Filed under: founder story
11 storiesThe archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.
RoamCircle opens in 13 cities in its first year
Elizabeth Rivas built a network for women travelling alone after a divorce took her through 13 countries. The events that worked best were the ones she turned up to, which is now the company's problem to solve.
Blanq says it has worked with over 300 businesses
Radhika Agarwal built her consultancy on the premise that companies buy marketing before they have a brand. Her one hard number rests on records she has not published.
Seven failed attempts, one boxing gym, then SHWDWN's first £100,000
Joshua Chumber spent seven years building companies that went nowhere. The idea that stuck came from a badly built ticket page at a small boxing show.
The Astute founder on her dad's snail money and the habit Fluidstack gave her
"You have a chip on your shoulder"
He found his way out of a hostel on page six of Google
Carlo Weaver left school with no GCSEs and was homeless at 15. He is now building the apprenticeship directory he needed at 16.
Lawyer who never coded built GC AI after early GPT access
Cecilia Ziniti spent two decades as an in-house lawyer, then left Replit to build software for the job she had been doing. She says GC AI now serves about 2,100 companies.
Nike veteran's brand Omorpho grew 743% in three years
Stefan Olander spent more than 20 years at Nike before starting Omorpho. Inc. reports the sportswear brand has grown 743 per cent over three years.
Humanities PhD dropout raised $92m for AI billing startup Tabs
Ali Hussain left Oxford two months into a doctorate, spent six years learning operations at a 10-person startup, then hired a technical co-founder to cover what he could not do himself.
Carpenter turned founder raises $70m for construction AI firm
Sarah Buchner started on Austrian job sites as a teenager. Trunk Tools, the company she founded in 2021, now employs more than 100 people and was valued at $325m last year.
Sara Blakely cut the feet off her tights and built Spanx
She had $5,000, no design training and two failed law school entrance exams. The rejections came first; the billion came fourteen years later.
The blacksmith who told customers not to buy his jacket
Yvon Chouinard bought a second-hand forge at nineteen, built America's largest climbing hardware supplier, then set about dismantling its bestseller. In 2022 he gave the company away.