Stories
Company profiles and the decisions behind them.
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.
Company Profile
The company Priya Nair priced into existence
Loom&Co finished last year at $9.6M with 34 people and a 61% gross margin. Every structural decision in the building traces back to one sentence about queues.
Company Profile
Hollis Bindery and the arithmetic of staying small
Bern Hollis has spent forty-seven years declining to grow a bookbindery. The decision he is making now — selling it to his apprentice for $1.5M less than it’s worth — is the same decision, with a date on it.