organization focused on engaging college students, had built two non-profits in workforce development. He realized that there was an issue in talent acquisition and development. In a serendipitous conversation in May 2016, the idea of The Selling Factory was born. Then in October 2016, The Selling Factory opened its doors with one intern, and since this time has grown to 3 partners, 3 full-time professionals, and has supported nearly 200 student interns and 60 companies. | 4 | 40 | 3 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 100,000 | 400,000 | 800,000 | 50 | The CEO of a local business referred to The Selling Factory a fellow business owner. | While the student interns stay between 1.5 and 2 years, the management of the expected turnover when they graduate is always a challenge. | An effective marketing plan early on instead of solely relying on word of mouth. | Offering an outsourced farm system to companies that recruit talent from universities and want an innovative way to lower their employee acquisition costs. |
| cred | Public Relations & Communications | We help our clients build thought-leadership through speaking and hosting events | I was living abroad working at a Advertising Agency doing brand strategy. Prior to, I ran Marketing, Communications and Events at LiveRamp, a SaaS business in the data space. Trying to decide what I wanted to do moving back to the States, I had the idea to marry my two backgrounds together, which is where cred was born. Taking my knowledge of the Events industry, and coupling it with brand strategy (and hustle!) I was able to build a niche agency that focusing on finding the right speaking opportunities for clients, and helping them host their own events. | 5 | 60 | 20 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,200,000 | 9 | Hustle and networking! I used mentors to ask for referrals and introductions and our first one came through one of those introductions | Given we're a service-based business, people are our most important, and our most expensive asset. It's tougher than an industry like SaaS to predict scaling and growing. Given the recent series of current events, another challenge we are facing is that in difficult times, advertising, marketing and PR budgets are often the first to get cut 🙁 | An office admin! While I love helping out, I've found I can be way more effective spending time on forecasting or generating new business vs ordering the office snacks and troubleshooting computer problems | Currently, virtual is on the rise! It's been hectic, but also a fun challenge to pivot to virtual opportunities and figure out how clients can leverage these opportunities so we can educate them. Sure, virtual opportunities have been around, but people are starting to depend on them more and more in 2020. |
| SupportNinja | Outsourcing / Offshoring | Outsourced Support for Startups & Technology Companies | Serial entrepreneur since I was 15, started first business partly in foster care. Published the book "From Foster Care to Millionaire" detailing this journey. They were all web hosting businesses and I started Supportmonk.com to make extra money with my Linux Engineers who did my customer support to offer to other companies. I sold this and my web hosting company and wanted to find a way to work with startups but without taking on the risk of trying something radically different. I saw there was an opportunity to offer Outsourced Support to startups as the industry is dominated by established companies who don't cater well to the tech-generation. Flew to Philippines in 2015 and in 2019 we were ranked #86 on the Inc. List which made us the fastest growing outsourcing company in the US with over 600 employees worldwide. | 6 | 12 | 600 | Yes (full-time) | 150,000 | 120,000 | 2,323,903 | 11,424,988 | 80 | I'm a big believer in brands and the idea that you need to fake it till you make it. I spent $15k negotiated price to buy the domain and spent most of my time on creating a website and an ad strategy. I knew to acquire our first customer was going to be the most difficult part as I didn't have the financial resources to go all-in and register a foreign corporation and open up an office in the Philippines. So I built the website and started a slow Google Ad campaign. Our first customer was Cleanify (now out of business) and the first call was tense. They were considering another very well established BPO (business process outsourcing) company but ended up going with us because they figured we would go the extra mile to take care of them. I chose the Philippines as the place where we'd offer outsourcing from, but I had zero contacts there, let alone even been there. As soon as they sent the $10k deposit I flew over to the Philippines and toured multiple outsourcing operations and after a week found an Australian who was willing to let me white-label resell his employees. It's difficult to do this as in many cases you're competing with the same company who is servicing you as a client. Cleanify started with just 3 agents and grew to a few extra agents in a matter of months. Unfortunately, our relationship turned sour after it was revealed they chose us because they thought they would be able to twist our finger since they knew we were small. I let this go on for a few months until I decided to fire them as a client because we had complied with too many of their demands and by then we had acquired a few more clients and were able to get off our feet. | Outsourcing is all about people and relationships. Oddly, I'm a self-described super-introvert and was never a fan of going into the office, let alone meeting face-to-face. My advantage is I came into the business with a vision as to who my target market was, what my USP (Unique Selling Proposition) was, and how I'd build a brand that would attract the right kinds of employees and clients. Right now, outsourcing is a heavily-saturated industry, and since I founded the company in 2015, several more outsourcing companies targeting the "startup crowd" have entered the market. I see a lot of outsourcing companies started by people who are in the relationship business, but have never stepped foot in the vision business; and this is an industry where you must have both. I'm grateful to have found a charismatic CEO early on who was able to organize the people and culture element. Putting the conversation on how AI will affect customer support aside, the biggest reason I see an outsourcing company fail to grow or grow to fail is some kind of deficiency in either their vision or ability to manage what I call the people machine. | Early on I relied on my online marketing experience while building my previous companies, but a year into the venture I started to realize that the industry was one based more-so on relationships and thus I paused my activities related to Content and SEO and put more attention on trying to find the right salespeople. While we have a phenomenal sales team today, we spent a lot of money on traditional marketing like event sponsorships, SXSW presence, and so-forth but despite the extensive list of relationships we had built over-time, our highest converting sales-funnel still came from landing pages I had spent less than a week building and had neglected very early on. I wish I would have doubled down on our online marketing and content efforts and resisted the call to go the more traditional sales/marketing approach just because that's what the industry norm was. | There is still so much we don't know about the future of A.I. and how it will impact jobs world-wide. So far, the outsourcing industry has been continuing to grow even under Covid-19. Every company in the world needs to offer customer support, and while many have tried to create intricate methods like navigating an online Knowledgebase to find the "Contact" link, I think most people still just want to be able to speak to a competent human being who can help them quickly. I can't recall a single interaction I've had with a chatbot that left me with a positive association with that company, but I can recall many that involved an empathetic customer support rep and a little leeway to do their job. Every business is unique, so a chat, phone, or email bot who can pass the turing test will need to be replicated with every business before businesses truly start to replace agents with bots, and I don't see this happening anytime in the near future. What I do see is a huge margin for optimization. There are far too few companies that are working to combine the analytics from a company like Mixpanel and merge it with an AI that can help increase the efficiency of a customer support team. Outsourcing companies are not incentivized to optimize their client accounts; so the industry is ripe for a disruptor who is able to offer enterprise-level support for a third of the cost to small businesses. |
| Oliver Construction LLC | Construction | Commercial and Residential remodeling including some design and landscape. | A landscape architect married a carpenter. | 12 | 50 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 0 | 50,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 | 40 | family | Unrealistic expectations, sticker shock | not sure | Offering "greener" services and materials |
| Riveter | Human Resources | Helping people thrive in unemployment. | I was leading sales at a self - driving car company, thinking a lot about how every one of my successful sales means someone loses a job. Sure, not a 1 to 1 correlation, but close enough. Researching automation and job loss, I learned about trends showing that 73 million people will lose their jobs due to automation in the next decade. Most of these people won't find work for 6-12 months, if they ever work again. So I decided to start a business helping people thrive in unemployment. This doesn't mean helping them get new jobs. It means helping them take care of their basic needs, and find new ways to create value for the world and, most importantly, in their own eyes. | 1 | 50 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 1,000 | 100,000 | 50,000 | -100 | It was another company I started years ago that bought our product. | Building credibility in HR takes years and huge connections | Ads in places that aren't google | Taking care of people out of work. All of tech is focused on taking care of people at their jobs, but 20 million a year lose their jobs, and very little is done for them. |
| whit rabbit ranscription | Hospital & Health Care | medical documentation servuves | started working for a medical transiption serice with no training except years of bi clases. three months i as earng all i neeed | 25 | 10 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 150 | 400,000 | 200 | 50,000 | 100 | cold calls | ther is no money in health csr for proper documentation | good printer | na |
| DRAFTING NOW | Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Engineering Drafting | Was made redundant, Sink or swim | 4 | 50 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 30,000 | 80,000 | 20,000 | 110,000 | 82 | phone call | cheap knockoffs | Dont know | Water, Power industries |
| God Be Goddin' | Apparel & Fashion | God Be Goddin's is faith apparel brand with a mission to declare who God is. | We coined a phrase "God Be Goddin'" as a tagline and expression in conversation years ago. One day we decided to put it on a t-shirt. And then decided to make the t-shirt available for anyone else that liked the tagline. It caught fire and became a brand with a greater mission. | 2 | 15 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 1,200 | 700 | 3,000 | 77 | Facebook 🙂 | Creating the marketing machine and funnel to drive e-commerce sales. | Professional photography. | We believe there's a strong market for household name faith apparel brands that combine creative and unique fashion with grounded and inspirational Christian messaging. |
| HolaCase | Consumer Goods | The new way to say hello & make memorable connections. | In spare time during the pandemic, we were looking to do a fun side project. We noticed that people were more cautious with hand-shakes and other direct contact and even hesitant to accept business cards. So we came up with a memorable, touch-free and convenient way to share contact information safely. HolaCase prevents transfer of dirt / germs / viruses through direct contact that occurs when you hand over business cards or type data in someone else's phone. It also helps make a memorable introduction. | 0 | 20 | 2 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 2,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | After demonstrating our first sample to friends. | Spreading word about the new product. | We started recently so it's still too early for this question. | Conferences, events and a replacement for business cards during direct marketing. |
| Lewis Furniture & Fabrication | Furniture | Custom metal/wood furniture, decor and metal fabrication. | I've been doing hobby woodworking since a kid, as an adult I started welding, so I'd be able to make metal and wood furniture. Received my Journeyman ticket in 2009 and in 2012 started a side business building items. In 2018 I moved to full time and have been going ever since. | 8 | 60 | 0 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 5,000 | 50,000 | 60,000 | 17 | I saw a company that was making reclaimed wood tables, I stopped in and asked if they needed steel table bases and we were off, about 1 base a month for first 2 years. | Finding clients and selling your abilities while also doing all the work involved in the business. | Advertising | Online orders, with pandemic creating changes to all shopping habits |
| KegWorks.com | Consumer Goods | Tools for Drinking | 22 years ago when Ecommerce was in its infancy, I knew I wanted to be a part of it as I thought the potential was going to be huge. I had worked in the beer industry for over a decade and figured the there must be a way to parlay some of that experince. | 22 | 40 | 35 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 30,000 | 4,000,000 | 11,000,000 | 64 | Online. I built the first website myself. AOL actually hosted it. Site was live for about 2 months before I got my first order. | Cash flow. | Better design for the website. It was awful. | Outside of selling on our own website, we also sell on Amazon, Walmart and eBay. There is a still a lot of room for those outside channels to grow. |
| Clove & Twine | Marketing & Advertising | An elevated standard for corporate gifts | We were sick of getting cheap swag from business partners, trade shows, etc, and decided there had to be a better option out there for branded goods that people will actually use and enjoy. When we searched we found nothing, so we started a brand that exclusively sells remarkable branded gifts. | 4 | 40 | 10 | Yes (full-time) | 20,000 | 900,000 | 1,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 83 | Networking | Setting client expectations vs realities in regards to timelines, budgets, etc. | Software and tools | Automated gifting programs, integrations to CRM, etc |
| My Jeepney Stop | Online Media | A cultural Yelp-type platform for the Filipino community | My Jeepney Stop initially started as a passion project between two friends, Cristina Espiritu and Christine Consunji, who share a common vision of connecting and helping promote the Filipino community. As entrepreneurs and community leaders, they often received questions such as “Where can find a Filipino-speaking attorney?” or “Where is the best Filipino food in Orange County?” And while they can eventually find the answer, it took a lot of time to research and information was all over the place. This inspired them to create a platform that connects Filipino-owned businesses, entrepreneurs, professionals and creatives, so that one can easily find Filipino-related resources in one place. Starting with only a handful of listings, My Jeepney Stop is now the fastest-growing Filipino online directory with close to 3,000 active listings and has since expanded its services to include event management and targeted marketing services. | 1 | 30 | 3 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 5,000 | 10,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 | 70 | Going through our existing network | Getting in the door to meet the right decision makers | Outsourcing labor-intensive activities | With regards to our online community, people are hungry to connect especially in these times when people are sheltered at home. Also, resources in the Filipino community are largely disconnected, and our goal is to provide a place (virtual and actual) that people can congregate to network and support each other. |
| Feed ATL | Food & Beverages | Full-course, at-home meals with dishes curated from different restaurants and pop-ups. | My business partner and I both lost our jobs due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At this point, we wanted a way to support local food communities who we saw to be suffering. | 1 | 60 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 1,000 | 150,000 | 40,000 | 250,000 | 84 | Friends and family | Margins and breaking into a croweded industry | Hiring a marketing consultant | Connecting chefs and consumers in a meaningful way. More interaction over how to cook, what to cook, etc. |
| Drigotas Weddings | Events Services | Wedding officiant services in all 50 states. | My brother asked me to officiate his wedding - after the ceremony, three of his wedding guests reached out and asked if I would officiate their weddings. Realizing how much fun it could be, I started offering wedding services across the country. | 2 | 2 | 0 | No (part-time / side-hustle) | 0 | 500 | 0 | 3,000 | 100 | My brother asked me to officiate his wedding - after the ceremony, three of his wedding guests reached out and asked if I would officiate their weddings. Realizing how much fun it could be, I started offering wedding services across the country. | The legal landscape is messy. As more of the population is less religious, non religious wedding officiants have to be aware of local laws that favor religious institutions or give special treatment to one kind of wedding over others. | None. | The next step in this industry is making sure that all people who want to get married are able to do so in the way best for them. Bucking the way things have always been in favor of what is best for people will help create happier, better, longer lasting marriages that start off on the right foot. |
| Your Girl Inc | Program Development | . We have been helping entrepreneurs, small business owners and nonprofits increase their revenues with lead generation, process development and digital communications since 2004. | My mom has been an entrepreneur my entire life. I have worked for all of her companies in one form or another. This experience made me an exceptional assistant, marketer and sales person. The places I worked would only hire me as an assistant. With little opportunities for growth I figured if I was going to do this work I would have the flexibility of working from where and how long I wanted. | 16 | 15 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 2,500 | 0 | 120,000 | 12,000 | -900 | Finding consistent paying clients | Marketing and technology | New work from home startups | |
| FLIK | Higher Education | FLIK is a platform that connects female founders/leaders and students from top universities across the world via meaningful apprenticeships. | My family always wanted me to be a doctor. Up until university, I lived my whole life to get into medical school. Every time I went a bit "off script" and worked with a startup or tried out a marketing role, people in my community would say, "oh Michelle, you're too soft for business, medicine is the best path for girls." The only time I was able to get hands-on experience in business was when startups took a chance on me and let me learn by doing in their businesses. Entrepreneurship was calling my name. In my third year of university I got into an entrepreneurship program called Next 36. I told my parents in one text - I'm switching my degree to graduate early. I'm not going to medical school. I'm trying out entrepreneurship in this program. They freaked out, but I moved to Toronto for Next 36 and when I walked in the room...less than 20% of the cohort were women. Actually it was 18% or something like that. Crazy. There were barely female mentors, no female investors, and all our female colleagues in the program were too intimidated to talk in class. My roommate and I made it our goal to find female founders and mentors for ourselves and the future female entrepreneurs around us. That's when we started FLIK - just as a media company side hustle. We started interviewing women leaders so that we could meet them and learn from them. We got to interview the Editor in Chief of Glamour, were invited to cover Michelle Obama's talk in Toronto, and met so many distinguished women along the way. We wanted to find a way for our readers to meet these cool women too. In meeting all these leaders, we knew that female founders are notoriously under-resourced and undercapitalized. Female students were always looking for experience as I was and looking for mentors. We pivoted to an apprenticeship portal in November 2019 ish and haven't looked back since. We have over 3000 womxn from 37+ countries in our community and 400+ apprenticeships going. Female founders get helping hands on their business and female students get career relevant experience and mentorship from these leaders. It's a win-win. We can't wait to continue advancing women's economic participation globally! Come along our journey 🙂 | 1 | 70 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 500 | 11,000 | 4,500 | 150,000 | 97 | We launched social media campaigns on Instagram and LinkedIn | Getting sufficient resources and capital. | Tech development | There are so many entrepreneurial women in under-represented and rural areas around the world who have never been tapped on the shoulder to join communities like ours and tap into our network / resources. Women entrepreneurs across the world are just a huge untapped market. |
| Contact Any Celebrity | Publishing | Online database of celebrity & influencer contact information. | Started a website and online database in 1996 while in film school. Turned it into a membership site for fans, marketers & nonprofits. | 24 | 45 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 75 | 100 | 100,000 | 500,000 | 80 | Bulletin boards on AOL, Prodigy & Compuserve in the 90s | People thinking information should be free. | Consultants (I had to figure out everything on my own) | Video, more influencers, celebrities wanting contact due to increased competition |
| Pluedeman Logging | Paper & Forest Products | Logging Contractor | I enrolled in a one year apprentice degree at Nicolet College in 1976. After completing the year I took a job in the logging industry and started my own business in 1979. I have been operating as a sole proprietor for the past 41 years. | 41 | 60 | 1 | Yes (full-time) | 25,000 | 100,000 | 750,000 | 900,000 | 17 | Cold calling | Markets | Better equipment | Bio fuels |
| Park Place Payments | Financial Services | We are a "Salesforce as a Service" business, currently disrupting the credit card processing industry with a superstar salesforce and exceptional service. | I have been working with women on their careers for years and the one group I was unable to help were those that had left the workforce and wanted to return but found no opportunities or extremely limited ones. They are smart, newly motivated and sidelined, yet with too many doors shut to them, many started joining multi-level marketing companies, selling makeup and skincare to friends and not even making martini money. I realized that they needed a flexible opportunity that would allow them to sell to businesses and earn recurring revenue. For years, credit card processing has been plagued by a lack of transparency and a used car salesman-like sales force. We are turning that on its head. Together we are growing Park Place Payments into a next-generation merchant services provider. | 2 | 55 | 210 | Yes (full-time) | 25,000 | 100,000 | 900,000 | 1,700,000 | 47 | Through our first account executive. As soon as she went through training, she started recruiting her local businesses. | Their biggest challenges is not our biggest challenge. Our competitors tend to all fight for the same sales guys. And they are almost always guys. We recruit from outside of the industry so we end up with a highly professional salesforce that we recruit and train and support. | A robust CRM solution | This is an industry that has settled for poor service and dishonest pricing for far too long. As a player who has entered with one rate card, transparency and white glove customer service, we have found enormous opportunity. |
| Black Scroll Network History & Tours | Leisure, Travel & Tourism | We lead tours and presentations dealing with African American history in and around the city of Detroit. | The founder and tour leader was a social studies teacher for 20 years, and realized that Detroit's African American history was missing in the school curriculum. | 8 | 50 | 2 | Yes (full-time) | 5,000 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 40,000 | 75 | Parents of my former students and teachers. | Getting customers to see the value in history. | Van or bus | |
| Uuanted | Retail | Uuanted is a marketplace where the buyer rules and the seller always find costumer for their products and services. | I had a problem in the curtain of my house and needed to find a company or person to carry out the repair, thinking about what I would have to do to meet my need, that is, use the web to find the provider of this service, then make contact , explain and everything I needed to solve my problem (those things that go through our head when you’re planning the best way to solve a problem. At that moment I thought, WTF !!!! I have to waste my time and running behind to spend my money ???? doesn’t make sense. So, at this moment the idea came up to create Uuanted, a platform where the buyer (who owns the money) could expose his demands and be disputed by product sellers or service providers. | 1 | 15 | 4 | Yes (full-time) | 50,000 | 0 | 10,000 | 0 | 0 | showing to friends | promote my platform and app, show this new way to buy and sell | marketing | For everybody who wants do best deals |
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