Interviews
Founders, in their own words.
Pricing
The price was the product
In 2019 Priya Nair doubled every price at Loom&Co in a single afternoon. A third of her customers left and revenue rose 60%. Seven years and $9.6M later, it is still the only rule she enforces personally.
Funding
We said no twice
Halyard crossed $6M in June with no outside capital, two declined term sheets and a growth rate its co-founder calls unfashionable. Tom Aldous on what restraint actually cost — in salary, in staff, in years.
Product
The Tuesday we killed it
Halyard spent fourteen months building a sensor that worked. Ana Ferreira ended it nine weeks before the trial units shipped, on the strength of three weeks spent watching riggers ignore the number it produced.
Software
Software that smells like a barn
Before writing a line of Fieldnote, Maya Okonjo spent a season riding shotgun in collection trucks with a clipboard. Her two-person company now routes produce for 60 co-ops that had never bought software before.
Craft
The apprentice who bought the workshop
Eli Nakamura swept the floor at Brenner Woodwork for two years before he was allowed to cut anything. Nine years later he bought the place from the man who hired him — on a handshake, then on paper.