Stories
Company profiles and the decisions behind them.
Profile
The Slow Build
Eleven years to twenty employees. Martin Oduya has turned down every offer to get there faster, and can tell you what each one would have cost him.
Funding
Halyard passes $6M ARR, still no outside capital
The sailmaker crossed $6M in recurring revenue in June with 31 staff, two declined term sheets and four straight profitable years behind it.
People
Daniel Kwame leaves Nexa to launch a climate-logistics venture
Nexa’s eleventh employee is leaving the 4,000-person logistics company to build refrigeration monitoring for the freight lanes he helped design.
Markets
Micro-factory permits up 40% across mid-size US cities
The Sherwood Index counted 40% more small-scale manufacturing permits in converted retail space last year — and found the buildings cheap for a reason.
Product
Fieldnote opens its farm-routing API to co-op partners
Maya Okonjo’s two-person company will let co-ops build on the routing engine directly — free under 40 member farms, priced above it.
Company Profile
The company Halyard didn’t build
Ana Ferreira and Tom Aldous have run a sailmaking company to $6M ARR and 31 staff without outside money. The interesting decisions are all the ones they declined.
Markets
Why micro-factories are coming back to Main Street
Permits for small-scale manufacturing in converted retail space rose 40% year over year, according to the Sherwood Index. The reasons are unromantic: rent, freight and the person who lives four streets away.
Company Profile
Fieldnote, the two-person startup rebuilding farm logistics
Maya Okonjo and one engineer route produce for 60 co-ops. They have turned down every offer of money that came with a plan to hire.
Growth
The first ten customers: five founders on how they really got them
No growth loops, no launch days. Five founders describe the unglamorous work that produced the only ten customers that ever mattered.
People
Leaving a unicorn to start over: Daniel Kwame’s second act
He was employee eleven at Nexa and watched it grow to four thousand people. At thirty-nine, he is starting again in a rented warehouse with two engineers and a spreadsheet.