Magzter Gold (Sitewide CA)

Magzter Gold (Sitewide CA)

Digital Delivery

Inc. May 1st, 2020 Digital Back Issue Cover

Inc. May/June 2020 (Digital)

(63)

Single Digital Issue

May/June 2020

$4.99

Powered By Zinio

Zinio

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Instant Start

Subscribe Instead

1 Year Subscription

6 digital issues

$19.99

($3.33/issue)

Go to Subscription

View Subscription Options

Also available on ZINIO Unlimited logo

Get unlimited access to Inc. (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines

1-month free trial

Renews at $8.99/month after trial.
Cancel anytime.

Get unlimited access to Inc. (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines. Renews at just $8.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Start Trial Learn more

40 Articles

Reworking Our Workplaces

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU Members of Inc.’s editorial staff at one of our daily Zoom confabs. It’s been a struggle to write this note, which is supposed to celebrate Inc.’s annual Best Workplaces awards. BWP, as we call it internally, is long planned, and popular with readers, and we look forward to producing the issue in which the winners are named. But now everything is different, of course. My writerly struggles began when I lost a few days of work to a fever, 102 degrees—too high to think, let alone write. Still home and feeling better with no other symptoms a few days later, I resumed writing only to learn that several officemates tested positive for Covid-19. We stopped everything and closed our office, figuring out how to report, write, edit, and photograph…

Reworking Our Workplaces

THE ICE CREAM FLAVOR MAKER

The sign on the door says “Chief Creative Officer,” but for Tyler Malek, co-founder of cult ice creamery Salt & Straw, work means sampling 15 to 20 varieties of each new ice cream at the company’s R&D kitchen, where such flavors as Arbequina Olive Oil and Honey Lavender were born. Salt & Straw was launched in 2011 by Tyler and his cousin, CEO Kim Malek, who recruited him out of culinary school to compose flavors for the Portland, Oregon-based operation. Soon, Tyler was hanging out with brewers and chefs and translating their heady conversations into ice cream creations like India Pale Ale (made with dry-hopped vodka), Brown Ale & Bacon, and Bone Marrow & Smoked Cherries. He had the scoop shop tinkering with traditional ice cream recipes, even swapping milk and…

THE ICE CREAM FLAVOR MAKER

May I Ask Who’s Calling?

JENNIFER MATTHEWS Co-founder and creative director of Tempaper, a Brick, New Jersey-based maker of temporary wallpaper. MICHAEL LASTORIA Co-founder and CEO of &Pizza, a Washington, D.C.-based purveyor of ultra-customizable pizza. ADVANTAGE: MATTHEWS Customers still want to talk to people. As reported by the Harvard Business Review, a 2017 study by research advisory firm BIA/Kelsey found that calls to businesses are expected to exceed 169 billion per year in 2020, and that calls are 10 to 15 times more likely to generate a successful sale or follow-up activity than text-based communication. That’s not to say that texting isn’t more useful for some businesses than others—it allows information to be distributed faster, and data to be collected more easily. And it can be popular with a younger crowd. But the numbers say you shouldn’t give up that…

May I Ask Who’s Calling?

How Amazon Reshaped the World

I was amazed at how deeply A.I. is embedded in the company’s activities. Amazon was an early adopter of artificial intelligence, and has injected it into almost every aspect of its business. For example, the company used to conduct weekly retail reviews with up to 60 managers. They’d negotiate what to buy, how much, and which warehouses needed what amounts. Now, algorithms do all that. My biggest surprise? Finding out that Jeff Bezos was cloning himself throughout the organization. When I spent time inside Amazon, I learned that Bezos and his top lieutenants religiously use a shadowing program that has promising young managers follow their boss every day for two years. By the end, the “shadow” knows how Bezos and his best executives think and has internalized the Amazon formula to spread those…

How Amazon Reshaped the World

Build a Better Bottle—From Paper

Julie Corbett, a California financial adviser, was wandering the aisles of her local supermarket in 2007, looking for liquid laundry soap in an environmentally friendly container. Her elementary school daughters were learning about recycling and had begun whipping the Corbett household into recycling shape. “Your kids come home and become the enforcers,” recalled Corbett. They were even weighing her trash. But she was having a tough time finding an alternative that fit the bill. So, Corbett decided to take on the challenge herself. The granddaughter of Canadian paper mill workers, Corbett had grown up with the sounds and smells of paper, and unwrapping a smartphone slickly wrapped in paper gave her an idea. “I thought if we could manufacture paper in curves, could we make a bottle of it? It was a…

Build a Better Bottle—From Paper

Place of Business RENO, NEVADA

COMPANIES TO WATCH ▶ Breadware To cut operating costs, cofounders Daniel Price and Danny deLaveaga relocated their startup from California in 2017. It’s a move that many other companies have made in recent years. Breadware, which helps companies build and launch products for the internet of things, is now in its fifth year and thriving: It booked $1.9 million in revenue last year. ▶ TrainerRoad Reno’s homegrown cycling analytics and training platform has bootstrapped operations since it launched in 2010. Co-founder and CEO Nate Pearson, who previously worked as a web developer for International Game Technology, started the business with Reid Weber and Chad Timmerman. ▶ Panty Drop 1 After launching her underwear subscription service in 2014, Julie Arsenault moved to Reno from San Francisco to give the business a little breathing room…

Place of Business RENO, NEVADA

CLOTHES MADE THE MAN Dunn co-founded menswear retailer Bonobos with Brian Spaly in 2007. (He is seen here at the Madison Avenue store in New York City.) BIG CHECKS The company landed $127 million in venture funding before Walmart acquired it for $310 million in 2017. PARTING COMPANY Dunn stayed at Walmart as SVP of digital consumer brands, working on a direct-to-consumer brand effort. He left in February. How did the deal with Walmart materialize? An old business school friend suggested I talk to Walmart executive Marc Lore, who had been a mentor. We mind-melded on the future of e-commerce. Then we went out to dinner with the CEO, Doug McMillon, where I learned how he was transforming Walmart. After that, I was literally praying that the deal would happen. The price discussion was easy. The harder…

IS YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE HUMAN ENOUGH?

In the fall of 2016, Rahul Vohra was testing a powerful email service called Superhuman. Between meeting potential customers, he would demo his $30-a-month service and spend nearly an hour training buyers. After 200 or so of those one-on-one calls, he began to notice something remarkable: “The retention of customers was high, churn was low, and they were making a lot of referrals,” he says. Today, Superhuman’s onboarding process, condensed to 30 minutes, teaches new users the ropes, including shortcuts to help them achieve inbox zero. It’s key to the Bay Area startup’s popularity. Why would anyone pay for email when they could get it for free? “With Amazon having nailed price and convenience, you need to have resonant customer service,” says David Bell, co-founder of advisory firm Idea Farm Ventures.…

IS YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE HUMAN ENOUGH?

Xenex Disinfection Services has one goal: to wipe out hospital-acquired infections, which claim some 100,000 American lives annually. The company’s $125,000 LightStrike “germ-zapping robot” uses UV technology developed by two Johns Hopkins epidemiology PhDs and is now working in more than 500 hospitals and labs. As the coronavirus pandemic exploded, so did demand. While there is no clinical proof yet that LightStrike can zap Covid-19—tests are ongoing—the robot is clearly lethal to related pathogens such as MERS. THE ZAPPER LightStrike uses xenon gas to create millisecond pulses of high-intensity, germicidal ultraviolet light, which deactivates the DNA of pathogens and prevents cell replication. It’s also being used to disinfect precious surgical masks for reuse. When idle, the robot’s light-emitting head retracts into the body. Do-Gooders Xenex’s founders include Rackspace co-founder Morris Miller and Brian Cruver,…

DTC Isn’t Dead—It’s Everywhere

Every time you open Instagram, you’re likely hit with an ad from a brand you’ve never heard of, showcasing a beautifully photographed product that’s sold only online. Welcome to the age of “direct-to-consumer,” or DTC—the name that’s been assigned to the digitally native businesses that now dominate your social feeds and have replaced traditional brands in the closets and cupboards of your home. Lately, rumors have been swirling of DTC’s demise, in press coverage of individual companies as well as the category at large. But I think these proclamations are missing the point, which is that these businesses aren’t defined by their model, but by their values. When we started our brand-development firm, Red Antler, in 2007, our vision was to partner with entrepreneurs to launch and grow businesses through the…

DTC Isn’t Dead—It’s Everywhere

Incubator or Accelerator?

TECHSTARS A global three-month accelerator. LAUNCHED 2006 LOCATIONS Of Techstars’ 47 programs, 29 are based in the U.S. Other locations include London, Montreal, and Tel Aviv. PROMINENT GRADUATES PillPack, ClassPass, Zipline GENER8TOR Five companies are given $100,000 and participate in a 12- or 16-week accelerator. LAUNCHED 2012 LOCATIONS Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis-St. Paul PROMINENT GRADUATES Panty Drop, Bright Cellars FOUNDERS SPACE An incubator and accelerator combined. LAUNCHED 2011 LOCATION San Francisco PROMINENT GRADUATES MyDigitalHealth Network, EquBot IDEALAB A full-time incubator that devises concepts for startups and brings in founders to develop businesses. LAUNCHED 1996 LOCATION Pasadena, California PROMINENT GRADUATES Evolution Robotics, Picasa, X1 Inc. has the lowdown on the best incubators and accelerators in the nation. Find the one you need to grow your business at inc.com/incubators. In the Fast Lane Techstars’ collegiate division, LaunchPad Lift, accelerates student-run startups in partnership with the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. UT Austin grad Mandeep Patel worked…

Incubator or Accelerator?

How SMBs Can Build Growth-Ready Teams

The past decade has seen an unprecedented national job expansion, which made it increasingly difficult for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) to recruit and retain the talent they need to sustain growth. That came to a screeching halt in March, when the coronavirus pandemic brought an end to a record 113 consecutive months of new job creation, but not before 22 million people had been added to payrolls. And while the pandemic has created more pressing short-term challenges for many SMBs, it’s important to keep in mind that the ability to build growth-ready teams remains critical for long-term success. With the pandemic expected to last months, SMBs have been forced to adapt to the “new normal” of the remote workplace, says Pamela Lacy, HR coach at Paychex, Inc. Supply chains have…

How SMBs Can Build Growth-Ready Teams

How I Get It All Done (From Home)

Climb Every Mountain The alarm clock buzzes at 6:30 a.m. “A lot of founders have these amazing morning productivity hacks, like meditation,” says Vechery. “For me, the single greatest motivating factor is to just be doing something I love. And so, uh, that translates to emails in bed when I wake up.” After that, Vechery typically bikes to work. During the crisis, she’s swapped her commute for an early-morning ride to the top of San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. It doubles as me time. “It’s really helpful to understand what’s going to bubble up from your subconscious when you’re not being stimulated sitting in front of a computer,” she says. Face Time Vechery’s days in quarantine include more one-on-one meetings than they did before, but that’s the cost of keeping information flowing. Modern Fertility…

How I Get It All Done (From Home)

Find the Right Balance Between Humans and Bots

Way back in the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT decided to have a little fun. To demonstrate the artificiality of computers—how soulless and very unlike humans they were—Weizenbaum created a little program called Eliza, which he designed to behave like a bored psychotherapist. When a user asked Eliza a question, it would spit back some programmatic response. Weizenbaum hoped to show how impossible it was for computers to imitate humans. The opposite happened. People were so taken with Eliza, so charmed by its manner, they treated it as one of them, even knowing they were chatting with a computer. Weizenbaum had given Eliza—the first chatbot—just enough of a personality to make “her” seem sufficiently real to believe in. Over 50 years later, it seems like everyone has a startup featuring a…

Find the Right Balance Between Humans and Bots

Tough Love From an Entrepreneurial Curmudgeon

Carey Smith started fan-and-light maker Big Ass Fans in 1999 and sold it for $500 million in 2017. Today he runs Unorthodox Ventures, an investment firm focused on helping small companies with big potential. Entrepreneurs are being hoodwinked and led astray by the very people who are supposed to be helping them. That’s my biggest takeaway two years after launching an investment company to take ideas and help turn them into long-term, successful brands. Every week at Unorthodox Ventures, we meet smart men and women who have graduated from entrepreneurship programs at top schools but have never been taught the basics of manufacturing prototypes or testing products. They think that effective marketing begins and ends with Facebook. Because they’ve received only positive feedback from mentors and professors—not to mention well-meaning friends and…

Tough Love From an Entrepreneurial Curmudgeon

Selling Ain’t Telling

A former editor and founding CEO of the ad agency Droga5, Andrew Essex is currently the CEO of Plan A, a marketing services holding company, the author of The End of Advertising, and a recognized authority on branding and brand storytelling. In this continuing column, he’ll provide advice to founders on the importance of narrative to creating a better business. Hey, Mr. Brand Guru, do I really need to sell a brand_? Isn’t that just a distraction—a way to push an inferior product by confusing the buyer with a bunch of piffle paffle? Isn’t my product the most important thing? As an advertising executive who’s spent the past few decades at the pinnacle of the marketing food chain, I have heard this tedious inquiry, this confident dismissal of brand and the need…

Selling Ain’t Telling

Whom Are You Not Serving? Diversify Your Customer Base

Scott Shigeoka is GoDaddy’s entrepreneur-in-residence, providing guidance to the everyday entrepreneur. Through his creative studio, he tells stories across different media and is working on his first book, which will focus on the role of curiosity in our lives. Connect with him on Instagram @scottshigeoka. Last year, I became the host of Made in America, an online documentary series on how low-income and minority entrepreneurs overcome barriers to build their businesses. In making the first season’s four episodes, I met entrepreneur Sequoia Ferguson, who bought a box truck to convert her storefront clothing business into a store on wheels. I also met Consuelo Rosales, who cleaned houses to earn the money she needed to escape an unhealthy relationship. She was in the process of hiring a team and expanding her business to…

Whom Are You Not Serving? Diversify Your Customer Base

WHEN PLAN B IS A BEAUTY

TWITTER: Sometimes, Employees Know Best Podcasting is white-hot. But 15 years ago, when Ev Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass started Odeo as a podcasting platform, they were ahead of the curve. Way too far ahead. In 2005, Odeo had 14 employees banging away when, suddenly, the earth buckled: A little company named Apple announced it would be including a podcasting platform in the bazillions of iPods it sold. Williams quickly grasped that Odeo was poised for a Wile E. Coyote free fall, and he didn’t have a Plan B. What he did have was something that almost maybe sort of could have been called a strategy: a series of now-what? employee hackathons. It was in one of these that Glass and a web designer named Jack Dorsey developed a wildly…

WHEN PLAN B IS A BEAUTY

Be a Better Leader Create a Better Workplace Build a Brand With Purpose

Question: Why did you become an entrepreneur? Answer: I wanted to gain control over my life. [Cue the laugh track.] Starting a business is an act of agency. Growing one, founders soon learn, is like juggling wet soap. (Antibacterial, of course.) If any CEOs still believed that their titles gave them power over events, the past few months have disabused them. Orders canceled. Offices emptied. Employees (friends) laid off. Yet from chaos emerges clarity. When the Covid-19 crisis abates, business leaders at companies small and large, local and national, will have to grapple with tough questions about remote work and diversified supply chains, and whether to trawl in the newly deep talent pool or keep their organizational BMIs as low as possible. But they will see those issues—and many others—with the fresh if…

Lead With Purpose

STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, FOUR-STAR GENERAL; FORMER COMMANDER, JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND; FOUNDER, MCCHRYSTAL GROUP As the Covid-19 pandemic intensified its assault at home and abroad, retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal found himself in pressing demand. Since 2011, McChrystal—who, as commander of U.S. special operations in Iraq after 9/11, had orchestrated the capture of Saddam Hussein—has applied his military acumen to building a business consultancy, McChrystal Group, with former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell. The pair codified their leadership insights in a best-selling book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. When the country shifted, perhaps too gradually, to war footing against a new and unseen viral enemy, McChrystal emerged as an authority for the authorities, a motivator for the motivators—and wrote an impassioned call to arms for The New York…

Lead With Purpose

ADVICE FROM THE TOP

Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. Indra Nooyi, former chair and CEO, PepsiCo People getting under your skin is a luxury. I don’t operate on that level now. This is about what I have to do for New York [during the pandemic], and whoever can help me do that, I will work with. Whoever is contrary to that, I will oppose—period. Andrew Cuomo, governor of the state of New York We have a policy: No individual mistake, no matter how boneheaded, will lead to the loss of a job. That way people can feel free to venture out, be daring, learn from their mistakes. Louis J. Erickson Jr., co-founder and COO, Bit-Wizards If you can laugh together,…

ADVICE FROM THE TOP

YOUR TEAM CAN THRIVE IN A CRISIS

It’s late in the afternoon on March 24, 2020. By this time, Covid-19 has disrupted, oh, just about everything. Many people are dying. Raj Kumar and his team are unfazed. They’d been planning for Covid-19 since January—and for pandemics since forever. “Most people want to say, ‘This crisis, it’s a black swan event,’_” says Kumar, who is the founding president and editor-in-chief of Devex, the Bloomberg-ish hub for information on events in developing nations. “In the world of Devex, we did not view it that way. Crisis is the new normal. Disruption is the new normal.” For 20 years, Kumar and his team of 120 globally positioned employees have been providing on-the-ground reports and risk assessments on famines, floods, pandemics, and every other imaginable calamity. Devex’s audience includes well over a million…

YOUR TEAM CAN THRIVE IN A CRISIS

ARE YOU A BETTER MANAGER THAN THE AVERAGE KINDERGARTNER?

1) In The Culture Code, Coyle uses which phrase to describe the method, concept, or quality that allowed four-person teams of kindergartners to outperform four-person teams of business school students in a contest? A__The power of play B__Iterative design strategy C__Trying a bunch of stuff together D__Failing fast Answer: C Coyle uses this plain-as-Twain phrase to describe how kindergartners bested B-schoolers at Peter Skillman’s Marshmallow Design Challenge. Now director of design at Amazon Web Services, Skillman created the contest for his postgrad research at Stanford, and then popularized it in a 2006 TED Talk. In The Culture Code, Coyle explains that Skillman “challenged each group to build the tallest possible structure using … 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of transparent tape, one yard of string, [and] one standard-size marshmallow.” There was just one rule: “The…

ARE YOU A BETTER MANAGER THAN THE AVERAGE KINDERGARTNER?

Place & Purpose

There is never a bad time to celebrate wonderful workplaces—businesses that make employees feel challenged, valued, and respected, where leaders are trust worthy, generous, and humane. And yet … We started assembling our annual Best Workplaces package months before Covid-19 began emptying offices and dispatching employees to their homes. Even in those innocent times, we knew great companies don’t depend on stocked refrigerators, onsite gyms, and nap rooms (though those don’t hurt). But we did envision workplaces as actual “places,” physical spaces made inviting and stimulating through a combination of thoughtful benefits, perks, and policies, and the interactions of the smart, interesting people attracted to them. Such offices thrummed with energy and collegiality. And then… As this issue went to press, sanitizer-drenched tumbleweeds blew through workplaces all across the country, including some of those…

Place & Purpose

DON’T START A BUSINESS UNLESS YOU HAVE A MISSION TO BUILD IT ON

Brian Cruver was a cocky, 29-year-old, freshly minted MBA who thought he had landed in the big leagues when he took a job in 2001 — at Enron. Within months, he witnessed the energy company once regarded as an innovative dynamo implode amid fraud allegations. He was laid off with thousands of others. The experience has colored everything he’s done since then. “Everyone else went on to their next corporate job,” Cruver says. “But I ended up writing a book [Anatomy of Greed], which was turned into a CBS movie.” He’s sitting in a conference room at AlertMedia, the Austin-based emergency-communications software startup he launched in 2013. It was during his book hiatus that he had an epiphany: “I realized I could go start companies of my own that do great…

DON’T START A BUSINESS UNLESS YOU HAVE A MISSION TO BUILD IT ON

THEY HELPED SAVE THEIR CO-FOUNDER WHILE BUILDING A COMPANY

Every founder knows that the culture they create can ensure their company’s survival. Rarely, though, does it save an actual life. But that’s exactly what happened at MX, a Lehi, Utah-based fintech company co-founded by Ryan Caldwell and Brandon Dewitt in 2010. In 2016, Dewitt learned he had Stage IV salivary acinic cell carcinoma, a rare cancer that had already spread. He’d just turned 33 and ran every day. Yet Dewitt’s doctor informed him that he had, at most, 90 days to live. His colleagues mobilized immediately. The plan: hack the cancer and do everything they could to save his life. MX’s business is partnering with banks, credit unions, and fintechs to analyze the data they collect so that their customers can make better decisions about their own finances. “We look at code,…

THEY HELPED SAVE THEIR CO-FOUNDER WHILE BUILDING A COMPANY

YOU CAN’T BE A JERK AND WORK HERE

Interviewing a job candidate recently, Jobot founder Heidi Golledge kept pushing him for references—though he was clearly qualified. The applicant soon realized why. “Are you trying to find out if I’m a jerk?” he asked. Her unapologetic reply: “Yes.” Working at Jobot, an A.I.-based staffing and recruiting firm, entails much more than demonstrating your ability. “It’s almost like dating,” Golledge says. “Would I want to be married to this person for the next three to five years?” The 140-person, Irvine, California, startup has scaled quickly since Golledge founded it in 2018 using money from the $100 million-plus sale of her previous company, CyberCoders. Even more than people with great résumés, Golledge seeks those who are respectful. “A good culture isn’t just about parties,” she says. “But I do like to throw parties.” Indeed.…

YOU CAN’T BE A JERK AND WORK HERE

CREATING AN AGENCY SHE CAN LIVE WITH

From the day Aimee Woodall (above) started her marketing firm, the Black Sheep Agency, in Houston in 2009, she knew success would depend entirely on breaking with what she calls “agency culture.” “It’s a lot like legal culture,” she says. “You’re tied to billable hours, and you’re always grinding.” So she threw a wrench into those gears. Black Sheep has no formal policy around flextime or working from home, and offers unlimited paid time off. The only rules are to respect your colleagues, respect the work, and over-communicate. Woodall says it’s better for clients, too. Such flexibility “keeps our energy levels high, so everybody can bring 100 percent, and helps us stay efficient,” she says. About six months in, Black Sheep worked with a large Texas nonprofit, and Woodall saw her whole…

CREATING AN AGENCY SHE CAN LIVE WITH

YES, THERE’S FREE BEER. BUT THIS COMPANY WANTS YOU TO FOCUS ON LIFE OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

At Buildertrend, a construction-management software company in Omaha, Nebraska, co-founders Dan Houghton, Jeff Dugger, and Steve Dugger are known as “the Bobs.” A reference to Office Space, it’s an inside joke, as Houghton and the Dugger brothers are nothing like the cost-cutting consultants of that 1999 film. Buildertrend employees have access to a long list of activities, an onsite gym and yoga studio, live music events, and sports tournaments. The company also holds monthly life-skills sessions that cover topics ranging from financial fitness to stress management to wine tasting. There’s even a company bar, where Buildertrend offers free snacks, wine and beer, and a lift home. “If you’ve had too much and take an Uber, we’ve never asked questions about that,” Houghton says. You could say beer was foundational. Prior to starting…

YES, THERE’S FREE BEER. BUT THIS COMPANY WANTS YOU TO FOCUS ON LIFE OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

THE BEST PLACES TO WORK 2020 HONOREES

Nearly 2,500 companies vied for the honor of being named to Inc.’s Best Workplaces list. But only this select group scored high enough—in terms of benefits, perks, and, most important, employee satisfaction—to meet the criteria. Congratulations. Abilitie Accelirate Accolade AceUp ACI Transport Acorio Addigy Advertise Purple Adzerk Aegis Business Technologies Affinity Aisle Planner AlertMedia ALKU Allego Alliantgroup AllPro Hospitality Staffing AMB Architects Ambra Health American Landmark Apartments Apex Digital Solutions Applause Applied Data Consultants AppNeta Aqueduct Technologies Arcadia Articulate Global Aryaka Networks Asana Avian Awake Security Aya Healthcare Bailard BambooHR Bankers Healthcare Group BayInfotech Beam Healthcare Beehive Strategic Communication Belay Belle Communication Bellmont Partners BenchPrep Better.com BetterUp Bev Big Cartel Binc Bit-Wizards Information Technology Solutions BizStream The Black Sheep Agency Blend Blue Jean Networks Bluetree Network BNG Team Boardsi Bold Insight Bold Orange Company Bolton & Company Bookkeeper360 Booyah Advertising Boston Dynamics Brave Care Braze Bridge Connector Brunet-Garcia Buildertrend Built In Buoy Health Button Cadre CampusLogic capSpire Cargas Cask Cassaday & Company Central Point Partners Charles Stephen and Company Chime CK Commercial Clari Clearcover CloudGenix Cloudticity Coastal Cloud Coda Code42 Software CodeScience Cogent Entertainment Marketing Compliancy Group Contrast Security Cornerstone Research CoSourcing Partners Crumdale Partners CyberGRX Databricks Dataiku Davenport Group DemandZen DH Technologies Dialexa Divvy DLP Real Estate Capital Dragos Drift DRM Productions DroneDeploy Dv01 Dynamic Logistix Eagle Pipe Eliassen Group Embark enCompass Advertising Agency Endgame360 EnergyCAP Entegrity Envida Envoy Epidemic Sound U.S. EventBooking Evolutyz Evolv Technology Evotek ExtraHop Fattmerchant Fetch Rewards 15Five Fish Consulting 5 Flexera Florence Healthcare Forcura Formstack Forter Fundera Fusion Medical Staffing GadellNet Consulting Services G&A Partners Gardner Builders The Garrett Companies Gasket Guy GitLab Glassman Wealth Services GoodRx GoSite Grafana…

TELEMEDICINE FINDS THAT THE FUTURE IS SUDDENLY HERE

Telemedicine as a business model has been hampered by the reluctance of practitioners to move from hospital or office-based medicine, and insurance companies that offered only cursory virtual-care coverage. In two months, everything changed, says Sarjoo Patel (above), founder of Beam Healthcare, which is seeing an upsurge in demand from health care institutions “because of our ability to assist from our years of experience.” Patel founded Beam Healthcare in Madison six years ago with two goals: first, to leverage technology to address the health care system’s most pressing issues regarding cost, quality of care, and access; and second, to recruit tech-minded medical professionals, and then hang on to them for the long run as the market evolved. Today, with some 25 to 30 doctors and specialists across the U.S., Beam’s array…

TELEMEDICINE FINDS THAT THE FUTURE IS SUDDENLY HERE

The winners were those that met a minimum engagement score and a minimum benefits score in each size category—micro, small, medium, medium large, large, or extra large—based on the number of employees. Minimum Engagement Score/Minimum Benefits Score Micro (10 to 24 employees) 96.37 / 44 Small (25 to 49) 94.42 / 47 Medium (50 to 99) 92.55 / 48 Medium Large (100 to 249) 91.19 / 51 Large (250 to 499) 88.99 / 54 Extra Large (500 and up) 88.13 / 52 How we count benefits Inc. assigned a 1 to 4 weighting on benefits and perks. Essentials such as health insurance and 401(k)s get a 4. Child care, onsite fitness, and other services rate a 3. That beer fridge and bringing your pet to work? Nice, but each is a 1. THE EDITORS’ FAVES In addition to our Best Workplaces list, Inc.’s editors have recognized a…

Brand & Purpose

By the time I got to This Old House, it wasn’t exactly Victorian, but it was definitely vintage. And I had to renovate it. TOH was the original home-improvement brand—the PBS television shows, a couple of websites, a magazine, and other businesses. When I got the house keys, the show had been around long enough to have been satirized on Saturday Night Live and in The New Yorker. TOH was the impetus for HGTV, and, in reruns, it was even much of that network’s early programming. But by 2005, even with home-improvement programming exploding, TOH’s audience was drifting away. My hunch was that TOH had a problem common to many businesses—it was focused on the wrong thing. TOH had given up on its reason for being: The simple remodels it started with…

SURGING FORWARD, GIVING BACK

AMY ERRETT FOUNDER OF MADISON REED If anyone could claim to be too busy to be a mentor, it’s Amy Errett, the CEO of 250-person hair-color company Madison Reed, which she founded in 2013. She’s also a partner at VC firm True Ventures and, to add to the crazy, raising a family with her wife. Yet Errett also finds time to regularly mentor about eight women founders over coffee. Each month, she gets a handful of requests for advice through her personal network and 60 to 80 inquiries via LinkedIn. She takes on as many as she can, covering issues like fundraising, hiring, and building a board. Says Errett, “I won’t refuse if I think I can help the next woman in line.” Once, that was Smitten Ice Cream’s Robyn Sue Fisher,…

SURGING FORWARD, GIVING BACK

Will You Be My Mentor?

When Sallie Krawcheck was raising money for Ellevest, her investment platform for women, there was one venture capitalist she just couldn’t get to commit. She told another woman entrepreneur how much she wanted that VC on board. “Actually, you don’t,” her friend replied. “That person gets drunk at my board meetings and screams obscenities.” “Excellent,” says Kraw-check in retrospect. “That was excellent information to have.” How do you get that sort of insider information? To whom can you turn when it’s time to hire a head of engineering, or when you don’t know what your org chart should look like? For female founders, turning to a peer is often the answer, and knowing how to present yourself is almost as important as knowing whom to call. Julie Rice, who founded SoulCycle with Elizabeth…

Will You Be My Mentor?

HOW I GOT COVID-19 TESTS TO MARKET IN TWO WEEKS

“I went outside for the first time in six days,” said Everlywell founder and CEO Julia Cheek, via Zoom from her living room in Austin in late March. “I’ve been working 20 hours a day.” Cheek, 36, was three weeks removed from a decision she’d made for Everlywell to offer tests for Covid-19. In the time since, the company had been battered by conflicting and confusing guidance from the federal government, a national economic tailspin, and frantic pleas for help from the public. Everlywell makes at-home diagnostic tests for common health issues, such as sexually transmitted diseases and vitamin deficiencies. After a health scare opened Cheek’s eyes to the frustrating costs and lack of transparency in lab testing, she left her role as Moneygram’s VP of corporate strategy to found Everlywell…

HOW I GOT COVID-19 TESTS TO MARKET IN TWO WEEKS

Sure, you lead. But the right hire leads to success.

It started with a cookbook. When pastry chef Fany Gerson couldn’t find a book on treats from her native Mexico, she decided to write one herself. “Most of the sweets in Mexico are part of an oral culture passed down from generation to generation,” Gerson says. “There’s not a lot of documentation about it.” Published in 2010, the same year Gerson founded her New York City-based frozen-treat company, La Newyorkina, My Sweet Mexico was nominated for a James Beard Award. Two cookbooks and one retail store later, Gerson is running a small business that pulled in $1.4 million in 2019. Her hugely popular paletas—ice pops made with Mexican flavors—inspired a miniature version called paletitas, which recently landed in Whole Foods. “You want to be differentiated in the right way. People connect to stuff…

Sure, you lead. But the right hire leads to success.

Take it from the son of a Holocaust survivor—a sense of humor goes a long way in hard times

In September 2019, when Daniel Lubetzky stepped down as the CEO of Kind to become executive chairman, he never imagined that within six months, the company would face a historic challenge. In February, concern over the coronavirus pandemic led consumers to hoard food and other essential supplies, sending demand for some Kind products up 200 percent. Meeting that demand was no small feat. “I don’t think we’d have been prepared if we hadn’t deepened our leadership over the past couple of years,” Lubetzky says, referring to the hiring of CEO Mike Barkley as well as a new chief human resources officer, chief customer officer, and chief operating officer, among others. “We were building five years out. I didn’t know it would come in so handy so soon, particularly given the accelerated…

Take it from the son of a Holocaust survivor—a sense of humor goes a long way in hard times

Hustle and Heart

An Inc. series about entrepreneurs who refocus their talents to do right by others. If you were to pluck co-founders from a crowd, Monica Peraza O’Quigley and Sydney Sherman would not make an obvious duo. But when O’Quigley, a mother of four who was then running the online importing business Alegreea, sat down at an Austin coffee shop in early 2019 to meet with Sherman, a 28-year-old traveler who splits her time between Guatemala and New York City, both felt it was kismet. “There was an incredible connection,” says O’Quigley, “and within the first 15 minutes, we said: Let’s do this together,” this being the ambitious goal of raising the incomes of women in developing countries by creating an online marketplace to connect them directly to conscious consumers in wealthier markets. The…

Hustle and Heart

What do donkeys, beer, and jogging have in common? Burro racing. Legend has it that inebriated miners in Colorado began racing alongside their pack animals in the 19th century. The sport continues today, and Caitlin Landesberg, 37, decided to give it a try when her father started fostering donkeys at the family farm in Windsor, California, last year. She and Lucy plan to run their first race in October. Landesberg will be sober, but, afterward, she’ll probably crack open a cold one crafted by her company, Sufferfest. The beermaker produces low-gluten brews designed to help athletes replace electrolytes and enjoy a bloat-free buzz. Sufferfest, which is available in chains such as Whole Foods and Target, got acquired by Sierra Nevada just last year, so even if Landesberg and Lucy don’t…

In This Issue

Description

Details

Reviews

Recent Digital Issues Browse all

Recent Inc. Digital Issues Browse all back issues

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 17th, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Winter 2023/2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) November 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) September 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) May/June 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription February 21st, 2025 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Spring 2025: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 15th, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Winter 2024/2025: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) November 2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) September 2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription April 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) April 2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) March 2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 17th, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Winter 2023/2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) November 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) September 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2023 Issue

Inc. (Digital) May/June 2023: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription February 21st, 2025 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Spring 2025: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 15th, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) Winter 2024/2025: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) November 2024: $4.99

Inc. (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

Inc. (Digital) September 2024: $4.99

Customers Also Viewed

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital) Subscription August 9th, 2017 Issue

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital)

No.91_Aug-16 - Special: $4.57

Art in America Magazine (Digital) Subscription September 24th, 2024 Issue

Art in America Magazine (Digital)

(2)

4 Issues: $79.95

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital)

13 Issues: $49.08 ~~$83.85~~

stern Magazine (Digital) Subscription April 24th, 2025 Issue

stern Magazine (Digital)

52 Issues: $161.74 ~~$209.56~~

Fantastic Four Magazine Subscription

Fantastic Four Magazine

12 Issues: $59.97

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital) Subscription August 9th, 2017 Issue

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital)

No.91_Aug-16 - Special: $4.57

Art in America Magazine (Digital) Subscription September 24th, 2024 Issue

Art in America Magazine (Digital)

(2)

4 Issues: $79.95

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital)

13 Issues: $49.08 ~~$83.85~~

stern Magazine (Digital) Subscription April 24th, 2025 Issue

stern Magazine (Digital)

52 Issues: $161.74 ~~$209.56~~

Fantastic Four Magazine Subscription

Fantastic Four Magazine

12 Issues: $59.97

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital) Subscription August 9th, 2017 Issue

Business Weekly Special 商業周刊特刊 (Digital)

No.91_Aug-16 - Special: $4.57

Art in America Magazine (Digital) Subscription September 24th, 2024 Issue

Art in America Magazine (Digital)

(2)

4 Issues: $79.95

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

VolksWorld Magazine (Digital)

13 Issues: $49.08 ~~$83.85~~

Reviews