His house burned down. He used the insurance money to build PopSockets.
Source: TechCrunch
PopSockets: From Garage to Global Brand
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 is more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer‑hardware brand was built on less than $500 k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor’s determination.
Podcast Episode
Watch as founder and former CEO of PopSockets, David Barnett, joins Equity to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10–20 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who’d grown up inside the company.
Listen to the episode on Equity:
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You can also follow Equity on X () and Threads () at @EquityPod.