Inc. Magazine July/August 2019

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One of the great privileges of working for Inc. is getting to meet entrepreneurs at every step of their journey. In May, Inc. held our first Fast Growth Tour event, in Chicago, at which my colleagues and I were pleasantly surrounded by entrepreneurs from all ranks: from those who are just figuring out their business plans, to Inc. 5000 founders like Angela Keaveny of Rowdydow bbQ (No. 1,701 in 2018) and Christina Stembel of Farmgirl Flowers (No. 739), to titans like Adam Lowry of Method and Ripple Foods and Kendra Scott. This issue of Inc. extends the same privilege to you. Our annual “How I Did It” package introduces you to entrepreneurs big and small, who are eager to share with you their tales of toil and triumph. The package, which was…

One sound bite still lingers from the days before the Great Dot-Com Crash of 2000, courtesy of an investment banker who insisted he wasn’t concerned about the tsunami of funding sloshing around the IPO market. “It’s Wall Street’s job to throw money at companies,” he said. And investors’ job to sort the winners from the losers. Throw money Wall Street did—to any entity ending in .com run by any group of idiots. How much? There were 486 IPOs in 1999, which collected $92.2 billion, and another 406 in 2000, for another $96.7 billion. Inflation-adjusted, that’s $283 billion worth of equity raised. And then razed, in large measure: The Nasdaq, where much of that dot-com money lived, lost 78 percent of its value peak to trough. Consider some IPOs from one week in…

ETHAN AGARWAL Founder and CEO of New York City–based fitness app-maker Aaptiv Do co-working spaces help with building a coherent corporate culture, or undermine it? • In our co-working space, the guy next to us was a jeweler, and there was a small PR firm and the local office of an industrial company. The people around us were not startup people, so the culture wasn’t that How can you ensure productivity? • I can’t tell you how many times you’ll be kicked out of a conference room because there’s something wrong with the booking process or the phone booth, or something is broken. Does working near other companies promote collaboration? • You can easily hear what everyone is saying and what they’re talking about. They can hear what you’re saying and talking about. Confidentiality is nearly impossible.…

TECHNICUREANS • noun Tech-savvy cooks who seek kitchen appliances with built-in recipe, meal delivery, and larder-replenishment apps. As long as my microwave still has a popcorn button, we’re good. Source: Digital Trends A PLUS • acronym Rejoice! A new investing acronym! It encompasses Airbnb, Pinterest, Lyft, Uber, Slack, Stripe, and Square. So, really A PLUSSS—but who caresss? Source: Forbes CRYPTO WINTER • noun The “bearish run” in crypto that has seen many currencies “suffer an 80 to 90 percent decline from their all-time high.” I think the word they really want is gravity. Source: Cryptopolitan MILLENNIAL MONEY MULES • noun Young people tricked into opening bank accounts “to help launder ill-gotten gains of cybercriminals.” Sounds terrible—but do I still get my frequent-flyer miles? Source: CPO Magazine ISTOCK; ILLUSTRATIONS: ANNA BAK-KVAPIL (2); MICHAEL PARKIN (4)…

Is there a better way to show your employees how much you care than [checks notes] sending them to the dentist? Probably. But consider Henry the Dentist, a New Providence, New Jersey–based mobile dentistry startup that will park in front of your company’s building (or, for that matter, wherever you want). There, patients get their teeth scraped and drilled while sitting in massage chairs, wearing noise-canceling headphones, and watching HBO or Netflix. “A lot of this,” admits founder Justin Joffe, who started Henry in 2016, “came out of people’s natural fear of going to the dentist.” Given the chairs and the entertainment options, he’s pitching this as a “luxury” experience. But there could be workaday advantages to Henry-ing: no need to take half a day off to visit a dental professional—hopefully meaning…