7 Winning Startups Share the (Adaptable) Secrets to Their Success

• Small business takeaway: Startup founders across industries—furniture, fintech, gut health, fitness, AI, and coffee—credit success to strategies rooted in market alignment and execution. From scaling with a realistic product-market fit and leveraging storytelling to build emotional ties to prioritizing ROI-driven decisions, their advice underscores the importance of conviction, adaptability, and partnerships in navigating markets and scaling profitably across sectors.

Startup founders in sectors ranging from food to fintech to fitness—who’ve managed to land funding windfalls, break into thousands of retail stores, and generate multimillions in profitable sales—credit their successes to one unifying theme: a pragmatic vision to build businesses that answer a compelling market need. 

They’re also dreamers. 

Indeed, their success reflects a tunnel-vision–like self-belief that blocks out the inner critic and secures business partners—from investors to manufacturers—that share that conviction, no matter how green a founder might be, according to interviews with the founders of seven buzzy startups.

Here, founders share the strategic moves and hard-won lessons informing their best advice for SMBs, from “the secret to going viral” to “finding someone who believes in what you’re doing.”

Cambio: Being realistic about the ‘scalability’ of your product or service boils down to two key considerations

In remaking single-serve coffee pods for an increasingly sustainability-minded consumer populace, Cambio tapped into a customer base that’s only growing. Founded by executives from single-serve coffee pioneer Keurig, Cambio packages coffee in recyclable aluminum pods, bringing an eco-friendly alternative to the traditional plastic K-cups on the market.

About 40 million U.S. households own a Keurig, and 21% of existing Keurig households report that they want purpose-driven brands to get behind, Cambio Co-founder Kevin Hartley told CO—. So the startup took the cue, making its recyclable pods 100% organic with coffee beans from small farms, yet designing them for widespread use, as the aluminum pods work with Keurig coffee brewers. And rather than price them as a specialty item, Cambio pods cost the same as mainstream brands.

And therein lies Hartley’s key lesson for nascent businesses: Being realistic about the scalability of your product or service boils down to “two creations,” he said. “One: you create a product that, in the real world, against real alternatives, and with real distribution, is something consumers will choose. Two: You create an organization that can deliver on the opportunity,” Hartley said. “Many major U.S. buyers say the same thing: ‘I find interesting products that can’t ship, and boring ones that can.’”

Cambio is now sold in 5,000 stores nationwide, with plans to triple its retail presence this year. 

[Read more: How Cambio Reinvented Coffee Pods to Secure National Distribution in Under a Year]

Almond Wind: Take chances, have conviction in your business, and partner with others who do, too

Brooke Sharpton spent 12 years in finance, most recently as a VP at J.P. Morgan managing wealth for high-net-worth individuals. 

Like many folks living through the pandemic, Sharpton’s home assumed a profoundly heightened importance—so much so that the period inspired her to address the sea of sameness she saw in the upscale sofa market.

With no formal design or home furnishings industry experience to speak of, Sharpton set about to bring high-end craftsmanship to affordably priced sofas, with a luxury aesthetic and messaging that reflected her personal journey and identity in a product category that lacked “storytelling,” she told CO—.

Just as Sharpton’s own path to purchase often starts with the compelling story behind a product, she launched Almond Wind to forge an “emotional tie-in” between Founder and brand, she said.

On social media platforms from TikTok to Instagram, Sharpton shared her business’s story as one of the few Black-owned and woman-owned furniture brands and her journey of leaving a highly lucrative Wall Street career to launch the business, drawing consumers and marketing buzz.

Almond Wind results from Sharpton’s crash course in home furnishings, which ranged from trips to industry trade shows to hiring experts to bring her vision for mid-luxury sofas to life.

After poring over fabric samples from manufacturers in China, Sharpton landed the ideal partner. The collaboration reflects her advice for other startup founders in any industry: Find “someone who believes in what you’re doing even when you’re not their biggest client,” she said. “You want to find the right fit and not just be at the back of the line.”

Starting a business can be scary, but “Don’t listen to all the reasons why you can’t do something,” Sharpton said. “For me, there were 100 reasons why it wouldn’t work,” she said. “If you believe in your product and you have a strategic plan, go ahead and try it.” 

[Read more: How the Founder of Almond Wind Is Serving an Untapped Market With Reimagined Furniture Design]

Goalsetter: Don’t be constricted by whatever has not been done

For Tanya Van Court, the statistic was startling: Half of all U.S. adults are considered financially illiterate, according to the World Economic Forum. “I started researching the marketplace to see what type of products and tools were needed to improve financial literacy from the earliest age,” but came up short, Van Court said.

So the Stanford-trained Engineer and former Media Executive set out to build one. In 2016, she launched Goalsetter, a digital financial literacy platform designed to help children, adults, and families learn sound money habits via gamified savings, quizzes, and debit-card tools, filling an overlooked niche in the fintech space. 

The platform is inspired in part by the heavy price she paid, a loss of $1 million in stock options during the dotcom bust, “when I didn’t know the basics of investing and finance,” Van Court told CO—.

To develop Goalsetter, Van Court harnessed her product development and digital marketing skills as well as her professional connections, including contacts she made while overseeing programming at Nickelodeon to consult with parents across income levels.

She attended business plan pitch competitions to school herself in the startup fintech ecosystem, and she met a successful entrepreneur who schooled her on crafting a deck and a go-to-market strategy and on how to mine her existing business network to raise angel financing.

In 2016, Van Court raised $700,000 in pre-seed funding from angel investors to launch Goalsetter with the help of former colleagues at Nickelodeon and the Stanford National Black Alumni Association.

Van Court’s growth story ladders up to her advice for entrepreneurs looking to build a business: honor your imaginative impulses for turning your idea into an up-and-running enterprise, particularly amid a business climate where AI is lowering the barriers to entry for small businesses.

“Don’t be constricted by whatever has [already] been done, just go for it,” she said.

“We are at [a] moment in time when past companies and products don’t necessarily determine future success,” Van Court said. “Advances in AI and other technology allow you to now leapfrog an existing tech or competitor.”

[Read more: How a Fintech Founder Secured Celebrity Investors for Goalsetter] 

BelliWelli: ‘Find your schtick, and once you find it, rinse, repeat’

Gut health startup BelliWelli broke through in the crowded, $13.53 billion U.S. digestive health market to amass a devoted following by creating authentic, quirky, and cultural resonant content via candid chats with celebs and customers, particularly Gen Z, about the startup’s gut health products on social media.

It all started in the aisles of a Walmart store when Co-founder Katie Wilson, a former celebrity matchmaker, stopped by her local Walmart to see how her fiber supplement powder was displayed on shelves.

She chatted up an elderly man buying BelliWelli for his wife. “This is my brand; I just launched in Walmart. I’ll buy you one,” she told him. Wilson pulled out her phone and began recording the interaction, and with his permission, shared the video of their conversation about fiber supplements and her BelliWelli powder on TikTok. 

While the move might register on the wacky scale of early-startup marketing strategies, Wilson’s in-the-moment instincts were visceral and organic. And they paid off. The videos went viral, helping to fuel a 405% year-over-year surge in Belliwelli’s revenue from 2023 to 2024. 

With these videos that captured candid interactions, BelliWelli, unwittingly, found its marketing voice, and went with it, again and again—a fitting goal for any brand, according to Wilson. “Find your schtick, and once you find it, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat,” she said. “Your schtick won’t be the same as everyone else’s. It will be something unique and ownable to you and for you.”

Wilson advises startups and small businesses to take two weeks to figure out what their schtick is. When you do, “It will be worth every moment,” she said. 

[Read more: How BelliWelli Broke Through the Crowded Gut Health Market to Amass a Devoted Following]

Solidcore: Maximize your ‘skill set’ and ‘know your end game’

Former waitress and lifelong fitness lover Anne Mahlum turned $175,000 in personal savings into national Pilates chain Solidcore, netting her $88.4 million from the sale of the company. Her success beat long industry odds: 81% of health and fitness studios shutter in their first year, done in by competition from big chains, along with lack of capital and brand identity, according to the Health & Fitness Association.

Mahlum’s success playbook doubles as her advice for entrepreneurs: “First, be sure to lean into yourself and who you are. Your skill sets and talents should match what you want to achieve as an entrepreneur,” she told CO—. “Second, be authentic and hold true to your values.”

While serving in a corporate role at Comcast, Mahlum’s morning run past a homeless shelter unexpectedly kicked off her pivot into entrepreneurship. 

After getting to know the shelter residents, in 2007, she quit her job to found non-profit Back on My Feet, which combined running events with coaching, financial aid, and job-training programs to help “this overlooked population build self-esteem and reforge independent lives,” Mahlum said. It’s where she built the entrepreneurial muscles that would ground Solidcore.

Six years on, fueled by the “transformative” impact Pilates had on her exercise routine and recognizing that there was no fitness chain branding the low-impact, high-intensity workout, Mahlum founded Solidcore. “I knew I had honed the leadership and business skills necessary for such an undertaking,” she said. 

She crafted an operating plan designed to be replicated market to market, including training talent, recruiting clients, and operating each studio profitably. “I focused on my personality, leadership skills, and knowing my numbers,” she said. “That helped me woo investors.”

That focus echoes Mahlum’s third piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs: “Know what your end game is,” she said. “Every decision you make must be your North Star.” Case in point, after growing to 10 stores in two years by bootstrapping the business, Mahlum set her sights on expansion, raising $18 million from private equity investors to take Solidcore to 27 locations. “Demonstrating your business savvy and how you meet your business goals is what impresses investors and leads to success,” Mahlum said.

With the ultimate goal of selling the chain, Mahlum spread the Solidcore gospel of the economic health of business to potential buyers. So when Kohlberg & Company purchased Solidcore for $88.4 million, “the business was attractive,” she said. “It had a good growth trajectory with healthy returns.”

[Read more: How a Former Waitress Built the Solidcore Fitness Chain and Made $100 Million]

Bilt: ‘First, you’ve got to solve a big problem’

Serial entrepreneur Ankur Jain became a fintech billionaire in four years by creating Bilt, the first membership and loyalty program for house and apartment renters nationwide, this year adding mortgage payments to the mix. 

The idea for the startup sprang from a fateful chat between Jain and Barry Sternlicht, Chairman of Starwood Capital Group, who leads the multibillion-dollar hotel and real estate business.

Sternlicht shared with Jain that airlines and hotels make more profit from their loyalty programs than they do from operating hotels and flying planes. “I was amazing by that business model, and I started to think of how that could be applied to the home rental market,” consumers biggest expense, he told CO—. 

Today, Bilt rewards apartment and house dwellers for making housing payments on time with a Bilt card or other credit cards including Visa, Discover, and American Express. Rewards range from frequent flyer miles to points toward hotel bookings, fitness classes, Lyft rides, local restaurants, and more.

Jain’s advice to nascent entrepreneurs is twofold. “First, you’ve got to solve a big problem,” and not get blinded by the bright shiny object of the (business) moment, he said. “It’s so easy to chase the latest hyped trend. Start by figuring out what the customer pain point is and then figure out a solution.”

For its part, Bilt sought to bring newfound value to renters and homeowners with never-before-seen perks for dutifully paying for housing, their biggest monthly expense, which incentivized them to pay on time. Meanwhile, the perks have a halo effect on landlords by reducing tenant turnover and boosting lease renewals, for example.

The strategy took hold. Bilt boasts more than 6 million members today and processes over $60 billion in housing payments through a vast property manager network. Jain also has words of wisdom for budding founders on financing a business. “Second, is something I learned the hard way. Raise capital from strategic partners who are your end customers,” he said.

In Bilt’s first two years in business, Jain raised capital from real estate partners he wanted to work with, including Related Company, Blackstone Real Estate, and Equity Residential. “These are the people who will be completely aligned with your success.” 

[Read more: Bilt Rewards: From Startup to Fintech Billionaire in Just Four Years]

Whippy: To reach profitability, make sure every single business decision yields a prompt return on investment 

AI-agent–powered platform Whippy is an outlier in the U.S. startup landscape. The 2021-launched business, which automates companies’ marketing and customer service functions, reached profitability year one, Co-founder David Daneshgar told CO—. (By contrast, about 20% of new businesses fail within their first year, and nearly 50% fail within five years, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)

Daneshgar’s first startup was another story. When BloomNation debuted in 2011, he raised $20 million to finance the business, an era when investors were throwing hefty capital at startups. So from the get-go, the floral disruptor “had money to burn,” he said. For investors then, it was a given that the business would lose money on its way to turning a profit in some unspecified future, he said. 

With Whippy, Daneshgar stopped deprioritizing profitability as some nebulous, distant goal, and instead, the urgent question became, “How do we spend money now to get a return on investment as soon as possible?” Daneshgar told CO—.

His message for entrepreneurs is to scrutinize every single business decision’s potential to generate an ROI. It’s an old-school way of doing business that he’s now come to fully appreciate, passed down from his dad, who’s run a successful gastroenterology practice for decades.

“The investor world skewed our thinking on traditional financing,” whereby turning a profit is a hazy, sometime-in-the-future objective, he said. “Now we’re thinking of [running] companies like our parents did.” For example, “if my parents are going to buy a machine, they’re asking, ‘Is this going to have an immediate return on investment?’”

With its eye on profits, Whippy positioned the startup as a customized AI agency for business sectors ranging from staffing firms to pharmacies. By solving big business use cases at scale, like deploying its voice AI agents to interview job candidates for hiring agency Express Employment Professionals, Whippy engendered trust, securing clients that committed to big long-term contracts.

“That first big use case was a $50,000 a year contract—it opened our eyes,” Daneshgar said.

Today, Whippy serves over 1,000 businesses, averages $500,000 in monthly revenue from its subscription model and turns a profit. It’s on track to become a $9.6 million business in 2026.

[Read more: How AI Tech Startup Whippy Beat the Odds to Turn a Profit in Its First Year]

—With reporting by Deborah Lynn Blumberg, Lori Ioannou, and Denise Purcell.

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