Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Inc. Magazine

I'm talking to friend and founder Angela Benton, who moved to a farm a bit ago, and she's telling me how she spends time outdoors between Zoom calls for her company, Streamlytics. Tending to the plants in a mindful way— horticultural therapy, it's called—has been healing for her, and she wants to bring other founders to spend time there, she says, before trading soil for concrete and offering to come to Inc.'s high-rise offices to share with our young reporters what startup life is like. We're at Inc.'s Founders House during SXSW in Austin, where we welcome about 3,000 founders for conversations and community, so the days are busy. Beatrice Dixon, CEO of the Honey Pot Company and host of our Your Next Move event and video series, has dropped…

As a founding partner of CAVU Consumer Partners, Rohan Oza invests in health-focused companies—like plant-based food company Beyond Meat and collagen supplement maker Vital Proteins. Here's how the former Shark Tank judge picks winners for his portfolio. “Smart founders are like King Arthur. They need advisers around the table to add value. That's why at CAVU, we invest in founders who are looking not just for money, but also for a partner. They don't have to listen to everything we say, but they do have to be open to taking our help—like Poppi co-founders Allison and Stephen Ellsworth, whom I met on Shark Tank. They were a cool husbandand-wife team pitching a brand they were calling Mother Beverage—an apple cider vinegarbased drink with less than five grams of sugar in…

I was overseeing business operations for the New York Jets in 2011 when our head coach, Rex Ryan, told the team about how the military commanders of antiquity would summon maximum effort by literally burning their boats after landing ashore, eliminating any possibility for retreat. It struck me then—this was the strategy for greatness, and had been for centuries. To prove it, I wrote a book, Burn the Boats, which draws on interviews with more than 50 highly successful entrepreneurs about their noretreat moments—the bold choices they've made to go all in on their dreams, without any plan B. Take one of my former students at Harvard Business School, Alexander Harstrick. He thought he needed to pay his dues at a private equity shop before launching his own fund, but…

NO. 2 Kim Abrams, Petra (Construction) From her home in Berkeley, California, Kim Abrams has had a front-row seat for the wildfires that climate change has made a perennial occurrence. The 44-year-old entrepreneur recalls feeling hopeless for weeks or months on end as the air around her filled with smoke and deposited soot on her walls. “I was living in a chimney every fire season, and my kid and I both have asthma,” says Abrams. “I was like, ‘You know what? I need to do something about this.’ ” With the summers increasingly hot and dry in the western United States, a single spark can ignite a deadly blaze that rips through parched terrain, leaving charred homes and devastated families behind. In many cases, that spark has come from malfunctioning…

7 NO. WHAT KEEPS ME CENTERED Treating time like money Eva Longoria, Casa Del Sol and Risa (Consumer Products) When you're Eva Longoria, a lot of companies approach you asking to slap your name on a clothing brand—and on bottles of tequila. Evaluating ventures through “a female lens,” as she puts it, has helped the Desperate Housewives star and longtime advocate for Latinas choose meaningful projects that align with her values. It's also how the opportunity to co-found Casa Del Sol came about. The entrepreneurs behind the Los Angeles-based tequila brand, which largely employs women to make its product in the Altos de Jalisco region of Mexico, asked Longoria, 48, to join the company to help boost its mission of redefining women's work in Jalisco. That women-focused ethos also led…

BY THE TIME he'd turned 39, in the spring of 2007, Mark Suster was a doubly successful entrepreneur. A Philadelphia native with a University of Chicago MBA, Suster had worked for Accenture around the globe for eight years, and then launched, in 1999, BuildOnline, an Ireland- and U.K.-based software company that enabled collaboration in the construction industry. He steered that business through the dot-com bust and a merger with an American competitor named Citadon, after which he stepped down as CEO. Then he founded Koral, a maker of content management software, in 2006, and sold that company to Salesforce the following year. Through it all, Suster was aware that some aspects of his personality had a tendency to make his life more difficult. He couldn't focus on routine tasks; unless…

Eric Todd has spent more than 40 years in the entertainment industry. As a junior in high school in the 1970s, he founded the company that became BMLBlackbird Theatrical Services. In the years since, it has produced NFL halftime shows, Madison Square Garden concerts, and New York Fashion Week events. Fair Lawn, New Jersey-based BML provides everything for a primetime event except the venue; as such it didn't qualify for the SBA's Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. Todd did receive pandemic aid, but he's still pushing for the relief meant to buoy his industry. “Before Covid-19, my business was doing no fewer than 1,000 event nights per year and I had 60 employees. When the pandemic hit, my living ceased to exist; my debts did not. My world was ending. Like…

Ashok Mehta spent more than 20 years growing his suburban Nashville primary care practice, SimplyCare, to 10,000 patients and $1.2 million in annual revenue. All that work evaporated overnight during the pandemic as patients chose to stay home. With bills piling up and five employees to support, Mehta turned to the Small Business Administration. He had such a good experience with the agency that he's gone back for more loans, for the interest rates. “During the pandemic, suddenly, barely 10 people were coming in every day. We worried that we might have to shut down permanently. So I turned to the SBA. I did not know what types of programs they had. We received two PPP loans, each one for about $35,000; both were forgiven. Everything was done at a…

Entrepreneur Craig Dubitsky was at his local pharmacy in 2012 when he noticed something off about toothpaste: Every brand had hard-to-pronounce ingredients and language about killing or destroying. Teeth, Dubitsky thought, should be about smiling. That year, he founded the oral care company Hello Products around natural ingredients and pleasant packaging. The Montclair, New Jersey-based venture soon became America's fastestgrowing oral care brand; by 2020, its products were on shelves in 45,000 stores. Later that year, Colgate-Palmolive acquired the company for a reported $351 million. Dubitsky stuck around post-acquisition but left in 2022 to do what he loves most: thinking up his next idea. —As told to Kevin J. Ryan “Here's the thing about exit strategies. Whenever people tell me theirs, I start looking for my exit from the conversation. I'm…

With an MBA from Wharton in health care management, a decade of experience co-founding and advising health care startups, and five years at the helm of her $1.65 billion health care career marketplace, Incredible Health, Iman Abuzeid is well-positioned to discuss the future nexus of business and health care. Her prognosis: What trends will shape health care over the next few years? I'm seeing hospitals experiment with artificial intelligence as a diagnostic tool and as a way to enhance workforce management and operations. McKinsey reported that A.I. could save the U.S. health care industry $360 billion a year. Telehealth will increase in popularity, both to improve patient outcomes and to cope with labor shortages, the latter of which will continue to drive wage inflation. We'll also see compliance with privacy…

LOTS OF BOSSES say they want to make their businesses better and claim their frontline teams have critical information—and they do. But here's the thing: Coming up with novel ways to improve your margin or reduce friction in your company's operations is not your teams’ job—it's your job. And you shouldn't expect such a level of attention from your employees or cashiers or wait staff unless you give them the support and specific instruction to do so. Back in 2005, I helped found the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, an Asian fast-casual restaurant group with three physical stores, one shipping container in Times Square, a fleet of four mobile trucks, and a retail grocery presence. Over the years, we would repeatedly road-test new dishes to see if they were worthy of becoming…

NO. 3 Emma Grede, Good American, Skims (Apparel) Emma Grede wants you to know that she's a college dropout. “I used to have a real hangup about not having a formal education—especially when you start hiring great people,” Grede says. “But it takes all sorts. I've had a different path—and that's really worked for me.” It sure has. Today, Grede, 40, guides two powerhouse fashion brands: She's the co-founder— with Khloé Kardashian—and CEO of bodyinclusive denim company Good American, and she is chief product officer at Skims, the shapewear label her husband, Jens, cofounded with Kim Kardashian. She's also co-founder of plant-powered cleaning brand Safely and a recurring judge on Shark Tank, the first Black woman investor to appear on the show. Oh, and did we mention she's the mother…

A pioneer of integrative medicine and an apostle of the Transcen dental Meditation movement, Deepak Chopra is a frequent speaker and prolific author (93 books; that's right, 93!) on physical and mental transformation. He's just negotiated an exit—selling his longtime well-being products-and-services company, Chopra Global, to New York City-based the Healing Co. His most recent book is a guide to the philosophy and practice of yoga called Living in the Light. We asked him how he— and other founders—can achieve joy and longevity inside the grind. You're a physician, scientist, professor, and author, but also an entrepreneur. How does being an entrepreneur fit into your identity and mindset? For me, an entrepreneur is somebody who's willing to take a risk to actualize their vision. For 30 years, I've held the…

Q: What did you learn from your worst boss? A: Never demean your employ ees. My worst boss ever threw his tax return in front of us and said to call him if we ever made more than he did. I do at this point, and have for several years, but I'll never treat my employees that way. Being mindful of the dynamics between bosses and subordinates is important and useful to keeping a steady workforce and engaged team members. —CHRIS HURN, FOUNDER AND CEO, FOUNTAINHEAD Source: 2022 Inc. 5000 CEO Survey…

Stephen Griffin never planned on getting into the crime-solving business—especially not in his 50s. Yet the founder and CEO of upstart forensic accounting firm Alley101 currently finds himself assisting multiple federal agencies in fraud-related investigations. It all started back in 2017, when Griffin, a former CPA, made an investment in Legacy Global Sports, a Boston-based conglomerate that ran youth sports leagues in more than 10 countries. From the start, Griffin couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Ever the accountant, he spent the year after his investment digging into the com pany's financials, an investigation that would lead to Griffin's fellow board members installing him as CEO in November 2018. And that's not even the juiciest part of the story. Griffin spent much of 2019 working to rescue Legacy.…

As an active duty officer in the U.S. Army for seven years, Roxanne Petraeus was used to a rather radical form of pay transparency: Any soldier's pay can be calculated if you know their rank, time served, and service. That's why in 2019, five years after she'd left the Army and launched New York Citybased compliance training platform Ethena, Petraeus made sure to institute pay transparency from the get-go: “You can't say that people are your company's greatest asset and then pay them arbitrarily,” she says. “There needs to be a baseline understanding—a system or process in place—that determines how people are paid.” Petraeus was ahead of the curve. Last year, New York City followed the lead of California, Colorado, and Washington state when it began requiring employers to list…

IN NOVEMBER 2017, I founded Hydrow, an indoor rowing machine startup. Prior to that, I'd spent years rowing and coaching—and witnessing the transformative power of the sport. Rowing is a singularly efficient exercise, engaging 86 percent of the body's muscles. On a deeper level, it requires unique teamwork; a crew on the water builds a special bond. We created Hydrow to share that feeling with everyone. Earlier rowing machines had eliminated everything from the experience except the physical work—as though the makers of those machines had specifically excluded the best parts of crew, reserving those for the privileged few who could afford to get on the water. We set out to make our machines different, pairing electromagnetic drag technology with livestreamed content from the world's waterways to provide a complete…

No. 1 Lena Waithe, Hillman Grad (Entertainment) Lena Waithe is a natural-born storyteller. She's known as much since she was a child, when she passed the time like most kids: in front of the TV. For her, that meant hour upon hour watching reruns of A Different World, which followed student life at Hillman College, a fictional historically Black university. “The show meant a lot to me because it featured dynamic characters who showed up in the world in their own way,” says Waithe. “They were smart, proud, funny, and flawed.” If you've ever seen The Chi on Showtime or Netflix's Master of None—for which Waithe became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing—you'll know the storytelling thing stuck. Today, the 38-year-old is the founder of…

NOs. 4, 5 & 6 Allison, Elaine, and Jacqueline Taylor; Le Prunier (Consumer Products) Growing up just four miles from the Sutter County, California, farm their great-grandfather established in 1916, Jacqueline, Allison, and Elaine Taylor learned the value of scrappiness early on. Before any of the sisters were old enough to drive, they woke up early on weekends to staff their family's farmers’ market stand, paying a friend's older brother from the day's wages to serve as chauffeur. Entrepreneurship, says Allison, 34, is “very much in our blood.” But it wasn't until 2016 that the Taylors got into the family business—and grew it in their own way. Today, their focus is on Le Prunier, a clean-beauty brand that harnesses the dermatologist-tested power of organic plums, harvested from the Taylor family's…

If there's one thing we all know about business, it's that no cycle lasts forever. Courses correct. Pendulums swing. Bubbles burst. What goes up comes down. So it is for entrepreneurs seeking funding in 2023. After a year of record investment activity in 2021 among U.S. venture capital and private equity firms, rising inflation and recession fears led to a precipitous drop in funding in 2022: The value of VC deals fell by more than 30 percent year-over-year, while PE dealmaking declined nearly 20 percent, according to PitchBook. Then, in March, Silicon Valley Bank failed, shaking up the VC world. • Now more than ever, investors are focused on fundamental analysis. Or as Cameron Newton, founder of VC firm Relevance Ventures, says, “People want to see the data. How are…

Long before Isabella Casillas Guzman took over at the Small Business Administration in 2021, while the agency was still pumping roughly $1 trillion of emergency aid into the heart of the American economy, she helped out her father as he grew his veterinary hospital in East Los Angeles into a small area chain. After school and during breaks, she checked in customers and their pets at the front desk while her siblings— all of whom became doctors—tended to tasks in the back of the house. Working among the menagerie of cats, dogs, birds, and the occasional iguana, she marveled at how her father juggled the dueling responsibilities of business owner and practitioner. “That was the experience of a lifetime,” Guzman told Inc. in a recent interview. Watching him “being the…

When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, Nanette Rodriguez Franceschini's intimates business, Blossom Boutique, found itself without power and no way to replenish inventory. She turned to a disaster relief loan from the SBA to keep her customers in undergarments. “We requested a disaster relief loan in November for inventory and got it by February. The process worked quickly. The SBA had offices throughout the island, and we went in to apply. They were helpful and quicker than the banks on the island, many of which weren't even operating. That's why we went with them. There were curfews; there were times when we didn't open; it was not business as usual. I freaked out when I saw the devastation and canceled my orders. So we had no inventory,…

In June 2020, Beret Kirkeby was pregnant, bills were piling up, and she needed cash fast for her New York City-based massage therapy business, Body Mechanics Orthopedic Massage. That's when she finally received the PPP loan, but only after exploring a few frustrating dead ends. Ultimately, a small local bank halfway across the country stepped up and got her the emergency funds. “We are an in-person service in Manhattan. When Covid hit, the neighborhood became a ghost town and we lost most of our clients. We survived with loans through the PPP, but the process of getting them was an absolute nightmare. First I tried Bank of America, where I'm a customer. Even though I was one of the first people to apply, I waited and waited and nothing happened.…