From the Ground Up

In this episode, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin host a roundtable discussion with some of the reporters who contributed to Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founders issue. They are joined by freelancer writer Issie Lapowsky and senior editor Rebecca Deczynski to discuss how the state of female entrepreneurship is rapidly changing in this political moment.

In putting together the 2025 Female Founders issue of Inc., Diana noticed an interesting phenomenon: There were a significant number of women entrepreneurs who’d bought back their businesses or returned to the helm of their startups after having stepped away. What’s going on? We discuss.

Also: The challenges—and remarkable innovations—of women-founded companies in health care.

And finally! Celebrity business overload! Could 2025 see a shift in strategy, with brands leaning more on social media influencers and fans to reduce their reliance on costly A-list celebrities? What industries are still ripe for celebrity founders? Which are essentially over? And, the eternal question: What’s the real ROI for a brand when it enlists a celebrity co-founder or spokesperson?

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2024 Female Founder’s list (2025 out soon!)

Listen to Chrisitine’s interview with Anu Duggal about the state of female founders in 2024

To read more from Inc.com about embattled DEI: The Anti-DEI Lawsuit Against the Fearless Fund Was Just Settled

To find out more about Female Founder funding read: What Female Founders Can Do to Raise Money Right Now, Next Year, and Beyond, According to This VC

Before Monte Deere joined Kizik, the hands-free shoe brand, as chief executive, he had zero experience in selling consumer products–—and no experience in footwear. Heck, he’d never been a CEO before.

But Kizik’s Kizik founder Mike Pratt had worked with Deere previously– and took a bet on him. Deere was tasked with recruiting a dream team of executives with experience at brands such as Hoka, Converse, and Nike--"—“shoe dogs,”" as he likes to call them, a reference to Nike founder Phil Knight's Knight’s memoir--—to complement the “"cool contingency of innovators”" led by Pratt.

This year, Kizik is #No. 407 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest fastest-growing companies in America. In 2023, its revenue was more thanover $100 million. In an interview with Inc. editor editor-at at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, Deere explains Kizik’s pandemic-era brand transformation, how it found its loyal customers, and its expansion into DTC and wholesale–—plus its fascinating collaborations. Monte believes that soon 10% percent of the global footwear market could soon be hands hands-free.

Following our regular episode, we have a special segment in collaboration with our partner at Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Inc. Editor-in-Chief Mike Hoffman spoke with Smarsh Founder Stephen Marsh about his remarkable journey, the legacy he has built, and the honor of being the first recipient of the inaugural Legacy Award presented by Glenfiddich at this year's Inc. 5000 gala. Skillfully Crafted, Enjoy Responsibly. Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky ©2024 Imported by William Grant & Sons, Inc. New York, NY.

Additional research and information:

Read on Inc.com: Is Kizik Building the Next Billion-Dollar Sneaker Brand?

Read on Inc.com: Kizik Inc 5000 profile

Visit Kizik website:

https://kizik.com/pages/about-us

Visit Hands Free Labs Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/handsfreelabs/

Visit Kizik’s YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRjtGcRZbkj4yQ3SrU4YcDQ

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Babba Rivera, the founder and CEO of clean-beauty company Ceremonia, is a cover subject of Inc. magazine’s 2025 Female Founder issue. Her heritage is both an inspiration and a driving force for her brand.

When Babba Rivera was growing up, her Chilean family moved to Sweden to escape the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. She spent her early career working at startups in both Sweden and the U.S., at Uber and at the luggage upstart Away, where she was director of marketing. During that time, Babba was spending an hour every morning styling her hair with really “toxic, unhelpful products.” As a Latinx woman, she didn’t see any products that were designed with her heritage or type of hair in mind. So, in 2020, she founded Ceremonia, an aspirational natural-ingredient brand that seeks to fill a void in the beauty market for her fellow Latinx consumers.

For Inc. magazine’s Female Founders 2025 series, Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom sat down with Babba to chat about her background and where the seeds for Ceremonia took root. They discussed how Babba felt that working at Uber in her 20s was like getting paid to go to business school, how she created a knowledge exchange with another founder to learn about the beauty business, and how her company’s product development is constantly evolving with the help of customer feedback. Joining Diana is Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, as well as special guest Cate Luzio, founder and CEO of Luminary.

Additional research and information:

Inc.’s 2025 Female Founder List

Read more about Babba and Ceremonia at Inc.

Visit: Ceremonia

Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks, is perhaps best known for his appearances on Shark Tank. But much of his focus these days is on expanding his Builders Movement, the initiative he co-founded that aims to bring together “builders” from around the world to help replace extremism with practical problem-solving. Lubetzky is trying to counter the political polarization that is taking over our culture and discourse, and to build better communities by promoting compromise and efforts to find common ground among people who disagree.

Inc. editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin spoke to Lubetzky about Shark Tank, his investment firm Camino Partners, his business philosophy, and how Builders Movement got started. He told From the Ground Up: “We need to bring a builder’s mindset to all conversations by relying on curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage.” He said that, while founders, and leaders, are important to the process of change, it’s an anti-authoritarian movement that he’s trying to spur. “There’s no chance we’re going to change things in a community, let alone across the world, with a centralized model,” Lubetzky said. “We need a distributed model where everyone, everyone here is empowered to bring change to their own communities.”

Additional research and information:

For more Inc. coverage of Daniel Lubetzky, read:

Daniel Lubetzky, Founder of Kind Snacks, Joins ‘Shark Tank’

Billionaire Daniel Lubetzky’s Simple Strategy for Overcoming Toxic Divisions

To learn more about the Builders Movement, visit its website.

Visit KIND Snacks

This week, we kick off our Inc. feature coverage by exploring the making of–and proliferation of–cult brands. In this episode, executive editor Diana Ransom and editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin invite Inc. staff writer Ali Donaldson to talk about an article she wrote that broke open a lot of consumer trends we’ve seen over recent years–and explained the anatomy of consumer-product virality. Certain brands seem to grow cult followings almost overnight. Turns out that’s no happy accident–it’s all in the plan. And Ali lays out precisely what that plan looks like for brands that achieve cult status.

Stanley, Kendra Scott, and Bogg Bag are extremely different companies–aside from the fact that each has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. And it turns out, they are all fascinating case studies in appealing to customers, both online and offline. Bogg Bag, founded by Kim Vaccarella, out of Lodi, New Jersey, landed on the Inc. 5000 this year and expects to book over $100 million in revenue by the end of 2024. Kendra Scott, the Texas-based jewelry brand, continues to evolve with its customers online–and meets them where they are on campuses, too. And the Stanley cup stans are seriously engaged and proudly express it through TikTok and other social media channels. They might wonder: How on earth is this a 110-year-old company? Donaldson explains, and also dishes about her interview with the marketing genius behind both the Stanley brand shift that brought it to a new generation and the proliferation of Crocs.

Source notes and additional research and information:

Read: How Preppy Cult Brands Captured the Imagination and Wallets of Female Consumers, by Ali Donaldson, on Inc.com

Read: How This Marketing Pro Got Crocs on Every Celebrity–and Also Was Behind the Stanley Tumbler Trend

Listen: Kendra Scott interviewed on Inc.’s What I Know podcast

Read: How Kendra Scott Crafted a Remarkably Wholesome Customer Service Philosophy

Read: A history of Stanley Cups, via Stanley1813.com

Read: Dive into the 2024 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America

Visit: Kendra Scott

Visit: Bogg Bag

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