Issue #11: Behind the Bootstraps – 3 Female Founders Growing Their Companies on Their Own Dime
3 Topics, 3 Brands, in 3-Minutes
📖 Bootstrapping: the process of building a business from scratch without attracting investment or with minimal external capital. This is in contrast to bringing on investors to provide capital or taking on debt to fund business expansion. It’s about stretching what you’ve got—whatever that may be—to get the job done.
This Forbes article highlights the well-known fact that female founders are held to a higher standard compared to their male counterparts. Due to harsher fundraising realities, you often don’t hear about many female founders because they lack top-tier VCs backing them or haven’t raised any VC investment at all — aka, they’re bootstrapped.
To shed more light on the hundreds of incredible female founders, Inc. announced its Female Founders 500 list this past week. Although every single woman on this list deserves her own personal shoutout, one particular woman caught my eye, sending me down a rabbit hole for this week’s issue on bootstrapping: Ann McFerran.
👢 Keep reading to learn more about Ann and two other female founders who scaled their businesses by their bootstraps.
💋 Ann McFerran: Glamnetic
Ann McFerran is the founder of Glamnetic, a beauty brand offering fake lashes that adhere to a customer's existing lashes using magnets. Although her product is genius, what is even more impressive is that Glamnetic is a 100% bootstrapped business that was founded from Ann’s L.A. apartment with just a few thousand dollars.
Since its founding in 2019, Ann has bootstrapped her way to $50 million in revenue after her first year in business. From taking the “professional” product photos herself to offering free pizza to those willing to help pack and ship products, Ann maintained a limited budget and kept her production costs low while still attracting brands like Sephora and Ulta Beauty for partnerships. Glamnetic is currently on it’s 6th year with no official venture or institutional funding announced, meaning Ann is still building her booming brand by her bootstraps.
Glamnetic — a beauty brand offering fake lashes that adhere to a customer's existing lashes using magnets.
Founded: 2019
Founder: Ann McFerran
Lastest Funding: Bootstrapped
🔗 Top 500 Female Founders - Inc. Feature
Listen to more of Ann’s bootstrapping strategies here.
🤸 Taylor Borenstein and Millie Blumka: Stakt
Meet Taylor and Millie, co-founders of the stackable yoga mat, Stakt. After the pandemic forced them out of their studio classes and into home workouts, they quickly noticed the lack of functionality in their yoga mats. They wanted a thicker mat that could fold into an extra piece of equipment — and so, Stakt was born.
Stakt has been bootstrapped since it’s founding in 2020, with Taylor and Millie handling all operations including bookkeeping, accounting, and marketing. They leveraged a friend-of-a-friend’s brother to find a product designer and manufacturer, and they finally shipped their first 20 mats in December 2021. Although you may have seen Stakt on a Shark Tank episode, their deal never closed. Taylor and Millie still each own 50% of their rapidly growing business and have recently expanded their product line into functional weights. Don’t sleep on Stakt the mat, as Stakt the brand is just getting started.
Stakt — creates functional, versatile, and convenient fitness products that inspire movement.
Founded: 2020
Co-Founder: Taylor Borenstein
Co-Founder: Millie Blumka
Latest Funding: Bootstrapped
🔗 Read more about Stakt’s journey here
💇♀️ Nancy Twine: Briogeo
Nancy Twine founded Briogeo in 2013 following the sudden loss of her Mother. Inspired by her mother’s ability to make customized products tailored to her haircare needs, Nancy embarked on her journey to develop her own line of carefully crafted, clean, and plant-based haircare. She bootstrapped Briogeo for the first six years of the business. Her product was on shelves at Sephora within its first year, making Nancy the youngest Black women to launch a line at Sephora.
After 6 years, Briogeo was growing rapidly, but with all of Nancy’s personal finances on the line, she finally began to think about a partnership. She aligned with the San Francisco based private equity firm VMG, which made a minority investment in Briogeo in 2019. Three years later, in 2022, Briogeo was sold to Wella Company for nine figures.
Briogeo — hair care brand focused on boosting healthy hair for all hair types.
Founded: 2013
Founder: Nancy Twine
Latest Funding: Acquired by Wella Company in 2022
👇Watch how Nancy Twine scaled her business to 9 figures (18:05-26:45)
That’s all for this week, see you next Sunday!
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Loved this! Nancy Twine's episode of How I Built This is great as well