Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Entrepreneur Magazine

ONE NIGHT THIS past April, Martellus and Michael Bennett were texting each other. If you follow the NFL, you know these brothers: They’re big and tough, with Super Bowl rings to prove it. But Martellus also spent the past few years making comic books and other entertainment for kids, and he recently retired to pursue that work full-time. Michael is still in the NFL, but he knows it won’t last forever. So over texts, Martellus was giving his brother advice on how to build a bridge out. “Posting team photos on your [Instagram] is cool for likes but not for growing your brand outside of the game,” Martellus wrote in one message. “Use those things to get ’em there, but sprinkle in your awesomeness outside of football while you have…

Jake Kassan started his first business in high school: a T-shirt company he grew through YouTube and social media channels. It went…a little too well. “I was generating $10,000-plus a week,” he says, “and I needed help.” He was just 16, after all, and he was falling behind on shipping, accounting—the whole operations side. Luckily, he found the perfect person. She lacked business experience, but she was a quick study, a hard worker, and unusually loyal. Plus, she worked for free. She was his mother, Marla. His mom helped out on his second startup, too, which sold apparel and “rave lights,” geared toward music festivals. While those companies eventually folded, Kassan’s third effort did not. In 2013 he and a cofounder launched MVMT, an L.A.–based startup that sells stylish, affordable,…

FENTY BEAUTY BY RIHANNA  The pop star is all too familiar with the lack of makeup made for women of color. With Fenty, she promised “beauty for all”—and delivered. KODE WITH KLOSSY The girls’ coding school, inspired by model Karlie Kloss’s experience learning code, is expanding nationwide. Each student can connect with Kloss in person or via video chat. SKINNYGIRL Reality TV star Bethenny Frankel started with a margarita brand and has deftly wielded her licensing power. Snacks, sweeteners, even denim—she brilliantly promotes it all. GIRLBOSS MEDIA  NastyGal founder Sophia Amoruso used her own fall to inspire an events series and content site for ambitious women. A recent redesign hints at a move toward a social network. SHONDALAND Shonda Rhimes, the megaproducer who charmingly live-tweets episodes along with her fans,…

BILLIE WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  It believes all products should be created equal. Georgina Gooley was tired of shaving with men’s razors. “I did it out of principle because I didn’t want to pay the ‘pink tax,’ ” she says, referencing the higher price many companies apply to products for women. As Gooley watched brands like Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club catch fire, both of which targeted men, she couldn’t help feeling that women were once again getting a raw deal. So she set out to change it, and last year she launched Billie, a subscription razor company for women. “We wanted to create a premium product specifically for women, at half the price,” she says. To do that, she and her cofounder, Jason Bravman, conducted countless focus groups, obsessing over…

INTUIT WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  It’s making better job recruitment a (virtual) reality. t’s hard to compete with Google at the college career fair, and a year ago, Intuit was feeling the pain. “Tech companies with household names would have these long lines, and we’d have maybe a few people,” says Nick Mailey, Intuit’s VP of talent acquisition. Mailey and his team understood why—young people just entering the workforce didn’t have exposure to Intuit’s business and financial software, making it tough to get them excited about the company. “We needed to show that we’re just as innovative, while differentiating ourselves from the other employers. We couldn’t just hand out water bottles,” Mailey says. With a Design Career Fair at the University of Washington coming up, recruiters decided to go big. Their solution:…

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1/ Bring everyone in. “A former boss was very hierarchical and discouraged collaboration. Everyone reported directly to her, and interdepartmental meetings were practically prohibited. It meant that only our boss had the full picture—we missed a lot of opportunity for alignment and cooperation. Today at our company, it’s a priority to hold regular team meetings and foster a strong culture of collaboration. It’s crucial that our team members weave collective sharing into the fabric of their day-to-day interactions.” —MELISSA BIGGS BRADLEY, founder and CEO, Indagare 2/ Be vulnerable. “Don’t be afraid to show your emotions! I worked for a partner at McKinsey who was an incredible person but an awful manager because he kept his feelings bottled up. After a client presentation went awry, our team didn’t know where we…

What makes a company brilliant? There’s no single answer, so we started with a question: “What in the past year made us say, ‘That’s brilliant!’?” These 24 pages explore boundary-pushing entrepreneurship—from Kevin Hart challenging comedy’s pecking order to big risks, fresh employee perks, and meaningful social missions. Take note—and maybe we’ll see you on this list next year.…

GRAVITY BLANKET WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  The company turned a marketing mistake into marketing magic. Two weeks into their Kickstarter last year, John Fiorentino and Mike Grillo had already raised $2 million (of an eventual $4.7 million) to launch a line of 15-, 20-, and 25-pound blankets. That’s when they got a note from the crowd-funding company itself telling them to revisit their marketing language. The creators had claimed that their $249 blanket would lower stress hormone levels and thus “treat” insomnia. The problem wasn’t whether the blanket could quell restless sleeping habits; it was the word treat, which implies science-backed promises the company couldn’t independently support. “Our strategy was to play in this tech-science place,” says Grillo. “But we had to reexamine that.” Rather than panic, the founders saw a…

KAIROS WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  The company makes companies that make services that matter. Kairos wants to help young entrepreneurs innovate in underserved industries, and for a decade it did that with programs: Its fellowships and incubator system helped 5,000 founders get off the ground. But founder Ankur Jain saw a gap. “We had so many smart people working on big problems, but no ability to concentrate the energy on a handful of critical issues where society needed solutions,” he says. So last fall, Jain and his team picked five issues—student loans, housing costs, childcare, the future of work, and costs of senior care—and began investing in and serving as a cofounder for startups poised to make a difference. Four have launched so far: Residenz, which makes it up to 40…

tEQUITABLE WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  For digitizing the #MeToo movement to improve workplace safety. The reckoning is under way for workplace sexual harassment in the U.S., and tEQuitable is on the front lines. Launched in late 2017, tEQuitable is a website and app allowing employees to confidentially discuss office complaints and get assistance from an appointed adviser. Used by companies including Twilio and VC firm Obvious Ventures, it also collects and analyzes data to spot problems before they escalate. Cofounder Lisa Gelobter, a former executive at BET and Hulu, was chief digital service officer in the Department of Education under President Obama, but she left the agency soon after Trump took office. She was unsure of her next move, but grew increasingly frustrated by the deluge of workplace harassment cases in…

In the snack world, ice cream and popcorn might not sound like a winning combination. But according to Steve Rothenstein, senior director of franchise development for Dippin’ Dots, which also owns Doc Popcorn, the disparity between the two foods is what makes them a perfect match in the franchise world. Since 2015, Rothenstein has led a push to open kiosks featuring both brands, primarily in shopping malls, in an effort to appeal to more customers from a single space. So far, it’s working: More than 20 cobranded operations are currently open, seeing higher sales volumes than single- brand locations. By the end of 2018, that number of locations will double. What makes these two brands work together? Dippin’ Dots has had success in malls, and Doc Popcorn is in that…

In the franchising world, food still reigns supreme. Almost a quarter of the 1,023 companies that applied for this year’s Franchise 500 were food-based franchises, and half of the companies that ranked in the top 10 were quick-service restaurants. Some of the oldest and largest franchises in the world are food-based, and new ones arrive on the scene every year, ready to capitalize on the latest trends, like build-your-own pizza and poke bowls. That said, food franchises can be some of the most challenging to build—with higher capital costs and more complicated operations than many other industries. But they can also be some of the most rewarding. They’re particularly popular with franchisees interested in multi-unit ownership. So, if you’ve got a taste for food-based franchises—whether it’s one unit or 100—start…

One Sunday in 2011, as Chris Carter and his family were leaving for their church outside Milwaukee, his oldest daughter began acting weird. She was 12 at the time, and she stood frozen—her face blank, her complexion white as chalk. Soon she was vomiting and having a seizure. The family rushed her to the doctor, and a diagnosis was made: epilepsy. “It was a day I don’t wish on any parent,” Carter says. But he couldn’t be just a parent; he was also a CEO, having founded a startup called Approyo only six months earlier, and his employees relied upon him, too. Carter tried tending to both sides. “I started working 24-hour days,” he says. “I couldn’t focus on one or the other.” Many entrepreneurs experience some version of this.…

Q I’m building an app, and I want to try a freemium model. Is this a successful strategy, or am I setting myself up for failure? —FABIAN, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA FABIAN, you’re facing one of the biggest headaches of the digital age. Turn back the clock 30 years, and the idea of giving away your product for free was almost unheard of. Today it’s a staple business model, used in some form by everyone from Dropbox to The New York Times to Match.com. So first, let’s define the options. The paid model is simple. If a customer wants to use your product or service, they must buy. The freemium model has several variations. You can offer free trials for a period of time, or offer an entire product or service for…

Considering how proud Kevin Hart is of the headquarters of his company, you’d think the place would be downright palatial. But it’s not. It’s simple, almost austere. It’s a series of small offices, a reception area, and a conference room, and it takes up a floor of a nondescript building in downtown Encino, Calif., on Ventura Boulevard, across from a Korean BBQ joint. The rooms are sparsely furnished. There are a lot of photos and posters of Hart, of course, but otherwise there is no expensive art, no designer tchotchkes on the credenzas, no tasteful floor coverings that could fund a motion picture production. No, the thing about this office that fills Kevin Hart with such pride isn’t its appearance. It’s the fact that it’s still his. Back in 2009,…

WeWORK WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  It once served people’s work lives. Now it serves their whole lives. WeWork—the company that provides businesses with shared office space, craft beer, and cucumber water—is often described as a brick-and-mortar version of LinkedIn. But it’s starting to look a lot more like a real-life Facebook. In addition to expanding to more than 100 cities in 21 countries, WeWork has been opening gyms, incubators, and even elementary schools for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Valued at $21 billion, the company pitches itself as a “lifestyle” and a “community,” facilitating meditation and kickboxing sessions as well as business mentoring and networking. While its offerings initially appealed to scrappy startups, today massive corporations including GE, Mastercard, and Samsung make up a quarter of WeWork’s membership. “The mission of WeWork…

WEGMANS WHY IT’S BRILLIANT  In a traditionally transient job space, it’s investing in employees—and keeping them (and customers) for a long time. Wegmans, the family-owned $8 billion supermarket chain in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, is known for its customer service. (In 2018, it has already received two national awards acknowledging its excellence in the space.) But good customer service wouldn’t be possible without a highly valued and motivated workforce, says company spokeswoman Jo Natale. “Our philosophy is that we can only be a great place to shop if we are a great place to work,” she says. “We hire the best, but then we invest in training and provide opportunities for employees to learn and grow.” In 2017, Wegmans put an impressive dollar amount behind that talk. It invested…

HATCH APPS The D.C.–based startup launched earlier this year, offering a kind of Squarespace for apps: a platform where building an app is as simple as clicking on templates, and the cost can be as low as $1,000 a month to maintain. TETHIS In 2012, three North Carolina State grad students launched Tethis to create biodegradable absorption materials, creating a product that sucks up salt, as a way to clean water after fracking. But then it turned to diapers, developing a more eco-friendly approach to a product that typically uses oil-based absorption materials and constitutes up to 1.4 percent of all landfill waste. Major diaper companies took note, and in February, Tethis closed a $17.6 million Series C to fund the testing. Now it’s time to fill those diapers. TRUMBULL…

VIETNAMESE REFUGEE Binh Nguyen founded Pho Hoa 35 years ago. The chain offers the traditional flavors of Vietnamese pho but uses meat broths instead of the customary bone marrow broth, making its menu items lower in calories and cholesterol. Part of Nguyen’s motivation for franchising his concept, after nine years of success on his own, was to offer other refugees the same opportunity to pursue the American Dream of business ownership as he had in coming to the U.S.…

MOST RESTAURANT FRANCHISES offer hands-on training to their franchisees, but Cousins Maine Lobster goes the extra nautical mile. The brand prides itself on serving wild-caught, sustainably harvested lobster from Maine—and wants its franchisees to understand firsthand exactly what that means. So founders Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis take each new franchisee on a three-day trip to their hometowns in Maine, where they board a lobster boat and get to work baiting and hauling lobster traps.…