Every entrepreneur has the moment — that time when hard work finally pays off, when a long-desired opportunity presents itself and the entrepreneur has to decide how to react.
The moment can be stressful, and for good reason. It can be a turning point for any business, but only if it’s seized properly. And as the eight founders here can attest, it isn’t always clear what the right move is. Success takes guts. It takes sweat. It takes a lot of hard work — first to have reached the moment, and then to prepare for what happens next.
Will you grab the opportunity when it hits?
Go where the buyers are
Roshini Raj, M.D., co-founder of TULA, New York City
TULA Could have launched like any skincare line — with its own website, a presence on e-commerce giants like Amazon, and a lot of marketing dollars. But one of its three cofounders, Dan Reich, had an idea: He’d previously worked with the team that launched QVC’s e-commerce site, and he knew the network wanted to try launching a brand from scratch online. Maybe TULA could be that brand.
TULA offered. QVC said yes, but there was a catch: For one full year, the company could sell only through QVC.com. TULA wouldn’t even have its own site. That was a risk, but the cofounders thought it was worth taking. They’d plug directly into QVC’s loyal audience, rather than have to build their own.
The test began and the startup sprang to work. Co-founder Roshini Raj, a gastroenterologist who’s a regular on Dr. Oz and other TV shows, worked her contacts to book herself several spots. TULA’s CEO, Julia Straus, reached out to bloggers and influencers. Within a few months, sales were continuing to grow, and QVC polled its website users to see which new brand deserved a shot to go on the air. TULA won, and soon after, Raj was pitching QVC’s TV audience on TULA’s $49 day/night cream.
“My role was to teach and explain.”
— Roshini Raj, TULA
“Before then, I had never sold a thing in my life, but I quickly learned that my role was to teach and explain, and the sales would come from the strength of the products, not me,” Raj says. The cream sold out in less than nine minutes.
TULA co-founders now knew they had a winning idea and didn’t waste any time prepping for a post-QVC life. Soon after the year-long exclusivity deal expired, they launched a website, expanded from four to 11 products and set out to raise more funding.
And Straus came away with a big insight into how to make a product pop. “If you package and sell your product for a TV audience,” she says, “the same principles work on a digital audience. And if you want to learn how it’s done, just watch QVC for several hours.” — Matt Villano
Hit the right influencers
Ben Jacobsen, owner of Jacobsen Salt Co., Portland, Ore.
After closing his mobile app company, Ben Jacobsen went looking for a new venture. He was inspired by Oregon’s food culture, which heavily valued local foods, and spotted opportunity: Nobody made local salt. So he spent two and half years learning to source and package salt, then began selling his artisan product for $5.50 per pound.
He knew the average foodie wasn’t going to pay $11 for a two-pound bag of his unknown salt — not at first, at least — so he courted big-name chefs. One of the first to bite was Portland chef Gregory Gourdet (a popular Top Chef competitor), whom Jacobsen connected with through a mutual friend. Other chefs caught wind of Jacobsen’s Oregon salt, right at the time Portland was becoming a national sensation for its foodstuffs.
That’s what led to Jacobsen’s big break. In July 2013, celebrity chef April Bloomfield was on The Tonight Show, and host Jimmy Fallon asked her to name her favorite salt (because, you know, Jimmy Fallon). She said it was Jacobsen’s; the next day, the salt-maker’s website crashed due to high demand.
Jacobsen used the boost to expand in both directions — with chefs (he now has direct supply accounts with 500 chefs across the country, including Michelin-star winners) and, finally, to consumers (Jacobsen Salt is in Williams-Sonoma and has added lower-cost products like salted caramels and spicy honey). Demand is high: He harvests 18,000 pounds of salt a month. — Matt McCue
Sell your story
Many founders wonder, Will my company succeed, or will it lead me to success somewhere else? As Tara Reed knows, the answer to that question can create hard choices — like whether to trade a product you love for new opportunities.
Reed’s path began when she built a mobile app called Kollecto, which helped users shop for art. But rather than rock the art world, the app gained recognition for another reason: Reed didn’t know a lick of code but created the app anyway. That earned her a TEDx talk on helping others build apps without code, and that led to consulting work and an app-building boot camp.
Reed decided to roll with it: Her skill set seemed to have more growth potential than Kollecto. The app is now on hiatus. “When people ask me for advice, I tell them, ‘Get going,’” she says. “Chances are, you’ll have something wrong, but you won’t know until you test those assumptions with actions.” — Kate Rockwood
Make a social media scene
Augustin Paluel-Marmont, co-founder of…