Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor’s determination. <\/p>\n
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with founder and former CEO of PopSockets David Barnett to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10\u201320 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who’d grown up inside the company.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. <\/p>\n
Chapters: <\/p>\n
00:00 Intro <\/p>\n
01:15 From philosophy professor to phone grip inventor <\/p>\n
05:17 How a house fire funded PopSockets <\/p>\n
07:33 Manufacturing nightmares nearly killed the business <\/p>\n
10:08 The local toy store that proved it could work <\/p>\n
13:14 The $20M Amazon standoff <\/p>\n
16:09 Growing too fast? <\/p>\n
18:20 Beating counterfeits in China through brand building <\/p>\n
19:11 Why David never wanted to be CEO <\/p>\n
23:07 The worst advice received, and what to do instead <\/p>\n
26:35 Outro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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