Alex Schinasi has nine employees and the ninth arrived last week. Her company, Hulken, sells a rolling tote her father sketched in a Paris hotel room, and it started with fifty bags shipped out of her New York apartment. She launched nationwide in Target a year ago, it worked, and then she woke up to find no containers arriving to stock her own website. She explains what she calls the minimum viable company: nine people, three factories, no venture capital and an AI chief of staff for every employee. Before Hulken she co-founded and sold two software companies, Ivy to Houzz and Clay to Kangarootime.
Featuring
Elizabeth Gore, Co-Founder and President, Hello Alice
Alex Schinasi, Co-Founder and President, Hulken
Timestamps
0:00 Gus, and AI agents that can now buy things on their own
1:32 Fifty bags, shipped from her apartment
2:50 A walking billboard, and what the name means in Swedish
4:40 Her first employee was her husband
6:36 Building the company and the family at the same time
8:05 The moment she finally left the software company
9:37 What she took from software into a physical product
11:32 Nine employees, and the ninth arrived last week
12:48 The AI brain they built for the whole company
14:05 Why every employee has a chief of staff
15:10 Her last two companies were venture backed
17:49 How she fights the copycats
19:09 The photograph she took of a stranger
20:56 Target nationwide, and what it cost her
22:25 Complexity decides when she hires, not revenue
24:28 The Brooklyn bakery she wants you to know about
25:53 Why 93% of her customers are women
#Hulken #SmallBusiness #Retail #TheBigIdea #YahooFinance
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