Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the venture capital treadmill to succeed? After 11 years and 290 million products sold in 115 countries, PopSockets has proven that a bootstrapped, low-dilution path is more viable than the industry gives it credit for. This global consumer hardware brand was founded with less than $500,000, no organizational capital, and the determination of a philosophy professor.
On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominique Madri-Davis interviews PopSockets founder and former CEO David Barnett about how he scaled up from a garage in Boulder, took on Amazon at a cost of $10 million to $20 million, and ultimately handed the CEO role to someone who grew internally.
Listen to the full episode and hear what's next.
How a house fire and some insurance money turned into unlikely seed funding for a global brand How a manufacturing defect that nearly sank a company actually taught him how to build a long-lasting company How ignoring investor advice turned out to be the right choice What he was looking for in his successor CEO (and why culture is non-negotiable) If he launched PopSockets today, he'd do something very different
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