Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2020 i Entrepreneur's Startups

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

HOW TO BUILD A BRAND

You’re really excited about your concept for a new product or service. But do you have a potential brand in the making? Unfortunately, it’s a question too many small-business owners ask far too late, or never ask at all—not a good idea in a world full of savvy consumers and big companies that have mastered the branding game. Great brands are all around us, and it’s no accident they make us think of certain things. Think FedEx, and you think of overnight delivery. Apple brings to mind cutting-edge computer products, must-have phones, music, and now TV and wearable devices. Even celebrities are brands. Would you describe Bradley Cooper the same way you would Jack Nicholson? Their differences—charming versus gruff, refined versus rough and rugged—helped define their particular acting “brands” and…

9 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

SAME WORD, NEW OPPORTUNITY

Tariq Farid thought he had a lock on the word edible. For more than 20 years, his company, Edible Arrangements, was famous for its bouquets of fruit and platters of chocolate-dipped fruit, and customers had begun casually referring to the company as simply Edible. In 2013, Farid went all in—trademarking the name Edible by itself and dropping Arrangements. Then, in 2016, California passed Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana. Farid read the text of the bill and was horrified: The word edibles was in there—familiar to any pot lover, and now enshrined into law to mean weed-laced food. We can’t let it happen, he recalls thinking. He tried to fight it—and as he did, he learned an important lesson: Sometimes the greatest threats are opportunities in disguise. This is an…

3 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

IT’S WHO YOU KNOW

IN 2018, I had my dream gig: I hosted a podcast that reached millions of listeners and gave me access to the world’s most inspiring entrepreneurs. Then my relationship with my business partners fell apart, and they emailed me to say I was fired. With that, I lost my livelihood, my calling, and my very sense of identity. For weeks, I sat on my couch dreaming up ways to reclaim my show. But I couldn’t; it was gone. Then I realized there was something I hadn’t lost: my relationships! I’d met incredible people throughout my career. And as I reached out to them, they’d become the insurance policy I didn’t even know I had—an insurance policy that would save me when I needed it most. In turn, these people made…

3 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

TOP 100 FRANCHISES FOR LESS THAN $50,000

1 Jan-Pro Franchising International Commercial cleaning STARTUP COST $4.2K-$54.7K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 9,155/0 2 Anago Cleaning Systems Commercial cleaning STARTUP COST $11.3K-$68.3K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,692/0 3 RE/MAX Real estate STARTUP COST $40K-$284K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 8,361/0 4 Stratus Building Solutions Environmentally friendly commercial cleaning STARTUP COST $4.5K-$72.9K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,787/0 5 Cruise Planners Travel agencies STARTUP COST $2.3K-$23.6K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 3,061/1 6 Dream Vacations Travel agencies STARTUP COST $1.8K-$20.3K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,432/0 7 Rooter-Man Plumbing, drain, and sewer cleaning STARTUP COST $46.8K-$137.6K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 666/29 8 Realty One Group Real estate STARTUP COST $49.3K-$222.5K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 189/11 9 NextHome Real estate STARTUP COST $14.5K-$212.6K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 361/0 10 Goosehead Insurance Agency Property and casualty insurance STARTUP COST $41.5K-$116.5K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 535/0 11…

7 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

WHERE HAVE ALL THE PLUMBERS GONE?

Back in Vinnie Sposari’s day, plumbing was considered a good, honest living. Before shop classes started disappearing from high schools and four-year college was championed as the only respectable career path, Sposari could put a classified ad in Sunday’s paper and have six or eight résumés on his desk by Monday. Good résumés, too. But those days have gone the way of print newspapers. “Very, very rarely will you get a licensed, skilled plumber calling you,” Sposari says. He’s 56 now and spent his career rising up in the plumbing business. He started straight out of high school and soon founded Sposari Plumbing. In 1992, he bought into a plumbing franchise called Mr. Rooter to “learn the business side of things,” and today he owns Mr. Rooter territory throughout western…

10 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

FROM FLYING HIGH TO PIZZA PIE

Beginning in 1985, Stephanie Moseley spent seven years as an Air Force intelligence analyst with top-secret clearance, running a division that oversaw the highest- and fastest-flying aircraft ever built. Which is to say, she never thought she’d end up running a pizza joint. But fast-forward to 2016, and as she was heading home from her corporate sales job in Virginia, a wind-waver banner caught her eye and lured her into a Marco’s Pizza, an international franchise with more than 900 locations. She read the company’s family-founded origin story, ordered a sausage-and-pepperoni pizza, and was sold: She wanted a piece of the Marco’s pie. Two years later, she opened the doors to her very own location in Newport News, Va., and is learning that her experiences in corporate America and the…

3 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

STOP DOING WHAT PEOPLE HATE

Baseball is a game of tradition, and Grayson Stadium is as traditional as they come. The Savannah venue was built in 1926, back when game-day radio broad-casts were a new thing. The Boston Red Sox held spring training here, leading Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson to round its bases. For three decades, a local high school also took Grayson’s field for its annual Thanksgiving Day game against a military academy. And between 1984 and 2015, it was home to a minor league team called the Sand Gnats. This was all baseball in its classic form—orderly and staid, romanticized by purists. Now? Things are a little different. It’s the bottom of the second inning at Grayson Stadium on a muggy midsummer night this past August, and baseball is briefly…

16 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED

No matter what type of financing source you approach—a bank, a venture capitalist, or your cousin Lenny—equity financing is the type that creates those $1 billion “unicorn” valuations for startups that have received so much hype these past few years. In equity financing, you receive capital in exchange for part ownership of the company. Equity financing can come from various sources, including venture capital firms and private investors. Whichever source you choose, there are some basics you should understand before you try to get equity capital. An investor’s “share in your company” comes in various forms. If your company is incorporated, the investor might bargain for shares of stock. Or an investor who wants to be involved in the management of the company could come in as a partner. Keeping…

16 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

FIRST, GET INVESTORS—THEN, MAKE THE PRODUCT?

As an interior designer, Nicole Gibbons was used to friends asking for decorating advice. And in 2016, one needed help selecting paint, so Gibbons consulted a well-regarded brand’s website—and found it impossible to navigate. The lightbulb went off: She could create a direct-to-consumer paint brand that offers a curated range of colors, an algorithm to point shoppers toward their ideal shade, and a simplified way to sample hues. But her interior design business was already a full-time job, so Gibbons didn’t move forward until, she says, “I woke up on New Year’s Day 2017 and was like, It’s now or never.” Here’s how she went on to build Clare, raising money before she ever had a product to sell. 1 Go all in. After deciding to build a startup, she…

3 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

TOP 100 FRANCHISES FOR LESS THAN $100,000

1 Kumon Math & Reading Centers Supplemental education STARTUP COST $73.4K-$154.8K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 26,256/22 2 Baskin-Robbins Ice cream, frozen yogurt, frozen beverages STARTUP COST $93.6K-$401.8K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 8,072/0 3 HomeVestors of America Home buying, repair, and selling STARTUP COST $56K-$426.3K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,102/0 4 Matco Tools Mechanics’ tools and equipment STARTUP COST $93.4K-$272.7K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,812/2 5 911 Restoration Residential and commercial property restoration STARTUP COST $70.1K-$226.9K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 204/0 6 CPR Cell Phone Repair Electronics repairs and sales STARTUP COST $55.7K-$170.5K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 565/6 7 Merry Maids Residential cleaning STARTUP COST $89.6K-$125K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,705/3 8 Chem-Dry Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Carpet and upholstery cleaning, tile and stone care, granite countertop renewal STARTUP COST $67.6K-$178.9K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 3,576/0 9 ServiceMaster Clean/ServiceMaster…

8 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

THE WAY TO SELL YOURSELF

Aman recently connected with me on LinkedIn and sent me this note: “Let me know if you ever need a writer.” I guess he’s a writer? I don’t know! But I do know this: The phrase “Let me know if you ever need a…” shows up a lot, in my inbox and surely yours, too. I’ve come to think of it as the eight most deadly words in entrepreneurship—because that phrase is the death of opportunity. We should all step back and think: Have we used these words? Have we used similar words? And if so, have we failed to seize the moment? “Let me know if you ever need a…” Let’s break it down to understand. First, consider the aspiration. This is written by someone hoping to provide a…

3 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

WHEN THE BRAND IS YOU

What do you do for a second act, when your first act literally changed an industry? That was the question facing makeup powerhouse Bobbi Brown, whose simple line of lipsticks blossomed into the billion-dollar company Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. She left it in 2016 with no plans for what to do next; all she knew was that she was done with corporate life. (The company had been acquired decades earlier by Estée Lauder.) “It wasn’t freeing,” she says. “It was like, Oh, shit; now what?” But she’s since found an answer—expanding into new territories with a supplements line for Walmart (Evolution_18), an editorial site (justBOBBI), and a boutique hotel (The George), all of which launched in spring 2018. She also has a new podcast (Beyond the Beauty) and a film and…

6 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

FOUNDERS, GO HOME

Nobody really wanted to fund us,” recalls Alex Kubicek, a soft-spoken Midwesterner with a shrewd scientific mind. He’s thinking back to 2013. He was 25 and had already banked dual degrees in physics and electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, as well as a master’s in atmospheric science from top-tier UW–Madison. Then he’d created a hyperlocal weather observation company called Understory and landed it in the first-ever cohort of an accelerator in his hometown of Madison, which in turn sent him off on nearly a year’s worth of pitching to Wisconsin-based investors. But nobody put in money. Was his company the problem…or was it the stock of local investors? He decided it was the latter, and moved to Boston—where his fortunes changed. The local office of a hardware venture…

11 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

A DREAM FOR ANY BUDGET

There’s more variety than ever in the world of franchising, from the types of businesses being franchised to their price tags. That’s right—opening a franchise doesn’t have to cost a fortune. There are hundreds of opportunities, in a wide variety of industries, that can be started for less than you might expect. To see what we mean, just check out our lists of the top franchises that can be started for less than $50,000, less than $100,000, and less than $150,000. These franchises are ranked based on the scores they received in Entrepreneur’s 2020 Franchise 500 ranking, our comprehensive analysis that looks at more than 150 data points in the areas of costs and fees, size and growth, franchisee support, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. One note: A…

1 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

TOP 100 FRANCHISES FOR LESS THAN $150,000

1 The UPS Store Postal, business, printing, and communications services STARTUP COST $138.4K-$470K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 5,166/0 2 7-Eleven Convenience stores STARTUP COST $47.1K-$1.2M* TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 66,307/2,382 3 Great Clips Hair salons STARTUP COST $136.9K-$259.4K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 4,371/0 4 Budget Blinds Window coverings, window film, rugs, accessories STARTUP COST $110.3K-$234.4K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,213/0 5 uBreakiFix Electronics repairs STARTUP COST $55.4K-$236.3K* TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 513/15 6 Anytime Fitness Fitness centers STARTUP COST $76.7K-$521.4K* TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 4,510/10 7 Mathnasium Learning Centers Math tutoring STARTUP COST $112.8K-$149.1K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,030/17 8 Fyzical Therapy & Balance Centers Physical therapy, balance and vestibular therapy, preventive wellness services STARTUP COST $148.8K-$819K TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 370/14 9 The Maids Residential cleaning STARTUP COST $63.3K-$141.2K* TOTAL UNITS (FRANCHISED/CO.-OWNED) 1,278/174 10 Huntington Learning Centers…

9 min

Entrepreneur's Startups|Spring 2020

JOINING FORCES TO GROW

Nikki Taheri grew up in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution and was raised on tales of her trailblazing grandmother—a six-foot-tall woman who chose to forgo a hijab and dressed as a man in order to pursue a career in trade. Taheri never met her grandmother, but she likes to think she inherited some of her gumption. In 1993, as opportunity and education for women seemed nonexistent in her home country, Taheri fled to the United States, where she earned her bachelor’s degree, discovered a passion for design, and eventually opened a sign-and-awning business in Bayonne, N.J. Nearly two decades later, as business was thriving, Taheri made yet another bold decision and converted her business into a franchised location of FastSigns International in 2018. Joining a network of 724 locations may…

3 min