The truth of a Start Up with Founder of “The Wild Curl” Vanessa Lopes
Vanessa Martins Lopes shares how she successfully started a natural curly hair company after being inspired to create a solution for a problem she experienced firsthand.
Three key juicy bits from this week’s episode:
- Using your personal experiences to find a gap in the market
- Embracing the sacrifices you have to make as a startup entrepreneur
- Deciding when to go full-time into your business
In this episode we discuss:
00:40 An introduction to Vanessa Martins Lopes
- Something most people don’t know about Vanessa [01:06]
- What is The Wild Curl? [02:00]
02:42 Vanessa’s motivation to found The Wild Curl
- Discovering the gap in the market [05:27]
09:34 Building a business alongside a day job
11:48 Creating The Wild Curl’s first product
15:26 How the first couple of years of business went
16:54 Deciding on the right moment to focus on the business full-time
18:40 How Vanessa managed her expenses for a year while the business was not yet profitable
34:23 Keeping your personal finances in check as you build your business
20:58 Knowing the best time to launch the business
23:20 How The Wild Curl’s successful fundraising campaign inspired Vanessa
26:17 The Wild Curl’s current overhead
- Vanessa’s hiring strategy [27:16]
28:24 Vanessa’s biggest failure so far
- Vanessa’s biggest learning out of that experience [32:07]
34:45 What the next few years will look like for The Wild Curl
Links Mentioned:
Quotes
- If we still have to do do-it-yourself products at home, that means there are no companies offering solutions.
- If you don’t put time into the business, the business is not going to grow—it’s not going to get profitable; so either you have to go for it or you have to drop it.
- When you make a mistake as a startup, you’re never going to repeat it again, ever.